At Campaigns & Elections, David Radloff, John Hagner and Dan Castleman explain “Why Persuasion Isn’t Dead in the Age of Wave Elections.” The authors, partners at Clarity Campaign Labs, a data and analytics firm that works with Democratic campaigns, write:

Even after success in 2018, many progressives remain convinced that winning over people who voted for Donald Trump is impossible and that trying is a waste of time…Data, however, tells a different story. According to 2018 exit polls, more than 3.5 million, or 8 percent of people who voted for Trump in 2016 voted for a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House this year.

This probably understates the real number—exit polls have had methodological challenges and many people who defected from Trump are unwilling to admit that they voted for him in the first place. But it’s clear that persuasion is alive and well in American politics.

Radloff, Hagner and Castleman add that they conducted “experiments that allowed us to see which voters actually changed their minds when presented with certain information. Then we scaled that analysis and created statistical models for the national electorate.”

They found that “Nationally, we could move 1-out-of-every-30 voters to change their congressional vote with a single message reminding them of Congress’s power to be a check on Trump…There were an almost equal number of people that moved to the Democrat as there were that moved to the Republican upon hearing anti-Trump messages.” Further,

We also found that using a different message reminding voters about healthcare issues and the GOP’s plan to cut protections for people with pre-existing conditions worked even better. Hearing that message just once, we could move 1-out-of-every-20 voters to change their congressional vote. And, unlike the Trump message, almost all of the movement was towards the Democrat, with very little backlash.

Healthcare, rather than opposition to Trump, proved pivotal for the 2018 blue wave, which won the Democrats a net 40 seats and control of the House. Our methods didn’t just tell us what message worked best, but what voters to target. Despite the backlash, we could identify a universe (almost 20-percent of the country) that still moved Democratic with the Trump message at a staggering rate of six times greater than that of the average voter.

This enabled us to help specific campaigns talk to the right voters, using the right message, and through the right medium. For healthcare messaging, we could identify groups of voters in which 1 out of every 5 we talked to would vote for the Democratic candidate instead.

The authors explain the methodology they used and conclude that “when we have conversations with Republican voters about issues they care about, we can still convince many of them to join us.”

It appears that Democrats can convince ‘some,’ if not ‘many’ targeted Republican voters, to vote for Democratic candidates with the right message. And in close races, ‘some’ may prove to be just ‘enough.’

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

We don’t know when the government shutdown over Trump’s border wall will end. But one thing we do know: unless the political dynamic around the shutdown changes dramatically, Trump is probably hurting his bid for re-election.

Consider the facts, as laid out in two recent pieces by Nate Cohn for the New York Times and by Ron Brownstein for the Atlantic.

Cohn:

“There has been little polling since the government shutdown began last month, but what there is indicates that voters oppose a border wall, blame the president for the shutdown, believe the shutdown will have adverse consequences and don’t believe the government should be shut down over the wall.

The wall has consistently been unpopular, with voters opposed by around a 20-point margin over months of national surveys. That makes it even less popular than the president himself….

It’s hard to see how the issue can be used to help him win re-election. Midterm exit poll data, election results, voter file data and pre-election polls indicate that the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent in states worth at least 317 electoral votes (270 are needed to win)….

Data from the Fox News Voter Analysis of the midterms, a new competitor to the traditional exit polls, indicated that a majority of voters opposed the wall in states worth nearly 400 electoral votes, including in several states where the president’s approval rating was above water in the poll, like Ohio and Florida….[T]he wall [also] isn’t popular in Michigan..Pennsylvania [or Wisconsin], important battleground states…

Tying the [wall] to an unpopular shutdown seems particularly unlikely to help and, historically, voters tend to drift against the policy preferences of the president’s party…. [T]here is not much reason to think that the base, alone, is enough for the president to win re-election in a one-on-one race against a viable Democratic candidate. This could change. It has before. But with the midterms over, this is now the central political challenge facing the president. By that measure, it’s hard to see where a shutdown over the wall fits in.”

Brownstein finds it equally difficult to see anything but a negative payoff for Trump in the wall-shutdown dynamic. He notes particularly the way in which this dynamic tends to push wall opponents, a significant number of whom actually Trump in 2016, away from the GOP or third party voting and towards the Democrats.

“After two years of arguing for the wall as president, Trump has shown no ability to expand its popularity. In 10 national polls conducted during his presidency, Quinnipiac University has never found support for the wall higher than 43 percent….

]T]here’s evidence that the voters hostile to the wall, and to many other aspects of Trump’s tenure, are less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt now than they were in 2016….Trump’s position among wall opponents has eroded dramatically….

In the [2016] exit poll, 18 percent of the college-educated whites who opposed the wall voted for Trump anyway, according to figures provided by Edison Research. But now, far fewer express support for Trump in general. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, just 3 percent of these voters approved of Trump’s job performance, according to data provided by Quinnipiac. Ninety-two percent disapproved.

Likewise, just over one-fourth of non-college-educated whites who opposed the wall still voted for Trump in 2016. But in the latest Quinnipiac survey, only 9 percent of these whites approved of Trump’s performance, while 83 percent disapproved. In all, fully 88 percent of Americans who oppose the wall say they disapprove of Trump’s performance as president.

Approval ratings correlate closely with the reelection vote for incumbent presidents….Trump’s relentless effort to cement the loyalty and stoke the outrage of his strongest supporters, compounded by his volatile behavior in office, is building a wall between him and the ambivalent voters who provided him critical support in 2016 (or at least withheld it from Clinton by splintering to third-party candidates)…..

Trump’s monomania on the border wall shows that he remains fixated on the priorities and resentments of his core coalition. But even a 30-foot barrier probably wouldn’t protect him in 2020 if he allows the waves of discontent to continue rising among the majority of Americans who don’t consider themselves part of that ardent club.”

If you like, go back and overlay these data on the Cook electoral college ratings I posted about yesterday. It’s not a pretty picture for Mr. Trump. Getting to 270 in 2020 was never going to be easy for him. He’s now making it even harder.

What, you may wonder, will Trump’s shutdown end up costing taxpayers? In his article “The Government Shutdown Will Cost More Than Trump’s $5 Billion Border Wall Funding, According to Experts,” Brad Tuttle shares some possibilities at Money: “The economic costs of the government shutdown may already exceed the $5 billion President Donald Trump is demanding for a border wall, according to some analysts’ estimates…First off, federal workers who are not paid during a government shutdown typically receive back pay once the shutdown is over, whether or not they were furloughed. So there is no money “saved” through a drop in federal employment payroll…Foregone services include things like permits and fees which the government cannot collect during a shutdown and therefore amount to lost revenues.” Tuttle notes also that “analysis of the October 2013 government shutdown, which lasted 16 days, researchers estimated that the shutdown lowered real GDP growth by 0.2% to 0.6%. That amounted to somewhere between $2 billion and $6 billion in lost economic output.” Also, “Standard & Poor’s estimated that the costs of the 2013 government shutdown actually came to $24 billion after incorporating the impact of the shutdown on hard-to-pin-down factors like decreased consumer and investor confidence — components that aren’t tabulated in the OMB analysis…in late 2017, Standard & Poor’s analysts said that a government shutdown threatened at the time would cost the American economy roughly $6.5 billion per week.”

Scott Clement and Dan Balz report on some findings of of a new WaPo/ABC news poll: “By a wide margin, more Americans blame President Trump and Republicans in Congress than congressional Democrats for the now record-breaking government shutdown, and most reject the president’s assertion that there is an illegal-immigration crisis on the southern border, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll…Support for building a wall on the border, which is the principal sticking point in the stalemate between the president and Democrats, has increased over the past year. Today, 42 percent say they support a wall, up from 34 percent last January. A slight majority of Americans (54 percent) oppose the idea, down from 63 percent a year ago…Concerning the allocation of blame, 53 percent say Trump and the Republicans are mainly at fault, and 29 percent blame the Democrats in Congress. Thirteen percent say both sides bear equal responsibility for the shutdown…The president faces sizable opposition from the public were he to do so. By more than 2-1 (66 percent to 31 percent), Americans say they oppose invoking an emergency to build a border wall.”

In “How House Democrats can advocate for a fairer, more effective tax system,” The Editorial Board of the Washington Post argues that “Democrats can use their platform in the House to advocate a fairer system that brings in more revenue than the current one…Their focus should be on eliminating or reducing the biggest source of favoritism toward the rich in the current code: the preferable treatment of capital gains and dividends. These forms of income are accrued overwhelmingly by the highest-earning households and reward activity that is, in principle, no worthier morally, or useful economically, than laboring for a wage or salary. Yet the top marginal rate for ordinary income is now 37 percent, while it is only 23.8 percent for capital gains and dividends…Certainly, the 2017 bill’s near-elimination of the estate tax, which affected precious few households in the first place, should be a high priority for reversal by the Democrat-controlled House…Eliminating a mere two percentage points of the differential between the tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income, and adjusting tax brackets, could raise another $81.4 billion over 10 years, CBO says. Meanwhile, increasing the Internal Revenue Service’s enforcement budget by $500 million from its fiscal 2018 level of $11.4 billion would net the government $35.3 billion over 10 years. Most of that would probably come from wealthy taxpayers who can afford to game the system.”

“The New Deal is back. Nearly a century after President Franklin D. Roosevelt began his effort to revive the American economy through government programs, Democrats are once again becoming fans of Roosevelt and his legacy,” writes Cornell professor Lawrence B. Glickman in his article, “The left is pushing Democrats to embrace their greatest president. Why that’s a good thing” in The Washington Post. Glickman traces the history of Democratic attitudes toward FDR’s New Deal, and explains, “It is too soon to say whether the Democratic Party as a whole will follow the lead of its left flank. But growing support for a Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, progressive taxation and corporate regulation suggests that many members of the Democratic Party are once again embracing the Rooseveltian vision of activist government that promotes freedom, opportunity and justice for ordinary Americans. After half a century of consensus that the Age of Roosevelt was history, today’s Democrats are reclaiming the mantle of the party of ideas by reembracing the New Deal as a vision of positive governance.”

At The Plum Line, Paul Waldman explains “Why Democrats will not tear themselves apart from the inside,” and notes that, “unlike the white guys who made up the tea party, the Democrats who just came to Washington represent not only the Democratic Party coalition as it exists today, but also the coalition that is most likely to allow it to prosper in the future.” Waldman adds that “the things the progressive Democrats are pushing for — action on climate change, a higher minimum wage, universal health coverage — are all quite popular. That doesn’t mean there won’t be vigorous debates about them, but despite Republican cries of “Egad, socialism!”, their agenda strikes most Americans as pretty reasonable.”

“…Many in the party believe that proving oneself as the antidote to Mr. Trump and his brand of incendiary politics will become the ultimate litmus test in 2020, more than demonstrating policy purity. Yet some activists want both: fierce resistance to Mr. Trump and unwavering fidelity to the left’s catechism of issues…To strategists who worked on the 2018 midterms, however, the enormous attention being paid to a handful of outspoken liberals like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York misses the nonideological approach of many of the party’s successful candidates for governor and Congress…“There wasn’t a demand among Democratic primary voters for litmus tests,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster…And Ms. Greenberg, who is working for former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a possible 2020 candidate, contends that electoral viability will be more central in the coming Democratic presidential primary than in any recent election.” — from Jonathan Martin’s “Democrats Want to Run on Issues in 2020. But Does Beating Trump Matter Most?” at The New York Times.

Patricia Mazzei and Jonathan Martin probe Democratic prospects in the largest swing state in their article, “Stung by Florida Midterm Losses, Democrats See a Swing State Drifting Away” in The New York Times. “What is so agonizing for Democrats is that 2018 did little to clarify the best path…The party put forward Mr. Gillum, a 39-year-old black progressive, and Mr. Nelson, a 76-year-old white moderate who had been in elected office for nearly half a century. Mr. Nelson lost by about 10,000 votes and Mr. Gillum didn’t fare much worse, losing by about 32,000 votes…In other words, the party pursued two differing approaches in the same state and the same year — nominating a progressive who could mobilize voters difficult to turn out in midterms as well as a moderate who would appear more amenable to persuadable voters — and both failed.” Also note Mazzei and Martin, “Democrats started organizing Latino voters too late, didn’t tailor their message for an increasingly diverse community and ultimately took Latino support for granted, a Florida pollster told about 50 members of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Broward County…Democrats will lose again in 2020 if they don’t move swiftly to win over Hispanics, the pollster, Eduardo Gamarra, told the group. “You just need to start now,” he said…The question looming over the state going into 2020 is the same one Democrats are wrestling with elsewhere: How can the party narrow its losses with voters who are older — and in many cases white — without alienating younger, nonwhite voters?”

In “The more women in government, the healthier a population” at The Conversation, Edward Ng and Carles Montaner write, “Our findings, published recently in the journal SSM – Population Health, support the argument that yes, women in government do in fact advance population health…we examined whether there’s a historical association between women in government and population health among Canada’s 10 provinces. Between 1976 and 2009, the percentage of women in provincial government increased six-fold from 4.2 per cent to 25.9 per cent, while mortality from all causes declined by 37.5 per cent (from 8.85 to 5.53 deaths per 1000 people)…we found that as the average percentage of women in government has historically risen, total mortality rates have declined.” In the U.S., there are currently 106 Democratic women in the U.S. Senate and House, compared to 21 Republican women, and there are 9 Democratic women governors, compared to 3 Republican women, according the The Center for American Women in Politics. (CAWP).

CAWP also notes that there are 1,431 Democratic women and 660 Republican women serving in the state legislatures of the U.S. The states that have the ten highest percentages of women serving in their legislatures include: Nevada (50.8%); Colorado (45.0%); Oregon (41.1%); Washington (40.8%); Vermont (39.4%); Maine (38.7%); Alaska (38.3%); Rhode Island (38.1%); Arizona (37.8%); and Maryland (37.2%). The states with the ten lowest percentages are all “red” states.

Some findings from a survey  of 2,407 RVs by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, conducted Oct. 1-16 (M.O.E. of +/- 2 to 2.8 percent), as reported in the Washington Post by it’s director Steven Kull:

The public at large, including Democrats, Republicans and independents, agrees on many immigration reforms that amount to an alternative strategy. Bipartisan majorities favor current proposals in Congress that aim to prevent the hiring of undocumented workers, alongside proposals that would create more opportunities to hire immigrants legally.

,,,Overall, only 4 in 10 favor building a wall. Fewer than half our respondents were persuaded by the argument that a wall would prevent potential threats from coming into the country and would strengthen U.S. borders. Nearly two-thirds, including 4 in 10 Republicans, were persuaded by the counterargument: Because migrants can always find alternative routes to crossing the border, there are better methods for deterring illegal entry.

As for immigration policies that relate to labor issues, the poll finds:

By contrast, 72 percent favored a Republican-sponsored congressional proposal that would require employers to use the existing E-Verifysystem to ensure that they hire only people who have the legal right to work in the United States. Fully 83 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats supported the bill…At the same time, 8 in 10 respondents agreed that “many industries in the United States … need immigrant labor, which is why they currently hire millions of them. It would be much better if this process was done in a legal way.”

…A majority supported a proposed bill — 69 percent overall, including 73 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats — that would substantially increase the number of temporary work visas, called H-2B visas, for such industries as landscaping, construction, hotels and conservation, a bill that includes some caveats about ensuring that no Americans are available and that immigrants get paid as much as Americans do.

Most also want to increase the number of green cards to fill jobs that require a skill that is needed in the U.S. economy, as well — 54 percent overall, and 63 percent of Democrats — with similar caveats…

However, 55 percent of Democrats oppose paying guest farmworkers “less than is required now” and  “eliminating the current requirement that they be given housing and transportation, while 69 percent of Republicans support the measures.

Kull notes that only 1 in 4 respondents want to get rid of the Green Card Lottery, and “only 4 in 10 Republicans, even though the Trump administration has called for eliminating it.” Further, “Asked to evaluate a number of such proposals, the most popular for both Republicans and Democrats is one that includes a path to citizenship. Overall, 70 percent find this proposal at least tolerable, including 67 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats.”

Kull concludes that “Rather, most Americans want to rationalize immigration, ensuring that the process occurs in a regulated, legal fashion and that people who come in can join the economy without hurting American workers.”

After watching Donald Trump’s lame-o Oval Office Address and observed the trajectory of events, I commented at New York on what’s likely next.

No one had any reason to expect significant progress in border wall/government shutdown negotiations in the wake of last night’s Oval Office address from the president warning the country of evil immigrants pouring over the border to murder innocent people and pillage the land. But things deteriorated really quickly, as the Washington Post reported:

“Talks between President Trump and congressional Democrats aimed at ending a partial government shutdown collapsed in acrimony and disarray Wednesday, with the president walking out of a White House meeting and calling it “a total waste of time” after Democrats rejected his demand for border wall funding.”

The surrounding dynamics were pretty bad. Pelosi mocked Trump for failing to show any sympathy for the federal workers and contractors being hurt by the shutdown: “He thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money. But they can’t.”

And Trump had this to say on Twitter:

“Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!”

Aside from that data point, and the steadily increasing human suffering it involves, Senate Democrats are filibustering everything that Mitch McConnell brings to the floor until such time as a House-passed bill to reopen the government, pending additional border-wall negotiations, receives a vote. So one way of viewing today’s drama is that Trump is going through the motions of a conventional food fight with Democrats before reaching for his not-so-secret weapon:

Short of compromising, which he seems less and less inclined to do, the emergency declaration option, for all its legal and political uncertainties, may be the only way Trump can back his way out of the government shutdown he triggered after losing his temper at a December 11 meeting with “Chuck and Nancy,” and then getting trashed by conservative mediawhen he tried to creep away from his belligerent position. It would let him declare victory after unilaterally ordering the redirection of Pentagon money for border wall construction, then magnanimously let the government reopen. That’s assuming the courts let him get that far before hauling his administration into the dock, and fellow Republicans don’t freak out at the potential abuses of power the declaration could make possible.

Whether it’s a good idea or not, Trump seems to be working quickly to dynamite any other paths out of the morass. There’s quite an irony, though: Having signally failed in his big speech to convince anyone other than his “base” that there’s any sort of real emergency on the southern border, the president will now simply declare one.

Harry Cheadle’s “The Shutdown Is Mitch McConnell’s Fault: The Senate majority leader can end the shutdown by defying Trump. He’s just refusing to do so” at Vice provides an instructive angle on the current mess. Cheadle writes, “Trump could of course veto any spending bill passed by Congress, but a two-thirds majority could override his veto and end this stalemate. The only thing that’s required is a bit of courage on the part of Republicans…For such a veto override to take place, 55 Republicans in the House and 20 in the Senate would have to join with the Democrats and defy Trump…Republicans, and in particular Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, could restore what passes for normality in this era any time they wanted to…Initial polls found the public blamed Trump for the shutdown, but subsequent polls contained evidence that people also blamed Congress—in one recent survey, 58 percent of respondents disapproved of Republicans’ handling of the affair, compared to 51 percent disapproval for Democrats…the path that McConnell has evidently chosen—is to embrace rank partisanship by holding Trump’s line and forcing some government employees to work without pay in support of a wall most Americans don’t even want.”

In his Washington Post column, “After Trump’s dud, it’s up to the Senate GOP,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. also sees McConnell as culpable, “Trump is willing to keep hundreds of thousands of government workers idle and unpaid. He lacks the guts to stand up to Coulter and her allies…Which means that the only path forward is for sensible souls to pressure McConnell and other Senate Republicans to stop enabling the blusterer in chief and put bills on Trump’s desk to reopen the government. Already, at least three Republican senators (with others titling that way) have said it’s time to do this. More should join them.”

From “Democrats Focus on Shutdown’s Cost and Steer Away From Trump’s Wall” by Julie Hirschfield Davis at The New York Times: “While Mr. Trump has launched an elaborate public-relations effort to draw Democrats into a debate over the wall itself — even the material to be used to construct it — Democrats are just as determined to talk instead about a more universally resonant theme: the need to get the government open and functioning while negotiations continue….Obviously, there are some Democrats who talk about the wall being immoral or inconsistent with American values, but across the spectrum of Democrats, there is an emphasis on the degree to which the wall is waste of taxpayers’ money and irrelevant to addressing the most important challenges we face with regard to immigration in the country,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster…Nick Gourevitch, a pollster and communications strategist who advised Democrats during the midterm campaign on Mr. Trump’s fear-soaked immigration message, said Democrats are sticking to the simplest and freshest argument they have to appeal to a public that does not focus on the finer points of border security policy.”

Here’s a couple of good talking points for Democrats about what the shutdown actually means for national security, from an editorial on “Borderline Insanity” at The New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s spiteful choice to shut parts of the government is only making the situation messier. Immigration judges are being furloughed, further slowing the processing of asylum requests. Border Patrol agents are working without pay, eroding morale. In perhaps the choicest twist of fate, some $300 million in new contracts for wall construction cannot be awarded until the shutdown ends.” Meanwhile, Dan Lamothe notes at The Washington Post that 6400 of the Coast Guard’s 8500 civilian workforce is on furlough and 2100 more are working witout pay.

In yet another white house tantrum, Drama Boy Trump walks out of his own meeting, with little concern for the collapse of essential government services. “The breakdown left no end in sight to the shutdown even as its effects spiral around the nation on services for farmers, food inspection services and national parks,” report Erica Werner, Sean Sullivan,  Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim at The Washington Post. In his earlier meeting witjh Republicans, “Moderate Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) pleaded with Trump to reopen the government, according to lawmakers present…Collins urged Trump to consider a previous deal she was a part of that would trade $25 billion for the wall for permanent protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Trump dismissed that idea.”

In her FiveThirtyEight article, “Trump Has Lost Ground In The Shutdown Blame Game,” Janie Valencia reports that “Trump’s efforts to pin the blame on Democrats aren’t working, according to three pollsters who have conducted at least two polls in the two and a half weeks since the government first closed. Rather, polls show that Americans are increasingly blaming Trump…Polls conducted in the first few days of the shutdown showed that between 43 percent and 47 percent of Americans blamed Trump most for the shutdown, while about a third blamed congressional Democrats. Polling data had been pretty scarce thereafter, but this week a handful of new polls gave us an updated view of who Americans think is responsible. (We’re looking only at data from pollsters who have conducted two surveys since the shutdown started — one just after it began and one after the new year. This makes for nice apples-to-apples comparisons.)..The two YouGov polls found a 4-point increase in those blaming Trump. There was a 4-point increase among registered voters who most blamed Trump in the two Morning Consult polls. And surveys from Reuters/Ipsosalso found a 4-point increase…As for where Democrats stand in the blame-game, Morning Consult found a 2-point increase in those who blame them the most between their two polls, while Ipsos/Reuters found a 1-point drop and YouGov found a 3-point drop…In the most recent HuffPost/YouGov poll, for example — conducted Jan. 4-7 — more Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the shutdown (52 percent) than they did of the way Democrats were handling it (46 percent), but 56 percent of Americans expressed disapproval of the congressional GOP’s performance…His job approval rating has edged down in the past three weeks — a trend that lines up almost perfectly on the calendar with the shutdown.”

Ruy Teixeira has a two-parter on the “Green New Deal” at his web page, The Optimistic Leftist. Among Teixeira’s strategic insights, from Part II: “The GND can and should be sold as a growth program because an effective approach to the clean energy transition (full employment, massive public investment) both needs and should facilitate strong growth…It is odd that the left does not stress this connection more than it does. This may have something to do with prevalence of anti-growth sentiments in some of the greener parts of the left. These sentiments could not be more misguided…instead of arguments for growth, we are more likely to hear arguments for “degrowth” from green activists, on the belief that, on our current trajectory, we cannot possibly continue to grow and hit reasonable climate targets.” You can read Part I here.

Teixeira also flags an article in The Economist, “Gerrymandering Is Still a Problem But It Isn’t Working Like It Used To,” and notes “There’s been relatively little comment about this but it’s interesting to note that Democrats got about 54 percent of the House 2-party vote and….about 54 percent of the House seats.” One of Teixeira’s Faceboopk commenters notes that “I always felt those white suburbs were winnable because they are easily canvassable as compared to rural areas and very urban areas.” Another adds that gerrymandering is “Still a factor in state legislative races. Wisconsin legislature: Dems 54% of votes, 36% of seats.”

Few political candidates have former President Obama’s speaking skills. But his “What took you so long?” question to Republican “leaders” is one that many Democratic candidates could tweak into a potent refrain for their 2020 campaigns:

If the early reviews of Trump’s televised shutdown pitch are a reliable indication of the outcome of the struggle for a credible immigration policy, Democrats have sharpened their edge. Described as a “nothingburger” by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin and worse, far worse by GOP strategist Rick Wilson, Trump’s whiny rant provides a case study of a poorly-reasoned and weakly-delivered “bully-pulpit” speech.

At New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore noted:

It was a message he could have conveyed in a tweetstorm or a press availability or a photo op or a tossed-off comment to reporters as he came or went from the White House. Since he was determined to blame the government shutdown he stumbled into on Democrats, he could have at least expressed some sympathy for the government employees and contractors who have been furloughed or who are working without pay, or the many Americans affected by interruption of services or benefits (or as he obliquely put it, “those who are impacted by the situation”). But his one-note nine-minute address had no space for any of that…And he gave fact-checkers a fresh opportunity to point out how much of his manufactured crisis is based on lies and misleading half-truths, including such howlers as another assertion that somehow Mexico will pay for the border wall.

Trump’s short speech was riddled with easily-disproven lies and distortions, as has already been documented by fact-checkers here and here, in addition to the source noted by Kilgore.

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll, reported hours before Trump’s 2nd Oval Office disaster in a month, “Nearly half of voters, 47 percent, say Trump is mostly to blame for the shutdown, the poll shows, while another 5 percent point the finger at congressional Republicans,” notes Politico’s Steven Shephard. “But just a third, 33 percent, blame Democrats in Congress…Nearly two-thirds, 65 percent, say the president shouldn’t shut down the government to achieve his policy goals, while only 22 percent say a temporary shutdown is acceptable to change policy.”

Given the awful reviews of Trump’s televised speech, it’s more likely than not that support for his  shutdown will soon be headed further south.

In their joint rebuttal, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did a good job of spotlighting the lies and meanness of Trump’s remarks, despite the strange optics of their sharing a small podium, which invited an SNL skit. Unlike Trump, however, they left an impression of mature adults committed to a bipartisan solution to end the shutdown and establish a sensible border security policy.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump and the GOP successfully mischaracterized Democratic immigration policy as favoring “open borders.” Schumer, Pelosi and other Democrats have done a good job of correcting that distortion. Now their challenge is to insure that the Democratic Party is branded as the party of genuine border security, which emphatically includes airports and seaports, as well as our northern and southern borders.

The bottom line, as reported by NYT’s Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmonson:

But it was perhaps Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, who most succinctly summed up his party’s response: “We are not paying a $5 billion ransom note for your medieval border wall,” he tweeted, with a castle emoji. “And nothing you just said will change that cold, hard reality.”

NYT’s Peter Baker reports that today Trump “will host congressional leaders from both parties to resume negotiations that so far have made little progress.” If Trump’s media handlers are smarter than they have appeared to be in recent weeks, they will keep TV cameras out of the Oval Office. But you wouldn’t want to bet on it.

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

The 2020 election could be a very good one for the Democrats. The 2018 election exposed the vulnerabilities of Trump and the Trumpified GOP and Democrats made significant gains both inside and outside their core constituencies.

It’s a good setup but it’s a long way to the actual election. A lot could happen, not least strategic errors that could derail all the promise.

David Leonhardt cuts to the chase in his column, “The People vs. Donald J. Trump: He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?” in The New York Times: “He has already shown, repeatedly, that he will hurt the country in order to help himself. He will damage American interests around the world and damage vital parts of our constitutional system at home. The risks that he will cause much more harm are growing…The unrelenting chaos that Trump creates can sometimes obscure the big picture. But the big picture is simple: The United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for the office as Trump. And it’s becoming clear that 2019 is likely to be dominated by a single question: What are we going to do about it?” Leonhardt recommends that House Dems conduct “a series of sober-minded hearings to highlight Trump’s misconduct. Democrats should focus on easily understandable issues most likely to bother Trump’s supporters, like corruption.”

“The Next Two Years Are About Democracy Itself,” argues E. J. Dionne, Jr. in his Washington Post column. “The contrast between the diversity of the Democratic side of the House (by gender, race, ethnicity and religion) and the visible homogeneity on the Republican side has been much noted. It was genuinely thrilling to see how free elections can allow citizens to bring about so much transformation in such a short time. And this new House was the product of the highest midterm turnout since 1914, back when all citizens aged 18-21 and most women and African-Americans were denied access to the ballot…It is thus appropriate that the new majority gave the hallowed designation H.R. 1 to the bill they presented Friday with the purpose of expanding democracy while pushing back against corruption. The headline aspects of the legislation took aim at Trump era sleaze, including a requirement that presidential candidates release their tax returns, and tightening of White House ethics rules…But the guts of the bill are all about making our system more democratic: automatic voter registration along with limits on voter purges and other methods that states use to block access to the ballot box, especially for minorities and the young. It would also ban contributions from corporations controlled by foreign entities…Central to the proposal is a new campaign-finance system designed to limit big money’s power in elections. It would create a series of incentives, including matching funds for donations of $200 or less, to encourage candidates to rely on small donors rather than the typically self-interested generosity of the wealthy…At this moment of trial for all who treasure democratic institutions, the world could use an example of politicians whose solutions to our problems involve more democracy, not less.”

Another Post columnist, Jennifer Rubin agrees in her column praising H.R.1 and its principle author rep. John Sarbanes. Rubin also notes that “The sheer size and scope of the bill may be an obstacle to passage, so Democrats, at some point, may want to break up the effort into manageable chunks so voters know exactly where their representatives stand — for example, on requiring the president and vice president to release 10 years of tax returns, or on knocking down barriers to voting. That can be sorted out later, however. If the House passes all or most of the items in H.R. 1 and sends them to the Senate, voter may begin to ask: Why are Republicans going along with Trump’s unethical practices and why do they want to suppress voting?”

In her New York Times op-ed, “Middle-Class Shame Will Decide Where America Is Headed: Who can appeal to the people who feel the most like they’ve gotten a raw deal?,” Alissa Quart, author of “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America,” writes, “what I have called the “middle precariat” vote — or what could be called the anxiety vote — gave us this president, and now it has also given us a Democratic House. It is a powerful force…Any Democrat who wants to win the White House in 2020 is going to need to harness the power of these voters. Indeed, the race has very much started, including the recent announcement of a presidential campaign exploratory committee by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has already started to emphasize how the middle class is “hollowed out”…the frustration that comes from people who find themselves slipping down the economic gradient is one of the most powerful untapped resources in American politics today.

“Compromise, common sense and listening to all sides of an issue don’t seem like countercultural values. Certainly, in the home I grew up in they weren’t. My parents belonged to separate political parties, and those values were part of the air I breathed. But in my state’s Republican Party, such values have become increasingly difficult to find. And that’s why I’ve decided to leave the party…I want to work with other moderate, pragmatic leaders on policy that helps remove bureaucratic hurdles and helps government better serve Kansans rather than having to constantly disavow rhetoric designed to divide people. I can do that in the Democratic Party,” writes Kansas State Senator Dinah Sykes in “Why I left the Kansas Republican Party,” her Washington Post op-ed…”My change to the Democratic Party has already shown me reasons for optimism. I have found that I am respected, my opinion is valued, and open discussions are encouraged. I see a future in which sound policy is valued above scoring cheap political points.”

Egberto Willies warns progressives that  “We must not allow the ‘Hillary-fication’ of Elizabeth Warren at Daily Kos. The GOP clearly wanmts to degrade Warren’s appeal, in large part because she is among the most savvy potential Democratic candidates on the all-important issues of financial reform and regulation, as well as how progressive Dems can win a larger share of white working-class votes. If they can reduce her to a wanna-be cliche, they hope they can trvialize her candidacy. As Willies writes, “The Pocahontas caricature that Donald Trump seeded is an issue that progressives must not allow to take hold and distract. The attack is a backdoor attempt to diminish her accomplishments without resorting to direct sexism. Some Democrats will see Warren as too anti-corporation, especially given her Accountable Capitalism Act. They will label her as too liberal and will likely attack her as they did Sanders, insisting that she is on the fringe…The media must be called out immediately as soon as it allows the Right to drive that narrative. Absent that, the story will metastasize, just like “death panels, throw grandma off a cliff” did with the Affordable Care Act. The media was instrumental in giving Hillary Clinton’s email issues legs it should never have had.”

“Democrats were elected in large part to provide a check on Trump’s corruption and shredding of democratic and institutional norms,” notes Greg Sargent at The Plum Line. “Trump’s blithe refusal to release his returns is basically a big fat middle finger aimed at our norms and institutions, and even in a sense a straight-out declaration that he can damn well do all the self-dealing as president that he pleases. You, the public, will never be the wiser…Yes, it will be very hard to get Trump’s returns, and yes, Trump will put up a protracted struggle over them. But this is a fight Democrats must wage, not to “get Trump,” as his defenders like to whine, but rather as a blow on behalf of the broader anti-corruption agenda that Democrats hope to stand for.”

WaPo columnist Dana Milbank shares a warning to Democrats: “If they can stay unified, they will be an effective counterweight to the Trump lunacy, establishing the Democrats as the party to be entrusted with governing. But if they are split by internal divisions, they could become an easy foil for President Trump, lose suburban seats that gave them the House majority and possibly hand Trump a second term…The country is on fire. This is the time for Democrats to be the grown-ups voters want…Democratic unity is what gives them the upper hand in the shutdown battle, as some Republicans openly question Trump’s strategy. Democratic unity also allows them to appeal to the large majority of Americans disgusted with Trump, as Pelosi did during her acceptance speech, uttering “bipartisan” seven times, praising George H.W. Bush and approvingly quoting Ronald Reagan on immigration…There was silence on the Republican side, now a shrunken sea of old white men. “You don’t applaud for Ronald Reagan? ” Pelosi taunted…A disastrous presidency has given progressives an extraordinary opportunity — if they don’t blow it by fighting among themselves.”

From “The House Democrats’ Best Path Forward: To counter Donald Trump, and to prepare for 2020, the Party needs to think big.” by Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker: “Still, whatever compromise is eventually reached to reopen the government, the best path forward for the Democrats as they take over the House of Representatives—the most effective way to counter the Administration’s frantic, unmoored agenda-setting, while also motivating voters for 2020—will be to pursue ambitious ideas. These could include the once utopian-sounding Medicare for All; a Green New Deal, to combat climate change while creating jobs; a national fifteen-dollar minimum wage; and a Voting Rights Advancement Act, to revive some of the protections that the Supreme Court eradicated in 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder…Such proposals are backed by the Party’s fired-up progressives, but not all Democrats in the House support them, and they are highly unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, let alone be signed into law by Trump. Yet they strike many people as fair and humane, if politically complicated. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, seventy per cent of respondents were in favor of Medicare for All…Even if such proposals can’t make it out of Congress this term, they can help form a blueprint for a future in which the Democrats control the White House or the Senate.”