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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

There is a sector of working class voters who can be persuaded to vote for Democrats in 2024 – but only if candidates understand how to win their support.

Read the memo.

Saying that Dems need to “show up” in solidly GOP districts is a slogan, not a strategy. What Dems actually need to do is seriously evaluate their main strategic alternatives.

Read the memo.

Democratic Political Strategy is Developed by College Educated Political Analysts Sitting in Front of Computers on College Campuses or Think Tank Offices. That’s Why the Strategies Don’t Work.

Read the full memo. — Read the condensed version.

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy The Fundamental but Generally Unacknowledged Cause of the Current Threat to America’s Democratic Institutions.

Read the Memo.

Democrats ignore the central fact about modern immigration – and it’s led them to political disaster.

Democrats ignore the central fact about modern immigration – and it’s led them to political disaster.

Read the memo.

 

The Daily Strategist

March 15, 2025

Trump’s Plans for Spinning the Loss of the House

It was about what you’d expect from someone who couldn’t even be honest about the size and nature of his own presidential victory. But still, Trump’s plans to spin the midterms even if his party loses the House are amazing, and I wrote it up at New York.

According to Politico, the post-election plan is already set:

“President Donald Trump and his allies have crafted a face-saving plan if Democrats trounce their way to a House majority — tout Trump as the savior of Republicans in the Senate.

“In public and private, Trump and advisers are pointing to the president’s surge of campaigning on behalf of Republican Senate candidates — 19 rallies alone since Labor Day — as evidence that nobody else could have had a bigger impact in the states. The argument is classic Trump, who despite making the midterms a referendum on his own presidency, has a history of personalizing and then dwelling on his victories while distancing himself and diverting attention from his losses.”

So now we know part of the thinking behind the otherwise oddly exclusive focus of Trump on states with Senate races instead of close House races. “Saving” the Senate was an extraordinarily easier task, given the fact that Republicans have the most favorable partisan landscape in living memory for that chamber. As veteran election forecaster Stu Rothenberg recently said: 

“The map continues to be the main reason why the Democrats aren’t likely to flip the Senate. It’s the worst map for one party I have ever seen.”

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/984922168910893056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E984922168910893056&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fintelligencer%2F2018%2F11%2Fhow-trump-will-spin-losing-the-house-he-saved-the-senate.html

So “winning” the Senate is about as impressive an accomplishment for Republicans this year as pushing a bicycle down a suburban driveway. The amazing thing is that Democrats ever had a realistic opportunity to flip the chamber (they still have a one-in-six chance of doing that, according to FiveThirtyEight). But if Republicans not only hold onto their slim Senate margin but pick up seats, the howls of triumph will be deafening:

“Should Republicans pick up Senate seats, ‘that’s all they’ll talk about,’ said Barry Bennett, a presidential adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign….

“”If the president picks up Senate seats, they’ll be no honest people talking about a ‘blue wave,’ Matt Schlapp, a Trump ally and chairman of the American Conservative Union, told POLITICO.”

No one will admit that had Hillary Clinton been elected president Republican Senate gains this year would have been certain, and probably significantly larger. It’s all about Trump’s magnificance!

And if Republicans hold onto both congressional chambers (an unlikely but far from impossible result), the president might just declare further debates about his greatness a waste of time.

If Trump’s party, however, loses on all fronts, what you will not hear is anything like Barack Obama’s admission after the 2010 midterms:

“A sober President Obama acknowledged Wednesday that he took ‘a shellacking’ in the midterm election and that his once highflying relationship with the American voter had hit rocky times….

“Obama took responsibility for Tuesday’s losses, expressed sadness for Democratic lawmakers who lost while standing by the administration’s policies, and defended his more controversial efforts. Pronouncing himself humbled, he pledged to negotiate with Republicans on a much less aggressive agenda.”

Only losers admit they’ve lost.

 


Teixeira: Why Dems Expect Improved Support from Midwest White Working-Class Voters and Women

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

In the Immortal Words of Jim Morrison, “The Midwest Is the Best”

Well, actually it was “the west is the best”, but I’m sure Mr. Morrison wouldn’t mind this slight alteration. Anyway, evidence continues to accumulate that Democrats will do exceptionally well in the midwest this year. From an excellent Perry Bacon Jr. article on 538:

“During the Obama years, Republicans won total control of the state government in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. Then, on Election Day in 2016, Hillary Clinton narrowly lost in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states Democrats had won at the presidential level for more than two decades. She was easily defeated in Iowa and Ohio, which had tended to be close.2 Clinton barely won in Minnesota, another state where Democrats are usually strong. Post-election, there was a lot of doom and gloom about the Democratic Party’s prospects in the Midwest, with both nonpartisan analysts and even some party strategists suggesting the party needed a dramatic overhaul or risk losing in this region, which will be packed with white, working-class voters, for the foreseeable future.

Never mind all that now. Democrats are looking strong in the Midwest — it is by some measures the region where they are likely to make their biggest gains this November.”

Why the comeback? Bacon lists several reasons but surely this is one of them most important and one to which Democrats should be paying close attention:

“[N[ational polls suggest that white voters without college degrees favor Republicans in 2018, but the margin between the two parties is likely to narrow compared to 2016, when Clinton lost that bloc by more than 30 percentage points. That shift has outsized influence in the Midwest, which has higher populations of white voters without college degrees than many other parts of the country. So the Democrats’ problem with white working-class voters may not be as severe as it looked on Election Day 2016 — which perhaps had more to do with the conditions in that election than the party overall. What we are seeing in 2018 suggests that working-class whites are not a single national bloc, but still vote much differently by state and region. Working-class whites in Southern states like Georgia and Texas are overwhelmingly opposed to Democratic candidates in key races this year, but they are less GOP-leaning in Midwest states like Ohio and Wisconsin.”

Also, women voters are likely to play a huge role in Democratic breakthroughs, if they come. Jim Grossfeld has an excellent, detailed article up on The American Prospect site about women candidates and voters in Michigan. It is indeed a heartening tale.

“[W]omen make up two-thirds of the Democratic challengers in races for the Republican dominated Michigan House, where Republicans currently outnumber Democrats 110 to 63, and women hold only 33 seats. Women also won just under half of the Democratic nominations for the state Senate, where Republicans now hold a 27-to-11 super-majority. There, men outnumber women by a staggering 34 to four. More than half of the Democrats running for Michigan’s U.S. House seats are women, too.

And at the top of the ticket, the Democratic nominees for the four principal statewide offices are all women: Gretchen Whitmer for governor, Dana Nessel for attorney general, Jocelyn Benson for secretary of state, and incumbent U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow.”


Trump’s Closing Midterm Pitch: White Identity Politics

Even before his “immigration speech” at the White House that telegraphed all sorts of panicky militarism about the southern border, the president was making it clear that he only had eyes for his “base” and was determined to get them fired up to save Republican candidates, as I pointed out at New York.

As the midterm election campaign winds down (or given the enthusiasm levels, winds up) to a tense conclusion, there’s not much doubt about the Trump/GOP closing pitch, made almost exclusively to the party’s conservative “base:” it’s about the “caravan,” the evil lying media, the scheming socialist Democrats, and the threat to law and order posed by (non-white) Democratic constituencies. It’s a fear campaign with the president’s usual lurid touches.

But make no mistake: underlying these themes is a politics of race and identity that somehow isn’t seen as malignant by Republicans because of the race involved and its endangered majority status. Adam Serwer does a good job of exposing the truth that is just barely beneath the surface of the GOP midterm message:

“In upstate New York, an embattled Republican incumbent attacks his black, Harvard-educated Democratic challenger as a ‘big-city rapper’; in California, an anti-immigrant Republican under federal indictment smears his Arab American rival as a terrorist; in Georgia, a state far from the Southern border, the Republican candidate for governor brags that he’ll drive around in his pickup truck and ’round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.’ Although the president hasn’t spent as much time in recent appearances emphasizing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he framed the opposition to his nominee, who faced multiple accusations of sexual assault, as an attack on powerful men by dangerous feminists.

Indeed, white male identity politics has become so central to conservative appeals to the electorate that it has become an obligatory orthodoxy as oppressive as any left-wing campus speech code, as I noted in observing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp’s boasts of being “politically incorrect” earlier this year:

“If Kemp wins…with this strategy, it is going to reinforce the already powerful Trumpian impulse to treat conservative “base” voters as motivated above all by the desire to go back to the wonderful days when a white man could without repercussions tell a racist joke, ‘tease’ women about their physical appearance or sexual morals, and mock people who in some way (say, a disability) differ from one’s own self. At some point we may all come to understand that it’s not (except in some scattered college campuses) the politically correct who are imposing speech norms on the rest of us, but the politically incorrect who won’t be happy until offending the less powerful is again recognized as among the principal Rights of Man.”

It has for years been unclear whether Republicans fully understand that they are living on borrowed time in depending on appeals to the fears and resentments of a shrinking majority, and to an increasingly insecure male minority within that majority. After their 2012 presidential defeat they were briefly chastened by the need for a more inclusive message, before Donald Trump came along and doubled-down on white identity politics one more time – and won.

Now there’s no doubt this is Trump’s party now. Its desire for policies benefiting the largely white business class is harnessed to an appeal to racial solidarity that keeps non-college educated folk in the fold despite the lack of any tangible accomplishments on their behalf. In a pure power struggle bereft of any principles of generosity or common purpose, those who already hold power have a built-in advantage, and that’s what Republicans are counting upon. But let’s please discard the idea that Trump and his allies are innocent of identity politics. They are master practitioners of that art.


Political Strategy Notes

From “A Voter’s Guide to Health Care” by The New York Times Editorial Board: “national poll results released in September found that three-quarters of Americans want to retain protections that prevent insurers from discriminating against people based on their medical history…As health care costs rise, more Americans are voicing support for a single-payer system: Fifty-three percent now support such a plan, compared with less than 40 percent in the early 2000s…Republicans have long insisted that they want to protect people with pre-existing conditions from insurance discrimination — just not through the Affordable Care Act…But it’s tough to argue that one is for pre-existing condition protections when one is actively fighting the only federal law to ever have guaranteed those protections in the first place.”

The editorial continues: “So far, 34 states have chosen to opt in to the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program, which provides coverage for working-age adults who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line. On Tuesday, three more states — Idaho, Nebraska and Utah — will decide whether to join those ranks, and several others — including Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin and Maine — will decide whether to replace a Republican governor who has opposed Medicaid expansion with a Democratic one who supports it…Medicaid is increasingly popular among voters, in part because so many of them — roughly one in five Americans, as of June — now receive benefits through the program.”

In his article, “How Will Hate Play in the Midterms?,” Robert Kuttner writes at The American Prospect: “Here is an awkward but urgent question. Will the grotesque violence incited by Trumpism and his own appalling remarks hurt Republican congressional incumbents and candidates who slavishly vote with Trump? Or will they be permitted to step delicately around the escalating violence?…One straw in the wind since the pipe-bomb mailings is the latest NPR poll showing that Trump’s favorability is down to 39 percent. Fully 44 percent of respondents said that Trump would be a major factor in how they vote in the midterm, compared to just 28 percent who said at a comparable point on the eve of the 2016 midterm that their view of President Obama would influence their vote for Congress…Even more ominously for Trump and the GOP, 47 percent of voters said that their view of Trump made them more likely to support a Democrat for Congress. Just 34 percent said they’d be more likely to back the Republican.”

With “Five Days to Go,” Kyle Kondik shares “our best guess right now” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “House: Right now, we have 212 House seats at least leaning to the Democrats, 202 at least leaning to the Republicans, and 21 Toss-ups. While we’re still gathering information about the Toss-ups, we do have a sense as to where we’re leaning in the races. As of this moment, we’d probably pick the Democrats in 12 of the Toss-ups and Republicans in nine of them. That would amount to a Democratic House gain of 29 seats. So let’s say, for now, we’re thinking an overall Democratic gain of somewhere around 30 seats, give or take. That’s more than the 23 net seats the Democrats need, but not so many more that one could rule out the Democrats sputtering out short of the majority…Senate: Including the 65 Senate seats not on the ballot as obviously “safe” for the current incumbent party, our Senate ratings show 50 seats at least leaning Republican, 45 at least leaning Democratic, and five Toss-ups. Our current sense, subject to change, is that the Toss-ups might split three to two in either direction. If that happens, and our other ratings hold up, the Republicans would net one-to-two Senate seats…Governors: Republicans currently hold 33 governorships, Democrats hold 16, and there’s one independent…our ratings show 22 governorships at least leaning Republican, 18 at least leaning Democratic, and 10 Toss-ups. Split the Toss-ups five to five, and Democrats would have 23 governorships, or a net gain of seven…”

In his NYT op-ed, “When Trump Voters Go For Democrats: Why is the Rust Belt trending blue for the midterms? The collapse of community may provide an answer,” Timothy P. Carney writes, “It’s easy to assume that Rust Belt voters have soured on the president, that blue-collar voters are upset Mr. Trump never Made America Great Again. But it’s not about the president: Mr. Trump still has extraordinarily high approval ratings among those who voted for him. The problem for the Republicans is that Mr. Trump made these Rust Belt voters into Trump voters, but he never made them Republicans…One NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in mid-October showed that, compared to the midterm voters in Mr. Obama’s first term, voters now are less likely (31 percent to 36 percent) to be voting to “send a signal” about the president. Instead, they seem to be sending a signal about the Republican Party…Low social trust and low civic engagement defined the places that swung hardest to Mr. Trump. Because the vote was an expression of alienation and dissatisfaction, rather than an expression of partisan fealty, many of those places will swing back enough to give Democrats statewide wins on Election Day.

Conservative Max Boot has an 18-point litany explaining why Republican candidates, nearly all of whom are Trump enablers, should be defeated across the board on Tuesday. As Boot writes in his column, “Vote against all Republicans. Every single one” in The Washington Post. “If you’re sick and tired, too, here is what you can do. Vote for Democrats on Tuesday. For every office. Regardless of who they are. And I say that as a former Republican. Some Republicans in suburban districts may claim they aren’t for Trump. Don’t believe them. Whatever their private qualms, no Republicans have consistently held Trump to account. They are too scared that doing so will hurt their chances of reelection. If you’re as sick and tired as I am of being sick and tired about what’s going on, vote against all Republicans. Every single one. That’s the only message they will understand.”

At The Nation, NationAction writes, “There’s no better way to get involved in the final days of a campaign than by canvassing and door-knocking. Swing Left, an organization founded to take back Congress after the 2016 election, has created a campaign called The Last Weekend that shows you high-impact canvassing opportunities near you. Whether you’re in a red or blue state, chances are there’s an important race nearby where you can make a difference by showing up in person.”


Beto O’Rourke’s Campaign Tests Power of Facebook in Elections

In most of the recent polls, Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke is running behind in his quest to win a U.S. Senate seat from incumbent Republican Ted Cruz. But, if O’Rourke wins next Tuesday, much of the credit will go to his unprecedented Facebook messaging. Alexis C. Madrigal explains at The Atlantic:

Through October 20, O’Rourke alone had spent $5.4 million advertising on the platform, according to Facebook’s Ad Archive Report. J. B. Pritzker, Kamala Harris, Andrew Cuomo, Claire McCaskill, and Heidi Heitkamp had spent $5.5 million total. O’Rourke’s opponent, Senator Ted Cruz, had spent only $427,000 on Facebook, about 1/13th as much as O’Rourke…Much of O’Rourke’s Facebook-ad buy seems to be going toward short videos of the candidate talking to crowds or directly to the camera.

Not that O’Rourke is neglecting TV and Google, as Madrigal notes:

The two Texas Senate hopefuls are relatively close in spending on television ads. While O’Rourke had spent more than $15 million on television ads through mid-October, Cruz and associated pacs had spent $12 million and were on pace to nearly catch up there. O’Rourke has also spent $1.3 million on Google ads, also top among all candidates, though by a much narrower margin (Rick Scott has spent more than $1 million). Cruz has spent little on Google—$181,000—according to the company’s political transparency report.

But O’Rourke’s online campaign has already proven to be a tremendous success in terms of fund-raising, and “his unexpected fund-raising success—pulling in $62 million through September 30—has catapulted the relatively unknown congressman from El Paso onto the national stage.”

Perhaps, even more importantly, O’Rourke’s campaign has also invested heavily in assembling a first-rate video production team.

But O’Rourke’s own video team has proved able to get and recognize hot footage, according to Kasra Shokat, a digital-media strategist at the consultancy Winning Mark. “He has invested a ton of infrastructure that can turn around and produce video on a dime and get those up quickly,” Shokat said. “That’s the kind of engaging content that works really well.”…Shokat said he’s begun to recommend that campaigns, especially those of charismatic talkers, hire full-time video help to create content.

Through widespread re-postings of his diverse videos, “it’s looking like O’Rourke’s total spending on Facebook has generated into the hundreds of millions of impressions,” notes Madrigal. It seems a wise bet. When a political campaign has a charismatic candidate, who is an underdog, maximizing face-time can only help.

“Facebook remains the primary platform for most Americans,” report Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson at pewinternet.org. “Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) now report that they are Facebook users, and roughly three-quarters of those users access Facebook on a daily basis. With the exception of those 65 and older, a majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups now use Facebook.”

“O’Rourke’s remarkable fund-raising might not be duplicative by candidates with less star power or in less contentious races, “warns Madrigal. “But if O’Rourke’s Facebook-heavy campaign surprises, even with a closer-than-expected loss, his approach could be a blueprint for state-level candidates devoting more resources to the platform.”


Teixeira: House Control Check-In

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

Well, there’s been a spate of stories about nervous Democrats fearing a 2018 surprise, just like the 2016 surprise, along with reports of some races tightening, making Democrats even more nervous. These are stories that have to be written I suppose but it’s still hard to see how the situation is changing in a big way at this point. The overall playing field is not contracting, it’s expanding as the GOP rushes in to try to defend seats they didn’t even think they’d have to worry about.

And we have this from Charlie Cook, as experienced and astute an observer of elections, particularly House elections, as we have. Cook observes in his latest column:

“With 12 days to go before the midterm elections, there are plenty of reasons to believe that we know the general directions that the House, Senate, gubernatorial, and state legislative elections will go, just not the degrees….

In the House, will the Democratic gain be above or below the 30-35 seat range? In the contests for governorships, will Democratic gains be closer to five seats or to eight or 10? In terms of state legislative seats gained, is it closer to 400 or to 700? And in chambers controlled, will it be closer to a half-dozen chambers flipping from red to blue or is it closer to a dozen?

For once, it is the fight for control of the House that is getting more attention than for the Senate, and a national survey conducted for The Cook Political Report and Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communications, in conjunction with Manship School Fellow James Carville, underscores that movement in favor of Democrats in the House. While among registered voters nationally, Democrats have a 7-point lead over the GOP in terms of the generic-congressional-ballot test, 45 to 38 percent, among voters in the 72 districts considered most competitive by The Cook Political Report, Democrats had an 11-point lead, 43 to 32 percent. When those who were undecided but leaning toward a party were included, Democrats were still ahead by 11 points, 45 to 34 percent. An Oct. 15-21 Washington Post-Shar School poll in 69 competitive districts released this week put Democrats ahead for Congress as well, though by a 3-point margin, 50 to 47 percent….

A generally accepted rule of thumb is that Democrats need a lead of at least seven points in the national popular vote for the House, matching the generic ballot number in the CPR/Manship School poll. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls is 7.5 percent, while Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight average is 8.3 percent. But when you look exclusively at the most competitive districts, not at the slam-dunk seats where parties waste votes by running up the score, and keeping in mind that only a handful of the competitive seats are held by Democrats, a generic lead for Democrats of 3 points, as the Washington Post/Schar School poll shows, or of 11 points, as the CPR/Manship School polls indicates, would both indicate Democrats having an advantage in terms of control of the House.

This top-down, macro-political view of the House matches a more race-by-race, micro-political analysis, starting with Alabama’s 1st District and going through Wyoming’s at-large seat, suggesting that Democratic gains in the 30- to 35-seat range, more than the 23 needed to tip control, are likely to occur.”

OK, now you can get back to worrying.


Political Strategy Notes

If Democrats needed a late energizer for their midterm campaigns, in addition to the horrific Trump-stoked violence of last week, Ari Berman’s op-ed “How Voter Suppression Could Swing the Midterms” in The New York Times should help. As Berman writes, “In Georgia and other states, the question in this election is not just about which candidates voters will support, but whether they’ll be able to cast a ballot in the first place. The fight over voting rights in the midterms is a reminder that elections are not solely about who is running, what their commercials say or how many people are registered to vote. They are about who is allowed to vote and which officials are placing obstacles in the way of would-be voters…Since the 2010 election, 24 states overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans have put in place new voting restrictions, such as tougher voter ID laws, cutbacks to early voting and barriers to registration. Republicans say these measures are necessary to combat the threat of widespread voter fraud, even though study after study shows that such fraud is exceedingly rare. Many of these states have hotly contested races in 2018, and a drop in turnout among Democratic constituencies, such as young people and voters of color, could keep Republicans in power.”

Berman spotlights voter supression initiatives in Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Kansas, and concludes, “If Democrats turn out in large numbers on Nov. 6, as the early-voting data suggests is happening in some key states, it will be in spite of these barriers, not because they didn’t exist or didn’t matter…Despite rampant suppression efforts, there is some hope. In seven states, ballot initiatives would restore voting rights to ex-felons, make it easier to register to vote and crack down on gerrymandering. If these pass, we could see 2018 as a turning point for expanding voting rights, instead of an election tainted by voter suppression. But first people need to have the right to cast a ballot.”

If a frog had a glass ass, he could only jump once. But Emily Badger’s “What If Everyone Voted?” at The Upshot does include an instructive observation, which sharply underscores the importance of better Democratic GOTV in key states: “It’s impossible to know what would have happened had the people sitting out elections voted. But Bernard Fraga, an Indiana University political scientist, has tried to gauge that alternative reality using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which annually surveys thousands of Americans…The survey asks which candidates people preferred even if they did not vote. And if we add their preferences to the voting population in the last several elections, we get different election results…“If everybody voted, Clinton wins. If minority turnout was equal to white turnout, Clinton wins,” said Mr. Fraga, who describes these patterns in a new book, “The Turnout Gap.” Many white voters who preferred Mr. Trump sat out 2016 as well. So in this full-turnout counterfactual, Mrs. Clinton doesn’t overcome Mr. Trump’s narrow victories in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania. Rather, she flips Florida, North Carolina and Texas.” And what if, more realistically, not everyone voted, but local activists mobilized a 10 percent improvement in turnout among African American, Latino and young voters in those 3 states?

At The National Journal, John Kraushaur notes, quoted by Ruy Teixeira, that ““Privately, Republican leaders expect to lose around 30 seats—and the House majority—but acknowledge that there could be a number of unexpected outcomes pushing those numbers higher on Election Night. That’s an all-too-realistic scenario given the supercharged liberal engagement in districts across the country, lackluster re-election efforts from unprepared GOP members of Congress, and impressive fundraising figures from even long-shot Democratic challengers…But there are many other districts where Trump won less than 55 percent of the vote that feature Democratic challengers who have gone under-the-radar…All told, that means Republicans are likely to lose around 30-35 House seats—but the potential for a larger total is higher than the likelihood they can salvage their majority.”

And if you wanna get wonky, Teixeira also flags a “Forecastapalooza!,” and notes, “The good folks at PS, one of the American Political Science Association’s journals, have made the articles from their special forecasting issue available online. These are all academic models, of course, which use a handful of variables to predict the outcome of the 2018 election. They are not continuously updated with polling information, etc, in the manner of 538 and other models on various websites….But they’re interesting and, if you can take the poli sci jargon, well worth strolling through.”

In additon to 538’s model, “Are Republicans Losing The Health Care Debate?” by Janie Velencia and Dhrumil Mehta, notes that “unfortunately for Trump and the Republican party, Democrats seem to be winning the health care public opinion battle: 53 percent of Americans said they trust Democrats to do a better job with health care than Republicans in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll. Just 35 percent of respondents said they trusted Republicans over Democrats. Similarly, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that Americans were more likely to trust Democrats over Republicans on specific health care issues like continuing protections for pre-existing medical conditions and reducing health care costs. Even independents have gotten behind Democrats: 60 percent placed their faith in Democrats to protect pre-existing conditions (compared to 19 percent who trusted Republicans) in the Kaiser poll.”

Anthony Adragna’s Politico headline says it well “The powerful weapon House Republicans handed Democrats: A GOP rule change handed unilateral subpoena authority to many House committee chairmen. Democrats cried foul, but now they hope to use it against Trump.” As Adragna elaborates, “House Republicans changed the rules in 2015 to allow many of their committee chairmen to issue subpoenas without consulting the minority party, overriding Democrats objections that likened the tactic to something out of the McCarthy era…Now the weapon that the GOP wielded dozens of times against President Barack Obama’s agencies could allow Democrats to bombard President Donald Trump’s most controversial appointees with demands for information. And many Democrats are itching to use it…“The Republicans have set the standard and, by God, we’re going to emulate that standard,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told POLITICO.” Adragna notes that some Democrats are relectant to use the power, but “Many Democrats argue that Republicans have only themselves to blame for weaponizing the subpoena process, and that their own party should not unilaterally disarm now that the power has been unleashed.”

Democrat Beto O’Rourke is fighting an uphill battle in Texas to take Ted Cruz’s senate seat. But, in his article, “Here’s One Way Beto O’Rourke And Democrats Nationwide Could Win. It Won’t Be Easy: Demographics isn’t destiny in Texas. But 2018 could mark a turning point for Latino turnout” at HuffPo, Roque Planas notes this ray of hope: “…Most polls measure the preferences of likely voters, an inconsistently defined classification that ranges from people who say they’re likely to cast a ballot to people whom pollsters can confirm voted in recent elections. That makes this Texas election harder to predict. In recent years, Texas has averaged an annual increase of 100,000 new voters. But between the last presidential election and last week, when the Texas Secretary of State’s Office released its final tally, the number of new voters skyrocketed by nearly 700,000…Some of that growth benefits Cruz. Suburban counties, many of which lean Republican, saw some of the highest growth in registration rates. But the top four counties to gain voters — Harris, Bexar, Travis and Dallas — all went blue in 2016 and amassed more than a quarter-million extra voters between them. The border’s largest counties saw voter growth outpacing the state’s average as a whole. Registration in Hidalgo County, where Cambio Texas works, jumped by 7 percent.”

“The share of 18- to 29-year-old voters who say they will definitely vote has jumped from 26 percent in the run-up to the last midterm election in 2014 to 40 percent this fall, according to a new poll obtained from the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government,” Amy Garner writes in “Pushing for a ‘youth wave’: Can Democrats channel dissent into action at the ballot box?” at The Washington Post. “One driving factor: widespread support for government intervention to curb gun violence and reduce college debt and health-care costs…A national analysis by the Democratic data firm TargetSmart shows voter registration — and voting in primaries — has risen slightly nationally among young voters since the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., last February…In Pennsylvania, youth voters have made up nearly 60 percent of all new registrants, Target­Smart reported in September. The share of the electorate that is under age 30 has grown since 2017 in several key states, including Nevada, North Carolina and Florida, according to state voter registration data tracked by the firm L2. In Virginia, requests for student absentee ballots, at about 30,000, are about 50 percent higher than in last year’s gubernatorial election.”


Teixeira: Latinos and the 2018 Election

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

How important are Latinos to Democratic prospects in the 2018 election? On one level, this seems like an easy question to answer. They are a fast-growing group and are now America’s largest minority group, surpassing blacks as a percentage of the population. They tend to vote Democratic, on average at about a 2:1 rate. Therefore, it seems logical to assume that they will play a big role in in an expected “blue wave” of Democratic victories this fall, especially given Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric toward Latino immigrants.

But all is not as it seems. The reality is that, while Latinos will certainly be helpful to the Democrats in this election, they may not play as big a role as many Democrats hope.

Start with the question of turnout. Some articles report anecdotal evidence of a lack of excitement among Hispanic voters, despite the presumed threat posed by President Trump and his allies. And a nationwide tracking poll of Latinos by the Latino Decisions polling firm reports that well over half (55 percent) of Hispanic registered voters have not been contacted in any way about the upcoming election.

However, traditional indicators of campaign interest paint a different picture. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 73 percent of Latinos now expressing very high interest in the midterms—a higher level than among all registered voters—and up from just 49 percent a month ago.

Thus it is quite possible that Hispanic turnout will be relatively high this election—as indeed it could be for the electorate as a whole looking across various indicators of interest and enthusiasm. But it should be kept in mind the Hispanic turnout starts from a low base (just 27 percent in 2014, the last midterm election) so that, even it goes up, it is still likely to be substantially below that of whites and blacks.

As for Democratic support, average levels among Latinos appear strong and consistent with historical patterns. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll put national Hispanic support for Democratic Congressional candidates at 66-26, while the Latino Decisions tracking poll has it a bit higher at 69-24.

But we also see considerable variation in Latino support when we look at specific races around the country. Looking across a range of competitive Congressional races that the New York Times is polling, Democratic candidates generally have solid leads among Hispanic voters, but in some key races fall short of the 2:1 lead that Democrats would ideally like to see. Even allowing for the notorious difficulties of polling Hispanics and relatively small sample sizes, these are concerning figures.

In key statewide races, we also see some strong but not overwhelming leads for Democrats among Latinos. For example, in Texas, where Democrat Beto O’Rourke is hoping to unseat the very conservative GOP Senator Ted Cruz, Democrats had hoped for crushing margins among Latino voters. Recent polls, however, have Cruz pulling 37 percent of the Hispanic vote and keeping Democratic margins in the 20-25 point range. This is very good of course but does not suggest the tsunami of Latino support Democrats probably need to counter their weakness among white, particularly noncollege, voters in Texas.

Thus, while Democrats will clearly benefit this cycle from the Hispanic vote—and the higher the turnout of this group, the better for them—available data indicate that these voters, by themselves, are not some sort of magic elixir for the party. They are a part, but only a part, of the political puzzle Democrats seek to solve.


Channeling Bad Memories of 2016–For Victory

As the midterms approach, it’s hard for many Democrats to forget what happened in the last nationwide general election. I wrote about the positive side of that trauma for New York:

Things looked even sunnier for Democrats this time two years ago, right? And then the nightmare began …

The sense of déjà vu is intensifying with reports of increased Republican enthusiasm, and in some places, better polling numbers for the GOP. Could it all be happening again?

That’s the question being posed by Orange County, California, Democrats in a close-up piece by the Washington Post’s Matt Viser:

“[V]oters there seemed racked with uncertainty. They want to feel optimistic, but they said that after Trump’s unexpected victory, they will never trust their expectations again.

“‘I’m getting anxious. I’m getting very anxious,’ said Carol Barnes, a 70-year-old retired clinical laboratory scientist from East Anaheim. ‘We just have to keep going and hope for the best. I don’t want to go home crying again.’

But at least one Democratic congressional candidate in the area, Katie Hill, is actually using the bad memories to keep her supporters motivated:

“Terrified of reliving the dejection they awoke to on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, they are attempting to harness those nervous emotions and inject a bit of fear in the hearts of their supporters.

“Katie Hill, who has emerged as one of the party’s most promising first-time congressional candidates, looked out at a group of about 100 supporters days ago and revealed that new polling indicated a four-point swing against her in what for decades has been a conservative stronghold, driven by consolidation by Republican voters into the camp of her opponent.

“‘We were ahead by a few points just a few weeks ago,’ she said from a campaign headquarters sandwiched between a vape shop and a gun store. ‘The last poll we got back a couple days ago has us exactly tied.'”

This isn’t the first time Democrats have exhibited Post-Trump Stress Disorder, as I observed at a similar juncture last year during the off-year Virginia gubernatorial contest:

“Earlier this week the Daily Beast’s veteran political reporter Sam Stein wrote that Democrats were ‘panicked’ over Virginia, worried about a lack of enthusiasm for their candidate and the absence of the kind of massive national small-dollar investments in the campaign that characterized the congressional special election in Georgia earlier this year. A prominent Virginia activist penned a piece that rocketed around the internet with this headline: ‘Heads Up — An Impending Disaster in Virginia.’ And Vox’s Jeff Stein penned a classic glass-half-empty assessment noting that polls showed the race as ‘surprisingly close’ while ‘worried’ Democrats fretted over Gillespie’s ‘culture war’ attacks on Northam.”

Then, as now, Republicans were getting very Trumpy in their efforts to motivate conservative voters with savage cultural themes.

“[T]he more Gillespie’s campaign begins to resemble Trump’s in its borderline-racist savagery about criminal gangs of immigrants and politically correct efforts to take down Confederate monuments, the more Democrats relive Election Night 2016, when all those objective indicators of a Clinton victory proved illusory.”

But it all turned out well on Election Day in Virginia, when Democrat Ralph Northam actually over-performed his polling expectations. It’s unclear whether the “Democratic panic” so palpable in the home stretch of that race helped motivate Northam’s supporters, or tempted them to hide under their beds. And it’s also unclear whether gambits like Katie Hall’s will make a positive difference in her prospects on November 6. It is very clear that if Democrats failed to win the House after a solid year or more of talk about a “Democratic wave,” left-of-center voters may not trust election punditry or projections for a good while.

 


Political Strategy Notes

For those wondering how Democrats should respond to the wave of terrorist bombing attempts against Democrats, progressives and media, the title of William Saletan’s slate.com article, “Trump Is Celebrating Violence and Nationalism at His Rallies: Republicans aren’t pushing back” puts the terrorist attacks in perspective. Saletan elaborates: “Trump has been testing the GOP’s tolerance for demagoguery that explicitly promotes brutality. And so far, Republicans seem willing to go along. Trump has repeatedly invited his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies…To build support for political violence, you need potential adversaries within your party to clam up or look the other way. Trump is getting that from the GOP. CNBC says it asked Republican lawmakers, “including every Republican senator,” for reactions to the president’s comments. The network got no replies.”

Yochai Benkler’s “The Russians didn’t swing the 2016 election to Trump. But Fox News might have” at The Washington Post merits a thoughtful read by those who are charged with developing media strategy for Democratic candidates. Among Benkler’s insights: “the fundamental driver of disinformation in American politics of the past three years has not been Russia, but Fox News and the insular right-wing media ecosystem it anchors. All the Russians did was jump on the right-wing propaganda bandwagon: Their efforts were small in scope, relative to homegrown media efforts. And what propaganda victories the Russians achieved occurred only when the right-wing media machine picked up stories and, often, embellished them…For a new book, “Network Propaganda,” Robert Faris, Hal Roberts and I — colleagues at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society — analyzed millions of articles: any story, on any website, mainstream and fringe, that mentioned any candidate for the election and the major parties, from 2015 to 2018…Throughout our work, we find clear patterns, before and after the election. The Russians are there. They are trying. But in all these cases, American right-wing media did the heavy lifting to originate and propagate disinformation.”

In his syndicated column, “Republicans are scared of Stacey Abrams. They should be,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes, “By engaging in voter suppression, Stacey Abrams’s opponents are paying her the highest possible compliment…The former Democratic minority leader of the state House of Representatives, Yale Law School grad and the first African American woman to be nominated by a major party for governor is so close to winning that Republicans seem to think the only way to stop her is to keep thousands from casting ballots…Abrams’s identity would make her election historic. But her campaign also matters because she represents the growing strength of a pragmatic style of progressivism that could transform the politics of states long cast as conservative bastions.” A good point — the Abrams campaign’s impressive ability to make a close race of it in a red state, where others have failed merits study by Democrats.

From a new AP-NORC and MTV poll of 1,052 young Americans age 15-34, conducted Sept. 20 to Oct. 8, 2018, as reported by A. P.’s Juana Summers: “Large majorities of young Americans want to see an expansion of government services, including a single-payer health care program, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV…According to the poll, 69 percent of young Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 favor a national health plan, known as a single-payer program. Eighty-eight percent of young Democrats and 40 percent of young Republicans favor a government-run health insurance program, according to the poll. Roughly two-thirds of young independents are in favor.”

Nate Cohn’s “Many Possible Paths to a House Majority for Democrats, None Guaranteed” at The Upshot provides a field guide typology to possible House swing districts: Cohn’s taxonomy  includes: “The First 13” — the most lkely Democratic pick-ups; “Well-Educated Republican Suburbs”; “Diverse Democratic Districts” — districts with pro-Democratic demographic profiles; “Mostly White, Middle-Class Districts”; “White Working-Class Trump Surge Districts” — basically Obama to Trump blue collar districts; “Democratic Stars, Republican Problems” –disticts where Dems have unusually strong candidates and/or Republicans are divided; “Republican-Leaning Gerrymanders” — districts that still have some pro-Democratic precincts, despite having lots of GOP supporters dumped in by redistricting; “A Stealthy Open Seat” — Republican-leaning districts that have no GOP incumbent; and “A Democratic Surprise” — a significant number of districts where there are no good polls to indicate trends toward either party.

“In the Senate,” Nathaniel Rakich writes at FiveThirtyEight, “our 80-percent confidence interval spans everything from Democrats picking up two seats to Republicans picking up three. And in the House, there’s an 80 percent chance that Democratic gains will be somewhere between 20 and 61 seats — that’s a big range!…What fuels this wide range of outcomes? A big part of it is lack of data. Even at this late stage in the election cycle, many states and districts — even potentially decisive ones — have seen little to no polling, which forces our model to lean on other factors like an area’s fundamentals, possibly missing sentiments stirring on the ground. Of course, we don’t need polls everywhere; many states and districts are safe for one party or the other. But if we just look at places that our model considers to be competitive, some get all the polling love, while several others are woefully under-surveyed…Overall, it appears that pollsters may be behind the curve on which districts are truly competitive given Democrats’ increasingly strong position in the House.”

Democratic strategist Joe Trippi has some comments about the effects of Trump fatigue on voters in the closing weeks. As reported by Tara Golshan at vox.com, “Trump’s creating energy among the Democratic base that wants to come out and wants to make the change and wants to do something to fight back against what’s happening. At the same time, he’s creating enough chaos and divisiveness and hostility that Republicans who would never ordinarily vote for a Democrat say, “Okay, well I’ve got all the chaos and hostility I can handle right now. I’ll vote for somebody who wants to try to find common ground and get things done for me, even if they’re a Democrat.” Golshan also quotes an anonomous “Democratic campaign aide,” who observed “People are over the drama…They are tired of the fighting. They want us to talk about the issue and the issue is not the border wall — their issue is whether their kid is going to get off of opioids.”

At The Washington Monthly, Megan Hart reports on “The Senate race That Climate Change Could Tip,” and offers insights about the largest swing state’s demographic dynamics, “Voter interest in environmental issues is exceptionally high this year, according to Jonathan Webber, the deputy director of Florida Conservation Voters.” Hart notes Republican Governor Rick Scott’s vulnerabilities regarding environmental concerns. “Under Scott and Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature, the environment has taken big hits. Webber said his organization has heard from many Republicans who are upset with the way their party has managed the climate crisis. “There are many older Republicans who miss the days when Republicans did really good things for Florida’s environment,” he said.” Also, notes Hart, “Florida’s electorate is getting younger. An analysis by TargetSmart showed that the rate of voter registration among 18- to 29-year-old Floridians increased by 8 percent following the Parkland shooting in February. Though the Sunshine State is known for its large population of retirees, more than 50 percent of Florida’s registered voters now come from the Z, Millennial, and X generations, according to MacManus, who is considered the state’s leading political authority. “These younger generations are environmental voters much more heavily than the older ones,” she said. Should they turnout on November 6, Scott’s chances of winning will diminish.”

Igor Bobic argues that “Democrats Hope Legal Weed Will Smoke GOP at the Ballot Box: The blue wave the party seeks may be more green than you think” at HuffPo. Bobic writes, “In races at the local, state, and federal level, Democratic candidates are embracing the legalization of some form of marijuana ― if not for recreational use, then purely for medicinal purposes ― at a rate not seen in previous elections…Not surprisingly, progressives like Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and Texas Senate candidate Rep. Beto O’Rourke have made legalizing cannabis a major plank of their campaign platform. But more centrist-minded Democrats in Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have made similar appeals to voters…The growing influence of cannabis on the campaign trail this cycle is a reflection of change over the decades in public attitudes about its use. According to a Gallup poll released this week, 66% of Americans now support legalizing marijuana ― a new record.”

From Gallup:

It's lit.