A perennial strategic topic has popped up a lot recently, so I addressed it at New York:

In 2020, Joe Biden won four states by a margin of less than 2 percent of the vote: Georgia (0.23 percent), Arizona (0.30 percent), Wisconsin (0.63 percent), and Pennsylvania (1.33 percent). Donald Trump won one state, North Carolina, by 1.34 percent. Biden carried two other key states by margins under three points: Nevada (2.39 percent) and Michigan (2.78 percent). These seven states represent what most strategists in both parties consider to be the Biden-Trump battlegrounds for 2024, though obviously some will argue that others should be targeted (many Republicans think they have a chance in Minnesota, which Biden carried by just over 7 percent, and an abortion referendum makes Florida, which Trump carried by 4.36 percent, tempting for Democrats). Polling tends to confirm these seven as highly competitive this year.

2024 polls also, however, show a distinct regional pattern whereby Trump is leading Biden by robust margins in the Sun Belt states of Arizona (4.5 percent in the RCP polling averages), Nevada (3.2 percent), Georgia (3.8 percent), and North Carolina (4.6 percent), while Biden is doing relatively well in the Rust Belt states of Michigan (Trump leads by 2.8 percent, per RCP), Pennsylvania (Biden leads by 0.1 percent), and Wisconsin (Trump leads by 0.6 percent). His campaign may be tempted to narrowly focus on a Rust Belt strategy for victory but would be well advised to keep his options open.

There are some underlying dynamics that reinforce the regional pattern, as Ron Brownstein explains:

“President Joe Biden’s breakthrough 2020 wins in Arizona and Georgia seemed to confirm that the party’s future was increasingly reliant on Sun Belt states rapidly growing more racially diverse.

“But seven months before his rematch with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, Biden’s most promising path may run directly through the three Rust Belt states that he recaptured in 2020 after Trump dislodged them from the ‘blue wall’ in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That’s the conclusion of a broad array of Democratic strategists.

“The shift in expectations reflects the upside-down racial dynamics of the 2024 race, with most national and state polls showing Biden largely holding his 2020 support among White voters, while facing, at this point, unprecedented erosion among Black and Latino voters. Biden, as I wrote last year, is likewise maintaining his 2020 support better among older than younger voters. These surprising patterns have made the relatively older and Whiter three industrial blue wall states appear a better bet for Biden.”

If everything else stays the same as in 2020, Biden could lose Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, along with North Carolina, and still win the presidency by the smallest possible margin in the Electoral College: 270 electoral votes to 268.

As Brownstein notes, the issue landscape in November could also make a Rust Belt strategy focused on white swing voters profitable:

“Biden is heavily stressing his support for legal abortion, and while polls show broad support for that position across racial lines, many pollsters believe it resonates most powerfully as a voting issue among college-educated White voters, especially women. Conversely, economic issues loom largest for most non-white voters; that’s a difficult dynamic for Biden across the Sun Belt because polls consistently show widespread discontent with his management of the economy, including among many Black and Latino voters.”

Another factor pushing Team Biden toward a Rust Belt strategy is the apparent strength of indie candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. among the Latino voters who are so prevalent in Arizona and Nevada, as Politico recently reported:

“[A] previously unreported poll in mid-February by Democratic group Equis Research … showed Kennedy performing surprisingly well among Latino voters in a dozen battleground states, effectively splintering Biden’s Hispanic coalition from 2020, when he garnered 59 percent Hispanic support …

“The poll of 2,010 registered Latino voters found Kennedy winning one in five young Latino voters, and also reported him capturing a sizable 17 percent Latino support in Arizona and an even more robust 21 percent in Nevada — the highest number among the battleground states polled.”

More generally, RFK Jr. seems to be taking votes away from Biden disproportionately in the Sun Belt. In the RCP averages, polls that include Kennedy and other minor candidates show Trump increasing his lead over Biden to 5.8 percent in Arizona, 5.5 percent in Nevada, 5.6 percent in Georgia, and 7 percent in North Carolina. These margins are pretty formidable.

Still, staking everything on sweeping Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would be perilous for Biden. Michigan still looks a bit shaky for the president thanks to Democratic base voters there who are unhappy with his position on the Israel-Hamas war. And you can argue that as November approaches, the Kennedy threat will fade as minor-party/indie candidacies typically do and that the Black and Latino voters so crucial in the Sun Belt are likely to return to the Democratic fold. In addition, Arizona and Nevada may have abortion-policy measures on the ballot in November that could help boost Democratic turnout. On Tuesday, Arizona’s high court reinstated a total abortion ban from 1864.

Fortunately for Biden, his campaign doesn’t have to commit to one region or the other just yet, and it has the resources to keep all the battleground states in play. But some Democrats may have a residual hangover from 2016, when Hillary Clinton vainly pursued Sun Belt votes while failing to shore up what was then called the “blue wall” of Rust Belt states that swung to Trump. The numbers indicate that Biden should indeed nail down Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin if he can. But it would be prudent to make a big play for one of the larger Sun Belt states as well (e.g., Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina) in case things go wrong. Having just one narrow path to 270 electoral votes is never a good idea.

Paul Glastris, editor in chief of Washington Monthly, introduces the April/May/June print issue of the magazine, which focuses on a detailed comparison of the records of President Biden and his Republican opponent during their respective administrations. Glastris’s introduction to the print issue, is here cross-posted from Washington Monthly:

It’s easy to conclude that American voters don’t care about reality these days. As the economy gets better, Joe Biden’s job approval numbers get worse. As his legal losses pile up, Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party tightens. Each side’s base is more motivated by fear of the other side (“negative partisanship,” political scientists call it) than by their own candidate’s record. The “low information” swing voters who will likely determine the 2024 presidential winner aren’t paying attention, and it’s not clear they will between now and November. “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” the conservative pundit Ben Shapiro famously wrote. For most voters, something like the opposite is true: Their feelings don’t care about the facts.

But some voters surely do care, including—indeed, especially—the readers of the Washington Monthly. That’s why we have devoted the feature well of the April/May/June print issue to an accounting of Trump’s and Biden’s presidential records of accomplishment.

Such an assessment is valuable in any presidential year, especially this one. A typical presidential reelection contest features an incumbent and a challenger who holds a not-quite-equivalent office—a senator, say, or a governor. This November’s race pits against each other two presidents from the major parties who served consecutively. That hasn’t happened since 1892, when Democrat Grover Cleveland challenged (and defeated) Republican Benjamin Harrison, to whom he’d lost four years earlier. The Trump-Biden comparison is even more apt—and potentially revealing—because neither president has more cause to blame Congress for their failings. The party of each all-but-certain nominee controlled both chambers during his first two years in the Oval Office, then only the Senate (by a minuscule majority) in his second two years.

Our editors spent months digging into the records of both presidents, beginning with the accomplishments each administration touts. We eliminated their least important and reliable claims and wrote short descriptions of the remaining ones by subject area in a back-to-back fashion for easy comparison. (See the index here.) We also asked 10 journalists to investigate both presidents’ records in a specific realm—the courts, national security, antitrust, etc.—and report on who got more of their respective agendas done and how.

Though the Washington Monthly is a center-left magazine, we didn’t judge the presidents’ achievements by whether we personally approve of them. Instead, we looked at what the presidents themselves wanted to accomplish. For example, Biden aimed to use federal regulations to advance his liberal agenda, whereas Trump vowed to ax regulations. So, the fair metric in that case is whether Biden has been an effective regulator and Trump a successful deregulator.

How, then, do Trump’s and Biden’s records in office stack up? Read the list and the essays and decide for yourself. We think you’ll find some surprises.

But after considering both the number and importance of each president’s achievements, here’s our takeaway (see chart).

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E, J, Dionne, Jr. explains why “Joe Biden must go left and right at the same time” in his Washington Post syndicated column: “Here’s one reason understanding the trajectory of the 2024 campaign will be so complicated: President Biden is running as both a conservative and a progressive. He must be both to win….Before card-carrying members of the right protest my characterization of Biden as “conservative,” they should consider who is carrying the banner for the most basic conservative impulse of all: preserving the nation’s institutions….Even at the level of economic self-interest, some well-off conservatives might lay aside their concerns that Biden wants to raise their taxes, preferring stable governance to the chaos a new Trump term would portend. The stock market’s bullish performance under Biden might push some of them in this direction….The opening Biden has with pro-institution conservatives was underscored by an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll published Wednesday. It found that on a variety of institutional questions, Democrats were united while Republicans were divided, providing Biden with many wedges to drive into the GOP coalition….Democrats, by contrast, were far more united against rule-breaking, against religion in government policy and against granting a president immunity. Unsurprisingly, nearly all saw Biden as the legitimate election winner….Biden is also getting a lot of help from Trump, whose wild and often hate-filled daily pronouncements will continue to shake many Tory souls. An AP/NORC poll late last month was revealing: While 43 percent were “extremely” or “very” fearful about a second Trump administration, only 31 percent harbored such fears of a new Biden administration….Biden’s vocation in this campaign is to show that “safe” can go hand-in-hand with “progressive.” When it comes to making this argument, some of the knocks on Biden — that he doesn’t provoke “excitement” and maybe even his age — could prove to be his major assets.”

“Adam Carlson, a former Democratic pollster, has been updating a useful spreadsheet aggregating the crosstabs of national polls and comparing them to what happened in 2020,” Kyle Kondik writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “Across nine polls in March—including some of the ones we noted above—Carlson’s average found Biden up 3 points on Trump among those aged 65 or over, compared to a Trump win of 4 points with that bloc in 2020 based on an aggregate of analyses of the 2020 electorate (including the Catalist report, which we cited above, along with a Pew Research Center analysis and the AP/Fox News VoteCast)….Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 points in 2020, while the March polling Carlson aggregated showed a Trump lead of 1.5 points. So the polls show the oldest voters getting about 7 points bluer but the overall electorate getting 6 points redder. This is where Biden’s weaknesses with, for instance, young voters and Black voters are making a difference—in Carlson’s polling aggregate, Biden was doing 15 points worse with young voters and 29 points worse with Black voters than he did in 2020. We do think there are reasons to be skeptical of these huge Republican swings among these subgroups based on history and other factors, as I wrote back in November on young voters and Abramowitz wrote last week on Black voters. But there also are reasons to be skeptical of Biden’s overperformance among older voters, too. Part of that is the history—particularly recently, one would not expect the 65+ cohort to vote to the left of the nation in a presidential election….Younger cohorts appear to be likelier to disagree with Biden on how he has handled the situation in Gaza, for instance. It also may be that some economic challenges, like higher interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve to fight inflation, are felt more by younger people trying to enter the housing market as opposed to older people who are more established. More broadly, the aforementioned New York Times/Siena poll found that 65 and over respondents were less pessimistic about the economy than the 18-29 group (38% of the former said economic conditions were excellent or good, while just 14% of the 18-29 group said the same). There could be many other legitimate explanations for a real shift in how voter preferences are changing among age groups—the patterns of the past do not always project the future.”

Democrats and other liberals and progressives who identify with the economic ‘left’ should read Nathan Robinson’s Current Affairs interview with Jessica Burbank, a “commentator who appears on The Hill’s Rising, co-hosts the Funny Money podcast, and now hosts her own online news program called Weeklyish News. Jessica is also big on TikTok, where she produces remarkable short videos communicating left political and economic ideas, such as this one on the power relationship between workers and bosses or this one on Elon Musk.” In many of her videos, Burbank, who comes from a working-class family, role-plays both sides of arguments between bosses and workers. Here’s an excerpt of Burbank’s comments in the interview from “How to Communicate Left Ideas to Gen Z” at Current Affairs: “I put myself really into the shoes of the person who holds these views that are very different from my own. I think it’s helped me consider my beliefs from a bunch of different perspectives and test them and come up with more persuasive explanations for things that I already talk about regularly. And so, doing the back and forth, it actually ended up being so much faster than if it was just me talking at the camera….People embrace populism because they’re kind of ripe for it. They don’t like the elites, and they don’t like the way they communicate. And so, I think another thing is that people are ready for it, and I think we have this opportunity where people are gravitating towards populism….I don’t think meeting people where they’re at right now is by knocking on their door because when someone comes to your door, you just want to get back to resting and scrolling on TikTok again. You’re not really meeting someone where they’re at. They mind it when they answer the door. They think, how can I get back to my television? How can I get back to my leisure time and consume entertainment? And so, meet people where they’re at, and if I put my organizer cap on, it is scrolling TikTok. That is where they’re getting information….I left a huge nonprofit, People’s Action, which was founded coming out of the labor movement, and they have member organizations in every state. I felt like if I was on the phone all day, or if I was creating a list for a mass text, we were engaging people less than my posts on TikTok. And so, when I left to pursue media, I actually didn’t feel like I was leaving organizing. I felt like I was going to the heart of it….I think people absorb a lot more value and information through comedy than anything else. I think it’s such an important tool. If you really care about your idea getting communicated, can you make it funny?”

With abortion and weed on the ballot in Florida, speculation grows that Democrats may be able to win the state’s electoral votes, which they lost by less than 4 percent of the state’s popular vote in 2020. Democrats suffered a proper drubbing in the ’22 midterms, as GOP turnout reached 67 percent, compared to an unimpressive 52 percent for Dems. Gov. DeSantis and Sen. Rubio were re-elected by healthy margins. But there are other reasons that Florida may be in play for Democrats in November. In “Clawing Their Way Back to Relevance,” Ramendra Cyrus writes at The American Prospect: “Florida homeowners pay the country’s highest average home insurance premiums. In 2023, the average annual premium was $6,000, 42 percent more than in 2022, according to the Insurance Information Institute.” In addition, DeSantis lost some luster as a result of his failed presidential candidacy and “the Florida GOP is also in disarray after a sex scandal and rape allegations forced the removal of the state party chairman.” Also, “In January, Democrat Tom Keen clinched a victory in the state House race for District 35, which includes sections of Orlando, Florida’s fourth most populous city. Both Democrats and Republicans showered dollars on this race, but Republicans outspent the Democrats 2 to 1. In the end, Rep. Keen narrowly took the seat by roughly two percentage points….In 2023, Donna Deegan, a Democrat and a longtime local television anchor, became the first female mayor of Jacksonville, the state’s largest city. Until this “major upset,” Jacksonville had been the largest city in the country with a Republican mayor. Deegan, a Jacksonville native, was able to pull together a bipartisan coalition to win the highly contested race. Deegan stressed her desire to promote greater transparency in the mayor’s office and to restore a sense of community after last year’s racial unrest in the city. She beat her Republican opponent by four percentage points.” Cyrus adds that “DeSantis and the GOP’s grip on power in Florida may have reached its zenith. Anger over developments on issues like abortion and insurance has given the Democrats an opening. But the Florida Democratic Party can’t adopt a scorched-earth approach to seats they have no chance of winning. In 2024, it’s all about the long game—setting the table for future gains. “Democrats have less room for error, that’s for sure. “You have to be smarter with things,” says Isbell, the political consultant. “It will force the Democrats to be strategic about which races they’re going to target.” Even if Democrats lose in Florida again this year, more effort put in to organizing could pay off in the next midterm and presidential elections.

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 new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

In the last couple of weeks, I have been revisiting my “Three Point Plan to Fix the Democrats and Their Coalition,” originally published in October, 2022. A brisk tour of the polling and political data suggested the Democrats are still in need of serious reform and that the three point plan is as relevant as ever. Here’s the very short version of the plan:

1. Democrats Must Move to the Center on Cultural Issues

2. Democrats Must Promote an Abundance Agenda

3. Democrats Must Embrace Patriotism and Liberal Nationalism

Two weeks ago I discussed cultural issues. Last week, I discussed abundance (or the lack thereof). This week I’m concluding the series with a discussion of patriotism.

The Patriotism Problem

Democrats suffer from a patriotism gap. They are viewed as the less patriotic party and Democrats are less likely than Republicans and independents to view themselves as patriotic. Here are some examples.

1. A Third Way/Impact Research poll in late 2022 found 56 percent of voters characterizing the Republican party as “patriotic”, compared to 46 percent who felt the same about the Democrats.

2. A Survey Center on American Life/NORC poll from May of last year tested the same question among 6,000 respondents and found 63 percent viewing the Republicans as patriotic, compared to just 48 percent who thought the Democrats qualified.

3. In two 3,000 voter surveys conducted by The Liberal Patriot/YouGov in June and September of last year, only 29 percent of voters thought the Democrats were closer to their views on patriotism than the Republicans were, while 43 percent chose the GOP over the Democrats. Among working-class (noncollege) voters, exactly twice as many (48 percent) thought the Republicans were closer to their views on patriotism than thought that about the Democrats (24 percent). Interestingly, among college-educated voters, there was very little difference in how close these voters felt to the two parties on patriotism.

4. In a poll of 2,500 battleground state and district voters last November, PSG/Greenberg Research found an 11-point advantage for Trump and the Republicans over Biden and the Democrats on who would do a better job on “being patriotic”.

5. In Gallup’s latest reading on pride in being an American, 55 percent of Democrats said they were extremely or very proud of being American, compared to 64 percent of independents and 85 percent of Republicans who felt that way. Just 29 percent of Democrats would characterize themselves as “extremely proud,” down 25 points since the beginning of this century.

6. Perhaps most alarming, in a 2022 poll Quinnipiac found that a majority of Democrats (52 percent) said they would leave the country, rather than stay and fight (40 percent), should the United States be invaded as Ukraine was by Russia.

So the patriotism gap is alive, well, and persistent. Why is this? One key factor is that, for a good chunk of the Democrats’ progressive base, being patriotic is just uncool and hard to square with much of their current political outlook. As Brink Lindsey put it in an important essay on “The Loss of Faith”:

The most flamboyantly anti-American rhetoric of 60s radicals is now more or less conventional wisdom among many progressives: America, the land of white supremacy and structural racism and patriarchy, the perpetrator of indigenous displacement and genocide, the world’s biggest polluter, and so on. There are patriotic counter-currents on the center-left—think of Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, or Hamilton—but these days both feel awfully dated.

Similarly, liberal commentator Noah Smith observed in an essay simply titled “Try Patriotism”:

I’ve seen a remarkable and pervasive vilification of America become not just widespread but de rigueur among progressives since unrest broke out in the mid-2010s….The general conceit among today’s progressives is that America was founded on racism, that it has never faced up to this fact, and that the most important task for combatting American racism is to force the nation to face up to that “history”….Even if it loses them elections, progressives seem prepared to go down fighting for the idea that America needs to educate its young people about its fundamentally White supremacist character…

That conventional wisdom is a problem. It’s why “progressive activists”—eight percent of the population as categorized by the More in Common group, who are “deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America’s direction today”—are so unenthusiastic about their country. Just 34 percent of progressive activists say they are “proud to be American” compared to 62 percent of Asians, 70 percent of blacks, and 76 percent of Hispanics, the very groups whose interests these activists claim to represent. Similarly, in an Echelon Insights survey, 66 percent of “strong progressives” (about 10 percent of voters) said America is not the greatest country in the world, compared to just 28 percent who said it is. But the multiracial working class (noncollege voters, white and nonwhite) had exactly the reverse view: by 69-23, they said America is the greatest country in the world.

Read more…

A complicated series of judicial decisions in Florida could have changed the state’s dynamics in 2024, and I wrote it all up at New York:

Not long ago, Florida was considered the ultimate presidential battleground state. It determined the outcome of the 2000 election, and as recently as 2012 it was carried by a Democrat, Barack Obama. But after being won twice by Donald Trump, as Republicans swept every statewide elected office and increased their grip on the state legislature and congressional delegation, Florida is now perceived as decidedly red-tinged. Nevertheless, as Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign ponders a path to 270 electoral votes complicated by poor polling in key 2020 states like Arizona and Georgia, Florida’s 30 electoral votes remain tempting. That’s particularly true after the Florida Supreme Court simultaneously let a six-week abortion ban take effect while clearing the way for a November ballot initiative aimed at overturning it. The very next day, the same court cleared a November ballot initiative to legalize recreational cannabis use as well.

Florida could theoretically become ground zero for a national Democratic strategy of making popular anger over abortion restrictions the big game-changer for 2024, offsetting economic unhappiness, border-security worries, and concerns about Biden’s age. As my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti has pointed out, ballot measures have become a turnout-booster for Florida Democrats: “In three of the last four election cycles, the party’s turnout appeared to be helped by ballot initiatives — on broadening medical marijuana laws in 2016, on restoring voting rights for felons in 2018, and on raising the minimum wage in 2020.”

But is Florida likely to be close enough in 2024 to make this issue-driven reach for a win feasible? That’s not entirely clear. Perceptions of Florida’s trajectory are being heavily affected by the 2022 midterm blowout that gave Ron DeSantis a landslide 19-point reelection win. But at the presidential level, the red tide in the Sunshine State has been less dramatic, if still highly significant. Obama carried the state by a mere 0.9 percent in 2012 and then Hillary Clinton lost it by 1.2 percent four years later. Trump’s margin then increased to 3.3 percent in 2020, though the Biden campaign did not really target Florida. Demographically Florida has been a haven for tax-leery white retirees, including the blue-collar folk who have been trending Republican, and it’s also Exhibit A in the much-discussed Latino voter surge toward the GOP (much of it driven by conservative Cuban American and South American immigrants, with some drift among Puerto Ricans as well).

Public polling of the 2024 general election in Florida has been sparse, but two polls taken in March both show Trump with a solid if not overwhelming lead (six points per St. Pete Polls and seven points according to Redfield & Wilton Strategies).

There’s no question the twin abortion and cannabis ballot initiatives should be appealing to Democratic constituencies in Florida (especially the crucial youth vote). And the state’s 60 percent requirement for approval of state constitutional amendments means those votes will be tantalizingly close and heavily publicized. It’s also likely that the abortion policy fight will attract serious national money, with some perhaps coming from ultrawealthy Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, who is already donating heavily to abortion ballot initiatives in Arizona and Nevada.

On the other hand, past ballot-measure fights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 have had a debatable effect on partisan-turnout patterns. Pro-choice forces have won them all, but often by attracting pro-choice Republican voters who still support their party’s candidates despite its anti-abortion positioning. The relatively late timing of Florida’s imposition of a near-total abortion ban (it was enacted last year but held up in the courts until this week’s judicial decision) could make the ballot fight in the state especially intense and accordingly dangerous for the Republicans responsible for this denial of basic rights.

Perhaps the best way to characterize Florida’s status in the presidential race right now is that it’s on the Biden campaign’s watch list and could move near the top if (a) subsequent polling looks promising and (b) other states counted on to win the president an Electoral College majority appear problematic. Even if it’s a reach, Team Biden would enjoy making a relatively cash-strapped Trump campaign devote precious resources to defending the 45th president’s home turf.

Not so long ago, many Democrats worried that the “No Labels” project could sink their party’s hopes for victory in the 2024 elections. There was speculation that the group would run a serious campaign for the presidency. The short-listers bandied about by the media as possible leaders of the ‘No Labels’ ticket during the last year included Sen. Joe Manchin, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Govs. Nikki Haley and Larry Hogan, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, RFK, Jr. and others, none of whom were much interested in fronting the effort. Instead, however, ‘No Labels’ just folded. Josh Fiallo reports the story in his article, “No Labels Finally Drops Its Quixotic Plan to Field a 2024 Candidate” at The Daily Beast:

The centrist political party No Labels announced Thursday it was calling off its plan to launch a third-party ‘unity’ ticket for November’s presidential election after it failed to find a candidate with a “credible path to winning the White House.”

In a statement, first obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the party said not putting a ticket together was the “responsible course of action” as it became clear nobody was near competing with Joe Biden and Donald Trump for the job.

“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run, and hungrier for unifying national leadership, than ever before,” the party wrote in a statement. “But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”

For months, the party teased that it’d offer a ticket that’d appeal to centrist voters who were disillusioned with both Trump and Biden. Now, the party is only promising to continue fighting for those who find themselves somewhere between Biden and Trump’s politics.

“Like many Americans, we are concerned that the division and strife gripping the country will reach a critical point after this election, regardless of who wins,” No Labels’ statement continued. “Post-election, No Labels will be prepared to champion and defend the values and interests of America’s commonsense majority.”

Rahna Epting, the executive director of liberal activist group MoveOn, cheered the party’s announcement—and encouraged independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to also bow out of the race.

“Millions of Americans are relieved that No Labels finally decided to do the right thing to keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” she posted to X. “Now, it’s time for Robert Kennedy Jr. to see the writing on the wall that no third party has a path forward to winning the presidency. We must come together to defeat the biggest threat to our democracy and country: Donald Trump.”

Reasonable people across the political spectrum have made cogent arguments for decades that a third party effort could serve as a worthwhile reality check for both parties, and perhaps encourage them to embrace a more conciliatory, centrist or bipartisan approach. ‘No Labels’ did have a catchy name for those who preferred not to formally affiliate themselves with either of the two major parties, and it got ballot access in 16 states. But ultimately, it was a hollow shell, lacking substance or even a legislative agenda. It was never quite clear what it stood for, other than serving as a hobby horse for political misfits and maybe playing a ‘spoiler’ role benefitting Republicans, which made it hard to build any kind of viable electoral coalition. It will not be missed by many.

I’ve been watching a particular threat to Democrats in 2024 for a good while, and was able to report at New York that it has receded.

In one of the less surprising developments of the political year, the nonpartisan No Labels organization is abandoning its plans to run a presidential “unity ticket” in November. The group confirmed the news via a statement emailed out on April 4:

“Today, No Labels is ending our effort to put forth a Unity ticket in the 2024 presidential election.

“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run, and hungrier for unifying national leadership, than ever before. But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”

The statement was probably triggered by a report from The Wall Street Journal:

“Nancy Jacobson, No Labels’ founder and CEO, told allies this week that the group would announce Monday that it won’t pursue a presidential campaign this year because it hasn’t been able to recruit a credible ticket that could win the election, the people said.

“Jacobson told supporters that the organization had reached out to 30 potential candidates during its process.”

The precise number of rejections No Labels encountered is both newsy and embarrassing. The procession of high-to-medium-profile politicians publicly expressing a lack of interest in joining the “unity ticket” had become a regular drumbeat in recent weeks. My own running list of announced No Labels no-thank-yous included Larry Hogan, Joe Manchin, Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley, Deval Patrick, Brian Kemp, Chris Sununu, Chris Christie, Geoff Duncan, Mitt Romney, and Jon Huntsman. I may have missed a few; NBC News indicated recently that the organization had fruitlessly gone well off-road in the search for a presidential candidate:

“Well-known non-politicians like businessman Mark Cuban and retired Navy Adm. William McRaven did not reciprocate interest from No Labels, either. No Labels’ search has gone far and wide — it even tried to make overtures to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.”

It’s easy to mock No Labels for its fecklessness, but the group did make good on its promise to bag the whole thing if it could not identify a ticket positioned to actually win 270 electoral votes. Polls consistently showed that the idea of a “unity ticket” was more popular than an actual “unity ticket,” so it made sense that as the group proceeded down its wish list of candidates, the weak case for the whole enterprise would begin to vanish. In the end, the intense pressure the group’s leadership was under to avoid a “spoiler” scenario that could help Donald Trump get back into the White House despite a weak popular-vote performance was a crucial factor in the No Labels No Go decision. The late No Labels leader Joe Lieberman consistently said that “the last thing I’d ever want to be part of is bringing Donald Trump back to the Oval Office.” He can now rest in peace in the certainty that won’t happen, and Joe Biden’s team also has one less major problem to address.

The centrist Democratic organization Third Way, which has been the Paul Revere of the effort to discourage a No Labels candidacy, had this to say in a statement:

“A year and a half ago, we were the first to warn that No Labels’ presidential bid was doomed, dangerous, and would divide the anti-Trump coalition. Joined by a wide array of allies, we waged a campaign to dissuade any serious candidate from joining their ticket. We are deeply relieved that everyone rejected their offer, forcing them to stand down. While the threat of third-party spoilers remains, this uniquely damaging attack on President Biden and Democrats from the center has at last ended.”

No Labels retires from the 2024 field having achieved ballot access in 19 states. That accomplishment will be looked on enviously by remaining non-major-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein. It remains to be seen if the perennial fantasy of a centrist third party — or as No Labels insisted it represented, a centrist bipartisan effort to force the major parties to work together — will live on.

AP’s Rebecca Santana and Amelia Thomson Deveaux write that “Americans are more worried about legal immigrants committing crimes in the U.S. than they were a few years ago, a change driven largely by increased concern among Republicans, while Democrats continue to see a broad range of benefits from immigration, a new poll shows….The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that substantial shares of U.S. adults believe that immigrants contribute to the country’s economic growth, and offer important contributions to American culture. But when it comes to legal immigrants, U.S. adults see fewer major benefits than they did in the past, and more major risks….About 4 in 10 Americans say that when immigrants come to the U.S. legally, it’s a major benefit for American companies to get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology. A similar share (38%) also say that legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture and values.” However, “Both those figures were down compared with 2017, when 59% of Americans said skilled immigrant workers who enter the country legally were a major benefit, and half said legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture….Meanwhile, the share of Americans who say that there’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S. has increased, going from 19% in 2017 to 32% in the new poll….There is some bipartisan agreement about how immigration at the border between the U.S. and Mexico should be addressed. The most popular option asked about is hiring more Border Patrol agents, which is supported by about 8 in 10 Republicans and about half of Democrats. Hiring more immigration judges and court personnel is also favored among majorities of both parties….About half of Americans support reducing the number of immigrants who are allowed to seek asylum in the U.S. when they arrive at the border, but there’s a much bigger partisan divide there, with more Republicans than Democrats favoring this strategy. Building a wall — former President Donald Trump’s signature policy goal — is the least popular and most polarizing option of the four asked about. About 4 in 10 favor building a wall, including 77% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.”

“The Florida governor’s draconian six-week abortion ban – which he pushed as part of his presidential run, thinking he could out-extreme Trump and the other GOP candidates – got the green light from the Florida Supreme Court on Monday,” Rex Huppke writes at USA Today. “It will go into effect in 30 days, with the state’s previous 15-week abortion ban kicking in until then….That’s horrific, but the state’s high court also ruled that an amendment protecting abortion rights will be on the Florida ballot in November, giving voters a chance to strike down DeSantis’ ban and, if past elections are any evidence, driving voter turnout considerably….For Floridians, a six-week ban is essentially a complete ban on abortion, as most people don’t even know they’re pregnant before six weeks. It will also further limit abortion access in the South….Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, which fought to get the abortion amendment on the state’s 2024 ballot, told The Washington Post: “There is nowhere in the Southeast that can absorb Florida’s patient base. It’s simply not possible. That is simply an unmanageable volume of patients to try to offset to another state.”….To summarize voters’ views on the issue, I’ll quote from this Fox News report published last week: “Nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a record number of voters think abortion should be legal, with two-thirds favoring nationwide law guaranteeing access, according to a Fox News national survey.”….The poll found 59% of voters think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And 54% oppose a 15-week federal abortion ban, with far more opposing more restrictive legislation.”

In “Florida’s abortion fight is headed to voters after court allows for a 6-week ban,” Regan McCarthy explains at NPR.org that “the court okayed ballot language for a proposed amendment that gives voters in November the choice of whether to explicitly protect abortion access in the state constitution….There are a lot of factors impacting the fate of Democrats in Florida, says Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida. For example, more Republicans are now registered in Florida than Democrats. But he thinks the abortion issue, combined with a recreational marijuana initiative that will also be on the ballot in November, give Democrats and President Biden a “glimmer of hope in Florida.”….”Ballot measures can mobilize people to the polls who might not normally come out,” Smith says. “But they can also persuade people.”….The key language in the proposed amendment reads, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It includes one exception, for parental notification when minors seek an abortion — a stipulation already in the state constitution….The proposed amendment, known as Amendment Four, could reverse the six-week ban. If it passes in November, {campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom Lauren] Brenzel says it will go into effect in January of next year. To pass, it needs approval from at least 60% of the voters who turn out at the polls. More than one million people signed petitions to get the proposed amendment on the ballot, and Brenzel says the next step will require even broader support….Abortion access advocates are planning to kick off their “Yes on 4″ campaign next weekend in Orlando.”

From “Biden’s campaign says he can win Florida, after abortion ruling” by Doina Chiacu at Reuters: “President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign team said it believes he can win in Florida this year after the state Supreme Court cleared the way for a Republican-backed law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy….Republican candidate Donald Trump won Florida in both the 2016 and 2020 elections but Biden’s team said it believes that opposition to tight abortion restrictions have put the Southeastern state back in play….It is not clear how far the issue will go in helping Biden in Florida, a state of 22 million people, in November’s presidential election….Florida has skewed Republican in recent years. Barack Obama the last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state, in 2012….A compilation of local opinion polls by 538towin, the election data website, shows former President Trump with a substantial lead in Florida….An ad released on Tuesday features a video clip of Trump boasting about helping to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court….Florida has a hefty 30 Electoral College votes and for a long time was a highly coveted battleground state….But Republicans have pulled away from Democrats there in recent years. Trump won Florida in 2020 with 51.2% of the vote compared with Biden’s 47.9%. In 2022, Republican Ron DeSantis won the governors race in a landslide, with 59.4% of the vote.”

The following chart and comments are cross-posted from “Scoop: House Democrats grow their GOP target list for 2024” by Andrew Solender at Axios:

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 new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Last week, I started revisiting my “Three Point Plan to Fix the Democrats and Their Coalition” from October of 2022. A brisk tour of the polling and political data suggested the Democrats are still in need of serious reform and that the three point plan is as relevant as ever. Here’s the very short version of the plan:

1. Democrats Must Move to the Center on Cultural Issues

2. Democrats Must Promote an Abundance Agenda

3. Democrats Must Embrace Patriotism and Liberal Nationalism

Last week I discussed cultural issues. This week I’ll discuss abundance and conclude next week with patriotism.

The Abundance Problem

Abundance means just what you think it means: more stuff, more growth, more opportunity, being able to easily afford life’s necessities with a lot left over. In short, nicer, genuinely comfortable lives for all.

That’s what voters, especially working-class voters, want. But that’s not what they feel they’re getting. Consider these poll results, all from the last month.

1. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, only about a quarter (26 percent) describe economic conditions today as excellent or good, compared to 74 percent who say they are only fair or poor. This represents some modest improvement from the middle of last year, but it is obviously still quite low. Among working-class (noncollege) voters, sentiments are particularly negative: just 20 percent have a positive view of economic conditions, while 80 percent are negative. These views are actually slightly more negative among nonwhite working-class voters: 19 percent positive vs. 81 percent negative.

Voters are more positive about their personal financial situation, about split down the middle between excellent/good and only fair/poor. But they are far more likely to say that Biden’s policies have hurt them personally (43 percent) than helped them (18 percent) and that Trump’s policies helped them personally (40 percent) rather than hurt them (25 percent). Less than a quarter (23 percent) believe the economy is better than it was a year and less than a fifth (19 percent) believe it is better than four years ago. And voters’ attitudes are very negative in a wide range of economic areas: prices for food and consumer goods (88 percent only fair or poor); the housing market (79 percent); gas prices (83 percent); and wages and incomes (70 percent). On all these economic questions the views of working-class voters are distinctly more negative than voters overall.

2. In the latest CBS News poll, just 23 percent say their personal financial situation has gotten better in the last few years compared to 55 percent who say it has worsened (29 percent say no change). Looking back on the economy during the Trump presidency, by 65 to 28 percent respondents characterize it as good rather than bad, while the Biden economy is viewed as bad by 59 to 38 percent. The same pattern is evident on whether prices will go up or down under the policies of a future Biden or Trump presidency: people overwhelmingly feel prices will go up rather than down under Biden (55 to 17 percent) while believing prices will go down rather than up under Trump (44 to 34 percent).

3. In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, by 57 to 31 percent voters believe the economy has gotten worse rather than better over the last two years. They believe by 68 to 28 percent that inflation has gone in the wrong rather than right direction over the past year, by 50 to 43 percent that their personal financial situation has gone in the wrong direction, and by 65 to 25 percent that the ability of the average person to get ahead has gone in the wrong direction. And in a final finding, which perhaps best captures what all these data are telling us, when voters are given the choice between what has increased more in the last few years, their household income or the costs of everyday goods and services (or both at the same rate), they choose everyday costs over household income by a whopping 74 to 7 percent.

There’s a lot more recent data along these lines but you get the idea. Abundance this ain’t. Now it’s possible that improving conditions may produce a sudden positive spike in voters’ feelings about the economy in general and Biden’s stewardship of it. But so far we just haven’t seen this (though as noted, there has been some modest diminution in the intensity of negative feelings).

There has been some debate about the significance of consumer sentiment and changes thereof during the Biden administration. The two main trackers of consumer sentiment are the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment and the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey. Both have been depressed through much of Biden’s term but the Michigan index much more so because it is more closely tied to pocketbook conditions and hence more sensitive to inflation. But both started moving sharply in a positive direction in last December and this January, leading to a spat of optimism that voters’ views of the economy and Biden’s stewardship might improve dramatically. As noted, that hasn’t happened and disappointingly the upward movement in both measures stopped in February (actually down slightly) and March (flat).

In Democratic circles, there are two main responses to this (so far) bleak record on the abundance front. The first is what I call the “deluded, ungrateful wretches” theory. The idea here is that the economy’s recent record has been stellar: very low unemployment, strong job creation, smartly rising wages and inflation that has declined sharply from recent highs (though it is still significantly elevated from normal rates). Given all this, why do voters still believe the economy is so bad? They’re deluded! And why don’t they give the Biden administration the credit it richly deserves for this stellar performance? They’re ungrateful! The shockingly high number of deluded, ungrateful wretches is variously attributed to partisanship, the baleful influence of the media (especially conservative media), and voter distrust of economic experts and official statistics. Pretty much anything other than things aren’t—and haven’t been—all that great.

But there’s quite a strong case that, in terms of the “lived experience” of voters, particularly working-class voters, things have not in fact been great. The primary suspect of course is inflation which is still relatively high and in June of 2022 reached 9 percent, the highest inflation rate the country had experienced since 1981. People absolutely hate inflation since it directly undercuts living standards and they are reminded of this fact when they do mundane things like go to the grocery store. Heather Long of the Washington Post recently collected data on changes in inflation, hourly earnings and household purchases since Biden took office, shown below.

As the chart shows, cumulative inflation has outpaced average hourly earning growth and the rise in many consumer prices have been even larger than overall inflation: rent and meat (up 20 percent); restaurants and groceries (21 percent); electricity (28 percent); gas (35 percent); and eggs (37 percent). These are facts of economic life that voters have a hard time forgetting.

Read more…