The following article stub for  “Polling Shows ‘American Families Are Trapped in a Cycle of Debt‘” by Jessica Corbett is cross-posted from Common Dreams:

Yet another poll exposes the pain that working-class Americans are enduring thanks to US President Donald Trump’s policies, the economic justice advocates behind the new survey said Tuesday.

Polling released in recent months has highlighted how most Americans don’t believe that merely working hard is enough to get ahead, a majority blames Trump for the country’s economic woes, and large shares are concerned about the price of groceries, housing, and unexpected medical expenses.

The new survey—conducted by Data for Progress less than two weeks ago for Groundwork Collaborative and Protect Borrowers—shows that “American families are trapped in a cycle of debt,” the groups said.

Specifically, the Data for Progress found that 55% of likely voters have at least some credit card debt, and another 18% said that they “had this type of debt in the past, but not anymore.” Additionally, over half have or previously had car loan or medical debt, more than 40% have or had student debt, and over 35% are or used to be behind on utility payments.

More than two-thirds of respondents said that the federal government’s resumption of student loan collections had an impact on their family’s finances, and almost a quarter said they would need a one-time infusion of cash, “such as from inheritance, lottery, government assistance, etc.,” to be able to pay off all of their debt.

More here.

From: “Democrats, GOP test their playbooks as Trump looms over elections in New Jersey and Virginia: In both states, Democratic candidates for governor are distancing themselves from their party’s far-left wing in campaigns focused instead on rising costs” by the Associated Press: “Democrats and Republicans are testing dueling playbooks in fall elections that will decide the leadership of Virginia and New Jersey — and perhaps a new direction for the parties heading into next year’s midterms…In both states, Democratic candidates for governor are distancing themselves from their party’s far-left wing — and its most divisive people and priorities — in campaigns focused on rising costs and the economy under President Donald Trump’s leadership. The move reflects what some operatives see as a critical lesson from the 2024 national elections, when Democrats faced a backlash for supporting so-called “woke” social policies…As Democrats race to the center, their GOP opponents in both Democratic-leaning states are largely unwilling to separate themselves from Trump, his controversial policies or his “Make America Great Again” supporters. Trump’s GOP continues to rally around him, shrugging off low approval ratings and opposition to his federal workforce cuts that have especially affected Virginia. That’s even as the Republican candidates hope to attract independents and even moderate Democrats to win in November…It is a delicate balance, and one that could inform both parties’ strategies a year before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.”

Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman report about “The 2025-2026 Gubernatorial Races: Rating Changes in Virginia, Iowa, and Maine” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and note; “As the post-Labor Day sprint to the November gubernatorial races begins, we are upgrading Democrats in Virginia, moving that race to Likely Democratic. New Jersey remains as Leans Democratic…For the 2026 races, open seats in Iowa and Maine get more competitive in our ratings…Republicans should be able to easily win a new seat in Missouri as the result of a new proposed gerrymander, the latest development in the fast-moving redistricting wars…Overall, Republicans hold 27 governorships and Democrats hold 23. Democrats are favored to flip Virginia this year, and Republicans are favored to flip Kansas next year. Otherwise, Democrats are defending the three Toss-ups. Democrats will hope to cut into the Leans Republican category—specifically Georgia, Iowa, and Nevada—to try to make gains while playing defense elsewhere. Maybe some longer-shot targets come into play for them, too, like Alaska or Ohio. Midterm years sometimes feature gubernatorial waves in favor of the non-presidential party, which was a feature of years like 2006, 2010, and 2018, all years that the party not holding the presidency netted roughly half a dozen governorships in the midterm election. But that doesn’t seem as likely this year unless there is a Democratic megawave that leads to upsets that aren’t really on our radar right now. As of now, we think the net gubernatorial party change might be more modest, as it was in 2014 and 2022. And it’s not out of the question that Republicans will come out of the 2026 gubernatorial cycle with a net gain in governorships, which would cut against the normal midterm trend of presidential party loss.” The map:

The rift among Trump’s business supporters just got a lot wider. In “Billionaire CEO who voted for Trump sounds the alarm on Fed attacks,” Matt Egan reports at CNN Business:  “While many CEOs have stayed silent during President Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin is speaking out about the dangers…Trump risks “stoking both higher inflation and higher long-term rates” by undermining the independence of the Fed, Griffin co-wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday titled “Trump’s risky game with the Fed.”…“The president’s strategy of publicly criticizing the Fed, suggesting the dismissal of governors and pressuring the central bank to adopt a more permissive stance towards inflation carries steep costs,” wrote Griffin, CEO of Citadel; and Anil Kashyap, a professor at the Chicago Booth Business School and a consultant to the Chicago Fed’s research department…The duo warns that history shows how this strategy can backfire, including the Nixon-era pressure on the Fed in the 1970s that set the stage for the Great Stagflation crisis…In a worst-case scenario, if the Fed visibly bows to political pressure and permits inflation to rise unchecked, tens of millions of retired Americans will see their savings diminished,” Griffin and Kashyap wrote. “Senior voters — tired of bearing the brunt of inflation — could cost the administration dearly in the midterms.”

Nor will business leaders be much impressed by what the Trump Administration has done to public appreciation of capitalism’s role in American society. As Jeffrey M. Jones reports in “Image of Capitalism Slips to 54% in U.S.” at Gallup: “Americans are more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021 and near that level in most prior years. Americans remain more negative (57%) than positive (39%) toward socialism, with little movement in these attitudes over time…Gallup first measured Americans’ opinions of various economic systems or aspects of the U.S. economy in 2010 and has repeated the question six times since then, including in an Aug 1-20 survey…Democrats and independents view capitalism less positively this year, each showing eight-percentage-point declines since 2021. For the first time, less than half of Democrats (42%) view capitalism positively, while a slight majority of independents (51%) still do. Republicans’ views are essentially unchanged, with three-quarters holding a positive opinion…Stability in U.S. adults’ opinions of socialism obscures Democrats’ more positive views of it over time, from 50% rating it positively in the initial 2010 reading to roughly two-thirds in three readings since 2019. Those increases have been mostly offset by declines in positive ratings of socialism among Republicans. Independents’ ratings of socialism have generally been steady…Democrats are the only partisan group of the three that views socialism more positively than capitalism — 66% to 42%, respectively. Independents are modestly more pro-capitalism than pro-socialism (51% vs. 38%), while Republicans are overwhelmingly so (74% vs. 14%).” Not that advocating for any particular “ism” is going to win votes for any candidates. But there appears to be a split in public attitudes toward big vs. small business. “This year’s survey asked Americans to evaluate free enterprise, big business and small business in addition to capitalism and socialism. Americans are overwhelmingly positive toward small business (95%) and free enterprise (81%), as they have consistently been. They are far more negative toward big business, with 37% rating it positively and 62% negatively.”

The following article, “Redistricting Isn’t the Democrats’ Problem” by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The redistricting wars are in full swing. Somewhat implausibly, Democrats claim they will match Republicans’ redistricting moves, as in Texas, with moves of their own that will cancel them out. But Democrats just have fewer places than the GOP to pull off these maneuvers and, even where they are in control of state government, are more likely to face institutional obstacles like nonpartisan commissions specifically designed to prevent gerrymandering. Therefore, the net results of these moves and counter-moves is likely to favor the GOP.

How badly could all this hurt the Democrats in 2026? In all likelihood, not very. As Nate Cohn has pointed out, other factors that make the midterm environment favorable to the Democrats will likely swamp the effects of any pro-GOP redistricting. As he notes, even with a Texas redistricting, the 2026 midterm map will still be less pro-GOP than the 2018 map—and we know what happened then.

So does that mean Democrats shouldn’t worry at all about redistricting shenanigans? No, but it does mean they shouldn’t hit the panic button about it. Their problems lie far deeper than that and go way beyond the marginal House seat in the 2026 election. Indeed the garment-rending about the GOP’s redistricting efforts misses the harm done to Democrats by the continuing concentration of their partisans in ever-less competitive districts, under the press of both redistricting and population sorting.

In the 21^st century, the number of Democratic-held districts that are considered competitive has declined steadily to only about a quarter of seats. The Democrats’ median district now has a double-digit partisan lean of +13D, meaning it is 13 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. This means that Democratic Congressional representatives are under less and less pressure to deviate from party orthodoxy and take account of sentiment outside of their highly partisan supporters.

The significance of this is reinforced by ideological trends among Democrats. The simple fact is that today’s Democrats are remarkably different from the Democrats of yesteryear: they are far more liberal. Few people know today or would believe that moderates and conservatives used to far outnumber liberals among Democratic identifiers. As recently as 2008, moderates and liberals were evenly balanced among Democrats and conservatives were still over a fifth of the total. But today, those saying they are liberal or very liberal are by far the largest group among Democrats (55 percent to 34 percent for moderates) and conservatives have become an endangered species.

Put all this together and the incentive structure for today’s Democratic politicians comes into focus. They are far more likely to be rewarded by their voters for no-holds-barred liberalism than to be punished for their lack of moderation or willingness to compromise. This has left the Democrats in poor shape to course correct against the loss of moderate-to-conservative working-class voters in the age of Trump. Even if individual Democratic politicians wish to do so, the pressures to stay within the bounds of Democratic orthodoxy are enormous. Sticking with the true faith generates adulation from activists, favorable media coverage, and gushers of donations. Breaking ranks risks unhinged attacks on social media and accusations of helping the Right and undermining “democracy.” Not too many Democratic politicians want to take that risk.

This dynamic has led to what I call “the paradox of Trumpian overreach”: that the more Trump overreaches, the more Democrats, ensconced in their partisan bubbles, are pressured into the most histrionic, radical, ineffective responses to Trump, thereby enabling Trump to overreach some more and crippling the effectiveness of his opposition. In other words, the very scale of his overreach, which should make it easier to defeat him, actually makes it harder.

This is not a healthy dynamic and presents a far greater obstacle to future Democratic fortunes than aggressive GOP redistricting efforts. Consider how little Democrats have changed since having their hat handed to them in the 2024 election. After a brief flirtation with the idea that the Democratic brand must be profoundly transformed in response and move dramatically to the center, Trump’s over-the-top actions and rhetoric have inflamed Democratic partisans against any change in Democratic commitments. Democratic politicians, dependent as they are on these partisans, have duly responded and the momentum is now clearly on the side of those in the party who reject compromise of any kind.

Take immigration. Trump successfully shut down the border but has also been very aggressive in using ICE for deportations within the country, some of them with questionable justification. Democrats have responded with fury and denunciations of the Trump administration for turning America into a police state. In the process, any attempt by Democrats to portray themselves as having a new, tougher (but fair!) policy on immigration has been completely submerged. Aside from being against Trump’s deportations, is the Democrats’ current immigration policy at all different from what they stood for before (and what helped them lose the 2024 election)? Most voters would have no idea.

Or how about trans issues. The Trump administration has taken decisive action to get biological males out of female sports and to shut down pediatric medicalization for gender dysphoria. The abrupt nature of these changes has triggered Democrats into intransigent opposition, despite how lopsided public support tends to be for these changes and how much rigid support for the trans activist agenda cost the Democrats in 2024. Democratic politicians, in thrall to their liberal partisan supporters who want no change whatsoever, have been powerless to change the party’s image in this area. Very few have even tried.

Then there’s racial preferences and DEI. Trump has taken a draconian approach to eliminating DEI programs and rooting out racial preferences of any kind. The very lack of nuance in Trump’s approach has provoked Democrats into frenzied denunciations of white supremacy and a blanket defense of everything that Trump is attacking. Any attempt to dissociate Democrats from racial preferences and rebrand the party as a vehicle for universal uplift has been lost. Woe betide the Democratic politician who hints that there was anything wrong with the previous Democratic approach to these issues.

The same dynamic has affected Democrats’ response to Trump administration cuts to government and to university funding. The very intemperate and throwing-out-the-baby-with-the bathwater nature of the administration cuts has infuriated Democrats to the point where they deny these institutions need any reform at all and characterize Republican actions as strictly arbitrary and unneeded. If Democrats have any ideas for reform of government bureaucracies and universities, voters are completely unaware of them.

Finally, consider the Democrats’ energy and climate policy commitments, which defined their approach to economic policy under the Biden administration. Trump has taken a meat axe to the Democrats’ “green” agenda, gutting the renewable energy and electric vehicle subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act and, through a flurry of executive orders and other actions, firmly committing the U.S. to using its massive endowment of fossil fuels to achieve energy dominance. This is fully in tune with public opinion but outrage in Democratic ranks has prevented Democratic politicians from recalibrating their approach and admitting some of this needed to happen. These politicians have strayed far from the all-of-the-above policies of the Obama years, which were more popular, but imprisoned as they are by their ever-more-fervent, ever-more-concentrated partisans, they can’t find their way back.

This is the fundamental problem then, not GOP redistricting skullduggery undermining Democratic House seats. Because structural trends, including but not limited to ongoing redistricting, have made Democratic politicians ever more insulated from the median voter, the more radical forces in the party now hold the whip hand. They are determined to prevent the Democrats from pursuing an effective reform course that could truly isolate Trump. And, by and large, they are succeeding.

It’s hard to look much of anywhere in discussions among Democrats right now without encountering a lot of hand-wringing over a party leadership vacuum, often combined with demands to purge the congressional leadership. I offered some pointed thoughts on the general topic at New York:

A key object of complaints about the Democratic Party’s performance during the second Donald Trump administration has been the Democratic congressional leadership, and particularly House and Senate minority leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. Both men are from New York and have a vague association with the centrist wing of the party, but otherwise these men don’t necessarily have all that much in common. The House and Senate are very different institutions with wildly varying perspectives on the legislative process and divergent incentive systems. Yet we often hear their fecklessness is responsible for the unsavory reputation of the Democratic Party and the ever-simmering anger of “the base” at the alleged unwillingness of their elected officials to “fight Trump.” A recent example of the monomania over Jeffries and Schumer came from the Guardian’s Mehdi Hasan:

“If you want to understand why the Democrats are polling at their lowest point for more than three decades, look no further than these two uninspiring Democratic leaders in Congress.

“If you want to understand why 62% of Democratic voters say ‘the leadership of the Democratic party should be replaced with new people,’ again, look no further than Jeffries and Schumer.

“Week after week, month after month, they embarrass themselves, undermine their colleagues and demoralize their voters. Theirs is a record of cowardice and capitulation.”

Hasan’s biggest beef with Schumer and Jeffries seems to be that they haven’t yet endorsed Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. To be clear, I think they should endorse him too, mostly because the alternatives to Mamdani are so incredibly bad, not because positions on municipal elections are the litmus test for national leaders. But Hasan also bashes the congressional figureheads for admitting they don’t have much power at present:

“Let’s start with Jeffries. In February, the hapless House minority leader wondered aloud: ‘I’m trying to figure out what leverage we actually have. They control the House, the Senate. And the presidency. It’s their government. What leverage do we have?’ It was a shrug of impotence; a sign of pre-emptive submission only weeks after Trump’s inauguration.”

But you know what? Jeffries was absolutely right. There is no one more “impotent” than a House minority leader, unless it’s a House minority leader at a time when maximum partisan polarization makes coalitions to thwart the Dear Leader in the White House literally impossible. Should he pretend to have power only to disappoint Democrats when he can’t actually exercise it? Indeed, doing just that earned Schumer special contempt from Hasan:

“Remember that cringe chant of ‘We will win’ and ‘We won’t rest’ that he led outside the Treasury building in February, as Elon Musk’s Doge teams rampaged through the federal government?

“Or when he shamefully backed down from a confrontation with Trump over a government shutdown in March and earned the scathing soubriquet ‘Surrender Schumer’?”

On the government-shutdown threat, Hasan has a point. Unlike Jeffries, Schumer and Senate Democrats did have one and only one bullet in the chamber: the ability to shut down the government with a filibuster against a stopgap-spending bill. But you can understand Schumer’s fear of wasting this one bullet, or using it when the prime victims would have been the same federal employees Musk and DOGE were threatening. My sense is that his biggest mistake was brandishing the pistol before putting it away. But it wasn’t going to bring Trump 2.0 to a halt in any event.

Hasan contrasts the feckless leaders with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who toured the country making speeches about the need to resist “oligarchs.” Good for them. But that’s not a proper task for congressional leaders, who have time-consuming day jobs even if they have no power.

A far better idea than deposing Jeffries and Schumer in favor of superior communicators or tougher fighters of fights they can’t win would be for Democrats to stop looking to Congress for national leadership, at least before the next presidential cycle. Even in the best of times, members of Congress are famously unrelatable thanks to their narrow legislative perspectives, their strange parliamentary jargon and their inscrutable traditions. There’s a reason only four sitting members of Congress (James Garfield, Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama) have ever been elected president, with the two most recent being transcendent political talents hardly defined by their congressional service.

It’s actually unclear whether Democrats need clearly defined leaders in order to break Trump’s hold on Washington in the 2026 midterms, and they’ll have a presidential-nominating contest in 2028 to choose a national leader then. But if they do need visible leaders for the Midterms, they should look at the Democratic governors instead of anyone in their powerless ranks in Congress.

Governors are by definition chief executives, not legislators dependent on party status. They can wield executive authority with or without legislative cooperation and can’t be locked out of power like their counterparts in Congress. They have countless platforms for communicating their views, not just unwatchable maneuvers on C-Span. And many of them are very good at talking to voters across party lines. Democrats Laura Kelly of Kansas and Andy Beshear of Kentucky have twice won in deep-red states. Former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper is a red-hot Senate prospect because he’s been running for office in that relatively conservative state for over 30 years without a single defeat.

If Democrats consider politicians like Kelly, Beshear, or Cooper too moderate and insist on a fiery “fighter,” they can obviously look to such highly combative governors as Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, who have battled Trump on a broad front for years and have actually achieved some victories. Nobody in Washington can outdo them for rhetorical volume and intensity, and they tend to speak in language that voters can understand.

Should Democrats flip either congressional chamber next year, then it will be appropriate to expect more of their leaders in Washington. But for now Democrats would be well advised to leave Jeffries and Schumer to their largely irrelevant tasks and look around the country for leaders, not just to governor, but to mayors, attorneys general, and civic leaders who are fighting the good fight without constantly displaying their powerlessness.

The following article stub for “Can Democrats Offer a New Vision for Labor?” by Justin Vassallo is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

As in recent years, millions of working Americans marked this past Labor Day with a sense of trepidation. While the holiday’s ubiquitous steep sales suggested that distributors and retailers haven’t yet passed on the full impact of Trump’s tariffs (recently jeopardized by a federal appeals court), Americans are afraid new price hikes are around the corner. And the pervasive discontent of the last fifteen years has hardly ebbed. A new Wall Street Journal poll finds that since the pandemic the percentage of Americans who believe they have a “good chance” to lead better, more prosperous lives has plummeted to a quarter. At the turn of the century, over seventy-five percent expected to get ahead. Millions either feel poorer or believe their minor pay bumps and savings have been vacuumed up by larger bills for routine goods and services.

Worse, the ability to counter any of these trends through politics or the workplace feels negligible. Modest gains, mostly reflecting phased-in minimum wage hikesinitiated last decade in several cities and states, have been outpaced by extraordinary housing costs, sharp price increases for basic groceries and modest family excursions, and higher credit card interest rates and monthly minimum payments. Yet the ongoing debate between Abundance converts, anti-monopolists, “care economy” progressives, and the tariff-friendly parts of the labor-left is more of an academic exercise than something that would yield a blueprint for action.

Currently, few elected Democrats are making an effort to clarify their top economic priorities following the sluggish response to “Bidenomics.” Struggling workers and cost-weary households don’t know who to turn to. Collective bargaining power remains stratified and has come under renewed assault by the Trump administration. Although the pandemic and its aftermath sparked an uptick in strike activity and organizing drives from Starbucks to Amazon to Uber, union households are typically older, concentrated in core legacy industries and the public sector, and comprise a dwindling fraction of the total workforce.

As the boomer retirement accelerates, the labor market is also undergoing a massive structural and demographic shift that Washington is plainly ill-prepared for. The share of Americans working as freelancers in some capacity has surged to over 64 million people, or nearly 40 percent of the working population, and is expected to grow as AI disrupts professional salaried work and spreads the demand for “labor flexibility” to fields in which expertise was once tied to greater employment security. Some of this growth reflects a genuine willingness on the part of workers to forge their own path and maximize the creativity and network power latent in the knowledge economy. Yet market fundamentalists would be mistaken to crow that this testifies to the march of individual liberty and the rejection of active government or collective agency. Unions enjoy their highest approval in decades, while consumers and small businesses are arguably attuned to the perils of monopoly power and anticompetitive practices at a level not seen since the Second World War.

Middle- and working-class Americans are clearly fed up with scraping by. Even so, many seem resigned to long-term labor market trends, believing American capitalism, more than ever, is a sink-or-swim system bereft of public goods and widespread upward mobility. Such pessimism about the dignity of work and the merits of trying to make an “honest living” is bound to affect how Americans approach core life decisions—and whether they take them up at all. That is a sociopolitical time bomb that, unaddressed, will make Trumpism’s extended pull seem like a minor affair.

Read more here.

Democratic political advisor Mally Smith explains why “Tinkerbell politics won’t save progressive Democrats” at The Hill: “A variation of this “Tinkerbell effect,” the idea that believing hard enough can make something true, shows up in both academia and popular culture. Now, I’ve started to see a political version of it in Democratic politics. (I’ll note it may exist in Republican politics as well, but I know progressive politics best, having worked in that space for years.)…I make no claim to grand theories of persuasion. Each campaign I’ve worked on has overturned some piece of “conventional wisdom” and replaced it with new lessons. But I hold one belief that never changes: politics is about addition. To succeed, you must expand your coalition through both persuasion and mobilization. In a diverse, polarized country like ours, that requires humility about your own views and a willingness to meet voters where they are — two things “Tinkerbell politics” cannot do… Some progressives might read this as a call for moderation. It’s not. In that TV segment, I could have said Democrats are too progressive; it would have earned easy applause. But I didn’t throw progressives under the bus, because I am one. I believe progressive economic arguments, especially on economic equality, can be electoral winners. But going further left on every issue is not always strategically sound, and writing off those who disagree with us is, frankly, political malpractice…In the end, it’s simple: Addition beats fairy dust every time. You win by having at least one more vote than your opponent. I’d like that voter under the Democratic Party’s tent.”

J. Miles Coleman shares his updated analysis of “The Big Picture in Redistricting” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Right now, our Crystal Ball ratings show 209 seats as Safe/Likely/Leans Democratic, 207 Safe/Likely/Leans Republican, and 19 Toss-ups. When Abbott signs this map, that will change to 211 at least Leans R, 206 at least Leans D, and 18 Toss-ups…However, if Democrats’ proposed California map is implemented, that would then flip to 211 at least Leans D, 206 at least Leans R, and 18 Toss-ups, even taking Texas into account…So, if re-redistricting were limited to just Texas and California, Democrats would probably come out ahead, although other red states like Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida could produce new Republican seats, giving the GOP an overall edge from redistricting even taking California into account. Of course, if the California redistricting ballot measure fails, Republicans could pick up the better part of a dozen seats…Over the weekend, Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) opened the door to redrawing his state’s lines, although Democrats, who hold 7 of Maryland’s 8 seats, could only gain one additional seat there. A Democratic 8-0 map of Maryland could also run into some legal problems (court intervention submarined such a plan in advance of the 2022 elections), There’s also Utah, discussed above, which could help Democrats, and potentially other states too…If the environment is blue enough next year, Democrats could still overcome the net loss from redistricting (even if California fails to redraw), but if 2028 is more of a neutral year, Republicans could have an easier time regaining the chamber.”

But David Dayen has this to say about the gerrymandering mess at The American Prospect: “Democrats aren’t relying solely on a blue wave to overpower gerrymandering. California’s redistricting election is on track for victory, according to Democratic pollsters. Maryland may take action to nullify a Republican seat. And gerrymandered congressional maps in Utah, in defiance of an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure, were finally ruled illegal by a state judge, who required the state to draw new maps that don’t crack liberal Salt Lake County four ways, a situation that will almost certainly create one solid-blue seat…But Democratic fortunes in 2026 can also be tied to the instability of the Latino voting shift, particularly in Texas. Three of the five new “Republican” seats created in Texas remain contested territory; while Trump won all of them by double digits, in the same election, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) did not reach 52 percent in any of those seats. So Trump’s popularity is not automatically transferrable down the ballot even when he appears on it, and he won’t next year…Trump’s Latino support shifted at least 13 points from 2016 to 2024; he shifted some Biden 2020 voters and took a large share of first-time voters. But House Republicans sharply underperformed Trump. And today, Latinos are snapping back away from Trump. An Equis Research poll from July showed Trump’s job approval among Latinos at just 35 percent, and one-third of Latino Trump supporters are thinking of voting Democratic in 2026. That number rises to half of Biden 2020–Trump 2024 voters. Other polling picks up similar trends…Some of the uncertainty for the midterms involves how far gerrymandering will actually go. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on October 15 on whether to obliterate what remains of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for diluting racial minorities in congressional districts. Louisiana, whose maps are at issue in the case, has already scheduled a special session just in case the Supreme Court moves quickly, and the ripple effects would reverberate throughout the South. (This could also save the Texas maps, which even with some of the heavy minority participation are under a lawsuit claiming that they violate the racial gerrymander section of the Voting Rights Act.)…But there are some limits to unfair maps, even in the worst-case scenario. If voters are unhappy with Trump and display their anger next November, maps are unlikely to stop the House from flipping.”

If you have been wondering about the massive voter indifference to and ignorance of such principles of American democracy like separation of powers, checks and balances and due process, consider the steep decline of civics education in America as a possible factor. Here’s some data from “A Look at Civics Education in the United States” by Sarah Shapiro and Catherine Brown at aft.org: “A 2016 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government, which was a significant decline from previous years…Not surprisingly, public trust in government is at only 18 percent² and voter participation has reached its lowest point since 1996…only 23 percent of eighth-graders performed at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics exam…The policy solution that has garnered the most momentum to improve civics in recent years is a standard that requires high school students to pass the U.S. citizenship exam before graduation.⁶ According to our analysis, 17 states have taken this path…Only nine states and the District of Columbia require one year of U.S. government or civics, while 30 states require a half year and the other 11 states have no civics requirement.” As the authors note, “Without an understanding of the structure of government, our rights and responsibilities, and the different methods of public engagement, civic literacy and voter apathy will continue to plague American democracy. Educators and schools have a unique opportunity and responsibility to ensure that young people become engaged and knowledgeable citizens.”

The intra-Democratic debate over messaging in the second Trump term has many legitimate perspectives. But as we watch our cities fall under armed military rule and other institutions crumble, it may be time to set some basic priorities, as I argued at New York:

One chronic vice in politics is failing to learn lessons from electoral defeats out of stubborn attachment to priors. But it’s also possible to overlearn lessons, too. That may be happening to Democrats right now, as Ron Brownstein observes at CNN:

“As President Donald Trump openly contemplates sending military forces into more American cities, the leading congressional Democrats almost invariably describe his actions as an attempt to create a ‘distraction’ from something else — whether that’s the cost of living, the massive Medicaid cuts he signed into law, or the controversy around the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“That reflex captures the overwhelming preference of top DC Democrats to frame the 2026 election on familiar partisan grounds, particularly the charge that Trump has failed in his core 2024 promise to bring down the cost of living for average families. It also reflects their hesitation about contesting Trump’s actions relating to immigration and crime.”

The preponderance of evidence suggests that Democratic efforts to depict Donald Trump as a “threat to democracy” in the 2024 election did not move that many voters. What persuadable voters did seem to care about was the cost of living, which they perceived as having been vastly more affordable during Trump’s first term. And Trump also benefited from “issue advantages” over Kamala Harris on immigration and crime/law and order.

Unsurprisingly, many Democrats have been allergic to “threat to democracy” messaging ever since the 2024 election and have also shied away from much talk about immigration or crime on the hoary theory that you shouldn’t “play on enemy turf.” While waiting for Trump’s tariffs to produce the inflation that they rightly regard as a potential disaster for the 47th president, they have typically tried to identify a few narrowly material but broadly shared concerns associated with Trump’s agenda and have mostly settled on the Medicaid cuts that helped finance the high-end tax cuts in his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Aside from the fear that swing voters are fine with dictatorship if it delivers cheap groceries and gasoline and are bored with hearing about Trump’s own criminal lawlessness, Democratic monomania about “kitchen-table issues” is also reinforced by the ancient prejudice of progressive “populists” in favor of pocketbook issues at the expense of cultural matters or “insider” institutional concerns they tend to dismiss as distractions from the real politics of class struggle. So there’s a double temptation for Democrats to downplay angst over Trump’s power grabs as “distractions” from the arguments that turn public opinion and win elections.

But there’s a big problem with this tunnel vision: Trump no longer represents a prospective “threat to democracy” who might fail to follow through on his thuggish authoritarian rhetoric, just as he often did during his amateurish first term. Depending on how you view his trajectory, he poses at the very least an imminent danger to democracy and is arguably in the process of converting America into an authoritarian regime. Nearly every step he has taken since last November, from building an administration stuffed with MAGA shock troops, to relentless, almost hourly claims of new presidential turf, to unprecedented assaults on private businesses and universities, to the rapid development of a national police force, shows that something like Viktor Orban’s Hungary — formally still a democracy, but under rigid one-party control — is Trump’s goal. So dismissing creeping fascism as a distraction from Medicaid cuts or the Epstein files is rightly infuriating to many Democratic activists. This approach implicitly legitimizes Trump’s lawlessness as relatively unimportant. When rank-and-file Democrats demand their congressional representatives show more “fight” against Trump, they aren’t asking for more frequent or louder protests about the distributional effects of Trump’s tax cuts. They are alarmed more fundamentally about what’s happening to their country under a proto-fascist regime whose leader treats all opponents as traitors to be jailed, sued, deported, gerrymandered, or physically intimidated.

As Brownstein points out, it’s no accident that the non-congressional Democrats most focused on the fight against Trump’s authoritarianism are becoming rapidly more popular with the rank-and-file:

“[J.B.] Pritzker has been unsparing in denouncing Trump as a ‘wannabe dictator,’ as he put in a fiery news conference last week decrying the president’s threats to deploy the National Guard to Chicago. Surrounded by local business, religious and civic leaders, Pritzker struck a conspicuously more urgent tone than the party’s Congressional leadership. ‘If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm,’ Pritzker insisted, before describing the prospect of troops on Chicago streets as ‘unprecedented, unwarranted, illegal, unconstitutional, un-American.’

“[Gavin] Newsom has attracted even more attention among Democrats by resisting Trump actions he’s portrayed as a threat to democracy through over three dozen lawsuits; speeches; mocking social media posts; and his ballot initiative to offset the Texas Republican gerrymander.”

This isn’t to say that the GOP’s chronic assaults on the material interests of Americans, or its alignment with oligarchs, doesn’t matter, but it’s precisely what history tells us you can expect from any right-wing authoritarian movement with the kind of power Republicans now enjoy. Trump is forever declaring emergencies to justify his endless expansion of his own power. It’s time for Democrats to recognize the real emergency that threatens to make economics a side-show.

The following article stub for “Democrats Keep Misreading the Working Class: Many in the party see workers as drifting rightward. But new data show they’re more progressive than ever on economic issues—if Democrats are willing to meet them there” by Bhaskar Sunkara, is cross-posted from The Nation:

“Zohran Mamdani won New York’s Democratic mayoral nomination with the most votes ever for a primary winner in the city. The democratic socialist did so with an agenda that spoke to the kitchen-table economic issues that, following the debacle of the 2024 election, Democrats generally acknowledge they have to get better at discussing. So what was the reaction of party leaders and the media echo chamber? A meltdown so severe that it has sparked widespread talk of a “civil war” within the party. On one side, the line goes, are younger, highly educated, pro-­Palestinian progressives who embrace economic populism; on the other, older Democratic stalwarts who are pro-Israel, economically moderate, in tune with the working class, and cautious about rocking the boat. But that’s not what the numbers say.

Advisers to House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries—who, like his counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, resisted endorsing Mamdani after the primary—referred to the city’s rising wave of democratic-­socialist-backed candidates as “Team Gentrification.” Yet exit polls reveal a different reality: Mamdani attracted support from a broad swath of New Yorkers by running a campaign relentlessly focused on working-­class cost-of-living concerns.

Unfortunately, top Democrats refuse to accept the notion that Mamdani’s economic populism is the key to his success. Or that the appeal of a boisterous tax-the-rich message might extend beyond urban progressive enclaves. Some go as far as Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, who says that Democrats need to stop demonizing rich people. But a recent report by the Center for Working-Class Politics(CWCP) upends Slotkin’s assertion. Analyzing data from three long-running national surveys, the report shows that working-class Americans have grown more progressive over the past two decades—not just on economic justice but also on immigration and civil rights. Today’s working class stands farther to the left than when it helped elect Barack Obama in 2008.

Why, then, do so many high-ranking Democrats imagine that workers are reactionary? Because the middle and upper classes are moving leftward at a faster pace, creating a perception gap. As higher-­income, college-educated voters embrace progressive positions on climate change, LGBTQ rights, and other issues, working-class voters—despite their own leftward shift—appear comparatively conservative. This distorted narrative misleads Democratic strategists and journalists alike.

Read more here.

From “How Trump is decimating federal employee unions one step at a time” by Andrea Hsu at npr.org: “Federal employees have had the right to join unions and collectively bargain over working conditions since the 1960s. Unlike private sector workers, government employees cannot negotiate wages or strike. But through collective bargaining, they do help shape disciplinary procedures, parental leave policies, how overtime is managed and much more…Giving workers a say in workplace policies, the thinking goes, leads to less friction in the workplace and more effective government…But President Trump has abandoned that idea. Instead, he’s argued that federal employee unions pose a danger to the country. In March, he issued an executive order ending collective bargaining rights for more than one million federal workers at about 20 federal agencies. Almost immediately, many agencies halted automatic deductions of union dues from employee paychecks, cutting off a critical source of cash flow to the unions. Just ahead of Labor Day, Trump issued a new executive order, adding about a half dozen agencies to the list…Unions have filed lawsuits, alleging Trump is retaliating against them for opposing parts of his agenda. Lower courts temporarily halted the March order; the government appealed…Two appeals courts then said the Trump administration could move forward while litigation continues, citing the president’s unique responsibility for protecting national security. In their rulings, the judges noted that the Trump administration had told agencies not to terminate collective bargaining agreements while litigation was pending…But last month, the administration sent agencies updated guidance, telling them they could go ahead with terminating most union contracts — just not those with the National Treasury Employees Union, due to ongoing litigation. To date, nine agencies have canceled contracts, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.” Now would be a good time for the Democratic Party to issue a statement saying they support union representation for all workers in both the public and private sectors.

Don’t entertain entertain any delusions that the souring of U.S.-Canada relations as a result of Trump’s tariff mess won’t hurt our economy. As Natasha Chen reports in her article, “The ‘self-inflicted injury’ to US tourism that’s making some Americans angry and disappointed” at CNN Travel: “Many Canadians have boycotted taking US trips and buying American products since the spring. That’s when President Trump made false claims and belittling comments about Canada in the midst of a tariff war…The absence of Canadians has been felt acutely in the United States, especially in cities like Seattle close to the northern border. And Canadians aren’t the only international travelers skipping the US. Some other international travelers have also named recent policies around tariffs and immigration as reasons they’re staying away…After a promising estimate in December by analytics company Tourism Economics that the US would see about 9% growth in overall international visitation in 2025, the company’s updated outlook now estimates an 8.2% decline, led by about one quarter fewer Canadians visiting the US from January to July, compared to the same period in 2024.”

Chen continues, “The World Travel and Tourism Council, a global tourism advocacy organization, projected in May that the United States will lose $12.5 billion in international visitor spending in 2025, the only country out of 184 economies the council analyzed that will see a decline this year.” Her article also reports “Rob Hawkins, from the United Kingdom, changed plans he and his wife had for a 20-day spring 2026 trip to the US to go to South Korea and Japan instead. “America to me is rock ‘n roll, NASA, speed, jazz, horses, bourbon, hip hop, dance, MTV (the original), Hollywood, gold medals, innovation, strength, respectful (sic) and apple pie,” Hawkins told CNN in an email. “Not the army on the streets and the extreme division currently on show,” he said, referring to the National Guard presence in Los Angeles during immigration raids and in Washington D.C. to take federal control of the local police force.” Chen’s article also quotes Julia Simpson, World Travel and Tourism Council president & CEO: “While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign.” Chen notes, further, “Tourism Economics, which tracks data on domestic and international tourism, now projects that a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels won’t happen until 2029 — three years later than it originally projected.”

David Corn shares some thoughts on “Donald Trump and the Deconstruction of America” at Mother Jones: “Every day, Americans are bombarded with the bad news of Trump 2.0: concentration camps; cruel ICE raids targeting law-abiding residents; health insurance being yanked from millions; elite universities, media companies, and law firms yielding to mob-like extortion; crypto deals and other brazen grifting tied to a corrupt White House; rampant abuses of governmental power and threats of sham criminal prosecutions against the administration’s critics and political foes; drastic cuts in food assistance; assaults on women’s rights; the withholding of disaster relief; the reckless shutdowns and eviscerations of crucial government services and agencies that will result in hardship (and, in some cases, death) for Americans and people overseas…This is, of course, a partial list. And it is exhausting to keep track of and absorb each new outrage. That is the clear intent. The Trump transgressions come so fast they distract from each other. Public attention rarely remains focused on any one atrocity. We’re bludgeoned by the never-ending stream of misdeeds and affronts—which each day come wrapped in propaganda extolling a new Golden Age and assorted false glories of Dear Leader. When one is caught in the crossfire, it is hard to see, let alone address, the big picture…That is to Donald Trump’s advantage. For a long time, commentators have noted that he relishes generating chaos and believes he can exploit disorder for political advantage. It’s an escape route for him. The dizzying whirlwind he creates places critics and opponents off-balance. And perhaps best of all for him and his crew, it hides their overall plan and inhibits the development and promotion of an overarching counternarrative. Their foes are stuck decrying the individual acts of villainy, one at a time, without doing what is most necessary in American politics: telling a story…In today’s fractured and bubble-ized media ecosystem, plotlines don’t punch through unless there’s repetition and force in the presentation. It’s too easy to be distracted.” More here.

Barbara Smith Warner, executive director at National Vote at Home Institute, has an article, “Mail ballots are not a threat to democracy, but an invitation to it” at The Hill. Warner’s article makes a compelling case for increasing voting by mail.

As Warner notes in one of her introductory paragraphs, “But whether you call it vote by mail, absentee voting or vote at home, it’s not new, risky or partisan. In fact, mail ballots are one of the most time-tested, secure and bipartisan voting methods in America. And instead of being a threat to democracy, mail ballots might just be the solution to the problem of American democracy becoming a mere spectator sport, where an aging, shrinking number of voters determine most of our electoral outcomes.”

You won’t find a better defense of voting by mail than Warner’s article, and every Democrat engaged in the discussion about voting by mail ought to give it a sober read. But drilling down a bit, I was struck by how her argument relates to political primaries.

As Warner writes, ” In the 2024 presidential election, more than one-third of America’s eligible citizens — over 80 million — didn’t vote at all…It’s far worse in primaries, which often determine who actually takes power in Congress and state governments. In the 2024 primary elections, turnout was just 18.5 percent of eligible citizens, less than one out of five. And the median age of these voters was 65. Add in the thousands of local contests for mayor, city council, school boards and more, where turnout is often in the single digits, and the picture is even bleaker.”

Think about that. Less than one out of five eligible voters cast ballots in the primaries, and the median age of those who voted in primaries was 65. Such stats raise all kinds of questions, including: Why is the primary turnout so low? Are the stats skewed significantly more by the primaries of one party more than the other?  If primary turnout was higher, would we have better leaders? Why does the primary turnout skew so strongly toward older voters? How come moderates don’t do better with elderly votes disproportionately influencing the outcomes of primary elections? Do the parties do a lousy job of turning out voters in their primaries on purpose, or are they just incompetent at it? Worse, is it just that Americans don’t really care all that much who their preferred party nominates? Have self-described ‘Independents’ gotten so large as a group that they don’t feel either party offers them adequate choices? What could be done to increase primary turnout rates?

Such questions ought to provide fodder for further research. But getting back to Warner’s main point, could primary turnouts across the nation improve by promoting voting by mail? Warner notes that “All but 13 states now allow the use of mail ballots for any reason, and in the 2024 general election, 48 million voted by mail.” But that doesn’t tell you what kind of education and promotion campaigns were most effective in increasing primary turnout, in particular. But it seems reasonable to conclude that expanding – and more aggressively promoting – mail voting in primaries could improve primary turnouts and, quite possibly, the quality of our elected officials.