Your sobering thought for the week comes from “Third Party Spoilers Are the Whole Deal, People” by Josh Marshall, editor of Talking Points Memo, who writes, “For all the arguing and analyzing and prognosticating about the 2020 presidential race I am surprised how little attention has been given to what may or I think likely will play the biggest role in the outcome: third party candidates…One of the truths about the 2016 election is that Donald Trump didn’t do any better in 2016 than Mitt Romney did in 2012 if you’re looking at the percentage of total votes cast. Indeed, he did significantly worse. Romney won 47.2% of the national vote while Trump won 46.1%. Electoral votes count, not popular votes. And that was Trump’s critical advantage. But it’s really the unusually high 5.7% of the vote going to three third party candidates — Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and Evan McMullin — that made it possible for Trump to win as a minority candidate.” Marshall addds that Trump “really, really needs the presence of spoiler candidates to pull the contest down into the mid-40s where it was in 2016. I’d never say never. But I think there’s a good argument that a significant third party/spoiler candidacy — or ideally more than one — are the necessary predicate of Trump’s reelection.”

In his post, “The End of the Filibuster May Loom,” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Hunter Brown writes, “In 2017, when Republicans had full control of both Congress and the presidency, the party lacked any legislative priorities requiring a filibuster-proof majority. Their two main initiatives, repeal of the Affordable Care Act and a tax cut package, both could be passed with 51 votes through the reconciliation process (the ACA repeal couldn’t win a majority in the Senate but the tax cuts passed). Thus, eliminating the legislative filibuster would not have advantaged them…Democrats, eager to pass, among other things, gun control measures, legislation expanding voting rights, and immigration reform, may practically need the elimination of the filibuster to accomplish these and other major goals. Thus, with an ambitious agenda and little chance at 60 seats, the next time Democrats enjoy full control, they very well may pull the trigger and put an end to the filibuster forever…Ironically, while it takes 60 votes to kill a filibuster, it would only take 51 to stop filibusters forever, as it could be changed as a part of the Senate rules, which only requires majority support, every two years.”

From Geoffrey Skelley’s “Who Will Make The Third Democratic Debate (And Who Could Miss It)” at FiveThirtyEight: Time is running out for Democratic candidates to make the third presidential primary debate in September. There are about two weeks left to qualify, and because of the debate’s higher thresholds, it’s likely that there won’t be 20 candidates — although the debate may still span two nights. Nine candidates have already qualified by our count, and a handful of others could also make it. (In previous debates, the Democratic National Committee capped the stage at 10 participants each night, but it hasn’t yet specified what it will do for the third debate.)..However, it is unlikely that the debate field will grow much beyond 12 or 13 candidates, as it’s much harder to qualify this time than it was for the previous two debates. Not only do candidates have to meet both the polling and donor requirements, but they also must meet higher thresholds. To qualify, candidates must attract at least 2 percent support in four qualifying national or early-state polls released between June 28 and Aug. 28, and they must also have 130,000 unique donors (including at least 400 individual donors in at least 20 states).”

Meanwhile, at CNN Politics, Chris Cillizza explains how “How failed presidential candidates could hold the key to a Democratic Senate majority in 2020.” Cillizza writes that “candidates like former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock are not, well, prospering in their presidential bids at the moment…It seems unlikely that any of that trio — with the possible exception of O’Rourke, although even that looks like a long shot now — is going to have their desired arc to the top of the presidential field. BUT, all three of them would be absolutely top-tier Senate recruits for Democrats trying to build momentum for a push to the majority next fall. (Senate Democrats need to pick up four seats to retake the majority if they win back the White House and five seats if Trump gets reelected.)…Senate Democrats are content to wait — for now. The deadline for a candidate to file to run for the US Senate in Texas isn’t until December — and in Colorado and Montana it’s not until next year. So there’s time.”

At New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait warns that “Russian Election Hacking in 2020 Could Easily Be Much Worse Than 2016,” and he reports, “The Senate report notes that while Russians did not breach voting machines in 2016, they scoped out the defenses in all 50 states. One expert told the committee that Russia was “conducting the reconnaissance to do the network mapping, to do the topology mapping, so that you could actually understand the network, establish a presence, so you could come back later and actually execute an operation…Even more alarming than the implied weaknesses in the voting system is the political context in which they exist. President Trump has frequently either minimized or outright denied Russia’s culpability in the 2016 email hacks (which Trump himself was exploiting at the time). The benign explanation is that the president is merely hypersensitive about the legitimacy of his election. But this fails to explain why Trump also refuses to accept intelligence about Russia’s plans to interfere in the next one…The vulnerabilities of the U.S. voting system certainly furnish Putin with an inviting target. The response, or nonresponse, to the Russian threat by both the administration and the Senate gives us two important pieces of information about a prospective Russian attack. The first is that a hack is more likely to succeed this time around. The insistent passivity of both the administration and the Senate has undermined responses at both the executive and legislative levels.

”Chait adds, “What seems clear is that Russia has incentive to act and that such an operation stands at least some chance of succeeding, given that it can go after voting machines almost anywhere and needs to succeed with only a handful of them in order to change the outcome. Every swing state has one or more large cities with a massive concentration of Democratic votes. Tampering with or disabling the vote count in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee, for instance, could throw the election to Trump outright or create the conditions for a disputed result. Either outcome would dovetail with Moscow’s goals of discrediting the democratic process as a sham and keeping Trump in office. This is the dynamic that has preoccupied most coverage of and commentary about the issue.”

Also at FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich reports that “The Movement To Skip The Electoral College May Take Its First Step Back.” As Rakich explains: “In March, the state of Colorado handed a historic win to opponents of the Electoral College by becoming the first purple state to sign on to the National Popular Vote interstate compact. Next November, however, it could make history yet again by becoming the first state to renege on the agreement…the compact only goes into effect once states worth 270 electoral votes (a majority in the Electoral College) have joined, thus ensuring that its signatories have enough electoral votes to guarantee that the national popular vote winner becomes president. Currently, 15 states plus the District of Columbia, together worth 196 electoral votes, have ratified the compact…Four of those states, including Colorado, joined the National Popular Vote movement just this year.” However, “opponents in Colorado were upset enough about its passage that they are now actively trying to repeal the law. Earlier this month, the organization Coloradans Vote said it submitted more than 227,198 signatures to the Colorado secretary of state in an effort to subject the law to voter referendum in the 2020 election. With that number of signatures, chances are very good it will make the ballot, making it the first time voters in any state will vote directly on the National Popular Vote compact.

“Rakich continues, “The only poll about the National Popular Vote law I could find in Colorado was a March survey from Republican pollster Magellan Strategies that found 47 percent of likely 2020 voters would vote to affirm the National Popular Vote law and 47 percent would vote to repeal it. However, even if those numbers are too rosy for the repeal effort, I would still expect support for the law to decrease as opponents prosecute the case against the National Popular Vote, so even a lead of, say, 10 points (akin to the national breakdown) would not be secure. This could be one of the most closely watched ballot measures of the 2020 cycle…Nationally, 53 percent of Americans said the popular vote should determine the president, and 43 percent said the Electoral College should, according to an April/May NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Unsurprisingly, given that almost every state government to pass the National Popular Vote compact was completely controlled by Democrats, there is a wide partisan gap on the question: 79 percent of Democrats preferred the popular vote, while 74 percent of Republicans favored the Electoral College.”

After 2016 Democrats constantly remind themselves that presidential contests are about the Electoral College, not the popular vote. That’s not necessarily good news for Trump, as I noted at New York earlier this week:

There has been a lot of discussion in political circles about Donald Trump’s job-approval ratings, what they portend, and Trump’s Electoral College strategy for 2020, which doesn’t necessarily require a popular-vote plurality. But in the end, of course, the conjunction of the Electoral College with Trump’s state-by-state popularity is where the deal will go down.

The online polling firm Civiqs has published a new set of state-by-state job-approval ratings for Trump as of August 11, and it shows how the president’s overall standing (a 43 percent approval rating nationally, which happens to match the current RealClearPolitics polling average) might translate into electorate votes. It’s not a pretty picture for the president, to put it mildly.

Civiqs shows the president’s net approval ratios being underwater (i.e., negative) in 10 states he carried in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. If that were to represent how the 2020 elections turn out, Trump would have a booming 119 electoral votes. And it’s not as though he’s on a knife’s edge between victory and defeat in all these Trump 2016 states where he’s doing poorly: He’s underwater by 12 points in Pennsylvania, 11 in Michigan, and nine in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. And there’s virtually no indication that states that narrowly went for Clinton in 2016 are trending in Trump’s direction: His approval ratios are minus 18 in Colorado, minus 15 in Minnesota, minus 12 in Nevada, and minus 27 in New Hampshire. These are, by the way, polls of registered voters, not just “adults,” so they should be a relatively sound reflection of the views of the electorate.

If you credit these polls at all, Trump’s reelection will require (1) a big late improvement in his approval ratings, which is possible but unlikely based on long-standing patterns during his polarizing presidency; (2) a campaign that succeeds in making the election turn on theoretical fears about his opponent rather than actual fears about a second Trump term, which won’t be easy either; (3) a big Republican turnout advantage, which is less likely among the larger presidential electorate than it was in 2018; or (4) some diabolical ability to thread the needle despite every contrary indicator, which superstitious Democrats fear for obvious reasons.

If the fourth scenario — a win against all the evidence — is Trump’s best hope for reelection, he’s the one who needs to experience some fear and trembling heading toward 2020. If anything, there’s evidence that he is likely to undershoot rather than overshoot his approval ratings as the sitting president of a country whose direction lacks any kind of public confidence.

You’ve read the arguments for Medicare for All, and you appreciate the inclusiveness of the proposal, note the success of it in many other countries and believe the economies of scale it would provide make it the most cost-effective system for the U.S. But you are also familiar with the reality that polls indicate millions of voters are happy with their private health insurance and a public option system is a much easier sell.

But if you are wondering if there is a range of policies in between these two choices, read “Here’s how we can have ‘Medicare for all‘ with a private option” by Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer, professor emeritus at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and co-author of “Understanding Health Policy.” Bodenheimer shares some recent data points:

According to CNN 2018 exit polls 41 percent of voters named health care as their most important issue. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 56 percent of the public supports “Medicare for all,” but 74 percent wants to keep their existing insurance. Seventy-seven percent, including 69 percent of Republicans, favor allowing everyone to choose Medicare as their health insurance.

When asked which health-care legislation Congress should focus on, 52 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leading independents chose improving the Affordable Care Act versus 39 percent picking Medicare for all.

Of course most such polling data is profoundly influenced by the phrasing of questions. But Bodenheimer’s data does suggest that many Americans are ambivalent about picking one with wholesale rejection of the other option. As a political junkie, I favor the public option, politics being the art of the possible and all that. But do we really have to pick one and ditch the other? Like Peggy Lee asked, ‘Is that all there is?’

Bodenheimer says no, “These seemingly opposing stances can be reconciled with a united front for health care. A united front means that progressives and moderates put aside their differences for now.” I doubt it’s as simplistic as ‘progressive vs. moderates’ — lots of progressives favor the public option, and I’m sure there are some moderates who have eperienced economic ruin because of crappy private health insurance, and are way ready for Medicare for All.

Bodenheimer cites three principles of a middle way forward:

1) Providing immediate relief from the burden of health-care costs

2) Over time, offering an improved Medicare to all Americans

3) Allowing people to keep their private health insurance – the “private option.” Most urgent is health-care cost relief.

Bodenheimer cites compelling data illustrating the unacceptable costs of halth care policy paralysis – skyrocketing premiums, the heavy burden of deductables and endless out-of-pocket expenses. Then there is sdrug company price gouging, coverage shortfalls in Medicare etc. He acknowledges that “any Medicare for all plan must improve Medicare to reduce the bills that Medicare patients have to pay themselves.” Further,

If the Medicare age went down from 65 to 55, we would receive a Medicare card shortly after our 55th birthday. Or Medicare might automatically cover children under 18. Over time, everyone would receive a Medicare card in the mail. We would have the private option. But we would be insured from the moment we are born until the day we die.

The details of financing must be debated. A couple of things might be important. First, to keep taxes down, employers whose employees choose Medicare should pay into Medicare the same amount that they were paying for those employees’ private insurance. Otherwise, employers would save a lot of money at taxpayers’ expense

Second, the social security contributions employers and employees pay to support Medicare would rise, especially for higher-income people. When we are young and healthy, we pay so that when we become old and sick, we benefit.

It’s not hard to envision widespread support for all of those approaches. You could also chuck into the mix catastropic coverage for all, with a public option approach for preventative and maintenance care. It’s not an either/or choice, unless that’s all that makes it to floor votes in the House and Senate.

As Bodenheimer concludes, “If Democrats win the White House and Congress, a transition to Medicare for all with the private option becomes possible. In the meantime, Democrats need to come together in a united front that can defeat Donald Trump and relieve people’s suffering from health-care costs.”

Medicare for All advocates Sens. Sanders and Warren surely know this, as does former V.P. Biden and the improve Obamacare and public option supporters. But they also know they have to strongly argue one or the other to push the debate. So far it’s working well, with the side benefit of revealing how utterly bankrupt the Republicans are in terms of both morals and ideas for health care reform.

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

Leaving aside some of the nutty resolutions like the Open Borders one, how should we assess the DSA convention as a whole? Harold Meyerson offers some thoughts, especially focusing on the Bernie or Bust resolution, which has fairly immediate implications. He also does a good job of discussing some of the disciplined caucuses like the Trotskyist-inflected Bread and Roses and the quasi-anarchist Build.

He concludes:

The following post, by consumer lawyer and former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and Leo Jennings III, a leading Northeast Ohio political consultant and media specialist, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives:

Two years ago, we compared the opioid epidemic to the mortgage crisis that nearly cratered the global economy, noting how both were caused by corporate greed. Recent reporting in the Washington Post and other media outlets reveals an important difference between the two: unlike the regulators who were blithely ignorant of what was happening in the financial markets, officials at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) knew exactly how many opioid pills were being distributed in the U.S. and where they were going. They simply chose to do nothing about it even though DEA investigators and line attorneys were pushing to hold at least one major drug manufacturer responsible for fueling the deadly epidemic.

The Obama administration’s decision to let drug company CEOs and managers off the hook runs parallel with its refusal to prosecute the big bank and brokerage officials who ignited the mortgage crisis. This eagerness to place Wall Street above Main Street is the key to solving the mystery that has confounded pundits, pollsters, and prognosticators since November 8, 2016: why did so many blue-collar and working class voters abandon the Democratic Party and vote for Trump?

Read more…

Democratic candidates have been pretty passive about promoting their party, which may help explain  why the party underperforms in polls. The thinking of too many Democratic candidates at all levels seems to be something like “The party doesn’t do well in polls, so I won’t talk about it much. I’ll just emphasize my individual accomplishments and bash Republicans.” But it’s not enough to assume, for example, that everyone knows Democrats have spearheaded the charge for needed economic reforms, such as a minimum wage increase. Dems should say, again and again that they, almost alone, have passed minimum wage bills across America over strident GOP opposition. At U.S. News, Susan Milligan reports that “A recent economic journal paper – considered the most comprehensive modern look at the impact of state and local minimum wage increases – analyzes 138 minimum wage increases over the past five years. The result? Pretty much what the proponents intended, says Arindrajit Dube, a professor at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst and one of the study’s authors.“..What we found was these policies have the intended consequence of raises wages at the bottom” of the income scale and “have some degree of spillover beyond the minimum wage,” since other employers tend to hike their own wages when the minimum wage increases…“ Brag more, Dems, about your party’s leadership, not just your own. That’s one way we can improve the party’s image.

Mueller is done, but Democratic presidential candidates, and perhaps all Democratic candidates and political reporters should read “Here Are the Questions a Shrink Would Have Asked Mueller: Three psychiatrists analyzed the Mueller Report to assess the president’s soundness of mind. Their conclusion: This is a national emergency” by Bandy X. Lee, Edwin B. Fisher, And Leonard L. Glass at The Daily Beast. The shrinks are the authors of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” and their questions open up some critical concerns for further consideration. The last question, in particular, hits the core concern squarely: “5) As a prosecutor, do you see a nexus between the president’s hate speech and danger to others as targets of his rhetoric?” Read the questions and answers for some useful insights regarding how to discuss Trump’s mental health.

Next time somebody gives you the old “Congress is bought off by the NRA” false equivalence routine, just show them this list of 178 co-sponsors of H.R. 5087, the 2018 bill to ban assault-style weapons, 177 of whom are Democrats.

Also check out “Here’s where every 2020 candidate stands on guns: The candidates agree on universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. There’s less agreement on other proposals” by German Lopez at Vox. Lopez notes, “President Donald Trump, for his part, doesn’t seem interested in much. He has supported a federal red flag law, which would allow police to take away someone’s guns if there’s some proof of a risk of violence (a “red flag”). But on other measures, from universal background checks to an assault weapons ban, Trump and Republican lawmakers have resisted, instead talking up questionable connections between violence, mental illness, and violent media…Democratic candidates, however, have taken more comprehensive stances on guns. For the most part, they’re sticking to common Democratic themes like universal background checks, an assault weapons ban (which is typically paired with a ban on high-capacity magazines), and federally funded research into gun violence. But the campaigns’ plans do include some new ideas here and there — including red flag laws, which campaigns ranging from Cory Booker’s to John Delaney’s back, and requiring a license to buy and own a gun, which Booker in particular brought to the presidential stage but others, like Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, also support.” Lopez provides more details on the positions of each candidate.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans see felon disenfranchisement as the cruel, pointless and counterproductive punishment that it is. It serves no purpose other than to prevent millions of Americans from more fully participating in society. That’s why many states have loosened or gotten rid of their felon disenfranchisement laws in recent years. Vermont and Maine have gone even further, allowing people in prison to vote — as is the case in most European countries. Last time we checked, all are still functioning democracies. — A choice paragraph from the NYT editorial, “Why Are Florida Republicans So Afraid of People Voting?“

In other voter suppression news, you may have missed “New Hampshire’s Republican governor just vetoed a bipartisan redistricting commission” by Danielle McLean at Think Progress. Among her observations: “New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a bipartisan bill Friday that would have allowed an independent redistricting committee to redraw the state’s legislative and congressional district maps in 2021 and beyond…The veto is just the latest sign that Republican Party leaders want to control the map-making process and preserve a system that allowed them to racially and politically gerrymander at historic proportions in several GOP-controlled states the last time district lines were redrawn in 2011…While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled this year that federal courts do not have the power to decide partisan gerrymandering cases, a growing number of states have established independent commissions to draw district maps in a non-partisan manner. New Hampshire would have joined eight other states to have established such a commission…Under the current system, New Hampshire’s legislature, which is currently controlled by Democrats, is responsible for drawing up the state’s political lines. The governor has the ability to veto or approve any maps.”

McLean continues, “Heading into 2021, Republicans appear poised to once again gerrymander and leave the process up to the lawmakers themselves…Next week, the shadowy group that crafts far-right legislation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas, will host a pair of closed-door workshops teaching state lawmakers the basics of ‘redistricting.’ Government watchdog groups warn those panels will in reality teach them how to gerrymander and pair them with the mapmakers that can help them draw partisan lines…Last year, ALEC created a model resolution that reaffirmed “the right of state legislatures to determine electoral districts” instead of the courts…And former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — who helped usher Wisconsin’s extreme gerrymandered districts in 2011 and is now leading the GOP’s redistricting efforts in 2021 as the finance chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust — has also claimed that rural residents should be counted more than urban residents when the maps are drawn.”

Nate Silver shares a revealing chart in his post, “Forget ‘Lanes.’ The Democratic Primary Is A Whole Freaking Transit System” at FiveThirtyEight:

A lot of political observers obsessively watch the president’s approval rating. One offered a different and alarming take, which I addressed at New York:

If there has been one bit of conventional wisdom about 2020 that has most comforted left-of-center analysts like me, it’s that Donald Trump’s job approval ratings seem exceptionally stagnant and too low to support the evident optimism of his conservative media boosters….

But now comes the formidable number cruncher Nate Cohn with a challenge to this assumption from a couple of different directions. It will be received by many Times readers as something of a terroristic threat, but it’s important to face it directly.

First up, he calls attention to something most of us have ignored since Trump took office: the president’s personal favorability ratings. Yes, we all know that Trump won despite astonishingly low favorability numbers (an Election Eve ratio of 36/61 according to Gallup). But Cohn notes these numbers now look better for POTUS:

“Millions of Americans who did not like the president in 2016 now say they do. Over all, his personal favorability rating has increased by about 10 percentage points among registered voters since Election Day 2016, to 44 percent from 34 percent, according to Upshot estimates.”

That is still well under a majority, though not far below the 45.9 percent of the popular vote he won in 2016. But more important, Cohn suggests, a lot of these voters who have a newly favorable view of Trump may not have voted for him last time around:

“Republicans with an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Trump were more than twice as likely to stay home on Election Day as those with a favorable view, according to New York Times/Siena surveys of North Carolina, Florida and Pennsylvania in 2016.

“It seems likely that a substantial number of these voters now have a favorable view of the president: Over all, 28 percent of Republican-leaning voters with an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump in 2016 had a favorable view of him by 2018, according to data from the Voter Study Group.”

Cohn acknowledges that the odds are pretty good Democrats will nominate a more popular opponent for Trump than Hillary Clinton was in 2016, though nobody knows how she or he will compare to the president in personal favorability. I think it’s pretty important to remember that Trump won among the 18 percent of the electorate who disliked both candidates by a robust 47/30 margin, which could reflect either relative unfavorability or the natural tendency of unhappy voters to support change (which would be my guess). The latter explanation would be bad news for Trump as the incumbent.

In any event, Cohn concedes that presidential job approval ratings are more relevant to a president’s reelection prospects, and makes two separate arguments about them. The first is that Trump’s job approval ratings have been rising since the end of the government shutdown this year. While this is true, they were clearly depressed by the government shutdown, just as they were when Republicans were trying to kill Obamacare. Without question, when Trump is supervising one of his party’s least-popular policies or tactics, he will suffer. But if his approval ratings have rebounded to their natural state, that’s not a sign they will continue to rise to that of presidents who are cruising toward reelection. According to Gallup last month, Trump’s approval rating was at 42 percent, just two points above the average approval rating for his presidency. The average approval rating for modern elected presidents in their tenth quarter is 54 percent. It’s not at all clear Trump is showing much progress in “normalizing” his popularity.

Cohn’s second argument is one that only data dogs like himself are much in a position to contest:

“In some periods over the last few months, his job approval rating increased to among the highest levels of his term, according to live-interview telephone polls, long considered the gold standard of public opinion research …. Curiously, online polls have not shown this same increase; in fact, they’ve shown no increase at all.”

Trump’s relative strength in online polls prior to the 2016 election was the basis for the “shy Trump voter” hypothesis holding that voters embarrassed to tell potentially disapproving interviewers they were MAGA people gave Trump some of the hidden strength he showed at the polls. So as Cohn suggests, the new inverse live/online gap undermines that theory. What else it might mean is beyond my ken.

In any event, even if you buy Cohn’s argument that Trump is near the ceiling of his narrow band of job approval numbers, there’s no evidence he’s about to bust right through it. Some observers seem to think that a steadily improving economy will save him, but aside from the possibility of bad economic events occurring, it’s important to remember that solid majorities of Americans continue to express unhappiness with the general direction of the country. There’s really no reason to assume that incumbency is going to help Trump more than it hurts him. As Kyle Kondik noted recently, there’s increasing evidence from trial heats testing Trump against Democrats that his performance will undershoot, not exceed, his approval ratings.

From a longer perspective, my guess is that the narrow band of favorability and job approval numbers for Trump is just another testament to the partisan polarization that made it possible for him to win in 2016, despite his unpopularity. He cannot fall too far, even when he’s behaving in his signature beastly manner, because Republicans will sustain him. But he’s the wrong figure to expand his party’s base, having already pretty much maxed out with those residual white working-class conservative independents and Democrats he so famously won over in 2016. Sure, we all understand there are circumstances under which he can transcend his many handicaps by demonizing his opponent, revving up the MAGA people, and taking advantage of an Electoral College system which does not weigh popular votes equally. But having thought through Cohn’s argument, I’m less terrified than when I read his tweets and fear he has stumbled into some pro-Trump breakthrough.

It probably won’t break your heart that the “Owner of SoulCycle and the Miami Dolphins faces outrage and calls for boycott over Trump fundraiser,” as Brian Ries reports at CNN Politics. What it ought to do is gladden the hearts of, not just Democrats, but every sentient being who cares about American democracy and human decency.

As Ries, writes,

Real estate developer Stephen Ross — who is chairman and majority owner of the Related Companies, which oversees Equinox Fitness — will host a luncheon on Friday, according to the invitation, at which attendees will pay up to $100,000 for a picture with the President and $250,000 to listen in on a roundtable discussion.

The Washington Post first reported the fundraiser, sparking the outrage. The news didn’t sit well with some people who frequent the gym, who assailed it as supporting a President whose inflammatory rhetoric and policies targeting people of color are out of sync with the gym’s progressive and oftentimes famous clientele.

Related Companies Chairman Stephen Ross tried to minimize his suport of Trump, parroting a lot of yada yada about his embrace of diversity etc. But hosting and organizing a Trump fund-raiser is a lot worse than writing Trump’s campaign a check, which alone would merit a progressive boycott.

For too long, Democrats have forfeited one of their most potentially powerful tools for social and economic progress — economic withdrawall. However, we live in a political climate that allows the Republican President of the U.S. and members of his administration to boycott congressional subpoenas and refuse all requests for information. The Republican Senate Majority Leader also feels free to unilaterally stonewall all progressive legislation and prevent meetings and hearings with a Democratic president’s nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court. Isn’t it time for Democratic rank and file to leverage their dormant power as consumers to achieve needed reforms?

Yes, boycotts are problematic. For one thing, it’s important to make sure that affected labor unions are OK with it. And it’s tough to get a critical mass of awakened consumers mobilized enough to have an effect.

But, you know what is even more problematic? Funding politicians who actively promote racism,  bigotry and white supremacy. Also, Democrats bankrolling a presidential campaign that would screw millions of Americans who have serious health problems, and cheat hard-working Americans of all races out of a living wage. Progressives Financing a reckless president to deny the climate crisis and grease the skids for polluting industries is also a big problem.

The way it is now, the GOP’s sugar daddies get a free ride. They support Trump’s worst initiatives with their hefty contributions, while paying no price whatsoever in term of public opinion. The day that this free ride comes to a halt is the day that American democracy will be renewed and energized. It’s a challenge that must be met by progressive consumers, as well as voters.

Steve Rosenthal addresses a question of critical consequence at The American Prospect: “Will Trump Steal a March on Democrats in the Midwest? It’s time for Democrats to begin their ground game in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.” As Rosenthal writes, “If you want to talk about “winnability,” let’s note how all three of these states are winnable for Democrats next year. Until 2016, Democratic presidential candidates had carried each of these states in every election since 1992. Have the demographics or voting patterns in each of them changed in such a way that makes them unwinnable for Democrats? Not at all. Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by just 10,704 votes, out of 4.8 million cast; she lost Pennsylvania by 44,292, out of 6.1 million cast; and she lost Wisconsin by just 22,748, out of 3.0 million cast. For those of you doing the math, Clinton lost these three states by approximately 78,000 votes, out of more than 13.9 million cast, and her campaign largely neglected all three states.

“Rosenthal continues, “In 2018, however, statewide Democratic candidates stormed to victory in all three states—gubernatorial nominees won by a collective margin of more than 1.2 million votes. By no means, then, are the “big three” moving away from the party, despite their 2016 results. If Democrats do their work right, and begin now, they can lock these states down, denying Trump a path to victory.” However, Rosenthal adds, “But while Democrats are having this debate over vague ideas about electability, Trump’s campaign, which has already raised $124 million, is actively engaging voters in all three of these states. Trump has visited each of them this year and his campaign has been spending huge amounts of money on digital ads there. And yet the latest Morning Consult tracking poll showed Trump’s approval rating under water in Michigan (40 percent), Pennsylvania (44 percent), and Wisconsin (42 percent)…The Democrats’ path to victory in all three states is clear. First and foremost, Democrats must turn out large numbers of voters of color; their drop-off in 2016 doomed Clinton in Michigan (where minority turnout fell by 12.4 percentage points from 2012) and Wisconsin (down by 12.3 percentage points). Next, they must keep in their column the suburban, exurban, and white working-class voters who went from voting for Obama in 2012, to Trump in 2016, then back to the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in 2018.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. makes it clear in his syndicated WaPo column, “On guns and white nationalism, one side is right and one is wrong“: As Dionne writes, “In pursuit of a mythical middle ground, the faint-hearted will counsel against calling out the moral culpability of those who divide, deflect and evade. Meanwhile, the rationalizers of violence will continue to claim that only troubled individuals, not our genuinely insane gun policies, are responsible for waves of domestic terrorism that bring shame on our country before the world…But sane gun laws are the middle ground, and most gun ownerssupport them. Opposing the political exploitation of racism is a moral imperative. And refusing to acknowledge that only one side in this debate seeks intentionally to paralyze us is the path of cowardice.”

From “The Left Needs a Language Potent Enough to Counter Trump: The president’s rhetoric is dangerously populist in nature, and the left doesn’t know how to fight it.”  by George Packer at The Atlantic: “…The language of the contemporary left is anti-populist. Its vocabulary, much of it taken from academia, is the opposite of accessible—it has to be decoded and learned. Terms such as centered, marginalized, intersectional, non-binary, and Eurocentric gender discipline separate outsiders from insiders—that’s part of their intent, as is the insistence on declaring one’s personal pronouns and showing an ability to use them accordingly. Even common words like ally and privilege acquire a resonance that takes them out of the realm of ordinary usage, because the point of this discourse is to create a sense of special virtue. The language of the left also demands continuous refreshing and can change literally overnight: A writer is told that the phrase born male is no longer okay to use and has to be replaced with assigned male at birth. Many of these changes happen by ambush—suddenly and irrevocably, with no visible trail of discussion and decision, and with quick condemnation of holdouts—which gives them a powerful mystique…The language of the left creates a hierarchy of those who get it and those who don’t. Mastering the vocabulary is a way of signaling entry into a select world of the knowing and the just. The system is closed—there’s an internal logic that can be accepted or rejected but isn’t open to argument or question. In this sense, though much of the language of the left has academic origins, its use in the public square is almost religious. The abandonment of language that brings people in rather than shutting them out is one of the left’s many structural disadvantages in American politics today. In fact, it divides the Democratic coalition in a profound way.”

For most of U.S. history, from Thomas Paine to Eugene Debs to Martin Luther King Jr., the left had a populist language of its own,” Packer continues. “It used a simple vocabulary and spoke in universal moral terms that appealed to the basic goodness in people rather than inventing a sophisticated hierarchical code to label their ills. It created insiders and outsiders, but they weren’t divided between the knowing and the unilluminated, the woken and the sleeping. The populism of the left posed the same opposition as Trump’s—the people against the elites—but with very different sets of characters.

Packer concludes, “You still hear notes of this language in the speeches of Senator Elizabeth Warren, with her talk of a “rigged” economy. Though she’s spent most of her adult life in universities, she speaks with a natural plainness that reminds you of her prairie origins. But she’s running for the presidential nomination of a party whose new activists think in and are constrained by a hermetic language of the chosen few. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another candidate, has embraced it with the zeal of a convert, and at times Warren seems to come under its influence. Trump, with his sadistic instinct for the weaknesses of others, has learned how to hurt Democrats by using divisive rhetoric and waiting for them to walk into a trap of self-enclosure they can’t see. He won’t hesitate to use an event as terrible as El Paso to keep this logic working in his favor. A force as dark and powerful as Trump’s populism can be defeated only by an equal and opposite force.

Emily Stewart explains “Why Joaquin Castro’s tweet of a list of Trump donors is so controversial,” and writes, “Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) is under fire for tweeting out a list of donors to President Donald Trump. Why the maneuver is so controversial isn’t entirely clear: It’s all information that was already public…The Texas Democrat and brother to 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro on Monday tweeted a list of 44 San Antonio donors who contributed the maximum amount under federal law to Trump in 2019. “Sad to see so many San Antonians as of 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” he wrote, calling out a couple of the city’s better-known donors by their Twitter handles. “Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’..The point of all of this is pretty straightforward: It’s a way to keep campaigns accountable and make sure they’re following the laws, and it also increases transparency for voters to see who is backing campaigns.” In my view, we need more “outing” of big contributors to political campaigns, not less. Most of the information in question is publicly available. But candidates and their staffs should not do it. It’s just asking to be taken off message. The major media has been unduly timid about their responsibility to amplify large donor contributions. But political activists should not hesitate to take it on.

We’ve had our hopes for corrective action dashed before, many times. With that in mind, FiveThirtyEight’s Weekly Political Chat inquires “Will The El Paso Shooting Change How Politicians Talk About White Extremism?” Among the observations, Nate SIlver notes, “There is a cumulative effect even if there’s also a short-term boom-and-bust cycle after significant events. During the midterm elections, for instance, more Democrats than Republicans rated gun policy as a high-priority issue, which is a departure from the old-school conventional wisdom that guns were supposed to rally Republican voters.” Perry Bacon, Jr. adds that “But even though some Republicans — maybe even Trump, I’m not sure — will probably dial down the white nationalist rhetoric, I think the only movement on gun control will happen on the left. Or Democrats will become even more unabashedly party of gun control…generally most Democrats support: 1) expanding background checks, 2) banning assault weapons, and 3) ban high-capacity magazines.”

Daniel Rakich addresses “How Views On Gun Control Have Changed In The Last 30 Years” at FiveThirtyEight and explains: “In a December 2018 poll, Gallup found that 66 percent of Americans said it was “extremely” or “very” important that Congress and the White House deal with the issue of gun policy in the following year, which was a significant increase from the 54 percent of Americans who said gun policy was extremely or very important to them in January 2014. However, we still have a while before guns are the most important issue to Americans. In July 2019, only 1 percent said guns were the number-one problem facing the country — barely changed from the 0 percent who said so for most of the 2000s. And while this number does spike in response to mass shootings — it got as high as 7 percent in the six months after Sandy Hook and hit 13 percent after Parkland — so far, it has never stayed at those elevated levels for very long. So while public opinion has swung more toward the side of gun control in recent years, it may not yet be dramatic or consistent enough to force politicians to act.”

One of the big questions about Trump’s 2016 win was the impact of minor-party candidates. I took a long look at the past and the present situation, and wrote it up at New York:

Like those who voted for an earlier Green candidate, Ralph Nader, in 2000, 2016 Jill Stein voters, and Clinton-hating progressives who tossed a vote to Libertarian Gary Johnson, will always get far more blame for the election outcome than they objectively deserve. The obvious reason is that just about any change in voting patterns can be given outsize importance in crazy-close elections (this one was famously decided by 77,000 votes in three states). As with most lurid theories of betrayal, there’s a kernel of truth to this one, as the Guardian noted on The Day After:

“In Michigan, where the election was so close that the Associated Press still hasn’t called the result [AP did call it later, of course], Trump is ahead by about 12,000 votes. That’s significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in Michigan. It’s a similar story elsewhere: third-party candidates won more total votes than the Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states, Trump would not have won the presidency.”

Fury at protest voters has spilled over into the 2020 Democratic race, exacerbated by data showing that 4.5 percent of Bernie Sanders primary voters pulled the lever for Stein and another 3.2 percent went for Johnson in November 2016 (perhaps more to the point, 12 percent of them voted for Trump, but that’s a different story). Some Democrats still fear defections by “Bernie or Bust” voters in this cycle. So as the general election draws nigh, you can expect renewed attention to what’s going on in the minor parties and how they might (or might not) take advantage of major-party divisions.

Having said all that, in 2016 Stein and Johnson both got a lot of votes. Johnson (and running mate William Weld), who was on the ballot in all 50 states, won nearly 4.5 million votes; only once (four years earlier, with Johnson as the nominee) had the Libertarians topped 1 million votes. Stein and Ajamu Baraka, on the ballot in 45 states, didn’t match Nader’s enormous 2000 vote, but with around one percent of the total, they beat the previous three Green presidential tickets combined. So even if Democrats are wrong about Stein and/or Johnson giving us President Trump, their parties bear watching in 2020, where a different configuration of forces may make them significant.

Interestingly enough, both Libertarians and Greens seem to be having a bit of a purist moment as they prepare for 2020. Libertarians have probably benefited electorally from their recent habit of running prominent ex-Republican elected officials for president (former New Mexico governor Johnson the last two times, former congressman Bob Barr in 2008, and former and future congressman Ron Paul in 1988). But a lot of Libertarian activists aren’t happy about the ideological compromises that has involved. Here’s Reason’s Matt Welch discussing an early presidential-candidate forum he moderated last month:

“’We aren’t Republican light; we’re not Democrat light,’ said [Kim] Ruff, an Arizona-based manufacturer who would go on to win that evening’s informal post-debate straw poll, eight to five ([Arvin] Vohra) to four ([Adam] Kokesh) to one apiece for [Max] Abramson and [Dan] Behrman. ‘We’re advocates of full, unencumbered liberty. And that means taking positions that make the public squeamish. I would never do black tar heroin, but I’m not going to stop you from doing it, because what you do with your life is your business.’”

What the candidates were alluding to is the buzz about Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, who recently left the Republican Party (right before a political lynch mob might have ejected him for endorsing a Trump impeachment). For the moment, he is running for reelection, but that could change, as National Interest reported last month:

“In the few days since leaving the GOP, he’s talked about ‘room for a third party’ and refused to rule out running for president. But sources close to Amash and the Libertarian Party deny that a presidential run is in the works — although the door is still open. For the time being, the Libertarian-leaning representative is looking to build a fiscally conservative, pro-restraint coalition across party lines.”

The 2020 Libertarian Party convention is scheduled for May of next year (with state gatherings to select delegates held earlier), so Amash doesn’t have a lot of time to decide on a path. Gary Johnson has ruled out another run. But the announced candidates seem to be stressing their radicalism to distinguish themselves from potential ex-GOP interlopers like Amash. Candidate Dan Behrman’s motto is “Taxation Is Theft.” Adam Kokesh’s platform features this plank:

“When elected, I will swear in, walk to the White House, and sign one executive order. This executive order will lay out the process for dissolving the federal government in a peaceful, orderly manner. With it, I will be resigning as President to become ‘Custodian of the Federal Government.’”

I don’t believe Amash would endorse that idea.

The Greens aren’t worried about Democrats or ex-Democrats appropriating their ballot line but are concerned about appropriation of their ideas, as Emily Atkin explained earlier this year:

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the wunderkind congresswoman from New York, has been getting most of the credit for the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to fight global warming that has become increasingly popular among Democrats. But Howie Hawkins wants to set the record straight. ‘A lot of people think AOC thought it up,’ he told me by phone Wednesday. ‘But I’m the original Green New Dealer.’”

Hawkins started talking about a Green New Deal as a New York gubernatorial candidate for the Greens in 2010. He’s now running for president, and he stresses that his and his party’s version is more serious than the Democrats’, mostly because it involves a socialist transformation of the U.S. economy:

“The two plans have the same goal of 100 percent renewable energy by the year 2030, and they both call for universal health care and a federal job guarantee. But the Green Party’s plan calls for single-payer Medicare for All, tuition-free college, and ‘democratically run, publicly owned utilities.’ To pay for it, the Greens call for major progressive tax and financial reform, including a 90 percent tax on bonuses for bailed-out bankers, and a reduction in military spending by 50 percent.”

Hawkins is running for president, and Jill Stein is not; another interesting Green presidential aspirant, Dario Hunter, describes himself as a “black, gay, Jewish son of a Persian immigrant.” He’s a rabbi and a local school-board member and also supports a “REAL Green New Deal,” among other intensely progressive priorities.

The 2020 context for these minor parties set by the major parties is, of course, very important to their relative appeal. Republicans are far more united behind Donald Trump than they were in 2016. You’d have to figure a self-consciously progressive Democratic nominee (Sanders or Warren, most notably) would take some of the oxygen away from the Greens. What is less clear is whether a nominee like Biden would drive voters to a Hawkins or a Hunter, or whether the vast ideological and psychological gulf between Trump and the entire Democratic field will induce unprecedented solidarity, even if the primaries turn out to be more fractious than they were in 2016.

The one thing we know for sure is that no one is going to take any particular outcome for granted after what happened in the Trump-Clinton race. The number of protest votes could drop significantly, even as turnout goes up. Dedicated supporters of the Libertarian and Green platforms will stay with their party, though even among true believers, those who are horrified by one of the major-party candidates more than the other may be tempted to “make their votes count” in 2020.