There’s nothing I enjoy more than a challenge to a deeply entrenched bit of conventional wisdom, and I had the chance to write about one this week for New York:

It’s generally assumed that if Donald Trump could just talk about the economy (or let the numbers do the talking for him) and lay off the racism and misogyny and other unpleasantness he so enjoys, he’d have a much better chance of reelection.

But now comes Tom Edsall with some contrary analysis suggesting that good economic times may not be so great for Trump, at least in the pivotal Midwest region:

“John C. Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, has explored the politics of the Midwest from a different vantage point. He examined income and other economic trends in 15 Midwestern congressional districts, including Pennsylvania, that went from Republican to Democrat [in 2018]. In the July 27 issue of Politico Magazine, Austin made a point of saying that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Contrary to the perception that a rebounding economy will work to the president’s benefit, there is growing evidence in Michigan and throughout the Rust Belt that metro areas that are bouncing back — and there are a bunch — are turning blue again. Austin noted that 10 of the 15 districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Iowa ‘have income growth rates that exceed their state averages.’

“Of the remaining five flipped districts, in which growth was below the state average, three were in Pennsylvania, where Democratic victories resulted from a state Supreme Court decision ordering the replacement of the Republican gerrymander of congressional districts, making those districts much more favorable to Democratic candidates.”

Why would people apparently benefiting from “Trump’s economy” vote Democratic more often? Perhaps they are simply less resentful:

It’s also possible that the demographic groups benefiting most from “Trump’s economy” are more likely to lean Democratic to begin with than those in low-growth or struggling small towns and rural areas. In any event, the phenomenon Edsall notes was not limited to the Midwest in 2018:

“The Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank that studies regional inequality, ranked all 435 congressional districts into five groups based on their economic condition: the prosperous, the comfortable, the mid-tier, the at risk, and the distressed.

“An examination by the group of all of the congressional districts across the nation that flipped in 2018 from red to blue produced intriguing results.

“Of the 43 congressional districts that shifted from Republican to Democratic control, 23, more than half, were ranked as prosperous, and seven, or 16.3 percent, were ranked as comfortable. Altogether, almost 70 percent of the districts that switched from Republican to Democratic were ranked in the top-two economic categories.”

This kind of data suggests that since relatively good economic times didn’t help Trump’s party last year, they may not next year, either. And it may help explain why Trump has lately been opening the spigots on a fresh effusion of filthy racist invective: Maybe he really does need it to build the resentment toward “outsiders” that stimulates his base, whether by distracting them from their economic misery or offsetting the pacific effects of economic growth.

Edsall also notes that a major noneconomic trend is working in Trump’s favor as he tries to replicate his 2016 Midwestern success: The region’s population continues to age.

“In five states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — the number of 18-to-35-year-olds, the most liberal age group, grew by 56,448 between 2016 and 2018, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings.

“That growth pales in comparison with the rising number of people 65 and older, a core of Republican support, which grew by 685,005 — an advantage of better than 12 old people for each young person. ”

The underlying reality may be that Trump is far more dependent on grumpy old men living outside thriving metropolitan areas than on the diverse populations living in them. If so, we can expect him to keep the hatefest going and to ignore the advice of “experts” telling him that his theme song should be “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

“Booker was a happy warrior — balancing attacks (primarily against former Vice President Joe Biden) with an optimistic demeanor. Booker spoke powerfully about criminal justice reform and immigration…Booker has considerable natural gifts as a candidate — and they shone through on Wednesday night.” – Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics.

Julian Castro had another very good night. He has a striking personal dignity and seriousness of purpose that should appeal to many voters. But he also showed a talent last night for laser-targeted attacks. As Cillizza noted, “He probably had the line of the night, hitting back on Biden with this hammer: “It looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t.” Castro was forceful and effective on immigration and really stuck it to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on how to handle the officer who choked Eric Garner.”

Here’s what we have to give to the embattled front-runner, according to Time Magazine’s Philip Elliot: “Biden took the lashing and lives to fight on. Advisers had spent the month since the first debate bracing for impact. They knew the aura of inevitability was not going to protect them and told him to anticipate wallops far worse than what Harris offered in Miami. Biden had tweets drafted and ready to go for a number of anticipated attacks, including a thread about that 1981 op-ed. It wasn’t a command performance for the front-runner, but he took incoming from all over the stage and appeared to come away relatively undaunted.”

Nate Silver observed at FiveThirtyEight: “My view at the start of the night was that Booker needed to differentiate himself in a positive way from Harris and I think he did that — not with any particularly interesting strategy or by taking her on directly, but just from being fairly sharp throughout the evening when she was quite uneven. Will it move the polls? I don’t know. I think Harris might be in for a skeptical news cycle or two given that she already has lost a lot of her bounce from the first debate.”

In a night of well-targeted zingers, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard scored a brutal one against Sen. Kamala Harris, with her comment, as reported by Stephanie Saul of the NYT: “Now, Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”

Gabbard had a lot more to say about Harris. But, caught off guard by Gabbard’s attack, Harris did a good job of defending her record, noting that she now supports pot legalization and banning the death penalty. But Harris missed an opportunity to counter-punch during the nationally-televised debate. After the debate Harris called Gabbard “an “apologist” for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, referring to her meeting with the dictator and previous claims that he’s not an enemy of the U.S..” We can only hope that they won’t squander their respective gifts on a personal feud. Gabbard is an eloquent critic of militaristic foreign policy and Harris provides the Dems’smost blistering take-down of Trump’s litany of abuse.

Sen Gillbrand also had a notable zinger, directed at the GOP’s ‘leader’: “So the first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president — is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office.” To the relief of envioronmentalists, she followed up with the less toxic, “The second thing I’m going to do, is I will re-engage on global climate change.”

Here’s a ‘tale of the tape’ 2nd night debate metric from Veronica Rocha, Meg Wagner, Amanda Wills and Elise Hammond, also at CNN Politics:

At The Guadian, Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times, opined: “Front-runner Biden defended his record vigorously, bonded himself to President Obama on civil rights, and reminded viewers of his experience on the world stage. The real winner over two nights: universal healthcare, strongly endorsed by every candidate. It remains the top issue among primary voters. And nothing over two nights appeared to materially interrupt Elizabeth Warren’s steady momentum, while Harris did not have the best night.”

‘Medicare for All’ took its share of lumps during the fourth presidential debate, since it has been creamed in a host of recent opinion polls. Yet, “A pure Medicare-for-all plan is much easier to describe than these complicated plans that try to thread the political needle,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “This was a huge problem for the Obama administration in trying to sell the Affordable Care Act,” quoted in 4th debate coverage by WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Yasmeen Abutaleb.

The overlooked Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who makes as much sense as any of the candidates and has an actual track record to back it up, made an important point in the 4th debate, reported here by Ella Nilsen of Vox: “We are all going to work like the dickens to get more Democrats elected to the Senate. If we get a majority in the US Senate because of the position of these senators, not a damn thing is going to get done,” Inslee said. “And I’ll tell you why, with all their good intentions — and I know they’re sincere and passionate — but because they embraced the filibuster, Mitch McConnell is going to run the US Senate even if we take a majority.”

Don’t be surprised of you start hearing more ‘Warren-Booker’ than ‘Biden-Harris’ buzz, since the Massachusetts Senator had the best night of the 20 candidates, followed by Booker’s impressive performance and that of Sen. Sanders, who has moved the political fulcrum to the left. I will be surprised if they don’t get a substantial lift in the polls over the next couple of weeks. My final take on both nights is that the Democratic presidential field has an embarrasment of riches, a lot of very impressive candidates — Time Magazine called it “the most diverse presidential debate in American history.” I was expecting a let-down after the energetic first debate, but came away from night two with an even better feeling about being a Democrat. This party has a bright future.

“Warren had a strong performance. For instance, she may have had the line of the night by shooting down a Delaney attack by asking why someone would run for president if they don’t have big ideas and plans. Warren has been firm and aggressive in defense of her progressive views, continuing to use the word “fight” over and over again when describing how she’ll take on Trump and change the country. I don’t think she’s going to necessarily rocket up further in the polls, but she’s positioned herself to be a strong contender for the nomination heading into the fall.” – Geoffrey Skelley at FiveThirtyEight.

“Steve Bullock: The Montana governor, to his immense credit, understood that this debate was his one big chance to make an impression with voters — and move from the third tier upward. I’m not sure if his numbers will move in a major way, but Bullock went for it — from his opening statement on. He made clear, time and time again, that he did not believe that the liberal views of Warren and Sanders were grounded in reality and did believe that those views would cost Democrats the election…If moderates were looking for someone other than former Vice President Joe Biden to support in this primary, Bullock offered himself as a viable alternative.” – Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics.

“…While Sanders and Warren correctly pointed out the problems with “good” private insurance ― namely that it’s at the whim of employers and frequently leaves very sick people with huge bills ― they never acknowledged the core political reality that polls have shown repeatedly and as recently as this week: Support for Medicare for All drops dramatically when people hear that enrollment in a new government plan would be mandatory.” – Jonathan Cohn at HuffPo.

“My bottom line–I’m not sure whether any of these five will surge in the polls or be on the debate stage in September. But I think both Bullock and Delaney have succeeded in pushing the Democratic 2020 debate to the center. And I think there’s an outside chance that Bullock actually gets a look from the party.” – Perry Bacon, Jr. at FiveThirtyEight.

“The “moderates,” desperate for a big moment and probably (as my colleague Jonathan Chait suggests) looking to become a back-up option to Joe Biden if he fades, obliged — some through substantive criticisms and others alluding to their fear of public opinion and Republican attacks. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, whose views were generally being challenged by moderators and rivals alike, fired back lustily, too, with Warren emulating and sometimes exceeding Bernie’s customary tone of righteous indignation.” – Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine.

“Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a candidate who has gained no traction, summed up the critique about an hour into the debate. “In this discussion already tonight, we’ve talked about taking private health insurance away from union members in the industrial Midwest, we’ve talked about decriminalizing the border, and we’ve talked about giving free health care to undocumented workers when so many Americans are struggling to pay for their health care,” Ryan said. “I quite frankly don’t think that is an agenda that we can move forward on and win.” – Andrew Prokop at Vox.

“Ten Democratic candidates struggled to overcome an abysmal debate format and moderators bent on forcing them to address right-wing talking points and attack each other. Some managed to rise nonetheless. Others continued to spur only questions about why, exactly, they were on stage to begin with. Once again, the winners were the progressive policies shaping the race and, by extension, the two candidates who have championed and driven those policies into the national debate…” – Laura Clawson at Daily Kos.

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

Josh Marshall has a great piece up on Talking Points Memo about the politics off Medicare for All. It is eminently sensible and covers well both the facts of the situation and the standard objections Medicare for All advocates raise when it is pointed out just how electorally difficult this program would make things for the Democrats. Point #6 of the Common Sense Democrat creed is: Don’t advocate clearly unpopular policies (if you want to win of course). Josh Marshall agrees!

Marshall’s piece is behind a paywall but it’s well worth seeking out if you are interested in this issue. But a few telling excerpts;

“In Democratic policy debates since 2016 there’s been a widespread and sometimes near dominant narrative that Medicare for All is the way forward and actually surprisingly popular…The problem is, the whole premise is false. A raft of public surveys show that Medicare for All has anything ranging from public support in the low 40s to dismal support down into the 20s. How is that reconcilable with all the polls showing that clear majorities support it? Like most political labels it’s not clear, beyond in an aspirational sense, what “Medicare for All” actually means. Survey after survey shows that when most people hear “Medicare for All” they assume something like a right for anyone who wanted it, regardless of age, to be able to get or buy into Medicare. Critically, most believe they and others would be able to keep their current private coverage if they chose to.

A new Marist poll illustrates the point, but it’s far from the only example. The poll asked Americans whether they supported “Medicare for all that want it, that is allow all Americans to choose between a national health insurance program or their own private health insurance.” 70% of adults thought that was a “good idea”.

When asked about “Medicare for all, that is a national health insurance program for all Americans that replaces private health insurance” the number fell to 41%. This isn’t an outlier. Numerous polls have shown roughly the same thing. A 2018 Reuters/Ipsos poll found 70.1% support and 51.9% support among self-identified Republicans. The numbers are actually remarkable consistent across many polls. Roughly 70% say they support Medicare for All, assuming that it means people can keep private policies. The numbers hover around 40% if they’re told that’s not true.

But just as consistently polls show that people assume Medicare for All means the option to opt into Medicare or keep their own private insurance. Much like the new Marist poll, a January 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 55% of adults believed Medicare for All would allow people to retain their private coverage if they chose. When told it would “eliminate private health insurance companies” that support collapses, going from slightly more than 70% to just 37%….

The reaction to these stark numbers from Medicare for All advocates has been telling and instructive. Of course, if you focus on perceived negatives or scare tactics, support falls! But this makes no sense. You can’t understand the popularity or political viability of a policy without figuring in counter-arguments that will certainly be used in the political arena. This is especially the case with counter-arguments which are actually true!

The secondary response has settled down to daring people to find anyone who likes their insurance company. Nobody likes their insurance company ergo these numbers can’t be true or don’t mean anything or don’t matter. It’s a pretty effective dare. Who raises their hand at a town hall meeting to give a big thumbs up to their health insurance company? Unfortunately that doesn’t really prove anything or at least what advocates what it to prove.

Here we have the kernel of magical thinking inspiring this whole debate: advocates belief that if something doesn’t make sense, it actually can’t be true. It’s certainly true that more or less everyone has complaints about their insurance company. And it’s hard to find people who affirmatively like or have some devotion to their insurance company since the whole system is a mess. But it simply doesn’t flow from that that people support doing away with private insurance or being forced to give up their current insurance. To pretend otherwise ignores basically everything we know about public risk aversion, especially tied to health care, and people’s perception that while what they currently may not be ideal something else might be worse. Call it relative privilege or advantage and people’s resistance to losing it….

He concludes:

“Of course, none of this means that people shouldn’t support Medicare for All or other comparable single player plans on the merits. A substantial minority of Americans do support it. Indeed, more practically, without a vibrant left supporting such a model the public debate is inevitably skewed to the right. A decade ago the legislative debate on Capitol Hill largely focused on whether or not what we now call Obamacare would include a “public option.” It failed because of stiff opposition from insurers and opposition from centrist Senate Democrats. Now that’s basically the centrist fallback position and Republicans running for office, as opposed to working the courts, have basically given up on gutting Obamacare. Indeed, ‘Medicare for America’, one of the major Medicare buy-in style plans proposed by wonks at the Center for American Progress, is as the name implies in large measure a reaction to the Medicare for All push. But that’s not what the proposal entitled “Medicare for All” actually does. It’s a single payer plan in which private health care plans would be prohibited except for supplemental plans which covers services or deductibles not covered by the standard plan.

There is every reason to believe that Medicare for All would be a major electoral liability for a Democratic presidential candidate in a general election – just on the basis of what the plan actually does, let alone the way the GOP and the health care industry writ large would pile on to that with a campaign of lies, horror stories and propaganda. It could well mean the difference between Trump’s defeat or reelection by effectively nullifying the Democrats big advantage on health care and giving the GOP a cudgel to sour a significant amount of the electorate on the Democratic candidate.”

Like Marshall, I get why people would be attracted to the Medicare for All idea. But I continue to be surprised at people’s willingness to ignore or try to explain away the clear evidence that the program would be a serious electoral liability. Sure it would be nice if that weren’t so. But it is.

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.