It hasn’t made headlines because it’s a complicated story, but gradual changes in how the Democratic presidential nominating process is going to work were in my opinion worth an analysis at New York:

From the beginning of the modern era of popular control of the presidential nominating process (basically inaugurated in 1972) to very recently, the unrepresentative nature of the first two stops on the road to the presidency, the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses and the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, was a chronic complaint. This was especially true for an increasingly diverse Democratic Party that nonetheless gave two small and very white states (as of the 2000 census, Iowa was 94 percent white and New Hampshire was 96 percent white) protected status as dominant factors in the nominating process.

After the 2004 cycle, Democrats (followed eventually by Republicans) got serious about this problem, and introduced calendar reforms that added two more diverse states — Latino-heavy Nevada and African-American–heavy South Carolina — to the early mix. Super-honkified Iowa and New Hampshire still got to go first, but nonwhite voters got to have a say before the whole deal was done. Indeed, Barack Obama’s successful nomination strategy combined an Iowa win with a dominant performance in southern states with large African-American voting populations, beginning with South Carolina. Hillary Clinton followed the same pattern in overcoming a terrible New Hampshire performance in 2016 by wins over Bernie Sanders in Nevada and South Carolina that put her ahead for good.

The 2020 nominating contest will represent a big leap forward in the development of a more diverse early calendar for Democrats, as Ron Brownstein explains:

“As in every recent Democrat primary race, the 2020 contest will begin in two virtually all-white states, with the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary in early February. But after that the next month of the primary calendar is dominated by states across the Sun Belt where non-white voters comprise a large share, and often an absolute majority, of the electorate.

“This decisive turn toward diversity, reinforced by California’s decision to move up its primary to Super Tuesday, represents a potentially critical new wrinkle in the nomination process. The pivot begins with Nevada and South Carolina, where contests will be held in the second half of February. The tilt toward diversity then explodes in early March when big Sun Belt states from Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in the southeast to Arizona and Texas along with California across the southwest will all crowd together on the calendar.”

This shift may actually be intensified by the fact that while Iowa and New Hampshire have never embraced early voting, their new competitors emphatically have, as my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti has pointed out:

“[S]trategists aligned with potential contenders’ teams are already starting to plan for 2020 by operating under the assumption that early voting in California — the state with the most delegates up for grabs — will start the very morning of Iowa’s evening caucuses, the traditional kickoff. (Vermont’s primary voting will have already begun by that point, if the current expected schedule holds.)

“Usually, all the attention then shifts to New Hampshire directly after Iowa. This time, though, Ohio and Illinois could both begin their own early voting before the Granite State’s day in the spotlight, and Georgia and North Carolina could start the day of New Hampshire’s primary. Then the windows could open in Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, and Louisiana before Nevada’s caucuses, let alone South Carolina’s primary.”

All these wrinkles are likely to reinforce nonwhite voting power, notes Brownstein:

“Through March 17, the Democratic candidates will face significant Latino populations in Texas and California on Super Tuesday and then Florida and Arizona on March 17 …

“Starting on Super Tuesday [March 3], large black populations will vote through mid-March in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Illinois. In all of these states, minorities comprised at least about two-fifths of the 2018 vote, and they reached majority status in several of them, including Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Texas. Given the overall trends in the party, Democratic strategists consider it likely that the nonwhite share of the vote in virtually all of these states will be higher in 2020 than it was in 2016.”

If that’s not enough diversity, New York may move its primary to March as well.

These dynamics will likely help candidates who really do well among nonwhite voters while hurting those who don’t. It could, as in 2008, put a minority candidate in the driver’s seat, though the fact that there are at this point a Latino (Julian Castro) and two African-American (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris) candidates could keep the nonwhite vote split up for a good while.

[T]he former longtime duopoly of Iowa and New Hampshire will still matter in 2020. But they’d do well to elevate candidates who are prepared to excel in the next very difference phase of the nominating process.

 

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

The story, as told by actual research, rather than the wishes of Republican operatives or the fears of Democratic activists, is simple: these laws just don’t have much effect. They don’t deter voter fraud, a minuscule problem to begin with, but they also don’t depress turnout, including among minority voters. This has been the great worry among Democrats, but it appears that, whatever the malign intent of GOP politicians–and it is certainly true that the drive for these laws has been highly partisan–depressed Democratic-leaning turnout has not been the result.

This means that if Republicans are attempting to shield themselves from the effects of demographic change and unpopular policies through voter ID laws, they are failing and will continue to fail. It also means that Democrats who blame election defeats on these laws are also probably kidding themselves. Their defeats, by and large, are due to other factors. If Democrats want to alter turnout patterns in their favor, it is likely far more important to concentrate on things like automatic voter registration than worrying about voter ID laws.

If you’re still skeptical, I invite you to read this lengthy piece on Vox that alludes to the latest study by Cantoni and Pons, as well as summarizes the previous literature. Vox, which tends to be exquisitely sensitive to issues around race, can hardly be accused of being predisposed to ignore racially-biased policy effects. In this case, to their credit, they have apparently decided that the data are the data.

“The study, from Enrico Cantoni at the University of Bologna and Vincent Pons at Harvard Business School, found that voter ID laws don’t decrease voter turnout, including that of minority voters. Nor do they have a detectable effect on voter fraud — which is extremely rare in the US, anyway.

The implication: Despite the legal and political battles over voter ID laws, they don’t really seem to do much of anything….[T]he findings join a growing body of research that suggests voter ID laws have a much smaller effect than critics feared and proponents hoped….

The researchers…looked at how the voter ID laws affected turnout and compared trends to states without voter ID laws from 2008 to 2016.

The results: Voter ID laws do not seem to decrease turnout, even when the data is broken down by race. This held when the data was analyzed in different ways, like evaluating only the effect of stricter laws that require an ID with a photo….

It’s good to be skeptical of single studies with surprising findings, but previous reviews of the research on voter ID laws are in line with what Cantoni and Pons’s study found.

In 2017, Benjamin Highton, a political scientist at UC Davis, conducted the most thorough review of the research yet on voter ID laws. He tried to filter out the studies with weaker methodologies, putting more emphasis on those that were more rigorous. His conclusion: The better studies “generally find modest, if any, turnout effects of voter identification laws.”

So, if you want higher turnout, including among poor and minority voters, get AVR passed and implemented in as many places as possible. Oh, and if you want Democrats to win, run smart, inspiring campaigns.

The following article by Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of ‘The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity‘, provides important strategic thinking for Democrats. It is cross-posted from The Washington Post:

It is the nature of media, especially social media, to magnify differences. Articles and tweets that feature heated, internal squabbles capture many more eyeballs than those that sing some version of “Kumbaya.” And nuanced policy debates are way less sexy than political fights, anyway.

As the field of Democratic contenders for president grows, the relevance of these truths is coming into view. There’s a narrative forming that the candidates are too far to the left, given the centrism of the American electorate. The party is vulnerable, according to this rap, to the very accusations of socialism that Trump has been spouting. Related to this critique is the view that as more moderates enter the race, the major Democratic contenders will form a circular firing squad and benefit Trump.

Most of this narrative — though not all — is wrong.

Democrats are poised to have the very debates we need to have in this country. If they play this right, they will be doing the electorate and the nation a great service, one that can ultimately get the United States back on track. That’s no mean feat, given how far off the rails we’ve flown.

The best way to understand this debate is through the concept of a continuum, a line of options, going from moderate to very progressive. Consider, for example, health care, climate, jobs and taxes. In every case, the Democratic candidates are pointed in the same direction. Their broad, united themes are: (a) to vanquish Trump and Trumpism, including his culture of lies and corruption; (b) to restore a functional, amply funded federal government; and (c) to leverage that newly functioning government to meet the major challenges we face.

The most important insight about this dynamic, one that risks getting buried if the Democrats aren’t careful, is that you would need a high-powered electron microscope to see the difference among the Democrats, compared with the difference between them and the Republicans.

Look at each issue to see how this plays out.

Health care: Here, the Democratic field is uniformly in favor of increasing the role of government in providing access to affordable, quality health care. Republicans, conversely, want the reverse: to increase the market’s footprint and reduce the government’s role.

The differences among the Democrats boils down to whether to take an incremental approach that slowly winds toward universal coverage or one that gets there a lot faster. Candidates on the moderate end of the continuum (e.g., Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota) favor undoing the Trump administration’s sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, expanding Medicaid to more states and holding down private premiums through subsidies to insurers and purchasers in the exchanges. Moving toward the left, some candidates favor Medicare-for-more — say, through lowering the eligibility age or offering a public insurance option to many more people — or Medicare-for-all (a longtime goal of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont).

Climate: The continuum here ranges from indirect incentives on the moderate end — raising the price of carbon through taxing it — to large, direct investments in green technology and the people and communities most vulnerable to the costs of climate change. One can find Republicans interested in carbon taxes, but the party is too financed by the fossil-fuel industry to go after climate change. GOP leadership remains in denial about the problem, actively undermining even the insufficient steps we’ve taken.

Jobs: At one end of the continuum are emerging proposals to provide time-limited, government-subsidized employment for narrowly targeted groups such as those with significant skill deficits or victims of discrimination (e.g., people with criminal records). At the other end is a guaranteed jobs program, providing gainful, permanent public-sector employment with decent wages and benefits to all comers (Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey has proposed such a pilot program). To my knowledge, there are no job programs of any type from Republicans. The most you’ll see is some hand-waving about jobs from an infrastructure plan — but there is no infrastructure plan.

Taxes: Once again, the differences between the parties could not be starker, and the commonalities between Democrats are strong: They all want to roll back some aspects of the Trump tax cuts and raise more revenue to support their initiatives. Though it’s still early, of course, a useful way to view the differences among Democrats is to note the distinction between broadening the tax base by closing loopholes vs. raising tax rates, including on income and wealth that goes untaxed. For example, expect more moderate Democrats to propose getting rid of the pass-through loophole that keeps tax rates low for hedge fund employees and expanding the share of families subject to the estate tax. The more progressive candidates will start there, but they’ll also go further, such as the tax Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) want sot impose the ultrawealthy.

Republicans, of course, want to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy, paid for by benefit cuts for the poor and middle class (usually rendered euphemistically as “entitlement reform”).

No one can reliably tell you where actual voters will line up on these within-group differences among Democrats. There clearly exists a lot of great energy around big, progressive changes, leavened by a lot of disenchantment with the old Republican-lite center-left. But whether more voters go for incrementalism or leapfrogging is to be seen.

Forthcoming debates must answer this question, but that won’t happen if Democratic primary candidates throw each other under the bus, or, more specifically, under Trump’s airplane.

I asked my friend Ron Klain, a veteran of many campaigns (and a Washington Post contributing columnist), about this potential pothole, and he summed it up well: “A debate about ideas is healthy, a debate about motives is not. The Democrats should hash out their differences in 2020 without slashing up one another — not casting aspirations on each other’s integrity, motivation or intentions. It is that latter path that creates an opening for Trump’s reelection in 2020.”

So let the debate about ideas begin. And let the social media hate-fest wither on the vine.

In “How Democrats Can Avoid Turning Their Presidential Primaries into a Circular Firing Squad” at The American Prospect, Steve Rosenthal offers four “Political Rules of Engagement,” which can help insure victory for Dems in 2020, including: Rule 1: Don’t try to stifle new ideas, new opinions, or new plans (“Trump, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and some in the media are painting new ideas from the Democratic camp as “socialist” and “fringe.” They will suggest that the views of every single elected Democrat represents the views of the entire party. This will only work if Democrats take the bait, turn on each other, and, so to speak, eat their young.”); Rule 2: Democrats need a robust debate on the issues instead of misleading or attack ads aimed at tearing each other down (“any debate or opposition should be primarily about the issues, not about attacking each other’s character or running misleading ads to score political points. It’s unhelpful, its counterproductive, and voters see right through it.”); Rule 3: “The Two-for-One-Rule” (“If a candidate spoke negatively about an opponent, people in the audience could remind her or him of the “Two-for-One Rule,” thus compelling the candidate to then say two positive things about their opponent”); and Rule 4: Every Democratic candidate should sign a pledge that they will give their wholehearted support to whoever eventually wins the party’s nomination (“Every Democratic candidate who doesn’t win the nomination should campaign full-time for the party ticket in the fall, as if they were the nominee.”)

At FiveThirtyEight, Perry Bacon Jr. explains why “Elizabeth Warren’s Ideas Could Win The Democratic Primary — Even If She Doesn’t.” Bacon writes that “Warren is likely to be at the forefront of the “policy primary,”– the one-time Harvard professor is perhaps the wonkiest person in the field. And Warren knows how to push her ideas onto the national agenda quite well…The Massachusetts senator appears poised to serve as a progressive policy anchor in the 2020 Democratic field, pushing the field — and the eventual nominee — toward aggressively liberal policy stands…How might Warren have such influence? Because the Massachusetts senator is planning to release detailed and decidedly liberal policy proposals on issue after issue. Her rivals, if past primary campaigns are any guide, will feel pressure to either “match” her on policy by coming up with their own proposals, say that they agree with Warren, or convince the party’s increasingly left-leaning electorate that Warren’s proposals are too liberal.”

At CNN Politics, Grace Sparks reports that “New research from Gallup released Tuesday reveals the party is getting less white, more educated, less religious and progressively more liberal since 2001. Notably, the party’s liberal shift is mostly driven by white Democrats, while nonwhite Democrats make up a larger share of the moderate and conservative wings of the party…In the last six years, more than half of white Democrats, 54%, identified themselves as “liberal.” That’s a 20-point jump from the average in 2001-2006. By comparison, the percentage of Hispanic Democrats and black Democrats identifying as liberal grew 9 points and 8 points, respectively, in that same time frame…College-educated Democrats have long been more likely to identify as liberal than those without college degrees, and the percentage of Democrats who reported having a college education grew 17 points from 2001-2006 to 2013-2018…Those educated groups have grown increasingly liberal over lime, with the percentage of Democrats with college degrees who identify as liberal jumping 16 points from 2001-2006 to 2013-2018. The percentage of Democrats with post-graduate degrees identifying as liberal also jumped 13 points in that time frame, outpacing the growth among people with some college education (12 points) and no college education (10 points).”

“The nascent 2020 campaign is shaping up to be all about radical ideas on the left, with candidates looking toward a populist, progressive agenda that’s distinct from the centrist politics of previous election cycles,” reports Lydia DePillis at CNN Politics. “Already, Democratic presidential contenders have proposed everything from requiring worker representation on corporate boards to strongly discouraging stock buybacks, along with almost uniformly agreeing with the need to provide some kind of public option for healthcare and invest in a “Green New Deal” to fight climate change. Free college, which Sanders floated in 2016, has become a litmus test; and this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed introducing free childcare starting from birth…That means that, all of a sudden, the academics who’ve been quietly working on those ideas for years now are finding an eager audience. Take University of Georgia law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, who has long advocated for allowing the US Postal Service to function as a bank in order to create a public option for financial services — an idea USPS has indicated it would be open to pursuing.”

John Nichols writes at The Nation: “Just as there was in the 1930s, and in the 1960s, there is now an opening for the Democratic Party to fill a void in our politics and policy-making. But to fill that void, the party must be willing to embrace at least some ideas that have been labeled as “socialist”—and to maintain the embrace even when a Herbert Hoover or a Barry Goldwater or a Donald Trump attacks. Social Security was described as a “socialist” program, but FDR fought for and implemented it. Medicare was attacked as a “socialist” program, but LBJ fought for and implemented it. Major strides on behalf of racial justice, gender equity, disability rights, and environmental protection, to implement fair taxation and to provide a safety net, were often decried by the right as “socialist” initiatives—as backers of a Green New Deal are now learning—but, as these policies have been advanced, society has come to the point even centrists and some conservatives recognize their value.”

New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait has a salient comment on the Republicans’s resurrected Socialist Bogeyman: “Possible Democratic presidential nominees Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Beto O’Rourke have all explicitly disavowed the socialist label. Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bluntly told one questioner that the Democratic Party is capitalist…I am old enough to remember when Pelosi was the prototype of the far-left ideology that would make Democrats radioactive in swing districts. (That was less than three months ago.) It is actually a form of progress that the liberal bogeyman has been replaced by the socialist bogeyman. For one thing, it’s much easier for Democrats to triangulate against socialism than it was for them to triangulate against liberalism. Trump’s campaign has given Democrats an easy way to position themselves in the center. All they need to do is say they believe in a role for free markets and reject socialism.”

Also at New York, Ed Kilgore weighs in on the socialism vs. capitalism hoo-ha with another sobering observation: “No, the term “socialism” doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of Americans the way it did during the Cold War, and that’s a good thing for anyone who believes the promise of this country requires a less neurotically intense allergy to government activism in the national interest. But Democrats are making it clear that support for social democratic staples like single-payer health care or aggressive bank regulation are drawn from the practical needs of the citizenry, not perusal of dusty pamphlets from the early-20-century British Fabian Society or any other ideological template. Perhaps Sanders and AOC will yet make American politics safe for socialism writ large. But in the meantime, a progressive take on democratic capitalism is likely to prevail in the marketplace of ideas.”

Even as a kid growing up in Washington, D.C. in the wake of McCarthyism, I became aware that the Socialist Bogeyman was weaponized to bash liberals, smother free speech and destroy lives. Back then, many Republicans preferred to trot out the Communist Bogeyman, but today’s Republicans are mostly content to conflate the terms. My hunch is that most voters who would be receptive to such smear campaigns in 2020 are going to vote Republican anyway. One swing constituency I would worry some about is the estimated 120 million small business operators and their employees, some of whom may associate the term with high taxes and burdensome regulations. Small businessmen and women have much to gain from being relieved of health insurance headaches by a more accessible government alternative, and that’s a net plus for Democrats. But it might help if Dems offered them some additional tax incentives and relief from over-regulation. It can’t hurt to make the Democractic ‘brand’ more small business-friendly in any case.

Kevin Drum reports that “North Carolina Vote Fraud Case Takes a Dramatic Turn Against Republican Candidate” at Mother Jones. Drum notes that “Mark Harris, the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 9th district, has a son. And that son, John Harris, is an attorney. Not just any attorney, either: he’s an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Today he testified about McCrae Dowless, the campaign operative hired by his father to get out the Republican vote: …First in a phone call and then in subsequent emails, the younger Harris warned his father of both political and legal ramifications of hiring Dowless….He spoke to his parents on April 7, 2017, a day after the candidate met with Dowless. “I told him that collecting absentee ballots was a felony,” John Harris said, “and I would send him the statute that collecting ballots was a felony.”…This certainly seems to change things from “poor Mark Harris was duped by McRae Dowless” to “Mark Harris knowingly hired a guy to perform ballot harvesting.” Stay tuned.”

I’ve written about this issue before, but with the presidential field now forming, it’s time to get serious about it, as I argued at New York:

With Bernie Sanders’s announcement of a 2020 presidential candidacy, we know for sure that there will be at least one aspirant for the job who would turn 80 during his first term in office. He’s the second septuagenarian to enter the race, counting the 72-year-old incumbent, though Elizabeth Warren will turn 70 this summer. And the field could soon include another candidate who would have an 80-candle birthday cake in the White House, Joe Biden (a little over a year younger than Sanders).

Will our budding gerontocracy be an issue during the nominating or general election stages of the 2020 campaign?

[F]ans of Biden and Sanders tend to brush off questions about their heroes’ ages by denouncing ageism, touting their vigor as compared to the junk-food-loving and sedentary Trump, or pointing at each other (if Biden can run, so can Bernie, and vice versa). But it was an issue in the presidential campaigns of the two nonincumbent septuagenarian major-party nominees before Trump (Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008 — both younger than Biden and Sanders will be in 2020), whose other unusual features overshadowed his age. So it cannot just be waved away as somehow irrelevant.

Presumably the younger Democratic rivals of Biden and Sanders will bring up the age issue indirectly by drawing attention to their own relative youth and/or their appeal to younger voters (though it will be tough for any of them to do better among younger voters than Sanders did in 2016). But the most destructive way it could arise, especially in the general election campaign in which no vulnerability will go unexploited, would be via a negative health event or some incident suggesting a “senior moment” or some more serious cognitive issue.

Do Democrats really want to take that chance given the existential threat of a second Trump term? And conversely, could they find significant value in a situation where it’s Trump and Trump alone who is vulnerable to age-related voter concerns? Is that a potential advantage that should be casually tossed away?

These are certainly factors that ought to be taken into consideration along with current horse-race polling and other candidate assessments that don’t take terrifying if marginally likely possibilities into account. Democrats have the luxury in 2020 of a vast field of qualified candidates with platforms ranging across the ideological spectrum; it’s doubtful there’s any one candidate who is indispensable. Perhaps testing the upward limit of an intangible maximum age for running for president is worth the risk in order to beat Trump soundly or reward Biden or Sanders for past service. But dismissing the risk involved is plain foolish.

Jordan Weissman explains why “Every Democrat Should Talk About Health Care Like Amy Klobuchar Does” at slate.com. Weissman quotes Sen. Amy Klobuchar at a CNN town hall, in which she plugged Sen. Brian Schatz’s health care reform bill, which lays the foundation for a public option through Medicaid buy-in:

What we need is to expand coverage so people can have a choice for a public option. And that’s a start. And you can do it with Medicare. You can do it many ways. But you can also do it with Medicaid, something I don’t think we’re talking about enough as a potential solution. This is a bill that I am one of the original sponsors of, Sen. Sanders is also sponsoring it, it’s a bill by Brian Schatz, who is a senator from the state of Hawaii, and what it basically says is “Let’s expand Medicaid so you can buy into Medicaid, and it’ll bring the prices down, and we can cover more people.”

Weissman praises Sen. Klobuchar for the way she frames the proposal “if you didn’t particularly like the substance of Klobuchar’s response, I think she deserves credit for being forthright; Democrats would be better off if more candidates talked about health care with her level of candor.” No matter which candidate you support, Klobuchar’s respectful tone could prove effective in winning popular support in the 2020  general election.

But Schatz’s bill is not intended as a final substitute for ‘Medicare for All,’ the health security reform brand most frequently associated with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who just entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as a leading candidate. Schatz’s billI is more of an interim reform on the path to universal health care coverage, one which may have some appeal to moderate Democrats, who are looking for legislation that could pass sooner than any of the ‘Medicare for All’ bills. Weissberg highlights some of the key features of the legislation:

…It would allow states to create public health insurance plans through Medicaid, with premiums capped at 9.5 percent of a family’s income. The policies could be sold on Obamacare’s exchanges and states would be free to include copays and deductibles. In states that adopted it, residents would be guaranteed access to health insurance priced at no more than one-tenth of their income; that’s progress from today’s status quo, where families that earn more than 400 percent of the poverty line have to pay the full cost of insurance, no matter how high premiums rise, and counties can be left without coverage options if private insurers decide to bail. It would also make Medicaid payments to primary care doctors more generous, which could encourage more physicians to accept it. And by working through Medicaid, it avoids the usual Republican attack that Democrats are somehow going to destroy Medicare by expanding it.

Part of the appeal of a public option is that it won’t alienate most voters who want to keep their health insurance, while it allows those who want a public option to try it out. Critics of the approach argue that the economics of universal coverage requires “all-in” participation. No matter which reform is eventually adopted, however, there will be unforseen problems and glitches that need to be fixed. Democrats should acknowlege that reality with an up-front commitment to making the needed repairs, while reminding voters that the Republican “reform” means letting insurance companies have their way with consumers.

Of course nothing is likely to pass before 2021, and then, only if Democrats win a Senate majority and the white house in the 2020 elections. If Democrats win by a landslide margin, a Medicare for All bill will become a practical possibility. If the margin is narrower, the Medicaid buy-in public option may be the more realistic possibility in the short range.

Either way, Democrats should not get suckered into internicine warfare between Medicare for All advocates and supporters of a public option through Medicaid buy-in. Don’t let the debate degenerate into a bitter false-choice exercise. Whichever approach gets prioritized after the election, it’s likely that it will win near unanimous support from Democratic Senators and House members in the final floor vote. Once it is passed, the other alternative will top the Democratic reform agenda. Indeed, expanding eligibility for both Medicaid and Medicare merits support from all Democrats as essential steps toward universal coverage for every American and all illnesses.

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

Now that a little more time has elapsed since the GND roll out, the responses on the left to the initiative have become clearer.

First, there are some folks–I would mention Mike Tomasky and Jonathan Chait here–who see the GND as being net negative because it’s so far over the top that it discredits the Democrats and provides abundant ammunition to the GOP. Tomaksy describes it as “a home run for Mitch McConnell”. Chait describes it as basically bad and a kind of anti-capitalist fever dream dressed up in green clothing.

That seems a bit harsh. Surely some credit is due for putting the general idea into play even if some of the specifics are, well, bonkers. On the other hand, another stream of left commentary is probably much too forgiving of the wackier aspects of the GND. (Examples: Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times; Maggie Koerth-Baker on 538.) The general idea here seems to be that since the basic idea is so good, we don’t really need to worry about nutty ideas that are associated with it. Hey, we’re moving the Overton window here, don’t bother us!

This is not convincing. The possibility and desirability of moving said window does not mean that you can loudly assert whatever wish list agenda you have and expect good results. The Overton window is indeed movable, but it’s not that movable. It still has to respect the underlying structure of public opinion and the state of real world politics.

Finally, there are those who are sympathetic to the general idea but recommend that a GND actually be at least somewhat economically and politically feasible and actually be targeted on climate change. I recommend here the approach of Noah Smith whose Bloomberg column on designing a GND “that isn’t over the top” is well worth reading. Some excerpts:

“I propose an alternative Green New Deal, which would focus on actually defeating climate change. Some of the proposals here are included in the Green New Deal resolution; some are not.

The first pillar of an alternative Green New Deal would be green technology. If the U.S. can discover cheap ways of manufacturing cement and concrete without carbon emissions, and of reducing emissions from agriculture, it will give developing countries a way to reduce carbon output without threatening their economic growth. To this end, the U.S. should pour money into research. The budget of ARPA-E, the agency charged with leading this research, should be increased from about $300 million to $30 billion per year.

The second way to move green technology forward is to encourage the scaling of these technologies. As companies build more solar power, batteries, smart grids, low-carbon building retrofit kits and other green technologies, the costs go down. To that end, the government should provide large subsidies to green-energy companies, including solar power, batteries and electric cars, as well as mandating the replacement of fossil-fuel plants with zero-carbon plants.

Infrastructure spending is also important. The original Green New Deal’s goal of building a smart electrical grid is a good one, as is the idea to retrofit American buildings to have net zero emissions.

Technologies developed in the U.S. need to spread quickly to other countries. All ARPA-E breakthroughs should be freely transferred to other countries….

[A]n alternative Green New Deal should include proposals to make sure as little as possible of the costs of the transition fall on the economically vulnerable. Government infrastructure and retrofitting projects will naturally create many green jobs. The proceeds of a carbon tax can be rebated to low-income Americans, either as a carbon dividend, or through earned income tax credits, child tax credits, food stamps, housing vouchers and income support for the elderly and disabled. These policies combine the goals of fighting climate change and supporting the poor and working class.

In order to sweeten the deal politically, an Alternative Green New Deal should also include some economic policies that aren’t directly related to climate change — but make sure these are things that should be done anyway, and which won’t break the bank. Universal health insurance….should be included [as well as] Increased spending on public universities and trade schools in exchange for tuition reductions, and grants to help lower-income students pay for these schools,…

Finally, an alternative Green New Deal should involve progressive taxes, both to raise revenue for the spending increases and to let the nation know that the well-off are shouldering more of the burden. Wealth taxes and inheritance taxes are good ideas…..

This alternative Green New Deal has similarities to Ocasio-Cortez’s version, but also has key differences. By focusing on technological development and international assistance, it would tackle the all-important problem of global emissions [while] avoiding huge open-ended commitments like a federal job guarantee or universal basic income…Ultimately, this plan would represent the U.S.’s best shot at fighting the looming global menace of climate change while also making the country more egalitarian in a safe and sustainable way. It would be a worthy successor to the original New Deal.”

This makes good sense to me. It’s plenty ambitious but actually has some intellectual coherence as a GND, rather than a wish list. It would likely be more effective and certainly more salable than the original proposal. If folks are really serious about a GND, that’s the direction we need to go in.

“House progressives are set to introduce a revised single-payer “Medicare-for-all” bill during the last week of this month, as Republicans sharpen their criticism of the policy and Democratic presidential hopefuls face questions about whether they support it, writes Mary Ellen McIntire at Roll Call. “The House bill from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., will have at least 100 initial co-sponsors. It comes as Democrats are offering a range of bills to expand health insurance coverage, such as a proposal to allow adults between 50 and 64 to buy into Medicare that was unveiled Wednesday, and presidential candidates refine their positions on what “Medicare-for-all” should mean and the role private insurers would play…The intra-party divisions could complicate Democrats’ hope of keeping health care as a unifying issue and a central theme in the 2020 campaign, building on their capture of the House in 2018 by focusing on protections for pre-existing conditions and defending former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement…“The most important thing for Democrats to do is outline a couple of core principles that they are for and what they mean by ‘Medicare-for-all,’” said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, adding that candidates should focus on broad topics like covering all Americans, lowering costs and the ability to choose their own doctors. “It’s very, very important that we get some of those components and core values out.”…“At the end of the day, what people want is access to affordable health care for everyone,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist and president of the Mellman Group. “People are less concerned about the mechanism through which that’s provided and more concerned about the ultimate objective….Polling shows that most people support expanding coverage through Medicare, but support for “Medicare-for-all” fell when people heard it could cause them to lose their insurance. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that support for a national health plan fell from 56 percent to 37 percent when people were told it would eliminate private insurance.”

Li Zhou and Emily Stewart consider “5 ways Trump’s national emergency declaration could be stopped” at vox.com, including: 1) A joint resolution of termination contesting the status of the emergency; 2) Congressional Democrats sue the White House; 3) Landowners sue the White House; 4) Liberal activist groups sue the White House; and 5) California and other states sue. There is a good chance that all of these challenges will soon be launched. As Zhou and Stewart explain “Trump is issuing the declaration under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which lets presidents issue an emergency declaration but under certain constraints — namely, Trump can only use specific powers Congress has already codified by law, and he has to say which powers he’s using. The act doesn’t define what counts as an emergency…House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday that they were prepared to take multiple routes to try to block Trump’s efforts. “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public, using every remedy available,” they said in a statement.”

At CNN Politics, Priscilla Alvarez explores the question, “Will the Supreme Court stop Trump’s national emergency?” Alvarez notes, “How and where these legal challenges proceed is unclear, but it’s likely they’ll bubble up to the Supreme Court — potentially testing for the first time the 1976 law that formalized the structure by which a president can declare a national emergency…There’s been virtually no litigation in the 43-history of the National Emergencies Act about that statute,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law. “To a large degree, what is about to happen is not precedented,” he added.”…the administration could face legal challenges on what statutes he relies on to merit pulling from funds that haven’t been appropriated for his wall. Trump invoked Section 2808 of Title 10 of the US Code, which allows him to dip into a stash of Pentagon funds that are earmarked but have no signed contracts for spending that money. Section 2808, specifically, requires the use of the armed forces.”

“By validating the Republican efforts to portray Democrats as outside the mainstream,” writes Ronald Brownstein in “Howard Schultz Is Already Helping President Trump: The former CEO has staked out a platform few Republican-leaning voters would endorse” at The Atlantic, “Schultz is helping Trump already. He would help him even more if he runs as an independent behind a platform that aligns much more closely with the views of Democratic voters than with those of Republican voters. An independent candidacy that splinters the vote would reduce the share of the vote required to win, inexorably benefiting a president who has never sustained support from more than about 45 percent of the public. Unlike Clinton, who sought to remake the Democratic Party from within, Schultz could debilitate Democrats…With minorities and Millennials replacing working-class whites in the Democratic coalition, the party is more liberal than during Clinton’s era. But enough voters inside the coalition still share the views Schultz has expressed for him to exert influence within the party if he chooses to. Instead, he’s pursuing a course that may only help Republicans.

In his article, “One blue wave was not enough: Democrats need another in 2020: Beating Donald Trump might not be Democrats’ biggest task in 2020: A second blue wave could reshape history.” Paul Rosenberg writes: “Altogether, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is initially targeting 33 GOP-held seats, for 2020. Chairwoman Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., has declared that “2018 was just the tip of the iceberg for Democrats,” adding, “We have a clear path to expanding our Democratic majority, and by putting our plans in motion earlier in the cycle than ever before, we are demonstrating to Democrats across the country that the political arm of House Democrats is operating in high gear from the start.”…What’s more, the DCCC pointed out, 20 of the 33 seats it’s targeting “are held by an incumbent Republican who has never served in the minority before,” making them especially likely to retire and create a more winnable open-seat race…Pundits have largely tuned out on the House amid the early furor of the impending presidential campaign. That’s a mistake. Just as 2018 was all about the House, 2020 is expected to be all about the White House — with a secondary nod to the Senate. But a second wave election in the House could be crucial for longer-term Democratic success. And making further gains in state legislative races will be crucial to the redistricting process after the 2020 census is complete.”…“In 2020 we can defeat Trump and set up decades of progressive victories,” a Swing Left spokesperson told Salon. “That requires winning the White House, the Senate, key state races that will determine redistricting, and protecting our majority in the House. Put simply, the blue wave can’t be a temporary movement, and it can’t be confined to the House. We need to build a comprehensive and sustained approach to activating grassroots energy to win elections up and down the ballot.”

Rosenberg continues, quoting Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska and chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party: “There’s no question that Democrats need rural voters in order to win back the White House, as well as to win statewide races like U.S. Senate,” she said. “Unfortunately, Democrats have lost an entire generation of rural voters because there’s been this cycle of mutual neglect. Democrats don’t invest in the state parties, and then they don’t have the money to talk to rural voters. We don’t talk to rural voters, so they don’t vote for Democrats.”…One old-timer put it bluntly to her husband at a town hall, Kleeb recalled: “Let’s just be honest, if there’s only one church in your community, guess what religion you become.” Kleeb added that Democrats “have to start including the solutions that rural people are already putting on the table to the big issues facing our country and our party.”…“Real investments have to be made in red and rural states if we’re going to win the White House and critical statewide elections,” Kleeb said. “Specific examples are investing in state parties who know their communities best; opening up our primaries to independents, since we need their votes to win elections; and talking about issues that matter to rural people, like ending eminent domain for private gain, providing broadband access and ensuring competitive markets for family farmers and ranchers.”

At The San Antonio Express-News, Kevin Diaz reports that Dems see a “Texas ‘focal point’ of Democratic congressional strategy in 2020.” Diaz explains, “Smelling blood after picking up two Texas congressional seats in November – along with Beto O’Rourke’s narrow loss in the U.S. Senate race – House Democrats on Monday announced six new 2020 targets in the Lone Star State.” Diaz notes that Democratic strategists see 33 pick up opportunities for House of Reps seats in 2020, and 6 of them arte in Texas. “The targeted Texas lawmakers include Houston-area Republicans Michael McCaul and Pete Olson. Around San Antonio, the Democrats are putting two other Republicans in their sights: Freshman Chip Roy, a conservative stalwart who worked for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, and moderate Will Hurd, who represents a heavily Latino border district. Rounding out the list are Republicans John Carter of Round Rock and Kenny Marchant of Coppell…”All six have suburban areas experiencing population booms and an increasingly diverse electorate. These factors gave Republicans a taste of what is headed their way.” said DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat, in a memo released Monday…Republicans still represent 23 of the state’s 36 congressional districts. Flipping six seats would give Democrats a 19-17 majority in Texas.”

“While Northam is looking to atone for his actions, black organizers and activists say that he has a lot to do before he can be forgiven…Northam declared last week that he will stay in office, promising to help Virginia “heal” and use the blackface scandal as an opportunity to be more active in addressing racial inequality. That hasn’t stopped protests, though, or ended calls for his immediate resignation…Strong turnout among black Virginians, coupled with the fact that 87 percent of black voters in Virginia backed the Democrat, pushed Northam to a decisive victory over Republican Ed Gillespie…With Northam staying in office in hopes of riding out the scandal, the focus now shifts to how he will address the issue moving forward. On Tuesday, the governor’s office released a statement touting Northam’s record on restoring civil rights to people with felony convictions, a group that is disproportionately black. The Washington Post reported last week that the governor’s office is planning a statewide “reconciliation tour”, and Northam will attend a February 21 discussion on race at the historically black Virginia Union University. — From P. R. Lockhart’s “Ralph Northam wants forgiveness. Virginia’s black activists want him to work for it: The embattled governor’s fight for redemption is just beginning” at vox.com.

Lockhart reports that some groups, including the national and Virginia NAACP and county branches of the organization are still calling for Northam to resign. Other groups have have seized on the Northam meltdown to convert the controversy into an opportunity to advance a stronger civil rights agenda. The ACLU has called on him to support a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote for those who have been convicted of felonies. Also, “In a letter sent to Northam this week, an activist group called the Virginia Black Politicos outlined their own set of policy proposals, including the removal of Confederate monuments, the creation of funds supporting black entrepreneurship and Virginia’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and a new office focused on issues affecting people of color.” Virginia’s legislative Black Caucus, which earlier called for his resignation, may be the most influential organization in shaping the outcome. Much depends on whether they will see a way for Northam to continue in office, in light of his record of support for civil rights reforms and the outright hostility to civil rights by Virginia’s Republican leaders.

On reading a description of plans for the first Democratic presidential candidate debates of the 2020 cycle, I put down some thoughts at New York:

[A]nyone who has thought for a few moments about the giant Democratic presidential field that is currently assembling has probably wondered how it will affect candidate debates. Faced with a similar problem in 2016, Republicans devised a poll-based formula for participation in the first several debates. But since there were 17 (or a bit later, 16) candidates in the field, the networks sponsoring the debates divided them into two groups, with the top tier (ranging from 8 to 11 candidates) getting a spot in the main prime-time debate, and the remainder appearing in a prior (but little-watched) “undercard” or “kiddie table” debate.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of complaining about this arrangement from those left off the big stage. But it probably helped Republicans gradually winnow their enormous field into, well, Donald Trump and an assortment of candidates who were supposed to beat him.

Now Democrats are preparing for their first round of 2020 Democratic debates for June, to be sponsored by NBC News, MSNBC, and Telemundo. And with a field that could potentially include well over 20 candidates, the Democratic National Committee has had to face some of the same decisions Republicans encountered last time around. Perhaps because of residual bitterness from former and current Bernie Sanders supporters over the DNC’s role in minimizing the number of debates in 2016 — presumably in the interests of Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton — the party is taking a lighter hand this time around. So while there is a formula for getting on the stage, there’s no “kiddie table,” and if the field is really large, random rules for sorting out participation could lead to some rather interesting combinations:

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

There are few policy questions more important for Democrats than how they’re going to handle the debate about deficits and the national debt. This is because every time Democrats come up with some good new programs that would actually help people and make the country better and more productive over the long haul, the standard response is: we can’t afford it, that would run up the debt, we’ll become like Greece, etc. That is, unless you want to raise taxes to cover every nickel of that spending–and good luck with that.

But the conventional economic wisdom on deficits and the debt is shifting–finally–and that should help Democrats keep their heads on straight about this stuff. It’ll still be a struggle to hold off the conservative attack dogs and their pals in the deficit hawk community. But there is hope that the ideological tide on government spending is turning.

Paul Krugman:

“[T]here are…two big questions [about the debt]. First, how much should we care about debt? Second, will a double standard continue to prevail? That is, will the deficit scolds suddenly get vocal again if and when Democrats regain power?

On the first question: One surprising thing about the debt obsession that peaked around 2011 is that it never had much basis in economic analysis. On the contrary, everything we know about fiscal policy says that it’s a mistake to focus on deficit reduction when unemployment is high and interest rates are low, as they were when the fiscal scolds were at their loudest.

The case for worrying about debt is stronger now, given low unemployment. But interest rates are still very low by historical standards — less than 1 percent after adjusting for inflation. This is so low that we needn’t fear that debt will snowball, with interest payments blowing up the deficit. It also suggests that we’re suffering from chronic weakness in private investment demand (which, by the way, the 2017 tax cut doesn’t seem to have boosted at all).

So in the past few months a number of prominent economists — including the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and top economists from the Obama administration — have published analyses saying that even now, with unemployment quite low, debt is much less of a problem than previously thought…..

[B]orrowing at ultralow interest rates to pay for investments in the future — infrastructure, of course, but also things like nutrition and health care for the young, who are the workers of tomorrow — is very defensible.

Which brings us to the question of double standards.

You don’t have to agree with everything in proposals for a “Green New Deal” to acknowledge that it’s very much an investment program, not a mere giveaway. So it has been very dismaying to see how much commentary on these proposals either demands an immediate, detailed explanation of how Democrats would pay for their ideas, or dismisses the whole thing as impractical.”

Noah Smith:

“[E]conomists’ views on the subject of debt are changing. Economist Kenneth Rogoff, who once ran into criticism for a dubious claim that debt reduces growth, now advocates more deficit spending for the U.K. The IMF has softened its tone on debt, and is beginning to embrace the idea of fiscal stimulus for distressed economies. And Olivier Blanchard, a respected macroeconomist and former IMF chief economist, has a new paper questioning the idea that higher deficits would impose any real cost on the U.S. economy.

Blanchard begins with a simple observation: If the interest rate paid by the government is lower than the rate of economic growth, government debt doesn’t have to be paid down. Instead it can be infinitely rolled over, and as the economy grows, the debt burden will have a tendency to shrink all on its own. Blanchard notes that interest rates on short-term government debt have generally been lower than the rate of nominal GDP growth during the past few decades:…

Blanchard notes that effective borrowing costs may be even lower for the government, since some portion of the interest paid to bond holders gets taxed, ending up back in the government’s coffers. Taking this into account, he finds that during the past half-century, the U.S. almost always could have afforded to take on more government debt than it did.”

Sometimes you just gotta borrow the money. And quite frequently, and especially now, that’s fine.