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

David Leonhardt’s column today, rightly in my view, approvingly notes a recent op-ed by Theda Skocpol in USA Today:

Theda Skocpol — the Harvard social scientist who has studied the Tea Party and the anti-Trump resistance, among many other things — has a new op-ed in USA Today that argues that the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are ignoring the lesson of 2018. By doing so, Skocpol says, they are increasing the chances that Trump will win re-election. As Democrats prepare for their second round of debates this week, I think Skocpol’s message is worth hearing.

Kendall Karson reports at abcnews.com: “Following more than six hours of questioning of former special counsel Robert Mueller before two different congressional committees, Democrats and Republicans remain largely splintered on impeaching President Donald Trump, even as nearly half of Americans show little movement on their support or opposition to the move, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll…The poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, asked Americans about the former FBI director’s testimony Wednesday in consecutive hearings before the House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees…Among those who read, saw or heard about Mueller’s testimony, 47% said it made no difference in their views about impeaching the president…Among Democrats, 48% said they are more likely to support the process of impeachment that could ultimately lead to Trump’s removal from office…Whereas for Republicans, only 3% said they were more likely to support impeachment, 42% said they were less likely… Independents were split, with 26% saying they are more likely to support impeachment and 29% saying less likely.”

In his syndicated column, “Kicking Trump out is the important thing. Fights over how to do it shouldn’t get in the way,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes, “Democrats might note that the hashtag #MoscowMitch, a phrase used by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, went viral to protest Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow votes on bills to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference. Making life hell for McConnell and his party for blocking necessary and patriotic legislation would be a good use of August…And, yes, the Democratic presidential candidates will debate this week. Judge them not by the points they score but by who among them best understands that removing this reprehensible president from office is far more important than any of their individual ambitions — and that nothing will make Trump happier than an opposition tearing itself to pieces.”

At CNN Politics, Julian Zelizer previews the second round of Democratic presidential debates and focuses on the challenges for front-runners Biden, Warren, Harris, Sanders and Buttigieg. We will get a first look at Governor Steve Bullock on the first night, and likely some fireworks on the second night, with Biden, Harris and Booker on the stage again. But do expect some sharp zingers from the other candidates, who really need to stand out this week. The value of the large field format is that it makes the diverse Democrats look more like the party of the future, and that’s a good optic. But the public would be better-served by a series of randomly selected smaller group debates, including some one-on-one match-ups, giving the candidates more time to show their command of the issues and visions for the future. Surely the networks can afford to do both large field debates and a series of smaller group face-offs.

Ed Kilgore provides some sobering observations at New York Magazine about the likely effects of failed impeachment. Kilgore explains that “it is as certain as anything in this life that the Republican-controlled Senate will not remove Trump from office under any foreseeable set of facts (and no, the Nixon precedent is not especially relevant). A failed impeachment effort — whether the House doesn’t formally take up articles of impeachment, or it takes them up and they are defeated, or the Senate acquits — would not only leave the president in office, but could even look like an exoneration (which is precisely how Trump would depict it). So what would be the point? A theoretical discharge of duty?…A reelected Trump would be rampant, vengeful, and (of course) unrepentant. The Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary would likely become a confirmed enemy to progressivism for a generation. With one or two more Trump appointees to SCOTUS, reproductive rights would almost certainly be vaporized. Climate change might well become truly irreversible. Trumpism (or something worse) would complete its conquest of one major political party, and the other would be truly in the wilderness and perhaps fatally embittered and divided.”

Apropos of the dust-up about where folks Trump doesn’t like should go back to, at Daily Kos Elections Guide, David Jarman shares a map students of political demographics may find of interest, which distills Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-Year Data (2013-2017) “most frequently-reported ancestry or origin” for every congressional district:

Noting that “in nearly half of the nation’s 435 congressional districts, the most prevalent ancestry is a non-European one,” Jarman also provides an in-depth analysis of the chart’s limitations. He also has  maps showing the second and third “most reported and ancestry or origin” for each district, and provides links for an even more granular analysis.

The New Republic’s Adam Eichen ruminates on the failure of Democrats “to strategically and methodically focus on the levers of power,” and offers some suggestions, including: “…Democratic donors and elites are generally far too focused on federal elections, a particularly egregious oversight given the sizable governing power found at the state and local level…Daily Kos election expert Stephen Wolf told TNR that, for maximum results, the Democrats should target the Texas State House, Florida State Senate, and both legislative chambers in Pennsylvania in 2020. Each of these chambers only require a handful of seats to flip to win Democratic control. Doing so, in the case of Texas and Florida, would block some of the worst and most devastating partisan gerrymanders of the next decade. Creating a Democratic trifecta in Pennsylvania, on the other hand, would open the door to a major voting rights expansion in a key swing state…Similarly, Wolf suggests Ohio’s two Supreme Court races should be a priority, as a dual victory would give liberals a majority on the bench, providing the only vehicle moving forward to striking down GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression in the Buckeye State…As Brian Kemp’s dubious handling of his own, ultimately successful bid for Georgia governor in 2018 makes readily apparent, secretary of state contests should also be a focus. In 37 states, this is the office that manages elections, overseeing such potentially consequential items as voter rolls, the certification of candidates, and the conduct of recounts. Thirty-one of these states directly elect the secretary of state, with Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi up for grabs in 2019.”

Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium tweets, “Now that the Supreme Court has run away from partisan gerrymandering, it’s time to fight on a state-by-state basis. Here’s a long list of actions for individual states. I’ll add to it as more ideas come up. First, the categories of actions you can take: 1) Ballot-initiative process: push for independent commissions. 2) Friendly state courts: file lawsuits. 3) Public-comment period on redistricting: use it in 2021 to speak for your community of interest. Use data to analyze/offer maps. 4) Everywhere: write your paper…5) Disrupt single-party control by flipping a legislature or breaking its supermajority. 6) Support local reformers: Common Cause, League of Women Voters, or local organizations. 7) Everywhere: help gather data & become a redistricting tech maven!” Wang has other suggestions right here.

Democrats have yet to leverage their formidable but dormant power as consumers in support of political goals. Those who think that the time to do so has arrived may want to check out “These are Laura Ingraham’s leading advertisers” at Media Matters for America, which provides the following list of the right-wing Republican program’s top sponsors: South Beach Diet; Fungi-Nail; Rohto; SeroVital; NFL Network; Waterpik; Stamps.com; Coravin; Takl; Roman Pharmacy; Energizer; Bausch & Lomb; Sandals Hotel/Resort; Sheex; Safelite Auto Glass Co; Nutrisystem; USAA; MyPillow; Lifelock; StarKist; WeatherTech; HomeToGo.com; ClearChoice Dental; Tecovas; Prevagen; Carfax; Elite Singles Dating Service; The Zebra; Eli Lilly; and Novo Nordisk.

In response to numerous polls indicating strong public support for allowing people to keep their private insurance if they want it, Sen. Kamala Harris has unveiled a more flexible health care plan. As Jonathan Cohn reports at HuffPo, “It’s government-run insurance, but with a 10-year transition and a private alternative for those who want it…It would eventually replace employer-sponsored plans, over the course of a decadelong transition, but it would allow private insurers to offer an alternative form of coverage, much as they do today for seniors on Medicare…the Harris plan calls for a more sweeping transformation than the reforms supported by former Vice President Joe Biden. But it would stop short of the change to wholly government-run insurance that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has championed. Cohn notes Harris’s timetable for Medicare for All “is more than twice as long as the four-year changeover in the Sanders bill.”

I love political history, so I felt constrained to comment at New York on an effort to draw a lesson from a famous campaign from the past in dealing with Donald Trump:

One of the raging debates among Democrats and progressives going into the 2020 elections is whether the president’s white-nationalist tendencies should be central to the campaign to oust him or whether, instead, (a) the focus should be on his corruption and the broken promises to his voters, or (b) his opponent should largely ignore him and emphasize her or his own policy proposals. The discussion over this question is heavily influenced by fears that white working-class voters are amenable to Donald Trump’s racial appeals and are better persuaded by appeals on other issues.

But when Trump is so blatant in his racism, as he has been since his July 14 hate tweets against four nonwhite members of Congress, it feels morally as well as politically feeble to try to take race off the table for 2020. Now comes a voice speaking from the experience of a fight against a far more notorious racist demagogue — Louisiana’s David Duke, a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Anti-racism activist Tim Wise, a veteran of two anti-Duke campaigns (a Senate race in 1990 and the famous gubernatorial “Race From Hell” in 1991), argues in a Washington Post op-ed that you have to call out racism vocally and relentlessly:

“To win an election where the issue of race is front-and-center, anti-racists must make it clear to voters that when they cast their ballots, they are making a moral choice about the kind of people they want to be and the kind of nation in which they want to live.”

In opposing Duke’s 1990 challenge to Democratic senator Bennett Johnston, Wise remembers, he and his colleagues in an anti-racist organization were advised not to play Duke’s racial game:

“Our organization, which worked independently of Johnston’s campaign, saw Duke’s racism as the issue. But we had consultants telling us similarly not to focus on it too much: Point out his Klan past and affiliations with white supremacist groups, we were told, but don’t try to underscore or challenge his contemporary racial messaging. That would ‘play into his hands,’ they said. They encouraged us, instead, to talk about reports of his delinquent taxes and avoiding military service.

“So we played that game, and the results weren’t pretty. We ran an expensive TV ad in which we mixed the messages, mentioning Duke’s white supremacist ties alongside his tax history and failure to serve in Vietnam, as if those issues were of equal importance. Highly stylized, the ad seemed crafted more to win awards than to drive voters. The result? Duke got 44 percent of the vote, with about 60 percent of the white vote. He lost, but Duke-ism had proved itself potent.”

A year later, Duke ran for governor, and, to the horror of the nation, he led incumbent Republican governor Buddy Roemer in Louisiana’s nonpartisan “jungle primary” to win a runoff post against the ethically tarnished Democratic warhorse Edwin Edwards. At that point, says Wise, those counseling a nonconfrontational approach to Duke were ignored:

“Unlike 1990, the message in 1991 was all about the fundamental danger posed by hate to Louisiana and America. Even the message that businesses and tourists would boycott the state if Duke won was ultimately rooted in a moral imperative. After all, it was his extremism that would drive companies and tourists away, and rightly so. Our bumper stickers that read, ‘Vote for the crook, it’s important,’ operated on the premise that whatever one might think of Duke’s opponent, then-former Democratic governor Edwin Edwards and his ethically challenged past, Duke’s racism was worse.

“In that election, hope won, not hate, even though Duke still won the white vote in the eventual, decisive runoff. He got more total votes in 1991 than in 1990, but his share fell to 39 percent overall and about 55 percent among whites, in part because racially progressive whites showed up in larger numbers, inspired by the moral message. And black turnout surged.”

And so, argues Wise, the same strategy represents the best and perhaps the only way to take on Donald Trump:

“The lesson now for Democrats is that they must make this election about the threat of Trumpism, which is racist at its core. That doesn’t mean that policy ideas aren’t important, but first and foremost, it’s about making it clear to voters what the stakes are. No issue — climate, jobs, health coverage — overrides the importance of getting a bigot with authoritarian tendencies out of office. Focusing on look-how-much-I’ve-thought-about-this-stuff might make for good primary-debate theater, but it’s not going to move the needle in 2020.”

Personally, it strikes me as probable that this full-frontal attack on Trump’s racism is necessary but not sufficient to the project of ejecting him from the White House. Wise is right that ignoring Trump’s white-nationalist appeals normalizes his behavior and makes it acceptable as conventional politics when it needs to be made shameful in respectable society. David Duke famously made himself and his modern Klan the relatively respectable face of white racism — the “man in the gray flannel hood.” He campaigned on anti-big-government, welfare-reform, and crime-control dog whistles, and opponents who accepted the legitimacy of these appeals played his game.

But a 1991 gubernatorial campaign is hardly a template for a 2020 presidential election. Trump is president of the United States and the unquestioned leader of the Republican Party, not a state legislator who has been repudiated by most of his party’s elected officials (including, as Wise notes, then-President George H.W. Bush). The business community that largely united to repudiate Duke as deadly to Louisiana’s economy has more or less made its peace with Trump, particularly given his business-friendly mix of anti-regulation and anti-tax initiatives laced with goose-the-gas fiscal and monetary policies. And as shocking as Trump’s history of race-baiting is, it hardly holds a candle to Duke’s.

As veteran Louisiana journalist John Maginnis explains in his brilliant account of the “Race From Hell” (in his book Cross to Bear), Duke might have won had the Klan been the only skeleton in his closet. What seems to have turned the contest around was the circulation of images of Duke wearing Nazi garb to protest a Jewish leftist speaker at an event at LSU. In a televised debate near the end of the campaign, Edwards jolted the audience when he responded to a standard Duke rap on welfare reform by saying, “David, I was working on welfare reform back when you were still goose-stepping around Baton Rouge.” At a time when many World War II veterans were still alive and voting, Duke’s identification with this particular brand of racism was disastrous to him.

The moral of the story is that racism must be called out, particularly by the party that depends so heavily on nonwhite voter support and professes a commitment to equality and justice. But Trump isn’t going to make it easy by goose-stepping. It will take other appeals on the economy, on health care, on climate change, on this administration’s corruption, and, yes, on the policy thinking of the Democratic nominee, to make the values and interests of a majority of the electorate converge.

Perry Bacon, Jr. addresses the question, “Is Trump’s Use Of Identity Politics An Effective Strategy?” at FiveThirty Eight, and observes: “Does the way Trump use white identity politics help him and the GOP electorally, even if he at times veers into racism that members of his own party can’t defend? And are the Democrats (usually more establishment, centrist figures) who worry the party is playing into Trump’s hands when it defends members of Congress like Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota generally right, at least in terms of political strategy?” Bacon concludes, that yes it probably did help him win the GOP 2016 primaries. However, “the way Trump talked about race and identity helped him win the general election is less clear…there are reasons to be skeptical that his rhetoric on race and identity was the main explanation for Trump’s victory…Americans may have decided to support Trump for reasons other than his stances on identity issues (for example, perhaps because he was an outsider to politics). According to Enns, these Trump voters may have then adjusted their views on immigration and other issues to align with Trump’s, as opposed to backing Trump because of his stance on racial and identity issues…”

Bacon adds that “some election models that ignored the two candidates and instead focused on factors like the economy and Obama’s approval rating predicted that Republicans would win. Whatever the merits of Trump (and Clinton’s strategies), the overwhelming majority of 2016 voters backed the same party as they did in 2012. By far the most important factor in Trump’s victory in 2016 was that he was the GOP nominee for president and millions of Republican-leaning voters likely backed him simply because they are Republicans…A perfectly plausible theory of the 2016 election would go something like this: Trump’s racial rhetoric turned off some voters, brought in some new ones, and was basically an electoral wash…To conclude, I think the safest answer to the question of whether Trump’s identity politics are a good strategy, at least in a general election, is “we don’t really know” or “maybe, maybe not.” He won in 2016, but his party lost in 2018 — and both of those elections had a lot more at play than just how Trump spoke about issues of race and identity.”

Looking toward 2020, Bacon concludes “That debate over policy and messaging to some extent overlaps with the 2020 Democratic primary contest. Does the party choose a candidate who might appeal to Obama-Trump voters with his or her populist economic stances (Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) or maybe a candidate who might appeal to those same voters by virtue of being a white man or downplaying his liberalism on these issues of race and identity (Joe Biden?). Or does the party pick a person who might focus on mobilizing college-educated white voters and minorities and takes more liberal stances on issues of race and identity (Beto O’Rourke)? And should the party be worried candidates who are not white and male (Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Warren) will be seen as embodying the diversity of the country in a way that some Trump voters don’t like?”

However, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall reports “Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at Penn, wrote me that in 2016 voters incorrectly identified Trump’s political agenda. “Many people underestimated the extent to which Donald Trump was perceived as ideologically moderate by 2016 general election voters,” Hopkins wrote…In October of that year, just before the election, 17 percent of respondents in an Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politicspanel survey described Trump as “extremely conservative” and 31 percent described him as “conservative,” for a total of 48 percent. In contrast, in 2012, 22 percent said that Mitt Romney was extremely conservative and 45 percent said conservative, for a total of 67 percent…This leads to an unanswered question: Are all of Trump’s adherents unshakably loyal or can some of them be persuaded to flip, motivated by the reality described on Monday by my colleagues Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman: that while Trump claims to be a pro-worker populist, he has governed as a trickle-down Republican elitist…In some respects, Trump was flying under a false flag in 2016. Will he pay a price in 2020 when he has to fly under his true colors?”

Also at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver makes the case that “Medicare For All Isn’t That Popular — Even Among Democrats.” Silver explains, “Whether you love, hate or are indifferent toward his “Medicare for All” plan, polls show Sanders leading when Democratic voters are asked which candidate they think is best able handle to health care…The thing is, though — according to new polling from Marist College this week — Sanders’s plan isn’t actually the most popular idea in the field. Instead, that distinction belongs to what Marist calls “Medicare for all that want it,” or what’s sometimes called a public option — something very similar to Joe Biden’s recently unveiled health care plan, which claims to give almost everyone “the choice to purchase a public health insurance option like Medicare.”…In the Marist poll, 90 percent of Democrats thought a plan that provided for a public option was a good idea, as compared to 64 percent who supported a Sanders-style Medicare for All plan that would replace private health insurance. The popularity of the public option also carries over to independent voters: 70 percent support it, as compared to 39 percent for Medicare for All.”

But Silver cautions, “there’s more to winning elections than just picking whatever policies happen to poll best; Medicare for All is consistent with the sort of revolutionary change for which Sanders advocates…At the same time, the public option is potentially a winning issue for Biden, and one that allows him to reinforce some of his core strengths. It offers greater continuity with the legacy of the Obama administration (since the public option is a more gradual change from Obamacare — not to mention, something Obamacare initially tried to include), and allows him to double down on his electability message, since it polls better than eliminating private insurance. That may be why Biden has gone on the offense against Medicare for All.” Silver concludes that Harris and Warren, who have endorsed the Sanders Medicare for all approach, may well introduce their own modifications in the months ahead. What we may have here is Sanders playing the bad cop, Biden the good cop, and Warren or Harris providing the compromise that can unify the party and win over persuadable voters.

At The Atlantic, Ronald Browstein probes the political views of a largely unexplored demographic “Will Trump’s Racist Attacks Help Him? Ask Blue-Collar White Women. His strategy rests on a bet: that these voters will respond just as enthusiastically to his belligerence as working-class white men.” Brownstein writes, “The white working-class men look like they are approaching the 2016 margins for Trump, but not the women,” says the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, in a judgment supported by public polling. “Clearly the women are in a different place.” Greenberg conducted the focus groups, whose findings were released today, for the American Federation of Teachers…If you think about the strategy they had in ’16 … where he campaigned and went into these [blue-collar and nonmetropolitan] areas and really drove up the vote—that doesn’t work if the women aren’t responding to it, if they watch him and they get put off by it,” Greenberg says. “It only works if women are part of the story. You just can’t get the numbers if half of white working-class, nonmetro voters are put off by what you are doing.”” Brownstein adds, “But Trump’s strategy faces a huge obstacle if working-class women don’t buy in to his message as much as working-class men. That’s for a simple reason: Every data source—from the exit polls to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of voter files to studies by Catalist, a Democratic voter-targeting firm—shows that these women reliably cast slightly more than half of all the votes from the white working class…”

Brownstein notes further, that “in 2018, Republicans sagged among these women. Nationally, GOP House candidates still won their vote overall, but by less robust margins than Trump did two years before: 14 points per the exit polls and 17 percent per the Catalist calculations. And Democrats in 2018 generally performed much better with these voters in marquee Senate and governor’s contests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. (Only in the Senate race in Michigan and in the governor’s race in Wisconsin did Republicans retain a solid lead with these voters.)..Trump’s job-approval rating on Election Day 2018 among these women stood at just more than 50 percent in all three states, according to detailed results provided to me by Edison Research, which conducts exit polls for a consortium of media organizations. In each state, that represented a decline of about five percentage points from his share of their vote in the presidential election. That’s not a radical shift, but in three states that were decided by a combined 78,000 votes in 2016, it could have a powerful impact…National polls since the 2018 election have continued to show Trump facing a cooling reception from these women. Both the latest NBC/Wall Street Journalpoll, released early last week, and the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released this week show him with a net-positive approval rating of just seven percentage points among blue-collar women, well below his vote advantage in 2016. The Marist poll found them divided almost exactly evenly on whether they intend to vote for or against Trump for reelection. That’s a much more tenuous equation than Trump faces among blue-collar white men. Both of the latest national surveys from NBC/Wall Street Journal and Marist found that the share of those men who approve of his performance still stands about 30 percentage points higher than the number who disapprove.”

However, Brownstein warns, “This week’s NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll suggests that non-college-educated white women are essentially just as hostile as working-class white men to vanguard liberal ideas that have emerged in the 2020 Democratic presidential race. Those issues include a single-payer health-care plan that would eliminate private insurance, allowing undocumented immigrants access to any federally funded health-care plan, and decriminalizing unauthorized crossing of the U.S. border. Additionally, while recent polls by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute show that these women don’t quite match the hostility of the men in their cohort to a wide array of demographic and social changes in the country, a majority agree on several ideas: that the growing number of immigrants threatens traditional American values, that the U.S. way of life must be protected against foreign influence, and that white people face as much discrimination as black people. All of those attitudes correlate with support for Trump.”

We all know how polarized the political climate has become immediately before and during the Trump Era. But it’s steadily getting more intense, as I noted this week at New York:

There’s been a lot of arguing back and forth about the net political impact of the president’s recent lurch into explicit racism (as imposed to incessantly implicit racism, which is his usual M.O.). For what it is worth, the first week of polling after he told nonwhite members of Congress to “go back where you came from” didn’t show much in the way of movement. At FiveThirtyEight, the 11 public polls (with results adjusted for quality and partisan bias) taken since July 14’s tweets show Trump’s approval rating going up by 0.4 percent, and very much within the narrow band of popularity he’s enjoyed throughout his presidency.

One thing that has become clear, however, is that Trump – or if you think the problem is more systemic, the Trump Era – has slowly and steadily polarized public opinion along partisan lines to an amazing extent. A new NPR/Marist poll released yesterday, which was in the field from July 15-17, showed 90 percent of self-identified Republicans approving of the job the president is doing, and a precisely equal 90 percent of Democrats disapproving. These are not casual judgments, moreover: 80 percent of Democrats strongly disapprove of Trump while 72 percent of Republicans strongly approve.

Yes, self-identified independents are less adamant, but even 39 percent of them strongly disapprove of Trump, while 22 percent strongly approve. So basically, nearly all Democrats and Republicans and nearly two-thirds of independents, either love or hate the man. No wonder he (like many Democrats and observers generally) think 2020 is going to be about base mobilization and turnout. Long before the white-hot frenzy of the general election campaign melts ambivalence while driving truly nonpartisan voters into aggressive plague-on-both-your-houses disengagement, it’s already hard to be neutral about the 45th president. There are going to be many millions of Americans very upset on November 4, 2020.

Since the 2018 elections there have been a substantial number of articles that analyze the white working class and how it may vote in 2020. But, at the same time, there have been very few articles that propose specific, targeted communications and advertising strategies whose aim is to weaken Trump’s hold on his white working class support.

Chris Truax, a self-described Republican opinion columnist, shares some unsolicited advice for Democrats at USA Today. Among his observations:

Like it or not, the Democratic party has had greatness thrust upon it. Every American who believes in the basic foundations of the American experiment, things like the rule of law, the Constitution and an apolitical Justice Department, now has a stake in who Democrats nominate in 2020. So please stop telling fellow travelers like me to mind our own business and start taking on board some of what we are saying. The next president of the United States is everyone’s business, and we can’t afford to screw it up. Again.

A fair point. It’s up to Democrats to pick their best candidate. But many non-Democrats have a stake in that decision. Getting down to the nitty-gritty of Electoral College considerations, Truax writes,

America needs you to focus. Democrats’ first thought in the morning and their last thought when they fall asleep at night should be, “How will this play in Erie, Pennsylvania?”

There are four states that matter in 2020: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. Win three out of four of those states and Trump is a one-term president. No matter how popular something might be with activists in Los Angeles or donors in Manhattan, it’s dead weight or worse if it isn’t a winner with Rotary Club members in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Those are, indeed key 2020 swing states with the most electoral votes as of this writing. You could substitute Arizona or North Carolina which have more EVs than Wisconsin, per Taegan Goddard’s interactive map flagged by Ed Kilgore yesterday. That could change some over the next 15 months, but probably not by much.

Here’s where Truax’s argument gets a little debatable for many Dems: “So don’t treat this like a base election. Democrats are already guaranteed a nominee that will excite their base and drive a big turnout. His name is Donald Trump.” That seems a little oversimplified. Dems can’t take their base for granted. Many factors could dampen base turnout. Besides, if Dems have a real shot at expanding their base in 2020 – and there is every reason to think they do – then they have to work it, as well as mine the universe of persuadable voters.

Truax also has some strong opinions about the real-world importance of energizing voters with “bold” policies:

Getting activists “excited” by bold policy positions is a waste of time. You could get every Democrat in California so excited that they all voted twice and it would make not the slightest difference to the outcome of the election. All that matters is getting voters in Michigan who have become uncomfortable and disenchanted with Donald Trump to vote for you once.

Sometimes the best Democrats can do is neutralize “soft” Republican voters to the point where they stay home on election day. Truax believes this presidential election is not one of those times. Try to get moderates, including some Repubicans, to vote for the Democrat, he argues:

The people you really have to motivate aren’t the Democratic base, they’re the people in the middle who have been unsettled by Trump’s presidency. They can see what Trump is and will happily vote for a reasonable alternative. But if Democrats offer what appears to them as a choice between death by hanging and death by firing squad, a lot of them will just give up and not vote at all.

Truax also has a warning for Dems, echoing some of the points made by Ruy Teixeira’s opinion data analysis at TDS in recent months:

Democrats could, however, easily expand this four-state map — for the Republicans. Want to put Minnesota, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire in play? Easy. Just run on policies like eliminating private health insurance, reparations for slavery, legalizing drugs and decriminalizing prostitution. Every one of these projects has been pushed by one or more Democratic presidential candidates. There may be things to be said for all of these issues. And someday, we should have a serious policy debate about them. Today is not that day.

Those legendary soccer moms are still out there and, by and large, they have had enough of Trump’s antics. But if you want to run on far-left positions like, say, resurrecting forced busing, they’re going to stick with the devil they know rather than vote for someone who promises to do things like send their kids on 30-mile bus rides every day.

I would add that America surely does need a serious discussion about slavery reparations, which is morally-justified. But the best time to address that issue with real reforms is after a Democratic landslide, when we can actually do something about it. Legalizing marijuana is already happening at the state level. I’m not sure what polls indicate about public sentiment for decriminalizing prostitution, but jailing women who turn to it out of economic hardship is also wrong. Eliminating private health insurance? Don’t even go there. Just make a public option so attractive that private insurance will gradually fade away, as a result of individual choices.

Not all policy-discussions are toxic, as Truax explains. “This doesn’t mean Democrats can’t run on progressive policies. Talk about fixing and expanding Obamacare, if you want. Talk about universal pre-kindergarten. Talk about guaranteed parental leave. If it’s OK with those voters in Erie, it’s OK with me.”

In a summary paragraph, Truax writes,

Democrats have one job in 2020: Beating Donald Trump. Nothing else matters. If progressives manage to mess this up by insisting on hard-left positions and ideological purity, they will own Trump’s second term. There is a time and a place for everything. When the ship is sinking and you find yourself in a lifeboat, you don’t argue about where you want to go, you head for the nearest land. Further travel arrangements can wait until you’re back in civilization.

My quibble with this is that something else does matter, besides “beating Donald Trump.” And that is winning a Senate majority. Dems have a real opportunity to win a landslide in 2020, the kind that can produce a governing majority, which can actually pass major social and economic reforms. That goal is highly compatible with “job one.” Trump fatigue is both wide and deep. If Dems play a good hand, they can win both prizes, plus take back some state legislative majorities and governorships.

A message from Ed Kilgore:

As much as we all like to look at national polls and other public opinion data looking forward to the high-stakes presidential election of 2020, it’s important to keep in mind that under our current system it’s really all about winning 270 Electoral Votes. To keep us focused on that ultimate prize, our friend Taegard Goddard has passed along his new and cool interactive 2020 map, complete with history and other essential information about the Electoral College.

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

Looking forward to 2020, Democrats have a lot of very important questions that can reasonably be debated, from the specific candidate to nominate to which issues to emphasize to the best campaign tactics. But there is a need for political common sense to undergird these debates. If polling, trend data, campaign history and/or electoral arithmetic make clear that certain approaches are minimum requirements for success, they should be front-loaded into the discussion. That way discussion can focus on what is truly important instead of endlessly relitigating questions that are essentially settled.

In other words, start with common sense and then build from there. There will still be plenty of room for debates between left and right in the party, but matters of common sense should be neither left nor right. They are simply what is and what anyone’s strategy, whatever their political leanings, must take into account.

Let’s call practitioners of this approach “Common Sense Democrats”. Here are 7 propositions Common Sense Democrats should agree on.

1. Of course, Democrats need to reach persuadable white working class voters. There is abundant evidence that such voters exist, that they were particularly important in the 2018 elections, that such voters have serious reservations about Trump and that they are central to a winning electoral coalition in Rustbelt states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Shifts among such voters do not have to be large to be effective.

2. Of course, Democrats need to target the Rustbelt. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the closest states in 2016, gave the Democrats big bounceback victories in 2018 and, of states Clinton did not win in 2016 currently give Trump the lowest approval ratings.

3. Of course, Democrats need to promote as high turnout as possible among supportive constituencies like nonwhites and younger voters. But evidence indicates that high turnout is not a panacea and cannot be substituted for persuasion efforts.

4. Of course, Democrats need to compete strongly in southern and southwestern swing states like Arizona, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. Recent election results, trend data and Trump approval ratings all indicate that these states are accessible to Democrats though less so than the key Rustbelt states. As such, they form a necessary complement to Rustbelt efforts but not a substitute.

5. Of course, Democrats need to run on more than denouncing Trump and Trump’s racism. One lesson of the 2016 campaign is that it is not enough to “call out’ Trump for having detestable views. That did not work then and it is not likely to work now. Democrats’ 2018 successes were based on far more than that, effectively employing issue contrasts that disadvantaged the GOP. Trump will be happy to have a unending conversation about “the squad” and those who denounce his denunciations. Don’t let him.

6. Of course, Democrats should not run against Trump with positions that are unambiguously unpopular. These include, but are not limited to, abolishing ICE, reparations, abolishing private health insurance and decriminalizing the border. Whatever merits such ideas may have as policy–and these are generally debatable–there is strong evidence that they are quite unpopular with most voters and therefore will operate as a drag on the Democratic nominee.

7. Of course, Democrats should focus on what will maximize their probability of beating Trump. By this I mean there are plenty of strategies that have some chance of beating Trump–if such and such happens, if such and such goes right. You can always tell a story. But the important thing is: what maximizes your chance of victory, given what we know about political trends and the current state of public opinion. In this election, we can afford nothing less.

Common Sense Democrats. Go forth and multiply.