Eric Alterman’s ‘Altercation’ at The American Prospect features an interview with Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic and Democracy and author of The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity, on the topic of “How the Democrats’ Economics Changed.” Among Tomasky’s observations:

How can liberalism win the economic argument against the right? People need to wrap their heads around four propositions:

The following post by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Some Democrats may believe that they have now fixed what’s wrong with their party. They just passed some key legislation and are set to do better than expected in the 2022 election. Republicans are on the defensive about abortion. Democrats are unified, particularly in their depiction of their opponents as an ultra-MAGA party controlled by semi-fascists. Perhaps their problems are now solved.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is that, when the smoke clears and the dust settles this November, Democrats will likely control just the Senate (if that) of the two houses of Congress and still face the same daunting obstacles that were looming before their fortunes improved in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. The same geographic and educational polarization that undercuts the power of the Democratic coalition will remain. Indeed that polarization is likely to increase as the party relies more and more on white college-educated voters in affluent metropolitan areas.

This has profound implications for Democrats in the Electoral College and in Congress, especially in the Senate. Put simply, Democrats’ uncompetitiveness among white working class voters and among voters in exurban, small town and rural America puts them at a massive structural disadvantage given the structure of American electoral system. This problem has only been exacerbated by recent attrition in Democratic support among nonwhite working class voters.

Nothing that has happened in the last several months changes this underlying and uncomfortable fact: Democrats have failed to develop a party brand capable of unifying a dominant majority of Americans behind their political project. Indeed, the current Democratic brand suffers from multiple deficiencies that make it somewhere between uncompelling and toxic to wide swathes of American voters who might potentially be their allies. And those swathes are very, very important. Without better performance there, Democrats’ hold on power will be ever tenuous, as will be their ability to implement their agenda at scale.

So, what to do? I have a modest three point plan for reform and renewal. The Democrats, of course, will continue to win some elections and dominate their favored areas of the country, even without reform. But if they are serious about moving the country away from its current partisan stalemate toward robust political and economic health, they must follow a new path. Here is the first part of that path (I will cover the other two in subsequent posts):

(MORE HERE)

Kaleigh Rogers and Zoha Qamar explain “How Americans Feel About Republican Governors Sending Migrants To Blue Cities” at FiveThirtyEight: “A poll from The Economist/YouGov fielded in the days after the Martha’s Vineyard flights found that Americans were evenly split over whether or not they approved of Texas and Florida sending undocumented immigrants to northern cities without giving those cities notice: Forty-four percent “somewhat” or “strongly” approved, while 44 percent “somewhat” or “strongly” disapproved (12 percent were not sure). Democrats were more likely to disapprove of the relocation efforts, with 71 percent disapproving, while three-quarters of Republicans approved. A poll from Politico/Morning Consult found that 42 percent of registered voters said it was appropriate that “some Republican governors from states along the U.S.-Mexico border have been sending thousands of migrants to liberal states and cities in the U.S.,” with another 41 percent saying it was inappropriate….Fifty-nine percent of Democrats said it was inappropriate, and 66 percent of Republicans said it was appropriate….And in a separate poll from YouGov, Americans were likewise divided when asked whether they approved or disapproved of Southern Republican governors sending undocumented migrants to Democratic-controlled cities without giving those cities notice….When asked in an August Economist/YouGov poll whether immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally should be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship, or whether they should be required to leave the country, Americans were split 44 percent to 41 percent. They were similarly divided in other YouGov data from this week: Thirty-seven percent of Americans said undocumented immigrants were treated “fairly,” and 38 percent said “unfairly.” And in an April survey from Republican pollster Echelon Insights….Thirty percent said immigration should stay at its current level, while 45 percent said it should be decreased and 15 percent said it should be increased….And in an NBC News/Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies survey conducted earlier this month, a majority of registered voters (56 percent) said the Republican Party better handles border security, and a plurality (46 percent) preferred the GOP on immigration.”

From FiveThirtyEight’s “Other Polling Bites“: “A recent Insider/Morning Consult poll found that almost half of Americans (41 percent) thought the age of our political leaders, such as the president and those in Congress and on the Supreme Court, is a major problem, and another 37 percent considered it a minor one — a breakdown that remained fairly consistent across political leanings. Seventy-five percent of Americans were in favor of introducing age maximums for members of Congress, too. Additionally, a majority agreed that a president should “definitely” undergo a physical and mental assessment to take office, with Americans ages 55 to 64 (71 percent) most likely to say so.” And at Forbes, Madeline Halpert reported on September 8, “A clear majority of both Democrats and Republicans think the U.S. should have a maximum age limit for those holding public office—and most believe it should be lower than the ages of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump—according to a CBS poll released Thursday, which also found about half of voters are interested in seeing more young people elected….Republicans and Independents were slightly more likely than Democrats to say there should be age limits: 75% of GOP voters and Independents were in support of a limit, while 71% of Democrats were in favor of a maximum age….Only 27% of all voters said there should be no limits, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,085 U.S. adults from August 29 to 31….About 40% said 70 should be the maximum age to serve as an elected official, while 26% said 60 years old and 18% said 80 years old….About half of U.S. senators are older than 65, according to several reports, despite those 65 years and older only representing 16% of the total American population as of 2020.” These studies don’t tell us which advanced age is a deal-breaker in all circumstances. But they do suggest the age ballpark that would be problematic in a “normal” election, when there is no extremely-corrupt, democracy-threatening opposition candidate. Could Biden win again, despite his relatively advanced age? Maybe, if he runs against the same, but even more damaged candidate again. But these studies do suggest that a healthy political party does a better job of developing its younger leaders than is now the case for Dems. But btw, Trump ain’t no spring chicken.

At Daily Kos, Christopher Reeves has some good questions Democratic campaigns should ask in public forums and media: “Why have Republican candidates not denounced or set themselves apart from Marjorie Taylor Greene, or said they don’t approve of Donald J. Trump’s behavior? While Democratic candidates worry about offending their base a little, Republican candidates are terrified of it. Their own base is so divided that they are not in a position where they feel they can stand against the MAGA members of their own party, and yet, they cannot risk losing the moderate, fiscal Republicans or party-unaffiliated voters who dislike the MAGA message. Now is the time for Democratic campaigns to turn the tables and start demanding: Will you denounce these out of control viewpoints?…If you are going to swing at Republicans, you swing at them right from the beginning on issues you know split their own base. Do they agree with Lauren Boebert? Where do they stand on a national abortion ban? Should people be free to marry whomever they choose? Where does the Republican in the race stand on protecting health care? Where are they on protecting Social Security? At the state level, where is my opponent on honoring elections?….In my own state of Kansas, we still have those who think the 2020 Kansas election was rigged. This in a state where not only is there no proof of that, but Donald J. Trump won the state’s electors fairly easily. Still, some want to go to court and protest….Put the Republican in a position to divide them away from their own base….Republicans yell about “the squad,” but it is well past time we yell back. The further Republicans are forced to define themselves on the issues, the more their own base fractures….When pressed to decide, most simply can’t and act as though they are caught like deer in the headlights. Why? Because they are not certain what they can say without potentially alienating the MAGA voters they have whipped up for years or turning off other voters they need….At every turn possible, force them to make that decision. Force the Republican in the race to choose their friends. To define themselves by their friends. To stand with their friends on issue after issue or to decide to be their own candidate….Force Republicans to own their issues. Lean in as far as you can.”

Kaila Philo reports that “Election Deniers Are Walking Back Their Claims For The General Election” at Talking Points Memo, and writes, “I very much believe it and I think it exists.”….That’s what New Hampshire Senate hopeful Don Bolduc told the New Yorker last October when asked whether he genuinely believed that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump through voter fraud….But when asked again on Fox News this month, the retired Army brigadier general walked back his belief. “I’ve come to the conclusion and I want to be definitive on this,” he said. “The election was not stolen. Elections have consequences and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country.”…He’s not the first to make the abrupt switch: Former triage nurse and Washington’s Republican Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley used to wear her denialism with pride. Statements like, “The 2020 elections raised serious questions about the integrity of our elections” and “I believe that courts have an obligation to give all evidence of voter fraud a fair hearing” sat pretty on her website until early August when, as Axios reported, they disappeared….There seems to be a growing pattern of Republican congressional candidates smothering their denialism once they hit the general election. Some haven’t even admitted their belief out loud: Colorado Republican congressional candidate Erik Aadland, for example, was exposed as a believer in the Big Lie only when a recording surfaced of a man who seemed to be him expressing his fealty to it.….In fact, similar switcheroos have been on display throughout the country in recent months on another topic — abortion. Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jenning, for example, reeled in his support for an abortion ban after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, a deeply unpopular decision in his state. His opponent, Democratic incumbent Tim Walz, enjoys an 18-point lead, widely seen to be in part a result of his pro-life stance.” In ads, interviews, debates and every opportunity, Democratic campaigns and candidates should make their opponents own their walkbacks. And be sure to refer to certified election results when talking about election deniers, just to remind voters of the legitimacy of the vote count, as opposed to unsubstantiated Republican allegations.

I’m certainly old enough to remember lots of these pre-election “agenda” documents, and couldn’t help but mock the latest one at New York:

In Thomas Pynchon’s 1965 cult novel The Crying of Lot 49, a character who has taken too much LSD decides that if everyone on earth repeats the marketing phrase “rich, chocolatey goodness,” it will represent the voice of God. With or without drugs, a lot of people in politics have a similar delusion that getting candidates to make the same noises like chirping cicadas will produce electoral victories. It’s a particularly strong belief among congressional Republicans, who share the dubious conviction that Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” is what flipped control of Congress in 1994.

With the assistance of Gingrich and former Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, the House Republican Conference has released a new “agenda” document, entitled “Commitment to America.” The document, clearly designed for online consumption, has lots of bells and whistles and factoids about the hellish reign of Joe Biden and his “Democrat” Party. What it doesn’t have is a whole lot of specificity, unlike the unfortunate “agenda” that Republican Senate Campaign Committee chairman Rick Scott released earlier this year to the near-universal horror of his colleagues, who don’t want to be identified with the proposed sunsetting of Social Security and Medicare.

The relatively anodyne character of Kevin McCarthy’s pet project doesn’t mean it is entirely useless. Candidates mouthing the approved pieties will presumably not be expressing their pithy views on Jewish space lasers or repeating QAnon slogans.

Still, it’s hard to take seriously an agenda for the nation that does not mention climate change, Russia, or extremist threats to democracy — or one that suggests the sole cure for inflation is to cut “wasteful government spending” without explaining what that means (in the indictment of Democrats that accompanies the agenda, there is much criticism of direct stimulus payments, which Donald Trump preferred to virtually every other form of government spending).

Most interesting was how House Republicans handled a red-hot issue they dare not ignore completely, given the obsession it commands among a very big chunk of the GOP party base: abortion. You have to look pretty hard to find it, nestled as it is under the unlikely heading of “A Government That’s Accountable,” and the downright misleading subheading of “a plan to defend America’s rights under the Constitution.” And it simply says Republicans will “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.” So they checked off a box for anti-abortion activists in the manner least likely to draw curious or unfriendly attention to the extreme abortion views so many of them have expressed, which don’t poll well. Perhaps voters will be too mesmerized by the overall party message to notice. Repeat after me: rich, chocolatey goodness.

 

It’s just a hunch, but I think FL Gov. Ron DeSantis probably screwed himself and hopefully his party’s brand, with what Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. calls DeSantis’s “cruel stunt of flying Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard — now under investigation by a sheriff in Texas and the subject of a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Boston.”

I doubt that there are a lot of swing voters thinking, “Hot damn, just what I wanted to see – a Republican governor defrauding impoverished immigrants and making their lives harder.” People who like that ‘owning the libs’ sort of thing are already on board with the GOP’s worst policies. There’s no value added with swing voters who are looking for constructive solutions and more bipartisanship.

DeSantis’s stunt does nothing to solve immigration problems and it calls attention to the GOP’s inability to come up with any credible immigration reforms. Makes you wonder if DeSantis has the same advisor who persuaded Sen Lyndsey Graham that now would be a good time to call for a national ban on abortions.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. sees it this way: “So DeSantis’s cynical move was, as much as anything, an effort to push aside abortion rights, an issue central to the underdog campaign Democrat Charlie Crist is waging against him….” Dionne adds,

New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall takes a deeper dive into the “Why Aren’t You Voting Your Financial Interests?” thing and comes up with some perceptive comments, including: “Partisan prioritization of cultural and racial issues has, to a notable extent, superseded the economic conflicts that once characterized the nation’s politics, leading to what scholars call a “dematerialization” of American electoral competition….On the right, millions of working- and middle-class whites have shifted their focus away from the goal of income redistribution — an objective Democrats have customarily promoted — to support the Republican preference for traditional, even reactionary, sociocultural values. At the same time, college-educated white voters have come to support tax and spending initiatives that subordinate their own financial self-interest in favor of redistribution and liberal social values….In “Identity, beliefs, and political conflict,” Giampaolo Bonomi, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of California, San Diego, and Nicola Gennaioli and Guido Tabellini, professors of economics at Bocconi University in Milan, make a similar argument:

I knew there was something familiar about the way Democratic and Republican strategists were talking about the 2022 issue landscape, and it finally hit me, as I noted at New York:

In the gospel according to the Church of Bipartisanship, the way politics should work is that each side should devise distinctive solutions to commonly identified problems and then compromise where necessary to get things done. If that doesn’t happen, the blame is typically assigned to self-serving politicians and fanatical activists who prefer gridlock to any accommodation of divergent views.

Reality is more complicated. In part, that’s because the real engines of gridlock are the institutional obstacles (especially the Senate filibuster and judicial review) available to minority parties to obstruct anything they don’t want to happen. Beyond that fundamental problem, moreover, is a flawed premise at the heart of the bipartisan proposition: The parties often don’t agree on any “commonly identified problems.” Indeed, as Ron Brownstein explains, that’s why Democrats and Republicans appear to be “talking past each other” in this year’s midterm-election chatter:

“As the Democratic pollster Molly Murphy told me, 2022 is not an election year when most Americans ‘agree on what the top priorities [for the country] are’ and debate ‘different solutions’ from the two major parties. Instead, surveys show that Republican voters stress inflation, the overall condition of the economy, crime, and immigration. For Democratic voters, the top priorities are abortion rights, the threats to democracy created by former President Donald Trump and his movement, gun control, climate change, and health care.”

Now this is not, of course, an entirely unprecedented phenomenon. Ever since polling and focus groups were invented, politicians have understood there are certain issues that favor or disfavor their own parties. For ages, Republicans have struggled to maintain credibility on fundamental fairness, maintenance of an adequate social safety net, and sensitivity to the needs of minorities, while Democrats aren’t really trusted to keep government efficient, attend to national security needs, or protect traditional moral values. Ceding whole areas to the opposition unfortunately tends to reinforce such stereotypes, which in turn makes loud shouting the way to elevate the issues one “owns.”

In living memory, some of the more innovative politicians in both parties have refused to play this game of ownership and instead sought to “capture,” or at least neutralize, the other party’s issues with distinctive policies of their own. Most famously, Bill Clinton, to the great dismay of Republicans and quite a few people in his own party, insisted on offering proposals aimed at reducing crime (e.g., community policing and deploying more officers on the streets), reforming welfare (originally a work-based proposal that maintained a personal entitlement to assistance), and “reinventing government.” Yes, Clinton, whose party did not control either chamber of Congress for six of his eight years in office, ultimately went too far in accommodating Republican policies on both crime and welfare reform (thus exposing him to the charge of “triangulating” against his own party). But the basic idea of offering Democratic proposals on public concerns outside the party’s comfort zone was smart, and it drove Republicans, who constantly complained that Clinton was “stealing our issues,” absolutely crazy.

Similarly, George W. Bush, on the advice of strategist Karl Rove, spent much of his first term offering modest but significant proposals on health care (a Medicare prescription-drug benefit), education (the No Child Left Behind Act), and immigration (a comprehensive reform measure) — all issues Democrats were generally thought to “own.” Like Clinton, he paid a price among party activists for “RINO” efforts to address “Democrat issues.” Arguably, the conservative backlash to his perceived heresies, especially on immigration, fed both the tea-party movement and its descendent, the MAGA movement, though Bush himself was clearly undone by the Iraq War and his inept reaction to a financial crisis. But the impulse to build credibility on salient public concerns where none existed was wise, and it was even in some minor respects emulated by Donald J. Trump (e.g., in his effort to co-opt criminal-justice reform via the Jared Kushner–brokered First Step Act).

Is anything like this kind of mold-breaking occurring at present? To some extent, Democrats have tried to address “Republican issues” involving the economy. Certainly, Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have spent much of 2021 and 2022 touting their budget proposals as essential to the task of building a strong economy. And while Joe Manchin might have been principally responsible for branding the fiscal year 2022 budget-reconciliation bill as an “Inflation Reduction Act,” by the time Biden signed the legislation, it had come to seem like a very good idea to most Democrats. The party has been less resolute in dealing with the crime issue, other than by constantly trying to rebut made-up claims that it wants to “defund the police” as part of an orgy of “wokeness.”

Republicans, perhaps because they thought they had a surefire winning message in 2022 and are loath to depart from it, have been less adept in adjusting to shifting public concerns that undermine their position. They justifiably think of abortion as a “Democrat issue” right now — one that threatens to boost Democratic turnout while flipping many suburban swing voters — and when Lindsey Graham tried to offer a proposal to reposition them on stronger ground, the reaction among Republicans was overwhelmingly negative, as the Washington Post reported:

“In a memo to GOP campaigns released this week, the Republican National Committee laid out what it called a winning message on abortion: Press Democrats on where they stand on the procedure later in pregnancy, seek ‘common ground’ on exceptions to bans and keep the focus on crime and the economy. Then, Senator Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) introduced legislation to ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy — overshadowing new inflation numbers and undermining what many GOP strategists see as their best message for the fall: ‘Leave it to the states.’

“’It’s an absolute disaster,’ GOP strategist John Thomas said, as Republican Senate nominees already targeted for their comments on abortion were asked to weigh in. ‘Oy vey,’ he said when informed that Blake Masters in battleground state Arizona had just expressed his support.”

Even if Republicans succeed in making inflation or crime or border control more salient than abortion among 2022 voters, they will pay a price down the road — among voters generally and in their powerfully anti-abortion base — by running for the hills when an issue is raised that’s not going to go away in the foreseeable future. Maybe someday the two parties can get onto the same page when it comes to the menu of national problems they intend to address. But don’t hold your breath.

From “How to Turn Out Young Voters in November” by Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect:

By the evidence of every known survey, today’s young Americans are the leftmost generation in many decades, perhaps in our entire history. But will they vote in sufficient numbers this fall to block a Republican takeover of the Senate and the House?

….A new poll by Hart Research of nine states with closely competitive Senate contests, which oversampled voters under 40 (it polled more than 800 of them), shows, however, that the Democrats can still campaign profitably on the economy, inflation notwithstanding.

Even though Republicans outnumbered Democrats in the poll’s overall sample, young voters in those states favored the Democratic Senate candidates by a 57 percent to 29 percent margin. The top three most important issues to those voters were “prices and inflation,” with 55 percent highlighting that concern; “wages and salaries that keep up with the cost of living,” with 47 percent; and “abortion,” with 43 percent.

The poll then teased out themes from that “wages and salaries” issue. Asked whether companies or workers had too much power today over the other, or whether their power was roughly balanced, 79 percent of young voters said it was the companies that had too much power, versus the 7 percent who said it was workers and the 14 percent who said the relationship was balanced. Seventy-seven percent of young voters said they’d prefer a pro-union candidate, while 23 percent preferred an anti-union candidate. After hearing a description of the PRO Act, which is the latest iteration of congressional legislation making it easier to join or form unions, 64 percent of young voters said they’d back a Democrat who supports the act, while just 22 percent said they’d back a Republican PRO Act opponent.

Singling out swing voters among the young, the way to their hearts, and to get them to the polls, Hart Research concludes, is to emphasize such messages as raising wages and salaries (which 63 percent of those young swing voters say is an “extremely strong reason to support a Democratic candidate”), and making sure that workers are not “punished or even fired” for speaking out about problems on the job (68 percent).

“In other words,” Meyerson concludes, “abortion is still a crucial issue for Democrats to stress, but there’s also some economic messaging, despite inflation, that will help turn out the young.”

The following post by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

“Democrats are congratulating themselves that they are now the “normie voter” party. The logic runs like this.

They have recovered from a deficit in the generic Congressional ballot and no longer appear to be headed for a complete drubbing in the November election. They could plausibly hold the Senate and keep their losses in the House relatively modest (though are still highly likely to lose control of that body).

The Democrats can point to several issues on which Republicans are out of step with the country and have contributed to their recovery. Chief among them is abortion, where the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade has allowed them to cast the Republicans as intransigent advocates of abortion bans. The public on the other hand is clearly on the side of moderate abortion rights.

Another helpful development is the increased prominence of Donald Trump in the political dialogue and in various specific races. Republicans have a great deal of trouble dissociating themselves from Trump and his endless relitigation of the 2020 election. Some are true disciples of Trump and some just find it too politically difficult, whatever their personal opinions, to put real distance between themselves and the former President. But the end result is being out of step with the public which sees the 2020 election as settled and generally disapproves of Trump’s role in the January 6th events, his inflammatory rhetoric and his disregard of democratic norms.

Finally, Democrats have succeeded in passing stripped down versions of key leglislative priorities, the CHIPS and Science Act and the cheekily name Inflation Reduction Act, both of which are fairly popular with the public and strengthen the Democrats’ argument that they are delivering on their promises. (Of course, the recent decline in gas prices has little to do with Democrats’ priorities and actions and that decline certainly does more for Democrats’ immediate prospects that these pieces of legislation.)

So Democrats are on the right side of public opinion on these issues and are seeing their fortunes improve as a result. Does that make them the normie voter party now?

Not so fast. It may be fair to say that Republicans, by virtue of being associated with abortion bans and with Trump and Trumpism, are not the normie voter party. But that does not mean that Democrats, by virtue of not being those things, are now the normie voter party. Normie voters want more than that—a lot more than that.

Start with the very issue that is currently doing the Democrats the most good: abortion. Democrats are taking advantage of the Dobbs decision and the intent of many pro-life Republican forces to leverage that decision into draconian state abortion laws. This is not what normie voters want (see: Kansas). But on the other hand, neither do normie voters want completely unrestricted access to abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, the default position of much of the Democratic party.

By about 2:1 the public favors at least some restrictions on abortion. Looked at by trimesters, the framework used in Roe v. Wade, Gallup found that 60 percent think abortion should be generally legal in the first three months of pregnancy. But that falls to 28 percent for the second three months and just 13 percent for the final trimester.

This and other data strongly indicate that the median voter position is that abortion should be available without restrictions for the first trimester and then available only with restrictions, such as for rape, incest and the health of the mother, thereafter. This approximates the legal situation in most Western countries and would cover close to 90 percent of the abortions that currently take place.

(MORE HERE)

In Georgia, the emerging Democratic strategy to win the governorship is all about in-person, early voting. As the Associated Press explains, “Stacey Abrams, Georgia Democrats’ nominee for governor, is launching an intensive effort to get out the vote by urging potential supporters to cast in-person ballots the first week of early voting as she tries to navigate the state’s new election laws….The strategy, outlined to The Associated Press by Abrams’ top aides, is a shift from 2018, when she spent generously in her first gubernatorial bid to encourage voters to use mail ballots. It also moves away from Democrats’ pandemic-era emphasis on mail voting, a push that delivered Georgia’s electoral votes to President Joe Biden and helped Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win concurrent U.S. Senate runoffs to give Democrats control of Capitol Hill….Republicans, including Abrams’ opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, answered in 2021 with sweeping election changes that, among other provisions, dramatically curtailed drop boxes for mail ballots, added wrinkles to mail ballot applications and ballot return forms, and made it easier to challenge an individual voter’s eligibility. But it also expanded in-person voting….“It’s self-evident we have to have a big early vote in-person,” said Abrams campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo, arguing the new mail ballot procedures make it risky for Democrats to rely too heavily on that option. “What’s not self-evident,” Groh-Wargo continued, “is how the hell you do that….Beginning Sunday, the Democrat’s campaign will ask supporters to commit to vote at in-person polling sites during the first week of early voting, which opens Oct. 17. The campaign will send digital commitment cards to targeted supporters via email and texts, with direct mail to follow. Field workers will ask voters to fill out commitment cards, with 2 million households slated for in-person visits. And the Abrams campaign will make pledge cards a standard part of its campaign events….“A lot of our constituencies are ‘persuasion voters,’” Groh-Wargo said. That doesn’t mean swing voters, she said, because they’re not choosing between Abrams and Kemp — they’re deciding whether to back Abrams or not vote at all.”

In. “Will The Polls Overestimate Democrats Again?” Nate Silver writes at FiveThirtyEight: “As Democrats’ prospects for the midterms have improved — they’re now up to a 71 percent chance of keeping the Senate and a 29 percent chance of retaining the House, according to the 2022 FiveThirtyEight midterm election forecast¹ — I’ve observed a corresponding increase in concern among liberals that the polls might overestimate Democrats’ position again, as they did in 2016 and 2020. Even among commenters who are analyzing the race from an arm’s-length distance, there sometimes seems to be a presumption that the polls will be biased toward Democrats….The best version of this argument comes from Other Nate (Nate Cohn, of The New York Times). He pointed out in a piece on Monday that states such as Wisconsin and Ohio where Democratic Senate candidates are outperforming FiveThirtyEight’s fundamentals index — like how the state has voted in other recent elections — were also prone to significant polling errors in 2020. Cohn’s analysis is worth reading in full….As I mentioned, the Deluxe version of our forecast gives Democrats a 71 percent and 29 percent chance of keeping the Senate and House, respectively. But the Deluxe forecast isn’t just based on polls: It incorporates the fundamentals I mentioned earlier, along with expert ratings about these races. Furthermore, it accounts for the historical tendency of the president’s party to perform poorly at the midterms, President Biden’s mediocre (although improving) approval rating and the fact that Democrats may not perform as well in polls of likely voters as among registered voters….By contrast, the Lite version of our forecast, which is more or less a “polls-only” view of the race, gives Democrats an 81 percent chance of keeping the Senate and a 41 percent chance of keeping the House.” Silver goes on to issue a 7-point rebuttal to the argument that recent polls have a pro-Democratic bias. It’s a smidge wonky, but a good read for all political junkies.

A couple of House seat ratings change in favor of Democrats, both in New Hampshire. At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, J. Miles Coleman reports, “Pappas, who now starts the general election campaign with $3 million in the bank, is still in for what could be a challenging race, but we feel comfortable calling him a modest favorite. So NH-1 moves to Leans Democratic.” Coleman adds that for NH-2, “we are holding our rating for it as Leans Democratic….While the map retains 2 competitive districts, we now have both in the Leans Democratic category. Aside from the results of last night’s primaries, where Republicans didn’t seem to put their collective best foot forward, this is also because of the improving national environment for Democrats. On the latter point, it may be worth noting that, with abortion becoming an increasingly salient issue this cycle, New Hampshire is, by some measures, among the states most supportive of abortion rights.” In. his article, “Rating Change: Kuster’s NH-02 Moves from Toss Up to Lean Democrat,” David Wasserman writes at The Cook Political Report, “Sometimes meddling in the other side’s primaries works; other times it backfires. In the case of New Hampshire’s 2nd CD, Democrats’ gambit worked. In a gift to Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster (NH-02), underfunded pro-Trump Republican Bob Burns toppled GOP leaders’ star recruit, moderate Keene Mayor George Hansel, 33%-30% — a result that wouldn’t have been possible if not for $569,000 spent by a liberal Super PAC propping up Burns.”

“How Hopeful Should Democrats Be About the Midterms?” Benjamin Wallace-Wells addresses the question at The New Yorker: “The Trump-era realignment poses a different challenge for Democrats. Their voting base and candidates mostly share political aims; the problem is that there simply may not be enough working-class Democratic voters to form a majority in key districts and battleground states. In response, Biden-era Democrats have mostly trusted that the threat of Trump will keep their educated base intact, while focussing on targeted material support for working-class voters: generous pandemic-relief checks and cheaper prescription drugs. This was, essentially, why Biden was picked as the nominee in the first place—he had support among voters without college degrees that the other candidates simply could not match….But the Democrats have also got a bit lucky. In the most competitive Senate races, their candidates are especially adept. The list includes Mark Kelly, the former astronaut, in Arizona; Mandela Barnes, the first Black lieutenant governor in state history, in Wisconsin; and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who has won three statewide races in Nevada. But Democratic prospects hinge especially on their candidates in the two Senate seats most likely to flip: Senator Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s church, in Georgia, and Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, the cargo-shorts-wearing former mayor of the blue-collar city of Braddock, in Pennsylvania. Both Warnock’s and Fetterman’s biographies insulate them somewhat from the Republican line that Democrats are out-of-touch élitists….Much like the Republicans, the Democrats have responded to education polarization by following a path of least resistance, theorizing that they do not need to change their commitments on abortion, climate policy, student-debt relief, and L.G.B.T.Q. rights in order to maintain a majority. This strategy has put enormous pressure on their swing-state candidates, who, in order to win in November, will likely need to secure the support of many voters who disapprove of Biden’s performance as President—without being able to distinguish themselves from the White House ideologically. A recurring question in American politics, given the electoral map’s bias toward rural areas, is how Democrats will seek to win in moderate and conservative places. Liberals might be heartened by the approach of Warnock, Fetterman, and the class of 2022, who are more forthrightly progressive on both economic and social issues and rely on their personas and the extremism of the Trump-era Republicans to make a broader appeal. But, for their politics to stick, those politicians, running in states that are not especially progressive, need to win.”