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.”

Ronald Brownstein mulls over the reasons “Why Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars” at The Atlantic and provides some insightful observations about the policy and messaging options being discussed by Democratic strategists and analysts, including:

Today’s Democratic conflict is not yet as sustained or as institutionalized as the earlier battles. Although dozens of elected officials joined the DLC, the loudest internal critics of progressivism now are mostly political consultants, election analysts, and writers—a list that includes the data scientist David Shor and a coterie of prominent left-of-center journalists (such as Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and Jonathan Chait) who have popularized his work; the longtime demographic and election analyst Ruy Teixeira and like-minded writers clustered around the website The Liberal Patriot; and the pollster Stanley B. Greenberg and the political strategist James Carville, two of the key figures in Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Compared with the early ’90s, “the pragmatic wing of the party is more fractured and leaderless,” says Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank that was initially founded by the DLC but that has long outlived its parent organization (which closed its doors in 2011).

For now, these dissenters from the party’s progressive consensus are mostly shouting from the bleachers. On virtually every major cultural and economic issue, the Democrats’ baseline position today is well to the left of their consensus in the Clinton years (and the country itself has also moved left on some previously polarizing cultural issues, such as marriage equality). As president, Biden has not embraced all of the vanguard liberal positions that critics such as Shor and Teixeira consider damaging, but neither has he publicly confronted and separated himself from the most leftist elements of his party—the way Clinton most famously did during the 1992 campaign when he accused the hip-hop artist Sister Souljah of promoting “hatred” against white people. Only a handful of elected officials—most prominently, incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams—seem willing to take a more confrontational approach toward cultural liberals, as analysts such as Teixeira are urging. But if next year’s midterm elections go badly for the party, it’s possible, even likely, that more Democrats will join the push for a more Clintonite approach. And that could restart a whole range of battles over policy and political strategy that seemed to have been long settled.

Brownstein discusses President Clinton’s success in the nineties, and credits Clinton’s “folksy, populist style he had developed while repeatedly winning office in Arkansas, a state dominated by culturally conservative, mostly non-college-educated white Americans” as a reason for his success. “After a quarter century of futility,” Brownstein adds, “Clinton’s reformulation of the traditional Democratic message restored the party’s ability to compete for the White House.” Brownstein notes, further,

David Shor, a young data analyst and pollster who personally identifies as a democratic socialist, has promoted his ideas primarily through interviews with sympathetic journalists (taking criticism along the way for failing to document some of his assertions about polling results). Ruy Teixeira and his allies have advanced similar ideas in greater depth through essays primarily in their Substack project, The Liberal Patriot. Stan Greenberg, the pollster, summarized his approach in an extensive recent polling report on how to improve the party’s performance with working-class voters that he conducted along with firms that specialize in Hispanic (Equis Labs) and Black (HIT Strategies) voters….Shor, Teixeira, and Greenberg all argue that economic assistance alone won’t recapture voters who consider Democrats out of touch with their values on social and cultural issues. (Today’s critics don’t worry as much as the DLC did about the party appearing weak on national security.) “The more working class voters see their values as being at variance with the Democratic party brand,” Teixeira wrote recently in a direct echo of “Evasion,” “the less likely it is that Democrats will see due credit for even their measures that do provide benefits to working class voters.”

….(Shor also believes that Democrats must move to the center on cultural issues but he’s suggested that the answer is less to pick fights within the party than to simply downplay those issues in favor of economics, where the party’s agenda usually has more public support, an approach that has been described as “popularism.” “On the social issues, you want to take the median position,” he told me, “but really the game is that our positions are so unpopular, we have to do everything we can to keep them out of the conversation. Period.”)….“It took me a long time to accept this, because it was very ideologically against what I wanted to be true, but the reality is, the way to win elections is to go against your party and to seem moderate,” Shor said. “I like to tell people that symbolic and ideological moderation are not just helpful but actually are the only things that matter to a big degree.”

However, notes Brownstein, “Democrats today need fewer culturally conservative voters to win power. Roughly since the mid-’90s, white Americans without a college degree—the principal audience for the centrist critics—have fallen from about three-fifths of all voters to about two-fifths (give or take a percentage point or two, depending on the source). Over that same period, voters of color have nearly doubled, to about 30 percent of the total vote, and white voters with a college degree have ticked up to just above that level (again with slight variations depending on the source).”

Brownstein shares a messaging tip from Stanley Greenberg, one of the top experts on political attitudes of the white working-class: “Greenberg says in his recent study that non-college-educated Hispanics and Black Americans, as well as blue-collar white voters, all responded to a tough populist economic message aimed at the rich and big corporations, but only after Democrats explicitly rejected defunding the police. “You just didn’t get there [with those voters] unless you were for funding and respecting, but reforming, the police as part of your message,” Greenberg told me. “The same way that in his era and time … welfare reform unlocked a lot of things for Bill Clinton, it may be that addressing defunding the police unlocks things in a way that is similar.”

Of course the risk is that overstating a centrist message will discourage turnout among Black, Hispanic and young voters. Brownstein notes alternative strategies, including:

“Rather than chasing the working-class white voters attracted to Trump’s messages by shifting right on crime and immigration, groups focused on mobilizing the growing number of nonwhite voters, such as Way to Win, argue that Democrats should respond with what they call the “class-race narrative.” That approach directly accuses Republicans of using racial division to distract from policies that benefit the rich, a message these groups say can both motivate nonwhite intermittent voters and convince some blue-collar white voters.”….Meanwhile, organizations such as Way to Win are arguing that Democrats should worry less about recapturing voters drawn to Trump than mobilizing the estimated 91 million individuals who turned out to vote for the party in at least one of the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections.”

The question remains: What is the best policy and messaging mix that can help Democrats win a modestly larger share of white working-class voters, while not discouraging turnout by other core constituencies? The answer holds the key to building a stable, working majority.

“Do Democrats’ difficulties grow more out of structural advantages of the Republican Party — better geographic distribution of its voters, the small-state tilt of the Electoral College and the Senate, more control over redistricting? Or do their difficulties stem from Democratic policies and positions that alienate key blocs of the electorate?,” Thomas B. Edsall asks in his New York Times column. Edsall explains, “If, as much evidence shows, working-class defections from the Democratic Party are driven more by cultural, racial and gender issues than by economics — many non-college-educated whites are in fact supportive of universal redistribution programs and increased taxes on the rich and corporations — should the Democratic Party do what it can to minimize those sociocultural points of dispute, or should the party stand firm on policies promoted by its progressive wing?….I asked a group of scholars and Democratic strategists versions of these questions. Three conclusions stood out:

• There was near unanimous agreement that the Republican Party under the leadership of Trump is a threat to democracy, but disagreement over the degree of the danger.

• There was across-the-board opposition to the creation of a third party on the grounds that it would split the center and the left.

• A striking difference emerged when it came to the choice of strategic responses to the threat, between those who emphasized the built-in structural advantages benefiting the Republican Party and those who contended that Democrats should stand down on some of the more divisive cultural issues to regain support among working-class voters — white, Black and Hispanic.”

Edsall quotes several top political analysts to assess the Democrats’ prospects in 2022 and beyond, and explains that  “Skocpol is sharply critical of trends within the Democratic Party: “The advocacy groups and big funders and foundations around the Democratic Party — in an era of declining unions and mass membership groups — are pushing moralistic identity-based causes or specific policies that do not have majority appeal, understanding, or support, and using often weird insider language (like “Latinx”) or dumb slogans (“Defund the police”) to do it”….The leaders of these groups, Skocpol stressed, “often claim to speak for Blacks, Hispanics, women etc. without actually speaking to or listening to the real-world concerns of the less privileged people in these categories.”….Along similar lines, William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings and former White House aide during the Clinton administration, wrote, “For the first time in my life, I have come to believe that the stability of our constitutional institutions can no longer be taken for granted…In my view,” Galston continued, “the issue is not so much ideology as it is class. Working-class people with less than a college degree have an outlook that differs from that of the educated professionals whose outlook has come to dominate the Democratic Party. To the dismay of Democratic strategists, class identity may turn out to be more powerful than ethnic identity, especially for Hispanics.” The party’s “principal weakness,” Galston observes “lies in the realm of culture, which is why race, crime and schools have emerged as such damaging flash points.” In this context, “the Biden administration has failed to articulate views on immigration, criminal justice, education and related issues that a majority of Americans can support.”

Edsall continues, “Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the pro-Democratic Center for American Progress, wrote in an essay, “Democrats, Not Republicans, Need to Defuse the Culture Wars”: Democrats are not on strong ground when they have to defend views that appear wobbly on rising violent crime, surging immigration at the border and non-meritocratic, race-essentialist approaches to education. They would be on much stronger ground if they became identified with an inclusive nationalism that emphasizes what Americans have in common and their right not just to economic prosperity but to public safety, secure borders and a world-class but nonideological education for their children. Edsall concludes, “It may be that in too many voters’ minds the Democratic Party has also crossed a line and that Democratic adoption of more centrist policies on cultural issues — in combination with a focus on economic and health care issues — just won’t be enough to counter the structural forces fortifying the Republican minority, its by-any-means-necessary politics and its commitment to white hegemony….The Biden administration is, in fact, pushing an agenda of economic investment and expanded health care, but the public is not yet responding. Part of this failure lies with the administration’s suboptimal messaging. More threatening to the party, however, is the possibility that a growing perception of the Democratic Party as wedded to progressive orthodoxies now blinds a large segment of the electorate to the positive elements — let’s call it a trillion-dollar bread-and-butter strategy — of what Biden and his party are trying to do.”

Alan I. Abramowitz has a data-driven analysis of the Dems’ Virginia loss, “Explaining the Republican Victory in the Virginia Gubernatorial Election: Conversion or Mobilization?” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz reviews “exit poll data from the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election (there was no exit poll in New Jersey) to examine the sources of the swing toward the GOP in that contest.[1] These exit poll results — though imperfect, just like any other survey — allow us to estimate the proportion of 2020 Biden and Trump voters who shifted parties in 2021 and the impact of changes in the demographic composition of the electorate between the two elections.” As Abramowitz writes further, “The results of the 2021 gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey showed a strong swing toward the Republican Party. A 16-point Democratic margin in New Jersey in 2020 turned into a 3-point Democratic margin in 2021 and a 10-point Democratic margin in Virginia in 2020 turned into a 2-point Republican margin in 2021. However, county-level data show that voting patterns in the gubernatorial elections were very similar to those in the presidential election while exit poll data from Virginia show that very few Biden voters actually switched sides in the 2021 gubernatorial election. Instead, it appears that the shift in election results between 2020 and 2021 was due largely to disproportionate partisan mobilization — stronger turnout among Republican voters than among Democratic voters in the off-year elections….Republicans won in Virginia and came surprisingly close to winning in New Jersey because Republican voters were more energized than Democratic voters. In the California recall election, in contrast, Republicans apparently did not enjoy a major advantage in turnout and the GOP-sponsored recall effort fell flat. These results suggest that the results of the 2022 midterm elections will depend primarily on the ability of Republican and Democratic candidates to mobilize their own party’s supporters more than their ability to convert supporters of the opposing party.”

The following Greenberg Research article, based on a battleground web poll by Democracy Corps, focus groups with Hispanic voters by EquisLabs and qualitative research with Black voters by HIT Strategies, is cross-posted from Democracy Corps:

• Key one — recognizing that the overwhelming majority of our diverse base is the hardworking working class. They are citizens who have never completed a four-year college degree. Fully 70 percent of Blacks in HIT Strategy’s battleground survey are working class, 75 percent in EquisLab’s surveys with Hispanics in Florida, Texas, Arizona and other battleground states. The AAPI voters are predominantly college grads in Orange County, but 67 percent of millennials and GenZ voters lack a four-year degree, as do 69 percent of unmarried women, and 57 percent of white unmarried women across the 2022 battleground. We need to wear their working class shoes.

• Key two is recognizing that all our base of Black, Hispanics, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are feeling less hopeful about the country’s direction and giving Democrats a weaker generic congressional vote than expected because of uncertainty on COVID, the economy, and whether Biden in the end will make life better for them… And that may be decided this week.

• Key three is recognizing our base is pretty clear-eyed and united about Build Back priorities: labor protections that promote a $15 wage and watch out for workers rights in the workplace; expanding Medicare or maintaining insurance subsidies that lower insurance premiums for the first time; the child tax credit; and infrastructure jobs. They want material help but also to strengthen workers and weaken big corporations who should pay their fair share of taxes.

•Key four is recognizing that campaigns to win these voters back must focus on a base that is consumed with material gains and class position, a base that prioritizes improving economic conditions of their communities within the context of racial disparity. AAPI voters put initiatives on racial equities at the bottom of their list, as do Hispanics in Democracy Corps’ research. Racial justice is an important priority for Blacks in HIT’s battleground research, but it is part of a top set of priorities that include greater labor protection, reduced health costs, infrastructure jobs, managing COVID, and the CTC.

• Key five is realizing that Democrats need to be showing, they care more about people like you and are are “better for Hispanics.” Democrats need to talk about each Hispanic community, its immigrant and class history that bring them to America to fulfill the American dream. Delivery on immigration in the Congress shows Democrats don’t take them for granted, are indeed better for Hispanics and helps them with pro-immigration voters. Democrats need to deliver in areas of Democratic strength: COVID, health care, immigration, and “caring for people like you.” And hit the Republicans who govern only for the biggest corporations.

• Key six is recognizing that AAPI voters are pretty alienated, believe country on wrong track, and Democrats are underperforming. They resent other groups getting more attention, yet very aligned with Democrats on corporations paying higher tax and respond strongly to message, “need government that works for us.”

•Key seven is recognizing that both our diverse base and persuadable working class voters have very similar priorities for government and they too, resent hardworking people no longer calling the shots in society and government. Our base and working class targets both want government to offer more protections and higher pay for low-wage workers, and maintain the child tax credit, reduced health insurance premiums and prescription drug costs and better Medicare, and big corporations paying much more in taxes.

• Key eight is recognizing this is an opportunity for Dems to pass legislation that lifts all working class boats but to advance messaging that describes how the new laws specifically addresses the needs of Black, Hispanic and Latino, AAPI and white working voters. It shows Democrats care about them, allays fear that some groups benefiting more than others and improves perception that “neither” party is delivering for them.

•Key nine is recognizing that crime is a major issue in every community and addressing it is a precondition for Democrats regaining support. Crime was among the very top concerns with AAPI and Black voters, where it ranks higher than police abuse. Trump’s message on respecting police still gets a strong hearing in all these communities. However, Democracy Corps research showed how much Democrats gained their biggest margin in an experiment where voters heard, “we must be for funding, not defunding the police” and “respect officers.” The Democrats are also unequivocal that abusive officers will be held accountable.

•Key ten is recognizing that persons with a disability are heavily represented in the white working class and rural areas, as is evident in every focus group we conducted. They respond with great enthusiasm to the current agenda and become more Democratic. Can they become base voters?

• Key eleven is recognizing that making the new expanded, monthly child tax credit a centerpiece of the Democratic agenda reveals new things about the the white working class. First, it is very popular, but also shows that white working class voters under 50 years of age may be culturally different than their parents and therefore more accessible to Democrats.

• Key twelve is recognizing the working class is really independent contractors, small business owners, and those who work in small businesses. Democrats need to have programs to help them, as well as be seen to battle for small businesses.

• Key thirteen. All of this research points to a common message frame where Democrats are on your side while Republicans fight for the rich corporations.

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

My latest at The Liberal Patriot!

“It’s not exactly a secret the Republicans are running hard against the Democrats on sociocultural issues like crime, immigration, ideology in the schools and cancel culture. Their strategy is to combine attacks on these perceived vulnerabilities with an indictment of Democrats’ failure to return normalcy to the economy and thoroughly contain the pandemic. The goal is to paint a picture of the Democrats as an incompetent party distracted by secondary issues out of step with normal voters.

The Democrats’ standard response to Republican sociocultural attacks is to insist that the problem areas identified by the GOP aren’t really problems. They are fake issues cynically pumped up by right wing media to scare voters who would otherwise be responding favorably to the Democrats’ superior performance and policy ideas. The apotheosis of this was Terry McAuliffe’s robotic pronouncement of voter concern about schools in the Virginia gubernatorial contest as responding to “racist dog whistles”.

This seems unlikely to work….

Unmuddling the Democratic story starts with defusing the culture war issues that give so much credence to the Republican claim that Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of ordinary voters and prevent Democrats themselves from focusing attention where it is most needed. This may strike many Democrats as terribly unfair; why should Democrats try to do this when GOP attacks are so cynically motivated and so many in their own ranks are guilty of holding truly reactionary and extreme cultural views?

This may not be “fair” in some sense. But it is necessary because it is Republicans who benefit from the endless battle over these issues, not Democrats. Democrats are not on strong ground when they have to defend views that appear wobbly on rising violent crime, surging immigration at the border and non-meritocratic, race-essentialist approaches to education. They would be on much stronger ground if they became identified with an inclusive nationalism that emphasizes what Americans have in common and their right not just to economic prosperity but to public safety, secure borders and a world-class but non-ideological education for their children.

Republicans would continue their attacks of course but they would land with less force, allowing—and perhaps forcing—Democrats to sharpen their focus on voters’ primary concerns like the economy. That is probably the very last thing Republicans would want Democrats to do—and therefore the very thing that Democrats should be doing.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe–it’s free!

At Axios, Sarah Mucha writes, “Vulnerable House Democrats are convinced they need to talk less about the man who helped them get elected: President Trump….Democrats are privately concerned nationalizing the 2022 mid-terms with emotionally-charged issues — from Critical Race Theory to Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection — will hamstring their ability to sell the local benefits of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda….The push by centrist lawmakers, especially from the suburbs, to keep the conversation away from Trump is frequently derailed by the party’s loudest voices — and their insistence to talk about him at every turn….People don’t want to hear about Donald Trump,” Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), told Axios. “They’re going to vote because they want to see people get sh-t done.”….”All politics is local,” Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) tweeted last week. “Whether it’s advocating for the equitable redevelopment of Gwinnett Place Mall, or securing funding for our local trailway system, every day I am working in Congress for our community.” However, “It’s going to be really really hard to distinguish yourself from your national brand,” said Sean McElwee, executive director of Data for Progress, a progressive think tank. “It’s functionally impossible for House members to do.” Mucha adds, “Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg said Democrats need to capitalize on their successes and paint Republicans as extremists….The process of defining the Republicans as unfit will not be about Trump,” he told Axios, but instead about how each Republican has adopted “unacceptable positions.”

Gregory Krieg and Rachel Janfaza argue that “If the Supreme Court curtails abortion rights it could flip the script on the 2022 midterm elections” at CNN Politics: “With the looming possibility of the Supreme Court gutting Roe v. Wade, the future of reproductive rights in America is poised to become a central and potentially defining issue in the upcoming midterm elections….The high court is expected to deliver its ruling on a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks next summer, as campaign season kicks into high gear. At a hearing this week, the bench’s conservative supermajority signaled its intent to uphold the law, going against decades of precedent and likely introducing a volatile new variable in electoral politics….Democratic campaign organizations up and down the ballot, along with allied abortion rights groups, are now ramping up efforts to channel the anger and anguish of pro-choice voters and drive them to the polls. On the federal level, Senate Democrats are stressing the importance of maintaining their majority in order to confirm a new justice in the event President Joe Biden has the opportunity fill a vacated seat. In the states, leading Democrats are warning that Republican victories in legislative and gubernatorial races will lead to another burst of efforts to outlaw or severely curtail abortion rights, in line with the hundreds of restrictions that have been enacted in the last decade — this time without constitutional barriers to slow or stop them….Abortion rights have strong support in a variety of national polling. An ABC News/Washington Post survey from last month found that 60% of Americans say Roe v. Wade should be upheld. Only 27% said it should be overturned.”

David Siders doesn’t buy it, however, as he writes in “Why the threat to Roe may not save Democrats in 2022; “I wish we lived in a world where outrage mattered. But I think we live in a post-outrage world,” said one party strategist” at Politico. Siders explains further, “Interviews with more than a dozen Democratic strategists, pollsters and officials reveal skepticism that the court’s decision will dramatically alter the midterm landscape unless — and perhaps not even then — Roe is completely overturned. Privately, several Democratic strategists have suggested the usefulness of any decision on abortion next year will be limited, and some may advise their clients not to focus on abortion rights at all….Some of that thinking is colored by Virginia’s gubernatorial race earlier this year. After the Supreme Court allowed a law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy to take effect in Texas, the party was so sure abortion would resonate with voters that Democrat Terry McAuliffe made it a centerpiece of his campaign, saying “it will be a huge motivator for individuals to come out and vote.”….By the time ballots were cast, just 8 percent of voters listed abortion as the most important issue facing Virginia, according to exit polls. Even worse for Democrats, of the people who cared most about the issue, a majority voted for the Republican, Glenn Youngkin.” As Julie Roginsky, a former top adviser to New Jersey’s Democratic governor, put it, “Every time we’ve run on issues like women’s health, they have polled through the roof. But … they have been completely ineffective at getting voters to the polls. There’s a difference between something that polls really well, and something that gets voters to the polls. And that is what a lot of people are confusing.” And yet, a substantial majority did vote against Trump in both 2016 and 2020.