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

One of the points I made in my book, The Optimistic Leftist, was that “the political dynamic unleashed by right populism will actually contribute to its own demise”. No one paid much attention at this time, since everyone was busy panicking about Trump. But perhaps I wasn’t so crazy, given the way things have been unfolding lately.

Along these lines, I was very interested to see this piece on Bloomberg from columnist Karl W. Smith. Smith is not a conventional leftist; he is rather a “liberaltarian” who is a fellow at the Niskanen Center, the split-off from hard-libertarian Cato Institute. Here’s some of what Smith had to say:

“Trump’s election was supposed to have heralded a political realignment in America. The Republican Party, long associated with the interests of business and more affluent Americans, would now be fueled by the white working class and a powerful nativist sentiment. In the Democratic Party, the interests of organized labor and the working class were giving way to those of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the cosmopolitan elite. The new partisan divisions would be based not on class but on openness to globalism.

To be blunt about it: This didn’t happen. (To be fair, some were skeptical at the time.) Instead, the entire country is shifting in a more populist direction, and Democrats are dominating the policy debate.

Exhibit A is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her off-the-cuff mention of a 70 percent tax rate, which has sparked a national discussion. Polls show that it’s popular not only with Democrats but with a plurality of Republicans. Celebrated left-wing economists argue that high tax rates are necessary to prevent the U.S. from slipping into an oligarchy, a message that is likely to resonate strongly among anti-globalist Trump supporters.

Likewise, Ocasio-Cortez has forced elites on both sides to at least grapple with the economic tenets of modern monetary theory. MMT, as it is known, suggests that a government with its own currency does not need to raise taxes in order to increase spending. So far MMT has faced strong pushback from elites of the left and right. But its basic contention, that deficit spending isn’t as bad as you have been led to believe, is gaining support.

These two propositions — that the government should check the power of private-sector billionaires and should spend freely to alleviate social ills — form the core of the classic leftist platform. And these positions are becoming more influential, not less, in the Democratic Party….

If their nominee in 2020 is someone like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown, then I predict a rapid shift. Democrats would win back many of the white working class voters they lost and cruise to victory. Centrist pro-business Democrats would be sidelined, and the only resistance to the president’s tax and spending priorities would be from Senate Republicans. That would just drive more populists out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic Party, which would enter a period of almost complete electoral dominance.

If, on the other hand, Democrats nominate a more centrist candidate, such as Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, then the uneasy status quo would remain…..

In the long run, however, the end result in both cases would be largely the same. America is moving leftward. And that shift infuses the left of the Democratic Party with an energy that is unmatched anywhere else along the political spectrum.”

Interesting times!

In his post, “How AI-Assisted messaging Can Help Democrats in Shutdown Fight,” At Campaigns & Elections, Michiah Prull, co-founder and CEO of Avalanche Strategy, reports on the findings of a new study of attitudes about immigration conducted by his firm: “Even among first and second generation immigrants—a segment of the American electorate we might expect to skew sympathetic to immigration—there’s a significant portion of voters who express a belief that they followed the rules in order to be a part of this country, and others should too…Americans who relate to immigration through a Fairness lens are very concerned about people getting what they deserve based on their actions. This “reap what you sow” version of fairness is a significant aspect of the moral reasoning that drives support for stricter enforcement of immigration laws…In our research, this value was very clearly tied to a belief that immigrants are receiving a great amount of taxpayer support, while ordinary Americans are left to struggle on their own. We saw this in particular among union members and soft conservative suburban woman, who may express high levels of care and concern for the struggles of immigrants, but feel a strong sense of unfairness about their perception that immigrants receive greater benefits, support and opportunity than their own families receive…Whether we agree with them or not, viewing the current standoff through the lens of these values and narratives explains why the border wall is such a powerful symbol for Trump’s base. For many of them, the wall is a physical manifestation of a deep and emotional attachment to the need to respect authority and to feel fairly treated compared to other groups…By understanding the deep why behind the border wall, Democrats can frame their communications to ameliorate and even attract elements of that base.”

Aaron Rupar shares the results of some new polls at vox.com on Trump’s tanking approval numbers as a result of his shutdown, including: A “Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that a majority of voters — 54 percent — blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown, compared to 35 percent who blame Democrats…A CBS News poll “finds that 71 percent of Americans “don’t think the issue of a border wall is worth a government shutdown, which they say is now having a negative impact on the country.”…The poll “also finds that Americans think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is doing a better job than Trump at handling the shutdown.”…CNN’s latest poll of polls also shows Trump’s approval rating dramatically underwater” with 57 percent disapproval, while a Marist/NPR/PBS poll indicates  “a majority of registered voters — 57 percent — say they will definitely vote against him in 2020” and “two-thirds of Americans want him to agree to a budget without wall funding as a way to end the shutdown.” In addition, an Emerson College poll finds that “57% said it was time to give someone else a chance while 43% said President Trump deserves to be re-elected.”

“At their core, congressional investigations are a form of political theater, which means their success won’t just depend on what Democrats find but how they present it,” notes Amelia Thomson Deveaux in her post, “Could A Slew Of New Congressional Investigations Erode Trump’s Approval Rating?” at FiveThirtyEight. “There is evidence that congressional investigations can erode presidential support, especially when the government is divided like it is now, but if hearings are unfocused, too technical or appear petty, they can either be ignored by the media or dismissed by the president and his supporters as partisan “harassment.” Congressional investigations can be an extremely powerful tool in a divided government — but only if the investigations make a clear, coherent case for executive branch wrongdoing…It is, of course, impossible to predict exactly what Democrats will uncover in a hearing like Cohen’s or in their potentially numerous other investigations, but we do know two things from studies on previous congressional investigations. First, House investigations have tended to be concentrated during periods of divided government. And second, this increased activity or “weaponization” of the congressional investigation process can weaken the president significantly in the public’s eye.”

Also at C & E, Sean J. Miller reports that a new “study backs the effectiveness of digital advertising to increase turnout among Millennial voters in competitive local elections.” As Miller notes, “Researchers Jay Jennings and Katherine Haenschen said their study, published this month in the academic journal Political Communication, is “the first evidence that online ads can positively impact turnout…this is the first study that shows with scientific rigor that exposure to internet ads increases turnout,” Haenschen, a practitioner-turned-researcher at Virginia Tech, told C&E…The research centered on a $50,000 digital ad campaign during a non-partisan May 2017 Dallas municipal election where the mayoral seat wasn’t up…The study was conducted in Dallas at the request of the publisher of the Dallas Morning News “due to the city’ s historically low levels of municipal participation particularly among Millennials.”. Miller adds, “After the Saturday Election Day, turnout was measured using public voting records. Haenschen said they increased voter turnout by 0.9 percent among people exposed to the ads.” She notes, however, that “digital spots are “not the most cost-effective method” for voter turnout. That would be social pressure mailers, which can increase turnout by up to 3 percent. But digital ads, she said, are great for targeting voters for turnout in hard-to-reach areas — apartment dwellers or people in gated communities.“This is a tool that should be used in compliment with broader campaign strategy,” she said.”

If you want to get up to speed on democratic reforms in the states, read Amy Hanauer’s “States of Change” at The American Prospect, which notes a number of encouraging developments, including: “While not perfectly correlated, higher minimum wages, more per-pupil education spending, more health-care access, lower incarceration, and more progressive taxes tend to cluster in states where Democrats have had more power. There are surprises—Massachusetts, Illinois, and Colorado have flat income taxes that fall more heavily on poor people; Washington, despite the litany of pro-worker policies, still has no income tax. But places led by progressives do more progressive things. And it pays off—education, income, life expectancy, and other measures of well-being are generally higher in places with liberal policies.” Also, “Naomi Walker, who directs the Economic Analysis and Research Network out of the Economic Policy Institute, sees more opportunities for state-level worker justice than Americans have had since 2010, when Republicans gained control in many states. “We have a chance not just to get back to where we were but to make advances,” she says.”

“States with a smaller population than Los Angeles County” — a compelling graphic that shows why the ‘two senators for every state’ thing needs to be corrected:

In “Midterms Showed That Midwestern Economic PerformanceCould Decide 2020 Race,” John C. Austin writes at Brookings: “Of course, economic evolution in many of the Midwest’s small and medium-sized industrial cities—which can be viewed as both an economic andpolitical priority—won’t happen overnight. But until then, experts suggest, the winning political path for Democrats in key Midwest states appears to be one of “both-and.” As political observer Ruy Texeira observed in the Washington Post: “Carry white college graduates, strongly mobilize nonwhite voters, particularly blacks, and hold deficits among white non-college-educated voters in the range of 10 to 15 points. Unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016…Democrats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota got all three parts of the formula right in the midterms.”

It’s only January, but If they gave awards for the lamest op-ed of 2019, WaPo columnist Marc A. Thiessen’s, “Trump is being the adult in the room on the shutdown” would be a safe bet for the category. Yes, Thiessen’s cheesey message du jour for the GOP echo chamber was in The Washington Post, not The New York Post. And no, it was not just a rogue head-line writer’s descent into drugged dementia; Thiessen actually went there, as in “Trump is being the adult in the room” a few graphs into the redolent rant.

For those who prefer less unhinged conservative analysis, David Bier’s “Senate GOP Bill Doesn’t Extend DACA. It Guts It” at The Cato Institute offers the following observation: “This weekend, President Trump promised to an “extension” of DACA for the “700,000 DACA recipients brought here unlawfully by their parents at a young age many years ago.” But the Senate bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced to implement his deal does not extend DACA but rather replaces it with a totally different program that will exclude untold thousands of Dreamers who would have been eligible under DACA.” Also, the bill provides “less than 3 years of relief from deportation and work authorization, not a pathway to citizenship.” Bier concludes, “Commentators should not describe this bill as “extending DACA” or even extending that status of DACA recipients.”

Donald Trump’s blatant and vicious appeal to pure prejudice regarding immigrants and immigration has led many progressives and Democrats to respond in an equally categorical way, describing all objections to immigration as simply a smokescreen for racism.

Since opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans are not bitterly anti-immigrant and do not support draconian measures like mass deportation, this reaction does not immediately seem to present a major problem for Democrats in 2020.

But, in fact, it does. While most Americans do not share Trump’s visceral loathing of Latin Americans and actually support a range of positive measures such as providing a path to citizenship for long time, law-abiding undocumented immigrants, a very substantial group also supports the demand that America regain control of the southern border and prevent further “illegal” immigration.

Simply dismissing all these voters as racists who do not deserve any response other than condemnation is a profound mistake–one that will endanger Democratic hopes of winning the presidency in 2020 and almost certainly place the Senate entirely out of reach. Democrats need to provide a reasonable response to the concerns that do exist, particularly among working class Americans.

To meet this challenge, the Democratic Strategist presents the following TDS Strategy Memo:Democrats need to understand how to talk to working class voters about immigration–and not just dismiss them as racists.

Democratic candidates, campaigns and office-holders would do well to read “What Democrats Can Learn From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Her communication style is worth emulating, not dismissing” by Aaron Huertas at medium.com. Some insights from Huertas:

Attention is a limited resource in politics, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., commands a lot of it. She has almost 2.4 million Twitter followers, and media outlets breathlessly cover her statements and policy proposals as well as feckless attempts by Republicans to throw her off her game.

For a lot of Democrats in Washington, this is disruptive. Normally, a freshman member of Congress would command little if any public attention and would quietly sit in the back benches, slowly building seniority over time with the hopes of one day running a powerful committee.

Huertas notes AOC ‘s unique appeal to millennials, who “grew up with a political system that has proven incapable of addressing student debt, income inequality, or climate change. We aren’t waiting for change; we don’t have the time. And there are more of us voting every single year.” Further,

That’s why it’s a mistake for Democrats to try to “rein in” the party’s biggest rising star, as this Politico article put it. Instead, the party should be looking to Ocasio-Cortez for guidance on how to effectively speak to working people, collaborate with activists, and beat Republicans soundly in 2020 and beyond.

Huertas cites  an article on Politico, dissing NY-14’s new congresswoman for being popular on Twitter, and argues that “This idea is so backward. Twitter stars can be great legislators, and having nearly 2.4 million Twitter followers is a very effective way to get out the message about legislation.”

Activists, like Ocasio-Cortez and John Lewis, who have a genuine grass-roots connection to their constituents, have an advantage in educating them and mobilizing volunteers. Huertas adds, for example,

Ocasio-Cortez’s advocacy for a Green New Deal is a great example of combing inside and outside influence from activists to advance an agenda. Several progressive House candidates campaigned on a Green New Deal last year, but the topic received little interest during the campaign. It only grabbed public attention after Ocasio-Cortez joined Sunrise Movement protesters in Nancy Pelosi’s office who were demanding a special committee create a Green New Deal…Did the Sunrise Movement and other Green New Deal advocates get exactly what they wanted right away? No, definitely not. But now the Green New Deal is a new standard for what serious climate policy looks like, and presidential candidates are starting to line up behind them.

AOC’s experience knocking on doors as a Bernie Sanders campaigner and her participation in the Standing Rock protests also served her well. It’s not a bad thing for elected officials to have had significant face time with grass-roots activists. “The simple truth,” says Huertas, “is that there is nothing preventing a lawmaker from actively working with protesters, dissidents, and activists to achieve serious political change. In fact, doing so is smart politics.”

Huertas argues that some of Ocasio-Cortez’s critics are more judgemental about women of color than they are about male office-holders, ignoring the reality that “A big reason Ocasio-Cortez resonates is that millennials actually have members of Congress who represent our generational interests now: eliminating student loan debt, income inequality, gun violence, and climate change…pundits and columnists should be asking themselves how they can market their own ideas more effectively. Because there is a zero-percent chance any leftist politician is going to take their free advice and hand the spotlight back to them.”

In addition, “In many midterm races, the youth vote was decisive as young people broke two-to-one for Democrats. Splits like that are a once in a generation opportunity to build lasting power,” as this chart illustrates:

Ocasio-Cortez “dunks on right-wingers who make stupid arguments with abandon,” notes Huertas. “While other Democrats ignore them or respond in somber, serious tones, Ocasio-Cortez rejects the premise that bad faith arguments should be taken seriously” — and boldly discredited.

This has created an incredible attention cycle online. Every time a prominent Republican takes the bait and attacks Ocasio-Cortez, they simply empower her more by giving her the opportunity to spend a few minutes composing a trenchant tweet, which then gets covered with short posts on dozens of media outlets.

When Republicans tried to bash Ocasio-Cortez for advocating higher taxes for the wealthy, “Instead of taking this argument seriously or posting charts and graphs, Ocasio-Cortez responded by debunking a powerful GOP legislator, questioning his knowledge about policy, and then pointing out why the GOP routinely lies about tax rates.”

It’s about getting engaged with adversaries, being confident and unafraid to confront them with well-informed refutations of their flawed defenses. She understands that “Politicians hate talking about their most unpopular policy positions, such as low taxes for wealthy people,” and denies them any wiggle room. Also, notes Huertas,

Calling out bad faith arguments has also extended to what Republicans call “working the refs.” In Ocasio-Cortez’s case, that means taking on fact-checkers who have rewarded her with four Pinocchios/Pants on Fire ratings for relatively mild errors. For instance, what’s worse: denying the scientific reality of climate change or not precisely representing budget figures from a media story about Pentagon accounting? How about scapegoating immigrants with hateful, dishonest rhetoric or talking about people who aren’t unemployed but are working multiple jobs to keep ahead of the cost of living?

tenIf you’re a fact-checker, it’s perhaps not something you’ve thought about because that’s a value-laden, moral question. But in challenging fact-checkers over what they choose to scrutinize, Ocasio-Cortez has exposed how an overly precise focus on facts can obscure the deeper moral questions at the heart of politics…When debates are broken, challenge the premise of the debate. Don’t obscure the real-world impact policy has. Confront it.

In addition, AOC “has helped foster more debate about the ways “how do you pay for it” rhetoric is selectively deployed for health, education, and environmental protection but not military spending, tax cuts, and other deficit drivers” — a good, and often overlooked point that adds needed perspective on spending debates that can help Democrats.

Huertas highlights the difference in communication styles between traditional liberal Democrats and Ocasio Cortez:

…Prominent Democratic Twitter users like Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Ted Lieu, both D-Cal., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tend to strike a more serious tone and often point out their political opponents’ hypocrisy. These arguments have a lot of reach, but Donald Trump and other Republicans can’t really be hypocrisy shamed any more, so these messages don’t quite have the same reach or impact they had a few years ago.

They’ll also dabble in memes, leetspeak, and slang, but playing along with internet culture is distinct from being born into it, and as a younger person, Ocasio-Cortez’s use of these tropes resonates, is consistent with her bio, and is stickier for audiences.

Finding one’s online voice is different for every politician, but emulating Ocasio-Cortez in this regard means finding novel, deeply personal ways to talk about the news of the day and a progressive policy agenda. That means effective communicators don’t just play along with how social media works. They embody it. Finding ways to be authentic online is incredibly hard, especially for politicians, but that’s the difference between being good on social media and being great.

Huertas distills her debate strategy as, “When debates are broken, challenge the premise of the debate. Don’t obscure the real world impact policy has. Confront it. And speak to people’s moral values and the type of world we want to live in.”

No doubt the nit-pickers will continue to needle Ocasio-Cortez at every opportunity. But there is zero chance that they are going to distract the new Rep from NY-14. Democrats would do well to study and emulate her energetic engagement and refusal to give them the last word.

In his conclusion, Huertas advises Dems to “Embrace that change, including change from the outside, and don’t be afraid to compromise with the next generation.” Good advice, right on time.

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

That would perhaps be a better headline than the Post headline on the web which says: “Trump voters now blame him for the government shutdown“. That sounds like all of them and of course that’s not true. But the fact that outlets like the Post are starting to run stories not about how Trump voters are still rock solid for their man but rather about how some of them are getting fed up is a good thing.

The article while anecdotal is still worth reading, especially since it’s written from Macomb County in Michigan, a storied locus of white working class discontent with the Democrats going back decades. As the article notes, while Trump carried the county by 12 points in 2016, Democratic Senate and governor candidates carried the county in 2018. Perhaps something is going on there and, by extension, in other similar areas in the Midwest.

The article also correctly points out that Democrats would be unwise to simply count on fed up-ness with Trump to close the deal with wavering Trump voters, especially when it comes to the immigration issue.

“The 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest is expected to include a heavy dose of debate over how to balance attempts to win back white working-class voters — those who live here as well as in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which Trump also won — with the energy around ascendant women and minorities.

Those attempts will also draw into question whether Democrats can find a way to articulate an immigration plan in areas like this, where the issue resonates. Trump’s insistence on building a border wall has hardened Democrats, whose most prominent policy now is to stop the wall. They rarely tout their own views on border security, but that issue remains important to many voters in industrial states….

“People do want immigration managed,” said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who has been studying Macomb County voters since the 1980s. “Trump makes it hard because he’s so outrageous. You don’t want to give him an inch. But immigration is still an important issue, and Democrats will have to speak to it.”

A similar point is made by Francis Wilkinson in a recent Bloomberg piece. You might summarize his article as saying “Democrats won’t always have the Wall to kick around” Wilkinson points out:

“[W]hen the shutdown, and the symbolic skirmish behind it, ends, the immigration debate will not. And it’s unclear how much progress Democrats will have made persuading distracted voters to embrace a realistic and humane alternative to Trump’s fantasy and aggression….

[W]ill Americans who have been encouraged to imagine an impregnable curtain of steel be better able to imagine the legal and topographical fiascos that would ensue from trying to build it? Or the handmade wooden ladder that would be used to vault over it? What about a comprehensive alternative that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented and tighter controls on borders and employment?

There’s no way to make progress on such arguments if the Democratic line is simply that the wall is, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, ‘immoral.'”

Exactly. Time for the Democrats to get to it if they really want to win back wavering Trump voters in 2020.

“President Donald Trump’s latest offer of a deal to resolve the government shutdown was an inept playing of a weak hand,” Robert Kuttner argues in “Why Trump Will Lose The Government Shutdown Fight” at HuffPo.”It was never in the cards for Democrats to agree to Trump’s $5.7 billion wall demand in exchange for just three years of protection for the Dreamers plus temporary reprieves for some other immigrants…Trump obviously knew this when he made the offer. He is still betting that the public will accept his argument that a physical wall is needed to protect Americans from an invasion of refugees and an inflow of illegal drugs. But public opinion isn’t buying it…I continue to believe that the final deal will include a DACA agreement in exchange for some increased funding for border security that will include some stretch of physical barrier that Trump can call a wall. He has already back-pedaled on his demand for a literal concrete wall. In the endgame, he can term a mix of electronic surveillance and some actual barriers a “wall,” and declare victory.”

At salon.com, Heather Digby Parton writes, “As the New York Times reported in its massive exposé of the Trump family business going back to the 1960s, Trump was a millionaire before he was out of diapers — and his repeated failures in business were all because of his lack of business acumen. Researchers discovered that had voters known about this, it would have changed the minds of a meaningful percentage of those who voted for Trump. Perceptions of Trump’s business acumen, which are fairly high among voters of both parties, are also subject to a significant shift. When they find out that his daddy bailed him out his whole life, Republicans reduce their admiration for his skills by 9 points and Democrats by 6. These are small differences, but considering how close the election was in 2016, it’s something worth thinking about for 2020…The Democrats can’t give in or this will be the only way he “negotiates” for the rest of his term. That would be a disaster. So, if he refuses to declare his bogus emergency and save face with Ann Coulter, it’s going to be up to Mitch McConnell to bring him the bad news. Ultimately McConnell can call a vote and override Trump’s veto if necessary to get the government open again. So far, McConnell’s been AWOL on the whole thing, but he may have to step up to get the Greatest Negotiator the World Has Ever Known out of his jam — just like Trump’s daddy always did.

Sen. Jon Tester shows how Dems can frame the shutdown. If Trump delivers a SOTU address, Tester would be a strong choice to respond for Dems:

So how wil Democrats handle Trump’s end the shutdown proposal, when it is submitted to congress this week? Stephen Collinson reports at CNN Politics: “Democrats will counter that the House has voted to reopen the government multiple times already but the Senate has refused to take up any measure Trump won’t sign…The House Democratic leadership plans its own vote on a new plan this week to add an extra $1 billion for border security not including the wall. Like Trump’s plan, it is unlikely to end the shutdown but will help rebut claims they are weak on the border…As each chamber takes up dueling measures to end the shutdown and the President continues posturing, it will look yet again like Washington is playing its political games and ignoring shutdown victims.” As Speaker Pelosi responded, “”@realDonaldTrump, 800,000 Americans are going without pay. Re-open the government, let workers get their paychecks and then we can discuss how we can come together to protect the border. #EndTheShutdown,” the California Democrat tweeted.”

A commenter, “Stephen C,” responding to Ruy Teixeira’s “is Trump Losing White Workers?” at TDS, writes, “I would love to see stories of Trump voters who’ve now reached their limit: instead of liberals complaining about Trump which tends to push Trump supporters back in line, we need to gently light up the exit path, from a distance.” It’s a really good idea, a worthy project for major TV networks, perhaps as a special report. A series of interviews with disaffected Trump voters might also provide good audio for radio — the leading daytime news source for working people.

Daniel Politi’s post, “Pence Likens Trump and His Offer to End Shutdown to Martin Luther King” at slate.com notes that, during an interview with CBS News on Sunday, “At one point in the interview, host Margaret Brennan asked the vice-president why Democrats weren’t included in the process to come up with the proposal that Trump put forward Saturday to end the longest government shutdown in history. After spouting his talking points, Pence quoted the civil rights leader. “One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was, ‘Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.’ You think of how he changed America,” the vice president said. “He inspired us to change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union. That’s exactly what President Trump is calling on the Congress to do. Come to the table in a spirit of good faith.” Pence does that with a straight face. He has been widely-ridiculed on the left as Trump’s empty suit boot-licker, not without reason. But I hope Dems do some serious thinking about what happens to that image if he assumes the presidency, which is not all that unlikely and could happen quite quickly. In that event, Democrats would lose ovdernight whatever edge they get from unhappy Republican moderates and other voters who are fed up with Trump’s general nastiness and boorish behavior, but not so much his politics.

For those who have been seething over Mitch McConnell’s betrayal of democracy, Charles Pierce has a blistering, share-worthy take-down at Esquire, entitled “There Is No More Loathsome Creature Walking Our Political Landscape Than Mitch McConnell. Yes, that includes the jumped-up real-estate crook in the White House.” Among Pierce’s observations: “There simply is no more loathsome creature walking the political landscape than the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. You have to go back to McCarthy or McCarran to find a Senate leader who did so much damage to democratic norms and principles…Trump is bad enough, but he’s just a jumped-up real-estate crook who’s in over his head. McConnell is a career politician who knows full well what he’s doing to democratic government and is doing it anyway because it gives him power, and it gives the rest of us a wingnut federal judiciary for the next 30 years…He doesn’t have the essential patriotism god gave a snail. He pledges allegiance to his donors, and they get what they want. He’s selling out his country, and he’s doing it in real-time and out in the open. This is worse than McCarthy or McCarran ever were. Mitch McConnell is the the thief of the nation’s soul.”

Andrew Prokop explores the pros and cons of Democrats pursuing impeachment at Vox, and concludes that “In the end, while Democrats may have a host of disagreements on impeachment, the real decision-makers on whether Trump may one day be convicted and removed from office are Senate Republicans…The bar for convicting an impeached president is high — the votes of 67 senators, two-thirds of the chamber, would be necessary…Since Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a 53-47 majority, that means that even if all 47 Democrats voted to convict Trump — including moderates like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — they would need another 20 Republicans votes to make it happen…That’s grown tougher to imagine after two years of Trump exerting his dominance over the GOP Senate caucus. With a few exceptions, the vast majority of Republican senators try desperately to avoid high-profile spats with the president. They have to face primary voters, and fear that attacks from Trump could sink their careers…It’s hard to envision this changing without one of two things: an utter collapse in Trump’s popularity (well below his current 40 percent overall approval and his 89 percent approval with Republicans) that would make the party expect a total wipeout in 2020; or some indisputable, incredibly damning evidence of an extremely serious crime. (Even that might not do it.)”

Both NBC and ABC web pages have-round up reports on various Democratic presidential candidates participation in MLK holiday events marking Dr. King’s 90th birthday across the nation. You may also want to check out John Blake’s in-depth report, “A new Supreme Court is poised to take a chunk out of MLK’s legacy” at CNN.

Like a lot of observers, I had a sense of deja vu after hearing calls for a strike of TSA workers who are toiling without pay, and I wrote about it at New York:

As Trump’s partial government shutdown drags on with no end in sight, attention is beginning to shift from furloughed federal workers and unperformed tasks to “essential” federal employees who are being forced to work without pay. Their ranks swelled this week as the administration “recalled” an estimated 46,000 furloughed workers, the majority of them at the IRS, where the GOP’s precious tax cuts are being doled out via endangered refunds.

Many of the “essential” employees are at work on chores remote from the public eye, such as processing oil-drilling paperwork for the nation’s extremely vital fossil-fuel industry, already reeling from years of Democratic persecution. Even IRS staff are invisible to most taxpayers lucky enough to avoid audits or other enforcement actions. And so the most visible symbol of involuntary servitude during the shutdown has become the 51,000 employees of the Transportation Security Administration. For anyone who flies, they are essential employees indeed, and the rising number who are calling in sick to protest the situation have already caused serious airport delays.

The union representing TSA employees has gone to court to challenge the work-without-pay system, but a parallel petition by the union representing IRS employees was rejected earlier this week by a federal judge who warned of chaos if unpaid workers were allowed to go home until pay is appropriated. So each day that passes without progress toward a resolution of the stalemate in Washington increases the possibility of the previously unimaginable: a TSA strike.

This specter was raised publicly in a New York Times op-ed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Gary Stevenson, who noted the relatively low pay (a starting wage of $23,000) and high visibility of TSA agents, plus the possibility that they could build on last year’s wave of public-sector labor activism:

“T. S.A. workers should use last year’s teachers’ strikes as a model. They were called not by the leadership of the teachers’ unions but by the rank and file. It was a new kind of labor activism, starting at the bottom and depending heavily on community support. By sticking together and creating their own communication system, the teachers succeeded in sending a powerful message of solidarity and strength.”

But Ehrenreich and Stevenson also acknowledge a specter haunting the potential TSA strike that could shut down the nation’s airports:

“In 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization struck over wages and working conditions, prompting President Ronald Reagan to fire 11,000 highly skilled workers, replacing them with military personnel. Patco was destroyed and unions in general retreated into a defensive crouch. Who wants to risk something like that again?”

That’s a good question. Reagan’s decision to fight the illegal strike was risky and curtailed air travel for quite some time. But it worked wonders for him politically, as Joseph McCartin observed years later:

“He showed federal workers and Soviet leaders alike how tough he could be. Although there were 39 illegal work stoppages against the federal government between 1962 and 1981, no significant federal job actions followed Reagan’s firing of the Patco strikers. His forceful handling of the walkout, meanwhile, impressed the Soviets, strengthening his hand in the talks he later pursued with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.”

Whatever it did or didn’t accomplish in concrete terms, the PATCO strike and its aftermath became a key part of the Reagan mythos and the enduring adulation he earned from conservatives. You could see how that example might be appealing to his current successor, who views himself as a world-historical figure fighting resolutely for America against a host of subversive forces.

So just to play this out, if TSA workers did go on strike, could Trump respond the way Reagan did? That’s unclear. On the one hand, there is no military equivalent to the armies of TSA screeners deployed at U.S. airports. On the other, screening is a vastly less complex process than air traffic control functions; presumably military personnel could be trained to take on screening responsibilities with reasonable dispatch.

The politics of breaking a TSA strike are not entirely clear, either. PATCO members struck over standard collective-bargaining issues like pay, benefits, and working conditions. The federal government has clearly breached its contract with TSA employees, and nobody supports the travesty of extended involuntary work without pay, even if pay is guaranteed (as it has been in legislation passed by Congress and signed by Trump) when the shutdown is finally resolved. In addition, Trump has the alternative remedy of simply letting the federal government reopen and continuing his fight with Democrats over his border-wall fetish without the hostages he’s chosen to take. And in the final analysis, Trump, the border wall, and the shutdown are all significantly less popular than Ronald Reagan was in 1981.

Still, one can imagine malevolent aides whispering in Trump’s ear that breaking a public employee strike could be a legacy-making “accomplishment,” much like it was for Reagan, and long before that, for Calvin Coolidge, whose successful battle against a Boston police strike in 1919 led to his vice-presidential nomination in 1920 and his ascension to the presidency on the death of Warren Harding.

A TSA strike might push him to an impulsive action a more prudent executive would avoid like the plague. But for unpaid workers and those spoiling for a definitive fight with Trump, it might be worth the risk to defy him.

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

Maybe Trump Will Finally Get Tired of Winning!

The latest CNN poll finds him tanking among white noncollege voters, the very folks who tend to be his staunchest supporters and who–in Trump’s theory, if we can dignify his bizarre mix of gut instinct and reality show street smarts by the word “theory”–were supposed to be utterly delighted to have him shut down the government to get the border wall.

It doesn’t seem to be working:

Josh Marshall explains why “Politics Aside, Pelosi Made the Right Decision on SOTU” at Talking Points Memo’s Edblog: “Nancy Pelosi is clearly playing hardball by essentially disinviting President Trump from giving a State of the Union address at the end of January. It’s a good move in terms of political leverage and to make a point. But it’s good for a reason that goes beyond political posturing or negotiation. It’s the same reason it was a good thing that Democratic senators are refusing to move bills on non-budgetary issues until the shutdown ends…The President has deliberately, intentionally stopped the federal government from functioning, except on certain continuity over government bases, to force an issue that has little public support and which he’s unwilling to bargain over through a normal legislative process. That’s not okay and we can’t allow it to migrate into becoming normal. The foundational role of the federal government and the essential responsibility of those who run it is that it runs. It isn’t security or the general welfare or anything else. It’s to run it. It’s no different from the fundamental responsibility of the electrical utility, which is that the electricity works. It’s critical to preserve the reality that this is a crisis and really nothing can be discussed or dealt with before this crisis is addressed.”

Paul Glastris envisions “How Democrats Solve Their Geography Problem” at The Washington Monthly.  “The challenge is not only that Democrats have hemorrhaged support in economically declining rural areas. It’s also that metro areas in red and purple states, which generally support Democrats, haven’t been growing enough to offset those rural losses. Instead, growth in income and opportunity has overwhelmingly flowed to a handful of large metro areas on or near the coasts—precisely the places where Democrats are wracking up millions of “wasted” votes…Democrats can fix their geography problem, our latest issue argues, only by confronting this regional economic inequality. And the best and only way to do that is to reverse the national policies that caused the problem in the first place: the abandonment of antitrust and other measures that once ensured that every part of the country could compete economically, which has since enabled the rise of monopoly firms that cluster opportunity in a few lucky coastal megacities like San Francisco and New York…In the short term, committing to that path could help Democrats make inroads among the rural voters they desperately need to woo back…Over the longer haul, anti-monopoly policies could empower small and midsize cities to compete for business, economic growth, and residents—and take away the GOP’s geographic advantage for good.”

“It’s still hard to gauge how this might play out for the president politically—he appears to have no actual strategy—even as the suffering brought by a lack of pay comes into sharper focus,” Matt Taylor writes in “Trump’s Shutdown Is a Savage Assault on the Working Class” at vice.com. “But the saga is not playing well in swing districts and some of the key electoral turf where Trump peeled off working-class votes from Democrats to win in 2016. Class consciousness may not be at an all-time high in this country, and public employees have long engendered resentmentfrom Americans who may be angry at the decline of manufacturing and other industries. But the specter of a rich man deigning to shell out a few thousand bucks on fast food for college football players while public servants worry about putting food on their tables probably isn’t doing him (or the conservative movement he represents a freak mutation of) any favors…We’ll have to wait and see whether this ends up worse for those who aspire to do good for the country or the party that has embraced the “deconstruction of the administrative state” as a core philosophy. If nothing else, it’s increasingly obvious the shutdown isn’t some kind of coherent political gambit so much as an unadulterated expression of class rage from top down.

From “Credit Where It’s Due: Democratic Leaders Have Not Caved Like a Bunch of Weenies on the Border Wall” by Ben Mathis-Lilley at slate.com: “One of the criticisms of the Democratic Party that has been made approximately one billion times since Barack Obama took power in 2008 is that its leaders are too quick to compromise. From the decision to leave the “public option” out of the Affordable Care Act, to Obama’s offer to make cuts to entitlement programs in 2013, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s agreement to “fast-track” the confirmation of judicial nominees in October 2018, a pattern has emerged: Dems bend over backwards to make concessions to Republican interests and talking points but Republicans never, ever return the favor…The border wall-shutdown standoff is exactly the kind of situation in which another Democratic fold would seem to be, er, in the cards. And yet not only have Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi not folded, it doesn’t seem like they’ve even thought about folding, despite some grumbling by new House members from swing districts. It’s gotten to the point where Donald Trump invited several centrist-ish rank-and-file Democrats to have lunch with him Tuesday without caucus leaders, ostensibly to woo and seduce them, but it didn’t work; none of them went. Democrats: Not in disarray! They also, per multiple polls, hold the significantly more popular position on just about every shutdown and wall-related question—and looking forward, an ABC-Washington Post survey found that respondents opposed Trump’s oft-threatened plan to launch the wall project via a declaration of national emergency by a blowout-level, mercy-rule 66–31 margin.”

In his post, “The Shutdown Is Hurting Trump’s Approval Rating. But Will It Hurt Him in 2020?,” Nate Silver argues at FiveThirtyEight that “Trump’s increasingly negative ratings match polling showing Americans growing concerned about the shutdown and disliking Trump’s handling of it. In a Marist College poll that was released this week, for example, 61 percent of respondents said the shutdown had given them a more negative view of Trump, while just 28 percent said they felt more positively toward him…So all of that sounds pretty bad for Trump. But will any of it really matter to Trump’s political standing, in the long run?..The glib answer is “probably not.” We’re a loooong way from the presidential election. And presidential approval ratings, as well as those for congressional leaders, typically rebound within a couple of months of a shutdown ending. A shutdown in October 2013 that caused a steep decline in ratings for congressional Republicans didn’t prevent them from having a terrific midterm in 2014, for instance.”

But Kerry Eleveld points out that “Conventional wisdom is shutdowns don’t have electoral consequences. Trump’s shutdown is different at Daly Kos. “The key difference as this shutdown drags on is that real people are feeling real consequences and real anxiety, with no end in sight. Stories of furloughed federal workers selling personal belongings or dipping into their kids’ college funds in order to pay their bills are spilling out. Some government workers are making horrific life-or-death decisions like choosing between buying food and paying for cancer medication, or rationing their insulin. People who contract with the federal government face the daunting prospect of both covering bills now and never receiving backpay for the work they missed while the government was closed. In addition, everyday Americans are increasingly feeling the effects, with air travelers experiencing excessive TSA lines and farmers, for instance, not being able to get the loans they need to stay in business…this government closure doesn’t have the air of short-lived theatrics that shutdowns past did. Not only is the pain of it reaching further into the heart of America every day, but it reinforces the narrative that has surrounded Trump’s entire presidency: He’s an impetuous and volatile personality who’s disastrously ill-suited for the work of governing.”

Peter Beinart argues that “Nancy Pelosi Is Winning: She beat George W. Bush on Social Security privatization, and she’ll beat Trump on the wall” at The Atlantic. “As in 2005, high-minded centrists are urging Pelosi and the Democrats to compromise…A recent Bloomberg editorialscolded Democrats for wanting “to deny the other [side] anything that might be portrayed as a victory,” and warned that “the only alternative to compromise, now that power in Washington is more equally divided, is paralysis.”…But Pelosi knows that the alternative to Democratic compromise isn’t necessarily paralysis. It may be Democratic triumph. Trump, like Bush, has picked a fight that is popular with conservatives but unpopular with the public at large. Most Americans don’t think there’s a border crisis, don’t support a border wall, and blame Trump for the shutdown. As a result, Republican members of Congress are under more political pressure to back down than their Democratic counterparts, and the longer the shutdown continues, the more that pressure should grow.”

Despite all the polls about the shutdown indicating bad news for the GOP, “House Democrats are frustrated the shutdown is drowning out the rest of their agenda” Dylan Scott reports at Vox. “The shutdown is still an unwelcome distraction and a potential delay on getting to the hard work of moving legislation through committees and onto the House floor. Governing is about priorities and right now there is no bigger priority than opening the government…It is difficult to imagine House Democrats undertaking a major legislative push — like stabilizing the Affordable Care Act, a top campaign promise of many Democrats in 2018 — until federal workers are receiving their paychecks again…It’s not as if the House would have passed Medicare-for-all and a Green New Deal if not for the shutdown. Clearly leaders are taking a very deliberative approach to the coming year, setting up hearings on some of the big-ticket items that progressives want to address while at the same time pursuing more targeted legislation on issues where there is a broad consensus within the party…That behind-the-scenes work is still continuing. But they will have to reopen the government before they can truly take on the role of a full-throated new Democratic majority.”

Nathaniel Frank and Evan Wolfson make the case that “Trump’s Shutdown Is a Historic Opportunity for Democrats” at slate.com. They note that, “while Democrats may be poised to win the short-term political argument over the shutdown, the pain and suffering it has inflicted are part of a long-term right-wing strategy that’s older and broader than many people realize. That strategy involved a decades-long campaign to turn everything from the courts to the Congress to the country’s overall cultural character sharply rightward by stigmatizing forms of collective action—government, unions, even voting—that history shows are necessary counterweights to the greed of the powerful…This long-game effort calls for an equal and opposite strategy: something that will bolster the promising, if disparate, elements of the resistance—mass protests, diverse candidates, grass-roots door-knocking, bold policy ideas—by offering a sustained, deep story about the positive role government plays in American life. To change the narrative effectively, progressives should launch a long-term persuasion campaign designed to restore belief in government…Progressives should cultivate and deploy our best and brightest to share powerful stories of all that Americans have achieved through government: protecting food and water from pollution; building highways, dams, great cities, and a thriving middle class; expanding inclusion, equality, and freedom; literally reaching the moon.”

For the most part the Trump administration’s public line is that the current partial government shutdown is not as big a deal as his desired border wall, but that to the extent it’s inconveniencing people it’s the fault of congressional Democrats. But that’s not the only administration voice we are hearing, as I wrote about at New York.

Yesterday at the Daily Caller, however, a sinister, anonymous senior Trump administration official offered a different rationale for continuing the shutdown indefinitely:

“As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

“Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.”

This latest Anonymous goes on in that vein for paragraph after fatuous paragraph, weaving a right-wing fantasy vision of lazy, evil bureaucrats sabotaging the noble president and his patriotic political appointees. Without a shred of documentation, this very Trump-y individual stipulates that 80 percent of the employees in her/his agency, and apparently all of the furloughed employees, do no work at all because they cannot be fired, and conspire with Congress (the Congress that until 11 days ago was controlled by Republicans) to create and maintain worthless programs. Thus, although it will impose sacrifices on the handful of essential employees currently working without pay, an extended shutdown is necessary to prove to the American people that the only government they need is the “free market night watchman” state “our founders envisioned.”

But what strikes the reader most about this cri de coeur for an indefinite shutdown is how nicely it fits into the annals of gutless conservative strategies for shrinking government indirectly and dishonestly. The most famous was the late-20th-century “starve the beast” strategy, which meant cutting taxes and deliberately engineering large federal budget deficits in order to force spending cuts (ideally by liberals) that conservatives couldn’t or wouldn’t propose straightforwardly. I once called this “the fiscal equivalent of a bottomless crack pipe” for Republicans, because it enabled them to tell themselves and their “base” they were doing brave things like attacking entitlement programs while never actually taking the political heat for it. Similarly, the Daily Caller’s correspondent wants to use the essentially mindless vehicle of a partial government shutdown to do what Trump and Republican pols don’t have the courage to propose. You could call it a “furlough the beast” strategy.

The supposition that “[m]ost Americans will not miss non-essential government functions” is already proving to be erroneous — unless “most Americans” is meant to exclude those who might want safe food or adjudication of tax disputes or federal-guaranteed mortgages or any number of other services and benefits that would be strained or eliminated in an extended shutdown. That’s aside from the fact that “essential employees” can’t be expected to toil without pay perpetually, as this “senior official” apparently has the wherewithal to do.

In the end, this op-ed may just be an ideological self-indulgence for those who always want to believe that the government Americans keep voting to maintain is just one gimmick away from vanishing. But at a time when the president is twisting in the wind, unable to figure out how to deal with a government shutdown that he stumbled into after a temper tantrum, this is one whisper in his ear we don’t need. Trump has already retweeted this recommendation of the Daily Caller piece from his son: