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

I’ve been a bit puzzled lately with the apparent lack of interest by Democrats in the white noncollege vote. There didn’t seem to be much of an attempt at the convention to highlight such voters who might be coming over to the Democrats’ side (see the Washington Post article, “Democrats embrace ‘who we are’ — women, people of color and young voters,” which summarizes the optics of the convention).

This would be easier to understand if there weren’t such voters. But there are! Indeed, my analysis of high quality August polls where appropriate crosstabs are available indicates that Biden is running 10 margin points better than Clinton among white noncollege voters compared to 6 points better among white college voters. The difference in favor of white noncollege voters is even larger in my analysis of the ongoing Nationscape survey. Add in the fact that white noncollege voters are about 40 percent larger as a group than white college voters (more in heavily white noncollege states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and it’s clear that the single largest contributor to Biden’s wider margin over Trump relative to Clinton is his superior performance among white noncollege voters.

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

The Democratic convention generally went off very well and Joe Biden did a terrific job with his big speech.

But was something missing? It did seem like there wasn’t much of an economic message. Presumably this was intentional and one can understand the logic behind it–keep the election a referendum on Trump, get voters very comfortable with Joe Biden the person, be inclusive in every kind of way from Democratic base groups to defecting Republicans. I get it.

But still….was an opportunity lost to put forward a crisp, clear message of economic growth and renewal that would galvanize working class voters, both white and nonwhite, and make them less potentially susceptible to Trump’s economic messages? I do wonder about this. It could matter for the campaign and also to governing should Biden get elected.

John Judis remarks:

“The Democrats in the past have alternated between being the party emphasizing economic growth (Kennedy’s “get the country moving again”) or redistribution (Mondale’s “making the rich pay their fair share”). Biden’s party, as viewed at the convention, was a party of redistribution. There were scattered appeals to growth (Bloomberg’s speech). There was mention of the “Green New Deal” and “Infrastructure” but no attempt to visualize or in other ways dramatize the promise of economic growth in these abstractions. “Build back better” is a tongue twister, but lacks content. America remains a world leader in high technology, but you wouldn’t have known it from the convention — except for the magic of the virtual presentations….

The Democrats of 2000, 2004, and 2016 failed to make [the] case [that they were the party of the great American middle] . The Democrats of 2020 have a candidate in Biden who embodies this appeal, but much of their rhetoric and the program itself, more clearly reflected the identity politics of 2016 that emphasizes difference and ignores, whether intentionally or not, predominately white, flyover America. The point is not to appeal, as Trump undoubtedly will, only to this America, but to present an image of a unitary American small-d democrat. It may be hard to do,, but the party’s ability to sustain majorities depends on it.”

Ron Brownstein elaborates:

“[Biden’s] speech, as well as the convention itself, had a conspicuous blind spot: The event did not deliver a concise critique of Trump’s economic record or offer a tight explanation of Biden’s plans to improve the economic circumstances of middle-class families. Though Biden ran through an extended list of policy goals on issues including job creation and climate change during his address, he offered vanishingly little detail about how he would achieve them—though, in fact, he’s delivered a series of detailed speeches laying out his agenda….

Even if Biden emerges from the convention with a boost in the polls, his choice to focus less on economic appeals and more on sweeping themes and social issues, particularly racial justice, raises some of the same questions that surfaced after the Democrats’ last national meeting. Though Hillary Clinton’s 2016 convention drew strong reviews, it too emphasized the party’s embrace of diversity, the breadth of her coalition, and Trump’s deficiencies of character without delivering a clearly delineated economic agenda for working families. Those choices faced pointed second-guessing after Election Day, when Trump’s huge margins among non-college-educated white voters allowed him to dislodge the Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from the Democrats’ “blue wall” and claim his narrow victory….

One senior Biden adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk frankly, told me that the issues highlighted during that sequence reflect the priorities of the party’s modern base, as the campaign sees it: young people (guns and climate), suburban women (guns and women’s rights), and people of color (racial justice and immigration).

Yet unless Biden can win across a wide range of Sun Belt states, he’s unlikely to reach 270 Electoral College votes without improving at least somewhat among working-class white voters in the key Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And analysts have long observed that many older Latino and African American voters in particular are more motivated to turn out to the polls by concrete plans to improve their life than by broad promises of confronting discrimination.”

It’s worth pointing out here that my analysis of Nationscape and other data indicates that the largest contribution to Biden’s improved margin relative to Clinton 2016, both overall and in key Rust Belt battleground states, has been due to relative improvement among white noncollege voters. The campaign should not lose sight of this and the general necessity to have a clear and compelling economic message in the rest of the campaign.

In his article, “The Missing Piece in Biden’s Convention Speech: The Democratic Party took a gamble by not delivering a more targeted economic message to working- and middle-class families,” Ronald Brownstein writes at The Atlantic: “The event did not deliver a concise critique of Trump’s economic record or offer a tight explanation of Biden’s plans to improve the economic circumstances of middle-class families. Though Biden ran through an extended list of policy goals on issues including job creation and climate change during his address, he offered vanishingly little detail about how he would achieve them—though, in fact, he’s delivered a series of detailed speeches laying out his agenda…Yet unless Biden can win across a wide range of Sun Belt states, he’s unlikely to reach 270 Electoral College votes without improving at least somewhat among working-class white voters in the key Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And analysts have long observed that many older Latino and African American voters in particular are more motivated to turn out to the polls by concrete plans to improve their life than by broad promises of confronting discrimination….even most Democrats agree that he might still squeeze out an Electoral College majority by maximizing margins and turnout among his core group of older, rural, non-college-educated white voters in a few closely balanced states. If he does, Democrats may again rue the choice not to direct a more targeted economic appeal at the voters Trump is relying on most.”

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter addresses a critical quetion for the 2020 elections, “Can Biden Undercut Trump’s Continued Advantage on the Economy?” Walter writes that “Third Way has been doing extensive research and data modeling in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Using data from the analytics firm Catalist, Third Way did a deep dive on these four states to estimate how many people are likely to vote and for which party in suburban counties (and urban and rural ones, too) this year. What they found was that Democrats “are in position to win majorities in the Michigan and Pennsylvania suburbs, which would set them up to win both states. Democrats should get close or just reach a majority in the Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin suburbs, which would put them in a dead heat with Republicans in these states.And Democrats are on target to win a majority in Arizona’s suburbs, but preliminary estimates still show Republicans with a slim advantage statewide. But additional analysis is needed for Arizona.”…In other words, writes Ryan Pougiales, senior political analyst for Third Way, “The battleground suburbs are where 2020 will be won or lost.”

Walter notes further that a survey of likely voters in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin indicates that “when it comes to handling the economy, these swing state suburbanites give Trump a decent 48 percent approval rating. ..These voters think the economy is in bad shape, and don’t expect it to get better anytime soon. Just 30 percent rate the economy as good today, and only 33 percent think it will be better in November. ..But it is that lack of optimism about the economy that worries Third Way. “Voters with the lowest expectations for a recovery,” they write, “may be most impressed by marginal economic progress.”…Under the current unemployment rate (11 percent), Biden had a 9-point advantage (37 percent to 28 percent)…But, if the unemployment rate were to drop to 8 percent, a number we’d normally consider unreasonably high, support for Biden and Trump is evenly divided (35 percent Trump to 34 percent Biden)…While these suburban voters “don’t see Biden in the same vein as say, an AOC,” said this strategist, “they worry about the party moving too far left on issues like taxes.”…To keep Trump from getting the upper hand on the economy, says the Third Way, “Democrats’ best counter is that the economy can’t get on the right track until we address COVID-19—and Trump has shown he can’t handle the virus.”

Anticipating the GOP convention message, E. J. Dionne, Jr. warns at The Washington Post, “…if there is one pesky polling number for Democrats, it is Trump’s slight advantage on the matter of which candidate will better handle the economy. Here is where his attempt to tie Biden and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) to the “far left” will do double duty…The obvious Trump play is to social conservative and racial backlash voters. If the Democrats painted an optimistic picture of a country that could achieve racial justice and national unity, Trump will paint a dark caricature (my color choice is not accidental) of a country facing disorder and chaos under the Democrats….American Carnage Redux is one side of the case Trump wants to make. The other is classic Republican propaganda on economics, aimed at more affluent voters, again particularly suburbanites. Attacks on Biden’s nonexistent “leftism” will be tied to made-up claims that he will boost taxes to confiscatory levels and, in embracing reforms to capitalism, new public programs and bold steps on climate change, will weaken an already ailing economy.” However, Dionne concludes, “In 2016, Trump was unencumbered by the responsibilities of office. In 2020, he has a dismal record to defend — or evade. And the nastier his convention’s message becomes, the more he will reinforce the implicit promise of the Democratic convention: of a calm, less divided country that is normal again.”

David Wasserman shares some revealing batteleground states statistics, also at The Cook Political Report, including “African American voters account for roughly 12 percent of eligible voters nationally, and they account for a substantial share of the vote in six of the seven states Trump carried by 5 points or less in 2016: Florida (15 percent), Georgia (32 percent), Michigan (13 percent), North Carolina (22 percent), Pennsylvania (10 percent) and Wisconsin (6 percent)…An NBC News/Cook Political Report analysis of census and election data from these states shows that the decline in African American turnout and Democratic support from 2012 to 2016 was probably enough to tip at least Michigan and Wisconsin — and possibly Florida and Pennsylvania — to Trump…Amping up African American enthusiasm could pay particular dividends for Biden in Wisconsin, where the Clinton campaign spent scant resources and turnout in Milwaukee plummeted. But even in states like Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where Black turnout was more robust, there were 397,000, 488,000 and 370,000 eligible Black voters, respectively, who failed to turn out last time.”

Wasserman argues further that Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket looks like  winner: “An early August GWU/Battleground Poll found that Harris had a similar net favorability among 18-to-29-year-old voters (38 percent favorable to 34 percent unfavorable) to Biden (51 percent to 46 percent), and a higher net favorability among 35-to-44-year-old voters (44 percent to 33 percent) than Biden (49 percent to 47 percent)…The GWU/Battleground poll found Harris’ favorability in the Midwest at 46 percent to 31 percent, higher than her national favorability and much higher than Vice President Mike Pence’s favorability in the Midwest (35 percent to 53 percent)…At least initially, at a time when voters desire racial unity and give Trump awful marks on his handling of race relations, it’s hard to see Harris as anything other than a plus for Biden. After all, Biden already has a good track record running on a national ticket with an African American attorney in a first term as senator from a blue state.”

At FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich and Meredith Conroy explore the effectiveness of progressive groups, as measured by the success of their endorsees, and write: “Thanks to an increasingly powerful progressive campaign apparatus, there’s no question that the left is now an established player in the Democratic Party. But is it strong enough to rival the political muscle of the party establishment?…To find out, FiveThirtyEight has once again tracked hundreds of endorsements in every Senate, House and governor primary completed so far this year (through Aug. 18). We looked at the win-loss records of the endorsees of eight key Democratic influencers: progressive groups Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee; progressive figures Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders; and two arms of the national Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.² The result is the most complete picture yet of which wing of the party is doing better at the ballot box…And while the progressive upsets may have grabbed all the headlines, the numbers say the party establishment is still king of the hill. Of the 217 Democratic incumbents who ran in the primaries we analyzed, 214 won or advanced to the general election…in the 17 primaries where progressives (candidates endorsed by at least one of these six entities) went up against an incumbent, the progressive-backed candidate lost 14 times. (Newman, Bowman and Bush were the only exceptions.)”…”All told, the progressive group with the best win rate so far in primaries without an incumbent is Indivisible; they’ve endorsed 10 candidates in those races, and nine of them have advanced. Our Revolution has the worst win rate of the progressive endorsers we looked at, but they’ve also backed more candidates than the other groups; of the 14 candidates they endorsed, five have advanced to the general. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Courage for Change PAC has a win rate of 50 percent (4 for 8).”

Pam Fessler and Elena Moore report that “More Than 550,000 Primary Absentee Ballots Rejected In 2020, Far Outpacing 2016″ at NPR: “An extraordinarily high number of ballots — more than 550,000 — have been rejected in this year’s presidential primaries, according to a new analysis by NPR…That’s far more than the 318,728 ballots rejected in the 2016 general election and has raised alarms about what might happen in November when tens of millions of more voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail, many for the first time…..Election experts said first-time absentee voters are much more likely to make the kinds of mistakes that lead to rejected ballots. Studies also show that voters of color and young voters are more likely than others to have their ballots not count…Most absentee or mail-in ballots are rejected because required signatures are missing or don’t match the one on record, or because the ballot arrives too late…

“Even with limited data,” Moore and Fessler write,  “the implications are considerable. NPR found that tens of thousands of ballots have been rejected in key battleground states, where the outcome in November — for the presidency, Congress and other elected positions — could be determined by a relatively small number of votes…For example, President Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by almost 23,000 votes. More than 23,000 absentee ballots were rejected in the state’s presidential primary in April. More than 37,000 primary ballots were also rejected in June in Pennsylvania, a state Trump won by just over 44,000 votes…The numbers are also significant because of large partisan differences in how Americans plan to vote this fall. Democrats have expressed more interest than Republicans in voting by mail — 47% to 28% in the Democracy Fund/UCLA survey. Forty-eight percent of those who intend to vote for Joe Biden say they will use mail-in ballots, compared with 23% of Trump supporters…Pennsylvania, one of the states where the extent of rejected mail-in ballots might well determine the outcome of the election, is planning an ad campaign soon, urging people who have applied for absentee ballots to return them immediately, so they don’t risk having them not count because they arrived too late.”

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s acceptance speech is being greeted with rave reviews. You would expect no less from fellow Democrats. But Biden is getting soaring praise for his address  even from Republicans. For example Fox News commentator Dana Perino, a former press secretary for George W. Bush, called it “a home run in the bottom of the ninth,” which “had pace, rhythm, energy, emotion and delivery. I think if he looks back, he’s got to say that was probably the best speech of his life. He really just took the moment, and I love that.”

It went like this:

Here is the full transcript of Biden’s acceptance address:

Good evening.

Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way.

Give people light. Those are words for our time.

The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.

Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness.

It’s time for us, for we the people, to come together. For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.

I am a proud Democrat and I will be proud to carry the banner of our party into the general election. So, it is with great honor and humility that I accept this nomination for president of the United States of America.

Trying to watch the Democratic National Convention through the baleful eyes of the opposition, I got the feeling it would tempt them into sin, so I wrote about it at New York:

We don’t know much about the messaging and lineup of next week’s Republican National Convention — aside, of course, from the president’s provocative decision to deliver his acceptance speech from the White House grounds and his equally provocative choice to offer a speaking slot to Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who brandished assault weapons at peaceful protesters who were passing the McCloskey’s mega-mansion on their way to the mayor’s house. But we know that Trump’s reelection campaign has been focused on energizing his base and emphasizing those racially abrasive themes that seek to augment his base with suburban swing voters. Here’s how one Trump adviser explained it to Politico:

“’Part of our message will focus on how the suburbs are becoming unsafe because inner cities are unsafe, and Biden and Kamala are going to make it even worse. People who have been impacted by the lawlessness will speak,’ said the outside Trump adviser.”

He might have added that Trump has been crudely promoting the idea that the equal-housing policies Biden is likely to favor will damage suburban property values by letting those people move into previously white areas. In any event, it’s unlikely the Trump campaign will suddenly “pivot to the center” and moderate his pitch this late in the game.

Indeed — as Ron Brownstein points out — for all the president’s troubles, he retains relatively strong support among the non-college-educated white voters who were attracted to his hateful and divisive 2016 message:

“Surveys released since August 11 by Monmouth University, CNN, NBC/The Wall Street Journal, and ABC/The Washington Post all found Trump attracting from 57 to 60 percent of white voters without a college education. The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey put his number slightly lower at 55 percent, while the most recent Pew Research Center poll put him higher, at 64 percent. Trump’s margin over Biden on these measures ranges from just more than 20 percentage points to about 30 points.”

These are not as strong as the numbers he posted in 2016, but boosting them with raw, race-based MAGA appeals may be the most direct path to another narrow Trump win. And it’s entirely possible that the images being flashed around the country by the Democratic convention will add to the Republican temptation to go feral:

“Last night’s proceedings were effectively a tribute to America’s growing diversity. The energetic, quick-cut keynote speech included multiple speakers who were Latino, Black, Asian American, Native American, and LGBTQ, not to mention several women. The brilliantly reimagined convention roll call reinforced the point, with brief testimonials—some somber, others endearingly goofy—from another diverse roster of speakers in every state and territory, a change that drew rave reviews on Twitter and TV news. Some Democratic activists complained that organizers had allocated too much of the event’s limited time to Republicans and too little to nonwhite progressive leaders such as Stacey Abrams and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But average viewers probably absorbed a very different image: On a day when Trump delivered an incendiary speech in Yuma, Arizona, touting his border wall and even reprising the language from his 2015 campaign announcement about immigrants as ‘murderers’ and ‘rapists,’ Democrats offered the 21st-century version of a Norman Rockwell painting.”

You have to figure Team Trump has some focus groups registering fear and loathing of this image of an America where 20th-century ideas of “greatness” have not been restored and are threatened anew.

Sure, the RNC will have its own overlapping agendas. You can, for example, expect as many non-white Republican speakers as organizers can find (including Black state legislator Vernon Jones of Georgia, who will serve as a counter to all the cross-party speakers Democrats recruited). But no one will be left with the impression that Trump’s GOP is anything other than the party of a threatened white Christian hegemony that is unhappy about Black Lives Matter, police accountability, and immigrant rights and is nearly twice as exercised about “violent crime” as it is about COVID-19 (according to a recent Pew survey). You can expect four days of subliminal and not-so-subliminal messaging to their worst instincts.

The New Yorker editor David Remnick shares his assessment of the Democratic Convention’s first three nights: “The set-piece speeches of this Convention have largely been effective. Sanders, who came in second in 2020, as he did in 2016, was at once generous to Biden but true to his insistence on foundational change. (There were disappointments: Al Gore on climate change would have been more relevant and welcome than Bill Clinton’s discourse on Oval Office comportment.) Many of the produced-for-TV-and-social-media video segments have also hit the mark, including Tuesday’s roll call with its visions of palm trees, mountain ranges, and fried calamari; the heart-tugging nomination of Biden by a Times security guard; the heroic story of Ady Barkan, a thirty-six-year-old lawyer who suffers from A.L.S. and became nationally recognized for his campaigning for Medicare for All. Those pieces and others largely felt genuine and stood in contrast to the distinctly sour and vindictive opponent they sought to upend.”

Among the “Hits and Misses from Day 3 of the Democratic Convention” according to Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics: “Barack Obama: Yes, the former president is an incredibly talented orator. But we’ve long known that. What mattered most about Obama’s speech on Wednesday was that he did what lots of Democrats have been begging him to do for the last three-ish years: He delivered a stunning takedown of the man who followed him into the White House. Obama said that Trump simply does not take the job “seriously.” He said that Trump uses the government’s vast powers in a purely “transactional way.” And most powerfully, he said this: “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t, and the consequences of that failure are severe.” Consider what Obama is saying there: As someone who did the job — for eight years — he not only believes Trump cannot rise to the demands of the presidency, but also that there are very real effects of Trump’s deficiency. “This isn’t just the sharpest criticism Obama has made of Trump,” tweeted Politico’s Tim Alberta. “This is the sharpest criticism a former president has *ever made* of a sitting president.”

Former President Obama’s speech:

At Vox, Dylan Matthews comments on one of the “winners” of night three of the convention, Sen. Elizabeth Warren who expalined why child care is more than just a checklist item to be mentioned in this political year: “Warren focused on a place of deep continuity with Biden: child care, where Biden has proposed a massive system of subsidies that bears a strong resemblance to Warren’s plan. Both would cap child care expenses at 7 percent of income for most Americans…Simply pulling out child care, as important as the issue is, would have risked making the speech seem overly niche. But Warren connected it to the broader coronavirus pandemic and the problem of many schools being unable to safely open for the 2020-’21 school year — she delivered the speech from an early childhood education center. Child care “is just one plan,” she concludes. “It gives you an idea of how we get the country working for everyone.”

Regarding one of the largest constituencies that has been only lightly-showcased at the Democratic convention, Ronald Brownstein writes at The Atlantic: “Surveys released since August 11 by Monmouth University, CNN, NBC/The Wall Street Journal, and ABC/The Washington Post all found Trump attracting from 57 to 60 percent of white voters without a college education. The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey put his number slightly lower at 55 percent, while the most recent Pew Research Center poll put him higher, at 64 percent. Trump’s margin over Biden on these measures ranges from just more than 20 percentage points to about 30 points…That’s not as formidable as Trump’s advantage in 2016, when various data sources measuring voting behavior generally put his lead among non-college-educated white voters even higher. And polls in the Rust Belt battleground states, such as the latest Marquette University Law School survey, show Biden performing better among those voters there than he has nationally. Trump’s small overall decline, especially in key battlegrounds, might be enough to deny him a second term by flipping back the three “blue wall” states he won narrowly last time: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.”

Charlie Cook writes at The Cook Political Report: “The Biden campaign’s singular mission is getting 270 electoral votes, and that means winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Nothing else matters…But the Democratic Party is also trying to rebuild for the future, so reach states like Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas are awfully enticing. But Georgia, Ohio, and Texas are big, expensive states. Texas alone has 20 Nielsen media markets, and Des Moines, Iowa, with its almost-statewide reach, isn’t cheap either…But the cold-blooded, reality-based decision about resources that the Biden campaign has to make applies to the Senate as well. Democrats have a surprising number of paths to a majority and beyond, but do they focus on what will get them to 51 or 52 seats, focusing on Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Montana, and North Carolina? Or do they go big, dropping resources into Georgia’s two Senate races, Kansas’s open-seat race, and long-shot opportunities in Texas, or even Alaska, Louisiana, and Mississippi? Notably left off of that list are challenges to Sens. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, since Democrats’ massive fundraising base will cover those two efforts, sparing the party tough decisions there…As tough as they are, they aren’t the triage decisions that their GOP counterparts are about to begin in their allocation choices.”

Day two of the Democratic convention generated lots of read-worthy articles. But please check out Stephen Collinson’s “A risky roll call turns into a surprise moment of national unity” at CNN Politics, which caught the vibrant spirit of the party that looks like America:

Locked down, isolated and fearful as a pandemic fractured national bonds and the power of community, America got a sudden, startling look at itself on Tuesday night as the Democratic National Convention’s virtual roll call vote whipped coast to coast and around the globe.

For a few sunny minutes, the despondency of the summer of Covid lifted during a celebratory glimpse into the country’s vibrant geographic diversity, cultural breadth and enduring common purpose. A risky television production experiment that could have gone badly wrong instead turned into a pageant of national unity, and injected unusual bounce into nominee Joe Biden’s basement campaign.

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

I have heard from a number of folks who can’t get through the WSJ paywall to read my pearls of wisdom. A tragedy! As a humanitarian gesture, I reproduce below the full text of the article–minus the snazzy graphics alas.

Since the New Deal, Democrats have struggled to hold together the eclectic elements of their coalition. Under President Franklin Roosevelt, who forged the party as we know it, the bedrock of Democratic support was the white working class, the “solid South” and Black Americans. But that alliance proved unstable. It came apart in the 1960s as the party struggled to incorporate the voters and demands of a range of new social movements—on civil rights, Vietnam, women’s liberation and the environment. Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 gave Democrats hope that they were forming a new coalition, perhaps one even more durable than its New Deal predecessor. President Obama brought together the rising, 21st-century constituencies of nonwhite voters—Black, Hispanic, Asian—as well as younger voters, educated urban whites and even a solid portion of the white working class.

(MORE)

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

With the DNC starting tomorrow, this seemed like a good time to check in on the state of the Presidential race, looking at the most salient aspects based on available data.

Modeled Forecasts

Princeton Election Consortium: 93 percent probability Biden win
Economist: 89 percent Biden win
538: 72 percent Biden win

Electoral Vote Forecasts:

Princeton Election Consortium: 356-182 Biden
Economist: 350-188 Biden
538: 325-213 Biden

There are many other EV assessments outside of the modeled forecasts. They generally have Biden over 270 because they see him taking back MI, PA and WI. Assignment of other states varies and the overall split is affected by how many states they don’t call but put in a “toss-up” category.

National Biden-Trump Trial Heat Averages

CNN: 52-41 Biden (+11)
538: 51.2-42.5 Biden (+8.6)
RCP: 49.8-41.9 (+7.9)

State Biden-Trump Trial Heat Averages

Too much data to list here. But places where you can get trial heat averages for states of interest are 538, RCP, CNN and CBS Battleground. Currently, in 538 Biden is ahead in every state Clinton carried in 2016 plus: AZ, FL, MI, NC, OH, PA and WI.

National Vote/Electoral Vote Split

This remains a real possibility but probably less of one than in 2016. Evan Scrimshaw remarks at Decision Desk HQ: “[Nate Silver’s] estimates, at the launch of the model, say that Wisconsin is the tipping point state, and that a 1.9% Democratic lead nationally would be enough to win the state, down from the 2.8% it would have taken in 2016. In other words, Trump’s vaunted Electoral College advantage is now small enough that a Hillary Clinton margin of popular vote victory would be enough to win the Electoral College this time – at least, more often than not. A 2% Democratic lead is a ways away from the current high single digit averages, and even if there has been some recent movement, it is a lot easier to close a lead from ~11 to ~9, and incrementally harder to move it every unit after.” Harry Enten notes: “If the live interviews polls [are] exactly correct, the difference between the tipping state in the electoral college (i.e. state containing the median electoral vote plus one) and the national vote would be under two points and perhaps closer to one point. It was nearly three points in 2016. A slightly under two-point gap is much more in-line with what has happened historically.”

Polling Error

There was significant polling error in key states in 2016, primarily because state polls that did not weight by education undersampled white noncollege voters. That has generally been corrected this year. Also,there is little evidence that large numbers of “shy Trump voters” are being missed by polls, as a number of recent pieces have noted. Finally, with the kind of lead Biden has, any plausible polling error would not affect the outcome. Of course, if the race gets very, very tight, anything is possible.

Turnout

Various indicators suggest that turnout should be very high this year. Michael McDonald, a leading expert on voter turnout and director of the US Elections Project says, “. “I expect voter turnout to be exceptional, perhaps the highest in over a century, since 1908.” It’s very difficult to gauge how much Trump’s obvious efforts to interfere with mail balloting, which is expected to skew Democratic, might affect turnout, as opposed to simply delaying the vote count. Mail balloting can also have higher spoiled ballot rates, which might also have some effect on ultimate Democratic totals.

Nonwhite Voters

Recent polling suggests that black, Hispanic and Asian support for Biden is firming up, where previously it had been running a little behind Clinton’s 2016 margins. Turnout of these groups is difficult to gauge in advance, but it would not have to be particularly robust to surpass that of the 2016 election. Also, it is worth noting that even if nonwhite turnout and support did not budge over 2016 levels,, Biden could still carry MI, PA and WI simply on the basis of underlying shifts in the population of eligible voters. Thus what is essential for Biden is less exceptional performance among nonwhite voters than reasonable performance among these voters, coupled with a Trump failure to expand his margin among white noncollege voters.

White Noncollege Voters

Biden is running 10-15 margin points ahead of Clinton among this demographic. Since Trump probably loses the election if he fails to expand his 2016 lead (+31) among these voters, Biden’s success in significantly cutting Trump’s margin, if maintained, is a death knell for Trump’s chances. As an illustration, since nonwhite college voters will be such a large group in the 2020 electorate, if Biden cuts Trump’s advantage by 10 points among this group (5 points more for Biden, 5 points less for Trump), that shifts the election 4.2 points in Biden’s direction nationally. The effect would be larger in midwest states like MI, PA and WI where the white noncollege population is significantly larger. In contrast, increasing black turnout by 5 points (assuming no other group’s turnout increases) would add .8 percentage points to Biden’s margin nationally, more or less in specific states depending on how large their black eligible voter share is.

White College Voters

Polls indicate Biden is running ahead of Clinton’s margin (+7) among white college voters by perhaps 5-10 margin points. Pew had Biden’s margin at +23 among this demographic but I suspect this is an outlier. As a rule, any given improvement in Biden’s margin among white college voters is worth about 30-45 percent less (depending on state) than an equivalent improvement in his margin among white noncollege voters.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. provides a preview of the Democratic Convention that starts today: “Democrats will gather for their convention this week with dreams of another New Deal dancing in their heads. “Gather” is a polite fiction, of course, since nearly everything will occur remotely in the purest media event ever. But the format will not stop party loyalists from savoring the possibility of a sweeping victory akin to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s triumph over President Herbert Hoover in 1932…Their hopes are not fanciful. President Trump’s catastrophic fumbling in the face of a pandemic and economic collapse invites comparison to Hoover’s haplessness, even if the 31st president was as morally upright as the 45th is not…Every second of the gathering will be an advertisement of Trump’s failure: the convention that could not meet because of the health crisis the incumbent could not manage…And a New Deal-style commitment to active, fact-based, problem-solving government really does match the mood of a country that wants a virus conquered, jobs and incomes on the rise again and fairness enshrined in the economic system…Much of the week’s speechmaking will focus on the calamity that is Trump’s presidency. But the historic task of this “unprecedented and unusual” convention is clear: To help Biden prove that a 21st-century New Deal alignment can be assembled from more diverse building blocks by embracing both racial and economic justice.”

Geoffrey Skelley notes at FiveThirtyEight: “Two early polls suggest that the public has had a reasonably positive reaction to Harris’s selection, too. A snap poll by YouGov after the pick found that 51 percent of voters approved of the choice while 36 percent disapproved. And 47 percent told ABC News/Ipsos that Harris was an excellent or good choice — including 83 percent of Democrats. Only 29 percent said the choice was not so good or poor…Bottom line: Biden’s decision to pick a woman as his VP has remained widely popular, and in Harris, he’s found a solid No. 2. As a former presidential contender, she’s already been through public scrutiny of her record and background, and, as a U.S. senator, she has high-level political experience. She’s also a relatively popular choice according to the polls, so her history-making nomination should please many Democrats.”

In “Democrats fight back in US Postal Service showdown with Trump,” Stephen Colinson reports at CNN Politics, “Democrats are launching an emergency effort to thwart what they warn is President Donald Trump’s attempt to squeeze the US Postal Service — one of the country’s most beloved institutions — to suppress the vote in November’s election…Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the House to return to Washington, likely next weekend, for an unheard of session during presidential convention season…Democrats have also demanded that new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testify on August 24 to answer charges that his controversial new policy changes are intended to deliberately slow voting by mail…Already, several states say they’re considering legal action against the Trump administration over concerns about the USPS and mail-in voting…It also comes with many Democrats worried that DeJoy’s policy changes, which have slowed delivery times, removed high-speed letter sorters from commission and included warnings that mail-in ballots will no longer be treated as a priority, will severely impact the election on November 3.”

Ronald Brownstein warns at The Atlantic: “President Donald Trump’s open admission yesterday that he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to improve his election prospects crystallizes a much larger dynamic: He’s waging an unprecedented campaign to weaponize virtually every component of the federal government to partisan advantage…Trump is systematically enlisting agencies, including the Postal Service, Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security, that traditionally have been considered at least somewhat insulated from political machinations to reward his allies and punish those he considers his enemies. He is razing barriers between his personal and political interests and the core operations of the federal government to an extent that no president has previously attempted, a wide range of public-administration experts have told me…“There’s always been temptation … but no president in modern times has taken action so explicitly and obviously—or transparently—to influence and actually direct these agencies to favor the party in power,” Paul Light, a public-service professor at New York University, told me. “None. None.”

SemDem warns at Daily Kos: “The 2020 election will be the first in almost 40 years where Republicans will be allowed to engage in a massive, nationwide coordinated effort for a so-called “ballot security” campaign. During those 40 years, Republicans were under a federal consent decree to curb their poll “monitoring” efforts because, back in 1981, Republicans sent armed, off-duty police officers to patrol the polls in minority neighborhoods for a gubernatorial race in New Jersey. The chief strategist for the Republican in that race was a man you might have heard of: convicted felon Roger Stone…The Democrats sued and won, and the Republican National Committee (RNC) promised to behave. The courts kept the Republicans more or less in line, although the Republicans always tried to work around it. Unfortunately, 2020 will be much different. A federal judge allowed the federal consent decree to expire in 2018. Free from any judicial oversight, the RNC will be able to conduct their dream voter intimidation campaign, and the Republicans are already planning on taking full advantage of this in November.”

Sem Dem also provides suggestions for meeting the challenge of GOP ‘ballot security, including: “Sign up to be a poll monitor – Contact your local Democratic party and volunteer. I’ve done this before here in Florida. The Democrats color-code the poll sites where there are issues of challenges and intimidation, on a scale of green, yellow, and red, like a traffic light. There were quite a few sites marked red, as I recall. Election lawyers, if available, are sent to the worst ones. Democrats are there to protect people’s fundamental right to vote. Republicans, not so much. Unfortunately, we were often short-staffed. When I volunteered in 2004, two monitors were allowed by each party for each site, but I was the only one who showed up on the Democratic side. Work the damn polls..Most poll workers are over 60 and thousands are not expected to work the polls this cycle due to the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is causing a massive shortage that will contribute to huge wait times…Are you over 15? Do you want to get paid? Sign up for a shift. I’ve decided that this is where I need to be this election. Please consider doing this.

Jennifer Agiesta reports at CNN Politics, “Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump among registered voters has significantly narrowed since June, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, even as the former vice president maintains an advantage over the President on several top issues and his choice of California Sen. Kamala Harris as a running mate earns largely positive reviews…And on the eve of the party conventions, a majority of voters (53%) are “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in this year’s election, a new high in CNN polling in presidential election cycles back to 2003…Across 15 battleground states, the survey finds Biden has the backing of 49% of registered voters, while Trump lands at 48%…”

From “A Steady Race Where Movement Is Driven by “Bystanders” by Amy Walter at The Cook Political Report: “In analyzing the last 18 months of polling from the Polling Consortium (which includes over 20,000 interviews), the AFL-CIO’s Mike Podhorzer has found that most of that movement can be attributed to a group he dubs “partisan bystanders.” These are people who either hate both parties or don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about either party. Some of them aren’t paying all that much attention to politics. Some of them are more checked in on politics. But, they are not deeply invested in their partisan allegiances. Podhorzer estimates that about 15 percent of the electorate falls into the ‘bystander’ category…According to Podhorzer’s analysis, this group cuts across demographic lines. They aren’t defined by demographics. They are defined by their lack of partisan attachment.”

If anyone has any doubts about which political party is leading the way to gender parity in America’s political institutions, Li Zhou shares some clarifying data at Vox, including: “As of earlier this week, 243 women had won House primaries this year, including 169 Democrats and 74 Republicans, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. That’s outpacing the 2018 results, when 196 women — 152 Democrats and 44 Republicans — won after the same states had voted. (These numbers don’t include the updated figures from the most recent August 11 primaries or runoffs.)…In 2020, both Democrats and Republicans are seeing a more diverse pool of women filing for these positions, a nearly 50 percent increase from the number of women of color who did in 2018. Democrats, however, still far surpass Republicans on this front, with 162 Democratic women of color filing to run, compared to 86 who did on the GOP side.”