Political predictions are always dicey. But, at FiveThirtyEight Geoffrey Skelley reports, “Sen. Joe Manchin told reporters Wednesday that suggestions he would leave the Democratic Party were “bullshit” with a “capital B.” He’d previously told Democratic leaders that he’d consider becoming an independent if they felt it would help them explain to the public why the party was having such a hard time coming to an agreement on its social spending plans, but he denied that he’d made threats about leaving the party….if Manchin did switch parties, it would, more likely than not, mean an immediate loss of clout for him in Congress, which is perhaps the biggest reason Manchin is likely to stay put….For starters, party switches are actually rare. Since 1951, just 34 sitting members of Congress have switched parties (four did so twice, for a total of 38 switches). And as the table below shows, most members who switched parties still ran for reelection or another office after changing their partisan stripes….Electoral calculations seem to have guided many of these members’ decisions to change parties, too. In his study of party switchers, political scientist Antoine Yoshinaka found that members were more likely to switch parties when they represented areas where their old party performed poorly — though they were most likely to switch if they intended on seeking a higher office in the future. However, troublingly for Manchin, Yoshinaka didn’t find that these switches necessarily paid off. In fact, he found party-switchers performed 4 to 9 percentage points worse in their next general election than non-switchers between 1952 and 2010. …And despite a blue wave in the 2018 midterm elections, Manchin won reelection by his slimmest margin yet — about 3 points. Moreover, running as a Republican isn’t really an option for Manchin. It’s true that he scores well among Republican voters in West Virginia — a Morning Consult poll recently found 44 percent approved of him — but he would undoubtedly have a challenging time winning a GOP primary, having voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in February.”

Skelley continues, “Granted, if Manchin were part of a 51-member Republican caucus, he would wield a similar amount of veto power. But outside of that, it’s unlikely he would be as influential as he is right now. He’d likely lose his post as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a politically advantageous position for a senator from a state deeply invested in the coal industry. And he’d also be unlikely to influence the trajectory of GOP legislation in the way he does as a longstanding member of the Democratic caucus….It’s possible Manchin could leave the Democratic Party while continuing to caucus with it and retain his chairmanship, but a public separation from his party would also strain relationships Manchin has spent years building. At home, for instance, Democratic activists might choose to work against Manchin by backing a more liberal challenger despite the difficulty such a candidate would have in winning. Meanwhile, in Washington, a switch could damage Manchin’s trustworthiness with his Senate colleagues and hinder future cooperation with them…..All this sounds like a much greater headache than using his current position to get more of what he wants. Moreover, when push comes to shove, leaving the party you’ve belonged to for years is simply very hard to do. Manchin has said that his stances on taxes and health care would make it difficult for him to join the GOP, and he’s pushed back on the idea of leaving the Democratic Party many times over the past few years….Long story short, Manchin could switch parties, but it’s unlikely that he will. And in the end, the main result of the party-switching storyline is yet another news clip of Manchin distancing himself from his party, which demonstrates his independence to voters in deep-red West Virginia.” In other words, at this political moment Manchin has a lot more leverage as a Democrat than he wold have as a Republican.

So, what does Sen. Manchin really want? In his article, “Manchin’s offer to Biden included universal pre-kindergarten and Obamacare expansion, but no child tax credit,” Phil Mattingly reports at CNN Politics that “Sen. Joe Manchin, just days before he called off negotiations with President Joe Biden, proposed a version of the Build Back Better plan centered on universal pre-kindergarten program, funded for a full 10 years, as well as an expansion of the Affordable Care Act and hundreds of billions of dollars to address climate change, a person with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed to CNN….The proposal, which was viewed as a counter-offer in long-running negotiations on Biden’s proposal, did not include an extension of the expanded child tax credit, a central priority for Biden and Democrats. CNN reported last week Manchin had proposed leaving the tax credit, which Biden’s proposal extended for an additional year, out of a final deal due to concerns over overall cost and structure….CNN has reported that the West Virginia Democrat presented the White House with a roughly $1.8 trillion proposal during discussions last week. In addition to universal pre-K and the Obamacare subsidies, the proposal also included several hundred billion for climate change mitigation efforts, though the climate policy itself was scaled back from the House-passed version,, the person said.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes, “For both reasons, President Biden’s speech Tuesday on the fight against the coronavirus’s omicron variant was one of the most useful he has given for some time. It got both substantive and political work done….He explained how he is trying to get on top of the new wave of infections that threatens to steal Christmas. He reassured Americans that we could get through this bad patch without reimposing lockdowns, including school closings. And he was unusually direct about the political forces making the pandemic worse….For months, Washington news has been dominated by the frustrating legislative struggle for the president’s Build Back Better program. The effort hit a wall on Sunday with the savage — though not necessarily fatal — blow delivered by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). With Tuesday’s address, Biden reminded the country he had not forgotten his most urgent task and sought to salvage his standing as a virus-slayer….In June, a Washington Post/ABC News survey found 62 percent of Americans approved of his handling of the pandemic while only 31 percent disapproved. By early November, his rating on the health emergency had plummeted: 47 percent approved, 49 percent disapproved. A CNBC survey this month found a similar deficit….But an address chock-full of new actions taken to address omicron’s challenge — expanding coronavirus testing sites, distributing a half-billion free at-home tests, deploying more federal health resources to shore up strained hospitals, new “pop-up” vaccination facilities — tells the tired and the frustrated that, at the least, Biden is on the case….it’s becoming ever clearer that a precondition for Biden’s success — in general, and on social, climate and voting rights legislation, in particular — will be a restoration of his image as a low-drama chief executive who can conquer the pandemic and allow Americans to enjoy life free of fears driven by a mysterious disease….As he reaches out to whatever minority of Trump supporters are willing to listen, Biden might discover that taking an even more aggressive stance on the virus, including booster mandates and vaccine passports, is the best politics.”

From “The alternative to Supreme Court enlargement is surrender” by E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post:

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

At The Liberal Patriot, John Halpin summarizes recent poll data from a 20 country survey and summarizes what it means about a realistic path for a clean energy transition.

“Despite increasingly dire predictions of planetary demise and apocalyptic rhetoric about the climate crisis, citizens across 20 leading democracies overwhelmingly favor carrots over sticks when it comes to addressing global warming.

This finding is based on TLP’s ongoing examination of vital multinational survey data conducted with more than 22,000 respondents globally by YouGov and Global Progress ahead of the G20 summit in Rome and the COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow.

To start, it’s important to note that most people across the globe are unwilling individually to take on the costs of transitioning to cleaner energy use….
The political implications of these findings are clear.

If societies want to make progress on reducing global temperatures, the only path forward with real consensus support is for governments to take on the primary task of moving to a carbon-free society by making clean energy cheaper and encouraging businesses and individuals to make the transition through subsidies and incentives—not punishments.

Along with the promise of creating more jobs and businesses in the clean energy sector, the political goal of moving to a carbon-free society clearly needs to be pitched using clean energy carrots over carbon tax sticks. It’s difficult to see any other viable political strategy for moving beyond existing ideological divides over climate change.”

Read the whole thing (with groovy charts) at The Liberal Patriot . And subscribe!

Among Amy Walter’s “Lessons on Latino Voters” at The Cook Political Report: “So, why have Democrats been bleeding support from Latino voters? Some, like [Ruy] Teixeira, argue that “Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with ‘people of color’ and assuming they embraced the activism around racial issues that dominated so much of the political scene in 2020, particularly in the summer.” Others think high-profile political figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have served to brand the Democrats as the party of “socialism.” Others argue that Trump was better trusted on the economy, especially among Latino men. Groups like The Third Way point to the education gap, similar to that among white voters….Ultimately, Equis concludes, “Latinos do not fit neatly into this country’s typical frameworks for race or partisanship.” As such, there’s no easy answer for why Latinos have become less consistent Democratic supporters.” Given the demographic breakdowns within the “Latino” community, could the term “Latino” now be nearly as politically-useless as “people of color”? Could the Democrats’ failure to win support from self-employed and small business entrepreneurs be part of the problem?

From “Americans Like What’s In The Build Back Better Act. They’re Lukewarm On The Bill Itself” by Mackenzie Wilkes and Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight:”There are certain parts of the bill that are very appealing to Americans, though — namely, expanded health care access. In fact, when Morning Consult/Politico asked respondents to select the five most important provisions in the bill, four of the five top issues were health care-related.¹For instance, the House version of the bill adds $150 billion over 10 years in funding for Medicaid home care for seniors and people with disabilities — the largest increase in funding for this program since its creation. According to Morning Consult/Politico, more registered voters said this funding was an important component of the bill than any other — and a whopping 76 percent of registered voters supported it….The second biggest priority in the bill per Morning Consult was allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, which 71 percent of registered voters supported. In addition, 65 percent supported more funding for affordable housing, and 75 percent supported the expansion of Medicaid to cover hearing services.” Without a healthy working majority, are  ‘big package’ reforms just fat, slow-moving targets that no longer make strategic sense for Democrats? Would it serve the Democratic ‘brand’ better to break omnibus bills down and pass the popular elements as separate bills, and rack up a string of smaller victories?

At CNN Politics, Simone Pathe identifies “The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2022.” They are located in the following states: AZ; FL; GA; MO; NH; NC; NV; OH; PA; and WI. Democrats hold four of the seats at present, Republicans have six. Four of the Republican-held seats are being vacated by retirements. It would be hard to single out a “marquee” race because the Senate is so evenly divided that all the races are important. Pathe provides updates on the senate races in each of the ten states, and it appears that a net pick-up of one or two senate seats for Dems is at least possible, even amid all of the gloom and doom scenarios being bandied about. Democrats have some strong challengers contending for the GOP-held seats, and Trump is dividing Republicans in several states. Much depends on whether Democratic GOTV can overcome voter suppression legislation in these states.

In Amy Walter’s article above, she notes that “socialist”-bashing still has traction with Latino voters. It’s probably more the case with Cuban-American voters in Florida than with Mexican-American, or Puerto-Rican voters in other states. For an update on opinion data regarding the ‘socialist’ label, read “Deconstructing Americans’ Views of Socialism, Capitalism” by Frank Newport at gallup.com. As Newport writes, “My colleague Jeff Jones recently reviewed updated Gallup research on the American public’s reactio.ns to the words “socialism” and “capitalism.” The new data show little change in these attitudes compared with previous surveys, with 60% of Americans holding a favorable view of capitalism (38% unfavorable), and 38% holding a favorable image of socialism (59% unfavorable)….Gallup’s historical tracking of the American public’s views of socialism, which includes this year, is timely because the word has a continuing presence in American cultural and political discourse. In doing research for this and several previous articles on the concept of socialism, I find consistent instances in which the word “socialism” crops up in news stories and political dialogue, usually in the context of critical references to federal government spending programs.” Never mind that there is not a lot of agreement among voters, or even commentators, about what ‘socialism’ actually means; the term still has toxic branding power in some congressional districts, as we saw in south Florida in 2020. Timid denials didn’t work for Dems, who were caught by surprise in several campaigns. Democrats who are targeted by ‘socialist’ branding campaigns against them can tweak this bolder response.

An alarming bit of news you might have missed is the subject of a piece I wrote this last week at New York:

Been wondering what former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been up to when he wasn’t dodging subpoenas and questions from the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6? Turns out he’s spending some time helping his old friends in the House Freedom Caucus to spread their noxious activities from Washington to state capitals around the country, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

“Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is making headlines in Washington today, but he’s also looking to make a mark on state legislatures, including Georgia’s, with the launch of the State Freedom Caucus Network.

“The network will be an extension of the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative House members that Meadows once chaired, which has successfully moved the House GOP agenda to the right since it was founded in 2015.

“The network will be supported by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Washington-based non-profit founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint, where Meadows has been a senior partner since leaving the White House earlier this year.

“Also on the CPI staff with Meadows is Cleta Mitchell, a prominent Republican attorney who helped Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

Meadows and Mitchell, the AJC notes, were both on the infamous Trump call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when the former president asked for a little help rustling up enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in the Peach State. DeMint, the former South Carolina senator and Heritage Foundation president, is probably best known in politics for his espousal of “constitutional conservatism,” that absolutist precursor to Trumpism which held that any means were justified to preserve the eternal policy preferences of the divinely inspired Founders.

The State Freedom Caucus Network will start initially with affiliates in 22 states from Connecticut to Alaska, with representatives attending a gala kickoff dinner in Atlanta. Its stated purpose is to organize “principled, America-First conservatives” to focus on “election integrity, critical race theory, school choice, vaccine mandates, and police reform,” issues where “our nation’s most important battles are taking place in state legislatures.” An unstated purpose is to encourage such pain-in-the-ass tactics as legislative hostage-taking, disruption of routine governing practices, and shakedowns of the “Republican establishment,” while serving as outposts for Trump’s efforts to get back to the White House by book or by crook.

This new organization, which will likely spread to other states soon, will help ensure that Republican state elected officials can’t get away with simply tugging the forelock to Trump and then getting along with their regular business back home. MAGA agitation is a permanent revolution with foot soldiers wherever cultural resentment and political opportunism meet.

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller has the best article title of the last few days, “Joe Manchin Is the Only Thing Standing Between America and Sen. Cletus Von Ivermectin in 2024.” Miller visited some conservative areas of West Virginia in his report and notes “in this political environment the existence of a Democratic Senator in West Virginia is just a notch below loaves and fishes.” Miller adds some salient observations, including,

Manchin does it by going along with the Democrats just enough to get by, while bucking the party loudly enough to keep the Trump voters in his state happy….And that tells you all you need to know about the reason why Manchin signaled on Wednesday that he wouldn’t support the current iteration of the Build Back Better plan, with sources in Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office telling NBC that the Democrats would shelve it until at least March….Joe Manchin isn’t interested in blowing up his career to pass the Great Society 2.0….The only spending bill Manchin was ever going to support was one that leaders in his party, and left-wing celebrities, hate. Because that’s how he would sell it to the folks at the Groves-Mann Funeral Home.

Miller’s thoughts on how Democrats can achieve optimum results in the midterm elections:

If Democrats want to change the environment, they need to make the case that they are providing policy solutions that voters actually want and then peg the nihilist, insurrectionist Republicans as the ones who are standing in the way.

That would create some leverage they might be able to use. And it would redirect the political pressure away from the one person who is miraculously standing between us and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and towards the politicians that they need to beat in order for Democrats to have majorities in the future.

This realist view of politics might not be as fun as demanding that Joe Biden snap his fingers and eliminate everyone’s student debt and usher in our utopian future. But it’s the only way to change the current high-speed trajectory towards a GOP takeover.

The BBB’s demise should be a wake-up call for Democrats to change what they’re doing. We’ll see if anyone gets the message.

In his Slate article, “It’s Time for Democrats to Buck Up and Give Joe Manchin What He Wants” Jordan Weissman agrees and writes that “Manchin has made it clear all along that he is comfortable allowing these negotiations to fail if the final product isn’t to his liking. He can make that threat credibly, because his entire brand back home in West Virginia depends on his willingness to buck his own party.” As Weissman concludes,

But if you accept Manchin’s demand to keep the bill’s total around $2 trillion—and at this point, Democrats have—then it also makes sense to design the legislation his way, with fewer programs set to last long-term. Caving to Manchin’s demands will require Democrats to sacrifice some worthy parts of their agenda. But it’s time for them to buck up and do it, lest they end up with nothing at all.

It would be good for progressive Democrats to realize that the spending cuts and elements of BBB that are being ditched can be restored — when Democrats win a real working majority. Take what Dems can get now, move on and fight for the rest of it when they have the numbers to win.

At The Nation, Contributing Editor Doug Henwood and Lauren Melodia, deputy director of macroeconomic analysis at the Roosevelt Institute, discuss two separate approaches in “What Should the Democrats Do About Rising Inflation? Doug Henwood argues that without raising taxes, many leftist policies will come with risks, while Lauren Melodia writes that the GOP is exaggerating inflation concerns.”

In his contribution, “Raise Taxes, Later,” Henwood writes,

The Democrats’ reaction to this price scare has often been evasive, dismissing it as not real or as unimportant or “transitory.” That’s wrong on both facts and politics. It is real, it’s important for as long as it lasts, and only a soothsayer knows if it’s transient. More recently, they’ve blamed corporate greed, which has been with us forever, and high profits, which have been with us for decades. Many progressive economists argue that inflation is confined to a few product lines: goods (rather than services) and energy, led by gasoline—whose price has more than doubled over the year. A problem with this argument is that price indexes put out by the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and New York that remove extreme price changes to isolate underlying trends are rising as well. The outliers are driving the headlines, but other prices are going up too.

The standard remedy—raising interest rates and provoking a recession—would be disastrous in an economy still recovering from the Covid shock. But we can’t deny that huge deficit spending and an infusion of trillions of dollars conjured out of nothing has something to do with the problem….The stimulus spending is mostly gone; people are running down their bank accounts. That will reduce demand and probably make holdouts more willing to take a job. (Their numbers are greatly exaggerated, but they do exist.) That should ease inflationary pressures. The supply chain will eventually get its act together….But the longer-term ambitions of the early Joe Biden era—really building back better—come with economic risks. The support payments in the Covid relief bills are models for some of the redistributionist social spending that we’d like to see made permanent, but unless the spending is paid for by taxes on people who have money to spare rather than by borrowing, it will have strong inflationary potential. There’s a belief on the left that you can fund a social democratic program just by taxing the rich, but there’s simply not enough money up there to do it.

In “Not Panic,” Melodia argues,

Most of the recent increase in the inflation rate—both in the United States and abroad—is not due to an overheating economy or too much stimulus; it’s the result of supply and demand factors that are linked to the pandemic….Covid-19 has played a role in nearly every dramatic price increase in the past year. I believe that this inflation will subside once people and our public infrastructure have adapted to the changes brought about by the pandemic. We must, of course, keep working toward vaccinating as many people as possible and implementing other public health measures so that people will want to return to services. As of November, consumer spending on services remains well below pre-pandemic levels, while spending on goods is well above them. These dynamics are taking place in an economy whose GDP is still significantly lower than we’d expect without a pandemic. Therefore, as people shift their spending back to more services, spending on goods will decrease and relieve the stress on supply chains, which will stabilize prices. The United States must also be a leader of and a major contributor to the international pandemic response, so that the global economy can operate with less disruption.

….What we are experiencing is the result not of too much overall demand but of supply-side issues coupled with a shift in demand. For example, a semiconductor shortage has led to the production of fewer cars just as more Americans are looking to buy. Raising interest rates would raise the cost of borrowing and discourage investment by automobile manufacturers—investment that is necessary to expand the production of and access to semiconductor chips. Rather than compare the headline inflation rate with the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent, we need to consider the sector-specific factors. If Democrats do that, they will find that there are many solutions to rising prices….In 2019, Oregon and California were the first states to adopt policies that regulate the amount by which rent can increase each year. More than 180 municipalities already have some form of rent stabilization policy. Democratic officeholders throughout the country could implement similar measures and launch public education campaigns to help their constituents take advantage of them….Energy costs have also been one of the largest contributors to inflation over the past five months….in the short term, Democrats can demand more transparency and oversight. They can also expand the eligibility for and the coverage of programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and invest more in the campaigns that inform the public about these lesser-known programs….Being proactive about addressing the major expenses households face every month, and continuing to address the pandemic that has caused or exacerbated rises in those costs, can be a unifying policy agenda for Democrats—one that uses every level of government to demonstrate that Democrats are committed to improving the quality of life for all.

President Biden has already taken substantive action, including “the largest-ever release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve”  and he has taken some effective steps to reduce bottlenecks. Of course, Democrats can — and probably should – leverage components of both approaches noted above and heavily publicize what they are doing at the federal, state and local levels.

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

In my latest for The Liberal Patriot, I consider the Democrats’ ongoing problems with Hispanic voters.

“The Democrats are steadily losing ground with Hispanic voters. The seriousness of this problem tends to be underestimated in Democratic circles for a couple of reasons: (1) they don’t realize how big the shift is; and (2) they don’t realize how thoroughly it undermines the most influential Democratic theory of the case for building their coalition.

On the latter, consider that most Democrats like to believe that, since a relatively conservative white population is in sharp decline while a presumably liberal nonwhite population keeps growing, the course of social and demographic change should deliver an ever-growing Democratic coalition. It is simply a matter of getting this burgeoning nonwhite population to the polls.

But consider further that, as the Census documents, the biggest single driver of the increased nonwhite population is the growth of the Hispanic population. They are by far the largest group within the Census-designated nonwhite population (19 percent vs. 12 percent for blacks). While their representation among voters considerably lags their representation in the overall population, it is fair to say that voting trends among this group will decisively shape voting trends among nonwhites in the future since their share of voters will continue to increase while black voter share is expected to remain roughly constant.

It therefore follows that, if Hispanic voting trends continue to move steadily against the Democrats, the pro-Democratic effect of nonwhite population growth will be blunted, if not cancelled out entirely, and that very influential Democratic theory of the case falls apart. That could—or should—provoke quite a sea change in Democratic thinking.

Turning to the nature and size of recent Hispanic shifts against the Democrats—it’s not as bad as you think, it’s worse. Here are ten points drawn from available data about the views and voting behavior of this population. Read ‘em and weep.

1. In the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, Hispanic voters were split evenly between Democrats and Republicans in the 2022 generic Congressional ballot. And in a 2024 hypothetical rematch between Trump and Biden, these voters favored Biden by only a single point. This is among a voter group that favored Biden over Trump in 2020 by 26 points according to Catalist (two party vote).”

Read all ten at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe!

Incumbent politicians are rightly nervous about inflation, particularly rising gas and grocery prices, even when accompanied by low unemployment and rising wages. Some new polling data suggests the concern is well-founded. “With ongoing labor and transportation constraints affecting the supply chain, many grocery stores have a limited supply of products — and Americans are feeling it at the kitchen table. Most Americans (65 percent) said they thought grocery availability was worse now than before the pandemic, according to an Ipsos poll released this week. And while COVID-19 still topped concerns for Americans (18 percent), the cost of everyday expenses, like bills and groceries, and inflation were the second- and third-highest concerns, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. The poll found that 15 percent of Americans thought everyday bills and groceries were the biggest concerns facing their families, which marked a 4-percentage-point increase from July. Meanwhile, inflation concerns jumped 9 points, from 5 percent in July to 14 percent in December.” – From “Other Polling Bites” by Alex Samuels and Mackenzie Wilkes at FiveThirty Eight.

At CNN Politics, John Harwood explains “How Larry Summers makes sense of confusing economic signals,” and shares the Democratic economist’s views on the dangers of inflation in context: “In May, he warned that Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan risked over-stimulating the economy and sparking inflation; Republicans have invoked those warnings ever since….Yet Summers also says Congress should pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion Build Back Better Plan over GOP opposition because it would boost long-term growth without significantly increasing inflation. Democratic leaders have crossed their fingers that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin listens….Lately, economic data offers cross-cutting superlatives nearly every day. Last week, new unemployment claims fell to a 50-year low — just before data releasd on Friday showed monthly inflation for November registered a 40-year high.…Summers, a former top economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, sees neither unalloyed prosperity nor dangerous decline. Instead, he acknowledges immense uncertainty that allows for either outcome or something in between….But the economy has also shown important strengths in its recovery from the coronavirus calamity. The Federal Reserve projects 2021 growth at 5.9%, the highest since 1984, as the US became the first advanced industrial economy to return output to pre-pandemic levels. Employers have added 6 million jobs, more than in any other president’s first year….Currently, Summers pegs chances at 50% that inflation will settle in at perhaps twice the Fed’s 2% target — for years. If the problem snowballs anything like it did in the 1970s, when expectations of higher prices became self-fulfilling, taming it could force an excruciating downturn….Summers sees a 30% chance that Fed tightening will trigger another recession, just three years from the last one, within the next 18 months. His least likely scenario — a 20% chance — is that the Federal Reserve pumps the brakes skillfully enough that demand and supply resolve imbalances harmoniously enough to sustain growth….Summers allows that economic good fortune could render his warnings overblown. “I don’t want to over-argue my case,” he said.”

In his Washington Post column, “Can Germany’s new leader teach Democrats to stop feuding?,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes, “A bit of free advice to the feuding factions blaming each other for the Democrats’ falling polling numbers: Parties that are bitterly and openly divided rarely win. And a friendly hint to Biden: Both ends of your coalition need a talking to — and a coherent approach to coming back together….For intimations of what that might look like, Democrats might learn from what just happened in Germany, a country where the major center-left party was widely seen as out of touch and doomed less than six months ago. In becoming only the fourth Social Democratic chancellor since the end of World War II, Olaf Scholz defied the premature obituaries. In the process, he gave center-left parties, including the Democrats in the United States, not only hope but a philosophical game plan…Scholz’s own obsessions in recent years have been concerns that ought to animate Democrats: how to protect democracy by turning back a rising far right; how to reconnect with a working class that often perceives educated progressives as belittling them; and how to offer realistic paths for economic advancement to left-out people and regions….Progressives, he said, needed to persuade voters that they sought a society in which “we are acting on the same level” and “not looking down on each other.” Respect is the virtue linking progressive imperatives that should not be in conflict: achieving racial justice and healing the injuries of class….Scholz’s success in building a heterogenous government is also a lesson to fractious Democrats. Progressive parties just about everywhere must win younger environmental and culturally liberal voters, but also parts of a more socially conservative working class and elements of a striving middle class as well….Before they can recapture the initiative, Democrats need a politics of forbearance, an understanding that neither the party’s center nor its left can win and govern alone. They also need a larger purpose. Scholz’s sermons about a society built upon mutual respect suggest a good place to discover it.”

Charlie Cook considers “The Possible Electoral Impact of a SCOTUS Abortion Ruling” at The Cook Political Report, and writes: “The Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case last week got political minds wondering whether the abortion issue would make the midterm elections about anything other than what they normally are: a referendum on the incumbent president and his party. Cook shares the insights of several political analysts of both parties, including, “One key Democratic strategist saw a risk in his party seeming to be too focused on abortion to the exclusion of other issues: “I do worry that even if there is unrest toward Republicans on this front, that voters will still primarily be focused on more economic matters—cost of living/wages and whatever effects of COVID we are still seeing that are disrupting life. And if Democrats seem more exercised about an abortion Supreme Court decision than they do about high prices, workers’ paychecks not going as far as they used to, businesses struggling to hire/survive … then that could be a problem for Democrats.”…It is entirely possible that the abortion issue triggers a shift in focus of this election. But it is also possible that it boosts turnout among both bases, mirroring the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018, creating what I called at the time a “color enhancement event.” That is, blue areas got bluer and red areas redder. Conservative turnout increased, particularly in rural, small-town, and heartland areas, enabling the GOP to hold onto the Senate, while simultaneously amplifying more liberal voting in the suburbs and cities, helping Democrats win a majority in the House….One Republican operative concluded, “I may be an island on this one, but I really do believe 2022 will be more of a persuasion campaign than we’ve had in a while. It worked in VA and NJ, and there is a lot (on both sides) to work with.”