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

Some interesting internals in this writeup of the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll by John Harwood. The data on white noncollege women are stunning. As I’ve noted before, serious defection from the GOP among this group would make a severe dent in their coalition.

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

Dante Chinni and Susan Bronson have a very interesting article up on the NBC News site, going over the final turnout numbers for this year’s primaries. Here’s the basic story:

“Democrats have been turning out in record numbers this year, and midterm history suggests that could have real significance in November.

The following article by Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, an organizing arm of the AFL-CIO, is cross-posted from the New York Times.

When we asked 4,035 working-class voters in battleground races to name an elected official who was fighting for them, the top response was not a Republican or a Democrat. It was “no one.”

That goes a long way toward explaining why debates among political elites about the strategic direction Democrats must take to win in 2018 and 2020 continue to miss the point. Should Democrats pursue moderate or liberal policies? Should they persuade white working-class voters or mobilize a diverse base? These arguments feel utterly irrelevant to the daily choices of working-class voters.

How do we know? Since Donald Trump’s election, my organization, Working America, a political organizing arm of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has spoken with 450,000 voters across 17 states. The overwhelming sentiment from these conversations was captured by an African-American voter in central Ohio named Carol (the voters’ last names weren’t provided). Asked to consider the difference in her economic well-being when Democrats are in power versus Republicans, she replied, “Does it even matter?”

Carol, and tens of millions of working people just like her, harbor a deep skepticism that politicians of either party can deliver any kind of meaningful change for them. Our current politics fail to engage working people in a conversation about what matters to them and to draw connections between their lived experience and the reason they should cast a ballot in the first place.

Working-class people share common anxieties about their economic security. Like Carol, they see few solutions from the politicians in either party seeking their vote.

Darren, a white voter in his mid-40s who lives in Philadelphia, said that “we mean nothing” to politicians. “Regular people don’t have money.”

Working-class voters like Darren, a longtime Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump, aren’t ideological; they’re fed up and politically adrift. Persuadable voters like Darren and pessimistic Democrats like Carol are looking for politicians with tangible solutions to help the majority of Americans who have been left out of the country’s growing prosperity.

A voter in Pennsylvania’s 18th District — where Conor Lamb won a special election this year — said, “I care about right here,” as he pointed to his feet on his doorstep. “Tell me what they’re going to do right here.”

Policy prescriptions and white papers don’t overcome this cynicism. The growing number of people living in areas with dwindling newspaper subscriptions or with Sinclair-owned television stations that spend more time on “must run” segments and less time on local issues never even hear the policies in the first place.

For Democrats, simply turning up the volume on political communications through these same channels has not quelled the distrust or broken through. My organization has found that we can get so much more with a different approach: Start where the voters are.

First, our experience running a large-scale, year-round field canvass reveals a somewhat obvious truth. Beginning the conversation by asking, “What matters to you?” instead of telling voters what should matter to them gets a more receptive audience.

Next, when we introduce new information by telling voters about something they don’t know rather than telling them that what they think they know is wrong, you can see the light come on.

Elaine, 70, a white Trump voter in Grove City, Ohio, told us she watches Fox News “in the morning till I go to bed.” Yet when we told her about our push to raise wages and improve working standards, something clicked for her. She shared that her adult children are struggling with low pay and poor benefits.

Like Elaine, two-thirds of Ohio Trump supporters agreed, when we asked them last summer, with a battery of progressive economic policies, including ending employers’ treating workers as independent contractors, so that they’re not saddled with tax and benefit costs, and measures that make it easier to unionize. They had just never heard any politician addressing these issues. The irony is that even where there’s ubiquitous content, people feel less informed. But when swing voters like Elaine can discuss and reason out loud, they can connect powerful stories from their own lives to pragmatic progressive policies — only if they hear about them.

We can’t assume voters like Elaine, Darren and Carol will pull the lever for a progressive in 2018. For this approach to be successful, it must be grounded in more than anecdote and observation. We need evidence that’s produced by clinical research about what changes minds.

An authoritative analysis by the political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla comparing nine Working America campaigns with 40 other clinical experiments measuring all major forms of voter communication validated our approach. By engaging in sustained organizing with voters identified via clinical analysis as the best targets, even in communities saturated with campaign communications, we were able to persuade swing voters to vote for Democrats in 2016 in places such as Ohio and to mobilize the party’s base voters in places such as North Carolina.

The recipe is simple: credibility derived from listening, compelling solutions, new information that breaks through and thoughtful analytics. And it works with working-class swing voters and disaffected Democrats equally.

Winning back the confidence of these voters is essential for gaining control of Congress and for building strength in the states ahead of redistricting fights after 2020.

Putting a check on the White House in 2018 won’t fix what’s broken. Radically changing how voters perceive their own agency in relation to politics will. Follow this recipe and progressives can win and govern for a generation.

“No longer playing defense on health care, Democrats and allied groups aired nearly 56,000 TV ads focused on health care between January and July,” writes Alice Miranda Ollstein at Politico. “The Wesleyan Media Project found that in September, health care ads dominated 44 percent of ads supporting Democratic House candidates and 50 percent of those supporting Democrats in Senate races. And in several competitive high-profile races, Democratic candidates are adding personal narratives…Candidates are sending this message in ads, on social media and in face-to-face encounters, and polls show the issue strongly resonates with voters.”

Here’s a good example:

From “The party of men: Kavanaugh fight risks worsening the Trump GOP’s gender problem” by Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Robert Costa  at The Washington Post: “Everything about this kind of encapsulates in one moment the problem the Republican Party has with women, ranging from it being male-dominated — with Trump’s Cabinet and the Republican leadership in Congress — to issues of dismissing women who experienced harassment and assault with typical kinds of victim blaming,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said…Current attitudes about Trump have inspired a record number of women to run for office this year as Democrats. In House races, women make up 43 percent of Democratic nominees and 13 percent of Republican nominees, according to Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Many of these female Democratic candidates have shared their #MeToo stories on the campaign trail…strategists in both parties say Trump’s agenda and style — and the fact that the GOP leadership stands mostly in lockstep with him — are undoing years of often painstaking work by party leaders to court more female and minority voters.”

From John McCain’s 2008 campaign’s senior strategist:

Riddle me this. If someone is lying (https://t.co/RoJWRckYLb)and they know that lying to the FBI is a crime, why would they be asking for an FBI investigation? If a sitting Federal Judge is accused of something he denies with his reputation at stake why wouldn’t he demand one?

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) September 20, 2018

In his New York Magazine post, “Lessons From the 2018 Primaries,” Ed Kilgore provides 8 takeaways, including: “5) The “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party” was oversold. Despite a lot of media talk about ideological clashes between “progressive” and “centrist” primary candidates, there was no clear pattern for who won primaries. Some of the notable “progressive” victories were in safe Democratic House districts (e.g., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s NY-14 and Ayanna Pressley’s MA-07) where district diversity and generational change were at least as important as ideology. Overall, “establishment” candidates did pretty well; an analysis of all Democratic House primaries by the Brookings Foundation showed 27 percent of “progressives” and 35 percent of “establishment” types winning.”

We are about to find out what would happen if a politician began making public statements about issues that sound the way real people talk. Charles Pierce has the story in his article, “Mazie Hirono Is a Legitimate Badass of the Senate: It’s about time someone in elected office called “bullshit” on this process” at Esquire. Pierce quotes Horono to good effect: ” I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.”..I would like to have us come together and figure out what is the best way to proceed. Not this seat of the pants stuff, and the latest being a letter from the chairman to the Democrats saying we have done everything we can to contact her—that is such bullshit I can hardly stand it.” Pierce notes also that she wants “judges who are fair and qualified” and ‘”care about individual and civil rights.” And then, without missing a beat, she added, “If that’s considered liberal, as opposed to what I call justice and fairness, as I am wont to say, ‘F*** them!'” It’s about time a U.S. Senator went a little Bullworth, all the more gratifying that it’s a Democratic woman. Don’t be surprised if her approval ratings increase.

Some interesting ad stats from “Despite an Uptick in Digital Spend, Top Senate Races Still Dominated by TV” by Sean J. Miller at Campaigns & Elections: “In 14 competitive Senate races, Democratic campaigns put an average of 15 percent of their pre-Labor Day ad budgets into digital while GOP efforts averaged 6.2 percent, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which conducted its analysis on ad spending done from May 31-Sept. 3. Though it’s worth noting those percentages include a handful of Senate campaigns that have yet to spend much of anything in earnest…Facebook remains the digital ad platform of choice – at least for Democrats. Of the total spent on digital advertising by the 14 Democratic Senate campaigns, $3,159,700 went to Facebook and $1.495 million went to Google…In total, some $6.1 million went into digital advertising from the 28 Senate campaigns. Compare that to some $45 million spent on TV during the same period.”

In his post, “Let’s sharpen and embolden the progressive narrative (and the counter-narrative, too),” Egberto Willies offers some insightful observations at Daily Kos: “Resigning ourselves to the belief that there is a large racist component within the Trump voting bloc and this therefore makes them unreachable denies a reality that President Obama disproved twice: Even racists will vote their interest if the narrative is right. It is my humble belief that our impatience, our timid narrative, our proclivity to stay high-minded in all circumstances, and our inability to frame and tailor a narrative at the level of those we need to reach have been the cause of our demise…Our young and upcoming politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andrew Gillum, as well as activists like Indivisible Houston’s Daniel Cohen and Nisha Randle, are unabashedly promoting progressive narratives. Much of it will fly in the faces of those who are pinning their hopes on the mythical political center, but only when we redefine the narrative, devoid of our past indoctrination, will we get the vote…It is not enough to complain that Trump’s voters are racist. After all, we have our own racists among us. We are not looking for friends and lovers, but we should be attempting to coalesce on common values that will get our people elected. After all, above and beyond economic issues, aren’t our people supportive of racial, criminal, and social justice?”

At cnbc.com, John Harwood writes, “Congressional Republicans are facing a mid-term election wipeout fueled by voter resistance to President Donald Trump, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll…The survey, six weeks before Americans head to the polls, shows Democrats leading Republicans by 52 percent to 40 percent for control of Congress. If it holds, that 12 percentage point margin would suggest a “blue wave” large enough to switch control of not just the House but also the Senate…Democrats have generated wide advantages among key swing groups within the electorate. The poll shows them leading by 31 percentage points among independents, 33 points among moderates and 12 points among white women…Among white college graduates, a group Republicans carried by nine points in 2014 mid-term elections, Republicans now trail by 15 points. Among white women without college degrees, a group Republicans carried by 10 points in 2014, Republicans now trail by five points.”

At CNN Politics, James A. Barnes writes that “Late summer surveys by CNN and other organizations show senior voters tilting decisively towards Democratic congressional candidates. That would dramatically reverse the recent pattern in midterm elections when the elderly provided a major boost to GOP candidates.” Barnes adds,

In CNN surveys conducted in early August and early September, registered voters who are 65 years of age and up preferred Democratic congressional candidates to Republicans by margins of 20 and 16 percentage points, respectively. CNN is not the only news organization to report this kind of GOP deficit among seniors. A late August Washington Post-ABC News survey found that if older voters were casting their ballots today, they would back Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives over Republican candidates by a whopping 22-point margin, 57% to 35%. Similarly, a national poll by Marist College conducted in early September found that among voters 60 years of age and up, they favored Democratic congressional candidates by a 15-point margin.

This is a potentially huge problem for Republicans: In the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections when Republicans regained control of the House and Senate, respectively, GOP candidates were solidly backed by voters 65 and up. When Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, they had a narrow advantage among senior voters.

Barnes notes that “Seniors are customarily more risk-averse than younger voters. Upheaval and uncertainty in government policies can make older voters apprehensive…In many instances, Donald Trump has governed in an opposite manner. And his brash personal style can sometimes come across as reckless. Barnes believes that Trump’s chaotic foreign policy, along with his reckless domestic initiatives and brinksmanship, is a turn-off for many seniors.

And it’s not just GOP-held House seats that are in danger. As Barnes writes,

But it may be in the midterm Senate contests where this trend could have its most profound impact. Democrats have six potentially vulnerable Senate incumbents: Florida’s Bill Nelson, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, Montana’s Jon Tester, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. President Trump carried those last five states by double-digit margins in the 2016 election, and he is a frequent presence in Florida, where he narrowly bested Hillary Clinton and maintains a Palm Beach retreat.

Four of those states, Florida, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, are among the top ten states with the highest proportion of elderly (65+) residents according to the last decennial census. (Missouri was ranked 16th and Indiana ranked 33rd.)

All of those Democratic incumbents have been elected before, and in Nelson’s case, he’s won three previous Senate races. They are known quantities, and if elderly voters in those states decide to look for a check on Trump, they have a familiar face to cast a ballot for.

“Of course, polls can vary a lot between now and Election Day, and Democrats may not be able to sustain the hefty margins they’re currently receiving from seniors in several polls,” Barnes concludes. “But to win back the House and the Senate, they probably don’t need to. As the 2006 election showed, even a narrow margin of victory among elderly voters can help facilitate a Democratic takeover of Congress.”

Brian Stryker, a partner of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, has an e-blast memo on “Campaigns: More Messaging about Skills Training,” which makes a compelling case for “skills training-that has been effective in persuading historical Democratic voters to return to the fold.” As Stryker, who specializes in advanced statistical analysis, turnout modeling, and non-traditional survey methods such as cellphone and Internet research, writes,

Not only has talking about skills training helped win us special elections across blue-collar America in the last year and change, it’s also consistently one of the best-polling reasons to support Democratic candidates across the Midwest/Great Lakes region of the country that swung so hard against us in 2016.

This is not to suggest Democrats stop talking about the value of classroom/college education and the need to get costs/debt down – they still have message value with many voters. It’s more to suggest highlighting alternatives in our messaging and realizing post-recession, many voters view non-college paths as a viable and successful alternative. We do well to hit on this issue that speaks strongly to voters who can’t, don’t want to, don’t want the debt, or for other reasons don’t see themselves sitting in college classrooms for four years.

Stryker makes som specific messaging points regarding skills training, including:

• Make this more about children, not adults. Campaigns too often conceptualize skills training solely as a job re-training message, when in fact voters react more positively to it when framed as a program for young people in high school or just after it. Voters talk in focus groups about the lack of shop classes or other work-oriented classes in high school any more. Many also raise the example of a child they know who they feel won’t succeed in college but could work hard and earn a living with their hands if given the chance. They also talk about how many high paying jobs are out there in the real world and how they are in demand if young people will just go get the skills needed to succeed.
• Think of skills training as a cultural touchstone, not just an economic one. Skills training speaks to people on a pocketbook level, for sure. But there’s a deeper cultural resonance among people who value hard work and don’t think hard work includes sitting at a desk. To many voters, it speaks to the honor of putting in a day’s work as a plumber, crane operator, mechanic, or working in advanced manufacturing. Respect for that type of work isn’t something blue-collar voters are hearing from all corners of the Democratic party, at least not as much as they need to be.
• Frame it in terms of a path for children who college isn’t right for. When presented with this concept in an ad or on paper in a focus groups, non-college voters talk about the “college for all mentality” that doesn’t speak to them or their reality. As a party, we should more explicitly talk about providing alternatives for kids besides just a four-year degree.
  • • Acknowledge that college isn’t for everyone. We hear a lot of “college isn’t for everyone” in focus groups from people who did and didn’t go to college. Voters don’t think of that as something to look down on someone for-there’s value to them in skilled trades and hard work-but they that elites look down on people who aren’t willing or able to go to college. Democrats would do well to talk about the inherent value of these paths that we should be providing for kids if college isn’t going to work for them.

Stryker adds that the message polls particularly well “with white blue-collar voters across the Midwest and Great Lakes states” as well as with white Obama-Trump and Rust Belt voters. But it also resonates with voters of color, college-educated whites and swing voters across the nation. He notes that it also “shifts the jobs debate from businesses (tax cuts and red tape/excessive regulation) to workers (raises, better jobs, training), which is more favorable terrain for Democrats. So we shouldn’t just silo this into an education message, it should also be about economic opportunity for kids.

In addition, skills training messaging also helps to educate the public about the important role of trade union training facilities and apprenticeship programs, and that “unions provide people a great path to the middle class. The more voters get that, the more they support the right to organize and a whole host of union priorities.”

Nearly all Democratic candidates can benefit from incorporating thoughtful skills training advocacy and proposals into their messaging — and it’s a message that strengthens the Democratic ‘brand’ as the political party that serves the prioroties of working people.

Mississippi’s special election to replace Sen. Thad Cochran hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. But that could change in a big way, as I explained at New York:

In the various scenarios of what will happen to the Supreme Court if Brett Kavanaugh’s originally expected late-September confirmation runs off the rails, it’s obvious that a Democratic Senate takeover in November (which would take effect on January 3) would create a real crisis for conservative SCOTUS hopes….

But there is one scenario that’s especially fraught with uncertainty and peril. The odds are good that a special election in Mississippi for the seat currently held by appointed senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (and formerly held for forty years by Republican Thad Cochran, who resigned in ill health in March) will go to a runoff on November 27. At the moment, the election is a three-way battle between the incumbent, fiery conservative insurgent Chris McDaniel, and former congressman and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, a Democrat. If no one wins a majority of the vote on November 6, it’s runoff time, almost certainly between one Democrat and one Republican. And if control of the Senate hasn’t yet been determined at that point, every campaign operative in the country and every unspent dollar will flood into the Magnolia State for three weeks.

This particular race has settled down a bit in recent weeks. Initially, it looked like McDaniel, who lost to Cochran by an eyelash in 2014 (with a lot of help from crossover voting by Democrats), might ride his “anti-establishment true conservative” message past former Democrat Hyde-Smith and into a runoff with Espy. But Donald Trump’s “complete and total Endorsement” of the incumbent (who has a 100 percent pro-Trump voting record) in late August has taken a lot of the wind out of McDaniel’s sails. One internal Hyde-Smith poll in early August showed McDaniel trailing her by ten points. Other polls have shown her with an even larger lead.

If there’s a Hyde-Smith-Espy runoff, the incumbent will be favored, for sure; if McDaniel pulls the upset and makes the runoff, it’s anybody’s race. But either way, Espy is about as strong a candidate as Democrats could field in this red state. Back in 1986, he became the first African-American to represent Mississippi in Congress since Reconstruction, and burnished a centrist reputation before Bill Clinton appointed him Secretary of Agriculture. He was forced from that position by perhaps the least-well-regarded independent counsel investigation of the era, which eventually led to his speedy acquittal on charges of taking gifts from corporations with USDA business. It’s doubtful that this 20-year-old “scandal” will significantly harm Espy’s Senate hopes, but his party affiliation is definitely a problem in a state where no Democrat has won a Senate or gubernatorial race in this millennium.

Still, the last Senate special election, 2017’s contest in next-door Alabama, presented an even tougher landscape for Democrats. Roy Moore’s upset primary win over an appointed senator backed by Donald Trump has to be the inspiration for Chris McDaniel, a neo-Confederate who is nearly as notorious in Mississippi as Moore was in Alabama. And in the likely case of a runoff, Mississippi’s large African-American population would provide an even stronger base for Espy than Doug Jones could count on in winning his race.

It’s possible that Hyde-Smith could win without a runoff; that control of the Senate will be decided elsewhere; and that Anthony Kennedy’s SCOTUS seat will be filled before the deal goes down in Mississippi. But it’s also possible that for the second straight year, a special election in the Deep South will command everyone’s attention.

The New York Times editorial board says the Kavanaugh proceedings have become “a mockery of lawmakers’ constitutional responsibility,” which invite public skepticism. “The bulk of the blame lies with Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee chairman, and his fellow Republicans, who have abused their power by refusing to let their colleagues and the American people see over 90 percent of the documents relating to Judge Kavanaugh’s critical years in the federal government.” Add that to the fact that the Republicans refused to allow Judge Merrick Garland even a hearing, and it’s clear why the public has good reason to see the nomination process as corrupted by GOP hyperpartisanship.

“I can’t imagine a scenario where it benefits Republicans to have their party’s Judiciary Committee members — 11 men, 0 women — interrogating a woman about the details of her recollections of being sexually assaulted. The only way this definitely benefits them is if Kavanaugh can really, really prove in some way that this did not happen…It would not be the worst move for Republicans if they found a female Supreme Court nominee. The problem is, of course, that the number of people who have the Federalist Society credentials of conservatism and elite degrees and are also female and already sitting on the bench might be small.” – From Perry Bacon, Jr. in “How Will The Troubled Kavanaugh Nomination Affect The Midterms?,” in FiveThirtyEight’s Weekly Politics Chat.

Among the findings of a new poll by Pew Research Center on gender and leadership released today, “Only about a quarter of them [Republican men] said there were too few women in leadership. That’s compared with almost half of Republican women, roughly three-quarters of Democratic men and more than 80 percent of Democratic women,” reports Clair Cane Miller at The Upshot. The poll also found an edge for women in one area, which political ad-makers for women candidates may want to explore: “In politics, they were more likely to be viewed as being good role models, and as maintaining a tone of civility and respect.”

At New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait flags an ironic development that has emerged in the campaign for Ted Cruz’s U.S. senate seat: “Ted Cruz is running for reelection in Texas trying to humanize himself by talking about basketball, and accusing his opponent, Beto O’Rourke, of liking tofu, hating the national anthem, and plotting to ban barbecue. What’s notably missing from Cruz’s campaign message is any recognizable conservative program. The conservative agenda has become at best a distraction, and at worst a liability…In this pivotal moment in his career, facing a surprising reelection threat from left-leaning Beto O’Rourke, and running in a state that has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1976, conservative thought is almost completely absent from Cruz’s campaign themes. His television ads tout Cruz’s record in securing federal hurricane relief for Texas and attack his opponent. (What would Ludwig von Mises think?) Cruz’s role in supporting Trump’s conservative policy accomplishments goes unmentioned…O’Rourke opposed the Trump corporate tax cut. He is openly endorsingthat his state accept the Medicaid expansion created by Obamacare. If even a conservative movement fundamentalist like Cruz doesn’t want to campaign on these issues in a state like Texas, what does that say about the political health of conservatism?”

Nathaiel Rakich writes in FiveThirtyEight’s September 19 Election Update: “The most likely scenario in the upcoming midterm elections: split control of Congress. As of Tuesday evening, the Classic version of our model gave Republicans a 7 in 10 chance of keeping control of the Senate, slightly better than when we launched the forecast, and gave Democrats a 4 in 5 chance of flipping the House. That’s close to the highest odds for taking the House that Democrats have had since the beginning of August…As I wrote last Wednesday, 21 U.S. House seats fit in the middle of the Venn diagram between “districts carried by Barack Obama in 2012” and “districts carried by Donald Trump in 2016.” These districts aren’t quite as fertile for Democratic gains this year as Romney-Clinton districts, but they are nonetheless a competitive batch of seats…”

“Democratic legislatures will be more likely to expand Medicaid, raise teacher pay, enact minimum wage increases, and go for things like automatic voter registration that will increase political participation down the road,” notes Matthew Yglesias at Vox. “Trump’s deep unpopularity is likely to give state-level Democrats a big boost….we are very likely to see some chambers flip this November. The Democratic committee for state legislative races has identified 17 key races that could collectively flip eight chambers. And, given national trends, Democrats will likely flip far more than 17 seats…In terms of actually flipping chambers, though, it is worth noting that the “stretch” goal on that 17/8 list is to flip the Florida state Senate by picking up five seats — and Florida is one of the states where Trump’s numbers have held up worst…In general, Democrats are well-positioned to make gains down-ballot in 2018. That’s going to give them a bigger voice in 2020 redistricting and, of course, in the important work of state policymaking.”

“So our ratings now show Democrats favored to net three Republican-held governorships, Illinois, Michigan, and New Mexico, while the Republicans are favored to win Alaska, currently held by an independent,” notes Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “There are seven remaining Toss-ups, and all but Connecticut are currently held by Republicans (and Democrats may ultimately have the edge in the Nutmeg State despite the unpopularity of outgoing Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy). So Democrats remain poised to net several governorships, although some of the biggest races — Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin most notably — remain uncertain.”

Ruy Teixeira cites an “interesting new round of state polls from Reuters/Ipsos,” which show Democratic candidates “Gillum and Sinema ahead, confirming other recent polls. Rosen behind in NV which is a bummer though race is clearly very tight. Most shocking is Beto O’Rourke ahead of Ted Cruz in Texas. I’m pretty skeptical given that most other recent polls have shown Cruz ahead. Also, the internals of the new poll show O’Rourke with 33 percent of the white vote which is super-high for Texas. But ya never know. If O’Rourke can really pull a third of the white vote, he’s golden.”

From Ronald Brownstein’s “The Year of the Woman of Color: Backlash to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh could help elect an unprecedented number of minority women to offices around the country” at The Atlantic: “Democrats have positioned themselves to benefit from that energy by nominating female candidates in 183 House races, according to the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics. That easily outdistances the previous record of 120 in 2016 and is much more than the 70 women who ran in 1992. (Republicans have nominated just 52 women in House races this year.) According to the center’s calculations, Democrats have also set records with 15 female Senate nominees (including the two challengers, in Nevada and Arizona, who are best-positioned to win GOP-held seats) and 12 gubernatorial picks…But this election could prove an even greater landmark for women of color. “I think what we’re seeing is the tipping point in the Democratic Party,” says longtime Democratic activist Aimee Allison. “We are telling a new story to the country about women of color: We are the least represented and the most progressive, and this is our year.”

In his New York Times column, “What the Kavanaugh Accusations Mean for Red-State Democrats” Michael Tomasky discusses several plausible scenarios that could affect the outcome of the hearings for the midterm elections, as well as for Trump’s nominee. As Tomasky writes,

A view seems to have taken hold in Washington that the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford have let red-state Senate Democrats off the hook. These Democrats — chiefly Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the three Democrats who voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch in April 2017 — all face re-election in just seven weeks in states where President Trump is popular, and where majorities presumably would support Judge Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court.

But now, some say, the allegations against the nominee provide reason enough for them to vote no. Jim Manley, a former longtime Democratic Senate aide who knows these matters well, told Reuters on Tuesday: “For those Democrats up for re-election from states that Trump carried, they now have absolutely no reason to vote for Kavanaugh. Period. End of story. They have all the cover they need.” Several talking heads on cable news said much the same thing Tuesday.

I’m not sure it’s that simple. Assuming Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is not withdrawn and the Republicans continue to fight for him, these three Democrats and possibly one or two others will still find themselves in a tough position. In fact, if a couple of Republicans defect from Judge Kavanaugh, these Democrats will be in an even tougher spot than before.

But even if two Republicans, say Collins and Murkowski, turn against Kavanaugh, “At that point, Republicans, far from accepting defeat, will surely start aiming fire at the three Democrats. Their opponents will taunt them about Judge Kavanaugh on the campaign trail.” It’s possible that these Democrats may see little to lose by voting for Kavanaugh.

Tomasky presents a more appealing scenario for Democrats:

Now imagine a second scenario. Imagine that Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski vote no, but this time they are joined by two other Republicans, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Now, Judge Kavanaugh is down to 47 votes. And more important, the air will be out of his balloon, emotionally. At that point, I think the three Democrats will be fully off the hook.

That’s a plausible scenario, but not the one Tomasky sees as most likely:

And, of course, there’s a third scenario (at least!), which I discussed here earlier, and it’s probably still the most likely one. All 51 Republicans stand pat, in which case some Democrats will go ahead and confirm Judge Kavanaugh. But their votes won’t matter. Whether you got 51 votes or 55 or 100, they still call you Mr. Associate Justice.

It’s not hard to see how much depends on Maine and Alaska voters who are against Kavanaugh making their voices heard. Of course, there are other plausible scenarios, including the possibility that more revelations about Kavanaugh emerge, providing the red state Democratic senators with even more cover.

Part of the calculus for all U.S. Senators has to be the potentially explosive power of the ‘Me Too’ movement. Ditto for the strong pro-Democratic voter enthusiasm trend among educated women, which will surely play a major role in the midterm elections, even in red states.

And let’s not forget all of the other arguments against Kavanaugh, including a key point that red state Democrats could amplify to good effect — Kavanaugh’s record of opposing worker rights against employer abuse at every opportunity that came his way.

In the end, however, the red state Democrats will have to answer key questions of conscience that will bear on their legacies, including: ‘Should my vote give Kavanaugh a pass on the serious allegations made by a credible woman?’ Also, ‘should I give Trump and the Republicans a rubber stamp on the Supreme Court that would adversely impact working people for decades?’

If being a Democrat means anything at all, the answer is no.

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

Politico is out with a new poll of Ohio voters which underscores just how contested the Rustbelt has become in the Trump era. Far from being lost to the Democrats in the wake of the Trump election, Democrats are coming roaring back, riding a wave of discontent with the Orange One and his party.

In the new poll, Democrats lead the Congressional ballot by 7 points in the state, Democratic Senatorial incumbent Sherrod Brown is crushing challenger Jim Renacci and Democrat Richard Cordray is running about even with Mike DeWine in the governor’s race