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:

 

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.