Democratic consumers should take a look at David Leonhardt’s NYT column “The Corporate Donors Behind a Republican Power Grab,” which notes that Walgreens “has allied itself with Wisconsin’s brutally partisan Republican Party. That party is now in the midst of a power grab, stripping authority from Wisconsin’s governor and attorney general solely because Republicans lost those offices last month. The power grab comes after years of extreme gerrymandering, which lets Republicans dominate the legislature despite Wisconsin being a closely divided state…A few weeks later, Walgreens donated $1,000 to Vos. Over the summer, it donated another $6,000 to the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate. A couple of weeks before Election Day, the company gave $1,000 to Fitzgerald. These donations weren’t simply a matter of spreading money around. Walgreens did not donate to state-level Democrats this year, as it has in the past…The sums here may not be enormous. But neither are the budgets for local campaigns. Even more important is the message that Walgreens is sending to politicians: We don’t care if you undermine democracy, so long as we get to keep our tax break.'”

“Are these political shenanigans norm shattering?,” asks The New York Times Editorial Board, concerning the GOP post-election power grabs in WI, MI and NC. “Absolutely. They’re obnoxious and cynical, too. And it is regrettable that one political party in particular is so insecure about the merits of its ideas — and the concept of representative democracy — that it feels the need to push a political system under strain even further toward extremism…Part of what makes the moves in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina unusual is that all three states can have lame duck sessions of their legislatures in the first place. Most state legislatures don’t meet throughout the year and so don’t have the chance to thwart the will of voters after an election. If they did, this sort of thing might be more common.”

“Are Republicans abandoning democracy?” by E. J. Dionne, Jr. in his syndicated Washington Post column. Dionne explains, “Especially after last week’s court filings in the ongoing investigations of President Trump, his critics have good reason to focus on the threats he poses to democracy and the rule of law. But the president is not alone in his party…In case after case, Republicans have demonstrated an eagerness to undercut democracy and tilt the rules of the game if doing so serves their ideological interests. The quiet coup by the GOP-controlled legislature in Wisconsin is designed to defy the voters’ wishes. It reflects an abandonment of the disciplines that self-government requires.” Dionne adds that “The Democrats won the popular vote in State Assembly contests by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent but emerged with only 36 seats to the GOP’s 63…The party’s efforts to lock in power regardless of election outcomes also eerily echo some of the behaviors of anti-democratic politicians abroad.”

In his Washington Monthly article, “How Will a Recession Affect the 2020 Election?,” David Atkins writes that “for potentially the first time in American history at least since the Civil War, it is possible that underlying economic conditions may not be quite the predictive factor they once were…The problem for Trump and the Republicans is that they already didn’t have much margin to begin with. Winning the electoral college without the popular vote is a fairly difficult feat, and it requires no small amount of luck. Republicans have done it twice in the last six cycles, but doing it again will be difficult. The 2018 midterms demonstrated that Trump has alienated large groups of voters who may have supported him previously, especially upscale suburban voters, those with college degrees, and a large number of Obama-Trump switchers who seem to be coming back home to the Democratic Party. Trump will have the advantage of incumbency, but as we have seen that advantage has shrunk. The economy may not be quite the factor it used to be, but even a small effect would be devastating given the headwinds faced by the GOP.”

WaPo’s David Weigel has an impressive statistical update on the Midterms elections. Among his findings: “Here’s the scorecard, starting with the state of the parties as compared with their status after the 2016 elections…House popular vote margin: Democrats by 8.6 points, as calculated by the Cook Political Report. That’s the largest popular vote margin for any party since 1974. Not since 1930 have Republicans lost control of the House — not just lost seats, but handed the gavels to Democrats — by as wide a margin as they lost it this year.” Weigel’s tally: Senate: 53 Republicans, 47 Democrats and independents (R 1);  House: 235 Democrats, 199 Republicans (D 41); Governors: 27 Republicans, 23 Democrats (D 7); Attorneys general: 26 Democrats, 24 Republicans (D 4); State legislative chambers: 61; Republican, 38 Democratic (D 8); State “trifectas”: 23 Republican, 14 Democratic (D 7).

Democratic office-holders and candidates who want to win support from those high-turnout senior voters should read United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard’s “Workers Petition Congress: Protect Our Pensions” at Blog for Our Future. As Gerard writes, “The total number of workers at risk is 1.2 million. In my union, the United Steelworkers (USW), 100,000 are threatened…Now, they’re vulnerable because 8 percent of multiemployer pensions are collapsing. This is not the workers’ fault. Often, it’s not even the employers’ fault. It’s because of economic forces that couldn’t be predicted and Congressional decisions to deregulate Wall Street and ignore trade violations…Loss of a pension strikes fear in the hearts of workers who shaped their lives around the covenant between them and their employer that they would receive in retirement compensation they deferred while working for decades.”

“Across the country, women who mobilized around the 2018 midterms are now mobilizing to make sure that the so-called Year of the Woman is not just that — one year,” writes Kate Zernike in The New York Times. “They want the energy that surged with the women’s marches after President Trump’s inauguration and powered a Democratic wave in November to continue not only through the 2020 presidential campaign, but until women make up at least the same proportion among lawmakers that they do in the general population…And for all the victories this year, women will occupy just 24 percent of seats in Congress come January — nowhere close to their proportion among voters or in the population, which is just over 50 percent…polls have shown women shifting their party identification to the Democrats by wide margins, and at least one analysis of exit polls showed that women of all education levels moved toward the Democrats on Election Day — even working-class white women who helped elect Mr. Trump.”

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin explains why “Senate Republicans are responsible for the most unethical and incompetent administration ever.” Rubin presents a devastating litany of Trump’s appointments disasters to date, and observes: “We shouldn’t be surprised that the least qualified president in history — with a long record of bankruptcies, refusal to pay his bills and schemes such as Trump University — should select unqualified and ethically challenged advisers and/or retain those whose ethical misdeeds and incompetence become apparent once in office. However, we cannot blame Trump alone for lousy appointments and staffing the government with unfit characters. The Constitution provides a check on the president’s ability to put shady characters in positions of power. It’s the current Republican Party that rejects that role and decides its job description is to enable Trump’s worst instincts. Just as House Republicans proved themselves incapable of fulfilling their oversight responsibilities, Senate Republicans prove themselves incapable of fulfilling their advice-and-consent duties.”

“Looking at voter turnout in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and throughout the Midwest and South, what we have learned is that, yes, there are real progressives in rural communities. And Democratic voters, too. We also learned that for statewide candidates, attempts to become more conservative in order to reach Republican voters who might vote for them are largely fools gold—you might attract a few, but the number of progressive voters you lose ends up nullifying those gains…In the primary, I worked to stay as neutral as possible. However, I could see the polling data and had a pretty good idea where the race was heading. In talking to communities, I received the same message…We risk creating a divide in this party for absolutely no reason. It’s a divide that insists that rural Democratic registered voters are vastly different than any other kind of Democratic faithful, anywhere in the country. It’s rubbish. — From Yes, Virginia, there are progressives in rural America by Chris Reeves at Daily Kos.

Democrats are still on a bit of a sugar high following 40-House and 7 governor pick-ups in the midterm elections. But the euphoria dissolves on pondering the brick wall of the GOP’s young lifer majority on the Supreme Court, which can invalidate a broad range of progressive reforms with a 5-4 majority. The Senate we can change with smart politics and a little luck. But flipping, or even restoring some balance to the high court, will likely require more drastic action.

Most of the public debate concerns two possible reforms —  changing the size of the court and or the length of terms for the justices. Changing the size of the Supreme Court has been accomplished a few times by congressional statutes. Term limits, however, would require a constitutional amendment.

Clare Malone discusses the possibilities at FiveThirtyEight, and notes,

Former Supreme Court clerk and law professor Ian Samuel is more certain about court-packing: He sees it as an unmitigated good and has written about its potential upsides. “You could amend the constitution to fundamentally change the way the court works — that’s very hard to do. You could try impeaching justices, but that would also be very hard to do and not obviously justifiable,” he said. “Then you have this idea of changing the size of the Supreme Court that has this wonderful virtue that it’s just doable with ordinary legislation the next time you happen to hold political power in the elected branches of government.”

OK, he makes it sound a little too easy. FDR caught hell for trying the same thing, although his efforts did ultimately pay off, by influencing public opinion enough to sway the high court to tilt leftward. Malone adds:

But the political feasibility of the court-packing plan remains a concern. [Rep. Ro] Khanna, one of the few, if not the only national elected official to come out in favor of a fundamental revamping of the court, says that what’s needed is a reframing of the issue, one that moves away from the historically tainted term “court-packing.”

In a war of terms between ‘court-packing’ and ‘court reform,’ however, I wouldn’t bet on the more vague term, ‘court reform’ carrying the day. ‘Court-packing’ just sounds like too much of a naked power grab. Unfortunately, it’s the term constituents would remember and the one the media would repeat.

Malone notes that “one of Khanna’s proposals is an 18-year term limit for justices, after which they would be sent back to sit on circuit courts. “Most Americans love term limits,” he said.”

Polls indicate that Americans do like term limits as a general principle, though not so much for their individual elected officials. Ed Kilgore cites a C-SPAN poll, which indicates that “By nearly a three-to-one margin, respondents favored some sort of restriction on SCOTUS tenure (as opposed to the current lifetime appointments).” In any case, ‘term limits’ is an easier sell than ‘court-packing.’

But term limits require a constitutional amendment. People do seem reluctant to mess around with the Constitution these days, despite the fact that it has been amended 27 times (six other amendments passed by congress failed ratification in the state legislatures). Most of the 27 amendments seemed unlikely to be enacted at some point. Yet now they are the law of the land.

Fundamental progressive reforms are always highly problematic, but you have to begin somewhere. What has changed for the better is that social media provides a powerful tool for shaping public opinion — a tool that wasn’t available to help pass fundamental reforms in the past.

So it’s a choice between enlarging the Supreme Court by congressional statute or enacting Supreme Court term limits by constitutional amendment. Both are daunting challenges, though maybe more realistic than hoping Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Gorsuch will somehow become more liberal, as did Earl Warren and David Souter.

Perhaps I am overreacting to the reports of so very many Democrats contemplating 2020 presidential runs, but I meditated at New York on how that may be Trump’s fault.

In 2016, a presidential candidate who broke just about every rule about who is qualified to run for president and how a successful campaign should be run improbably won the GOP nomination, and then the presidency. More than two years after the fact, it’s still hard to understand how it all happened.

And now, as Democrats look for a challenger to Donald Trump’s reelection in 2020, an enormous field of potential candidates is forming — one that could overwhelm a nominating process designed to choose among relatively few rivals and produce a contested convention whose prize is fought over by a divided party. I can’t imagine that the two phenomena are not closely related.

It’s true that Trump blew up an awful lot of conventional wisdom. He’s the fifth president to have never won a previous elected office. But three of the others (Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower) were military heroes, and Herbert Hoover was a universally renowned humanitarian as the organizer of food aid to Europe during and after World War I, and then a two-term cabinet member and favorite of party insiders. Trump’s background, featuring multiple business failures and broken marriages and admitted serial adultery was unusual, too. And the way Trump campaigned was even more unprecedented, featuring nasty personal attacks on members of his own party (beginning with his mockery of the war service of his party’s most notable military hero, John McCain) and his frequent profane and belligerent utterances, alongside lies too frequent to count. And Trump also defied the ideological orthodoxies of his very ideological Republican Party by opposing the Iraq War and free trade. Yet he won.

And so there’s an inchoate sense that Trump broke the mold so thoroughly that anybody can run a viable race for president, perhaps successfully. That’s how you get multiple billionaires with no record of public service (e.g., Tom Steyer, Howard Schultz, and Mark Cuban) seriously considering candidacies; seven sitting Members of the U.S. House, which hasn’t produced a president since 1880, exploring presidential runs; mayors from municipalities as small as South Bend, Indiana (Pete Buttigieg) getting encouragement to run; septuagenarians galore (Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, John Kerry) looking for a fountain of youth; and politicians best known for respectable losses in statewide races (Beto O’Rourke and possibly Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum) making 2020 lists as well.

No, all these people won’t run, but few if any authoritative voices are telling them it’s a waste of time. One rich celebrity who did take himself out of the running, actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, summed it up well:

“‘I think in a lot of people’s minds, what Trump has proved is that anybody can run for president,’ Johnson says. ‘And in a lot of people’s minds, what he’s also proved is that not everybody should run for president.'”

That second part needs to be heard a bit more often. For one thing, Trump in 2016 had an asset that few potential candidates (even The Rock) possess, which is decades of heavy national publicity as a popular entertainment figure and as a very public businessman. He also had the corner on an high-value ideological position that virtually none of his intra-party rivals shared in his virulent opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, amplified by his dangerously blunt appeals to white Christian nationalist sentiments. It is unclear there is a “lane” in the 2020 Democratic presidential landscape that is equally open and undervalued by other pols.

And let’s face it: Trump got lucky. The 16 candidates he initially faced in the GOP contest gave him an excellent opportunity to remain viable as his support slowly grew. Had either Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz gotten a one-on-one shot at Trump a bit earlier in the contest, the mogul would have probably lost. As for the general election, no matter of Russian interference or Clinton email obsession would have gotten Trump into the White House if Hillary Clinton’s campaign had invested appropriately in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Yes, the conventional wisdom so neatly and confidently presented in The Party Decides has been shredded. More likely, though, Trump ‘16 was the exception that proves rules do exist, and a new, if modified, conventional wisdom that does make sense will emerge.

But politicians have always been willing to gamble on luck, and the phenomenon of a huge field of gamblers paradoxically makes the odds of something strange happening that much stronger. Democrats who don’t want to roll the dice in 2020 might want to consider ways to winnow their field before voters vote and we find out that there are not “three tickets out of Iowa,” as legend has it, but maybe ten.

Zack Beauchamp reports at Vox: “The Wisconsin Republican Party is nullifying the results of the 2018 election…On Wednesday morning, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill that would seize key powers from incoming Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who defeated incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in November. Walker is expected to sign it in the coming days…The bill blocks Evers’s ability to change state welfare policy and withdraw from a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — two things he campaigned on. It limits the state’s early voting period, a move that would make it harder for Democrats to win future elections. And this is all happening during the lame-duck session before Evers takes power, rushed through quickly in an explicit effort to weaken Democrats and prevent the new governor from doing what he was elected to do. In essence, Wisconsin Republicans are telling the state’s voters that their preferences will be ignored…This would be troubling enough if it were a one-off. But it’s not.” Beauchamp goes on to discuss similar GOP lame duck power grabs in Michigan and North Carolina, which “highlight one of the most disturbing facts about American politics today: The Republican Party has become institutionally indifferent to the health of democracy. It prioritizes power over principle to such an extreme degree that it undermines the most basic functioning of democracy.”

Ronald Brownstein weighs in on the GOP power grab at The Atlantic, and notes, “The naked power grab unfolding in Michigan and Wisconsin shows the urgency many in the GOP feel to block the priorities of a metro-based Democratic coalition that embodies and embraces the big cultural and demographic changes reshaping the country. The determination of a Republican Party rooted in rural America to shred the rule book is likely to only deepen as more population and economic power concentrates into the metropolitan centers hurtling away from the GOP in the Trump era…the sharp, and strikingly consistent, geographic and demographic contrasts between the Republican and Democratic coalitions in Michigan and Wisconsin make clear that these explosive fights are also something more. They represent just the newest front in a larger national confrontation: the struggle between metropolitan and nonmetro America for control of the country’s direction.”

Paul Waldman explains it well in his article, “Republicans Against Democracy” at The American Prospect: “Since Donald Trump became president we’ve heard a lot about norms, the informal expectations and patterns of behavior that govern much of the political world. We’ve discussed them because Trump so often breaks them, in ways small and large. There’s no law saying the president has to release his tax returns, or can’t publicly demand that the Justice Department investigate his political opponents—it’s just how everyone accepted that things would work…But it didn’t start with him. Republicans have been pushing against norms for years, in ways that have consistently demonstrated an undeniable creativity. They not only do what Democrats wouldn’t dare, they come up with new ways to distort the system that nobody had ever thought of…Which is what is happening right now in multiple states: a shocking and repugnant attack on the will of the electorate and on democracy itself, from a party that plainly believes it can get away with just about anything…This is a three-step maneuver: Gerrymander brutally when you have the chance; hold on to power even when you lose the vote; then hamstring the Democrat the voters elected. It’s the kind of thing that until a few years ago no one would have even contemplated…Put them all together and you have a meta-lesson that Republicans took to heart: We can get away with anything. It doesn’t matter whether we’re the target of a stern editorial from The New York Times, or whether Democrats squawk. What matters is winning.”

Politico’s David Siders likens the potential Democratic presidential field to “a big game of chicken,” noting the bailout of former MA Governor Deval Patrick, who the article concludes is on “everyone’s short and long list for V.P.” Also gone is Michael Avenatti, who flamed out before he got started. Siders notes new buzz for Sens. Michael Bennet and Bob Casey and Biden affirming his “most qualified” resume. Democrats also have abundant talent in the lower chamber, and at New York Magazine,  Ed Kilgore explores the possibilities of a candidate from the House winning the nomination. Perhaps the salient point at this juncture is that Dems have a bumper crop of highly-qualified, if not particularly charismatic potential presidential candidates. With just a little less voter suppression in TX and FL, the punditry would be all abuzz about a ticket featuring Beto O’Rourke and/or Andrew Gillum. Sigh.

No one should be shocked by Trump’s petulant behavior at the funeral for former President George H. W. Bush. But the photos and videos of the Trumps glowering during the Apostle’s Creed and other songs and prayers are quite striking. It may be that Trump’s remaining Evangelical support has already been whittled down to the hard core. But it is interesting to wonder how the photos will play with Evangelicals in a purplish state with lots of church-goers, like say, North Carolina.

Astead W. Herndon has a NYT update on the “controversy” surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage. It’s only news because Trump has repeatedly ridiculed Warren, who he fears might be a presidential candidate who could beat him. Some critics believe she lent support to the notion of genetic testing affirming racial distinctions. Yet, many Americans have taken genetic tests just to learn what they can about their family roots. One of the more sensible comments about the dust-up comes from Deb Haaland, newly elected Native American House member from New Mexico, who said “I absolutely respect tribes’ authority to determine who are tribal members,” Ms. Haaland said. “But I don’t think that’s what Elizabeth Warren was doing. She was merely looking to find a connection to her past and that’s exactly what she did.” In any case, Warren can always respond “I’ll let Trump and his followers worry about all that stuff. I’m more interested in advancing policies that can help make life better for Americans.”

In his New York Times op-ed, “Citizens United Is Still Doing the Dirty Work,” Thomas B. Edsall shares some lucid observations about the reverberating effects of the Citizens United ruling on American politics: “In the eight years since it was decided, Citizens United has unleashed a wave of campaign spending that by any reasonable standard is extraordinarily corrupt…Citizens United has turned campaign finance into a system universally disdained by the public, a system even more ethically unmoored than the one obtained before Watergate…The difference now is that the checks are bigger…How did this come about? Essentially, by legal fiat: a declaration by five Supreme Court justices that what looks, smells and feels like corruption is not in fact corruption…The American system of campaign finance, undergirded by a Supreme Court whose conservative members feign innocence, has become the enabler of corrosive processes of economic and political inequality.”

So, “How Much Was Incumbency Worth In 2018?” Nathaniel Rakich addresses the question at FiveThirtyEight, and observes, “For decades, running as an incumbent was undoubtedly a huge advantage in electoral politics. As recently as 20 years ago, holding office added an average of 8 percentage points to a candidate’s margin. But in this century, experts say, the incumbency advantage has significantly diminished. Now the verdict is in for the 2018 election: According to our method of calculating it (which is different from other researchers’, so keep in mind that these numbers can’t be compared directly to those from previous years), the electoral benefit of already being a member of Congress this year was down to less than 3 points.”

From “Trump to the rescue? Presidential campaigning and the 2018 U.S. Senate elections” by Alan I. Abramowitz at Sabato’s  Crystal Ball: “The evidence examined in this article suggests that President Trump’s attempts to intervene in the 2018 Senate elections had, at best, mixed results for the GOP. On average, Trump’s campaign rallies appear to have had a minimal impact on the outcomes of Senate contests. A few Republican candidates did better than expected based on “fundamentals” but others did worse than expected. Only one Republican candidate, Rick Scott in Florida, did substantially better than expected but that may well have been due to factors other than the president’s intervention. And while the president’s visits may have marginally helped GOP candidates in red states like Indiana and Missouri, they may have marginally hurt Republicans in swing states like Nevada and Arizona…The bigger picture here is that Republican candidates actually underperformed in the 2018 Senate elections. Given a map in which Democrats were defending 26 seats, including 10 in states carried by Donald Trump in 2016, Republicans might well have picked up six or seven seats in 2018 in a neutral political environment. But the political environment in 2018 was far from neutral, as can be seen in the results of the House and gubernatorial elections where the map did not give Republicans the same sort of advantage. And the fact that the overall political environment was toxic for Republicans in 2018 was due largely to the unpopularity of President Trump. That reality was far more important than the effects of the president’s campaigning for GOP candidates.”

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Democrat John Barrow has lost his bid for Georgia Secretary of State to Republican state Rep. Brad Raffenberger by a margin of 52-48 percent. With a total 1,454,786 votes counted out of about 7 million registered voters, it appears that less than 21 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the contest. That would be an even smaller percentage of “eligible” voters who showed up and voted in the run-off.

In recent years, elections for Secretary of State have gotten more attention, in the wake of rising awareness of voter suppression, based primarilly on race, but also against Latinos and young voters. In most states, the Secretary of State supervises voting and counts the ballotts. When the office gets heavilly-politicized, as has clearly happened in Georgia, voters lose faith in the integrity of their elections.

As Ari Berman writes in Mother Jones, “Democrats flipped secretary-of-state offices in Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan in 2018. These victories will help reshape voting laws in key swing states. But given the voter suppression we saw in Georgia in 2018—and with Kemp now governor—a victory for Barrow would be the most significant of the bunch.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein has an insightful report on the Georgia run-off, which notes:

The suburban wave that nearly swept Democrat Stacey Abrams to Georgia’s highest office last month all but evaporated in Tuesday’s runoff for secretary of state and Public Service Commission.

Democrats only narrowly held Gwinnett County after winning it by about 15 percentage points in November’s general election. And Cobb County, the long-time Republican stronghold that Democrats easily carried four weeks ago, appeared to have flipped back to the red column.

The struggles in the close-in suburbs contributed to stinging defeats for John Barrow, a former U.S. House member running for secretary of state, and Lindy Miller, the businesswoman seeking a PSC seat. So did tepid Democratic turnout on the heels of a record-shattering race for governor.

The result was an election as polarizing as the general election – with the same conclusion: A GOP sweep.

Republican Brad Raffensperger outdid Brian Kemp’s margins in a spate of counties, from Clinch to Coweta, on his way to a 52-48 victory over Barrow. And Barrow narrowly topped Abrams’ 84 percent margin in all-important DeKalb County.

But the big margins in DeKalb and next-door Fulton weren’t nearly enough for Democrats to break the GOP grip on every statewide office.

Bluestein adds that “Raffensperger waged a low-key campaign focusing on rural Georgia,” while “Barrow tried to drive out turnout in the east Georgia district he long represented in the U.S. House. He flipped two sparsely-populated counties that voted GOP in November – Burke and Washington – but it wasn’t enough.”

“Republicans have long dominated fall general election runoffs,” notes Bluestein.  Yet, “Democrats hoped that swirl of voting rights issues that dogged the November vote would energize liberal voters still seething from Kemp’s victory and eager to prevent another Republican from overseeing state elections.” Barrow just fell short.

Democrats did flip more than a dozen state legislative districts, but Republicans still control both houses of the state legislature, along with the governorship, a majority of the U.S. House delegation and both U.S. Senators.

At ABC News, Adam Kelsey said that the runoff was “widely viewed as a referendum on allegations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement that marred Georgia’s midterm races this year.” Kelsey notes, further,

On Election Day last month, Raffensperger received 49.09 percent to Barrow’s 48.67 percent, a difference of just over 16,000 votes. Voting that night, and early voting in the weeks prior, overseen by the secretary of state’s office, featured scores of complaints across Georgia about voter registration purging and difficulties in obtaining absentee ballots and confirming their receipt and legitimacy.

Kemp, who defeated Abrams with 50.22 percent of the vote, narrowly avoiding a runoff himself, served as secretary of state until Nov. 8, two days after Election Day, leading to accusations of a conflict of interest by Abrams and others who believe his office’s efforts affected his own race. Kemp stepped aside from the position before Abrams conceded the race, as her campaign fought for a runoff by arguing for the inclusion of some additional provisional and absentee ballots.

But it was the contentious gubernatorial election that brought the office to the national spotlight. Last week, a group affiliated with Abrams brought a federal lawsuit against the interim secretary of state, Robyn Crittenden, seeking reforms that included halting voter purging practices, requiring the use of voting machines that provide paper confirmations and taking steps to reduce lines at polling places.

Kelsey adds that “Abrams said Saturday that no matter the winner, the lawsuit will proceed.” No doubt the same level of voter suppression that likely cost Abrams the election also hurt Barrow’s campaign this year. But, when the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast ballots sinks below 20 percent, Dems can’t blame it all on voter suppression. In Georgia, and in nearly all other states, voter participation is lagging badly in non-presidential election years — and it’s not all that great, even in presidential years compared to other democracies. The state and local Democratic parties and allied groups in all of the states must do a better job of mobilizing voters, if they want to put an end to widespread gerrymandering and voter suppression. If anyone has some fresh ideas about how to go about it, now would be a good time to share them.

In terms of demographics, Georgia is a good bet to become the next blue state. Abrams showed how closely divided the Georgia electorate has become. In addition, African Americans are a about a third of Georgia voters, the third highest percentage among the states after Mississippi and Louisiana. Only New York and Florida have more African Americans in the population. Latinos are about 9 percent of Georgia, but the percentage who are eligible to vote is in the low single digits. Georgia has one of the highest rates of increase of undocumented workers of all the states. In terms of generational voting patterns, Georgia has one of the lowest percentages of citizens over age 65.

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

Two interesting recommendations here. In the UK Guardian, Paul Mason emphasizes the role of emotion, inspiration and economic hope.

“The first lesson…for liberal centrism, if it wishes to survive, is that it needs an emotional narrative with an inspirational core offer. And that core offer has to be economic hope: there is nothing that says the far left has to own policies of fiscal expansion, redistribution, state aid and high wages. It’s just that the neoliberal economic textbook says they can’t be done. The “fear of the future” reported in much qualitative research on supporters of the nationalist right is, for many of them, rational. People are reacting as if scared, depressed and angry because the world created by precarious employment, poor housing and rising inequality is scary, depressing and annoying.

If you can’t answer the question: “How does life get rapidly better for me and my family?”, no amount of communicative power will help. Secondly, the centre has to make a strategic choice: to side with the left against the right. All discussions of populism that avoid that conclusion are worthless.”

Amen. On a different tack, Joan Williams on the Atlantic site focuses on the various ways educated and affluent whites tend to look down on the white working class. She includes a tendency to pooh-pooh the whole idea of economic anxiety as a driver of reactionary populism (“it’s just racism”) and a tendency to see any and all opposition to open borders as yet more racism.

She concludes her piece with a challenge to white elites. I particularly like the last line.

“With each trump-fueled outrage, people on Twitter ask whether I’m finally ready to admit that the white working class is simply racist. What my Twitter friends don’t seem to recognize is their own privilege. If elites cling to the idea that working-class whites are perpetrators of inequality, rather than both perpetrators and victims, perhaps it’s because they want to believe that they are where they are because they’ve worked hard and they’re the smartest people around. Once you start a conversation about class, elite white people have to admit they have not only racial privilege but class privilege, too.

Acknowledging this also requires elites to cede yet another advantage: the extent to which they have controlled Democrats’ priorities. Political scientists have documented the party’s shift over the past 50 years from a coalition focused on blue-collar issues to one dominated by environmentalism and other issues elites cherish.

I’m one of those activists; environmentalism and concerns related to gender, race, and sexuality define my scholarship and my identity. But the working class has been asked to endure a lot of economic pain while Democrats focus on other problems. It’s time to listen up. The only effective antidote to a populism interlaced with racism is a populism that isn’t.”

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

It’s very important for Trump that he carry Pennsylvania again in 2020. This could be quite difficult for him, judging from recent trends in the Keystone state. An article by Paul Kane in the Post collects a lot of the reasons why and in the process makes it pretty clear what the Democrats need to do in 2020 to win the state.

“President Trump’s biggest 2016 upset took a very sharp turn this year away from Republicans.

Look at Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr.’s more than 13-percentage-point victory last month, only to be topped by Gov. Tom Wolf’s 17-point reelection win. Those Democrats torched the four suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia and Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh and its inner suburbs, by margins never before seen.

Take Chester County, the wealthiest in Pennsylvania, due west of Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton broke through the traditional GOP stronghold in 2016, winning by 9 percentage points over Trump. Casey won there by 20 percentage points.

“You can’t attribute that just to a verdict on me,” Casey said in an interview inside his Senate office, giving Trump’s unpopularity much of the credit.

Wolf won there by 24 percentage points, actually topping Clinton’s raw vote total in Chester County from the higher-turnout 2016 race….

The broader problem was spelled out by G. Terry Madonna, who runs the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, and Michael L. Young in a memo laying bare the Republican struggles:

* Democrats have won four of the past five governor’s races, each by more than 9 percentage points;

* Republicans lost 11 seats in the state House and five in the state Senate, creating the chance for Democratic majorities after 2020;

* Republicans performed even worse in down-ballot statewide contests: They have lost six straight races for state auditor, four straight for state treasurer and two straight for attorney general….

Of eight statewide races in the past three elections, Republicans won just two — Trump and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R), both in 2016.

Two Pennsylvania Democrats, state Attorney General Joshua Shapiro and Treasurer Joseph Torsella, actually received more votes than Trump two years ago…..

Casey believes a Democratic presidential nominee, man or woman, can keep Trump’s margin down in the rural towns if they follow the Wolf-Casey approach.

“Get there physically, listen to them, show up and give a damn,” he said.

His first ad, run heavily in the western part of the state, showed coal miners talking about Casey’s legislation to help with their health benefits. A second ad showed a mother talking about the opioid epidemic in that part of the state.

Clinton devoted outsized attention to Pennsylvania, including an epic election eve rally outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall with Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry and the Obamas.

But her campaign focused heavily on liberal cultural issues, running ads that questioned Trump’s fitness for office. She received just 26 percent of the vote in the rural areas and small towns, according to exit polls.

Last month, Casey received 44 percent of that same region’s vote.

That came despite an ideological transformation in which he abandoned the culturally conservative views of his late father, former governor Robert Casey Sr.: The son now supports most gun-control proposals and in 2013 backed same-sex marriage.

His message for 2020 contenders is to follow that same path. The nominee will not abandon Pennsylvania’s urban or suburban voters, the new Democratic base. He or she does not need to win a majority in small rural towns, but must do better than Clinton.”

That shouldn’t be too tough.

Ari Berman, author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” explains why “A Runoff Election Tuesday Could Reverse Brian Kemp’s Voter Suppression in Georgia” at Mother Jones, and notes “John Barrow is the only former member of Congress with the unfortunate distinction of being drawn out of his district not once, but twice…Barrow, 63, calls himself “the most gerrymandered member of Congress in history.” His personal experience dealing with attempts to manipulate state voting laws led him to run this year for Georgia secretary of state, in a bid to become the state’s top election official. He trailed on Election Day by just 19,000 votes to Republican state Rep. Brad Raffensperger, but because neither candidate won an outright majority, a runoff election on Tuesday will decide the race—and the fate of Georgia’s suppressive voting practices…“For many years, most folks haven’t put much thought into the office of Secretary of State,” Barrow wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the election’s first round. “But on November 6th, all of us received a civics lesson on the importance of this office…Democrats flipped secretary-of-state offices in Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan in 2018. These victories will help reshape voting laws in key swing states. But given the voter suppression we saw in Georgia in 2018—and with Kemp now governor—a victory for Barrow would be the most significant of the bunch.”

“President Trump announced his intention late Saturday to quickly withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a move intended to force House Democrats to enact a revised version of the pact despite concerns that it fails to protect American workers,” reports Glenn Thrush at The New York Times. “If the president follows through on his threat, congressional leaders will have six months to pass the measure. The agreement has been losing support in recent days as Democratic lawmakers, ready to take control of the House in January, reckon with fallout from the announcement last week that General Motors was planning to idle five plants in North America…Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader who is likely to be elected speaker, cast doubt on the likelihood that the deal could be passed without significant new assurances from Mexico that labor standards in the agreement will be strictly enforced.”

At Post Partisan, Republican strategist Ed Rogers writes, “One bad thing about writing is that some of what you write doesn’t age well. My post on election night said that Democrats won the House, but Trump won the election. I need to walk that back. As the days have gone by, the election results have gotten worse for Republicans, and the analysis of what went wrong includes many bad omens for the GOP in 2020…The Democrats’ fundraising in 2018 — particularly among small donors — was also stunningly effective. Their ActBlue platform succeeded beyond anyone’s forecast, raking in a record haul of more than $1 billion…Michael Bloomberg’s last-minute money bombs were strategically placed and made a meaningful difference in several races…While midterms are not necessarily a good predictor of what will happen in the general election, Republicans would be wise to reflect on the fact that Democrats just won the House by the largest midterm margin ever.”

“We submit that the party’s huge vote total advantage is the bigger story of these midterms, as this metric is more indicative of the longer-term strength of a party than seats won,” writes B.J. Rudell,  associate director of POLIS: Duke University’s Center for Political Leadership at The Hill. “Democrats increased their vote totals in over 96 percent of House districts. We could not find evidence of any comparable midterm-to-midterm jump in U.S. history…Were the 2018 midterms a Blue Wave? The answer is clear  — 2018 might not have yielded the electoral gains of 2010, but no midterm election in the past century or more has been so lopsided, which almost certainly suggests its impact will be felt in 2020.

In his article, “Want a Democrat in the White House? Reform the Primaries: With anywhere from ten to 30 presidential candidates, only ranked-choice voting can produce a viable nominee,” at The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson writes “The one way to ensure that the nominee actually is favored by a majority of Democratic voters is for the party to adopt a form of ranked-choice voting. Under this system, voters would be able to designate one candidate as their first choice, another as their second, and another as their third. Maine recently adopted such a system. The political parties would have to devise the system they want to use, but they would need the cooperation of the states, which would have to rework their computer systems to accommodate rankings.”

“Democrats have a plan to stop GOP voter suppression,” reports Dan Desai Martin at Shareblue. “In the 116th Congress, our first order of business is giving democracy back to the people,” Rep. Terri Sewell (D-MS) said at a Friday press conference introducing “HR 1,” the symbolically important first bill of the new session…HR 1 will focus on strengthening democracy, which Republicans have abandoned in their complicit acquiescence to the Trump agenda…“We will promote national automatic voter registration, bolster our critical election infrastructure against foreign attackers, and put an end to partisan gerrymandering once and for all by establishing federal guidelines to outlaw the practice,” Pelosi and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed…“Let’s make it easier, not harder, to vote in America,” Sarbanes said at the Friday press conference…Beyond strengthening voting rights, HR 1 also seeks to protect our democracy by fighting the corruption that tilts the playing field in favor of wealthy dark money organizations…According to draft legislation viewed by the Washington Post, the bill will set “new donor disclosure requirements for political organizations,” and help strengthen the impact of small donations to political campaigns…“Wealthy special interests shouldn’t be able to buy more influence than the workers, consumers and families who should be our priority in Washington,” Pelosi and Sarbanes wrote…To boost transparency, the bill will also require the president to release his or her tax returns.”

Paul Rosenberg’s Salon/Alternet article, “A prescription for stagnation and disaster: Here’s why Democrats must resist the ‘bipartisan’ trap” probes the realistic limits to cooperation between the two major parties. In this excerpt, he identifies some legislative priorities that poll so well that progressives can expect strong popular support at a level that could force enactment. As Rosenberg writes,  “There are some things progressives want that even majorities of conservatives support, as with the top tier of the Progressive Change Institute’s Big Ideas poll in early 2015, which I wrote about in July of that year in discussing Bernie Sanders’ popular appeal…The poll identified 16 ideas with 70 percent support or more, and don’t depend on any sort of “bipartisan compromise” as defined inside the Beltway. These range from allowing the government to negotiate drug prices (at 79 percent approval) to universal pre-K (77 percent), an end to gerrymandering (73 percent), debt-free public college (71 percent), Medicare buy-in for everyone (71 percent), and the “Green New Deal,” with its promise of millions of clean-energy jobs (70 percent).

At Brookings, Senior Fellow Isabel V. Sawhill has a warning and a recommendation for Democrats: “Democrats have re-taken the House, and already we’re hearing calls for investigations and greater accountability…But to the new members of the House prioritizing their long to-do lists, I’d like to offer some caution: If serving as a check on President Trump is all you manage to accomplish between now and 2020, your electoral victory may ultimately disappoint those who voted you into office, shrinking rather than growing your base and further increasing the public’s cynicism about government….Americans are most concerned with their low pay and poor benefits. They noted that there are plenty of jobs out there, and that jobs are easier than ever to find because of the Internet (and a strong economy). The problem, they insist, is that there aren’t enough good jobs….Yes, we need to address climate change, affordable health care, immigration reform, and other issues, but providing decent-paying jobs should be the top priority. In focus groups I have done with “the forgotten Americans” that’s what they say they want and that’s what it will take to restore their faith in government.”

From David Jarman’s “Here’s how the new Democratic members of the House sort out ideologically” at The Daily Kos:

As a transplant living in California, I’m pretty familiar with the electoral system here. And the things I’ve been hearing Republicans say on the subject are outrageous, as I explained at New York.

Some Republicans were so busy on the evening of November 6 spinning a poor midterm showing into a vindication of their party and president that they apparently missed the fact that the election wasn’t quite over. And later on, they professed mystification at the final results. I say “professed” because it’s hard to believe Speaker Paul Ryan is as stupid as he sounds here:

“The California election system ‘just defies logic to me,’ Ryan said during a Washington Post event.

“‘We were only down 26 seats the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race….’

“’In Wisconsin, we knew the next day. Scott Walker, my friend, I was sad to see him lose, but we accepted the results on Wednesday,’ Ryan said. In California, ‘their system is bizarre; I still don’t completely understand it. There are a lot of races there we should have won.’”

The slow count from California should not have come as a surprise: It happened in the June 5 primary as well, and in the 2016 primary and general election. And it was in part the product of a 2015 change in state election laws allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within three days to count. Since the share of Californians voting by mail has been going up regularly in recent elections, we’re talking about a lot of votes. Since mail ballots have to go through signature verification (just like in-person ballots go through at polling places), it takes a while to count them. There’s nothing new or nefarious about either of these practices. Voting by mail (or as the practice’s proponents prefer to call it, “voting from home”) is now quasi-universal in three states: Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. And much longer than California, Washington has for years allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to count, leading to slow counts in that state as well. A Washington election official had an interesting reaction when asked back in 2012 about the consequences of a slow count:

“‘News reporters are the only people who complain about the vote-counting delay,’ said [Katie] Blinn, adding that Washington’s system is relatively inexpensive, accurate and encourages turnout.”

Apparently Speakers of the House also complain now.

While a spokesman for Ryan hastened to say he didn’t intend to claim a election fraud, his complaints echoed those of a California member of the Republican National Committee, Shawn Steel, who suggested just that in an op-ed for the Washington Times.

Citing Republican congressional candidate Young Kim’s 14-point lead at one point on the evening of November 6, Steel asks:

“How does a 14-point Republican lead disappear? Merciless and unsparing, California Democrats have systematically undermined California’s already-weak voter protection laws to guarantee permanent one-party rule.”

To those unfamiliar with GOP rhetoric, I should explain that “voter protection laws” means laws making it as hard as possible to vote. Consider Steel’s interpretation of the rule allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day:

“In California, voting doesn’t stop on Election Day. Absentee ballots need only be postmarked by Election Day, with ballots counted that arrive up to three days late. If ballots are sent to the wrong county, the ballot is valid for an additional four days….That means you literally have seven days after an election where a county could still be receiving legitimate ballots.”

Again, that’s been the practice in Washington for years, without complaint (other than from reporters). And when you think about it, why should we respect ballots cast on Election Day more than those filled out on or before Election Day that are duly placed in the mail, at their own expense? Should such voters have to guess how long it will take the postal service to deliver their ballots? This complaint only makes sense to someone who wants to make voting inconvenient, and hence rarer. Steel goes on to suggest that voting by mail is itself nefarious:

“In just four years, the number of absentee ballots distributed in California has increased by 44 percent. ‘Nearly 13 million voters have received a ballot in the mail, compared to just 9 million in the last gubernatorial election in 2014,’ notes Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.”

First of all, these aren’t “absentee ballots.” As is the case in a growing number of states, voting by mail is considered normal, not something you have to construct an excuse to do. And of course the number is rising: In California you can register as a “voter by mail” and you will receive mail ballots automatically so long as you keep voting. Steel points to an experiment that allowed a handful of counties this year to mail ballots to all registered voters as though that somehow encourages fraud. Again, that is the universal practice in voting-by-mail states; what’s the beef? You can vote by mail, vote in person, or not vote at all. Nothing has changed.

Here’s another bogus complaint from Steel, about what he calls, without a shred of evidence, “motor voter fraud:”

“Every person in California that interacts with the Department of Motor Vehicles is automatically registered to vote. This has predictably led to tens of thousands cases of voter registration problems. The state’s Motor Voter program has come under fire for double registering as many as 77,000 people and registering as many as 1,500 ineligible voters. The state’s bipartisan oversight agency expressed concerns about ‘serious problems with ensuring that the New Motor Voter Program works as intended and promised.'”

This is called “automatic voter registration” and 15 states (plus the District of Columbia) have similar systems. California’s just went into effect this last April, and those 1,500 ineligible voters (who were duly purged from the rolls) were out of the 1.4 million enrolled by September, when the errors were discovered and cured.

One more bogus complaint that you can hear other Republicans make involves something Steel confusedly calls “conditional voting”:

“California has effectively adopted same-day voter registration with the introduction of ‘conditional voting.’ This election cycle, voters who missed the 15-day voter registration deadline could request to cast a conditional ballot.”

Same-day voter registration is in effect in 17 states (plus D.C.). And “provisional ballots” have been in effect nationwide since the passage of the 2002 Help America Vote Act. It’s actually a means for ensuring against voter fraud, since provisional votes are not counted until their validity can be established. Yes, provisional ballots slow down vote counts, but the alternative — giving voters the benefit of the doubt and counting them all — isn’t likely going to be endorsed by Republicans….

This brouhaha might not matter if it did not feed the same myths of voter fraud that led Donald Trump to claim without a hint of evidence after the 2016 elections that “millions” of illegal votes had been cast for Hillary Clinton in California, robbing him of a popular-vote plurality nationally. Going into 2020, this sort of loose talk needs to be debunked wherever possible, unless we want to risk the possibility of a GOP election defeat that is not simply questioned but denied.

Democrats had a lot going for them in their midterm quest for a House of Representatives majority, including: historical midterm election patterns; the public’s desire to check President Trump and GOP domination of all branches of government; the Republican failure to offer a credible health care reform package; their multi-billion dollar tax give-away to the wealthy; unease about Trump’s reckless trade policy; a bumper crop of really good Democratic candidates and competent campaigns; and additional millions of fed-up women voters.

But for many Democrats who won close races, a leading factor in their success would have to include the generosity of former New York Mayor/publishing tycoon Michael Bloomberg. As Stephanie Saul and Rachel Shorey explain in their NYT article, “How Michael Bloomberg Used His Money to Aid Democratic Victories in the House“:

Big donors like the Adelsons, the Uihleins, the Koch brothers on the Republican side and Tom Steyer and George Soros on the Democratic side have become integral and influential players in every election cycle. But in this year’s midterm elections, Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, emerged as a powerful and effective force, as well as the biggest outside spender promoting Democratic House candidates, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Records filed so far show that organizations controlled and funded by Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $41 million on 24 House races, much of it on eye-catching ads rolled out on social media and broadcast on television in the crucial final days of the campaign.

And while it’s impossible to conclude that any one factor tipped the balance in a race, Mr. Bloomberg appears to have reaped the benefits of his millions in giving. Democrats won 21 of the 24 races he sought to influence. Of those, 12 had been considered either tossups or in Republican districts.

“The mission was to flip the House. Success or failure would be defined by that,” said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Mr. Bloomberg.

…When the final reports are filed next month, Mr. Bloomberg’s organization says they will show that the former mayor and his organizations spent $44 million on television ads and another $12 million on digital advertising in support of House candidates. Overall spending by Mr. Bloomberg and his organizations in the 2018 elections topped $112 million, an amount that also includes donations to help Senate candidates and progressive organizations…That puts him on the same level as Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, longtime Republican megadonors who had given $112 million to Republican Super PACs as of Oct. 17.

No doubt some of the 40 Democratic pick-ups and incumbents who won narrow victories would have won without contributions from Bloomberg and other wealthy donors.  However, note Saul and Shorey, “Assessing the election outcome, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, cited Mr. Bloomberg’s spending as a significant factor. “Michael Bloomberg’s money went a long way. He defeated a lot of people by writing those $5 million checks,” Mr. McCarthy told CNBC. Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball sees a more moderate Bloomberg effect, adding that “Mr. Bloomberg and his late money may have made a difference in a few of the surprising results that helped pad the size of the Democratic majority.”

And Bloomberg’s investments were smart and strategically-sound, as Storey and Saul explain. His strategy “involved spending on digital advertising beginning in September and spending “big” and “late” on television advertising. Records show that more than $30 million of Mr. Bloomberg’s spending on House races came after Oct. 22…They identified districts previously ignored by national Democrats where there were opportunities to stretch the Democratic map.”

In terms of digital and TV ad strategy, “Digital ads are cheaper and carry metrics showing how many people clicked, how long they watched and how many people shared. Using those metrics, Mr. Bloomberg’s operation was able to identify successful digital ads that they could move to television.” Saul and Storey provide a number of specific examples, including:

Health care and taxes were major themes of the Bloomberg ads. In Illinois’s 14th Congressional District, a suburban Chicago area, one Bloomberg-funded ad emphasized the Democratic challenger Lauren Underwood’s record as a registered nurse who would fight for health care.

A separate ad attacked the four-term incumbent, Randy Hultgren, for his vote in favor of the bill limiting deductions for state and local taxes, which the ad claimed would lead to “higher taxes for many Chicagoland families.”

…In Houston, a media market saturated with political advertising, one ad stood out for its quirkiness. It featured a cartoonlike depiction of the Republican incumbent, Representative John Culberson, riding a spaceship.

Mr. Culberson had pushed millions of dollars in funding for a NASA mission to find signs of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“John Culberson: Out of this World,” the ad trumpeted.

“It was definitely the most-talked-about ad in the Houston area,” said Tony Essalih, a former aide to Mr. Culberson and now a principal with Cornerstone Government Affairs, a lobbying firm. “In terms of driving up his negatives, I think it had an impact.”

It’s impossible to pinpoint the overall effectiveness of Bloomberg’s contributions with any precision. But it’s clear his support had a significant impact in a number of races. It looks like Democrats owe him a debt of gratitude. Meanwhile, Bloomberg is behaving like a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and he has an upcoming speaking engagement in Iowa. If he runs, former Republican Bloomberg will likely be cast as a centrist, business-friendly Democrat, even though he is now the NRA’s top boogeyman.

Bloomberg will undoubtedly make some Democrats nervous, especially those who could use his support, but don’t want to get locked into an endorsement trajectory. Bloomberg may end up more a king-maker than a King. But either way, his influence in Democratic Party politics is on the upswing — and so far, for progressives, as well as moderates, that’s been a good thing.