Daniel Cox explores the question, “Why Are White Liberals So Pessimistic About Politics?” at FiveThirtyEight, and writes: “A new survey conducted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, which I lead, found that less than half the American public felt optimistic about the country’s future. But there is a fairly stark divide among Americans on this question, with white Americans expressing far more pessimism about our country’s direction than members of other racial groups….White evangelicals were the most pessimistic group we surveyed, but I found in follow-up analysis for FiveThirtyEight that there was a notable racial divide among Democrats as well.¹ More than 6 in 10 Black Democrats (68 percent), and 62 percent of Hispanic Democrats said they were somewhat or very optimistic about the country’s future but white Democrats were much more divided — roughly as many said they felt optimistic (53 percent) as pessimistic (47 percent) about where the United States is headed.” Among the reasons this pessimism is politically consequential is “A greater share of Americans identify as liberals today than at any point in the past 30 years or so, according to polling from Gallup, even if they are still significantly outnumbered by self-identified moderates and conservatives.” It seems worth investigating, at what point does liberal pessimism turn into a decision not to vote?

Cox notes that “Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts University, argued in 2020 that college-educated white Americans — a group that has trended leftward in recent years — tend to engage in politics very differently from Black and Hispanic Americans. In his research, Hersh found that “white people reported spending more time reading, talking, and thinking about politics than black people and Latinos did, but black people and Latinos were twice as likely as white respondents to say that at least some of the time they dedicate to politics is spent volunteering in organizations.” There are reasons to be skeptical about ‘reading, talking and thinking’ data. But Cox notes a more consequential difference: “Hersh suggested that white, college-educated, left-leaning voters are much more likely to engage in “political hobbyism” than in building coalitions to address social problems. These efforts often require sustained energy and investments, which for many left-leaning hobbyists is likely a less attractive way of participating in politics, though it may prove more effective in the long run.” Cox adds that “a new study by the Knight Foundation shows that Democrats are already paying far less attention to national news today than they were just a few months earlier. Taking an interest in politics is an important part of being an engaged citizen, but for liberals, greater participation in local affairs and organizations may ultimately prove more personally rewarding.”

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walker writes “Democrats like NDN’s Simon Rosenberg urge the president to acknowledge the challenges the country has been through over the past couple of years and “to make the grit, resilience, ingenuity, can do spirit of the American people the hero our story in 2022.”….But, Rosenberg also wants to see Democrats selling their successes. “As the incumbent party, Democrats will be judged this fall largely on whether voters think we’ve done a good job, that things are better. Things are better, and we should spend the next 10 months relentlessly making the case that they are.”….In a slide deck released this week, the Democratic research organization, Navigator, made a similar argument. When voters are presented with the tangible economic gains made during the Biden era (such as “more than 6 million jobs created last year,”), the presentation shows, opinions about the state of the economy improve….”The story Dems have to show is that the economy is back up off the mat,” Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson (and adviser to Navigator Research) told me. “That doesn’t mean everything is fixed or everything is better, but just that it’s heading in the right direction. This can’t be mission accomplished, but it does need to be mission underway….But, former Obama White House senior advisor David Axelrod warns Biden not to overdo it on the happy talk. In a New York Times op-ed this week, Axelrod writes that “[Y]ou simply cannot jawbone Americans into believing that things are better than they feel.”

Walker continues, “All of this advice is coming up on a pretty hard economic reality. Americans’ views of the economy aren’t likely to get better until they see that inflation improves. I’ve yet to sit in a focus group where the issue of the rising costs of groceries, rent or gas didn’t come up. In fact, many of the participants can tell you, to the dollar, how much more they spent at the gas station or the grocery store this week than they did a year ago.”….The Brooking’s Institution Bill Galston pointed to a recent Economist/YouGov survey showing that inflation has become the dominant factor determining voters’ view of the economy. Asked to identify the “best measure” of how the economy is doing, 52 percent pointed to the cost of goods and services, compared to 17 percent for unemployment and jobs and just 6 percent for the stock market. As such, writes Galston, while “the Biden administration wants Americans to focus on rapid job creation and the sharp decline in unemployment, it seems that the people are more likely to emphasize rising prices until the pace of inflation abates.” Walker adds that Biden does not have Trump’s gift for bragging and getting away with it. Instead Biden’s strong card is his ability to convey real empathy for struggling Americans. That alone won’t inspire the needed uptick in his approval ratings that can help Democrats in the midterm elections. For that he’s going to need a downtick in Covid and inflation — or at least some credible executive action on both fronts.

It’s eight plus months till election day. But former President Trump’s coddling of Russian President Putin’s Ukraine policy during his Administration and now the invasion of Ukraine may turn into a midterm campaign issue benefitting Democrats.

Stephen Collinson reports at CNN Politics, ” It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of “genius.”….The former President often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump’s self-serving standards.”

It gets worse. Trump also said, “So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force,” Trump said. “We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. … Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. … I know him very well. Very, very well.”

Collinson notes, further, “Trump’s latest idolization of Putin is likely to widen the growing divide in the GOP between traditional hawks, who have sometimes praised Biden for standing up to the Russian leader, and pro-Trump lawmakers – and conservative media stars like Tucker Carlson – who have sided with Putin….The House Republican leadership, which is in Trump’s pocket, accused Biden of “appeasement” on Tuesday – the same day that their de facto leader described Putin as a “genius.”

No doubt many Republican candidates for the Senate and House are squirming today. But former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised Putin for being an “elegantly sophisticated.” Mitch McConneell, along with some G.O.P. House members tried to deflect criticism to President Biden. Representing the sane wing of the G.O.P., Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted “Former President Trump’s adulation of Putin today – including calling him a “genius” – aids our enemies. Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

It’s starting to dawn on more and more Democrats that the crazy in some parts of the party really is having a dire effect on the party’s brand. It’s not just a nuisance, it’s an honest to god problem that can’t be batted away by referring to Fox News talking points and January 6th.

This week of course three ultrawoke members were recalled from the San Francisco school board by absolutely crushing margins. When something like his happens In a place like San Francisco, you know a backlash is afoot.

Tyler Cowen in his Bloomberg column asserts that this result makes it a reasonable time to say wokeism has now peaked and will be receding. Maybe. But Cowen rightfully points out that receding doesn’t mean they will disappear anytime soon since they have burrowed into academia, cultural institutions HR departments, foundations, nonprofits and the like. They’ve got jobs and power and that doesn’t disappear so easily.

“The turning point for the fortunes of the woke may be this week’s school board election in San Francisco, where three members were recalled by a margin of more than 70%. Voters were upset that the school board spent time trying to rename some schools in a more politically correct manner, rather than focusing on reopening all the schools. There was also considerable opposition to the board’s introduction of a lottery admissions system for a prestigious high school, in lieu of the previous use of grades and exam scores….

Another trend is how relatively few immigrants are woke. Latinos in particular seem more open to the Republican Party, or at least don’t seem to have strong partisan attachments. More generally, immigrant political views are more diverse than many people think, even within the Democratic Party….

Wokeism is likely to evolve into a subculture that is highly educated, highly White and fairly feminine. That is still a large mass of people, but not enough to run the country or all its major institutions. In the San Francisco school board recall, for instance, the role of Asian Americans was especially prominent….

The woke also are likely to achieve an even greater hold over American universities. Due to the tenure system, personnel turnover is low, and currently newer and younger faculty are more left-wing than are older faculty, including in my field of economics. The simple march of retirements is going to make universities even more left-wing — and even more out of touch with mainstream America.”

Also this week the DCCC released a memo and data showing just how potent GOP attacks, building on the crazy, are likely to be this cycle.

“In swing districts, 64% of voters agreed with the statement that “Democrats in Congress support defunding the police and taking more cops off of the street.” The internal poll found that 80% of self-defined swing voters in competitive districts agreed with the same statement. Politico previously reported on the DCCC warning about the effectiveness of what they refer to as conservative “culture war attacks.”

Sixty-two percent of voters in contested districts agreed with the statement, “Democrats in Congress have created a border crisis that allows illegal immigrants to enter the country without repercussions and grants them tax-payer funded benefits once here.” Seventy-eight percent of swing voters in those districts agreed.

Sixty-one percent of swing district voters agreed with the statements, “Democrats in Congress are spending money out of control,” and, “Democrats are teaching kids as young as five Critical Race Theory, which teaches that America is a racist country and that white people are racist.” And 59% agreed with the statement, “Democrats are too focused on pursuing an agenda that divides us and judging those who don’t see things their way.”

Remember Democrats, only *you* can stop the crazy. If not you, who? If not now, when? Time to say enough is enough.”

At Bloomberg, Mike Dorning explains why “Democrats’ Muscle-Flexing on Inflation Meets Reality and There’s No Easy Fix“: “Democrats have been searching for tools to ease inflation as price increases continued and worsened, with a January inflation report showing consumer prices rose 7.5% from a year earlier, the steepest climb in almost four decades….A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows inflation as the most urgent issue for 36% of Republicans, 32% of independents and 13% of Democrats….Congressional Democrats’ strategy to address rising costs through a gas-tax holiday and other legislation are shaping up as more of a political crutch than an inflation cure ahead of the midterm elections….Several of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats are spearheading a proposal to suspend the federal 18-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax until next year and others are drafting a bill to lower insulin prices….Though the federal government could act quickly to lower gasoline taxes, the savings at the pump would likely be disappointing, said Gilbert Metcalf, a Tufts University economics professor who specializes in energy tax policy. What’s more, suspending the federal gas tax would siphon off a source of funding from badly needed highway construction and maintenance that Congress only months ago sought to address with a historic bipartisan infrastructure bill….Several studies have shown savings from a gasoline tax reduction, especially a temporary one, are usually split between consumers and sellers. When Illinois and Indiana suspended a 5% gasoline tax in 2000, retail prices only dropped 3%, according to an analysis by MIT economist Joseph Doyle and Krislert Samphantharak of the University of California San Diego….The Federal Reserve holds the most powerful tool to bring down inflation, by raising interest rates, as the central bank is expected to do when it meets in mid-March. And rate increases typically take six to 18 months to deliver their full effect on the economy….Democrats are also considering pulling out popular pieces of President Joe Biden’s stalled economic agenda addressing prescription drug and child care costs..” In November, Biden released 50 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. There are still over 500 million barrels left in the S.P.R. If Biden plans another release, it should be perfectly-timed.

For now, however, the Biden Administration is focused on executive action to help unclog bottlenecks in supply chains to ease inflation. Congressional action on inflation is mostly a non-starter because of Republican roadblocks. The Republican midterm strategy is anchored in the assumption that voters will blame the party in the White House for inflation, regardless of what the other party does or does not do. Pundits, and to some extent history, say they are likely correct in that assumption. Unclogging bottlenecks may not help in time to make much of an impression in the midterm elections, but Biden has to try. There is also increasing talk of “strategic price controls” to quell inflation, and President Biden seems open to using the tool for prescription drugs. You may have seen ads attesting to how much the pharmaceutical industry, and really industry in general, hates that idea. It’s hard to assess how much it would help Democrats in the midterm elections, but it’s certainly a good idea that would help Americans who are struggling with prescription drug price-gouging. Inflation in gas and meat prices the two expenses that likely have the most immediate political consequences, since consumers confront them on a regular basis. Biden is expected to take more executive action to alleviate bottlenecks leading to rising meat and gas prices, along with jawboning about excess profits paired with price gouging. Unfortunately, big media is distracted by culture war side-shows, which makes it hard to get voters to see how much the Biden Administration is doing to stem  inflation, while Republicans do nothing. regarding the application of price controls more broadly, Economist Isabella Weber has written, “Today, there is once more a choice between tolerating the ongoing explosion of profits that drives up prices or tailored controls on carefully selected prices. Price controls would buy time to deal with bottlenecks that will continue as long as the pandemic prevails. Strategic price controls could also contribute to the monetary stability needed to mobilize public investments towards economic resilience, climate change mitigation and carbon-neutrality. The cost of waiting for inflation to go away is high. Senator Manchin’s withdrawal from the Build Back Better Act demonstrates the threat of a shrinking policy space at a time when large scale government action is in order. Austerity would be even worse: it risks manufacturing stagflation.”

Michael Sokolove’s New Republic article, “The Losing Democrats Who Gobbled Up Money” is generating buzz in Democratic campaign circles. Sokolove provides some instructive examples of bad campaign finance management, which merit consideration as cautionary tales. You can read his article for the dish about specific Democratic candidates, and I’ll just share a couple of his general observations: “Even in the digital age, local broadcast TV still accounts for the biggest share of campaign advertising, as high as 60 percent. It’s the most expensive use of funds, and, after a certain point, the least effective. But campaigns fat with cash have only so many ways to spend it. Especially in the final stretch, all they can do is throw it at more TV….David Hopkins is an associate professor of political science at Boston College who has written extensively about the American electoral system. “What we know from the academic study of campaign finances is that money is subject to a threshold effect,” he said. The threshold, he explained, is the point at which the money allows a candidate to run a “visible” campaign that establishes close to 100 percent name recognition, broadcasts a message, answers the other side’s attack ads, and deploys an effective field operation….“Once you are past that point,” Hopkins explained, “the marginal return on additional dollars becomes very small. It may be helpful for a voter to see an ad three times rather than once. Or even 10 times. Once you are seeing it 25 times instead of 20, it probably won’t make a difference.”….Late money—meaning dollars that gush in during the final weeks of a campaign—is particularly hard to make good use of, because it usually just buys more ads after all but a tiny number of voters have tuned out.” Absent a crystal ball, it’s not clear what can be done to prevent placing big, wasteful bets on doomed candidates, but maybe, by some kind of party-wide agreement, a small percentage of all large campaign contributions could be set aside for underfunded Democratic Senate and House candidates.

Jon Steinman of Project Democracy shares some insights at Talking Points memo regarding “The RNC’s Complicity In Trump’s Attacks On Democracy,” which merit repeating by Democratic midterm campaigns: “Acknowledging the truth of what actually led up to and occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, after all, might expose the RNC to genuine civil penalties….Indictments from the U.S. Department of Justice and evidence from the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 are painting a fuller picture of the attempted heist of our democracy….Whether the RNC will be named in any future civil suits is an open question. Less of an open question is the notion that the party’s behavior demands some kind of accountability — from its voters, donors, and electeds who still believe in democracy. The RNC was instrumental in helping some of the worst promoters of the Big Lie flood the zone with falsehoods, distract voters from reality, and secure a nation’s angry attention. Our democracy is built on the rule of law, and one can’t simultaneously demand “law and order” while seeking to overturn the will of the voters….As with a bank, there is money in the Big Lie and, like any self-respecting get-away driver, the RNC got a cut of the take. Let us not forget that vast sums were raised by amplifying and recirculating the claims of election fraud. Tucked within the attack on our democracy was a cynical money-making machine, as misled supporters continue donating to fund this destructive lost cause. By driving anger in their base against our democracy and the valid winner of the presidential election, Big Lie flamethrowers like Powell raised millions of donor dollars for themselves as well as Trump and the RNC, as the RNC received 25% of the post-election WinRed donations to Trump….The RNC helped create this monster, raised money off of it, and shares responsibility for the damage done. The question is whether the party will face any true accountability for its actions.”

In looking ahead to the 2022 midterm elections, there is one category of contests Democrats should pay close attention to, if only because the 45th president is already there, as I discussed at New York:

Even as Congress investigates Donald Trump’s attempted 2020 election coup and considers reforms to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that aided his schemes for overturning the results, the former president is working hard to undermine future contests around the country. Beyond supporting gubernatorial candidates who have endorsed his election conspiracy theories, Trump is aggressively intervening in state contests for a less high-profile office: secretary of state. At stake is control of the election machinery in states where Trump failed to prevail in his false but vociferous claims that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.

Trump has endorsed candidates in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan, three very close 2020 states where he got no cooperation from secretaries of state in advancing his wild claims of election fraud. Arizona and Michigan have Democrats in that position, and in Georgia, Republican Brad Raffensperger famously defied Trump’s instructions to find some extra votes to overturn Biden’s win. The 45th president doesn’t want to face that sort of obstruction to his plans in 2024.

To carry out a purge of Raffensperger, Trump recruited Jody Hice, who gave up a safe U.S. House seat to launch a primary run. Raffensperger is also being opposed by 2018 primary rival David Belle Isle. A runoff is possible since Georgia requires a majority of votes to win in primary and general elections. But Hice is the fundraising leader and the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination in a primary that is being overshadowed by David Perdue’s Trump-sponsored effort to get rid of Republican Governor Brian Kemp (who seconded Raffensperger’s certification of Biden’s Georgia win). At this point, the biggest obstacle to a MAGA conquest of the Peach State’s election machinery is the likely Democratic nominee for secretary of state, highly regarded state legislator Bee Nguyen.

In Michigan, Trump’s candidate, community-college professor Kristina Karamo, has a more direct connection with the 2020 election coup effort, as CNN explains:

“Karamo rose to prominence in Michigan after the 2020 election when she alleged to have witnessed fraud as a poll challenger during the state’s count of absentee ballots. The month after the election, Karamo testified before a state Senate committee, signed onto the unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge to Biden’s win and appeared on Fox News conservative opinion shows to promote her allegations and falsely claim widespread fraud occurred in the state.”

If there were any doubt about her allegiances, Karamo dispelled them the day after January 6, 2021, declaiming: “I believe this is completely antifa posing as Trump supporters … I mean, anybody can buy a MAGA hat and put on T-shirt and buy a Trump flag.” She has opposed COVID-19 vaccines and the teaching of evolution and called public schools “government indoctrination camps.”

Karamo has an early fundraising advantage over her two Republican rivals, state legislator Beau LaFave and Township Clerk Cindy Berry. Perhaps most important, the nomination will be decided at an April 23 GOP convention rather than a primary, which should help the activist-fueled Karamo unless delegates decide she is unelectable. Incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson has been doing well in fundraising, but as with other battleground states, the expected nationwide Republican trend could be enough to tilt the balance, particularly in a down-ballot race in which party preferences will matter most.

In Arizona, incumbent Democrat Katie Hobbs is running for governor. The state is a hotbed of 2020 election revisionism, and three Republican candidates for secretary of state — Shawnna Bolick, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, and Mark Finchem, all state representatives — have been active in efforts to question the 2020 results and skew future elections in the GOP’s direction, as the Associated Press reported last fall:

“Bolick introduced legislation that would allow the Legislature in future presidential elections to disregard voters and choose its own electors to represent Arizona in the Electoral College …

“Ugenti-Rita has been one of the Arizona GOP’s most active proponents of legislation imposing new restrictions on voting, drawing stiff opposition from Democrats who say her measures would disenfranchise people of color.”

But Trump endorsed Finchem, who really does take the MAGA cake:

“Finchem brought Trump attorneys, including Rudy Giuliani, to Phoenix after the election to air bogus allegations that the former president’s narrow loss in Arizona was marred by fraud. Though he’s in the state House, he’s been a mainstay in conservative media promoting Senate Republicans’ partisan review of the 2020 vote count in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous.”

Finchem has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack for questions about his antics with Giuliani. He also attended Trump’s January 6 rally in Washington and was photographed near the Capitol, though he claims he never entered it.

Fontes, one of the two Democrats in the race, is a former Maricopa County elected official whom Finchem is blaming for trying to interfere with the phony “audit” of the 2020 election in that county.

Only one of the Republicans in the race, businessman Beau Lane, is not running on a MAGA vengeance kind of platform, so depending on general election dynamics, the odds of Trump getting an ally controlling the Arizona election machinery are pretty good.

While these are the three close 2020 states where Trump has already intervened in secretary of state races, others could follow. In Nevada, former state legislator Jim Marchant has proclaimed himself a leader in a national coalition of “America First” candidates for secretary of state, which includes the Hice, Karamo and Finchem. He leads the three other Republican candidates in fundraising. The vibrant GOP field was buttressed by the retirement of two-term incumbent Republican Barbara Cegavske, who was censured by the Republican State Central Committee for her failure to buy into Trump’s election-fraud allegations.

If some of Trump’s candidates do prevail in November, it might make him more confident about running in 2024. He’ll know that in the event of another close race, his acolytes will put their thumbs on the scales and make victory that much more likely.

At FiveThirtyEight, Geoffrey Skelley writes:

In the 2020 election, the rightward shift among Latino voters raised eyebrows. Post-election surveys have disagreed about the exact split in the Latino vote, but it appears around 3 in 5 (or slightly more) voted for President Biden over then-President Donald Trump. Yet many of those same surveys as well as precinct-level analysis of the 2020 vote suggest that, compared with his performance in 2016, Trump made gains among Latinos — and in some places, quite sizable ones. Going forward, such swings among Latinos — the largest ethnic or racial minority group in the country— could affect each party’s chance of carrying important states like Arizona, Florida and Texas while also putting Democratic-leaning turf in play for the GOP.

Yet for all the talk about Republicans making serious inroads with Latino voters, new data from Gallup suggests that Latinos’ lurch toward the GOP could be overstated, at least when it comes to how they identify with the two major parties. In Gallup’s survey data for 2021, the pollster found that 56 percent of Hispanic Americans identified as Democrats or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 26 percent identified as Republican or as leaning toward the GOP. Those figures represent very little change from what Gallup found in 2020 and, as the chart below shows, largely fall in line with Hispanic party-identification data over the past decade.

Skelley explains further,

And among Latinos, ties to the two parties may be particularly weak because they aren’t as likely as other Americans to form a strong partisan identity at a young age. For starters, about one-third of Latinos weren’t born in the U.S., which means many haven’t developed a strong allegiance to either party. As a result, many first-generation Latinos haven’t instilled loyalty to either party in their children, which is often how younger voters in the U.S. form their partisan identities.¹ It’s no surprise then that younger Latinos, in particular, hold only weak affinities for the two major parties or identify as independent, as they often have to find their own way politically….These looser partisan attachments mean that a sizable bloc of the Latino electorate is persuadable.

Skelley notes that there is evidence that some of the Latino drift toward Trump can be attributed to younger Latino voters, but “Biden’s approval rating has fallen especially hard among Latinos, and like other Americans, Latinos are particularly worried about issues like the economy, COVID-19 and crime, which could benefit Republicans, especially if immigration, an issue that has benefited Democrats among Latinos, remains mostly sidelined.”

Skelley concludes,

“Still, at this point it seems more likely than not that Latino voters will continue to prefer Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. However, given the 2020 election results, the prominent issues that voters are worried about and Biden’s standing with the public, there’s plenty of reason to think that Republicans can further trim Democrats’ lead among Latino voters in 2022 — even if Democrats retain a sizable party-ID advantage among all Latinos.”

In close elections, that could be decisive.

Thinking ahead to what may happen at the U.S. Supreme Court in June or July, I began thinking of a possible outcome no one is talking about. So I talked about it at New York:

All signs point to the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court when the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization comes down, likely at the end of the current Supreme Court term. President Donald Trump had explicitly promised to deliver the reversal of Roe; when he managed to appoint three justices very carefully vetted by the conservative legal movement, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before the deed was done. Then in May, the Court accepted a case explicitly designed by the State of Mississippi as a frontal challenge to Roe. Oral arguments in December showed no wobbling at all among the five conservative justices presumed to be strongly inclined against legalized abortion, and at best pro forma equivocation by Chief Justice John Roberts. At the state level, there’s been frenetic legislative activity anticipating the end of a federal right to an abortion. It certainly seems that conservatism’s long-awaited judicial counterrevolution has arrived.

It’s not the first time Roe looked cooked, however. Thirty years ago, the Court was widely expected to gives states the green light to restrict abortions in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. There had even been a preliminary vote in favor of an opinion from Chief Justice William Rehnquist (one of the original dissenters in Roe) that would have done so. But Justice Anthony Kennedy changed his mind and joined “centrist” Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, resulting in a decision that allowed certain state-imposed abortion limitations while actually reaffirming the constitutional protection of pre-viability abortions.

To be clear, it’s unlikely that this “betrayal” of the anti-abortion cause will happen again. For one thing, with the occasional exception of Roberts, there aren’t any “centrists” left among the six current justices appointed by Republican presidents. For another, if the conservatives on the Court were inclined to move slowly and incrementally in eroding reproductive rights, they could have surely arranged to accept a case involving state restrictions that fell short of an outright ban like Mississippi’s, and that didn’t raise expectations among anti-abortion activists that would soon be dashed.

But what would happen if all the Court watchers and legal experts are wrong?

Since the idea of the Court flatly striking down the Mississippi law is hard even to imagine, let’s hypothesize a decision that upholds the state’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks specifically, under some revision of either Roe’s “viability” standard or Casey’s “undue burden” test, rather than a decision that generally affirms state prerogatives to regulate abortion, as in the days before Roe. If that were to happen, the new lines the decision draws would determine how many existing or potential state laws restricting abortion might survive judicial scrutiny. The federal constitutional right to choose would be weakened, but not abolished.

Some observers might treat such an outcome as a sort of deferred reckoning, which was a common reaction to Casey, particularly among pro-choice folk relieved that the viability standard had survived but worried about the approved state restrictions. Obviously, if the Court approves Mississippi’s ban on all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, that would be a rather large step back from Roe and Casey; it could also lead to additional erosions of reproductive rights in future cases. But given the expectation of a more sweeping decision, pro-choice advocates might at least privately be pleased that the vast majority of abortions occurring today would still be legal and (at least for the moment) constitutionally protected.

For exactly the same reasons, anti-abortion advocates and their Republican allies might be deeply disappointed and even angry if Roe survives again, even in an attenuated form. The justices’ majority and concurring opinions would be examined carefully to identify culprits and backsliders. If (as would be likely) Roberts were one of the temporizers, his past betrayals of conservatism (particularly the Obamacare decisions) would be hashed over again with bad intent. If Kavanaugh joined him, we’d be treated to psychobabble about his need to prove his feminist critics wrong.

But if Amy Coney Barrett failed to answer the call to gut Roe on her first opportunity to do so, the effect on those who so avidly supported her nomination and confirmation could be truly traumatic. In a recent examination of Barrett’s “originalist” judicial philosophy, Margaret Talbot suggested that those who view the courts simply as instruments for their right-wing religious and political views might revolt against the entire conservative legal movement if she lets them down:

“Lately, some right-wing Republicans have, like Josh Hawley, been making it known that they don’t see much use for the originalists on the Court if they don’t deliver Roe a fatal blow. Rachel Bovard, a columnist for the Web site the Federalist, recently wrote, ‘If the outcome of Dobbs is indeed a hedge that splits the Court’s conservatives — or, to put it more bluntly, if the conservative legal movement has failed to produce Supreme Court Justices who are comfortable overturning two outrageously constitutionally defective rulings on abortion — we will be left to justifiably wonder what the whole project has been for.’”

Such a disappointment would not reflect well on Donald Trump’s ability to produce what conservative Christians want, either. And that reliability is a key component of his past, present, and presumably future position as leader of the Republican Party and a MAGA movement devoted to restoring an orderly patriarchal society in which the right to choose abortion is just another “woke” nostrum to be mocked and repudiated.

The stakes are undoubtedly high in Dobbs, and not just on the central question of abortion rights. While the Court is expected to deliver a decision that deepens the divide between blue and red America, there’s a chance it could produce something more complicated, like a civil war on the right.

One of the most challenging obstacles to Democrats holding their House of Reps majority and the speakership is, well, quitters. As Chris Cillizza writes in “Here’s why Democrats’ chances of winning in November are slipping” at CNN Politics: “House Democrats are retiring in numbers not seen in decades as a dire political outlook, new district lines and a negative environment at the US Capitol haveother combined into a toxic brew for lawmakers considering their political futures….On Tuesday, New York Rep. Kathleen Rice became the 30th Democrat to announce plans to not seek re-election in 2022. By comparison, only 13 House Republicans are planning to call it quits or seek higher office….”I entered public service 30 years ago and never left,” said Rice of her decision. “I have always believed that holding political office is neither a destiny nor a right. As elected officials, we must give all we have and then know when it is time to allow others to serve.”….The 30 House Democratic retirements are the most for the party since 1992, when a whopping 41(!) Democrats walked away from their seats. If one more House Democrat retires before the election, the 2022 cycle will tie the 1976 and 1978 election cycles as the second most retirements in modern history for the party, with 31. Democrats have already seen more retirements in this cycle than the last two elections combined.”

It’s one thing when a retirement trend is fueled by normal aging or length of service, but quite a different phenomenon when it is not. Although he does not provide any stats regarding the average age or length of service of the retirees, Cillizza does share some telling observations, including: “Amy Walter, the editor of the Cook Political Report, a non-partisan campaign tip sheet, cites three main reasons for the Democratic exodus. First, she told me the national environment; “it’s bad out there for Democrats,” she said. Second, the weight of history; “they all know that it’s hard for party in White House to pick up seats. They can only afford to lose 5. They can do math.” And, finally the “environment” in the Capitol itself; “Talk to any member or staffer and they’ll tell you morale is low. It’s a combination of January 6th, a lack of civility, plus a frustration with a fact that most legislation is leadership driven instead of member driven.”….”I think it’s a direct result of the malaise on Capitol Hill,” said former New York Rep. Steve Israel, who previously ran the party’s House campaign committee. “Most Members decide to retire when they calculate that they might lose their next election. These days people are deciding to retire when they’re confident they will win.” Cillizza adds, “There is a solid — if not perfect — correlation between high retirement levels and House seat losses. In 1992, for example, Republicans netted 10 House seats in the general election, according to Brookings’ Vital Statistics on Congress. In 1978, the Republican gain was 15. In 1976, however, Democrats actually gained a seat despite the 31 retirements from within their ranks….Democrats’ issues are compounded by the fact that Republicans have kept their own retirements very low. If no other House Republican walks away this year, the 13 calling it quits will be the party’s lowest total since 1988.”

At least one of those retirements I can wholeheartedly applaud, that of 10-term House Democrat Tim Ryan, who will retire from his House seat, and is running for the U. S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Rob Portman. Ryan currently reps OH-13, which includes portions of Youngstown, Akron, Lordstown and the Mahoning Valley (aka “Steel Valley”). Democrats have won this district in the last 23 House elections, so prospects for holding it in November, even without Ryan, are good, given a credible Democratic candidate for the House seat. Ryan’s senate bid has been endorsed by Ohio’s other Democratic U.S. Senator, the highly-regarded Sherrod Brown, who also occupied OH-13 back in the day. Ryan does have some primary opposition. But he has to be one of the most appealing Democratic Senate candidates for 2022. A gifted orator with an impressive track record and solid center-left cred with Ohio’s white working-class voters, Ryan provides an important pick-up opportunity for Dems in a state that has been trending red in recent presidential elections. Ryan’s blistering denunciation of the Republicans abdication of democracy and his passionate endorsement of infrastructure investment resonates as the kind of authentic patriotism many voters are hoping to see more of in Democratic candidates. This could be the marquee U.S. Senate race, if Ryan wins the primary and if enough Democratic contributors step up and make sure he has adequate funding to take on the Republican senate nominee, who will be rolling in sticky corporate cash. Democrats urgently need a few more  Senate candidates like Ryan.

“Part of Biden’s dilemma is that reorienting a bureaucracy to promote competition takes time, and voters want to see inflation — running at a 40-year peak— start dropping now,” AP’s Josh Boak writes. “Voters feel the bite of inflation with every trip they make to the grocery store or the gas station, yet the president is traveling the country to discuss solutions such as competition and new infrastructure that predate the current predicament and would have a much more gradual impact….America’s current inflation woes stem from the pandemic. Supply chains for computer chips, clothes, furniture and other goods are under stress. At the same time, consumer demand has surged after a historical amount of government aid flowed into the economy. Despite efforts to get the kinks out of the supply chain, price increases have stayed high in recent months instead of fading as many initial forecasts suggested. That has the Federal Reserve ready to increase interest rates to lower inflation.” However, “in a January survey by the University of Chicago, two-thirds of leading economists said that the concentrated power of companies does not explain the current rash of inflation.” Yet, “Corporate profits after tax equaled 11.8% of the total U.S. economy in the second quarter of last year, the highest share on record going back to 1947. The Biden administration is arguing that government policy can ensure that more of that money goes to workers and customers.” At Axios, Hans Nichols and Joanathan Swan note that “Last week, the White House unveiled a three-pronged plan to fight inflation: fixing supply chains and the country’s infrastructure, lowering health and child care costs and promoting competition to benefit consumers.”

In his New York Times column, “There’s a Reason Trump Loves the Truckers,” Thomas B. Edsall shares some revealing research on how ‘social capital’ influces political choices, and notes Trump’s predictable response:

“We want those great Canadian truckers to know that we are with them all the way,” Trump told rally-goers in Conroe, Texas on Jan. 29….I see they have Trump signs all over the place and I’m proud that they do,” he added.

Edsall notes that in “The Rise of Populism and the Revenge of the Places,” [Andres] Rodríguez-Pose argued:

Populism is not the result of persistent poverty. Places that have been chronically poor are not the ones rebelling.” Instead, he continued, “the rise of populism is a tale of how the long-term decline of formerly prosperous places, disadvantaged by processes that have rendered them exposed and almost expendable, has triggered frustration and anger. In turn, voters in these so-called ‘places that don’t matter’ have sought their revenge at the ballot box….Social capital in the U.S. has been declining for a long time. Associationism and the feeling of community are no longer what they used to be and this has been documented many times. What my co-authors and I are saying is that in those places (counties) where social capital has declined less, long-term demographic and employment decline triggered a switch to Donald Trump. These communities have said “enough is enough” of a system that they feel bypasses them and voted for an anti-system candidate, who is willing to shake the foundations of the system.

Put another way, and regardless of Trump’s future prospects, right-wing populism’s primary constituency is the more recently dispossessed. As Edsall explains, “Translated to the present, in economic and culturally besieged communities, the remnants of social capital have been crucial to the mobilization of men and women — mostly men — who chanted “You will not replace us” and “blood and soil” in Charlottesville, who shot bear spray at police officers on Jan. 6 and who brought Ottawa to its knees for more than two weeks.”

Citing other research, Edsall writes that “cultural conflict and regional economic discrepancies also generate powerful political momentum for those seeking to build a “coalition of resentment.” Since the 2016 election of Trump, the Republican Party has focused on that just that kind of Election Day alliance.” Further,

Shannon M. Monnat and David L. Brown, sociologists at Syracuse and Cornell, have analyzed the economic and demographic characteristics of counties that sharply increased their vote for Trump in 2016 compared with their support for Mitt Romney in 2012.

In their October 2017 paper “More than a rural revolt: Landscapes of despair and the 2016 Presidential election,” Monnat and Brown found that “Trump performed better in counties with more economic distress, worse health, higher drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates, lower educational attainment, and higher marital separation/divorce rates.”

Trump’s populist message, Monnat and Brown write in their conclusion,

may have been attractive to many long-term Democratic voters in these places who felt abandoned by a Democratic Party that has failed to articulate a strong pro-working class message, whose agendas often emphasize policies and programs to help the poor at what seems like the expense of the working-class, and who evidently believed it did not have to work very hard to earn votes from behind the “big blue wall.”

Edsall notes that “Regardless of the sources of discontent and regardless of the characteristic of those leading the assault on the liberal democratic state, there is no question that the trucker’s insurgency in Canada is catching fire abroad — currently in France, Britain, Belgium, New Zealand and Australia.”

Also, as Edsall observes, “Non-college whites in the United States, like the protesting truckers in Canada, continue to face grim prospects, subordinated by meritocratic competition that rewards what they lack: advanced education and top scores on aptitude tests — accomplishments that feed the resource allocation, the status contests and the employment hierarchies that dominate contemporary life and leave those who cannot prevail out in the cold.”

No one should be surprised if the protests spring up inside the U.S. leading up to the midterm elections. As Edsall concludes, “As long as these voters remain on a downward trajectory, they will continue to be a disruptive force, not only in the political arena but in society at large.”

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

For forty years or so the left has been preaching against neoliberalism—the view that capitalism and markets should mostly be left alone to generate prosperity with only modest regulation and a frugal welfare state. For forty years the left has polemicized against this economic model, frequently despairing that they could ever get through to ordinary voters, particularly working class voters, who, the left said, were duped by political elites who either promoted this model or were afraid to challenge it.

Well a funny thing happened in the wake of the Great Recession, a worldwide pandemic and persistent, maddening economic inequality: ordinary voters, including working class voters, are sick of neoliberalism. They’ve had it and they’re ready for something different.

The answer to the left’s prayers right? The opportunity—finally!—to push the American economic model in their preferred direction by building up the mass support the left has always lacked.

A great opportunity, yes, and also an opportunity that’s being impressively blown by today’s left and, in the process, is taking the Democratic party down with them. At the very moment when neoliberalism has been comprehensively discredited, the left has become more and more associated with unpopular sociocultural issues and less and less with solving the problems of working class people. This has branded the left as a movement out of touch with the concerns and language of ordinary voters—a movement that is using its increased influence within the Democratic party to promote pet causes and interfere with effective governance. This is undermining the Democrats’ ability to garner mass support for the very economic transition the left has been promoting for forty years.

How did this sorry state of affairs arise? This is best illustrated by looking at the area of culture and language where the left’s estrangement from ordinary voters is most obvious and which has increasingly defined the left’s brand—and by extension the Democratic party’s.

The culture of the left has evolved and not in a good way. It is now thoroughly out of touch with its working class roots and completely dominated by college-educated professionals, typically in big metropolitan areas and university towns and typically younger. These are the people that fill the ranks of the media, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations and the infrastructure of the Democratic party. They speak their own language and highlight the issues that most animate their commitments to ‘social justice”.

These commitments are increasingly driven by what is now referred to as identity politics. This form of politics originated in the 1960s movements that sought to eliminate discrimination against and establish equal treatment and access for women and for racial and sexual minorities. In evolving to the present day, the focus has mutated into an attempt to impose a worldview that emphasizes multiple, intersecting levels of oppression (“intersectionality”) based on group identification. In place of promoting universal rights and principles—the traditional remit of the left–advocates now police others on the left to uncritically embrace this intersectional approach, insist on an arcane vocabulary for speaking about these purportedly oppressed groups, and prohibit discourse based on logic and evidence to evaluate the assertions of those who claim to speak on the groups’ behalf.

Is America really a “white supremacist” society? What does “structural racism” even mean and does it explain all the socioeconomic problems of nonwhites? Is anyone who raises questions about immigration levels a racist? Are personal pronouns necessary and something the left should seek to popularize? Are transwomen exactly the same as biological women and are those who question such a claim simply “haters” who should be expunged from the left coalition (as has been advocated in the UK)? This list could go on. What ties the questions together is that they are closely associated with practitioners of identity politics or adherents of the intersectional approach, who deem them not open to debate with the usual tools of logic and evidence. Politically derived answers are simply to be embraced by the left in the interest of “social justice.”

The left has paid a considerable price for its increasingly strong linkage to militant identity politics, which brands it as focused on, or at least distracted by, issues of little relevance to most voters’ lives. Worse, the focus has led many working-class voters to believe that, unless they subscribe to this emerging worldview and are willing to speak its language, they will be condemned as reactionary, intolerant, and racist by those who purport to represent their interests. To some extent these voters are right: They really are looked down upon by the dominant elements of the left—typically younger, well-educated, and metropolitan—who embrace identity politics and the intersectional approach. This has contributed to the emerging rupture in the Democratic Party’s coalition along lines of education and region.

This rupture was solidified by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. By far the dominant interpretation of white working class support for Trump on the left was that these voters were racist and xenophobic, full stop. They just didn’t like the loss of status and privilege allegedly attendant upon being white as America evolved to a more multicultural, multiracial democracy. This was odd since the left has just spent the last many decades sternly denouncing neoliberalism and how it was ruining the lives and communities of all working people. But that counted for little as the left digested the Trump victory and girded for battle as “The Resistance”.

The Trump years further deepened the identity politics commitments of the left, particularly in the wake of the nationwide movement protesting the murder of George Floyd. This left its stamp on the 2020 edition of the Democratic party, notwithstanding their old school standard-bearer, Joe Biden. Not surprisingly Biden did not do much better than recent Democrats among the white working class. But, especially shocking to those on the left, the “racial reckoning” and four years of Donald Trump, did not produce enhanced support for Democrats among nonwhites, but rather significant erosion in that support, particularly among working class nonwhites.

I do not see many signs that the processing of these electoral signals has led the left back toward a more universalist approach. In fact quite the opposite seems to have happened. The left is holding ever more tenaciously onto policies and rhetoric linked to identity politics.

Biden and leading Democrats have sought to defuse controversies around this brand of politics by characterizing the controversies as Republican attempts to distract voters from Democrats’ more popular policies. This is certainly better than directly endorsing the highly unpopular rhetoric and practices of the left in areas like crime, immigration, ideological “anti-racism,” and language policing. But, because it falls short of direct criticism and because the Biden administration itself has drenched many of its own initiatives in rhetoric of “equity,” “systemic racism,” and other buzzwords central to identity politics, the Democratic party has not escaped association with that approach’s more unpopular aspects.

As a result, the party’s—or, at least, Biden’s—attempt to rebrand Democrats as a unifying party speaking for Americans across divisions of race and class appears to have failed. Voters are not sure Democrats can look beyond identity politics to ensure public safety, secure borders, high quality, non-ideological education, and economic progress for all Americans. A universalist message is simply not getting through.

Instead, the Democrats find themselves weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curricula and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy, and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding is impossible, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately crippled by a torrent of criticism or simply never proposed.

In short, Democrats are stuck. The left will not allow the party to escape the gravitational field of identity politics and the party’s inability to do so means that their brand cannot sustain a durable majority. Indeed, there are signs that Democrats are experiencing more and more slippage among working class voters of all races. For a left of center party, that is catastrophic—not just for 2022, but far beyond.

There is a way forward and it involves embracing the core views and values of ordinary voters, particularly ordinary working class voters. Logically, the left should be promoting this approach since realistically a transition away from neoliberalism—the economic program fervently advocated by the left for forty years—will take years and a far broader coalition than the Democrats currently have.

Below I present a list of such core views and values, cast in terms that would be congenial to ordinary working class voters but nevertheless reflect the liberal commitments of the Democratic party. Democratic politicians, including those on the left, should be able to put forward these liberal-but-not-radical statements without feeling embarrassed or afraid they will get attacked by their own side.

• Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.
• America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.
• Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.
• No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.
• America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.
• Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. But crime is a real problem so more and better policing is needed for public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police”.
• There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong.
• There are basically two genders but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and not settled.
• Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.
• Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith.

Movement in this direction should start at the top with President Joe Biden. As the Financial Times noted in a recent editorial taking off from Bill Maher’s criticisms of the American left:

A president cannot and should not micromanage local policing and schooling, much less the private decisions of “woke” business. What he can do is state his own liberal-but-not-radical position in the cultural struggles of the day, as did former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at various times.

Maher is not the only American who subscribes to liberalism in its old sense while balking at group rights, equivocation over crime (many of whose victims are poor minorities) and the minefield of modern speech. It is not as though Biden need turn into J Edgar Hoover to win these voters over. And if and when they are reassured, the Republicans’ own capacity for cultural over-reach, perhaps in the form of judicial rulings on abortion and other issues this year, will stand out.

At the moment, Biden is relying on his bona fides to get him through. He has spent much of his career at the conservative end of his party. He is a Catholic who came of age before the Permissive Society of the 1960s. If anything, the worry upon his third bid for the White House was that the author of hardline criminal justice laws was too draconian and old-fashioned for modern America.

Perhaps to compensate for that past, however, he has been nervous to shout down the strident voices to his left. He is caught between strict liberals and the kind of progressives for whom liberalism is a polite cover for all kinds of structural inequities. Refusing to pick a side is a good way to maintain the uneasy peace within the Democratic party. Unfortunately, it is also a good way of arousing the mistrust of large parts of the country.

It is time for Joe Biden to pick a side. The left is dragging his party and Presidency down. And in the process the left is blowing its big opportunity to move American society away from the neoliberalism they’ve been criticizing for forty years. In that sense, Biden, by taking a side, would be doing the left a favor and saving them from themselves. That is, if they still believe in replacing neoliberalism.