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

Neoliberals in Democratic Party Surrender

Or at least if we mean by that the strenuously centrist, business-friendly, no-big-ideas-please approach to economic policy that dominated Democratic party thinking from the Clinton years onward, there does appear to be some sort of surrender going on. You can see it in the kind of ideas dominating the Democratic policy discourse today, including the pronouncements of Presidential hopefuls. And you can see it in the writings of various economists and policy intellectuals close to the party.

A very clear example of this is recent statements by Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, once Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration. DeLong, who has long insisted on referring to himself as a “neoliberal” (despite, I might add, a tendency to have a pretty left position on a lot of specific issues) said the following on his twitter feed:

“On the center … those like me in what used to proudly call itself the Rubin Wing of the Democratic Party — so-called after former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, and consisting of those of us hoping to use market means to social democratic ends in bipartisan coalition with Republicans seeking technocratic win-wins — have passed the baton to our left. Over the past 25 years, we failed to attract Republican coalition partners, we failed to energize our own base, and we failed to produce enough large-scale obvious policy wins to cement the center into a durable governing coalition. We blame cynical Republican politicians. We blame corrupt and craven media bosses and princelings. We are right to blame them, but shared responsibility is not diminished responsibility. And so the baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left. We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.”

He followed this up with an interview with Zack Beauchamp on Vox, where he explains the thinking behind his surrender. The conclusion of the interview captures the terms of this surrender well:

“I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole.

It’s much harder to believe in those things now. That’s one part of it. The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years.

The other part is that while I would like to be part of a political coalition in the cat seat, able to call for bids from the left and the right about who wants to be part of the governing coalition to actually get things done, that’s simply not possible as of now.

We shouldn’t pretend that it is, or that it’s going to be. We need to find ways to improve left-wing initiatives, rather than demand that they start from our basic position and do minor tweaks to make them more acceptable to their underlying position.”

Very nice Brad. We accept the terms. But I do think that, of all people, Ross Douthat in the Times does put his finger of what could be a problem with this evolving detente within the Democratic party.

“From the mid-2000s onward, the leftward flank of the Democratic Party looked at the country’s changing demographics and growing social liberalism and decided that Clinton’s compromises with cultural conservatism weren’t as politically necessary as they had been (which was true), and that therefore they were free to become increasingly ideologically maximalist on everything touching gender or race or sexuality or immigration (which was … not true).

In this sense the story of the Democrats’ struggles over the last 15 years is a story of a party that has consistently moved leftward faster than the also-changing country, and consistently overread victories — on same-sex marriage above all — as a template for how every cultural battle should play out. It’s a story of a new feminism that’s pushing the party ever-further from the center on abortion, of a new cohort of white liberals who are actually to the left of many African-Americans on racial issues, of an activist base that brands positions that many liberals held only yesterday as not only mistaken but bigoted or racist or beyond-the-pale….

[T]he Democratic Party as a whole…[has written off] the possibility of winning over voters who would almost certainly be Democrats if the party still occupied the cultural terrain that it held in 2000 or even as late as 2008.

Because the country as a whole has also shifted left since 2000, that kind of writing-off will not prevent the Democrats from winning elections; it probably won’t prevent them from beating Donald Trump. But it will stand in the way of any dramatic left-of-center consolidation, any kind of more-than-temporary Democratic governance. And if the center-left feels itself irrelevant in an age of socialist ambition, then taking up the task of rebuilding a cultural center, and a Democratic Party capable of claiming it, seems like the task that might actually be suited to the times.”

Douthat has a point. The winds are shifting to the left on economics, but handling culture and tradition intelligently will still be key to the left’s future. Leave no votes behind!

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

Could Trump Lose Texas in 2020?

Sure he could, though I’d say the odds are still against it. But this could be a surprisingly competitive contest in 2020. The latest evidence for this is a recent Quinnipiac poll of Texas registered voters, which ran several trial heats of Trump against named Democratic contenders. Three candidates, Biden, Sanders and O’Rourke almost tie Trump, losing by 1, 2 and 1 points, respectively. Harris and Warren lose by 7 points and Castro by 5 points.

‘In the key Rust Belt states that Trump captured in 2016, his job-approval rating during 2018 was consistently worse than his national average among whites with and without a college degree, according to detailed figures provided to me by Gallup. This suggests that the most straightforward path for Democrats to recapture these states—particularly Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—may be to find a nominee who can reassure white voters who are cooling on Trump,” Ronald Brownstein writes in “Democrats’ Two Roads to Beating Trump” at The Atlantic. “In almost all the Sun Belt states that Democrats are hoping to contest, by contrast, Trump’s approval rating among both college- and non-college-educated white voters exceeds his national average, according to the same previously unpublished results. This suggests that to flip targets such as Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina, Democrats must find a nominee who can mobilize much greater turnout among those states’ large and growing populations of nonwhite voters.”…Democratic strategists and liberal media commentators are already debatingwhether a focus on swing states in the Rust Belt or the Sun Belt offers the most promising road to ousting Trump in 2020. Some have argued that it’s a false choice for Democrats to prioritize one over the other. They say a strong economic message could allow them to simultaneously appeal to disaffected white voters in the Midwest—especially from working-class families with slow-growing incomes—and excite greater turnout among nonwhite voters in the Sun Belt, particularly young people.”

David Atkins writes at The American Prospect that “The center-left, which has dominated the Democratic Party since at least the late 1970s, has long depended on being the “responsible” party: the cogent, the level-headed, the ones who, as Michelle Obama famously said, “go high” when they go low. Like the real mother in the biblical Judgment of Solomon, they are willing to sacrifice almost any legislative priority in order to maintain the norms of late-20th-century governance, especially so long as no one’s stock market portfolio takes a hit…The problem is that this dynamic between right and center-left is codependent and convenient to the status quo. The far right gets to keep the angry old racists happy; the center-left keeps the concerned vaguely cosmopolitan educated crowd happy. Notably, the donor class and those with an interest in maintaining the current order always seem to come out ahead…The progressive left is simply refusing to play the game. This is partly a matter of fundamental fairness, partly a recognition that this unhealthy political codependency causes a continual rightward drift in most policy areas. But most importantly, it’s a recognition that resolving the environmental and economic crises facing the country is more important than protecting rhetorical niceties and parliamentary traditions.”

At Daily Kos, Egberto Willies explains why “A move to the center is a continued fraud on Americans,” and observes that “Progressives must disregard all calls to move to the center. The status quo is not sustainable, and will continue to screw the poor and the middle class…Too often Democrats panic and instead of expending the effort to defend the practical and mathematical superiority of their ideas, they acquiesce to timidity. For that reason, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other newly elected, unabashedly progressive stalwarts should give hope to many. Republicans are expending a lot of energy to manipulate Democrats into giving up on moving left. Moving to the center would be fatal, and the GOP knows it…It is imperative that we continue to tell Americans, issue-by-issue, how we intend to make life better for them. But most importantly, we need to make the truthful case that our current economic model is a clear and present danger to the personal economy and well-being of most. A move to the center is a continued fraud on Americans.”

In “‘Dems in Disarray’ Is an Exhausting and Flawed Beltway Meme” at Esquire, Charles Pierce writes about the media’s hyping up divisions between Democrats. “The Washington Post would like you to know that the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has degenerated into open gang warfare, and that they’ll be very lucky if they all come out of all this success alive…We all should be accustomed by now to the Dems In Disarray template. (Note the perpetual binary by which the caucus is divided into “liberals” and “moderates.” Conservative Democrats apparently do not exist.) But the apocalyptic prose here has been dialed up to 11.” Pierce also asks, “is it time yet to wonder whether “districts Trump won” is an accurate metric by which to judge the ideological makeup of a congressional district, let alone a proper basis on which a congress critter should vote? What if, in many of these places, the Trump election was a fluke? What if the Trump vote was not ideological in the least but, rather, a desire to hock a loogie at the current political situation, the personal economic circumstances of millions of voters, the dreaded libtard hordes, and everything that’s gone wrong from the mill leaving town to your mother-in-law’s pot roast? What if the unprecedented confluence of events and circumstances that produced this administration* can’t be duplicated, even by the president* whom it installed in the White House?”

Ed Kilgore warns at New York Magazine that as the 2020 race narrows, “if it looks like Trump is in a relatively good position, it may be difficult for Democrats to think about anything other than electability…Will they calmly resolve to unite behind whoever emerges from the abattoir of the nominating process, based on their popularity among Democratic primary voters? Or will they panic and become obsessed about “electability” as opposed to any other candidate quality?..will progressive journalists and Democratic activists neurotically look at horse-race polls every other hour and adjust their views of presidential aspirants accordingly? It’s entirely possible. So in addition to developing an exciting agenda and raising money and figuring out where on a complex primary and caucus map to deploy candidate time and other resources, 2020 Democrats need to develop, update, and document a strong case that they are a good bet to beat Trump. This could soon dwarf arguments over Medicare for All and college affordability and income inequality and other substantive issues even among — perhaps especially among — the most serious progressive Democrats.”

Robert Griffin and Joe Goldman of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group share data from an updated survey which “shows how the public currently perceives the Mueller investigation, including its fairness and integrity, the seriousness of the allegations, and the appropriateness of certain actions that the president might take. It is based on the January 2019 VOTER Survey (Views of the Electorate Research Survey) of 6,779 Americans, most of whom had been surveyed previously as part of a longitudinal panel.” Among their “key findings”: “A consistent plurality of Americans remains confident that the investigation is being conducted fairly (49 percent) and have a favorable opinion of Robert Mueller (41 percent). Interestingly, in the face of intense media coverage and efforts to undermine the investigation, almost a quarter (23 percent) of Americans still don’t have an opinion of Mueller. However, a clear majority (61 percent) still believe it would be inappropriate for Trump to remove him from the investigation…About half (52 percent) of Americans think that members of the Trump campaign had improper contact with Russia during the 2016 election. Almost seven in ten Americans (69 percent) think that it would be serious if the Mueller investigation concluded that Trump or his campaign accepted or sought assistance from the Russian government. An identical number (69 percent) of Americans say it would be serious if Mueller found that Trump or his staff obstructed the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. About six in ten (60 percent) say it would be inappropriate for the president to issues pardons to senior members of his administration…A consistent 44 percent of Americans believe the president should “definitely” or “probably be impeached” — including more than three-quarters of Democrats (78 percent), about three in ten independents (31 percent), and just 7 percent of Republicans.”

If you were wondering how often “every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president,” check out this updated chart, “Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump” at FiveThirtyEight. Among U.S. Senators, for example, Joe Mancin was the Democrat who supported Trump’s position most frequently during his administration (59.8 percent of the time). followed by the recently-elected Kyrsten Sinema (59.2) and the 2018-defeated Heidi Heidkamp (54.8). The Democratic Senators who supported Trump’s position the least were Kristen Gillibrand (12.0), Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley (both 13.0). “Independent” Bernie Sanders supported Trump 14.3 percent of the time, while Independent Angus King supported Trump in 42.4 percent of votes. In terms of votes supporting or opposing Trump, the Democratic Senator with the closest to the median score between Gillibrand and Mancin is Jon Tester, who voted for Trump’s positions 35.8 percent of the time.

From “Time for a change: Can 2020 Democrats break free from the failures of neoliberalism?” by Paul Rosenberg at salon.com: “One of the most striking things about the blossoming 2020 Democratic primary campaign is how much the candidates have broken with the party’s defensive, neoliberal posture of the past quarter-century — a period of time in which Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once, but have nonetheless dominated the parameters of debate. Now, all that has changed. In 2016, Bernie Sanders’ advocacy of Medicare for All was read as a fringe position by a fringe candidate. Heading into 2020, it has polled as high as 70 percent support, and is now a mainstream candidate position, ..Ideally, the Democrats’ 2020 primary campaign could and should involve a full-throated debate about the best ways to realize the full meaning of inclusive growth, including all the non-economic dimensions of recognition as well. It should flesh out specific aspects of what progressive populism means, and how to achieve its goals. It should promote sound policies to advance inclusive growth. And it should reclaim the once commonsense idea that while the market can be a good servant, it makes a terrible, tyrannical master…What voters care most about is the future — what candidates promise to do, and why — and the past matters most for making sense of what they say, for showing they saw things in the past, how they came to change, and how they see us all moving forward in the future.”

“Given the damage the Republican Party has caused with pass two deficit-busting tax cuts for the wealthy over the past two decades, Democrats can argue that they’re the party of fiscal seriousness not in spite of any plan to soak the rich, but because of it,” Alex Shephard observes at The New Republic “Democrats are largely talking about their bold programs in a fiscal vacuum. That should change. Raising taxes to fund Medicare for All and the Green New Deal isn’t just a moral argument, but an economic one. These proposals are necessary to fix a broken health care system that bankrupts hundreds of thousands every year and an broken capitalist system in which a wealthy minority reaps nearly all the benefits of continued growth. While continued discussion of potential drawbacks will undoubtedly make these programs less popular, Democrats need to unite around a message to counter bad-faith attacks from the GOP…The answer is to merge a number of the Democratic plans floated by presidential candidates and politicians like Ocasio-Cortez into a larger program aimed at creating a fairer economy, providing universal health care, and decarbonizing the economy—and to be clear about exactly how they plan to pay for it. The politics of taxes are changing. Now the Democrats need to change their message accordingly.”

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

Time to revisit the Rustbelt vs. Sunbelt debate on Democratic 2020 strategy. This time we have some new data to look at, courtesy of Ron Brownstein on the Atlantic site. Brownstein got the good folks at Gallup to give him white college/noncollege breaks from their state by state 2018 approval ratings (which I previously posted about); the results are quite interesting.

Some relevant topline:

“In the key Rust Belt states that Trump captured in 2016, his job-approval rating during 2018 was consistently worse than his national average among whites with and without a college degree, according to detailed figures provided to me by Gallup….
In almost all the Sun Belt states that Democrats are hoping to contest, by contrast, Trump’s approval rating among both college- and non-college-educated white voters exceeds his national average, according to the same previously unpublished results.”

More specifics on Rustbelt states:

“Among whites holding at least a four-year college degree, Gallup placed Trump’s 2018 approval rating at 39 percent in Michigan and Wisconsin, and at only 36 percent in Pennsylvania—each slightly below his national average of 40 percent among white-collar adults. Among his core supporters, whites without a four-year college degree, Gallup placed his 2018 approval rating at 54 percent in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and at 50 percent in Wisconsin. Those were each below his national average of 57 percent with blue-collar whites.”

Comparing these numbers with States of Change estimates for Trump support among these groups in the 2016 election, there are big white noncollege drops (2016 Trump support vs. 2018 Trump approval) in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and big white college drops in Michigan and Pennsylvania. So all three states look quite vulnerable for Trump.

Specifics on Sunbelt states:

“[Trump’s] support among non-college-educated whites was much higher than it was in the Rust Belt: Gallup found that he drew positive job ratings from 73 percent of these voters in Georgia, 67 percent in North Carolina, 66 percent in Texas, and 61 percent in Florida. Likewise, among college-educated whites,Trump ran well above his Rust Belt numbers in all four states….In Arizona, which has moved into play for Democrats in 2020 after Democrat Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate victory there last fall, 59 percent of non-college-educated whites said they approved of Trump’s performance, but only 42 percent of those with degrees said the same.”

These numbers too show some attenuation compared to 2016 Trump support, which is also consistent with some of the data from the 2018 election about these groups in these states. So there are clearly opportunities for the Democrats here too, especially in conjunction with nonwhite populations that are large and generally very hostile to Trump. As Brownstein notes, white voters, especially white noncollege voters, will probably be much harder to move in these states, making very strong nonwhite turnout particularly important.

But there are reasons to doubt that even strong nonwhite turnout may be enough to flip these states. After all, in Georgia in 2018, Stacey Abrams lost her election, despite stellar black turnout (the share of black voters in that election was actually slightly higher than in the previous Presidential election, which is quite unusual). There just wasn’t enough swing in the white vote. A better model perhaps is Arizona, where Kyrsten Sinema both got very strong Latino turnout and big shifts among white voters (both college and noncollege).

Looking at the big picture then, this seems like a fair summary of priorities:

“Considering all these factors, Democratic strategists generally agree that any road to 270 Electoral College votes begins by recapturing Pennsylvania and Michigan, the two former blue-wall states that reverted most sharply toward Democrats last November. But even if the party retakes both, it would still need to win one more state to beat Trump.

Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC, recently released a strategy memo (linked to below) in which it reaffirmed this consensus by identifying Pennsylvania and Michigan as the two states Democrats are most likely to regain from Trump in 2020. The group then pinpointed Wisconsin as the state most likely to push the Democratic nominee’s vote count over the edge, with Florida ranking next as the state most likely to tip toward the Democrats. The group announced that it will shortly launch a $100 million advertising and organizing effort in those four states.

Josh Schwerin said that toward the end of 2019, the group will also invest in a second tier of states: North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia, three Sun Belt states that Trump won; and Nevada, which Clinton carried….Though Schwerin’s group doesn’t believe Democrats have to choose between the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt, it does believe targets in the latter region may be “somewhat closer” in 2020. “These are states that were blue before,” Schwerin explained. “As Arizona is moving towards us, we are making sure that some of these states don’t move away from us.”

Sounds right to me. Now what candidate is best-suited to pursue this kind of strategy–kind of Rustbelt plus–that is an interesting question. That seems a bit more debatable to me than the general strategy. Let the debate begin!

After a number of writers warned of Democratic incivility given the huge 2020 presidential field, I weighed in at New York with a summary of good advice for avoiding the problem:

We’re now well under a year away from the Iowa caucuses, and an unusually — perhaps uniquely — large Democratic field is forming to compete for the opportunity to face Donald J. Trump in 2020. It is highly appropriate that before the festivities intensify, multiple voice are being raised to remember the wolf at the door before engaging in any intramural fisticuffs.

At the American Prospect, veteran labor political operative Steve Rosenthal offers four “rules” for 2020 Democrats in order to avoid a “circular firing squad” that helps Trump win the general election.

Former federal prosecutor Ken White explains why “Republicans Committed the Classic Cross-Examination Blunder” at The Atlantic: “Republicans committed the classic cross-examination blunder: They gave the witness the opportunity to further explain his harmful direct testimony. They provided Cohen with one slow pitch up the middle after another, letting him repeat the cooperating witness’s go-to explanation like a mantra: I did these bad things so often and so long because that’s what it took to work for your guy. I have seldom seen a cross-examination go worse.” White also faults Democrats for failing to support Cohen’s credibility and seize the “opportunity to build the outline of a case against Trump.” But White undervalues the inspiring closing comments of House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, which put Cohen’s testimony in clear moral perspective — the kind of leadership that impresses voters more than legal score-keeping.

It kind of got lost amid the coverage of the Cohen testimony and Trump’s fake N. Korea summit. But Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats scored another victory by passing “a universal background check bill — which, if the Senate were interested in passing it, would be the most significant gun control legislation in a generation,” according to German Lopez, writing at vox.com. Lopez notes further, “Under current federal law, licensed dealers are required to run a background check to make sure a buyer doesn’t have a criminal record, history of mental illness, or any other factor that legally bars him from purchasing a gun…But the law has a big loophole: Private sellers — meaning unlicensed sellers — don’t have to run a background check. So someone who doesn’t run a licensed gun shop can sell or gift a firearm at a gun show, over the internet, or to friends and family without verifying through a background check that the buyer isn’t legally prohibited from purchasing the weapon…The new bill, HR 8, would close this loophole, although it would leave some exemptions for gun transfers among family and temporary transfers (like lending a gun) while hunting.” True, the bill is limited in scope and it’s not going to pass under Trump and McConnell. But it shows that a Democratic majority means passing legislation that can save lives, a big plus with voters who want something done about gun violence.

“To avoid watching in horror as the Senate slips away forever while the Electoral College map becomes ever more daunting, liberals need a long-term strategy to combat the decline of heartland cities—to turn Clevelands into Denvers,” writes Daniel Block in his article, “To Take Back the Map, Democrats Need a Plan to Revive Heartland Cities” in The Washington Monthly. “To do so, they need to first recognize that geographic inequality did not come out of nowhere. It is not the inevitable product of free market forces clustering new skill and innovation around where all the old skill and innovation are found—nothing makes people in St. Louis or Milwaukee any less talented than people in San Francisco or Washington, D.C. Instead, it’s the result of nearly four decades of policy choices in Washington—such as giving large banks and other corporations in elite coastal cities free rein to acquire rival firms headquartered in cities in America’s interior. This has stripped those interior cities of what were once their economic engines, even as it has enriched the already wealthy coastal megalopolises…Fixing America’s regional inequality would be a good idea irrespective of its political implications. It would increase innovation and GDP across the country. With economies, as with professional sports leagues, having more cities that can compete ups everyone’s game. It would help curb the broader scourge of income inequality. And it would improve our quality of life by making it easier for talented people to stay with family and friends in the communities where they grew up, or to move wherever else they might like to go, rather than being channeled to a handful of overly expensive, traffic-choked megacities.”

Umair Irfan’s “How Trump’s EPA is letting environmental criminals off the hook, in one chart” at vox.com provides a sharable graphic for voters concerned about climate change:

Some notes from a westernpriorities.org study, “Winning the West,” which analyses polling of different groups, including: ticket-splitters; millenial parents; empty-nesters; anglers/hunters; CORE; Cable-news-watchers; and social media users (hover over icon for stats): “The Casual Outdoor Recreation Enthusiast (CORE), makes up about two-thirds of the western electorate. If you like to take nature walks, hike, camp or bird watch you are a CORE voter too. This group is important because they actively participate in outdoor activities that any of us can do. They are passionate about the outdoors and public lands too….87% say public lands, parks and wildlife issues are important factors in how they decide on which candidate to vote for…76% oppose significantly reducing the size of national monuments, including shrinking Utah’s Bears Ears by more than 80 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 50 percent….86% say the outdoor recreation economy is important.”

Eliza Newlin Carney writes at The American Prospect that “Republicans are quietly scrambling to catch up with Democrats in low-dollar fundraising, which was pivotal to the 40-seat pickup that put Democrats back in control in the House, and is increasingly becoming the holy grail of modern campaign financing…The small-donor craze is playing out both on Capitol Hill, and on the presidential campaign trail, where raising large sums via low-dollar contributions—anywhere from $3 to $200 apiece—has become a leading measure of viability in the sprawling Democratic field. In the House, more than three dozen freshman Democrats who swore of corporate PAC contributions on the campaign trail are also test-driving a new “subscription” model of fundraising built around small, recurring, monthly donations…New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has likened the monthly, low-dollar gifts that make up the bulk of her campaign receipts to “Netflix, but for unbought members of Congress.” Ocasio-Cortez raised more from small donors in the midterm than any other incoming freshman—close to 62 percent of her $2 million war chest. She has touted the “Netflix” model as a means to free her from the ‘round-the-clock fundraising that has become the scourge of life on Capitol Hill, and that helped drive a near-record 52 House members to retire instead of seeking re-election in 2018.”

Writing at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Kyle Kodik finds that “Our initial Electoral College ratings reflect a 2020 presidential election that starts as a Toss-up…We start with 248 electoral votes at least leaning Republican, 244 at least leaning Democratic, and 46 votes in the Toss-up category…The omissions from the initial Toss-up category that readers may find most surprising are Florida and Michigan…Much of the electoral map is easy to allocate far in advance: About 70% of the total electoral votes come from states and districts that have voted for the same party in at least the last five presidential elections.” Kondik ads that “We close with the final 46 electoral votes, the Toss-ups. They come from four states — Arizona, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — as well as one congressional district, Nebraska’s Second, which is based in Omaha…Arizona, to us, is the best target for Democrats among the usually Republican Sun Belt states that have been becoming more competitive (a group that also includes Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas). Arizona’s voting is dominated by Phoenix’s Maricopa County, one of the nation’s only very populous counties that is gettable for a Republican presidential candidate. But the trendlines for Republicans in such counties are generally poor, a factor that can’t be discounted in a country where local political eccentricities are increasingly being overtaken by one-size-fits-all trends.”

At Politico, Burgess Everett and James Arkin take a peak “Inside Schumer’s plot to be majority leader” and note, “Schumer said he’s not giving a hard sell to prospective candidates, but that he is laying out the advantages of joining his dogged pursuit of the majority: A chance to control the agenda, potentially with unified Democratic control of Washington in 2021….“We’re finding that people are stepping up to the plate,” he explained. “What I tell anybody who I think would be a good candidate [is] that the Senate is a very good job. I don’t try to dissuade them from running for something else.”…Regardless of the number of headaches ahead for the famous political micromanager, Schumer is in a far better position than he was in 2018 when he was defending 10 seats in Trump country with a narrow path to the majority. Now, he’s on offense — yet how wide his party’s campaign will extend is yet to be determined…Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) are working to get candidates who can transform races that Republicans might otherwise be easily favored to win. Schumer is aiming to persuade ex-fighter pilot Amy McGrath to take on McConnell in Kentucky, as well as Stacey Abrams to challenge Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.)…Schumer doesn’t want to appear too bullish — already eyeing 2022 even as he firms up his candidates in 2020. “It’s better than last time,” Schumer said of his prospects in 2020. “It’s not as good as two years from now. But it’s good.”

In her article, “The Missing Black Millennial” at The New Republic, Reniqua Allen writes, “Black millennials, like others in their generation, are frustrated with the current system. Participation among black millennials in presidential elections dropped between 2012 and 2016, according to Pew, with turnout at 55 percent and 51 percent, respectively. That could partly be attributed to Obama no longer leading the Democratic ticket. But black millennials also supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, while their parents went for Hillary Clinton, an indication that young blacks are disillusioned with the establishment and hungry for the kind of economic freedom promised in Sanders’s more far-reaching platform…Perhaps young blacks are guilty of being that most unforgivable of millennial sins: entitled. But our sense of entitlement does not revolve around avocado toast and CBD lattes. Our sense of entitlement, or at least mine specifically, comes from the notion that the richest nation on earth can provide all of its citizens with basic necessities.” Allen goes on to explain the developing  sense of betrayal of hope shared by young people of her generation and race and how it gets buried in MSM coverage and misunderstood by the public. Her article is a good read for Democratic campaigns.

Seeing a few straws in the wind, I wrote up for New York some concerns about the likely Trump/Republicans demagoguery about racial reparations.

Some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in discussing anti-inequality measures have mentioned the moral rationale for a particular effort on behalf of African-Americans who were enslaved and then (under Jim Crow) semi-enslaved, and are suffering from systemic racism even now. Elizabeth Warren, for example, has made the obvious point that the legacy of slavery and its successor regimes has had a negative impact on the ability of black families to accumulate wealth over generations. Her proposed remedies, especially universal child care, are not actually “race conscious,” and aren’t similar to the cash compensation to descendants of slaves that is usually connoted by the term “reparations.” But there are signs that Republicans looking for a fresh way to appeal to white voters worried about alleged redistribution of resources from themselves to minorities may use the r-word to describe any and all race-conscious rationales for public initiatives. Fox News’ highly influential Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment to the subject last week based on the premise that Democrats are stampeding in the direction of reparations.

Tucker Carlson agrees with his guest after he goes on a rant about how African Americans just need to get over slavery pic.twitter.com/8riQIlUr2I

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 22, 2019

Carlson and his guest are probably canaries in the coal mine in terms of the likely interest of Republicans in adding “No Reparations!” to their “No Socialism!” battle cry for 2020. At FiveThirtyEight, Perry Bacon Jr. explains that relatively strong public awareness of past and present racism does not translate into support for anything like reparations.

But when it comes to acting on these beliefs, notes Bacon, public opinion is significantly more mixed. And sizable majorities reject the idea of “reparations” as they are commonly understood:

“A July 2018 survey from the left-leaning Data for Progress found that 26 percent of Americans supported some kind of compensation or cash benefits for the descendants of slaves. A May 2016 Marist survey also found that 26 percent of Americans said the U.S. should pay reparations as ‘a way to make up for the harm caused by slavery and other forms of racial discrimination.'”

That Marist poll showed 68 percent of respondents, and 81 percent of white respondents, opposing reparations, defined as “money [paid] to African-Americans who are descendents of slaves.”

Now it should be noted immediately that an idea’s unpopularity is not an inherent reason for Democrats rejecting it (as Bacon puts it, “That’s kind of the point of bold ideas — they wouldn’t be bold if everyone already agreed with them.”) And Lord knows Republicans insist on promoting very unpopular ideas, from total opposition to gun regulation to supply-side economics to a ban on all abortions.

But being attacked for a position you do not actually hold is another thing altogether. So far, no 2020 Democratic candidate has embraced “reparations” as the public understands the term (cash payments to all descendants of slaves). But it appears some candidates, led by Warren and Kamala Harris (who called for “reparations” in the form of “investing in historically black colleges, improving maternal mortality rates for black women, and reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system”) may finally begin to entertain the broader question of America’s moral and material debts to those it not only oppressed but robbed.

In his landmark 2014 essay, “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates sought to document those debts in some detail, but concluded that the most important step white America needed to take was simply to acknowledge its falsified history and come to grips with what that means today:

“Reparations — by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences — is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely …

“What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices — more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling ‘patriotism’ while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.”

This idea may not be as controversial as cash reparations, but even if stated honestly, it will become a target for fury among the MAGA folk who believe the abolition of slavery discharged all obligations to African-Americans, and that the falsified past Coates speaks of was one long reign of glory endangered by political correctness and the demands of the previously marginalized. One of the most pervasive ideas of contemporary conservatism (championed, for example, by one of its leading lights, former House Speaker Paul Ryan), in fact, is that liberating impoverished people is best accomplished by denying them any government assistance at all, so as to spur them on the road to self-sufficiency.

So Democrats and the media need to set the record straight on what “reparations” actually mean when discussed by Warren, Harris, and others. But they shouldn’t run away from the inevitable conflicts over what they domean and do propose. They owe a reckoning over racism’s legacy not just to the descendants of slaves and sharecroppers and victims of official and unofficial discrimination; they owe it to their country and its willingness to live up to its purported values.

If that offers Donald Trump another demagogic talking point for 2020, so be it. He’s not going to start telling the truth simply because Democrats tell less of the truth than they should.

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

I wouldn’t say we should be slaves to public opinion data but I think it’s still true that a serious left politics takes these data seriously. And that should be true of reparations and other race-related issues, just as in other areas of concern to progressives.

I therefore applaud the excellent Perry Bacon Jr. at 538 for rounding up the latest public opinion data on a wide range of these issues so we can see what Americans really do think about them. Bacon divides up his survey into three categories: popular, mixed opinions and unpopular. In regard to the latter category he notes:

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

The odds are long that Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau has read or even heard of my book, The Optimistic Leftist. But there are some interesting overlaps in his latest column with arguments I developed in the book and have elaborated since.

Munchau’s critique of contemporary (neo)liberalism is spot on:

“Liberal democracy is in decline for a reason. Liberal regimes have proved incapable of solving problems that arose directly from liberal policies like tax cuts, fiscal consolidation and deregulation: persistent financial instability and its economic consequences; a rise in insecurity among lower income earners, aggravated by technological change and open immigration policies; and policy co-ordination failures, for example in the crackdown on global tax avoidance.

When the financial crisis struck, continental European governments did not take full control of their banking systems, crack down hard enough on bonuses, or impose financial transaction taxes. They did not raise income and corporate taxes to counter-balance cuts in public sector spending. They did not tighten immigration policies.”

He sees European and Trump-style right wing populism not as the beginning of the end but rather a transitional stage:

“I expect the pushback against liberalism to come in stages. We are in stage one — the Trumpian anti-immigration phase. Immigration carries net economic benefits, especially over the long term. But there are losers from it, too, both actual and imagined…..Liberal democracy has been successful at breaking down trade barriers, protecting human rights and fostering open societies. But the inability to manage the social and economic consequences of such policies has rendered liberal regimes inherently unstable.”

And here we get to the crux of it:

“For now, the right is thriving on the anti-immigration backlash. But its rise is self-limiting for two reasons. First, rightwing policies are not succeeding even on their own narrow terms. A wall along the border with Mexico will not stem US immigration flows any more than the re-nationalisation of immigration policies would in Europe. And second, I suspect that immigration will soon be superseded by other issues — such as the impact of artificial intelligence on middle-class livelihoods; rising levels of poverty; and economic dislocation stemming from climate change.

This is a political environment that favours the radical left over the radical right. The right is not interested in poverty and its parties are full of climate-change deniers. Some of the rightwing populists may speak the language of the working classes, but the left is more likely to deliver.

The killer policy of the left will be the 70 per cent tax rate proposed by freshman US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is not the number that matters, but the determination to reverse a 30-year trend towards lower taxation of very high incomes and profits. There would be collateral damage from such a policy for sure. But from the perspective of the radical left, collateral damage is a promise, not a threat…..

We have entered an age that will favour radicalism over moderation, and the left over the right. It is not going to be the age of Donald Trump.”

I agree, however scary Trump and his ilk look at the present time. The left should have the courage of their convictions that they have a better way that that way is salable in a rapidly changing environment. Trump certainly exploited voter anger and, yes, racism to get elected. But he also promised to solve people’s problems — with their health care, with their jobs, with their living standards, with their communities, with their children’s prospects. He won’t succeed. That’s a huge opening for the left, including among white non-college voters.

Nowhere is that opening greater than on the issue of growth that leads to better jobs and higher living standards. The Democratic Party is more or less united around a programmatic approach to the economy that could actually produce such growth — an approach some of us call “equitable growth.” It pushes back on inequality, seeing current high levels as an active detriment to growth, and seeks to combine support and opportunity for the broad middle class with investments to make the economy more productive.

This includes truly universal health care, universal pre-K, free access to two years and some four-year colleges, paid family leave, subsidized child care, higher minimum wages, a commitment to full employment, and robust investments in infrastructure and scientific research, especially around clean energy. In one form or another, all of this is working its way into the policy discourse of Democrats, especially candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

The GOP, in contrast, now harbors a cacophony of different economic approaches, from pure libertarianism to Trump’s incoherent economic nationalism. Astonishingly, the one point of agreement of these approaches appears to be that inequality should be pushed even higher by increasing the flow of benefits to the rich. The idea that ratcheting up inequality will somehow lead to strong growth, better jobs, and higher living standards is substantively ludicrous — and not at all what Trump’s working-class supporters had in mind. When it doesn’t work, they will be upset.

In sum, the left can deliver and the Trumpian populists can’t. In the end, that will matter.

Harry Enten explains why “Donald Trump still shows some strength in the Midwest heading into 2020” at CNN Politics: “…Trump may be able to do exactly what he did in 2016: win the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote…There were four states where Barack Obama performed better than he did nationally in 2012 that Hillary Clinton then lost in 2016: Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If Clinton had won Michigan, Pennsylvania and either Iowa or Wisconsin, she would have won the Electoral College…Iowa and Wisconsin are the most likely to continue to cause heartache for the Democrats in 2020. A loss in both of these states would cause the Democratic nominee to fall short in 2020, if she or he carries all the states Clinton won, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Enten cites polls and evidence showing that “The midterm results from Iowa and Wisconsin generally back up the idea that they are to right of the nation…If the Democratic nominee does, in fact, lose Iowa and Wisconsin, she or he will have to win in a state that hasn’t voted to the left of the nation in the past few cycles in order to win the Electoral College. That may not be such an easy task.”

David S. Bernstein has a different warning for Democrats in his Politico article, “Trump’s Secret to Victory in 2020: Hispanic Voters: Yes, it’s true: The man who wants to build a wall to keep out immigrants is winning over just enough Latinos to get re-elected. Unless Democrats figure out how to stop him.” Bernstein writes, “When President Donald Trump tweeted, on January 20, that he had reached 50 percent approval among Hispanic-Americans, most fair-minded observers reacted with skepticism, if not outright disbelief…So, when even the pollsters responsible for the data Trump was touting—Marist Institute for Public Opinion, for NPR and “PBS NewsHour”—cautioned of the high margin of error for that subset, and a possible over-sampling of Republicans, many on the left promptly dismissed it as an anomaly…In theory, the rosy predictions that once gave rise to chest-beating liberal books like “The Emerging Democratic Majority” are proving true: 2020 will be the first U.S. election in which Hispanics make up the largest racial or ethnic minority in the electorate, according to the Pew Research Center. Pew estimates that 32 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote—a full 2 million more than eligible black voters and more than 13 percent of the electorate. Hispanics figure to constitute at least 11 percent of the national vote, as they did in 2016 and 2018.”

Bernstein continues, “Many expected Hispanics to vote overwhelmingly against Trump in 2016. A Latino Decisions poll conducted just before the 2016 presidential election found Trump had the support of just 18 percent of Hispanics. But the actual figure was 28 percent, which—given Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about immigrants—some analysts and pundits refused to believe from exit polls until further studies confirmed it. That was just as good as Mitt Romney, as the 2012 Republican nominee, did with Hispanics—and it was enough to help Trump squeak an Electoral College victory…Now, here’s the brutal truth for Democrats: If Hispanic Americans are in fact showing surging approval of Trump, he could be on his way to matching or exceeding the 40 percent won by George W. Bush in his 2004. If Trump does 12 percentage points better than his 2016 numbers with the growing Hispanic vote, it pretty much takes Florida, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina off the table for Democrats, who would need to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House…the eventual Democratic nominee can’t simply assume that Hispanic voters will flock to the polls to prevent Trump’s second term. If anything, the challenge for the party looks tougher than in 2016—when it arguably cost them the White House.”

Ruy Teixeira’s post, “Trump Approval Ratings in 2020 Swing States” at the Optimistic Leftist notes that “Gallup has issued its average approval ratings by state for 2018, based on their very large sample tracking poll. It’s definitely worth a look. Short story: in states that are likely to matter in 2020, Trump’s approval ratings are pretty bad. Doesn’t mean he can’t win of course, but approval ratings are a pretty good guide to potential support, so it definitely suggests a challenge for the incumbent President…Caveats: these are average 2018 ratings; Trump may be higher across the board by November, 2020 (or not, his approval have varied within a very narrow band throughout his Presidency). He is already a bit higher this year than he was at the end of 2018. Also, Gallup approval ratings are of all adults not registered or likely voters. This may be of particular significance in a state where there are large numbers of adult noncitizen Latinos or Asians.” Teixeira shares ratings for  “swing states from low to high Trump approval,” including: Colorado, Minnesota 39; Nevada, Virginia 40; Texas 41; Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin 42; Arizona, Florida 43: Georgia 44; Iowa, North Carolina 45; and Ohio 48. Teixeira says he “was particularly struck by the “Rustbelt 3″–Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin–who put Trump over the top in 2016, all being at exactly 42 percent.”

If you’re interested in what the public thinks about taxes on wealth, check out ‘Other Polling Nuggets’ at FiveThirtyEight, in which Perry Bacon, Jr. notes: “More than 60 percent of Americans said that the government should pursue policies to reduce the wealth gap and that they support a 2 percent tax on wealth above $50 million, according to a survey conducted by SurveyMonkey that was published by The New York Times this week. Opinion is more divided (51 percent support, 45 percent oppose) on a marginal tax rate of 70 percent on income above $10 million a year.”

Paul Waldman writes at The American Prospect, “Democrats are already changing the entire political conversation around the economy even capitalism itself. Not only are they proposing significant tax increases on the wealthy, whether it’s higher marginal rates or a wealth tax, they’re also arguing for a fundamental reorientation of federal policy to get at the roots of inequality. Their proposals include traditional Democratic ideas like raising the minimum wage, along with a broad expansion of social supports in areas like health care and child care, and even some revision to the nature of the modern corporation to give workers a greater voice…Every one of those proposals has wide appeal to voters, and every one gives Republicans the vapors. But let’s not forget that in 2016, Donald Trump correctly surmised that despite the fact that unemployment was low and the economy was on a steady path of recovery from the Great Recession, something was fundamentally wrong. The fact that nearly anyone can get a job isn’t much to celebrate if the only jobs available where you live are at Walmart or in an Amazon fulfilment center. When Trump told voters that the system was rigged against them, he tapped into a genuine and justifiable desire for something different…Of course, what he delivered was more wealth for the wealthy and more powerful for the powerful. If Democrats can’t turn that into an effective argument for change, they ought to be in a different business.”

Looking towards 2020, Social Security reform is an issue of concern for high-turnout senior voters. “Now in control of the House, Democrats have thrown their weight behind a measure that would extend and expand the program — largely by asking high earners to pony up, along with a gradual increase in the Social Security tax rate that applies to workers’ income,” reports Sarah O’Brien at cnbc.com. “More than 200 lawmakers, all Democrats, have signed onto the Social Security 2100 Act in the House. Introduced by Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut, the bill would require that earnings above $400,000 be subject to the payroll tax that funds the program…Currently, earnings above a certain level — $132,900 for 2019 — are not subject to Social Security taxation. This means someone who makes $132,900 pays the same amount into the program as someone earning, say, $1 million…A recent poll conducted by The Senior Citizens League of its members explored what they thought the new Congress should focus on. Boosting Social Security benefits was cited by 42 percent, followed by reducing taxation of those benefits at 31 percent (reducing prescription drug prices came in third, at 18 percent).”

Bacon also flags new Gallup poll stats on political leanings of Democrats, which finds that “An average of 54 percent of white Democrats identified as politically “liberal” during the six-year period from 2013 to 2018, according to data released by Gallup this week. That compares with 38 percent of Latino Democrats and 33 percent of black Democrats. There was also variation by education level — Democrats with postgraduate degrees were the most likely to describe themselves as liberal (65 percent), followed by Democrats with undergraduate degrees (58 percent), those who attended college but don’t have degrees (45 percent) and those with high school educations or less (32 percent).”

No matter how well Sen. Bernie Sanders does in the Democratic presidential primaries ahead, he has  shaped the debate in his Party more than anyone else. At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein considers the strengths and weaknesses Sen. Bernie Sanders brings to the contest for the Democratic nomination in 2020, and writes “The biggest question for Sanders is whether he can expand the coalition that he mobilized in 2016—or even, in this enormous field, maintain the advantages he displayed last time. Sanders ran extremely well in 2016 with three groups. Young people topped the list: Sanders won most voters age 30 and younger in 25 of the 27 states with exit polls. Looking across the entire contest, he carried fully 71 percent of younger voters, according to a cumulative analysis of all 27 exit polls by CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta. That was an even higher percentage than Barack Obama carried among younger voters in 2008…Sanders was also extremely strong with primary voters who identified as independents rather than partisan Democrats. He carried them in 24 of the 27 states with exit polls (losing them only in three southern states), and won nearly two-thirds of them overall in Agiesta’s cumulative analysis. He also ran very well among white men without a college degree—carrying slightly more than three-fifths of them overall—while posting a more modest advantage among their college-educated counterparts.” Brownstein also provides a detailed account of Sanders’s weaknesses.