Elaine Godfrey explains why “The Democrats Aren’t Really in Disarray Over What to Do About Mueller: Lawmakers are, for the most part, united behind three immediate goals” at The Atlantic: “A review of Democratic lawmakers’ statements and interviews with more than a dozen Democratic House aides demonstrate that while there are some stylistic differences in how lawmakers are choosing to respond to the Mueller report’s findings, almost all of them agree on three immediate goals: They want to read the full, unredacted report. They want both Attorney General William Barr and Mueller to testify before Congress. And they want each of the relevant House committees to proceed with their investigations. They may argue in the meantime about what the end goal of those efforts should be, but overall, claims of Democratic dysfunction belie these points of consensus…Democratic lawmakers across the ideological spectrum have reacted to the report with varying degrees of urgency and outrage, but almost all of them—progressives and moderates alike—are demanding the same follow-up steps, starting with the release of the unredacted Mueller report, which House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler subpoenaed on Friday…Democrats have an incentive to appear on message, which could account for some of the agreement. There are genuine tensions in the party about how aggressively Democrats should go after the president in light of the special counsel’s findings.”

At Politico, Steven Perlberg’s “How the Intercept Is Fueling the Democratic Civil War: The national security site has found fresh energy as a savvy, progressive attack dog in national politics. But is it undermining its own side?” provides a number of provocative observations about the Glen Greenwald-founded, Pierre Omidyar-funded online news outlet, including: “The Intercept faces a political question, as well: As the Democratic Party strives to mount a coherent attack against a president it loathes, will the site’s belligerent strategy be effective, or will it handicap the only Democrats who have a serious chance of capturing the White House? Depending on whom you ask, the Intercept is either cleansing the Democratic Party and pushing it to be more accountable to voters and regular people—or it is a Breitbart of the left, trafficking in drive-by hit pieces, an approach that will ultimately undercut the larger goals the site supports. Says one Democratic operative, frustrated with the Intercept’s relentless attacks on the Democratic center: “Grim apparently doesn’t ever want to win an election again and is dead set against anyone who does.””

The winner of the 2016 popular vote for President of the United States has some advice for Democrats regarding impeachment: “My perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of [Russian President] Vladi­mir Putin’s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country…We have to remember that this is bigger than politics…Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country … It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless…For today’s Democrats, it’s not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it’s essential … It’s critical to remind the American people that Democrats are in the solutions business and can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

From “Kate Manne on why female candidates get ruled “unelectable so quickly, in a vox.com interview by Ezra Klein: “Because I think of misogyny as a hostility women face, rather than a psychological property men feel, I think it’s been coming across pretty clearly in the population-level patterns of how much support female candidates are getting compared to white male candidates. It’s depressing watching the four Bs — Biden, Bernie, Beto, and Buttigieg — rise in the polls and generate enthusiasm beyond the substance that may be there while women trail behind them with no plausible explanation for why we see that striking pattern. It’s always possible it’s just due to the female candidates being less exciting, but I have a hard time believing it in this race…My worry is electability is a smokescreen for for this sadly common thing, which is not wanting to support a female candidate…If we knew for sure that a candidate couldn’t beat Trump, that would be reason not to support them. But electability isn’t a static social fact; it’s a social fact we’re constructing. Part of what will make someone unelectable is people give up on them in a way that would be premature, rather than going to the mat for them. If you’re really worried that an otherwise excellent candidate won’t be elected, isn’t that a reason to fight if there’s a decent chance that people can be brought around and convinced?”

If elected, former Vice President Joe Biden at age 78, would become the oldest person ever inaugurated President of the United States. But the other side of age is experience. In “Biden Would be Arguably the Most Experienced New President Ever,” Kyle Kondik writes that  “Biden has spent 44 years in major elected office: He served from 1973 to 2009 in the Senate, and then an additional eight years as vice president. He had successes in that role, and Biden’s time as vice president makes him a credible presidential contender, as VP expert Joel Goldstein argued in a Crystal Ball piece earlier this year. If one also counts Biden’s pre-Senate elected experience, two years on the New Castle County Council, he has 46 years of elected experience…Biden’s 46 years of formal public office experience would dwarf that of the current leader, Democrat Martin Van Buren, whose 31 years in public office currently stands as the highest total of public office experience of any incoming president, according to Vox’s count. The leaders in military experience are Whig Zachary Taylor and Republican Dwight Eisenhower, both of whom served for roughly four decades in the military prior to being elected president.”

In “Impeachment: The False Choices,” Robert Kuttner writes at The American Prospect: “If some Democrats think that an impeachment will crowd out discussions of, say, debt relief for college students, or shoring up Social Security, or a massive public infrastructure program, or an expansion of Medicare, they misunderstand politics, and underestimate the voters…People are actually capable of focusing on more than one thing. And the more Trump is consumed by defending himself against the corrupt reality of his presidency and calling on Republicans to spend political capital to save his sorry neck, the more he is weakened in general…Moreover, as Elizabeth Warren put it so well, there is a constitutional duty to impeach, whether or not it is politically convenient. In fact, there is no contradiction between pursuing an impeachment and debating other issues where Trump’s position is unpopular.”

“The point of the next several months is to build a national dialogue about the Trump administration’s rampant corruption,” Alex Shephard writes in “Should Democrats Impeach Trump? Wrong Question. Allowing the president’s crimes and misdemeanors to take a backseat to impeachment’s political implications does little to emphasize the rule of law” at The New Republic. “There is no vexing, existential, binary quandary that needs an immediate answer. “To impeach, or not to impeach,” that is not the question. Impeachment, after all, is a process—a lengthy one at that—and not a magic wand. Democrats can and should build the case against Trump—and, perhaps, the impeachment case against Trump—publicly, in the form of hearings and other investigations. Through the public testimony of Robert Mueller and William Barr, and of administration officials and Trumpworld associates like former White House Counsel Don McGahn, former Communications Director and Trump confidant Hope Hicks, and, perhaps, members of Trump’s own family, a narrative of this administration’s high crimes and misdemeanors is likely to emerge.”

Shephard continues, “Contrary to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments last month—“Impeachment is so divisive to the country … I don’t think we should go down that path”—it is that path that will help locate a national point of consensus. Pelosi may have been right in concluding Trump is “just not worth it,” but the Constitution is…For other Senior Democrats, however, there is a third path, and it’s probably the best one—one that takes into account the president’s wrongdoings, and likely the politics, as well. Now that the Mueller report is out in the open, House hearings can probe the president’s many scandals—not only looking at obstruction of justice and “collusion,” but also a host of other issues, from the Trump administration’s shameful handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to the president’s financial dealings and cozy relationship with strongmen, industrialists, and oligarchs…It’s a wide-angled approach, but one that endeavors to put the scope of the president’s misconduct on full display. These hearings may very well turn up impeachable offenses, but they also have the secondary effect of highlighting the Democrats’ best message heading into 2020: That they are a party bent on restoring good government, not just on ousting a bad president.”

At HuffPo, Ariel Edwards-Levy reports “Most Democrats harbor a deep dislike for Fox News, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. But fewer than 1 in 5 have a problem with Democratic candidates choosing to appear on the network, with most saying they don’t have any opinion on the matter…The new survey found that nearly three-quarters of Democrats hold an unfavorable view of Fox News, with 59% saying they feel strongly unfavorable toward it…Only 6% of Democrats describe themselves as regular viewers…Just 18% of Democrats say that Democratic presidential candidates should refuse to make appearances on Fox News. Twenty-seven percent say that candidates should go on the network, but 55% ― the majority ― say they either aren’t sure or don’t really care.”

As the Democrats debate the merits and pitfalls of impeaching Trump as soon as possible, it’s helpful to review the importance of securing as much information as possible about his taxes. The following exchange comes from Jon Weiner’s interview of David Cay Johnston, the top investigator of Trump’s finances., “What Is Trump Hiding in His Tax Returns? The Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter explains what’s likely in Trump’s returns” at The Nation.

“JW: The really interesting question is, what do you think is in Trump’s tax returns? Why do you think he’s trying so hard to keep them secret?

DCJ: There are at least three reasons here. Number one, Trump’s tax returns will show that he is not anywhere near as wealthy as he claimed. Remember during the campaign he kept saying he was worth more than $10 billion. But after he became president, he signed under oath his financial disclosure statement, and 90 percent of his wealth vanished. Even that statement, which I’ve analyzed, overstates his wealth. There’s never been a scintilla of verifiable evidence that Trump is a billionaire. And I’m the guy who revealed, back in 1990 when he said he was worth $3 billion, that he wasn’t a billionaire. We eventually found that he had negative net worth of about $295 million—minus $295 million.

Secondly, Donald Trump is a tax cheat. He had two civil trials for income tax fraud, one by the State of New York and the other by the City of New York. In both cases he lost. In one of those trials, his own long-time tax attorney and accountant, Jack Mitnick, testified against him. Mitnick was shown the filed tax return, which was a photocopy, and testified, “That’s my signature on the return, but neither I nor my firm prepared that tax return.” That’s as good a badge of fraud as you’re ever going to find. It indicates that Donald Trump took the tax return that was prepared, changed it, and then with a photocopy machine put the signature of Jack Mitnick on it. Donald Trump is also a confessed sales tax cheat. Mayor Ed Koch of New York said he should have served 15 days in jail for his crime. Trump has a long history of hiding records from auditors, cheating governments, using two sets of numbers. So his tax returns are highly likely to show tax cheating.

Finally, the returns may well establish how much money he has been getting from Russians, Saudis, people from the Emirates, and elsewhere. They may show whether he has been engaged in money laundering for these people through real estate transactions and other actions that make no business sense, but, when closely examined, show exactly what we see when there’s money laundering. I think the record is pretty clear that he has been doing that.”

Meanwhile, Washington state, New Jersey and Illinois have advanced state laws requiring President Trump to release his tax records to get on their state ballots. Dems should  encourage other states to do likewise.

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

Who Do the People on Twitter Represent?

Well, they represent themselves quite well. The rest of us not so much.

This important article from Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy focuses on how left Twitter posters differ from not just the American public as a whole but also from their fellow Democrats. Frankly, this has always been obvious to anyone reasonably acquainted with actually-existing public opinion. But it’s nice this pointed out in a major article with solid data.

At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein sees three political trends deepening as a result of the Republicans decision to double-down on backing Trump, even after the Mueller report: “The electoral bet embodied in this choice is to bind the party’s fate tightly to Trump’s. His tumultuous presidency has accelerated and deepened three political trends that predated him. One is to solidify the Republican hold on what I’ve called the “coalition of restoration”: older, blue-collar, and evangelical whites. The second is to alienate the most ardent elements of the Democratic coalition: young people and minorities. The third is to weaken the Republican position with college-educated, white-collar white voters, particularly in the suburbs surrounding major metropolitan areas…The Mueller report may not dislodge significant elements of Trump’s electoral coalition, some of whom thrill to his behavior and others who accept it in the same implicit bargain as do Republicans in Congress. But it seems highly likely to reinforce the doubts of the nearly 55 percent of Americans who expressed unease, if not outright revulsion, about him as president through their votes for other candidates in the 2016 election and for Democrats in the 2018 House races.”

At Vox, Ezra Klein comments on Democratic strategy in the wake of the Mueller report: “As I understand the House Democrats’ plan, it’s to use the Mueller report to launch investigations, send out subpoenas, and hold public hearings. All of that could lead to revelations that tilt the public toward impeachment, it could prove that the public doesn’t consider these revelations important enough to merit impeachment, or it could simply inform the public to help them make a decision in the 2020 election…Either way, it keeps the focus on Trump’s crimes and his lies, rather than overwhelming that conversation with a debate over removing Trump from office at a time when there’s no prospect of marshaling the votes to actually remove him from office. It seems like a reasonable strategy to me.”

“Eight House Republicans, including the three from districts won by Hillary Clinton in 2016, have been named to the National Republican Congressional Committee’s list of incumbents expected to face tough re-elections, notes Simone Pathe at Roll Call. “Only one of the eight Republicans on the initial list is in a race rated a Toss-up by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. The rest are in contests rated as tilting, leaning or likely to remain Republican. The eight endangered Republicans include: Michigan Rep. Fred Upton; Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon; New York Rep. Lee Zeldin; New York Rep. John Katko; Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick; Texas Rep. Michael McCaul; Texas Rep. Pete Olson; Texas Rep. Will Hurd; Texas Rep. John Carter; and Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler.

“To understand Pennsylvania’s fast-changing political geography, look no further than Tom Killion. After Democrats recently flipped six state Senate seats in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Killion is one of the chamber’s last Republicans standing in those areas — and target No. 1 for Democrats in 2020…Located in Pennsylvania’s southeastern corner, Killion’s district is part of the heavily populated and politically moderate suburbs of Philadelphia. Once a bastion of Republican power, voter registration has shifted to favor Democrats over the past couple of decades, and Trump’s election seemed to accelerate Republican losses and bolster Democrats’ political activism there…Last year, the suburbs roared again , flipping three congressional seats outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to Democrats. Victories in state legislative races exceeded the expectations of Democratic strategists, and gave the party a majority of suburban Philadelphia’s seats for the first time in modern history.” Republicans are worried: “They’re so angry at Trump that they’re just pulling the straight D lever in the general election,” Killion said.” — from “As suburbs roar, Pennsylvania Democrats pick top 2020 target” by AP’s Marc Levy in The Morning Call.

Writing at npr.org, Ashley Lopez, Brett Jaspers and Sergio Martinez-Beltran have an update on GOP suppression laws, “After Democrats Surged In 2018, Republican-Run States Eye New Curbs On Voting,” which notes that “After high turnout in last year’s midterm elections propelled Democrats to a new House majority and big gains in the states, several Republican-controlled state legislatures are attempting to change voting-related rules in ways that might reduce future voter turnout…In Texas, state lawmakers are considering adding criminal penalties for people who improperly fill out voter registration forms. Arizona Republicans are proposing new voting rules that could make it more complicated to cast an early ballot. In Tennessee, GOP lawmakers are considering a bill that would fine groups involved in voter registration drives that submit incomplete forms…If enacted, these proposals could have an impact on future elections, especially in Arizona and Texas, where demographic and political trends are making both states more competitive on the national level for the first time in decades.” Read the article for more details on each proposal.

Heather Digby Parton has a warning for Democrats at salon.com. Noting the decay of accountability since the Watergate scandal, Parton writes “I hate to say it, but the Democrats have been accomplices. Throughout this anything-goes evolution in our political culture, they have played their own brand of politics. They accuse the Republicans of being craven and unethical for enabling Donald Trump, yet when faced with scathing bill of indictment in Robert Mueller’s report, they are openly calculating whether doing their duty will work to their advantage or not. They have become partners in this scheme that allows the Republicans to sink to ever greater depredations, and always seem to find a reason not to stop them…We have reached a turning point in this ongoing crisis. If someone as obvious and inept as Trump can get away with all this, imagine what a competent authoritarian demagogue could do. Allowing Trump to just ride out his term and perhaps even win another one — which is entirely conceivable, I’m sorry to say — could be catastrophic. If Democrats refuse to take the risk of changing this dynamic once and for all, someone much smarter and stronger than Donald Trump is going to come along, very soon, and take advantage of the destruction of our political culture to fundamentally change our democracy in ways we will not be able to fix. At some point there will be no way to “right the ship” anymore. It will be sunk…If Democrats don’t take a stand this time, it’s very likely they won’t get another chance.”

Concern about the Trump campaign’s realtionship with Russians cerainly merits intense media scrutiny and reporting. But if you want to get up to speed on the disturbing relationship between Trump and  Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. read “The Other Collusion Scandal” by Paul Gottinger and Daniel Kelman at The Progressive. An excerpt: “During the first two years of his presidency, Trump’s foreign policy has lined up tightly with the interests of the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. In a remarkable number of instances, Trump has sided with these two crown princes over his own State Department, intelligence officials, and even Cabinet members…Like Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have repressive autocratic governments with atrocious human rights records; however, unlike Russia, these two countries have enormous wealth and can operate under the cover of being U.S. allies.”

Among the many insights provided by Gene Sperling’s article, “Economic Dignity” at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas: “If we are to seek an economic metric worthy of serving as an economic North Star, it would have to analyze the cumulative impact of the economy and economic policy on human well-being. The 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance led by Joseph Stiglitz, Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi explicitly sought to start a global discussion of how best to measure quality of life and well-being, and not just GDP—a project Stiglitz and the OECD have continued. While there is no escaping qualitative judgements in defining an economic dignity goal, if we’re in search of a more meaningful metric, it would be an evolving “Economic Dignity Index” that looked at the various end impacts on human well-being: health care, college opportunity, second chances, affordable housing, environmental quality, and worker participation.”

in his article, “How to Win” at Dissent, Nelson Lichtenstein provides some instrucrive obseevations, including: “On the one hand, something is stirring in the land. The red-state teacher strikes, the Democratic sweep in the 2018 midterms, the Los Angeles teachers’ historic victory in early January, and the organizing success unions have enjoyed among millennial wordsmiths in media, both dead tree and on the web, testify to the spread of the union idea in even the most unexpected venues. In 2018 more workers took part in strikes than in any year since 1986. Fully 62 percent of Americans support unions, according to a recent Gallup poll, a number that has increased 14 points over the last decade…The 2018 election reinforced the critical role unions play in electing progressive, pro-worker candidates. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, union-household voters made up 25 percent of the electorate and helped sweep Democrats to victory up and down the ballot…Without unions to institutionalize them, waves of activism dissipate. The energy that went into the first Obama campaign evaporated after the thrilling election celebrations. The Occupy movement in 2011 fizzled when the tents cleared. And the contemporary anti-Trump resistance lacks an organizational structure independent of the people it has put into office. In contrast, effective trade unionism contributes not only to the mobilization of voters at the climax of a campaign season, but in the aftermath as well, when the political and organizational trench warfare continues in a large array of legislative chambers, administrative agencies, and community political institutions…”

All of us in the chattering classes had an immediate reaction to the release of the redacted Mueller Report. Here was mine at New York.

Mueller lets us know (directly contradicting Barr’s repeated assurances that it was lack of evidence, not the legal standard, that prevented criminal accusations) that he decided not to pursue a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on possible obstruction of justice in order to comply with the DOJ’s position against prosecution of sitting presidents:

“The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued an opinion finding that ‘the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions’ in violation of ‘the constitutional separation of powers.’ Given the role of the Special Counsel as an attorney in the Department of Justice and the framework of the Special Counsel regulations, see 28 U.S.C. § 515; 28 C.F.R. § 600.7 (a), this Office accepted OLC’s legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction.

In a sort of Catch-22, Mueller then concluded that it wouldn’t be fair to Trump to accuse him of criminal conduct if he wasn’t going to be hauled into court and given an opportunity to properly defend himself.

“Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought. The ordinary means for an individual to respond to an accusation is through a speedy and public trial, with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case. An individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use that process to seek to clear his name. In contrast, a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.”

And then there’s this tantalizing passage:

The footnote to the italicized portion reads: “See U.S. CONST. Art. I § 2, cl. 5; § 3, cl. 6; cf OLC Op. at 257-258 (discussing relationship between impeachment and criminal prosecution of a sitting President).”

So very carefully Mueller is suggesting: Here’s what the president did. I can’t do anything about it, so I will not call it criminal. Use my findings to impeach him if you wish, Congress.

As Nancy Pelosi could tell you, there are solid practical grounds for the U.S. House of Representatives to eschew impeachment proceedings, beginning with the fact that there is approximately zero chance the Republican-controlled Senate would vote to convict Trump, particularly now that we are in the active phase of a presidential election cycle. So it may well be that the best Democrats, and Trump’s other critics, can do is to take Mueller’s findings and whatever else other prosecutors or House investigators can uncover, and present it clearly as part of the case against the man’s reelection.

Is the Mueller Report a game-changer for Democratic strategy? Some responses:

Presidential candidate Rep. Tim Ryan, asked this morning about impeachment in a telephone interview on Morning Joe, said that the people he was talking with are more concerned about their kid’s future, than impeachment. “I’m not there, yet…If we go down that road, we’ll disconnect from working-class people,” Ryan said and urged letting Chairman Nadler and the other committees do their job first.

From Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on twitter: “Mueller’s report is clear in pointing to Congress’ responsibility in investigating obstruction of justice by the President. It is our job as outlined in Article 1, Sec 2, Clause 5 of the US Constitution. As such, I’ll be signing onto @RashidaTlaib’s impeachment resolution.”

From “Democrats See No Green Light for Impeachment in Mueller Report” by Billy House at Bloomberg: “Too early,” said House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, whose panel would conduct an impeachment probe…House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff agreed. “The evidence would have to be quite overwhelming” to gain bipartisan support for a conviction, he told CNN. “I continue to think that a failed impeachment is not in the national interest.”

…”The report provides a conundrum for Congress by virtually inviting an impeachment probe around the obstruction issue,” tweeted David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama.”

…“It must fall to Congress to assess the president’s improper, corrupt and immoral conduct,” the leaders of six House Democratic committees said in a statement. Without mentioning possible impeachment, they said Mueller’s report “outlines efforts to destroy evidence, conceal evidence through encrypted apps, and otherwise interfere with the special counsel’s ability to conduct this investigation.”

“…Representative Al Green of Texas, who forced an unsuccessful House vote on impeachment in the last Congress, said Thursday it’s time for his fellow lawmakers to act.”…“I call for the impeachment of the president of the United States of America,” Green said in a press conference streamed on Facebook. “This rests solely now on the shoulders of the Congress of the United States of America.”

From Chris Cillizza’s “Why Democrats Would Be Dumb to Pursue Impeachment” at CNN’s The Point: On Thursday, after the release of the Mueller report, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told CNN’s Dana Bash this: “Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point. Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgment.”…There’s no chance that Pelosi will OK impeachment proceedings. There’s plenty in the Mueller report to keep Republicans, who have stood behind Trump ever more solidly over the past two-plus years, in line. There will be no broad-scale abandonment of Trump by the GOP. In fact, there may well be a rallying behind him — and a call for Democrats to move beyond the Mueller report.

Update: “Elizabeth Warren became the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump Friday afternoon, citing the “severity” of “misconduct” detailed in the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. — from “Elizabeth Warren calls on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump” by Grace Segers at cbsnews.com.

This is just a partial snapshot of the views of some leading Democrats at this political moment. New revelations could emerge at any time.

Geoffrey Skelley has a post, “Who Might Make The Democratic Debate Stage?” at FiveThirtyEight, which notes that “Democratic hopefuls have two ways of getting onto the debate stage, according to a February news release from the Democratic National Committee. They can earn at least 1 percent of the vote in three different national or early-state polls conducted by qualifying pollsters, or they can receive donations from at least 65,000 unique donors, with at least 200 individual donors in at least 20 different states.” Skelley goes on to explain that 15 candidates have qualified, with more expected — maybe over 20, even though the DNC caps the total at 20. The debate spots would then be allocated by the highest average scores. But, really what’s so great about having 20 candidates on a stage? Why not have randomly-drawn, one-on-one match-ups all over the country, even in small towns? It could be a fun thing to attend on a slow Thursday night.

At Vox, Li Zhou argues that “Democrats are prioritizing “electability” in 2020. That’s a coded term. It often means white and male.” Zhou writes that “the expectation of who can win is inextricably wrapped up in the knowledge of who has won…And in the case of the presidency, that mold consists overwhelmingly of older white men, a precedent that could hurt candidates who don’t fit those characteristics…“Metrics like authenticity and likability and electability are just code that we use against candidates who are not like what we are used to,” Christina Reynolds, a spokesperson for Emily’s List, a political organization that supports women candidates, previously told Vox…“Electability,” in other words, could be another term that actively excludes candidates who don’t fit whatever the historical profile of a political candidate looks like.” Zhou notes the experiences of President Obama, Democratic candidate for georgia Governor Stacy Abrams and Sen. Kamala Harris in confronting the “electability” argument. The article title overstates the reality, however, in that many Democrats have refused to be hustled by the electability argument. Certainly, Democrats can do better in running more diverse candidates. But the photo below of Dems elected in 2018 shows quite clearly which party’s candidates look more like America, and Obama and HRC did very well with Democratic voters.

David Frum’s “Democrats Are Falling Into the Ilhan Omar Trap: By rushing to stand with the controversial congresswoman, the 2020 contenders are allowing Trump to transform her into the face of their party” also seems overstated to me. Surely most persuadable voters understand that Democrats are a highly diverse party, which includes Sen. Joe Mancin, who recently endorsed a Republican Senator, as well as Rep. Omar. It’s not like Democrats are going to sit around and quietly take crap from Republicans who try to stereotype them. Nor will Democrats in competitive elections risk their re-election prospects by over-praising Rep. Omar. As for “the face of their party,” Republicans have a face, Democrats have faces. Most voters get that.

It’s probably a good thing that “Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe won’t run for president in 2020.” Not that McAuliffe wouldn’t make a good president — he was an excellent Governor of Virginia. As for reasons why, he cited the glut of presidential candidates and another urgent priority: McAuliffe is one of the strongest “team players” among Democratic leaders, and one who gets it that Democrats have a lot of work to do in order to become competitiive in states across the nation. CNN Politics reporters Caroline Kelly and Dan Merica quote McAuliffe’s instructive explanation: “I’ve listened to the Virginians and I’m going to help Virginia for the next six months. I could spend eight months traveling around the country running for president, or six months really making a difference,” the Virginia Democrat told CNN’s Chris Cuomo during an exclusive interview on “Cuomo Prime Time.”…McAuliffe said that, after being courted by state Democrats, he would be “going home” to help coordinate the campaigns of the state’s national and local Democrats. “I’m going to work the next six months every single day to make sure Virginia, we win the House and the Senate, and then next year I’m going to work like a dog to make sure that we are blue,” he said. “We were the only southern state that went for Hillary in 2016, very proud of that. We need to do it again in (20)20.” Dems could use a few more like him.

From “The Democracy Poll: Americans and the Economy” by the editors of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas: “Conducted in January exclusively for the journal by Change Research, the poll asked respondents a range of questions about their opinions on a host of economic matters and tested their knowledge of economic policy. The purpose was to try to learn what presumptions about economics—about growth and fairness, about government intervention, about the two parties—people carry around in their heads. We also wanted to learn how much people know about certain economic realities, in order to find out how much educating Democrats and progressives need to do….Results? There is some good news. People have pretty progressive attitudes on health care and on some aspects of government investment and intervention. They also reject some basic philosophical conservative arguments about wealth, poverty, and other matters. But here are the catches: They still have little faith in government; they still share a number of conservative assumptions about how the economy grows; and yes, they still seem to think the deficit trumps everything else.” A few highlights: “There was also majority support, 54 percent, for Medicare for All among respondents, even when they were told their taxes would “go up, perhaps by a lot.”…When asked how much of the wealth the top 1 percent should hold, a plurality of 26 percent of our sample said 20 percent. (The real number is 90 percent.)…Respondents still think the Republicans are better for the economy, by 49 to 40 percent…When we asked them whether the free market better provides for people’s needs or if the government should steer investment “in some cases,” they chose the free market 59 to 41.”

The Democracy editors continue: “The last four recessions in this country, going back nearly 40 years, have happened under Republican presidents. But still, Republicans are seen as slightly better at improving the economy (49-40)…When it comes to the government hiring out-of-work Americans, respondents also seem to be quite Keynesian. Overall, just under 60 percent said they would strongly support such a measure, with a majority from both parties either somewhat or strongly supporting it. Support for investing in infrastructure was also high and bipartisan…On the downside, respondents also support cutting government spending, reducing the national debt and deficit, and cutting personal taxes. Overall, most respondents were in favor, to some degree, of such tax cuts during a recession (75 percent). Respondents were supportive, to varying degrees, across the ideological spectrum…Those in favor of Keynesian economics must evidently do a better job of countering the longtime scaremongering, from both sides of the aisle, about the effects of government deficits and out-of-control spending…Finally, we asked respondents for their priorities in terms of major public investments and major social expenditures. A majority (over half) of all respondents chose “building and repairing roads, bridges, and mass transit systems” as their preferred investment out of a list of five.”

“For this more radical agenda to succeed among Democratic candidates, the party will have to resist describing its big tax proposals as merely a means to pay for priorities like a Green New Deal or Medicare for All,” argues Bryce Covert in his article “Why Democrats Like Taxes Again” in The New York Review of Books. He notes further, that “if Democrats fail to make the argument for higher taxes on the rich as a social good, a public benefit in itself, they will once more play into the Republican smear of “tax and spend Democrats.” Never mind the hypocrisy that Republicans spend their time out of power decrying the economy-killing, existential threat of soaring federal debt and then once back in power, spend where they please and rarely deign to pay for it…When Democrats propose taxes to pay for their policy priorities, they are simply playing by rules the other side never follows…The country urgently needs them to turn away from that tactic and toward a more radical approach to taxation that can reverse income inequality and America’s gradual drift toward plutocracy…Without the megaphones of a few ultra-rich people drowning out the healthy din of democracy, more voices could be heard in the halls of power—which, in turn, could boost a more progressive political agenda that actually commands broad support among the public, if not among Republicans, centrist Democrats, and the wealthy donors who keep them in power. But first, we have to properly soak the rich.”

Salon.com’s Lucian K. Truscott IV has some choice words for Democrats and supposedly liberal news commentators who are “forming circular firing squads around the glass-topped anchor tables on MSNBC and CNN. They’re sniping at each other on op-ed pages. They’re posting unhinged, granular takedowns of their opponents on Facebook. They’re tweeting out quotes from decade-old speeches targeting each other for departures from liberal orthodoxy. They’re catching fellow Democrats for slips of the tongue, or use of the hands, or backroom misbehavior like — gasp! — yelling at a staffer!…WFT, Democrats? WTF, liberal media? Did we learn nothing over the last three years?…Every day Democrats throw garbage at each other…You know what the real shame is? They’re nitpicking the Democrats while Trump puts a torch to the whole damn house…You want four more years of this shit? Four more years of Trump turning the White House into a criminal enterprise? Four more years of racism and gay-baiting and Muslim-hating, and demolition of democratic norms and government institutions and the rule of law? Go on another cable show, pen another op-ed, tweet out another rumor, trash another fellow Democrat. Keep it up.”

Truscott’s sober warning for Democrats merits consideration by all the presidential candidates. My beef with the TV media is a little different: Stop interrupting your interviewees with lengthy comments designed to make yourself look good. The point is to educate the public. Give candidates running for high office more room to explain their views. Viewers hate interviews which dissolve into two or three people all talking at the same time. If you need a role model for how to conduct a great interview, check out the now retired Brian Lamb’s more than 5,000 thousand interviews at C-SPAN. His thoughtful, but short, pointed questions served his viewers and his interview subjects extremely well. One of his interview subjects, the late Christopher Hitchens dedicated his bio of Thomas Jefferson to Lamb; “For Brian Lamb… a fine democrat as well as a good republican, who has striven for an educated electorate”.

Watching as the MSM had great sport with snippy-grams going back and forth between House Democratic leaders and their new super-star freshman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I tried to think through the deeper implications at New York:

Nancy Pelosi’s comments at the London School of Economics explaining the fruits of partisan gerrymandering made their way back across the pond with lightning speed, as reflected in the Washington Examiner:

“Pelosi explained to the London school audience that her district as well as the one represented by [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez vote Democrat no matter what.

“’This glass of water would win with a “D” next to it in those districts,’ Pelosi said. ‘But that’s not where we have to win elections.’”

Just to be clear, Pelosi’s right about the noncompetitive nature of her own San Francisco House district and AOC’s in New York: The former is the sixth-most Democratic district according to the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index (PVI), and the latter is the 31st-most Democratic. Hillary Clinton won 77 percent of the vote in AOC’s district, and Obama won 81 percent in 2012.

Presumably Pelosi thinks that despite her own safe seat, she can understand the plight of Democrats representing swing districts, but apparently has doubts about aggressively progressive members like AOC:

“’This is about winning,’ Pelosi told the London School of Economics and Political Science. ‘When we have to go into the districts we have to win, we have to cull that to what we have in common with those people.'”

Now Pelosi also had words of praise for her preternaturally talented young colleague. But you have to figure she wishes AOC, who has replaced Pelosi as the principal target of sexist conservative agitprop, had a slightly lower profile.

It’s unclear how any of this threatens Pelosi’s majority, except insofar as conservatives have sought to identify the entire Democratic Party with this one democratic socialist member’s views — which of course they are going to do in any event. Unless the entire House Democratic Caucus is expected to repeat the party line like cicadas, then there will always be members from districts where a more progressive viewpoint is viable than is politically sustainable everywhere. Their job is precisely to keep pressure on the leadership and the party to represent their constituents, too — not just the swing voters who have very nearly been hunted to extinction. And it doesn’t mean Democrats cannot accommodate candidates and members in more competitive districts with views more appropriate to local conditions. The big-tent principle should, however, work both ways.

If AOC begins threatening primary challenges to loyal Democrats from swing districts who happen to disagree with her ideology or policies, or suggesting Democrats take a dive in national elections if their candidates are too “centrist,” then that’s a clear violation of party discipline and Pelosi would be justified in rebuking her. That hasn’t happened, though. So long as gerrymandering and simple concentration of partisan voters produces safe House seats, however, their valuable function is to produce restless insurgents who stretch the imaginations of their elders rather than time-serving perpetual incumbents who go along to get along. In truth, both Pelosi, the precedent-shattering Speaker, and Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive comet, represent the silver lining of the generally rotten system of partisan gerrymandering: It gives leaders the opportunity to emerge from the crowd of election-fearing pols.

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

I don’t want to be a broken record on this but I continue to believe people are underestimating the potential effects of generational change on American politics. The data on generational cleavages in attitudes and voting behavior continues to accumulate and, if anything, is getting stronger as Millennials have fully entered the electorate and as the oldest part of the Gen Z cohort has reached voting age.

The New York Times recently had an interesting article along these lines. Leaving aside the interviews with actual teenagers in the article, which are intriguing but not exactly hard data, they do cite some real data which makes the point.

“Election data suggests that the youngest voters are supporting Democrats, and surveys of teenagers not yet old enough to vote reveal them to be anxious about the current state of the country and likely to embrace liberal views.

Over all, 59 percent of people 18 to 24 say they’re Democrats, compared with 33 percent who say they’re Republicans, according to an Upshot analysis of Pew Research Center data over the last year. Even young people who self-identify as Republicans, another Pew survey found, say they hold more liberal views than older Republicans on a wide range of issues — including race relations, the causes of climate change and the involvement of government in people’s lives. The youngest Republican voters who supported Mitt Romney in 2012 were the most likely to abandon Mr. Trump in 2016.

The youngest white voters are more evenly split between parties. About half of whites ages 18 to 24 say they’re Republicans. They favored Mr. Trump in the presidential election, but those who turned out in the midterm elections very narrowly backed Democrats, according to preliminary data from Catalist, a Democratic data firm. And only 39 percent of 18-to-24-year-old whites approve of Mr. Trump’s job performance, the Pew data shows.

Also, this next generation (those born after the mid-1990s, the so-called Generation Z) will be the first in which nearly half of the electorate is nonwhite — a group that overwhelmingly votes Democratic.

“Republicans are in trouble,” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster who has written a book on millennial voters. Election results show millennials holding onto their Democratic views as they age, she said. “It would not surprise me if the problem is worse, not better, with Gen Z, given the moment we’re in.”

I have no quibble with these data except I believe white 18-24 year olds in 2018 were probably strongly not narrowly Democratic, My reading of the Catalist final data is that white 18-24 year olds were probably around +20 nationally for the House. So that’s not “narrowly”.

Anyway, these data are a big deal. A really big deal. States of Change estimates are that in 2016, GOP voters were 19 percent Millennials and Gen Z and 56 percent from the Baby Boomer and Silent generations. Flash forward to 2036, holding voting and turnout patterns constant, and we would expect the Republican coalition to be 47 percent Millennials and Gen Z and just 22 percent Boomers and Silent. For the Democrats, the analogous figures are 30/44 in 2016 and 59/15 in 2036. These are massive changes, especially given the significantly more liberal cast of the Millennial and Gen Z generations when compared to the oldest cohorts. And that will deeply effect both parties and the politics of the country as a whole.

You can count on it.

Some stats on the age of Democratic voters from Harry Enten’s post, “The Democratic electorate is older, more moderate and less educated than you think” at CNN Politics: “There’s a case to be made that Democrats are younger than they were at the beginning of the decade. Those younger than the age of 40, for example, made up 6 more points of the Democratic vote in the 2018 midterm than they did in the 2010 midterm, according to a Catalist (a Democratic firm) estimate of the national voter file. The exit polls illustrate a similar trend…But even if Democrats are younger than they once were, Millennials and Generation Z voters (roughly those younger than 40) are still very much the minority of Democrats. They made up just about 29% of all Democratic voters in the 2018 midterm, per Catalist. In fact even when you add in those 40 to 49 years old, you still only account for about 44% of Democratic voters in 2018. In other words, the AARP demographic (age 50 and older) were the majority (56%) of 2018 Democratic voters, per Catalist. And in case you were wondering, those ages 65 and older (27%) made up about double the percentage of Democrats who were younger than 30 (14%)…The exit polls can differ slightly on the exact level each age group makes up of the electorate, though all sources agree that a majority of Democratic voters are age 45 and older. That’s a big deal when age was the No. 1 predictor of vote choice in the 2016 primary and continues to be a primary driver of vote choice in early 2020 polling.”

Enten continues, “Whether it be the exit polls, Gallup or the Pew Research Center, there’s no doubt Democrats are more liberal than they once were. In the exit polls, for example, the percentage of Democratic voters who identify as liberal rose by double-digits between the Democratic midterm blowouts of 2006 and 2018…Still, moderates and conservatives make up about 50% of all Democrats. In the 2018 midterms, the exit polls found that moderates and conservatives made up 54% of those who voted Democratic. Pew similarly put moderate and conservative Democrats as 54% of all self-identified Democrats and independents who lean Democratic voters in 2018. Gallup’s 2018 figures had moderates as 47% of all adults who self-identified as Democrats…And while liberals make up about 50% of Democrats, many of them are only “somewhat liberal.” In a Quinnipiac University poll taken last month, people who identified as “very liberal” were only 19% of all Democrats and independents who leaned Democratic. Very liberals made up the same 19% of those who said they were voting Democratic in Suffolk University’s final 2018 pre-election poll. The 2016 primary exit polls discovered that about 25% of Democratic primary voters called themselves very liberal…Put another way: the moderate/conservative wing of the Democratic Party likely still makes up at least 2 times as much of the party’s voters than the very liberal flank.”

And, if you were wondering what percentage of Democratic voters lack a college degree, Enten writes, “Democratic voters are still more likely to lack a college degree. According to Catalist, about 59% of voters [all races] who cast a ballot for the Democrats in 2018 didn’t have a college degree. Gallup and Pew have the percentage of self-identified without a college degree well into the 60s. The exit polls, which historically have painted a better educated electorate than other sources, found about 55% of 2018 Democratic voters lacking a college degree…Even among white Democrats, there are still many voters who have no college degree. Among whites, Catalist calculates the percentage of 2018 Democratic voters without a college degree at about 54%, compared to 46% who had a college degree. Gallup and Pew have the percentage of self-identified Democrats without a college degree in the high 50s among whites. The exit poll had them as a slight minority at 48% of voters who went for the Democrats in 2018…When you broaden it out to look at all Democratic voters, all the sources I could find have whites with a college degree as less than a third of all Democrats. Most have them at less than 30%…As the Washington Post’s David Byler put it, “Democrats should stop chasing Trump’s base. They have their own white working-class voters.”

Every political junkie should take a look at Stephen Wolf’s “Check out our maps and extensive guide on the demographics of every congressional district at Daily Kos. Here’s just one of his impressive graphics:

Democratic candidates and campaign workers should read German Lopez’s “Marijuana legalization is very popular: In the three major national surveys, support for legalization is at an all-time high” at vox.com. An excerpt: “The three major national polls in America are increasingly converging on one point: Marijuana legalization is very popular in the US…The latest finding, from the recently released General Social Survey by NORC at the University of Chicago, shows that 61 percent of people supported marijuana legalization in 2018. That’s up from 57 percent in 2016 and 31 percent in 2000 — a rapid shift in public opinion in less than two decades…The other two big national surveys on the topic have found similar results. Gallup put support for marijuana legalization at 66 percent in 2018, up from from 60 percent in 2016 and 31 percent in 2000. Pew put it at 62 percent in 2018, up from 57 percent in 2016 and 31 percent in 2000.”

“To coincide with Tax Day, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is rolling out digital ads on Monday attacking 12 Republicans for the GOP tax plan that passed during the 115th Congress,”  Simone Pathe writes in “Democrats launch Tax Day ad attack aimed at GOP overhaul” at Roll Call. “The new Facebook ads, obtained first by Roll Call, signal Democrats will continue to use the 2017 tax overhaul, which passed with only Republican votes, as a key part of their economic message heading into 2020, when the party will be trying to protect their midterm gains and expand the map by investing heavily in such places as Texas…Democrats made the Republican tax overhaul — especially the new $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes — a key part of the party’s messaging in 2018, when Democrats gained a net of 40 seats in the House. That surge was fueled by gains in New Jersey, New York, Illinois and California, where residents rely more heavily on the deduction.”

Laila Lalami writes at The Nation: “Whatever happens in 2020, expecting transformative change from the top is a recipe for disappointment. If Democrats want to deliver on their big promises, they have to work on the small ones first. Last month, for example, I attended a fund-raiser for the Virginia House of Delegates’ Danica Roem. As far as political events go, this one wasn’t huge or loud or flashy. It was simply an opportunity to hear from Roem, who made history in 2017 as the first trans woman to be seated in a statehouse—and who did so by defeating a 26-year GOP incumbent who has called himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe.” Her winning strategy? Focusing on the needs of her district, specifically traffic issues on State Route 28. It’s this unglamorous work that we need to be doing if we want to have any chance of making serious change…Let’s leave salvation to the prophets and work on saving ourselves. And that begins by treating our candidates like the public servants we expect them to be.”

At Roll Call, Lindsey McPhereson notes some Democratic ideas for financing a major infrastructure program, which can create needed jobs at a living wage: “The difficulty of avoiding a “stimulus,” or a federal investment that’s not offset, becomes greater the more Democrats want to spend. Pelosi said she wants the government to invest at least $1 trillion in infrastructure, preferably $2 trillion…Democrats are committed to finding ways to pay for an infrastructure package but have yet to coalesce around any one proposal…Members at the retreat mentioned at least four different ideas: Hoyer favors a gas tax increase; Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Chairman David Cicilline wants to roll back the GOP tax law for revenue; CPC Co-chair Mark Pocan floated a high speed financial transaction fee; and Kildee, a tax writer, suggested investment bonds.”

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik explains that “the [Democraticocra] voting calendar is so frontloaded that a nominee may emerge relatively early in the process…Based on the tentative early primary and caucus calendar, nearly two-thirds of the pledged delegates will be awarded from early February to mid-March.” Kondik provides the following chart to illustrate:

Table 1: Tentative schedule of Democratic nominating contests, early February through mid-March 2020