The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and John B. Judis, a former editor of The New Republic and author of major works about contemporary politics, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot. It is adapted from their recently published book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in an Age of Extremes:

The Democratic Party has had its greatest success when it sought to represent the common man and woman against the rich and powerful, the people against the elite, and the plebeians against the patricians. Over the last thirty years, the Democrats have continued to claim to represent the average citizen. In his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton championed “the forgotten middle class” and promised to “put people first.” Barack Obama pledged that the “voices of ordinary citizens” would “speak louder” than “multimillion-dollar donations.” Hillary Clinton in her 2016 campaign promised to “make the economy work for everyday Americans.” And Joe Biden promised in 2020 to represent “the people” and framed the election as being between “Park Avenue and Scranton.”

For all this, over the last decades, Democrats have steadily lost the allegiance of “everyday Americans”—the working- and middle-class voters that were at the core of the older New Deal coalition. Initially, most of these lost voters were white, but in the last elections, Democrats have also begun to lose support among Latino and Asian working-class voters.

How did this happen? There is an original reason, for which the Democrats were hardly to blame. Democrats were the principal supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—measures that went a long way toward ending racial segregation and Jim Crow, but that angered many southern whites and, to a lesser extent, some whites in the North.

With the exception of a few far-right groups, however, Americans have reconciled themselves to those bills. Democrats regularly win elections in Virginia, the seat of the southern Confederacy, and many of the northern and southern suburbs formed by white flight now vote for Democratic candidates. And Americans elected an African American president in 2008 and reelected him in 2012.

Today, there are a multitude of factors that have driven working-class voters out of the Democratic Party. They include:

• Democrats’ support for trade deals that led to factory closings in many small towns and midsize cities in states that were once Democratic strongholds.
• Democrats’ support for spending bills that the working and middle classes paid for but that were primarily of benefit to poor Americans, many of whom were minorities.
• Democrats’ enthusiasm for immigration of unskilled workers and the party’s opposition to measures that might reduce illegal immigration.
• Democrats’ support for strict gun control.
• Democrats’ insistence on eliminating fossil fuels.
• Democrats’ use of the courts and regulations to enforce their moral and cultural agenda, whether on the sale of wedding cakes or the use of public men’s and women’s bathrooms.

Not all Democrats are in line with these actions or beliefs. But overall, they came to characterize the party. Some of these stances have to do directly with economics; others with culture. The differences over them are often taken to distinguish the college-educated professional from those who do not have college degrees, but they equally, if not more accurately, arise from the differences in economic geography—what we call the “Great Divide” in American politics.

On one side of the divide are the great postindustrial metro centers like the Bay Area, Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Seattle. These are areas that benefited from the boom in computer technology and high finance. These areas are heavily populated by college-educated professionals, but also by low-skilled immigrants who clean the buildings, mow the lawns, and take care of the children and the aged. The professionals, who set the political agenda for these areas, welcome legal and illegal immigrants; they want guns off the street; they see trade not as a threat to jobs but as a source of less expensive goods; they worry that climate change will destroy the planet; and, among the young, they are engaged in a quest for new identities and sexual lifestyles. A majority of them are Democrats.

On the other side of the divide are the small towns and midsize cities that have depended on manufacturing, mining, and farming. Some of these places have prospered from newly discovered oil and gas deposits, but many are towns and cities like Muncie, Indiana; Mansfield, Ohio; and Dundalk, Maryland that have lost jobs when firms moved abroad or closed up shop in the face of foreign competition. The workers and small businesspeople in these towns and cities want the border closed to illegal immigrants, whom they see as a burden to their taxes and a threat to their jobs; they want to keep their guns as a way to protect their homes and family; they fly the American flag in front of their house; they go to or went to church; they oppose abortion; some may be leery of gay marriage, although that is changing; many of them or members of their family served in the military; they have no idea what most of the initials in LGBTQIA+ stand for. A majority of them are now Republicans and many are former working-class Democrats.

Read more…

Just a few days ago Democratic political operatives were chewing their fingernails to the nubs over President Biden’s lousy poll numbers. Then in the darkest hour, Americans went to the real polls and gave Republicans a proper shellacking. Then the GOP veep hopefuls had their televised “debate,” the highlight of which was one candidate calling another “scum.” And then, while Dems were breathing sighs of relief, Sen. Manchin chucks his little bomb into the scenario, significantly decreasing Dem hopes for holding a senate majority and provoking new worries about a possible 3rd party presidential run.

By now, no one could be blamed for throwing their arms up and shouting “whatever!”

But Democrats who are looking for a more lasting source of satisfaction are directed to “Republicans have never been this panicked over their abortion debacle—never by Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos, who writes, “On the heels of an electoral shellacking Tuesday over their continued attacks on abortion rights, Republicans are in hair-on-fire triage mode. Republican Party operatives are now counseling their congressional candidates to disavow any support for a national abortion ban, according to NBC News.” Eleveld adds,

At Wednesday’s third Republican primary debate, only one of the five candidates committed to pushing a national abortion ban—a glaring lack of support among GOP presidential hopefuls. And even that single candidate, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, sought to take the edge off such a ban by using the term “limit” instead of “ban,” stealing a page from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s failed rebranding effort.

….No matter what Republicans say now, remember North Carolina, where some Republican state lawmakers and candidates actually campaigned on protecting abortion access in 2022. But as soon as the GOP-led legislature had the votes earlier this year, Republicans jammed a 12-week abortion ban through, overriding a veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to make it law. Their denials on the campaign trail have no bearing whatsoever on how they will actually govern.

For now, many Republican candidates have made their radical support for banning abortions perfectly clear, and Democrats are promising to show those receipts.

“On the record and on video, Republican Senate candidates have already staked out dangerous positions that would make abortion illegal without exceptions — and we’ll make sure voters see and hear them in their own words,” said Tommy Garcia, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

So now Democrats get to make ads showing all Republican presidential candidates contradicting themselves on reproductive rights and broadcast the ads throughout the year. In addition, all manner of  GOP candidates – not just presidential, but also candidates for Senate, the House, statewide and legislative districts, will be squirming in TV lights while they are being nailed by reporters. Pass the popcorn.

There’s not much doubt about the issue that most helped Democrats to a strong showing in the 2023 Off-Year elections, as I observed at New York:

Continuing a pattern evident in Democrat overperformance in the 2022 midterms and 2023 special elections, the Donkey Party posted solid wins in Tuesday’s elections thanks in large part to the continued backlash to the end of Roe v. Wade.

Democrats held on to an improbable Kentucky governorship, defeated a heavily financed bid by Virginia Republican governor Glenn Youngkin to win GOP control of the legislature, and won an expensive and potentially important Pennsylvania State Supreme Court race. And in the contest that most exemplified the day, Ohio became the seventh consecutive state where voters have confirmed abortion rights since the Supreme Court reversed Roe. The lone disappointment was in deep-red Mississippi, where, as generally expected, Republican governor Tate Reeves overcame scandals and a spirited challenge from Democrat Brandon Presley, cousin of Elvis.

Kentucky’s Democrat governor Andy Beshear handily defeated Daniel Cameron, the Republican attorney general and Mitch McConnell protégé, despite the state’s strong red tint (Donald Trump carried the state by 25 points in 2020) and some evidence that Cameron was gaining on Beshear as the campaign reached its climax. While the incumbent’s general popularity and his handling of the pandemic were front and center in the campaign, the abortion issue was major. The candidates were on opposite sides of a failed 2022 ballot initiative that would have overruled state-court recognition of reproductive rights.

The Ohio pro-choice win was no surprise, after Republicans spectacularly failed to sneak through a preemptive ballot measure during a special election in August that sought to make it harder to pass constitutional amendments like Tuesday’s reinstating Roe. The abortion-rights measure won by double digits in a state where Republicans who control the governorship and the legislature have tried to impose a six-week abortion ban. (That now looks impossible.) The partisan nature of the battle was underlined by the very visible role of Governor Mike DeWine and secretary of State (and 2024 Senate candidate) Frank LaRose in fighting (and lying about) the initiative. But without question, Republican voters contributed strongly to the abortion-rights victory; as the New York Times reported, 18 Ohio counties that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 gave a win to Issue 1.

Abortion policy also played a key role in the Virginia legislative races. Youngkin talked Republicans out of the defensive crouch on the issue they had assumed after the reversal of Roe and convinced them (and a lot of big donors) to loudly promote a “compromise” position backing a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape and incest (in contrast to the six-week or total bans many red states were enacting) and seeking to depict Democrats as the extremists on abortion. It didn’t work, as Democrats repelled Youngkin’s bid to take over the state senate and create a Republican trifecta. Democrats also flipped the GOP-controlled House of Delegates.

Since Youngkin and his fans clearly advertised his abortion gambit as an experiment with vast national implications, the legislative defeat was a major blow to his star status among Republican elites, as Politico noted:

“Youngkin’s loss will likely stretch beyond the commonwealth. Some Republican donors have been publicly pining for the Virginia governor to jump into the presidential race as a last-minute challenger to Trump …

“Youngkin pointedly never ruled out a presidential run, only saying he was focused on these legislative races when asked. But Tuesday’s results will likely put an end to that talk.”

No question about that. But more importantly, Republicans in Virginia and elsewhere will very likely resume their defensive position on abortion, which will remain a Democratic priority everywhere. More oddly, the redundant demonstration that abortion is a loser of an issue for Republicans will likely benefit the front-running primary campaign of Donald Trump, who has been telling Republicans exactly that since the 2022 midterms, notwithstanding his own central role in making the reversal of Roe happen by installing three of the six justices who voted to overturn it.

All in all, the 2023 election was a tonic for Democratic troops recently dispirited by poor showings in the polls for President Joe Biden and jittery feelings about the incredible survival skills of his heavily indicted predecessor and likely future opponent. Off-year elections aren’t always harbingers of what will happen in the immediate future, but the evidence grows that the GOP will continue to pay a heavy price for its bad marriage with the anti-abortion movement.

In “Elections 2023: Democrats Enjoy a Strong Night,” Kyle Kondix and J. Miles Coleman share their thoughts on Tuesday’s election at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, including “Last night’s results have given Democrats a shot in the arm and have confounded the recent narrative about Democrats being in deep trouble next year. But it’s also true that these races in many respects differ from the election coming up next year. It may be the case that President Biden is in fact uniquely vulnerable, and that even former President Trump — himself dragged down by plenty of vulnerabilities that likely are not getting the kind of attention now that they will if he is renominated — could beat Biden. It may also be the case that polling a year out from an election is not predictive (and it often is not). Maybe the Democrats do just have an advantage now in smaller turnout, off-year elections as their base has absorbed many higher-turnout, college-educated voters while shedding lower-turnout voters who don’t have a four-year degree. Maybe the presidential year turnout will bring out more Trump voters and give the Republicans a clearer shot. About all we feel comfortable saying is that we should continue to expect the presidential race to be close and competitive — a boring statement, we know, but probably true….One other thing before we take a quick look at some more granular results: In case it wasn’t already blindingly obvious before, the abortion issue in a post-Dobbs political environment continues to be a significant advantage for Democrats. Another abortion-related state ballot issue triumphed in Ohio; the abortion issue, we suspect, helped bring southeast Pennsylvania more in line with presidential partisanship, powering the Democratic victory there; even in Kentucky, Beshear was able to run against the strong anti-abortion stance of Cameron as part of his campaign; and in Virginia, abortion rights were a huge factor in the campaign, and Democrats came out on top (albeit narrowly). Abortion is not a one-size-fits-all automatic decisive winner for Democrats in every race, but it’s clear that the Democrats are just closer to where average Americans are on the issue than Republicans, and they have used the issue to great effect in many parts of the country.”

Kondik and Coleman note further, “At the topline level, there was hardly any difference between Issue 1 in Ohio, the reproductive rights vote, and Issue 2, a ballot issue that legalized marijuana sales and use. As of Wednesday morning, Issue 1 was leading 56.6%-43.4%, while Issue 2 was doing slightly better, 57.0%-43.0%. However, the actual county-level voting patterns were notably different in some places, as the marijuana issue did less well in Northeast Ohio and some other places than the abortion rights issue but a lot better in many other parts of the state, winning several Appalachian counties ranging from east of Cincinnati to Athens, home to Ohio University (alma mater of one of the authors). We were not surprised that Athens turned in the highest “yes” vote in the state on the marijuana issue; we also could not conceal a chuckle when we saw that sparsely-populated Meigs County, Athens’s southern neighbor and home to the legend of “Meigs Gold,” narrowly backed the marijuana issue despite strongly opposing the abortion issue. Undergraduate laughs aside, we suspect that for some rural Ohio counties, backing marijuana may have been an economic issue as much as anything else. Map 2 shows the differences between the two issues at the county level.” Wherever it is possible, Democrats might do well to put both issues on the ballot a year from now.

“Tuesday’s wins will likely validate Democrats’ plans to continue to run on abortion next year, a strategy that has given them a series of almost uninterrupted wins since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer,” Zach Montellaro writes in “Why Democrats’ big Virginia win is also a victory for Biden” at Politico. “In hundreds of races since Donald Trump’s conservative Supreme Court appointments overturned Roe v. Wade, we’ve seen Americans overwhelmingly side with President Biden and Democrats’ vision for this country,” Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said in a statement Tuesday night. “That same choice will be before voters again next November, and we are confident the American people will send President Biden and Vice President Harris back to the White House to keep working for them.”….They also show that Youngkin doesn’t have the silver bullet for solving the GOP’s electoral problems with abortion, as his operation had hoped. Youngkin’s operation poured millions into ads that said Republicans in the state would push for a 15-week ban on abortion, calling their position reasonable and casting Democrats as the ones who are extreme….Voters, evidently, did not agree….In a small way, Democrats’ wins in Old Dominion on Tuesday also makes a 2024 rematch between Biden and Trump more likely….Some big GOP donors nervous about Trump’s continued stranglehold over the party have been practically begging Youngkin, a rising star in the party, to launch a last-minute bid for the presidential nomination. The governor has steadfastly insisted he was focused on winning Virginia’s legislative elections, but pointedly he never entirely ruled out a run….,Now, Virginia voters have weighed in — and may have knocked the white knight off of his horse.”

From “Andy Beshear offers Democrats some lessons for how to win in Trump country” by Li Zhou at Vox: “Much of Beshear’s support seems to stem from his successful leadership of the state both economically and during various disasters. In the course of Beshear’s tenure, Kentucky has attained one of the largest budget surpluses in its history, much of which has gone into its “rainy day fund.” The state has also attracted major external investment projects related to battery manufacturing for electric vehicles. Additionally, voters have praised Beshear’s leadership during a series of crises including the Covid-19 pandemic, when he held nightly briefings about the status of the virus in the state; a mass shooting at a Louisville bank in which one of the governor’s “closest friends” was killed; and severe flooding that required rebuilding in many parts of Kentucky….Beshear centered much of his campaigning on the state’s low unemployment rate; a slew of business investments, including a new project from Ford; and the state relief funds that were established for communities to rebuild after devastating tornadoes and floods….Beshear also focused on abortion rights and called out Kentucky’s near-total abortion bans. In November 2022, voters in Kentucky voted against supporting a state constitutional amendment that would ban abortion. Republicans, meanwhile, put forth attacks about Biden’s leadership and Beshear’s ties to the president, argued that Beshear is to blame for rising crime rates, and criticized his vetoing a measure that would ban gender-affirming care for minors….Although Beshear touted infrastructure projects that were funded from legislation Biden previously championed — like pipes for clean drinking water — he’s put the focus on the benefits the state has gained, rather than where the money came from.”

Despite widespread concerns about President Biden’s sinking poll numbers, Democrats did really well in yesterday’s elections. With the exception of Mississippi, Democrats pretty much ran the table in the most important elections. From a roundup of ‘takeaway’ articles in different media:

In Virginia, Gregory Krieg reports at CNN Politics, “Gov. Glenn Youngkin – the Virginia Republican who believed he could crack one of the most intractable issues in American politics with the promise of “reasonable” abortion restrictions – will not lead a GOP-controlled legislature in the Commonwealth, which denied the party control of the state Senate and put a swift end to both his plan for a 15-week abortion ban and rumors he might pursue a 2024 presidential bid.”

A.P.’s Bruce Schreiner reports “Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection to a second term Tuesday, notching another significant statewide victory in an increasingly red state that could serve as a model for other Democrats on how to thrive politically heading into next year’s defining presidential election….The governor withstood relentless attempts to connect him to Democratic President Joe Biden, especially his handling of the economy. Beshear insulated himself from the attacks by focusing on state issues, including his push for exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban that he said would make it less extreme. His reelection gave pro-choice advocates nationwide yet another victory since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.”

Also at CNN Politics, Arit John writes, “With the passage of the ballot measure Issue 1, Ohio will be prevented from restricting abortion access before fetal viability, which doctors believe to be around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After viability, the state can restrict abortion access unless the patient’s life or health are at risk….The vote is yet another sign that abortion access is a key issue for voters across party lines, even in a state like Ohio, which has trended Republican in recent elections.”

Ohio voters also voted for the legalization of marijuana, which was supported by most of the state’s Democratic leaders,  on “Issue 2” by a hefty margin – 57 percent (with 95 percent of the vote counted). (More here)

“On Tuesday, all 120 seats in the Democrat-led [New Jersey] State Legislature were again on the ballot, and Republicans were hoping to tally further gains.,” Tracey Tully reports in the New York Times. “But as of 11:30 p.m., Democrats had held on to win in competitive districts in southern and central New Jersey and were leading in other key races.”

The sole downer for Dems was in Mississippi, where the incumbent Republican Governor took 51.8 percent of the vote to beat Democrat Brandon Presley’s 46.9 percent (another 3.2 percent, and he would have won). Geoff Pender reports at Mississippi Today that “Numerous precincts in Hinds County reportedly ran out of ballots, or of the proper ballots, leaving some voters waiting in line for hours and causing others to give up and go home. This prompted legal filings from multiple groups before normal poll closing time at 7 p.m., and prompted a circuit court judge to order all Hinds County polls stay open until 8 p.m. to allow more people to vote.” Hinds County, which includes Jackson, is Mississippi’s most populous county.

As for the importance of turnout in Tuesday’s results, Julia Manchester notes at The Hill: “Democrats benefitted from high turnout in Tuesday’s off-year elections. This was evident in the red states of Ohio and Kentucky, where Democrats turned out in high numbers. In Ohio, the Issue One ballot measure sparked an early voting surge that clearly benefited Democrats. In Kentucky, Democrats benefitted from strong turnout while Republicans struggled to bring out their base in what is typically a reliably red state….Strong Democratic turnout was evident in Virginia as well. NBC News reported earlier on Tuesday that Election Day turnout at one precinct in Henrico County in the greater Richmond area reached 1,200 people by the middle of the day. There are over 3,200 people registered to vote at that precinct and 800 people cast their ballots during the early voting period.”

Tonight we should know the answer to a question Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. poses, “Will Kentucky’s Andy Beshear show Democrats how to win Trump Country?”  As Dionne writes, “Astonishingly, for a Democrat in a state Donald Trump carried by 26 percentage points in 2020, Beshear has become one of the most popular state chief executives in the nation….He did it with a sterling economic record — bolstered by state spending spurred in part by President Biden’s investment programs — and courtesy of an unusually personal link with voters that he forged through empathetic daily briefings during the pandemic. They were so popular that his sign-language interpreter, Virginia Moore, became a beloved celebrity in her own right, and her death this year was mourned across the state. …With polls showing Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron closing fast by rallying his party’s base with attacks on Biden, Beshear is reminding voters that this election is not about a certain white house some 570 miles away….“What you’re seeing is fear and anger, and even encouraging Kentuckians to violate that golden rule and to get one Kentuckian to hate another,” Beshear told the appreciative crowd here. “Listen, this race is about us. It’s about Kentucky. But if we can send one message to the rest of the country, it ought to be that anger politics ends right here and right now.”….It’s a lovely thought, and it’s a reason Tuesday’s gubernatorial battles in Kentucky and Mississippi matter. Neither state is likely to vote for aDemocratic presidential nominee anytime soon. But Beshear and Brandon Presley, the surging underdog Democrat in Mississippi, have shown that their party’s brand can be detoxified on hostile terrain with a focus on jobs, education and health care — and by intensely personal campaigns that encourage voters to forget culture wars and partisan loyalties.”

“The erosion of Democratic strength in rural areas, especially in Appalachia and the western reaches of the state, echoes national patterns,” Dionne explains. “The decline of the coal industry is part of the story. But so is the collapse of an infrastructure of community that once favored Democrats….“There were labor unions in these areas, there were Democratic clubs in these areas,” Contarino said. “People were hearing alternative messages.” Now, as Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol argue in their insightful book, “Rust Belt Union Blues,” the community-binding messages come from talk radio, conservative churches and other local groups that lean right….That’s why Beshear’s pandemic briefings were so important. They allowed him to crack through those barriers by conveying empathy and cultivating solidarity across the state. “We will get through this,” he said over and over. “And we will get through this together.”….His willingness to admit uncertainty helped him develop a reputation for honesty. “They teach you never to say, ‘I don’t know,’” Beshear told the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2021. “And I had to say ‘I don’t know’ a lot.”….One other aspect of Beshear’s appeal that national Democrats might study: an open religious faith grounded in ideas quite different from those of the Christian right. “For me, faith is about uniting all people,” he told me. “It says all children are children of God. And if you’re truly living out your faith, you’re not playing into these anger and hatred games.”….Democratic state Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, who represents a Louisville-based district, grew up in the foothills of Appalachian Mountains. The author of “Hill Women,” a powerful tribute to her native region’s tenacity, Armstrong said rural voters often feel “overlooked by decision-makers in the outside world.” The Democrats’ “brand problem” in rural areas, she argued, will have to be solved by local Democrats who can make a case for “how these larger policies actually impact people’s lives.”….But this is a long-term project, she added, “best done outside the election contest.”….If he prevails, Beshear could be a powerful voice in that argument. No wonder Republicans are working so hard to beat him.”

Ever wonder if  discouraged voters who are influenced to stay at home by horse-race reporting are contributing to election outcomes? At Journalist’s Resource, Denise-Marie Ordway  comments on “Projecting Confidence: How the Probabilistic Horse Race Confuses and Demobilizes the Public” by Sean Jeremy Westwood, Solomon Messing and Yphtach Lelkes at The Journal of Politics: “This paper examines problems associated with probabilistic forecasting — a type of horse race journalism that has grown more common in recent years. These forecasts “aggregate polling data into a concise probability of winning, providing far more conclusive information about the state of a race,” write authors Sean Jeremy Westwood, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, Solomon Messing, a senior engineering manager at Twitter, and Yphtach Lelkes, an associate professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania….The researchers find that probabilistic forecasting discourages voting, likely because people often decide to skip voting when their candidate has a very high chance of winning or losing. They also learned this type of horse race reporting is more prominent in news outlets with left-leaning audiences, including FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times and HuffPost….Westwood, Messing and Lelkes point out that probabilistic forecasting might have contributed to Clinton’s loss of the 2016 presidential election. They write that “forecasts reported win probabilities between 70% and 99%, giving Clinton an advantage ranging from 20% to 49% beyond 50:50 odds. Clinton ultimately lost by 0.7% in Pennsylvania, 0.2% in Michigan, 0.8% in Wisconsin, and 1.2% in Florida.”

“Is the Israel-Gaza war changing US public attitudes?,” Shibley Telhami asks at Brookings and writes: “To probe the issue, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos asked several questions focused on the role of the United States and the perception of the Biden administration. The poll did not directly ask about attitudes toward the war itself but probed any shifts in public attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian issue broadly….Here are three takeaways: First, public opinion on U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue remains divided along partisan lines, with an increasing majority of Republicans wanting the United States to lean toward Israel, while a declining majority of Democrats wants the United States to lean toward neither side. Those who want to lean toward Israel increased since last June, the last time we asked about this issue….A majority of Republicans, 71.9%, say they want the United States to lean toward Israel, compared with 47.3% in June, while a majority of Democrats, 57.4%, said they wanted the United States to lean toward neither side, a drop from 73.4% in June. A 53.6% majority of independents also wanted the United States to lean toward neither side, a drop from 71.4% in June….While those who wanted the United States to take the Palestinians’ side remained relatively constant since June, those who wanted the United States to lean toward Israel increased not only among Republicans but also among Democrats, going from 13.7% in June to 30.9% in October; it also increased among independents, going from 20.8% in June to 37.9% in October….It is notable that there was no statistically significant change in the attitudes of young Democrats (under 35). In June, 14% wanted to lean toward Israel, and this increased to 14.7% in October; 17% wanted to lean toward the Palestinians in June compared to 16.2% in October. Among young Republicans and independents, however, there were significant increases among those wanting to lean toward Israel, but also smaller increases among those wanting to lean toward the Palestinians. Overall, a majority of young Americans, 54.5%, wanted the United States to lean toward neither side.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Large segments of the progressive left disgraced themselves by indulging in demonstrations and statements that, directly or indirectly, excused Hamas’s terrorist massacre. For that, they were rightly condemned across the political spectrum, including by many Democrats. But the progressive left has not given up on pushing their “decolonialist” perspective within the Democratic Party, demanding that Biden soften his support for Israel and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the conflict. This policy recommendation is backed up what is essentially a threat: if Democrats don’t move in the direction recommended by the progressive left, “their” voters, especially young voters, will fail to be “energized” in 2024, endangering Biden’s re-election and Democratic electoral prospects generally.

But is that really true? Leaving aside the question of whether that would be a responsible use of their power (I don’t think so), do they even have that kind of power? I doubt it. In fact, I think the progressive left is more of a paper tiger, claiming power and influence way above what they actually have.

Start with the fundamental fact that the progressive or intersectional left, for whom issues from ending fossil fuels to open borders to decriminalizing and decolonizing everything (free Palestine!) are inseparably linked moral commitments, is actually a pretty small slice of voters—six percent in the Pew typology, eight percent in the More in Common typology. So we should ask whether and to what extent their commitments are reflected in the views of the voter groups in whose name they claim to speak.

Probably the most important of these is young voters, lately lionized as Democrats’ best hope—but also perhaps their downfall, if not appropriately catered to. And it is true that young voters generally lean more left than older voters, including in expressing more sympathy for the Palestinians and more opposition to sending weapons to Israel. But that does not mean young voters’ views are therefore in sync with those of the intersectional left and likely to take their cues from activists’ fury at the Biden administration. Consider these results from a very recent poll by Slingshot Strategies on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

1. Respondents were asked who they blame for the current violence in Israel and Gaza. Among the 18-44 year old age group, which covers the entire Millennial generation and eligible members of Gen Z, just 19 percent blame Israel for oppressing the Palestinians, less than half the 44 percent who blame Hamas for committing acts of terrorism against Israel (36 percent had no opinion).
2. Respondents were also asked what they think about the level of support Biden is showing for Israel. Less than one third (31 percent) of 18-44 year olds think Biden has been showing too much support for Israel, compared to 69 percent who believe he is either showing the right amount (42 percent) or not enough (27 percent) support for Israel.
3. Similarly, only a third of this age group prefers that the U.S. work to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, less than the 36 percent who would prefer that the U.S. support Israel’s attempt to eliminate Hamas’s military capabilities.

The disjuncture between these views and those of progressive activists is striking. Far from speaking for the younger generations, it would appear the intersectional left is, as usual, speaking for itself.

This disjuncture can be seen on many other issues. One such is how to tackle the problem of climate change. The progressive left is in a state of perpetual outrage that the country is not moving faster to get rid of fossil fuels and transition to renewable (e.g., wind and solar) energy, the alleged solution to the problem. This too is supposed to be an issue where the Biden administration is out of sync with younger voters, who therefore will fail to be energized by his re-election bid.

But, again, is this true? In a recent 6,000 person survey by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life (SCAL) respondents were asked about their preferences for the country’s energy supply. By 64 percent to 36 percent, Millennial/Gen Z (18-44 year old) voters favored “Use a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources” over “Phase out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only.” This does not seem consistent with the mantra of progressive left activists.

Similarly, in a recent 3,000 voter survey conducted by YouGov for The Liberal Patriot, the following choices were offered to voters about energy strategy:

• We need a rapid green transition to end the use of fossil fuels and replace them with fully renewable energy sources;
• We need an “all-of-the above” strategy that provides abundant and cheap energy from multiple sources including oil and gas to renewables to advanced nuclear power; or
• We need to stop the push to replace domestic oil and gas production with unproven green energy projects that raise costs and undercut jobs.

Among the same Millennial/Gen Z (18-44 year old) voters, the progressive left-preferred first position, emphasizing ending the use of fossil fuels and rapidly adopting renewables, is a distinctly minoritarian one, embraced by just 36 percent of these voters. The most popular position is the second, all-of-the above approach that emphasizes energy abundance and the use of fossil fuels and renewables and nuclear, favored by 48 percent of Millennial/Gen Z voters. Another 16 percent flat-out support production of fossil fuels and oppose green energy projects. Together that’s 64 percent of these voters who are not singing from the progressive left hymnbook.

So the progressive left’s claim that failing to embrace their positions is the death-knell for Democrats among younger generation voters is highly suspect. Of course it’s entirely in their interest to claim that only a bracing tonic of progressive left positions can jolt these voters out of their torpor. But there isn’t much behind this claim; in reality, the intersectional left and the groups and politicians in +25D Democratic districts that support it are paper tigers. Their power derives more from their ability to scare the rest of the party than from their power over actual voters.

Democrats would be well-advised to worry less about the progressive left’s complaints and more about the uncomfortable possibility that the voters who surge into the voting pool in 2024—those who sat out 2022 but may return in 2024—will present a serious persuasion challenge to their party. Gone are the days when higher turnout necessarily bodes well for Democratic fortunes. As Nate Cohn noted in a recent article:

Mr. Biden’s pronounced weakness among less engaged voters is, at least momentarily, disrupting the usual patterns. It has at least temporarily weakened or even reversed the typical Democratic advantage from higher turnout. It has hurt Mr. Biden in national polling of registered voters and all adults, as low-turnout young and nonwhite voters make up a far larger share of eligible voters than the actual electorate.

Even more sobering, consider some findings specifically about Hispanics, the group driving the growth of the nonwhite population and much of Democrats’ hopes for the future. It turns out that Hispanic voters who did not show up in 2022 but did vote in 2020 are much more Republican leaning than 2022 Hispanic voters. According to a study by Equis Research of the Hispanic electorate, Hispanics who were drawn into the 2020 Presidential election but have been skipping congressional elections favor a generic Republican Presidential candidate over Biden by 20 points. Hispanic men under 40 in this group are even more pro-GOP, favoring a generic Republican by well over 30 points.

Now that’s a challenge. Instead of worrying about placating the progressive left, Democrats should be scheming about how they can persuade these peripheral voters that the Democrats are better for them than the Republicans. Otherwise, they may “energize” themselves right into a 2024 election loss.

Democrats in Congress and the White House really need to understand how to negotiate with new House Speaker Mike Johnson. I offered some pessimistic thoughts at New York on what he might demand:

On November 17, barring action by Congress and President Joe Biden, nonessential functions of the federal government will shut down, as they nearly did last month. The bullet Washington narrowly avoided in October at the price of Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership will be fired again. And there’s no indication just yet that McCarthy’s successor, Mike Johnson, has a feasible plan to keep the government functioning, or that he even wants to develop one.

Up until now, Washington politicians probably took solace at the news that Johnson wanted to enact another short-term stopgap funding measure that would extend spending authority until January or even later. His right-wing backers seem okay with that — in theory, at least — though it’s not necessarily a solution since the Democrats who control the White House and the Senate would vastly prefer a measure taking care of appropriations until the end of the fiscal year next September and ruling out any additional shutdown threats in the interim.

But it’s important to understand that Johnson has not committed to the kind of “clean CR” — continuing resolution, as stopgap spending bills are known in congressional parlance — that was McCarthy’s fatal concession. He’s talking about demanding an across-the-board spending cut as a condition for keeping the federal government open. And he’s already shown in his ultraconfrontational gambit tying aid to Israel to a demagogic cut in IRS funding that he is even more prone than McCarthy was to placating the hard-right faction in the House GOP (of which he is a charter member).

The latest wrinkle the new Speaker has added to the stopgap spending-bill discussions is a bizarre idea that would immensely complicate matters, as Government Executive explains:

“Federal agencies could face an ongoing series of independent shutdown threats under a proposal put forward by House Republican leadership on Thursday, who pitched the idea with just more than two weeks until current funding expires.

“While details on the plan were not yet made clear, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he was considering rolling out a ‘laddered CR,’ or continuing resolution, that would create multiple stopgap bills that fund different parts of the government and have different end dates. Rather than the normal tact of keeping all agencies afloat under one short-term spending bill, the measures would be more narrowly focused and set up unique deadlines for each bill.”

This approach most definitely does reflect the House Freedom Caucus’s mania for avoiding the comprehensive spending measures it associates with runaway “big government” in favor of passing the 12 individual appropriations bills covering the landscape of federal agencies. Trouble is, in a time of divided government and partisan appropriations, multiplying the number of bills on which highly divisive time-sensitive negotiations must take place from one to 12 is a recipe for gridlock and chaos. A “laddered CR” is most definitely a nonstarter for Democrats and probably many Senate Republicans. It’s alarming to hear Johnson talking about it just a couple of weeks before all hell breaks loose, and it makes you wonder if he even wants to prevent a government shutdown.

Amidst the sound and fury surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas, there’s been some loose talk about Biden imperiling his reelection by standing so firmly with Israel. I looked at the numbers, and wrote a cautionary note at New York:

In the furor over Joe Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, one of the more interesting reactions is the supposition that Democrats are in dire danger of losing large numbers of votes from Arab Americans and/or Muslim Americans, risking their defeat in a number of critical states in November 2024.

The Arab American Institute released a new poll suggesting a serious backlash against Biden in 2024, as The Hill reported:

“President Biden’s support among Arab American voters has sharply decreased since the Israel-Hamas war, plummeting to dismal and unprecedented numbers.

“Support for his upcoming reelection bid from Arab Americans dropped by 42 percentage points, from 59 percent in 2020 to 17 percent, according to a new poll conducted by the Arab American Institute …

“The poll found that if the election were held today, 40 percent said they would vote for former President Trump, the GOP front-runner …

“The institute said the poll marks the first time in the 26 years it has polled Arab Americans that the majority did not claim to prefer the Democratic Party.”

Both support for third-party options (17 percent) and an undecided vote (25 percent) spiked in this poll. And, of course, the sponsors pointed out that “Arab Americans account for hundreds of thousands of voters in several key election states, like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where the 2024 election battleground will play out.” (At the same time, a group calling itself the National Muslim Democratic Counsel gave Biden and Democrats an “ultimatum” to support an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza or potentially forfeit Muslim votes in “Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, where many of our voters reside.”)

So is this backlash as alarming as it sounds? It’s certainly significant, but there are some important qualifiers to address before weighing the effect on Biden’s and his party’s 2024 prospects.

First of all, there’s a tendency among Americans who aren’t closely in touch with Arab and Islamic communities to conflate the two. That’s a major mistake. Roughly one-fourth of Arab Americans are Muslim (a significant majority are Christian). And roughly one-fourth of American Muslims (or less by some estimates) are of Arab ethnicity. Michigan with its heavy concentration of Arab Muslims is probably an outlier.

Measuring Muslim or Arab political leanings isn’t easy, either, since neither category is deployed regularly by Census takers or exit-pollsters.

Since neither the U.S. Census or exit pollsters break out Arab or Islamic Americans systematically, any analysis of voting preferences for either group is less than completely authoritative, though it is clear both Arab Americans and Islamic Americans trended Democratic following September 11. The Arab American Institute’s portrayal of massive losses of support for Biden ’24 should be taken with a grain of salt since it was conducted by pollster John Zogby, whose methodologies have long drawn criticism from experts in the field.

That is not to say that Democrats shouldn’t worry about evidence of voter estrangement over Biden’s war policies (which will likely extend beyond Arab Americans and Muslims to include self-identified progressives and younger voters). In a close election like 2024 is expected to be, relatively small numbers of voters in battleground states can be crucial.

Without question, Democrats should make it clear that the GOP under Donald Trump is far from representing a safe haven for voters unhappy with U.S. policies toward Israel and Palestinians. Aside from Trump’s abundant history of Islamophobia and encouragement of Israel’s most extreme right-wing elements, he and his party are going to be seriously constrained from any “even-handedness” by their conservative Evangelical electoral base, in which disempowerment of Palestinian Arabs (along with general hostility to Muslims) is theologically blessed and even mandated. Trump as the Republican nominee could make a crucial difference between a mere lack of enthusiasm for Biden and a decision to vote for a third-party candidate or for no one at all.

 

From “An Ohio amendment serves as a testing ground for statewide abortion fights expected in 2024″ by A. P.’s Julie Carr Smyth and Christine Fernando at The Hill:

Abortion access is expected to play a central role in the 2024 elections. The preview comes next week, when Ohio voters decide whether to enshrine reproductive rights in their state Constitution.

The amendment is the only abortion question on any state’s ballot this year, a spotlight that has generated intense attention from national groups and made Ohio a testing ground for fresh campaign messaging — some of it misleading. The amendment has drawn more than $60 million in combined spending so far.

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Ohio offers a vital proving ground heading into next year’s presidential election, when Democrats hope the abortion issue can energize supporters in contests up and down the ballot. Initiatives seeking to protect access could be on the ballot across the country, including in the presidential swing states of Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

“When we’re able to see how our messaging impacts independents and Republicans and persuades them that this fundamental freedom is important to protect in Ohio, that’s going to be something that we can implement looking at 2024,” she said.

The battleground on abortion shifted to the states last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision, erasing federal abortion protections that had been in place for half a century. Since then, voters in six states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — have either supported measures protecting abortion rights or rejected efforts aimed at eroding access.

Smyth and Fernando note that “The Ohio amendment would guarantee an individual’s right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.” It expressly permits the state to regulate abortions after fetal viability, as determined by an attending physician, as long as any laws regulating the procedure after that point provide exceptions for the life and health of the woman.”

Further, “Its supporters include Democrats in the state, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and a bipartisan coalition of labor, faith and community groups. They portray the measure — one of the most broadly worded so far — as a way to enshrine Roe-era abortion rights in a one-time bellwether state that has turned increasingly Republican and has passed some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on the procedure….AP VoteCast polling last year found that 59% of Ohio voters say abortion should generally be legal.”

“Turnout in the election that concludes Tuesday is expected to be robust,” Smyth and Fernando write, “building on the enthusiasm from the summer, organizers say. Local election officials anticipate 40% to 50% of registered voters will participate, according to the Ohio Association of Election Officials. That’s higher than a typical off-year November election and up from the 39% turnout in August.”