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

I often hear laments that, despite all the other things going wrong for the GOP, Trump himself has an unshakable base of support that will ultimately save him and his party.

This is a myth. Yes, Trump has a strong base of support, but it is not extraordinary and is subject to attrition among voters who have questions about him, his behavior and/or his policies. Trump has not invented a new form of politics where he is invulnerable to voter defection.

First point, his approval rating among Republicans. This is high but hardly unprecedented by historical standards. According to Politifact:

“The most recent publicly available data from Gallup’s weekly tracking poll at the time of Trump’s tweet showed him with 85 percent approval from Republicans.

So how does that 85 percent rating compare with his Republican predecessors? We looked at Gallup historical data for Republican presidents going back to Eisenhower. We looked for the closest polling data for July 29 of their second year in office (the day of Trump’s claim). We used the equivalent period after the inauguration of Gerald Ford, who unlike the others was not sworn in on Jan. 20.

So…not only did George W. Bush have a higher approval rating among Republicans, but so did Dwight Eisenhower and, arguably, George H.W. Bush.

Two other points of comparison make Trump’s achievement less impressive.

One is to compare Trump’s highest approval rating of his tenure so far — 90 percent as recently as mid-July — to the record-high rating for his predecessors through July 29 of their second year in office.

By this measure, Trump actually ties for the second-worst of any post-World War II Republican president, surpassing only Ford.

Another approach is to compare each president on the highest approval rating of their tenure. (Trump has only been in office for a year and a half, but he opened the door to this analysis by claiming the “highest poll numbers in the history of the Republican Party.”)

Once again, by this measure, Trump fares the second worst of any post-war Republican president, only surpassing Ford.

By historical standards, Trump has had “solid, but not extraordinary in-party approval,” said Kathleen Joyce Weldon, director of data operations and communications at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University.”

Second point: Support for Trump is relatively weak among large and important groups of Republicans. According to a study by political scientists Peter K. Enns, Jonathon P. Schuldt and Adrienne Scott:

“During the first two weeks of July, we fielded a nationally representative survey of 1,379 likely voters. Conducted online and on the phone by the National Opinion Research Center, we included only respondents who reported a high likelihood of voting in this year’s midterms. The survey was funded by Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality.

In our survey, Trump’s approval rating was 85 percent among Republicans. That’s consistent with other polls. On the surface, the president’s support among his fellow Republicans is overwhelming.

But the key to our analysis was to divide Republicans into three groups: those who say they identify strongly with the Republican Party; those who identify as Republicans but not strongly; and those who call themselves independents but say they lean toward the Republican Party. These distinctions, often obscured in media coverage, are important because research shows that the strength of a voter’s partisan identity has an important effect on their political attitudes.

Among strong Republicans, Trump’s overall approval rating is 93 percent, with 78 percent “strongly” approving of the president. The problem for Trump, however, is that these voters make up less than half of the Republican electorate — and 18 percent of likely voters.

Among the larger number of Republicans who identify less strongly with their party, Trump is much less popular. For example, Trump’s overall approval rating among not-so-strong Republicans is 72 percent, with 38 percent saying they strongly approve. Thirty-four percent say they only “somewhat” approve of Trump. Those numbers are similar among independent-leaning Republicans.”

Third point: Not everyone who voted for Trump is very happy with him. That matters. Nate Cohn on newly-released Pew data:

“There has been little change in President Trump’s approval rating in the last 18 months, and so it’s often assumed that nothing can erode his base of support. The Pew data suggests it’s not so simple.

Yes, nearly half of Mr. Trump’s voters have exceptionally warm views toward him: 45 percent rated their feeling toward him as a 90 or higher out of 100, a figure that is virtually unchanged since his election. But a meaningful number of his voters had reservations about him in November 2016, and even more Trump voters held a neutral or negative view of him in March.

Over all, 18 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters gave him a rating of 50 or less, on a scale of 0 (coldest) to 100 (warmest), up from 13 percent in November 2016.

It is worth noting that the November 2016 Pew survey was taken after Mr. Trump won the presidency, at the height of his post-election honeymoon. But even when you consider the slightly lower ratings voters gave him in the months before the election, the big picture is the same: A modest number of Mr. Trump’s voters didn’t like him that much then, and don’t like him much now.

Women, and especially college-educated women, are the likeliest Trump voters to have serious reservations about him in 2018: A striking 14 percent of the college-educated women who voted for him hold a very cold impression of him, up from just 1 percent in November 2016.”

So don’t believe the hype. Trump’s support is plenty shakable. And it’s being shaken.

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

Buried in the latest Pew report was an extraordinary finding from their study of validated voters in the 2016 election. As you may recall, the exit polls had Trump carrying college-educated whites by 3 points. This was puzzling to many of us since polls prior to the election had been regularly showing Clinton carrying this group by 15-20 points.

Subsequent analysis from the States of Change project strongly indicated that Clinton carried white college voters in the 2016 election, not Trump. Our estimate was that Clinton won this group by around 7 points. Now we have this Pew study based on verified voters that puts Clinton’s margin over Trump among this group at 17 points. 17 points! That’s impressive and indicates that the pre-election polls were in the right ballpark on the white college grad vote and that this group may have crossed over from being a swing group to a solid Democratic one. I might add that this is entirely consistent with the polling and other data we are seeing in the run-up to the 2018 election.

Michael Wines explores what it means that “Voting Rights Advocates Used to Have an Ally in the Government. That’s Changing” in The New York Times. In his lead graphs, Wines writes: “A new voter ID law could shut out many Native Americans from the polls in North Dakota. A strict rule on the collection of absentee ballots in Arizona is being challenged as a form of voter suppression. And officials in Georgia are scrubbing voters from registration rolls if their details do not exactly match other records, a practice that voting rights groups say unfairly targets minority voters….During the Obama administration, the Justice Department would often go to court to stop states from taking steps like those. But 18 months into President Trump’s term, there are signs of change: The department has launched no new efforts to roll back state restrictions on the ability to vote, and instead often sides with them…Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department has filed legal briefs in support of states that are resisting court orders to rein in voter ID requirements, stop aggressive purges of voter rolls and redraw political boundaries that have unfairly diluted minority voting power — all practices that were opposed under President Obama’s attorneys general.” The rest of the article provides an instructive update on the GOP’s voter suppression tactics, leaving leading to the inescapable conclusion that Democrats must win majorities in congress and state legislators and more governorships to effectively address the threat.

“The money and the machinery is there. It’s just that not enough of it is directed at Latinos. With total spending on the midterm elections expected to reach $4 billion, outside groups and super PACs have almost unlimited funds. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has pledged $30 million to take back the House. Liberal philanthropist George Soros has already spent $15 million. And Michael Bloomberg has promised $80 million. Yet none of the cash they have allocated has been earmarked exclusively for a major new initiative to reach Latinos. Bloomberg has been focused on gun control and Steyer on climate change—as well as impeachment. He has spent another $40 million on billboards in Times Square, town hall meetings, and TV ads urging the House to oust the president. “If he’d given Mi Familia Vota [a Latino group that works to register and mobilize Hispanic voters] that money, they would have registered enough Latino voters by now to turn Texas blue,” said Andres Ramirez, a veteran Democratic strategist. Yet most of these liberal megadonors “would scoff at Latino groups making this request,” he added. “They wouldn’t even entertain it.”” — From Adrian Carrasquilo’s “Democrats Are Taking Latino Voters for Granted: The party has the money and machinery. Why is so little of it going toward Hispanic outreach?” at The New Republic.

Dems are going to like the title of Ronald Brownstein’s latest article at The Atlantic, “The Ohio Results Point to Democratic Strength in 2018—And a Showdown in 2020: The party has a clear formula for victory in November: sweep America’s suburbs, and pick off a few other Republicans for good measure.” Says Brownstein: “Democrats will be operating with very little margin for error if they must win back the House almost solely by capturing white-collar suburban seats. Their path would be much easier if they could also win a respectable number of the Republican seats they are targeting outside of the major metro areas, including districts in upstate New York, northeastern and southwestern Iowa, downstate Illinois, California’s Central Valley, and Washington State, where Republican Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jaime Herrera Beutler both showed weakness in Tuesday night’s primary…Democrats, and outside election handicappers, like their odds in several of those races (especially given the agricultural community’s unease over Trump’s ongoing trade wars). But Balderson’s big margins in such blue-collar and small-town counties as Marion, Morrow, and Muskingum are reminders of how strong a headwind Democrats must overcome in those places.”

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson makes the case that “The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it” in his Washington Post column: “In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles E. Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?…They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward…Under Republican control, important committees — such as Chairman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp…The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”

According to the NYT update, “Tracking the House Races to Watch in the 2018 Midterm Elections” by Alexander Burns, which presents data from the Cook Political Report, “There are currently 62 highly competitive seats — those considered a tossup between the two parties or leaning slightly toward one,” and “Right now, 10 seats currently held by Republicans are either likely to be won by Democrats or lean slightly toward them, while another two dozen Republican-held seats are designated as tossups — political coin flips that could just as easily break in either direction.” Further, “There are also more than 50 other Republican-held seats that are contested enough to make Democratic victory at least a plausible possibility. Many of those are in conservative-leaning suburbs and rural areas in the Midwest and West.”

At New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore draws from Andrew Levison’s Washington Monthly article “What Democrats Still Don’t Get About Winning Back the White Working Class,” and observes: “The most important thing right now for Democrats may be abandoning the idea there is any ideological template — progressive or centrist — for dealing with white working-class voters. Telling them to chow down on government benefits while abandoning their cultural viewpoints, as progressives sometimes advocate, is arguably condescending, and the common “centrist” approach of refusing to talk about hot-button issues is disingenuous. Connecting with these voters simply and authentically is also superior to a heavy-handed triangulating message that alienates “base” Democratic voters or college-educated suburban swing voters.”

“Campaign finance was once famously dismissed by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, as being of no greater concern to American voters than “static cling,” notes Farah Stockman in “For Voters Sick of Money in Politics, a New Pitch: No PAC Money Accepted” at The New York Times. “But since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates for unrestricted political spending, polls have shown that voters are growing increasingly bitter about the role of money in politics…The issue is now emerging in midterm races around the country, with dozens of Democrats rejecting donations from political action committees, or PACs, that are sponsored by corporations or industry groups. A handful of candidates, including Mr. Phillips, are going a step further and refusing to take any PAC money at all, even if it comes from labor unions or fellow Democrats.” It is proving to be a popular approach for Demopcrats, because “A recent Pew report found that 75 percent of the public said “there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns.”

Relying on small donations from individuals is more commendable than being financed by corporate interests. But Eleanor Clift reports at The Daily Beast that unrelenting pitches for money from small donors can get pretty obnoxious, as well. Clift quotes extensively from retired liberal journalist Roger Williams:  “He applauds Democratic efforts to go after small donations, but adds that “it’s the way they’re doing it is very aggravating. They lead with absolute panic time, panic time all the time. This election, whether it’s the most important one, I don’t know, but yes, I think it’s terribly important or I would not have given any money—but it’s NOT all about money and these people make it sound like it’s all about money…Further, you guys are supposed to be political pros. Your job is to win elections, which includes figuring out how to do so in races that are difficult. Whining about being outspent and groveling before people like me for a few bucks is not the way to accomplish that.  Do your G.D. jobs!”

If you were wondering why The Republicans stopped bragging so much about their tax cut, a NYT editorial explains that “The idea that the tax cuts were going to line workers’ pockets was always a mirage. Most people will enjoy only a modest and temporary tax cut — families earning $25,00 or less will save on average just $60 on their federal tax this year, and those making between $48,600 and $86,100 will save $930, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Families in the top 1 percent, on the other hand, will save an average of $51,140.”

Reading and watching coverage of the August 7 primaries led me to a meditation on how confusing and unhelpful intra-party labels have become this year, which I wrote up at New York:

It is reasonably clear that Bernie Sanders and his distinct movement (joined on the campaign trail by the new Democratic Socialist megastar from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), had a rough night on Tuesday, when candidates they had backed in person, Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Kansas congressional aspirant Brent Welder, both lost races many expected them to win, against (respectively) Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids. But were those defeats for “progressivism” or victories for “centrism”? That depends on whom you ask.

The Third Way organization, an influential think tank that doesn’t do actual campaigns, was quick to get on speed-dial with political reporters and pundits and claim victory, as reflected in this quote from a piece by the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel:

“‘This is a fantastic night for centrist Democrats,’ said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the center-left Third Way think tank. ‘We nominated the right candidates who can win House seats and governor’s mansions for the Democratic Party. There’s a quiet enthusiasm in the middle. There’s a quiet voice that people are not hearing in the media, but it’s loud at the ballot box.'”

A piece on the Democratic primaries by influential New York Times columnist Tom Edsall similarly described the primaries as pitting “Sanders-style policies” against the “centrist” advice of Third Way.

But The Nation’s Joan Walsh — a self-conscious “progressive” who is not, however, exactly enamored of the Bernie Sanders movement — pushed back on the whole narrative with gusto:

“I’m not aware of Third Way, a centrist think tank, actually lifting a finger for any of Tuesday’s candidates, by the way. I’m not sure either Whitmer or Davids would label themselves Third Way centrists.

“The real story is that progressives won big on Tuesday might, because by only the most cramped and divisive standards would Davids and Whitmer be considered ‘centrist.’ Both are open to Medicare for All as an end goal but favor Medicaid expansion in the meantime. Both are staunchly pro-choice and pro–Planned Parenthood funding, favor gun-safety reforms and protections for DACA youth as well as comprehensive immigration reform. Whitmer supports a $15 minimum wage.”

So how do you define Democratic candidates like Whitmer and Davids? They aren’t from Bernieland, and would actually fail some lefty litmus tests (like immediate and unqualified support for single-payer). But nor are they out there objecting to “class warfare” or criticizing teachers unions or separating themselves from their party on controversial positions.

Part of the definitional problem is the long war over ownership of the word “progressive.” During the 1990s, when after decades of demonization by the right the term “liberal” fell into disrepute, “progressive” more or less became a default term of self-identification for nearly all left-of-dead-center folk. It’s no accident that the think tank of the quintessential (if now defunct) “centrist” organization the Democratic Leadership Council named itself the Progressive Policy Institute (which is not at all defunct). And very term Third Way, in both the U.S. and U.K., originally connoted an effort to “modernize the progressive tradition,” not just to move the traditional left parties “to the center” (hence the names New Democrats and New Labour).

That all seems to be ancient history at this point, but the idea that “progressive” means following Bernie Sanders or espousing democratic socialism is most definitely disputed, as Joan Walsh’s argument shows.

Some prefer distinctions like “Establishment Democrats” versus “Insurgent Democrats.” That may be useful temporarily in primaries where one can track where official party and elected official money and endorsements are and are not going. Trouble is, though, that once primaries are over, the “Establishment” almost invariably backs Democratic nominees regardless of any prior “insurgent” labels. And in this particular election year, that sort of dichotomy (and for that matter, the “progressives versus centrists” framing) collides with the reality that a large number of “Establishment-backed” women are winning primaries with substantial help from EMILY’s List, a cause-oriented pro-choice group. Some critics claim that this powerful organization doesn’t like risk-taking progressivism these days, or is too beholden to rich donors, or is too close to the Democratic Party itself. But it has its own criteria for picking candidates (early, as its name suggests), and only someone who thinks “progressive” means “Bernie Sanders supporters” would call EMILY’s List “centrist.” It has supported all sorts of pro-choice Democratic women, including, as it happens, Gretchen Whitmer and Sharice Davids.

The bottom line is that left-of-center folk probably need a new vocabulary, or at the very least a clear and thorough debate over what the terms they actually use–actually mean. It would probably be wise to undertake that debate after the November midterms. At that point they may be in a better position to determine whether voters even care about all these labels.

Greg Sargent’s “Will the ‘Trump economy’ save the GOP? Here’s the Democratic strategy to prevent that” at The Plum Line offers some insights Democratic campaigns should consider. He cites two major challenges Dems face:

The first is the difficulty of puncturing their message about the economy through the din of press coverage of other matters, especially child separations and the Russia probe and Trump’s reaction to it. This isn’t to say that Democrats are at a disadvantage on those issues — the opposite is very likely the case — but rather that in addition to winning the argument about those things, it is also a crucial ingredient that their message about the economy get heard. “Unlike Russia and immigration, voters won’t hear about this as much in the press,” the memo concludes, “meaning Democrats must continue to carry the message in paid media and on the campaign trail.”

The second big challenge Democrats face is that it isn’t clear voters will necessarily base their choices on personal perceptions of the economy, rather than on general perceptions of it. A recent Post-Schar School poll found that 57 percent of voters rate the economy as good or excellent, including 58 percent in battleground districts.

Thus, the imperative for Democrats is to get voters to base their choice instead on their personal experience of the economy, as well as on specific Republican policies that would slash the safety net, particularly on health care (an area where Democrats are stronger). Of course, many Democrats are already trying to do this. As Margot Sanger-Katz reports, Democratic candidates around the country are stressing health care, crucially by asking audiences how many of them suffer from preexisting conditions, thus personalizing the issue, which is essential.

So when you see Democratic candidates trying to stress voters’ personal experience of the economy and the health-care system, and highlighting specific Trump/GOP policies on both fronts, this memo helps shed light on the thinking behind it.

Sargent makes an excellent point that health security is a central economic concern of millions of voters, who are understandably very nervous about the GOP’s lack of a coherent alternative, as well as Republican opposition to coverage for preexisting conditions. Democrats have been given a potent gift in the GOP’s total failure to improve the ACA, despite their House and Senate majorities and the presidency, and they should work it to brand the Republicans as incompetent, as well as elitist. Do read the rest of Sargent’s article for a thoughtful perspective on Democratic strategy in the months ahead.

It didn’t get as much attention as it deserved before August 7 (though I did write about it), and the same is true of the remarkable results from Missouri, where the labor movement pulled off a shocker, as I noted at New York:

[Members of] America’s beleaguered labor movement really, really needed this one, and after an impressive investment of time, energy, and money, they got it. In conservative Missouri, a right-to-work law enacted last year by a Republican-controlled legislature and former Republican Governor Eric Greitens was overturned by voters who rejected the anti-labor measure by a comfortable margin. In early returns, rural counties were joining urban labor strongholds in opposing right-to-work.

Republicans had sought to make Missouri the 28th state to adopt right-to-work, which prohibits “union shop” arrangements whereby workers who benefit from collective bargaining agreements can be required to help defray union costs. When unions and their allies succeeded in putting the law on hold pending the ballot measure, the legislature countered by moving the vote from the relatively-high-turnout general election to the primary, hoping to kill it with voter indifference. But it didn’t work.

A reported 5-1 financial advantage for the No on Prop A campaign obviously helped produce this result. But you have to figure there was an intensity factor, too. The Supreme Court’s June decision imposing the equivalent of right-to-work rules on all public-sector workplaces was not just a blow to unions, but a huge setback in the sector of the workforce where labor had made most of its recent membership gains. Labor needed to mount a comeback, and as fate would have it, the opportunity arose first in Missouri, a state with a proud labor tradition but an increasingly pro-corporate state government.

Today’s verdict by voters should give pause to anti-union pols and organizations who assume they can roll back collective bargaining rights at will in any state where Republicans have control.

I wrote this well before the final results, which exceeded all expectations: the right-to-work law went down by more than a two-to-one margin–in Missouri. That is truly good news for embattled union folk everywhere–and for Democrats who very much need a vibrant labor movement.

More bad news for the GOP, from Kyle Kondik’s update “The House: Ratings Changes in the Aftermath of Another Nail-Biter Special Election: GOP likely holds on in OH-12, but narrow result and other developments Tuesday reinforce positive Democratic trends” at The Crystal Ball: “The Democrats now have 203 seats at least leaning to them, the Republicans have 198 at least leaning to them, and there are 34 Toss-ups. Based on our current ratings, the Democrats no longer have to win a majority of the Toss-ups to win the House — 15 of 34 would now do the trick — although Republicans hope that some of our Leans Democratic seats are rated too bearishly for their side. There is always a chance that something could happen to change the current dynamic, but nothing that happened Tuesday night suggested that the pro-Democratic trend we’ve seen throughout the cycle is eroding. The election is less than three months away now.”

At The Princeton  Election Consortium, Sam Wang’s “OH-12 is ominous for GOP in House…and the Senate” notes, “In 46 special elections in 2018, the overall swing from 2016 has averaged 12 points toward Democrats. Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by a little over 2 percentage points. If this swing were to hold up in November 2018, it would mean a 14-point win in the national House popular vote. I estimate that a 6-point win would be just enough to flip control. A 14-point win is massive, enough for a gain of over 50 seats.”

Frank Bruni urges “Democrats, Do Not Give Up on the Senate: The party’s odds aren’t great, but they look better all the time” in his New York Times column, and argues, “But I wouldn’t give up on it, because a Democratic majority in the Senate means more than one in the House (Supreme Court, anyone?), and there really is a rationale for hope…It starts with the general political climate and Trump’s approval rating, which never crests 45 percent. Sad! Recent polls have shown that in congressional races, voters prefer a generic Democrat to a generic Republican by six to 10 points. That’s wave territory, and Democrats are favored by the historical patterns of midterms…The party needs to pick up two seats. It has more than two states to turn to. For a while now, Jacky Rosen in ever-bluer Nevada has been scaring the bejesus out of the Republican incumbent, Dean Heller. More recently, Kyrsten Sinema in reddish Arizona and Phil Bredesen in redder Tennesseehave emerged as fearsome contenders for seats being vacated by Trump-averse Republicans (Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, respectively).”

Ruy Teixeira writes on his Facebook page, “Why did Democratic support spike in Franklin county in OH-12 last Tuesday? I have a feeling it has a lot to do with the data on the far right hand side of this chart[below]. No wonder smart Republicans like Sean Trende are getting nervous.”

“The biggest strategic challenge [Democrats] have will come in September and October when they’ve got to make a decision whether some races are now in the safe column and they can divert resources to lean-Republican races,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), quoted in “Dems eyeing smaller magic number for House majority” by Scott Wong nd Mike Lillis at The Hill. “It’s way too early to make those decisions,” added Israel, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) from 2011 to 2014…“Without the redistricting firewall that they built, Republicans would probably lose 60 seats in this kind of cycle,” Israel said. “As a result of the redistricting firewall that they built, they could lose about half of that.”

Some statistics to consider about the contest for Georgia governorship, from Thomas B. Edsall’s column, “The Democratic Party Has Two Futures: Candidates in different states are testing out the electoral power of the left and the center” at The New York Times: “The black share of the Georgia electorate has been growing rapidly. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the number of African-Americans voting in the May primary grew by 43 percent between 2010 and 2018, while white voters declined 9 percent. In 2017, the state population was 52.8 percent white — on the cusp of turning majority minority.”

Edsall also notes, however, that “In an analysis of Democratic primaries through July 12, Brookings found that establishment candidates had won 88 and progressive candidates had won 64. The results from Tuesday now increase the share won by establishment candidates.”

“Nearly half — 46 percent — of registered voters younger than 30 said they are “absolutely certain to vote,” according to Post-ABC polls averaging across polls in January and April. And more than 6 in 10 millennials ages 22 to 38 said they are “looking forward” to midterm elections in a recent Pew Research Center survey. That number was 46 percent in 2014 and 39 percent in 2010…Relying on young voters — particularly those enrolled in college — may not be the best strategy,” argues Eugene Scott in “There’s optimism college students could deliver in Ohio in the fall. Is that realistic?” at The Fix. “Washington Post polling analyst Emily Guskin did a deep dive on the uptick in voter registration for 18- to 29-year-olds. It has not been as significant as some expected after the politically charged Parkland, Fla., school shooting earlier this year. Many people who register to vote do not show up on Election Day, and young people are by far the least likely age group to cast ballots, especially in midterm elections. The United States Elections Project analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data tracking turnout in midterm elections since 1986 and found that 16 percent of eligible voters ages 18 to 29 turned out to vote in the 2014 midterms. It was the lowest for any election since 1986, though turnout among this age group was never higher than 21 percent in midterms over this period.”

There’s no substitute for in-person engagement for both base mobilization and winning over swing voters. But Democratic campaigns should also take a look at “How RumbleUp is Powering the Republican Texting Revolution: When it comes to campaign technology, Democrats invent, Republicans perfect.” by Thomas Peters at Campaigns & Elections. His article provides a clear picture of how the opposition is planning to reach younger voters in particular, and it shows what some of their text messages look like.

The Democratic Strategist is proud to present an extremely important new Strategy Memo–one that is simultaneously appearing as a lead article in The Washington Monthly.

The memo’s basic thesis is simple:

In many white working class and red state districts, Democratic policies and proposals, regardless of whether they are “progressive” or “moderate,” never get seriously debated or even considered. As a result, in these districts neither strategy can be relied on to elect Democrats.

Instead, the success of Democratic candidates in these white working class communities will most critically depend on their ability to convincingly demonstrate to voters that Democrats will once again be their most sincere, effective and genuine advocates and representatives.

This challenge cuts across the conventional centrist-progressive divide that now dominates the debate within the Democratic coalition–and will fundamentally determine the outcome in November.

For a printer-friendly document, you may download the memo below:

Democrat Danny O’Connor trails by less than 1 percent in the vote count for the special election in OH-12. As Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns explain in “Republican Holds Slim Lead in Ohio Special Election for House Seat” at The New York Times,

O’Connor has not conceded as of this writing, and Republicans are still nervous about the final tally, as well as the November rematch.

In his slate.com post, “The Results in Ohio Bode Poorly for Republicans, Regardless of Who Wins, Josh Vorhees notes:

As for its bearing on the midterms, though, this race has already told us pretty much everything it can. Donald Trump won the district by 11 points two years ago, and Democrats haven’t represented it in Congress in three-plus decades. That the contest turned out to be as close as it did is shocking, regardless of who wins—or it would have been shocking, anyway, if it weren’t for the surprises of the previous 10 federal elections since Trump took office. Democrats have performed better, often way better, than the makeup of their respective electorates would predict. That was true in Pennsylvania, where Conor Lamb beat the partisan lean of his district (as measured by FiveThirtyEight) by 22 points to win his congressional race by a few tenths of a point. It was true in South Carolina, where Archie Parnell beat the lean by 16 points, to come up only 3 points short. And it’s true in Ohio, where O’Connor is on pace to beat expectations by about 13 points.

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

At the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans, there was an ostentatious lack of interest in anything remotely resembling an actual swing voter. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Our swing voter is not red to blue; it’s nonvoter to voter”. In other words, it’s all mobilization not persuasion, according to her and others at the conference.

That may be unwise. Henry Olsen offers some hard data from the Voter Study Group surveys (full disclosure: I was involved in the collection of these data and sit on the editorial board of the group) on the potential salience of good old-fashioned swing voters in the coming election. Olsen may overstate his case a bit but attention must be paid to the data he presents.