As a group, nonvoters also tend to be generally disengaged from public affairs and cynical about the government and their own roles in civic life. Nearly half of nonvoters in the most recent election said their personal dislike of politics played at least a minor role in their decision not to vote, according to Pew, with 44 percent saying they didn’t think their vote would make a difference and 41 percent saying that voting was inconvenient. (Nonvoters could select multiple reasons they didn’t vote.)

Three in 10 nonvoters said they weren’t registered or eligible to vote, 35 percent said they didn’t care who won the congressional elections and 22 percent said they’d forgotten to vote.

The Pew online survey, which included 10,640 adults online Nov. 7-16, (1,767 nonvoters included), is likely to be the most insightful study of why people didn’t vote in the 2018 midterm elections.

Edwards-Levy’s article includes this chart, which illustrates some of the major reasons why adults don’t vote.

PEW RESEARCH

Looking at the six reasons provided in the chart, it’s instructive to consider which of those problems can be solved with cost-efective remedies. There’s may not be much that can be done to reduce the percentages of those who say they “don’t like politics” and those who believe their vote “doesn’t matter,” outside of improved educational outreach and more educational videos on civic responsibility and voter empowerment.

The same may be true for those who “don’t care” who wins congressional elections. However, Edwards-Levy notes that “A 61 percent majority of the nonvoters said they wished they had voted, with the remaining 38 percent saying they had no regrets.” That indicates that there is room for improvement

But Democratic activists must get more engaged in projects to address the complaints about inconvenience and registration issues. Every Democratic state and local party should have a task force  to help identify and correct all such access problems. As for the 22 percent who “forgot to vote,” wherever possible, the offices of the Secretary of State should send out text messages alerting voters about registration and early voting deadlines, times and places. Dems must also escalate the fight for automatic registration in every state.

Edwards-Levy also reports that “Half of white Americans who cast a ballot in-person said they didn’t have to wait in line at all to vote, compared to 43 percent of black voters and 39 percent of Hispanic voters.” The challenge here is to figure out exactly where and when the lines were longest, and press the case for better hours, locations, parking, and more early voting.

More information about the methodology of the Pew Survey is available here.

NYT’s Nicholas Fandos and Catie Edmondson report that “Democrats still plan to make a wide-ranging anticorruption and voting rights bill their opening legislative priority,” along with legislation to end the GOP’s government shutdown. “They will introduce the first bill of the Democratic House — which includes changes to campaign finance law, outlaws gerrymandering, and restores enforcement authority to the Voting Rights Act — on Wednesday, followed with a marquee unveiling ceremony on Friday on the steps of the Capitol…House Democrats, who take control on Wednesday, are weighing three approaches to getting funds flowing, none of which would include additional money for President Trump’s proposed wall along the southwestern border.”

In his NYT column, “The New Fight for Democracy,” David Leonhardt notes promising initiatives for electoral reform in several states: “…Republicans in many states also pushed to make voting more difficult. They closed polling places, reduced voting hours and introduced ludicrous bureaucratic hurdles — like requiring Native Americans who have no street address to have one in order to vote…In Florida, 65 percent of voters — which means large numbers of Democrats, Republicans and independents — approved a ballot initiative restoring the voting rights of people who had been convicted of a felony. In Missouri, 62 percent of voters approved a law to reduce corruption and gerrymandering. Pro-democracy initiatives also passed in a few other states. At the federal level, House Democrats have promised to make electoral reform the subject of the first bill they offer, after taking control next month…This country has the beginnings of the pro-democracy movement that it needs.”

Alex Shephard has a warning for Democrats at The New Republic, noting that “the idea that Trump has a political advantage over Democrats on the broader issue of immigration is not so easily dismissed. Support for the border wall, while still a minority of Americans, recently hit an all-time high. Although Trump’s fear-mongering over the migrant caravan failed to block the blue wave in last month’s midterm elections, there are reasons to believe that immigration will be a potent, even decisive issue in 2020, just as it was in 2016…And then there’s the question of where Democrats stand on the issue—which isn’t entirely clear. They’re betting that Trump’s radicalism makes them the de facto party of reasonable immigration policy. But the risk is that the opposite will happen: that in the absence of a clear, affirmative message from Democrats, the public will see Trump and the Republicans as the ones doing something rather than nothing to address America’s broken immigration system…This is still largely the Democratic position on immigration: “common sense” border security measures, and some kind of path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It’s no accident that Schumer keeps bringing up 2013’s Gang of 8 bipartisan reform bill, which failed to pass: The Democrats’ immigration policy hasn’t really evolved since then. While some innovations have cropped up, notably “Abolish ICE,” the party’s position on immigration remains opaque. They’re against Trump’s policies, to be sure. But it’s rarely clear what precise policies the party supports.”

“A sprawling field of potential Democratic presidential candidates is simultaneously confronting the need to raise staggering sums of money — and to do so under demands from party activists to curb many of their traditional sources of campaign cash,” reports Matt Viser at The Washington Post…Most of the candidates will probably run on a package of proposals to restrict money in politics and would support legislation to help overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited spending by outside campaigns…But several are going beyond that, responding to demands that they spurn outside assistance from independent groups or cease accepting donations from employees of specific companies, among other strictures. The fiercest battle so far has been over whether candidates should accept money from those employed in the oil and gas industry — one seen as acting contrary to the party’s position on climate change.” Viser notes that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) are expected to reject PAC funding, while Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and others will accept it.” Most of the other possible presidential candidates have not yet announced their campaign’s policy on funding.

Re the shutdown, Paul Waldman argues at The Plum Line that “the only answer may be for everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, to ignore President Trump. Act as though he doesn’t exist and this has nothing to do with him. By which I mean that members of Congress should shut their ears to Trump’s tweets and threats and fulminations, pass something that House Democrats and Senate Republicans can live with, and then dare Trump to veto it. Because I doubt he has the guts…He’ll have to agree to something eventually, but the only way forward might be to cut him out of the process until the end, then force his hand.”

In his Washington Post syndicated column, “There is much to fear about nationalism. But liberals need to address it the right way,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. highlights a key distinction, noted in new book, “The Nationalist Revival” by John Judis: “Globalization married to rapid technological change has been very good to the well-educated folks in metro areas and a disaster for many citizens outside of them….Judis sees the rise of nationalism as a reaction to “the illusions and excesses of globalization…He proposes a useful distinction between “globalism” and “internationalism.” He’s against the first but for the second. Globalism, Judis argues, “subordinates nations and national governments to market forces or to the priorities of multinational corporations.” Internationalism, on the other hand, accepts that nations may sometimes have to “cede part of their sovereignty to international or regional bodies to address problems they could not adequately address on their own…friends of liberal democracy need to keep two ideas in mind at the same time…On the one side, they should not automatically cast those who worry about the decay of national sovereignty as reactionaries. On the other, they must continue to insist — and urgently so in 2019 — that American patriotism and the defense of constitutional democracy are one and the same.”

At Talking Points Memo, Kyra Lerner reports on “The Powerful Role Confusion Plays In American Elections,” and notes: “As laws making it harder to vote spread across the country, an additional and often unnoticed barrier comes with them: confusion. Georgia wasn’t the only state that created chaos and uncertainty at the ballot box. Similar scenarios played out this year in parts of Missouri and Florida. Two of 2018’s most competitive gubernatorial elections may have swung on voter confusion…The United States’ byzantine election system is governed by overlapping rules on the county, state, and federal levels. Elections in different states and even different cities are held on different days, with polling places in varying locations and voting hours that change from one year to the next.” Lerner adds that confusion over voter identification requirements, court rulings, broken voting machines, ballot design and provisional ballots, implemented by poorly-trained poll-workers frequently takes a sugnificant toll on voter turnout. Lerner suggests same-day registration and automatic voter registration as two effective remedies. On a grand scale, Democrats would be wise to launch an energized public education campaign to explain the electoral reforms of H.R. 1, their top  legislative priority.

Political strategist Robert Creamer explains why “America Isn’t As Polarized As You Think It Is” at HuffPo. Among his examples: “82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington…78 percent of likely voters support stronger rules and enforcement for the financial industry…82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem…76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes…87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by the wealthy…61 percent of Americans ― including 42 percent of Republicans ― approve of labor unions…78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave…According to a CNBC poll, 70 percent of Americans support Medicare for All…The vast majority support progressive solutions. This is true even when it comes to immigration. A Harvard-Harris poll found 73 percent of the population supports “comprehensive immigration reform.” And a CNN poll found that 83 percent want to protect Dreamers, the young immigrants brought to the country as children…It turns out that what is necessary to end political polarization is not milquetoast compromises with the political right. It is standing up straight and fighting with everything we have to make American policy come into alignment with the views of ordinary Americans.”

Writing in The Atlantic, Edward-Isaac Dovere flags “10 New Factors That Will Shape the 2020 Democratic Primary,” including: the Democratic National Committee last week announced that there will be 12 official primary debates. Each will mix frontrunners with back runners, attempting to put anyone who meets a basic set of qualifying criteria on equal footing…They won’t have to wait long to start their arguing: The DNC schedule has the first two debates set for June and July, less than 200 days away.” Devere notes also that “There’s never been a presidential primary race with more than one female candidate. There’s never been a presidential primary race with more than one black candidate. There’s never been a presidential primary race with more than one candidate running from the left of the base.” All of that is about to change with more than 20 Democratic presidential candidates expectedto join the fray.”

Thinking about the perpetual challenges to Democratic Party unity, I discovered and nourished a new concern: 2018 provided some fresh fodder for those who want to enforce ideological rigor. I wrote it up at New York.

This is the time when political analysts take a long look back and a longer look forward at what the midterm results mean for the two political parties, led often by ideological factions determined to prove their way is the highway to success in the next contest.

This is an especially urgent task for moderates of the center-left and center-right, who often take credit for wins in hostile territory and warn that they alone can win the big presidential prize just down the road — or at least that used to be the case. Nowadays, moderate Republicans are an endangered species, and at the presidential level, being at least “moderately conservative” or having some distinctively savage brand of right-wing politics like Donald Trump has become mandatory. The ideological “struggle for the soul of the party” is more common among Democrats, who haven’t had a loud-and-proud lefty president since FDR.

With no clear presidential front-runner for 2020 and a huge array of potential candidates lining up, Democrats will have plentiful opportunities to argue over which ideological persuasion gives them the best opportunity to topple President Trump and salt the earth that brought his monstrous presidency to life. But the empirical case for any particular type of Democrat having an advantage in 2020 did not get much of a boost from what happened in 2018, according to top-shelf political scientist Alan Abramowitz:

“The outcomes of House contests in 2018 were overwhelmingly determined by two factors — the partisan composition of House districts and the unpopularity of President Trump in many of those districts, including some that had supported him in 2016 …

“[The results] had very little to do with the characteristics of the local House candidates. In making their choices, voters apparently were far more concerned about which party would control the House than about who would represent their district. As a result, the advantage of incumbency reached its lowest level in decades — less than three points in terms of margin, according to an analysis by Gary Jacobson.

A corollary to the irrelevance of incumbent characteristics was that ideology didn’t much matter either:

“[F]or both Republican and Democratic incumbents, election outcomes were overwhelmingly explained by the presidential vote in the district. Moreover, the incumbent’s voting record had little or no influence on the results. For Republican incumbents, conservatism had a very small and statistically insignificant negative impact on incumbent vote share. For Democratic incumbents, liberalism had a very small and statistically insignificant positive impact on incumbent vote share.”

These findings have limited implications for Republicans, who, barring something unforeseen, are stuck with Trump in 2020. And however you choose to define Trump’s ideology, he has shown little to no interest in appealing to Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (other than those who already share his white nationalist tendencies).

For Democrats, though, the idea that running “to the center” generates no measurable electoral gains will be a central talking point for those who want to run hard to the port side of the ship. Indeed, for many self-conscious progressives these days, there are only two plausible reasons for a Democrat being anything other than a progressive: pure political expediency, or corrupt submission to corporate power. Only the former justifies the presumed sin of centrism.

This is a pretty important issue in intra-Democratic debates. While progressives may excuse, say, a Democrat’s refusal to fully embrace an immediate leap to single-payer health care in conservative areas of the country, they tend to assume such a centrist posture must be accompanied by public or private acknowledgement that of course Medicare for All is the ultimate goal. It is far less acceptable to claim that some other form of expanded health coverage — say, Obamacare with a strong public option — is actually a superior policy. That sort of talk must reflect a sellout to private insurance interests, or so it seems to those who assume that Democrats should press for as much democratic socialism (to choose the most prevalent label) as political markets will bear.

There are going to be other leftward pressures on Democrats going into 2020. As Jamelle Bouie argues, white Democratic presidential candidates seeking to display solidarity with an increasingly nonwhite primary electorate may seek to do so with more controversially progressive positions. But in the general election, if it just doesn’t matter what flavor of Democratic policy thinking you use to spice up your messaging, since everyone is polarized for or against Trump as a matter of first principle, then left activists are going to want to know why any Democratic candidate doesn’t steer steadily to the left.  Moderates need a better answer than “I have a poll!” Because this time around, they probably don’t.

Reading a piece by the renowned Steven Teles about the possibility of an unorthodox 2020 Democratic nominee got me thinking, and I wrote about it at New York:  

Part of the explanation usually offered for the extremely unlikely elevation of Donald J. Trump to the presidency is that he outflanked a huge field of bland Establishment conservatives and forced an astonished Republican Party to take a wild ride with him all the way through November. And it’s true things might have turned out differently if Establishment conservative voters had been consolidated by a single candidate (say, Marco Rubio) early in the primaries, or had a hard-core ideologue like Ted Cruz gotten into a one-on-one with Trump before the deal was all but done. We’ll never know, of course; it’s possible an angry God determined to subject America to a Trump presidency from the get-go as punishment for our sins.

But in any event, the likelihood of an equally large 2020 Democratic field is quite naturally encouraging fantasies about an equally unorthodox outcome in that contest. No, unless Oprah Winfrey changes her mind and runs, there isn’t a Democratic analogue to Trump — i.e., an extremely well-known pop-culture icon who loosely embodies one party’s values and viewpoint while offering some variations that are attractive to certain constituencies (in Trump’s case, nativists, racists, globaphobes, and conspiracy buffs). But as Steven Teles argues, there could be enough clustering of candidates around the orthodox progressivism that Democratic activists prefer to create an opening for someone closer to the center:

“More than a dozen candidates may run for the Democratic nomination in 2020: governors from the Plains states, senators from the coasts, billionaire entrepreneurs. But the most serious so far—Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders—run the risk of falling into the same trap as the main Republicans did in 2015. All of them—even the previously ideologically flexible Cory Booker—are competing for the same section of the primary electorate, one that wants to trade in centrist triangulation for social democratic economics. Given the repeated failures of deregulation, fiscal conservatism, and crony capitalism, this is an understandable instinct. Any one of these candidates could win the nomination if he or she were the only one in the mix. But there are (at least) four or five of them, all clustered around the same positions; come next summer, they will be fighting for the same voters, and as a result, they could all lose. It’s the same bad math that afflicted Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio four years ago, only now it’s on the other side.”

For this to happen, of course, there has to be a conjunction of supply and demand for a different kind of politics. Teles thinks it could be what he calls (following a terminology created by Michael Lind) “radical centrist” politics:

“[P]eople who are economically more left-wing—angry about the powerful moneyed interests who, they believe, have rigged the economy in their favor—but more traditional on questions of social order and skeptical of the nation’s governing elites. New America’s Lee Drutman recently found that these kinds of voters make up 29 percent of the entire American electorate.”

The “radical centrists” include most of those “populist”-oriented Obama–Trump voters Democrats lost in 2016. Teles describes a hypothetical candidate who could appeal to them via redistributive policies that don’t require big government or its clientele-tending bureaucracies, while also taking crime and immigration concerns seriously without becoming Trump-y. And he argues that there are enough voters craving this mix of policies to win a Democratic presidential nomination if the field is as large and ideologically conventional as seems likely at this point.

But where is the candidate who could become, in effect, the Democrats’ own Trump? For Teles, it could be anyone who sees the opportunity and hasn’t already cast her or his lot with the progressive ascendancy in the party:

“Such a candidate may not exist. But the potential Democratic contenders, like Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar, who have not yet fully attached themselves to the left’s agenda, could incorporate at least parts of this appeal. And there may be an opening for a purer version of this ideologically unorthodox Democrat, especially someone like outgoing Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper or former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who has not yet developed a clear political brand.”

Would a standard-brand Clinton–Obama “centrist” of the non-radical variety like Biden generate the kind of grassroots excitement Teles thinks is out there to be captured? It’s hard to say. A Suffolk-USA Today poll released just this week showed Democratic voters expressing roughly equal “excitement” about Biden and a hypothetical “someone entirely new.” Yes, the Democratic presidential nominating process with its strictly proportional delegate-award rules provides a clear path to respectability for any candidate who can win a consistent minority of primary or caucus voters. But then again, the heartland states most likely to support a “radical centrist” candidacy aren’t well-positioned early in the 2020 calendar. And the calendar — particularly now that California has moved up from June to early March — might well enable a progressive candidate to execute the voter consolidation coup that eluded Trump’s opponents.

All in all, a big Democratic field could just as likely produce a front-runner who has high name ID and/or unusually broad support (descriptions that could match not only Biden but Beto O’Rourke or even Bernie Sanders) as some sort of ideological outlier. But this scenario is a reminder that ideological conformity within a political party has its limits. To the extent the major Democratic candidates sound like magpies reciting a formula of single-payer–minimum-wage-job guarantee–stop-ICE, some voters may look for a different tune. And if there is a surprise nominee — left, center, or “radical center” — the horror of a second Trump term will likely keep Democrats in the harness despite their issues with the candidate.

“One of liberalism’s most noble commitments is to advancing the rights of minorities and those who have suffered discrimination,” writes E. J. Dionne, Jr. in his column explaining “How progressives can get identity politics right” in the Washington Post. “Contemporary progressives would lose their moral compass, not to mention a lot of votes, if they cast this mission aside…But there is another strong, if fluid, identity at play in politics and social life: class. What many critics of identity politics are implying is that progressives have downplayed class politics to their own detriment and the country’s. Moving away from a robust focus on the interests of working-class men and women of all races, this view holds, was a mistake on two levels. Liberals lost a rhetoric that can appeal across the divides of race, ethnicity and gender. And they moved away from an approach to politics and policy that would deal with one of the premier problems of our time: the rise of extraordinary inequalities of wealth and income.”

“On the left, the word “intersectionality” has gained popularity as it deals with the cross-cutting effects of race, gender and class,” Dionne continues, “and there is no doubt that progressive politics will, of necessity, be intersectional. But beyond buzz words, progressives must find a politics that links worker rights with civil rights, racial and gender justice with social justice more broadly. In the 2018 elections, Democrats found that an emphasis on health care, access to education and higher wages worked across many constituencies. A war on corruption targeting the power of monied elites holds similar promise. It was a start…In grappling with the tensions entailed in identity politics, we can do worse than to remember Rabbi Hillel’s celebrated observation: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?” Hillel was not a political consultant, but his balanced approach remains sound, electorally as well as morally.”

In “Black Voters, a Force in Democratic Politics, Are Ready to Make Themselves Heard,” Astead W. Herndon writes in The New York Times that “potential Democratic candidates interested in the 2020 nomination have begun reaching out to black leaders and are testing messages for black voter outreach. This courting is particularly critical for white, liberal Democrats like Ms. Warren, Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and lesser-known figures like Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon…There was also a significant generational gap among black voters in the 2016 Democratic primary, with younger black voters significantly more likely to be open to the populist message of Mr. Sanders than older generations, who overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton.”

Herndon’s article also quotes Yvette Simpson, incoming head of Democracy for America, who says, “Black and brown voters are done with you showing up at my church right before the elections,” Ms. Simpson said. The candidates who will be successful with black voters, she said, are the “ones who have strong local presences, who are setting up offices and hiring local people in those offices. It will be the ones constantly asking, ‘What can we do?’ and showing a commitment to come back and do that work over and over again…You can’t just have the one or two black or brown validators as your only connection to the community.” The public appearances and behind-the-scenes outreach by the candidates are commendable, but having an African American on the ticket can certainly help increase turnout among Black voters.

The Washington Monthly’s Nancy LeTourneau argues that the 2018 midterm elections indicate that African American candidates can navigate the politics of race effectively by reaching out to to white voters, while allowing their racial identity as African Americans to be self-evident, rather than making it a major campaign topic. As LeTourneau writes, citing Jamelle Bouie’s “The Path to the Presidency Could Be Harder for White Democrats in 2020” at slate.com: “…In the 2018 midterms, African American candidates like Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum, Collin Alred, and Lucia McBath embodied a response to racism in the way Bouie describes—all while reaching out to white voters in their states and districts. When it came time to address racism directly, no one did it better than Andrew Gillum, perhaps because it is something black candidates have been doing their whole lives.”

As Bouie explains the challenge facing white candidates, “Not because of something inherent to being white, but because—somewhat similar to what happened to Clinton—the increased salience of identity puts them in an awkward spot vis-à-vis the Democratic primary electorate. A substantial share of those voters is black and Hispanic, and many of them seek expansive solutions to the ills facing their communities, from draconian immigration enforcement to entrenched racial inequality. These voters are absolutely crucial to winning the Democratic nomination, and everyone running will likely appeal to them with concrete policies. But white candidates will face the additional task of demonstrating social solidarity—of showing that they understand the problems of racism and discrimination and empathize with the victims…One possible implication of all of this is that black candidates may have the strategic advantage in the Democratic primary. Not because they’ll automatically win black voters, but because they won’t have to demonstrate the same social solidarity. Like Obama, they can stay somewhat silent on race, embodying the opposition to the president’s racism rather than vocalizing it and allowing them space to focus on economic messaging without triggering the cycle of polarization that Clinton experienced.”

At PostEverything, Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, argues, “In terms of fighting on Trump’s turf, let’s make the shutdown the last straw,” and observes, “It starts with the recognition, shared by many, I’m sure, that this “wall” argument is tired, old and boring. There’s a new year starting with a new House majority and given the serious work they’ve come here to get started, it’s well past time to stop wasting energy, time and media space on Trump’s chaos…Yes, the first job of the new Congress is to end the shutdown, but every moment spent wrestling with Trump about an imaginary wall is one not spent on what you were sent here to do…But as the new year dawns, so does a unique, political moment, one wherein a new, diverse, energized majority can try to remind the nation that politicians don’t exist merely to cut taxes for the wealthy, pit economically vulnerable groups against each other and engage in high-stakes fights about fantasies (it’s not just the “wall;” it was also the “caravan”).”

From Julie Bykowicz’s “GOP’s Fundraising Problem: Democrats’ One-Stop Online Platform: Democrats, united on a single platform, gain firepower in online fundraising” pays tribute to the effectiverness of ActBlue” at The Wall St. Journal: “Republicans dominated small-donor fundraising in the era of direct mail and telemarketing, partly because a bumper crop of companies saw an easy way to cash in on the lucrative political industry. But that capitalist ethos has backfired as small contributions have moved online…More than a half-dozen for-profit GOP digital fundraising firms founded in recent years are splitting the political market, while nearly all Democrats use ActBlue, a 14-year-old nonprofit payment processor,” which has raised more than $3 billion from more than 5, 800,000 donors since it was founded in 2004.

In a richly-deserved tribute to outgoing CA Gov. Jerry Brown, Todd S. Purdum writes at The Atlantic: “It is no exaggeration to say that Brown’s tenure as governor of the Golden State—two disparate tours, separated by nearly 30 years, four terms and16 years in all—bookends virtually the entire modern history of California. He is both the youngest and oldest man in modern times to preside over his state, and five years ago he surpassed Earl Warren’s tenure as the longest-serving California governor. He leaves office next month, at 80, at the top of his game, California’s once-depleted coffers bursting with surplus, his flaky youthful reputation as “Governor Moonbeam” long since supplanted by his stature as perhaps the most successful politician in contemporary America…He was a dedicated environmentalist, promoting wind and geothermal energy before those technologies were in vogue, and a visionary when that quality was mocked in politics; indeed, the Chicago columnist Mike Royko, who tagged Brown with his lunar nickname (the governor had suggested California might launch its own communications satellite), could never have imagined that Brown would announce just this fall that the state was contracting for the launch of “our own damn satellite” to monitor global climate change. He was a socially liberal Democrat who embraced diversity when gay marriage was no more than a dream, but he was also wary of partisan orthodoxy and famously tight with a buck.”

A little excerpt from “Shutdowns Always Backfire—Especially on Republicans” by Manhattan Institute conservative Brian Riedl, from The Daily Beast:

President Trump and House Republicans have shut down part of the government in hopes of forcing Senate Democrats to accept $5 billion in border wall funding.

This mistake will almost surely backfire on the GOP.

…This is the fourth significant government shutdown in 25 years. During the three previous shutdowns, the party that held government funding legislation hostage to additional demands experienced a nasty public backlash that inevitably led to a humiliating surrender.

Riedl adds that “In all three cases, an intense public backlash weakened the aggressors’ hands, until vulnerable members decided to stop committing political suicide…shutdowns alienate moderates and independents. While the party’s base cheers their lawmakers’ “fighting spirit,” moderates and independents see a temper tantrum and a government held hostage…the party shutting down the government alienates the swing voters who decide elections. Approximately two-thirds of independents oppose the new shutdown.”

Riedl provides a history of previous shutdowns, all of which ended badly for its advocates. Naked obstructionism is apparently a tough sell with mainstream voters, despite the bellowing of media wingnuts, who Trump thinks speak for the majority.

In their White House meeting with Trump, Schumer and Pelosi did a good job of portraying Democrats as the party of reasoned compromise, in stark contrast to the GOP’s embattled and increasingly desperate “leader.” With the support of McConnell and lame duck Ryan, Trump seems hell-bent on branding the GOP as the party of chaos. When your adversary is engaged in political suicide, get out of the way.

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

White Identity, Consciousness, Racial Resentment.

These terms get thrown around a lot and are seldom rigorously defined. Tom Edsall provides a useful discussion in his latest column on how contemporary political scientists tend to use these terms. One thing it seems to establish is that views associated with these terms are complex and should not be reduced to sheer racial bigotry (especially if one’s goal to move some of these voters away from the Trump/GOP camp).

Edsall’s article prominently cites the research of Duke political scientist Ashley Jardina:

“According to Jardina, “higher levels of white identity are somewhat linked to higher levels of racial animosity.” At the same time, she contends in her book:

A small percentage of white identifiers score quite high on measures of racial prejudice or resentment, but many more white identifiers possess average and even low levels of racial prejudice. In other words, white identity is not defined by racial animus, and whites who identify with their racial group are not simply reducible to bigots.”

There is also discussion of the ever-popular “racial resentment” scale, which is somewhat promiscuously used in political science research. The racial resentment scale is based on “responses to four survey items, with response options ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree for each. The survey items ask respondents if they agree/disagree that (1) blacks should work their way up without any special favors; (2) generations of slavery and discrimination make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class; (3) blacks have gotten less than they deserve; (4) blacks must try harder to get ahead. The index is scaled to range from 0 (least resentful) to 1 (most resentful).”

Edsall properly notes that interpretation of these responses is vexed; these responses–and their associated scale–may not, in fact, mean what many researchers assume they mean. In so doing, he cites the landmark Carney-Enos study, which deserves to be more widely-known.

“There is an ongoing dispute over the use of such questions to measure racial resentment. Jardina acknowledges that “some scholars are critical of this framework” and “argue that racial resentment entangles conservative principles, like individualism, with racial prejudice.”

Most recently, Riley Carney and Ryan Enos, political scientists at Harvard, have sought to assess the validity of racial resentment questions in their working paper, “Conservatism and Fairness in Contemporary Politics: Unpacking the Psychological Underpinnings of Modern Racism.”

In survey experiments, Carney and Enos substituted Lithuanians and other nationalities for African-Americans so that the first resentment question would ask for agreement or disagreement with the statement: “Lithuanians should work their way up without any special favors.” Their conclusion:

The results obtained using groups other than blacks are substantively indistinguishable from those measured when blacks are the target group. Decomposing this measure further, we find that political conservatives express only minor differences in resentment across target groups. Far greater differences in resentment toward blacks and other groups can be found among racially sympathetic liberals. In short, we find that modern racism questions appear to measure attitudes toward any group, rather than African-Americans alone.

Carney and Enos conclude that the “modern racism scales” fail to capture attitudes specific to African-Americans. However, the scales do capture a form of racism, both a general resentment that applies to many groups and a specific failure to recognize the unique historical plight of African-Americans.”

Food for thought. Something to keep in mind when you read the next study linking racial resentment to Trump/GOP/whatever voting.

Dems should not even think about going wobbly on the shutdown. In addition to the stock market meltdown, “An estimated 800,000 federal employees may be impacted by the partial shutdown, either by having to work during it while their pay is withheld until it ends or by being furloughed,” reports Clare Foran at CNN Politics. “More than 420,000 government workers are expected to work without pay in a partial shutdown, according to a fact sheet released by the Democratic staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee. That estimate includes more than 41,000 federal law enforcement and correctional officers. In addition, more than 380,000 federal employees would be placed on furlough, according to the fact sheet.” Dems could not ask for better proof that Trump, McConnell and Ryan govern by chaos, complete with video clips that depict Trump arrogantly bragging about it. Trump and his GOP enablers control all branches of government, and they own the shutdown and the meltdown. Dems must make sure everyone understands it.

At Vox, however, Dylan Scott argues that “Voters don’t hold grudges against the party that shut down the government…They are feeling too fatigued to notice or remember it…The historical record is pretty persuasive at this point: Voters don’t hold grudges against the party that shut down the government…Republicans owned the shutdown in 2013; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made himself famous for reading Green Eggs and Ham from the Senate floor while urging the Democratic majority to defund their signature health care law. Polling at the time found more than 60 percent of the public disapproved of how the GOP was handling the shutdown. In November 2014, Republicans won 13 House seats and, more importantly, nine Senate seats to take a majority in the upper chamber and assume full control of Congress. During this year’s earlier multi-day shutdown, voters blamed Democrats and Trump in almost equal measure. The punishment for Democrats was winning 40 House seats and sweeping back into power in Congress on a blue wave…Surveys already show that people would blame Trump and Republicans for a shutdown now. But there is just little reason to think at this point that there will be any meaningful political aftershocks for the upcoming shutdown. For one thing, it will be a long time until voters go back to the polls. Many of the members of Congress who will be up for election in 2020 aren’t even in office yet. So much could happen before then.”

So, how does the public feel about the shutdown? “According to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 57 percent of Americans think Trump should “compromise on the border wall to prevent gridlock,” reports Dhrumil Mehta at FiveThirtyEight, “while only 36 percent think he shouldn’t compromise even if that means a government shutdown…And that reflects a larger trend — in CBS News polls that have been conducted since July 2016,¹ Trump’s border wall proposal has generally been unpopular, except among Republicans…After the government closed for 16 days in 2013, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that more Americans placed responsibility for the impasse on Republicans than on President Obama. And nearly 3 in 5 Republicans said they disapproved of how their party handled the shutdown negotiations.” However, “in the aftermath of the 2013 shutdown, Obama arguably didn’t escape unscathed: His favorable rating dipped below his unfavorable rating for the first time in his presidency. Government shutdowns can have serious political fallout in the short run for everyone involved.”

For more evidence of GOP government by chaos, read Michael Tomasky’s NYT op-ed, “The Steady Bedlam of the Trump White House,” which notes: “On Dec. 17, Brookings Institution scholars Elaine Kamarck, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Nicholas W. Zeppos released a report called “Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration.” The study analyzes turnover among what the authors call the president’s “A Team” — the few dozen most influential positions within the executive office of the president — and among Cabinet members…Among the 65 Trump A Team members, they find, 42 positions have turned over, for a rate of 65 percent. Seventeen of these vacancies occurred because the person was promoted, 14 because the person “resigned under pressure” and 11 because the person simply resigned…The 65 percent turnover rate for the first two years is considerably higher overall than that of Mr. Trump’s five immediate predecessors. In Barack Obama’s first two years, his A Team turnover rate was 24 percent (Mr. No Drama!). George W. Bush’s rate was 33 percent. Bill Clinton’s was 38 percent. George H.W. Bush’s was 25 percent…If we extrapolate the Brookings numbers out, Mr. Trump is on track to have a four-year turnover rate of greater than 100 percent — that is, to have all 65 A Team positions change hands at least once. All of which makes the ‘Republicans govern by chaos’ meme an irresistably easy sell.

Is it realistic for Democrats to hope that Chief Justice Roberts will become more centrist in his rulings?  At The New York Times, Adam Liptak writes that “Chief Justice Roberts’s voting record has been generally conservative. On issues of racial discrimination, religion, voting and campaign finance, his views are squarely in the mainstream of conservative legal thinking…He voted with five-justice majorities in District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 Second Amendment decision that established an individual right to own guns; Citizens United, the 2010 campaign finance decision that amplified the role of money in politics; and Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 voting rights decision that effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act.” Roberts was the lead staffperson for voter suppression in the Reagan white house. Also, “In June, Mr. Trump won the biggest case of his presidency so far, when Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion sustaining the administration’s order limiting travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.” Nor is there any reason to hope that Roberts will protect worker rights, when threatened by powerful companies. Roberts has shown some moderation in rulings on assylum policy, climate change and health care. Liptak explains, “by casting the decisive vote to save Mr. Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, he transformed his reputation. Liberals hailed him as a statesman. Conservatives denounced him as a traitor.” History shows that a few conservative justices did become more progressive during their tenure, including Earl Warren, Hugo Black, Byron White and David Souter, all of whom seemed to mature in a more humanitarian direction. Still, the wisest course for Dems regarding Roberts is to plan for the worst, hope for the best.

Paul Krugman explores “The Case for a Mixed Economy” at The New York Times, and notes, “the choice is still between markets and some kind of public ownership, maybe with some decentralization of control, but still more or less what we used to mean by socialism…there are some areas, like education, where the public sector clearly does better in most cases, and others, like health care, in which the case for private enterprise is very weak. Add such sectors up, and they’re quite big.” Krugman argues that government directly or indirectly funds about a third of American jobs (15 percent government workers + another 15 or so percent employed in education, health care and ‘social assistance”). He sees a public sector employing a third of workers as a healthy share of a stable economy at present, with room for public sector growth in utilities and possibly pharmaceuticals, as Elizabeth Warren has suggested. In any case, it would help if the MSM showed a little more understanding that most Americans want a mixed economy with a sizable public sector.

In “Other Polling Nuggets,” FiveThirtyEight’s Dhrumil Mehta notes that “61 percent of Americans say they are concerned that they or a member of their immediate family will have to pay higher health-insurance premiums in the next few years, according to a Gallup poll. Forty-two percent said they were worried about themselves or someone in their family having to go without health insurance.” Shutdowns come and go. But the public’s legitimate concerns about health security now seems a more permanent feature of America’s political landscape.

Miles Rappaport and Cecily Hines see “A New Playing Field for Democracy Reform” at The American Prospect: “Perhaps the most amazing thing about the 2018 midterms was the turnout itself. The latest estimates are that 116 million people voted, compared with 83 million in 2014. That striking turnout clearly helped fuel the Blue Wave, both in Congress and at the state level. The turnout of constituencies voting Democratic was even enough to overcome the walls of gerrymandering in many districts, at both the congressional and state levels. In the states, the shifts in state control were not a full-scale tsunami, but they were significant enough to dramatically shift the equation on democracy issues going forward…the results of election-related ballot initiatives were, in a word, stunning. A remarkable element of these wins was that most of the ballot initiatives passed by more than 60 percent, meaning that they had strong bipartisan voter support…Leading these results was the mammoth victory in Florida of Amendment 4, with almost 65 percent of the voters supporting the restoration of voting rights to 1.4 million former felons. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition led an extraordinary campaign that received bipartisan support, including from evangelical churches that believe in redemption. This will be transformative of democracy in Florida…Michigan had two major ballot initiative victories: one that created an independent redistricting commission, and a second, multifaceted initiative that enacted same-day registration, automatic registration, a constitutionally mandated post-election audit, and enhanced voting rights for veterans and military and overseas voters…in 2018, five states passed ballot initiatives that changed the redistricting process in a positive direction: Michigan, Missouri, Colorado, and, in a cliffhanger, Utah, all on Election Day. In addition, Ohio passed a significant reform by ballot initiative back in May as the result of negotiations between advocates and the legislature.”

In “Amid government shutdown, a host of bigger worries” at Post Politics, Michael Kranish, Joe Heim and Steve Hendrix have a quote by “Jon Meacham, the presidential historian and author of “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” who “said the shutdown comes at a defining moment in America, as an anxious public yearns for Washington to calm down and start solving the nation’s problems. “In a sense, American history can be understood as a perennial battle between fear, which manifests itself in a politics and culture of exclusion and defensiveness, and hope, which manifests itself in inclusion and larger-heartedness,” said Meacham, who delivered one of the eulogies for former president George H.W. Bush earlier this month…“We’re now immersed in a fearful time, a moment where we speak of walls and tariffs rather than the free flow of ideas and people and goods. But here’s the good — or at least goodish — news: History tells us that hope tends to win in the long run…“Right now, there’s Trump. But if folks work hard enough, soon there’ll be a restoration of dignity and forward thinking. That’s the task.”

As the federal government partially shut down following a strange series of changes in direction from the president, it’s appropriate to compare and contrast how Donald Trump and Barack Obama responded to his party’s midterm defeat. I wrote about that this week at New York:

The standard reaction to the way the president has behaved since his party’s midterm setback has been to note accurately that he is Donald Trump acting just like Donald Trump. There’s been no “pivot’ (other than his standard minute-to-minute erratic communications), no effort to project a “New Trump,” and of course, no acceptance of responsibility. To the extent the president has even reflected on the results, it has been to deny it’s a defeat at all (which is ridiculous if predictable), or to blame Republican losers for ensuring their own defeat via insufficient sycophancy toward his own self.

Before moving on to the reality that Trump will probably remain Trump right on through to the 2020 election, it’s worth looking back at how the last president reacted to his own midterm defeat in 2010. For one thing, Obama accepted responsibility for his party’s performance, as the Washington Postreported at the time:

“President Obama, appearing somber and reflective after what he described as a ‘shellacking’ at the polls Tuesday night, conceded Wednesday that his connection with Americans has grown ‘rockier’ over the last two years and expressed sadness over the defeats of congressional Democrats who supported him…

“In response to a question about how he felt when some of his Democratic friends and supporters in Congress lost their reelection bids, Obama said: ‘It feels bad. You know, the toughest thing over the last couple of days is seeing really terrific public servants not have the opportunity to serve anymore, at least in the short term.’ Not only is he sad to see them go, he said, ‘but there’s also a lot of questioning on my part in terms of, could I have done something differently or done something more so that those folks would still be here?’ It’s hard. And I take responsibility for it in a lot of ways.’ “

And Obama also made immediate and reasonably durable overtures to the opposition in a way that Trump hasn’t done except in the most superficial (“let’s compromise: do it my way!”) manner:

“He said he told Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the new presumptive speaker of the House, that he is ‘very eager to sit down with members of both parties and figure out how we can move forward together.’ He added, ‘I’m not suggesting this will be easy. I won’t pretend that we’ll be able to bridge every difference or solve every disagreement.’”

These Obama gestures led to the long and murky search for a “Grand Bargain” over budget and tax policy, which didn’t produce any breakthrough (Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to support any sort of tax increase, and Democrats wouldn’t buy into “entitlement reform”) but did arguably help Democrats clarify their side of the argument and position Obama for reelection in 2012. It wasn’t as dramatic as what Ronald Reagan did after his party lost ground in 1982; he accepted two tax increases before rolling to a landslide reelection win in 1984. But both of these presidents understood that going along with electoral signals that they had initially overreached made a sort of reset possible which set the foundation for reelection.

If there is any discernible lesson President Trump drew from his midterm defeat (beyond denying it) it seems to be that he and his party did not go far enough in energizing its base by driving so deep a ravine between the two parties that any talk of bipartisanship would be a laughable ruse. So instead of discussing a “Grand Bargain,” Trump has created a situation in which even a no-brainer tiny bargain to keep the federal government operating through the holidays looks very unlikely. To the extent that his strategy (or lack thereof) going forward relies on confrontation rather than actual negotiation, with (presumably) 2020 preelection polls and then the election results determining the “winner” rather than any policy accomplishments, Congress could shut down for much of the next two years and it would not make much difference, now that his party has lost the House.

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

Let me recommend a memo my old friend Andy Levison has written for The Democratic Strategist site. He takes aim at three myths–dangerous myths–that have taken hold in conventional interpretations of the 2018 elections. I have pushed back against each of these myths in various posts I have written since the election, but Levison does a nice job of rounding up much of the relevant data undermining these myths and putting it all in one place. I heartily endorse his conclusions.