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

Calling All Big Tent Democrats!

The Welcome Party organization is doing some great work trying to build a big tent Democratic party. They have some stern words for those on the left of the party who seem more interested in fratricidal attacks on Joe Manchin than in building the big tent party actually capable of defeating an increasingly authoritarian GOP. From their newsletter (well worth subscribing to):

“In vitriolic response to Manchin’s “Fox News Sunday” appearance, the Twitterverse has been brimming with everything from preposterous assertions that the West Virginia Democrat is, in fact, a Republican to nonsensical insinuations that he has done more than Mitch McConnell to blow up Biden’s agenda. These extreme and dishonest characterizations come either from a place of ignorance, malevolence, or both….

To put it mildly, the differences between Manchin and MAGA are stark. Mitch McConnell couldn’t be more off-base when he argues that Manchin would fit in better with the GOP than with the Democrats, but that has not stopped him from getting away with doing so. At a time when Democrats should be doing everything they can to convert the handful of remaining pro-democracy Republicans (such as those who voted for Trump’s impeachment), it is both striking and problematic that the obstructionist in chief and his ever-more-authoritarian cabal are leading the charge on cross-partisan recruitment.

The Democrats desperately need a big-tent, pro-democracy faction capable of appealing to cross-partisan coalitions of voters in swing districts across the country — and there’s no better place to start than with those elected officials on the center-right who clearly feel alienated from today’s radicalized GOP. Fostering such a faction requires that the party and its leadership make it crystal clear that they welcome and encourage a diversity of voices and perspectives, and that begins with Manchin. While the West Virginia senator won’t support everything that his colleagues to the left propose, they should be receptive to and grateful for everything that he is willing to get behind. After all, they’re lucky to have him.

As we wrote earlier this fall in The Bulwark, Democrats should be responding with empathy and aggressive recruitment to the growing spectre of political intimidation on the right. When the far-right has chosen to engage in threats of physical intimidation against members of the GOP, the Trump wing has largely been rewarded with retracted critiques and retirements.

As The Spectator World observed back in October, this kind of intimidation — physical and psychological — doesn’t work on Joe Manchin. When the far-left tried to pressure Manchin (he told the White House his family had “been the target of abuse”), they simply tore at the seams of an already-fragile big tent….

The disproportionate one-sidedness of this week’s conversation seems to suggest that the kind of self-righteous, pie-in-the-sky thinking that animates the online left is increasingly seeping into and molding how a substantial segment of the Democratic mainstream thinks — across the party’s leadership, base, and media allies. In many ways, it’s a mirroring of the same kind of far-left groupthink that gripped the candidates during the 2020 party primary debates. Remember when Elizabeth Warren raked John Delaney over the coals (to thundering applause) for his suggestion that Democrats are best served by running on “real solutions, not impossible promises”?

Warren’s leftist nihilism — “I don’t understand why someone goes to all the trouble of running for President of the United States just to talk about what we can’t do” — eloquently forecast Democrats’ 2022 predicament, where the left can plainly state not only disinterest in reality, but disdain for it.

Democrats from deep-blue strongholds must remember that many of the policies and assumptions they take for granted are, in fact, controversial or downright unpopular with large and critical constituencies across the country.

That the party has lost its focus and allowed this moment to be construed as “Manchin vs. the Democrats” instead of “big-tent Democrats vs. the increasingly authoritarian GOP” is telling of its approach to this perilous moment. Instead of Mitch McConnell trying to recruit moderate Democrats to his team, it’s time for Democrats to roll up their sleeves and start working over moderate Republicans — and their constituents.”

In her article, “Quit Moping: Democrats Had a Great Record in 2021: Despite inflation, the Biden economic boom is on. Shots are getting in arms. We’re out of Afghanistan. Now, if Democrats can just get their swagger back,” at The Washington Monthly, Anne Kim writes that “when Biden entered office, the U.S. economy was in chaos, thanks to Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic. Unemployment was 6.8 percent, the economy was contracting, and job growth was anemic. Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in March, averted a financial crisis for millions of American households through emergency stimulus checks, rent relief, and other support. It also funded school districts’ reopening efforts, propped up state and local governments facing steep budgetary shortfalls, and helped keep thousands of businesses afloat with loans and grants through programs like the Paycheck Protection Plan. The Treasury Department reports that the economy created 3 million new jobs within six months of the package’s enactment, while the nation’s economic output recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Since last November, the economy has regained 5.8 million jobs, and wages are up 3.8 percent….The American Rescue Plan included a first-ever monthly tax credit for families with children, which reduced child poverty to historic lows. In October, according to Columbia University, the child tax credit reached 61.1 million children, slashing the child poverty rate by 4.9 percent and reducing hunger among low-income families with children by as much as 25 percent….After decades of inaction (and four years of empty promises from Trump), Biden signed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package to repair the nation’s roads and bridges, upgrade energy and water systems, and connect millions of rural Americans to broadband. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which has consistently awarded U.S. infrastructure C and D grades over the past 20 years, hailedthe new law as a “historic, once in a generation investment.” Already, the first infusions of cash are headed to states and cities; the federal government recently announced the award of $3 billion in upgrades for U.S. airports, with more to come….In his debate with President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked the question that’s become the litmus test for voters ever since: “Are you better off than you were four years ago”?….In the case of Biden’s slow but steady stewardship over the past year, versus the chaos and corruption of Trump, the answer, unequivocally, is yes. Democrats should brag about their accomplishments rather than undercut their success, moping about what hasn’t yet happened. What’s important is that American families are overwhelmingly better off this year than last.”

Some insights from Charlie Cook’s latest article at The Cook Political Report: “President Biden and congressional Democrats could look back at this year with pride and accomplishment, given their passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $1 trillion infrastructure package. But instead, the first session of the 117th Congress is now in the history books, and Democrats head into the holiday season deeply demoralized, badly damaged politically, and with real reason to fear that Biden could become the fifth consecutive president to lose both Senate and House majorities on his watch…While there is still a chance that Biden and maverick Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin can reach some agreement early next year for a scaled-down version of the Build Back Better Act, the budget reconciliation package with major social spending and climate-change funding, the reality is that Biden and Democratic congressional leaders badly miscalculated what was realistic given the circumstances of the 2020 election outcome….Quite simply, if you want to do big things, you have to win elections big. The ambition of a party’s legislative and policy agenda should be commensurate with the magnitude of their victory. A meager victory won with the smallest of majorities demands a more modest agenda. Notwithstanding many worthy elements in what Democrats sought this year, proportionality was not to be found when comparing how Democrats did in 2020 and what they tried to do in 2021….”

Cook continues, “Biden’s 5-point popular vote win masked the fact that the relationship between the popular and electoral vote has been severed. Democrats running up the score in California and a few other populous states distort the picture about what really matters: the swing states. By that standard, this was an extremely close election, decided by a combined total of fewer than 126,000 votes scattered across four states. That is a long haul from Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson’s 44-state sweeps, with popular-vote wins of 23 and 18 points, respectively….Looking at Congress, 59 of the Senate’s 96 seats were occupied by Democrats when FDR took office. LBJ had 68 out of 100. Democrats had 313 seats in the House for FDR, 295 for LBJ….For this Congress, Democrats won their 49th seat on Jan. 5 with Raphael Warnock’s win of just under 94,000 votes over Kelly Loeffler in one Georgia runoff. The 50th came days later, as Jon Ossoff was declared the winner, by just under 55,000 votes over David Perdue. This is about as underwhelming as Senate majorities come….The 221 seats that Democrats have in the House represents a 13-seat loss in the 2020 election. Their very majority was saved by fewer than 32,000 votes in five districts. Simply put, this was a very ambiguous election result and not one from which to claim a mandate….So where are Democrats now? This past Saturday morning on SiriusXM’s The Trendline with Kristen Soltis Anderson, my colleague David Wasserman told the host, a highly regarded Republican pollster, that a net Democratic loss in the House of between 20 and 40 seats was quite possible. The Senate is far too murky to even hazard a guess.”

“It’s time for Democrats and the media to stop bashing Joe Manchin and to start bashing the other 50 members of the U.S. Senate who are keeping the public’s business from getting done—the Republicans. Especially bash-worthy are three world-class phonies named Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, and Lisa Murkowski,” Robert Kuttner writes at The American Prospect. “These alleged moderates vote in lockstep with Mitch McConnell and the Trumpers. Once, Collins actually was sort of moderate. She is said to be worried that if she breaks with the MAGA gang, she would likely be defeated in a primary. But in independent Maine, Collins would win in a walk running as an independent….Murkowski might do better in Alaska as an independent in a three-way contest, as well. Romney, who was a centrist Republican when he was governor of Massachusetts, will have to look to his own conscience as an enabler of outright fascism….If even one of them broke ranks and worked across the aisle, Manchin would suddenly be a lot less powerful.” Collins and Romney probably lack the intestinal fortitude to challenge their party and become Independents. But Murkowski has occasionally shown some mettle and flashes of humanity. One of 7 Republican Senators who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, she said, “if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.” And, really, this isn’t her father’s Republican party any more. Murkowski has the smarts to see that, if she merely declared herself to be an Independent, she could suddenly become the most powerful U.S. Senator. It would put her in position to bring home some serious bacon for her constituents in Alaska, not just in BBB —  it would also give her unique leverage in future legislative battles.

In her article, “How Do Democrats Recover From This? Here are five ways in which they could salvage their election chances,” at The Atlantic, Elaine Godfrey shares the thoughts of five Democratic strategists, including:

2. President Biden should enforce strict message discipline—and send the right messengers around the country.

I am an inveterate student of the Iowa Caucuses, so news this week about the 2024 presidential nominating processes fascinated me, as I explained at New York:

On February 4, 2020, the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses suffered a meltdown when results could not be tabulated and reported on Caucus Night. This perfect storm of dysfunction fed a lot of preexisting discontent about the privileged position of the not-terribly-diverse states of Iowa and New Hampshire in the Democratic presidential-nominating process. It looked like a change in the process, or at least a toppling of Iowa, was inevitable.

As late as this past autumn, that was still the prevailing mood in the Democratic Party, as the Washington Post reported:

“President Biden is not a big fan. Former Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez is openly opposed. And elsewhere in the Democratic inner sanctum, disdain for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucus has been rising for years.

“Now the day of reckoning for Iowa Democrats is fast approaching, as the national party starts to create a new calendar for the 2024 presidential nomination that could remove Iowa from its privileged position for the first time since 1972, when candidates started flocking to the state for an early jump on the race to the White House.”

But now, as a disappointing year for Democrats comes to an end, Politico explains that the impetus for changing the nominating process has ground to a near halt:

“Democrats, including in the White House, suddenly have more pressing problems. And as party leaders gathered in recent days for year-end meetings here, interest in what was once a red-hot effort to overhaul the order of the early nominating states had all but vanished.

“Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic National Committee members, state party chairs and strategists laid bare widespread desire to avoid a divisive, intraparty dispute in 2022 — and skepticism that any change enacted after the midterm elections could be done in time for the next presidential campaign.”

Even if DNC members were strongly in favor of changing the nominating process, there are a lot of obstacles to wholesale reforms. For one thing, the national parties do not control what individual states decide to do; there isn’t a “system” in place but rather an interlocking set of decisions by state parties and legislatures. The most common form of nominating contest is a state-funded primary, which typically requires bipartisan cooperation in state legislatures and usually involves a common date for both parties (anything else would be deemed an inefficient waste of tax dollars).

If Democratic Iowa critics had their way, the state would replace the caucuses with a primary that would be held later in the year. But the Republican-controlled Iowa legislature is perfectly happy with the status quo, and, in fact, there is no evident interest among Republicans anywhere (including the party’s 2024 front-runner, Donald Trump) in a “reformed” nominating process. This is evidenced by the fact that Iowa’s GOP chair has been designated to lead the national-party committee that sets the calendar. And if Iowa did try to stay first but shift to a primary, New Hampshire has a state law that empowers and requires the secretary of state to move the Granite State’s election date back perpetually to head off any rivals for the first primary. Nevada has already bid for first place (it is currently third) in the process by junking its caucuses for a primary and scheduling it ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. But New Hampshire will fight for its primacy, and it’s unclear if the national party really wants to adjudicate fights between the states.

It’s possible that residual anger at Iowa among Democrats over its non-diversity or its 2020 meltdown could lead to a simple national-party veto on Iowa going first. Short of creating a state-funded primary, Iowa Republican legislators would have no leverage over that sort of decision. The national party could also try to force Iowa Democrats to abandon caucuses, though in the absence of legislative action, the only option would be a party-funded so-called firehouse primary, so named because financial considerations usually mean that polling places would be limited to inexpensive public facilities like firehouses.

Iowa Democrats could also take some of the heat off themselves by simplifying the caucus process to make a recurrence of the 2020 fiasco far less likely. Iowa Republicans, after all, just show up, hear a few announcements, eat some cookies, and vote for their favorite presidential candidate before going home. Moving to that sort of process instead of the complex system of candidate thresholds and affinity groups and “votes” measured in multiple ways might boost participation while making the results much easier to tabulate and report.

In the end, the decision to stand pat or try to change the system may come down to how interested Joe Biden is in changing the calendar or the procedures by which particular states elect national-convention delegates. Biden is famously not invested in the Iowa–New Hampshire duopoly; he finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire in 2020 and then began his comeback with second place in Nevada and a big landslide win in South Carolina. Some of his closest party allies are those who think more diverse states should weigh in first.

Biden, however, obviously has other fish to fry and doesn’t need any additional intraparty drama at present. If he runs again in 2024, he will almost certainly win the nomination no matter which state goes first, second, third, or 35th.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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