After watching the election returns from Wisconsin Tuesday night and marveling at an unexpectedly big win for a left-of-center judicial candidate, I offered some observations at New York:

Yesterday’s landslide win for progressive (and Democratic-backed) Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet may be dismissed by some observers as the product of a low-turnout special election with no particular implications for the November midterms, when Governor Scott Walker is on the ballot and the massive money and mobilization effort he has generated in the past is in play. But Walker himself is not exactly exuding confidence:

Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred — we must counter it with optimism & organization. Let’s share our positive story with voters & win in November.

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) April 4, 2018

It’s the startling double-digit margin of Dallet’s win that’s setting off alarm bells among Wisconsin Republicans. Yes, turnout in November will likely more than double yesterday’s million-voter performance (though it did significantly exceed average turnout in Wisconsin’s traditional spring Supreme Court elections). But it’s a combination of mobilization and persuasion that seems to have produced Dallet’s big win.

The results end a pretty impressive Wisconsin winning streak for the GOP, featuring Walker’s 2014 reelection by more than a five-point margin, and then in 2016, Senator Ron Johnson’s comeback win over Russ Feingold and Trump’s shocking victory in a state that hadn’t gone Republican in a presidential election since Reagan’s 49-state wipeout in 1984. Indeed, as conservative blogger Allahpundit noted, Wisconsin Republicans have lost a lot of ground in the last year:

“Last year Wisconsin Republicans practically ruled America: Reince Priebus was in charge in the White House, Paul Ryan was in charge in the House, and Scott Walker was a three-time gubernatorial winner in an important purple state. A year later Priebus is long gone, Ryan’s the subject of endless rumors that he’s on his way into retirement if Dems flip the House this fall, and Walker’s banging the drum warning that a Democratic landslide could bury him.”

A lot could change between now and November, and Walker has survived adverse political developments before. But he’s not invincible, as evidenced by his ignominious withdrawal from the 2016 presidential contest long before the first vote was cast. 2018 could be the year when his and his party’s remarkable run of luck in Wisconsin just runs out.

Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016 is often linked to his pugnacious statements regarding trade and American jobs. But things have gotten considerably more complicated, now that he has launched the opening salvos of what could soon degenerate into a trade war. As Erica Werner notes in “Ohio workers love Trump’s tariffs, and that’s making trouble for the GOP” at The Washington Post: “Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is running for reelection partly by touting his support for the president’s aggressive trade strategy and trumpeting his longtime opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade deals Trump rails against. That’s largely a boon in Ohio, where Trump won by 8 percentage points in 2016. “I’m working with the president to make these tariffs work,” Brown said last week after addressing a gathering of Teamsters at a United Steelworkers hall in Akron…For Brown’s likely Republican opponent, Rep. James B. Renacci, Trump’s trade moves are a growing political headache, forcing the candidate to explain his own past support for trade pacts and his concerns about the tariffs…Renacci, like GOP lawmakers elsewhere, is being forced to explain to blue-collar voters why he supports free trade policies that are now out of step with Trump’s Republican Party…Similar upside-down trade politics could emerge in House races, too, in districts from California to Washington state to Michigan.”

Comments by Ari Berman, from his interview by Amy Goodman on ‘Democracy Now’ addressing Trump’s decision to ask Census repondents about their citizenship status: “…The census affects everything in American life, Amy. It affects how $675 billion in federal funding is allocated to states and localities. It affects how many congressional seats and electoral votes states get. It affects how local and federal districts are drawn. It affects the data that every institution in America, from corporations to universities to the military, uses to understand their populations. And so, if the census is rigged, if the census is manipulated, then all of American democracy is rigged and manipulated as a result…there has always been a tremendous undercount of people of color by the census. In the 2010 census, 1.5 million people of color were undercounted, were not counted by the Census Bureau. That undercount could be dramatically larger now under Trump, because immigrants are going to be afraid to respond to the census now. And so, what Donald Trump is doing is he’s turning the census, which is a constitutionally mandated act every 10 years, he’s turning the census into a tool of voter suppression and to a tool of nativist resentment. And that’s so shocking for our democracy.”

David Leonhardt sketches a major opportunity for Democrats in his column, “Asian-Americans, a Sleeping Political Giant” at The New York Times:“In a new piece for Washington Monthly, Saahil Desai suggests that Virginia can serve as a model for Democrats nationwide. “Democrats’ failure to mobilize” Asian-Americans, Desai writes, “has been a major missed opportunity.” Outside of Virginia, many other swing states and House districts — in California, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere — have meaningful Asian-American populations. In the last midterm election, in 2014, the nationwide turnout for Asian-American citizens was dreadful — just 27 percent, according to the census. That’s far below the rates for whites and blacks and virtually identical to the Latino rate…The six biggest Asian-American groups — which, in descending order, are Chinese-, Filipino-, Indian-, Vietnamese-, Korean- and Japanese-Americans — have varying opinions on nearly every major political issue (as these charts show). Yet not one of these subgroups leans Republican.”

How are Dems doing in the quest to level the playing field among America’s governorships in the 2018 midterm elections? Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley share some insights at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “On the gubernatorial front, Democrats seem better than 50-50 to win Republican-held seats in Illinois, Maine, and New Mexico. The GOP’s best targets are Alaska, where independent Bill Walker is unpopular, and open seats Democrats are defending in Colorado, Connecticut, and Minnesota, particularly if and when former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) decides to try for a third, nonconsecutive term in the Gopher State (he appears likely to run). Democrats have several other prime targets, which is natural given both the environment and the immense amount of defense Republicans need to play on this map…We’ve previously said that the best way to judge 2018’s gubernatorial races is by which party wins a majority of five big states: Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Republicans currently hold all but Pennsylvania…Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) is an underdog against Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker in Illinois. Florida and Michigan are open-seat Toss-ups, and Ohio Leans Republican but should feature a competitive race in the fall. Meanwhile, Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA) seems like an increasingly good bet for reelection, as we explain in our next section.”

At The Fix, Eugene Scott flags a frequently-overlooked point in the ongoing discussion about class and politics in the U.S.: “The teacher boycotts making national headlines highlight the problem with the way many define class in the United States — especially “working class.”…But a lack of understanding about education and income often make addressing the economic woes of Americans like these teachers challenging. In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, analysts often conflated the working class with those who don’t have a college degree…But the teacher walkouts are a reminder that even professionals with master’s degrees in some of the country’s largest cities endure many of the same economic challenges associated with those in blue-collar jobs. This is perhaps why most — 54 percent — of white working-class Americans said investing in college education is a risky gamble, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Atlantic…According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for elementary and middle school teachers is $56,420 per year, while high school teachers earn an average of $58,170. The salary is comparable to some trade jobs, like plumbers ($57,070), electricians ($57,910) and food service managers ($57,250).” The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimates that about 3.6 million teachers are “employed in public and private elementary and secondary schools in 2007-2008.” Democrats might also think about the number of recent college graduates they know who are doing working-class jobs, including waiting on tables, walking dogs, baby-sitting and other such employment in the ‘gig economy.’

It is amazing how much the gun safety protests have accomplished in a short period of time. Check out Amanda Holpuch’s post, “Six victories for the gun control movement since the Parkland massacre” at The Guardian, which presents the litany of achievements of the movement, including: “Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, on 9 March signed a $400m bill to tighten the state’s gun laws while flanked by family members of students killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The bill fell short of what campaigners had hoped for, a ban on assault weapons, but it did raise the age for buying a gun to 21 from 18, ban bump stocks and extended a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns. Hours after it was signed into law, the NRA filed a federal lawsuit against Florida…The week after the Parkland shooting, US companies distanced themselves from the country’s National Rifle Association (NRA) amid public pressure. Hotel chains, car rental firms and home insurance businesses had offered discounts to members of the NRA but cancelled them in droves after the shooting.”

Helene Cooper’s “‘All It Takes Is One Mistake’: Worries Over Plan to Send National Guard to Border” at The New York Times” provides one of the more perceptive critiques of Trump’s ill-advised idea to put large numbers of American troops on the border we share with Mexico: “At the Pentagon, several officials privately expressed concern about being seen as picking a fight with an ally at a time when the military has plenty of adversaries — the Islamic State, North Korea, Russia, Syria — to contend with. Massing American troops at another country’s border, several current and former Defense Department officials said, would send a message of hostility and raise the chances of provoking an all-out conflict…“We are so lucky here in this country when you look at our borders,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a retired veteran of the Iraq war. “We’ve got the Pacific on one side, the Atlantic on the other and allies to the north and the south. Mexico is not an adversary. Why would you present this offensive barrier to a friendly country?””

In his slate.com post, “It’s Time to Stop Yammering About Liberal Bias: The right has plenty of representation in the nation’s opinion pages,” Ositu Owanevu has a richly-deserved scold for conservatives, observing: “If, as conservatives have insisted over decades of uninterrupted complaint, the American people really are being indoctrinated into liberalism in their formative years at our schools and colleges and in their adult years by an oppressively slanted press, how exactly does one explain the American political situation in 2018, with right-wing control of the presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, 33 governorships, and 32 state legislatures? If America’s citizenry really has been spoon-fed leftist propaganda for nearly 70 straight years, isn’t the reorganization of the United States into semiautonomous workers’ republics long overdue?”…Regarding charges that The New York Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic are examples of major media infected with liberal bias, Owanevu writes, “those three publications already employed, by my cursory and possibly incomplete count, 18 conservatives and libertarians writing regularly for them: David Brooks, Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Ross Douthat, David Frum, Conor Friedersdorf, Reihan Salam, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Megan McArdle, Marc Thiessen, Max Boot, Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin, Kathleen Parker, Radley Balko, Ed Rogers, and Anne Applebaum. The majority offer their takes frequently and freely without liberals on Twitter or anywhere else jeering in mass protest.”

A TDS staff post on Tuesday commented on TV shows about the working-class, noting that only one show, the edgy drama “Atlanta,” often spotlighted Black working-class characters. “ABC Scored With ‘Roseanne.’ But Where Are TV’s Black Working-Class Shows?” by Ira Madison III at The Daily Beast has more to say about that. As Madison notes:, “the easy answer could be to reboot shows like Sanford and Son or Everybody Hates Chris, two very good shows that depicted working-class black families. It’s worked well for One Day at a Time on Netflix, which has rebooted the Norman Lear comedy with a Cuban family. The show has tackled racism, PTSD, sexuality, the economy, and health care—all the issues that affect the working class…It might seem gauche, perhaps, for white executives to try and greenlight shows where the leads are lower-income black people. Perhaps they can only feel comfortable with affluent depictions of black lifestyles. But it’s absolutely necessary that we let all Americans see themselves, I mean, that’s the heartland strategy, yes?..Of course, that would require the media to focus as well on the people who are working class in America who didn’t turn out for Trump, minority and white ones—which is actually a majority of Americans. And the last time I checked, the electoral college didn’t log its Nielsen ratings.”

Today marks the last of the major MLK-related anniversaries for a long while, which means that there are likely going to be more articles about him in the media today than will appear on any day for the next half century. Here are some of them, which may be of particular interest to those who are interested in ways MLK’s legacy can still inform Democratic strategy:

Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “How Dr. King Lived Is Why He Died: We owe it to Dr. King to commemorate the man in full: a radical, ecumenical, antiwar, pro-immigrant and scholarly champion of the poor” at The New York Times will probably have more readers than any other MLK retrospective appearing today. Jackson’s best paragraph: “Dr. King’s spirit has been our moral guidepost for 50 years. That spirit is alive today with the high school students of Parkland, Fla., as they push the country toward sensible gun control. It is alive with the teachers of West Virginia, who have blazed a trail for other workers. It is alive with Black Lives Matter, the Dreamers, Colin Kaepernick and thousands of African-American voters who defied the pundits and sent an Alabama Democrat to the Senate for the first time in a generation. It is alive with the Rev. William Barber as he resurrects Dr. King’s last crusade, the Poor People’s Campaign.”

At The Washington Post’s Daily 202, James Hohman’s “MLK’s final speech — delivered 50 years ago today — was full of timely and timeless teachings” dissects King’s last message, and notes in one moving graph: “That night, he framed what was happening in Memphis as a flash point in the global struggle for human dignity. “It’s all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here and His children who can’t eat three square meals a day,” the reverend told a few thousand people who had come to see him. “In the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done and done in a hurry to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty — their long years of hurt and neglect — the whole world is doomed. … If we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.””

“In our long effort to moderate King, to make him safe, we have forgotten how unpopular he had become by 1968,” write Stephen and Paul Kendrick, co-authors of “Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader & a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery & Save the Union.” in their Washington Post op-ed. “In his last years, King was harassed, dismissed and often saddened. These years after Selma are often dealt with in a narrative rush toward martyrdom, highlighting his weariness. But what is missed is his resilience under despair. It was when his plans faltered under duress that something essential emerged. The final period of King’s life may be exactly what we need to recall, bringing lessons from that time of turmoil to our time of disillusion…Fifty years later, it would look too familiar to the King of 1968 to see our continued economic inequality, hawkishness, backlash to civil rights gains, and racist violence from Charleston to Charlottesville. His response then was to resist exhaustion from the deluge of issues and to enlarge his work instead, hold firm his insistence.”

CNN Opinion has an excellent collection of essays from diverse writers in “Who is Martin Luther King Jr. to us, 50 years later?,” including a powerful closing piece by Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, who writes, “Rather than discovering the shared experiences that unite us, we obsess over the political labels that divide us. Rather than discovering our beautiful selves, we obsess over who’s in our camp and who’s outside of it…This obsession with political affiliation has inspired a “win at all costs” mindset. Most of us can barely stand to be maligned in the comments section of news stories, or in social media threads, but King withstood so much more. He famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that; hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” He withstood his share of hate, but he did not allow it to make him bitter nor did he allow it to alter what he envisioned as possible for the future.”

At The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner writes, “Fifty years have gone by since his death. And far too little has changed—or has even changed for the worse. Police still kill young black men with impunity. In King’s era, blacks could be arrested or killed in the South for trying to exercise their civil rights. Today, they can be arrested or killed in the North for walking down the street…Each generation needs to discover MLK’s truths in its own way. For instance, the March for Our Lives and the gathering movement against gun violence, initiated by relatively affluent high school students from Parkland, was at risk of taking the spotlight away from the gun violence that has ravaged black communities, including police violence. But these groups have been able to come together, with compassion and solidarity.”

Also at The American Prospect, Randall Kennedy observes “What should we focus upon in marking the 50th anniversary of this somber landmark? I suggest three things: the particulars of King’s achievements as a liberal dissident; the trying circumstances he faced at the end of his life; and the virtues of his principal strategy and aim—coalition politics in the service of a decent, egalitarian, multiracial society…“As we work to get rid of the economic strangulation that we face as a result of poverty, we must not overlook the fact that millions of Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, Indians and Appalachian whites are also poverty-stricken. Any serious war against poverty must of necessity include them.” The Black Power slogan, King complained, “gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike.” He preferred the slogan “Power for poor people,” understanding and teaching that a common struggle for economic justice is key to suitably addressing the recalcitrant problem of racial injustice.”

One of Dr. King’s favorite publications, The Nation is providing links to four of his many articles for the magazine. But also read “Dr. King Knew That Labor Rights Are Human Rights” by John Nichols, who notes, “As right-wing Republican governors (and some supposedly more moderate Democrats) target public employees in particular and union members in general for abuse, it is necessary for the right-minded and right-hearted people of today to defend public workers—just as the right-minded and right-hearted people of Memphis joined King in defending the workers of that city in 1968…King’s call for labor rights, economic fairness, and racial justice rings as true today as it ever did. “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness,” he declared on the night before he was slain. “Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”

The Boston Review is also running, “Forum V: Fifty Years Since MLK,” a collection of in-depth essays about Dr. King’s legacy and it’s meaning for our times. We conclude with a segment from Brandon Terry’s “MLK Now,” in which he writes, “It is not enough for people to be angry,” King argued; “the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.” Crucially, King never denied the existence of righteous anger or the threat of rebellion, but incorporated these passions into his political thinking as challenges to be redirected toward worthier ends…One concrete implication of this view—beyond curbing the impulse to mock and condemn on social media—is to avoid forms of political resistance that seek to “humiliate the opponent” rather than “win his friendship and understanding.” These vengeful approaches deny others the capacities for moral learning. They foreclose unanticipated forms of reconciliation and community, and judge, a priori, the life horizons of others based on their worst transgressions, cognitive mistakes, or group identities. Worse, the misguided notion that such practices build partisan solidarity and affirmation are woefully shortsighted. Inevitably, such passions turn inward, destroying organizations with recrimination, excommunications, and cynicism.”

The following post by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis (cross-posted from his facebook page):

More evidence that Democrats should not confine their efforts to affluent suburbia.

One common view on the struggle to reach white working class voters is that it’s just too damn hard. Democrats are making big progress with educated suburbanites, the argument goes, so it makes sense to clean up among these voters and not worry about those other voters who are so much harder to move.

Wrong. That’s what Nathaniel Rakich shows on 538 by digging into the actual data on 2017-18 special elections.

From Bill Keveny’s “Blue-collar TV: ‘Roseanne,’ ‘The Middle’ show working-class muscle in ABC’s Tuesday combo” at USA Today:

ABC has assembled a blue-collar comedy hour that’s likely to become a high-end ratings district, at least for its short duration.

Starting Tuesday, the network will pair Roseanne (8 ET/PT), which made shabby chic with a huge return last week (25 million viewers and counting) and a quick 11th-season renewal, with ninth-season Midwestern neighbor The Middle (8:30 ET/PT), presenting the first of its final six episodes.

The Conners of Roseanne and the Hecks of The Middle have different sensibilities, as evidenced by the lightning-rod reaction to Roseanne star Roseanne Barr. However, both represent a demographic — families surviving paycheck to paycheck, heartland division — that traditionally gets little representation on TV. (But maybe don’t call them proletarians, unless you’re talking to The Middle‘s Brick Heck.)

Keveny also cites ABC’s “Speechless,” NBC’s “Superstore” and Netflix’s “One Day at a Time” as other examples of network shows that are part of  “an uptick in TV characters living paycheck to paycheck” — shows that appeal to working-class families.

The ‘Roseanne’ reboot is getting lots of buzz, owing to the star, Roseanne Barr’s support of Trump. And yes, liberals are often the target of the jokes. But that doesn’t mean well-crafted ads for Democratic candidates won’t be effective, since many voters — and viewers — are conservative on some issues, liberal on others.

While most of these shows have white working-class characters in lead roles, “One Day at a Time” features a Cuban-American family. FX’s  drama, “Atlanta” often spotlights Black working-class characters and families. ‘Paycheck to Paycheck’ families of all races likely cross over in significant numbers to watch these shows.

Despite the increasing role of social media in presenting affordable political ads, television still rules when it comes to reaching massive numbers of voters quickly. In terms of internet political advertising, the Cook Political Report projects “a spend total of $600 million driven mostly by advertising done on Facebook,” compared to “$2.4 billion for local broadcast and $850 million for local cable for 2018.”

At The Fix, Amber Phillips probes “Just how big of a hurdle is gerrymandering to Democrats’ taking back the House this November?,” and observes that “there’s one outsize hurdle standing in the way of Democrats’ sudden popularity: gerrymandering…After the 2010 Census, Republicans controlled enough state legislatures to draw new electoral lines in four times as many districts as Democrats did. And Democrats have been locked out of power in some swing states ever since. A new report finds they might not make it back to power without lines that favor them, and Democrats don’t have a reasonable chance to control the line-drawing process until after the 2020 Census…A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice calculates that Democrats are going to have to win the popular vote by a historically large margin — an estimated 11 percent —  to overcome Republican-drawn districts that were designed to keep them out. Winning by such a large margin is something no party has done in decades.”

Republican gynephobia extends well beyond their decades-long obsession with Hillary Clinton. In his USA Today article, “Exclusive: Nancy Pelosi targeted in more than a third of GOP House commercials,” Craig Gilbert notes that the GOP’s fear of women leaders is apparently getting worse: “Nancy Pelosi has long been a favorite target of GOP attack ads. But Republicans seem to be taking it to another level in this election cycle…The House Democratic leader has been featured in roughly one-third (34%) of all GOP broadcast ads aired in House races this year, according to data provided to the USA TODAY NETWORK by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), which tracks political advertising…That compares with 9% in all of 2016 and 13% in 2014.”

“Priorities USA, a progressive super PAC focused on digital advertising, has been encouraging Democrats to push a strong economic message,” notes Alexi McCammond at Axios. “But now they’re pushing for candidates to refocus that message to include health care: “Democrats need to seal the deal by talking about economic issues, health care being one of those,” said Josh Schwerin, the PAC’s communications director…Be smart: The real challenge for Democrats will be choosing a more moderate or progressive health care message. Voters are split 48-46 on wanting a national health plan and simply wanting improvements to the Affordable Care Act, according to a March Kaiser Family Foundation poll…But the timing of the expected insurance premiums increase could help Democrats; another Kaiser poll found health care costs are the top health care issue voters want candidates to talk about in 2018.”

“It feels like America’s working class has been losing the class war for as long as we can remember. But it has one wildly powerful, often forgotten tool: trillions of dollars sitting in pension funds. Might this enormous pool of capital be labor’s greatest weapon in its fight against the power of capital itself?..The awesome political potential of this money is the topic of “The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder,” a new book by David Webber, a law professor at Boston University. Even though organized labor has been getting its ass kicked politically for decades now, its vast pension funds can exercise an incredible amount of power—though their ability to do so is under continuous assault.” — from Hamilton Nolan’s “The Working Class Has a $3 Trillion Weapon. Are They Willing to Use It? at splinternews.com.

In his NYT op-ed, Thomas B. Edsall mines a vein TDS and its contributors have been working for a long time — the  political reality that Democrats must win a larger share of white working-class voters to build an enduring majority. Edsall focuses on the flaws in exit polling in the 2016 election, which were based on a sample that badly underrepresented white working class voters. He notes that a recent Pew Research survey “found that 44 percent, or 60.1 million out of a total of 136.7 million votes cast on Nov. 8, 2016 were cast by whites without college degrees — demographic shorthand for the white working class,” compared to the widely-cited Edison Research exit poll which was based on a sample with only 34 percent in this category. Edsall extensively quotes two TDS co-founding editors William B. Galston and Ruy Teixeira, whose Vox article “The math is clear: Democrats need to win more working-class white votes,” provides the critical insight that, had Clinton matched Obama’s share of white working-class voters, “she would have carried, with robust margins, the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, as well as Florida and Ohio. In fact, if Clinton could simply have reduced the shift toward Donald Trump among these voters by one-quarter, she would have won.” For an in-depth look at the role of white working-class voters, also check out TDS’s “The White Working Class Roundtable,” which includes a dozen essays on this pivotal constituency.

So now, “China hits back at Trump, slaps new tariffs on U.S. goods worth up to $3 billion,” writes Alice Tidey and the Associated Press. It’s unclear how Trump’s trade war will effect the 2018 midterm elections. No doubt he hopes to pick up some votes for Republicans from working-class voters in November. But a humiliating walk-back by Trump may kick in well before 2020. Democratic candidates  may find a good balance in Conor Lamb’s winning strategy in PA-18, in which Lamb noted that it was time to“take some action to level the playing field here” and supported the steel tariff. As David Weigel noted at powerPost, “The unanimity in steel country stands in sharp contrast to how the tariffs have played in Washington and around the country. Trump’s surprise move has scrambled party loyalties, upsetting Republican leaders fearing a trade war and attracting the support of Democrats determined to win back working-class voters in the midterm elections.”

There are good reasons for Democratic candidates to support a soda tax hike, as noted by Mary Bottari of the Center for Media Democracy at Alernet: “The public health community – pediatricians, dentists, the American Heart Association and more – are energized to take action as never before on soda and other sugary drinks because new data is showing that consuming sugar in liquid form increases risks of serious health conditions, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and obesity in a much more significant way than was previously known…If you are a Mountain Dew addict, get ready for this statistic. One study found that consuming just one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes a whopping 26 percent. Another study showed that men averaging one can a day of a sugary drink had a 20 percent increased risk of heart attack. Further, more than three-quarters of American adults are considered overweight or obese, and 30 percent of children.” The soda tax hike movement has been gaining traction recently, but the industry is fighting back in a big way. Still the moral case — and the statistics — strongly favor the tax hike.

After reviewing more than 100 elections since January 2017, FiveThirtyEight’s, Nathan Rakich sketches one of the key Democratic challenges for the midterm elections: “If 2016 represents a new normal, then the party would do well to prioritize suburban districts that moved from Romney to Hillary Clinton, such as the California 45th, Illinois 6th or Texas 7th. But if the 2012 map still applies, then Democrats might be better off targeting districts that voted for Obama before they defected to Trump, like the Iowa 1st, Maine 2nd and New York 19th. Guess wrong, and the party will end up spending valuable time and money in districts that are redder than they appear while lower-hanging fruit goes untouched…One thing the data does show is that Democrats are capable of winning districts of all kinds, even if it doesn’t always work out that way. That should reassure the party that there may not be a wrong answer when choosing which types of districts to target — at least when it comes to demographics. (Some other factor, such as candidate quality, may better explain when Democrats overperform and when they don’t.)”

“In the 2014 midterm elections, less than 20 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 turned out to cast ballots, compared to more than 40 percent of voters between 45 and 59, according to an analysis of survey data by the United States Elections Project, which is run by Michael P. McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida,” note Matt Flegenheimer and Jess Bidgood in “After Gun Control Marches, ‘It’ll Go Away’ vs. ‘We Are Not Cynical Yet,’” at The New York Times. “Recent polling suggests the gap could close, at least somewhat, this fall. A Quinnipiac University survey released in late February found that 54 percent of those 18 to 34 said they were more motivated than usual to vote, outpacing every other age group…New voter registration pushes, steered by teenagers, are well underway. Students are consulting with established (and adult-run) groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, founded and financed by Michael R. Bloomberg, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — with plans to discuss how to host their own candidate events before November or start clubs at their schools…Looking to history, fledgling activists are researching Vietnam-era student protests for context and inspiration. They are using words like “intersectional.” They are quoting favored lyrics from “Hamilton”: “This is not a moment, it’s the movement.”

After receiving a couple of inquiries from colleagues concerned about talk of Trump registering a dramatic rise in job approval ratings in a couple of major polls, I looked into it, and reported my conclusions at New York:

For many Republicans (and most definitely for Trump himself), every spike in any measurement of the president’s popularity is a sign that (a) Americans are getting used to him; or (b) Republican policies are making life so wonderful that people don’t care about this or that report of scandal or chaos in the White House, or (c) the anti-Trump enchantment woven by the fake-news media is wearing off. Conversely, Democrats tend to view drops in Trump approval as a sign that his party is toast in the upcoming midterms, while experiencing spikes as a sort of flashback to the evening of November 8, 2016.

There’s been a new buzz this week because two surveys absolutely guaranteed to get media attention — one from CNN and the other from the Associated Press — both showed the president’s job approval rating jumping seven points in the last month. Both, as it happens, had the same numbers both months: 35 percent in February and 42 percent in March. So once again, the speculation began: What might be lifting Trump’s popularity? Was it the economy or the tax bill? And was this the beginning of a rise that could stun the world this November, and then keep him in office through (yikes!) 2024?

In this and every other situation involving polls, it’s generally wise to look at averages rather than isolated polls, which are subject to all sorts of statistical “noise” and issues with samples, methodologies, and timing. Looking at the RealClearPolitics averages, on February 15, when the AP poll went into the field, Trump’s approval rating was 42.1 percent. On March 14 when the latest AP poll went into the field, the average rating was 41.0 percent, down just over a point. No “spike” for Trump there. Similarly, on February 20, when CNN began its polling for that month, Trump’s approval rating was at 41.9 percent. On March 22, when the latest polling began, it was at 41.6 percent. No Trump Bump there, either.

There has been, as you may know, a herky-jerky rise in Trump’s approval ratings since they bottomed out in December of last year, at a time when the tax bill he and Republicans were pushing was quite unpopular, and it looked like the GOP might finish the year with virtually no legislative accomplishments. You can get an exaggerated sense of the turnaround by looking at individual polls that showed Trump ready to be tarred and feathered in December and other individual polls that showed him well up into the mid-40s — damn near even to his disapproval rate — much more recently. But again, the averages aren’t so dramatic. His low point at RCP was 37.0 percent on December 12, and his high point, which he’s equaling right now, was 42.2 percent. That’s nice for him, but less exciting when you realize that his average approval rating was roughly the same in May and September of last year.

The more you stare at the numbers, the more it looks like Trump had a really bad month in December and now his popularity is reverting to the mean. That provides no particular reason to believe it’s going to keep drifting upward.

Some Republicans think — or hope — that growing confidence in Trump’s stewardship of the economy will continue to lift his overall approval ratings. But it’s unclear that’s the key variable. In the quite negative-for-Trump February AP poll his approval rating on the economy was 45 percent. In the much better March AP poll it was 47 percent. And it’s not exactly clear that the economic indicators for the near term are all that boffo anyway; a lot depends on how Trump’s trade war shakes out. In any event, the economy isn’t what’s exerting a drag on Trump’s popularity: it’s basically everything else, and everything else isn’t going away.

Another thing to keep in mind in a low-turnout midterm election year is that intensity of approval and disapproval matters more than in a high-turnout presidential year. In that wonderful March CNN survey, 28 percent of respondents approved strongly of Trump; 46 percent disapproved strongly. The pattern persisted among the most important subcategory of voters, self-identified independents (whom Trump carried in 2016): 24 percent of indies strongly approve of Trump, while 43 percent disapprove strongly. Noting that this adverse intensity ratio has persisted over time, CNN’s analysis concludes: “[T]he fluctuation in Trump’s ratings comes largely among those whose views on the President aren’t that deeply held.” And that’s not a good thing in terms of any positive popularity trend, particularly in a midterm year when the irresolute may simply refrain from voting.

Trump fans, of course, are ever-ready to remind us that the president wasn’t very popular when he won the presidency. That may bode well for his 2020 reelection prospects if he draws an opponent as unpopular as Hillary Clinton. But in midterms, poor presidential approval ratings invariably mean poor performance by the president’s party. The most important historical data point remains this: Presidents who go into the midterms with an approval rating under 50 percent have an average loss of 36 House seats. Democrats need 24 seats to take control. Trump and the GOP have a ways to go to become popular enough to minimize their losses.

In the ongoing debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment, it is often forgotten that the NRA’s position on it was not endorsed by the courts until recently. I offered a quick refresher on that subject at New York:

In the minds of most gun enthusiasts, the idea that the Second Amendment was consciously designed by the Founders as a bedrock right to horde shooting irons, either for self-protection or to overthrow future “tyrants,” is beyond question. But as retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens reminds us today, the personal right to bear arms as a premise of constitutional law is actually less than a decade old.

“For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a ‘well regulated militia.'”

That precedent held until June of 2008, when by a 5–4 margin in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller the court finally recognized a right to civilian firearm ownership for self-protection.

Stevens wrote the main dissenting opinion in that case, which featured this argument:

“Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.”

It wasn’t until 2010, in the case of McDonald v. Chicago that another 5–4 Supreme Court majority determined that its novel interpretation of personal, civilian gun rights would be binding on the states via the 14th Amendment. Again Stevens wrote the principal dissent, arguing that even if there’s some personal right to bear arms outside the militia context, it’s hardly the sort of “liberty interest” that requires its imposition on the states.

This treatment of the subject is far, far away from the standard conservative treatment of the Second Amendment as the most fundamental right of them all, extending not just to the sawed-off shotguns Congress was regulating in 1939 to all sorts of military and quasi-military weapons.

Yes, Stevens was in the minority in those two landmark cases, but the point to keep in mind is that the arguments about the Second Amendment assumed as being self-evidently true by gun rights advocates these days are, from the point of view of constitutional law, fragile and recent. And even conservative jurists were dismayed by the gun lobby’s efforts to change constitutional law on this subject, as Stevens points out:

“During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that [Second] amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating ‘one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.'”

Stevens understands how much water has gone over that particular dam in the years since the Heller decision. And so he is now advocating a constitutional amendment to remove the Second Amendment altogether, as “a relic of the 18th century” that is enabling gun violence.

Constitutional amendments, of course, are all but impossible to enact these days, and the zeal, paranoia, and vast resources the gun lobby would bring to bear in opposition to any effort to remove the Second Amendment make that idea a total nonstarter. What’s less fanciful is the possibility that a Democratic president or two could make Supreme Court appointments leading to a partial or even total reversal of the not-so-well-established precedent of Heller.

In his Washington Post Politics article, “Why political independents are political independents” Philip Bump writes:

A frequently observed trend in American politics is the rise of self-identified independents. In Gallup’s most-recent estimation, 42 percent of Americans say that they’re independent and not members of either political party. The last time more people identified as a member of a party than as independents was in 2012.

It’s a weird trend in a moment of spiking partisanship, but it’s easy to see how the two could overlap. As partisans become more partisan, it drives some people away from parties entirely. Those independents aren’t then independent in the sense that they vote for members of each party; most independents vote consistently with one party or the other. In the vernacular, they’re leaners — they lean to the Democrats or the Republicans….In Gallup’s latest poll, only 7 percent of independents don’t lean to one party or the other.

In other words, most “Independents” are either Republican-lite or Democrat-lite. Some of the 7 percent of voters who are genuine Independents are part of the “swing voter” category. Even though they call themsleves Independents, they may cast a ballot for a Democrat or Republican on occasion. Others vote for third party candidates. Even though they voted in the last election, some may not vote at all in the next one.

But the swing voter category is larger than Independents because it includes some who self-i.d. as either Republican or Democrat. but may occasionally or frequently vote for the other party, such as many “Reagan Democrats.” Swing voters are the primary targets of campaign because they are more likely to be genuine “persuadable” voters. Significant Democratic Party resources are directed toward winning back Reagan Democrats, a primary battelfield of the struggle for hearts and minds.

If you are running a political campaign, the most relevant way to look at the percentage of the ‘Independents’ electoral segment is to use it as a rough guideline for understanding your electorate. It’s hard to target them for special appeals, and it wouldn’t be a cost-effective use of your time. Keep them in mind in advertising, but don’t spend too much time and effort locating them.

For Democrats, swing voters are more of interest, especially since ample polling data indicates that many voters who identify themselves as “conservatives” hold liberal views on a number of issues. Swing voters include some Independents, but also Dem and GOP partisans, and some who don’t identify as anything. But not all swing voters are persuadable. Some have already made up their minds, or are otherwise uninterested in  new information, arguments and appeals.

If there is a ‘holy grail’ of Amerian politics, it is the elusive persuadable swing voter (PSV). They decide the outcomes of some elections, particularly in a highly-partisan, competitive political environment, in which Democrats and Republicans are evenly matched – like we so often have today. Perhaps the most effective way to find them is to knock on as many front doors as possible and talk with people, which campaigns should do for other reasons as well — like shoring up base voters. After writing down their contact info, get back to them with carefully-calibrated “touches.”

‘Touches’ can be tricky. As Beth Donahower notes in her post, “Get Out the Vote and Super Voters,” at Political Resources Online:

How many times have you heard that you need to contact targeted voters six times, seven times, nine times, or more? These numbers, which are different based upon who you talk to, are at best derived from the average number of touches that you need to persuade a voter and get the voter to the polls. The truth is you don’t need to contact targeted voters a specific number of times to win their support and ensure that they are going to the polls on Election Day; you need to contact them as much or as little as necessary to persuade them and get them out to vote.

The challenge is understanding groups of voters well enough to know what that necessary number is. It could be zero touches, seven, or twenty. Some of your targeted voters need a lot of attention and others, like super voters, you can skip your traditional GOTV calls and mail.

The same principle applies to your scripts and messaging. The better you understand each segment of your targeted voters, the better you can tailor your communication with them. In the case of super voters, leverage your communication with them by tapping into their political prowess and their connections in the community. It’s almost condescending for someone to tell a super voter who has voted every election for the last thirty years that they vote at the local fire hall. They know that! Instead, tap into the intelligence that they can provide to the campaign and turn their interest in politics into volunteerism.

Candidates and campaigns should appeal to the elusive PSVs with ads, media interviews, statements, debates and policies. They can be important in a close race, but they are a small group, compared to base voters, who are easier to reach with specific appeals and the all-important late reminders to vote. Each campaign will have to decide on the wisest allocation of resources to reach PSVs vs. their base. But every winning candidate has to appeal to both groups.

Expect plenty of articles in early June marking the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. But Eric Alterman’s “What Can Democrats Learn From Robert F. Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign? Liberals need to find a way to appeal to white working-class voters without betraying their principles” at The Nation is of particular interest now, as Democratic midterm campaigns hit high gear. As Altman writes in the lede, “Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, inspired an important debate with his recent report “The Inclusive Populism of Robert F. Kennedy.” In The New York Times, he argues that Kennedy’s 82-day 1968 presidential campaign provides a model for liberals who seek to recapture the allegiance of white, working-class voters and “forge a powerful coalition” based on a “liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism.” It really is a good time for Dems to understand the elements of RFK’s unique appeal, and Altman’s article illuminates the power of ‘inclusive populism.”

In his cnbc.com article, “Democrats bet on moderates, military veterans to win in GOP House districts, but the strategy faces big tests as the left pushes more liberal stances,” Jacob Pramuk spotlights two promising Democrats running in potential red-to-blue congressional districts, Brendan Kelley (IL-12) and Gina Ortiz Jones (TX-23) as prime examples of candidates well-matched for the unique features of their districts. Pramuk adds that “Of the 33 challengers getting the DCCC’s organizational and fundraising support as part of its “red to blue” effort, at least a dozen have some military or national security experience…Democrats often try to run candidates with military or national security backgrounds to counter a GOP narrative that the party is weak on defense or crime, said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Democratic National Committee member. That experience is “particularly valuable” in swing districts where Democrats will need voters to cross ideological lines, she said.”

Other insights from Pramuk’s post: “”No side has ever lost an election because of too much energy, and it’s clear that Democrats have all the energy,” said Tyler Law, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC. “Ultimately, robust primaries can be very helpful for candidates, especially those who haven’t run for office before…House Republicans won’t say it publicly but they woke up after the special election terrified by the fact that we have a huge amount of Democratic candidates who uniquely fit their districts and have deep records of service,” said the DCCC’s Law. “But that’s not all that keeps them up at night – Republicans know that their stale playbook backfired, particularly on taxes, and now they’re stuck without a single popular accomplishment to campaign on.”

Megan Bernan and Lydia Saad report the latest findings from the Gallup Poll concerning global warming and partisanship, including: “While 82% of Democrats think global warming has already begun to happen, only 34% of Republicans agree. Rather, 57% of Republicans think it will not happen in their lifetime (25%) or will “never happen” (32%)…About seven in 10 Republicans (69%) think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated in the news, 15% think it is generally correct and 15% say it is generally underestimated. Democrats, however, are much more likely to think the seriousness of global warming is underestimated (64%) or correct (32%), and just 4% say it is exaggerated…Four in five Republicans do not think global warming will pose a serious threat to them in their lifetime; two-thirds of Democrats think it will.”

According to a new CNBC All-America Economic survey, “the data show that the tax cuts have not been felt, at least not yet,” reports Steve Liesman. “The poll was conducted March 17-20, which should be well enough into the year for Americans to notice a change in their withholding taxes. But that’s not the case…Just 32 percent of the public reports having more take home pay because of the tax cuts, including only 48 percent of Trump supporters and 35 percent of the middle class. More than half say they see no change in their paychecks and 16 percent are unsure. It could be that more time is needed for people to notice the change. It could also be that the tax cut provided too small a break to be meaningful to many Americans.”

Regarding the controversy about adding a question about a respondent’s citizenship status in the 2020 census, E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains the problem succinctly: “There’s a reason why the formal census has not asked about citizenship since 1950, and why it is an especially bad idea to reintroduce it now….Response rates to the census in lower-income neighborhoods have long been a challenge, and immigrants in the country illegally have worried that answering the questionnaire could endanger their status, despite legal guarantees of confidentiality. Even legal immigrants have shared these worries….The undercounting of immigrants would create a twofold injustice,” explains E. J. Dionne, Jr. in his syndicated column. “It would tilt representation at all levels of government away from places with large populations of Latinos and other immigrants (often Metropolitan and Democratic-leaning) and overrepresent white, rural regions and states. And it would short-change undercounted areas when it comes to federal funds, since many programs operate on formulas based on the census…In the Trump era, there is an irony here since one legitimate concern in locales with high levels of recent immigration is that their public services are often strained. Cutting money from such jurisdictions only increases the burdens on local taxpayers, native born and immigrant.”

At The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein writes, “All the elections held since 2016 have signaled that Republicans are facing elevated turnout among Democratic partisans eager to hobble Trump. The refusal to challenge Trump—particularly as he rages against the Russia investigation—enhances that risk for Republicans. Their approach threatens to persuade less partisan voters that they need a Democratic House (and perhaps Senate) to impose any limits on a president who daily redefines the words “mercurial,” “belligerent,” and “volatile…One group has emerged as especially alienated from the president: college-educated white women. The group ordinarily leans Democrat, but only slightly: Since 1992, Democrats have never carried more than 52 percent of their votes in House elections, and Hillary Clinton won 51 percent of them in 2016. However, this week’s NBC/WSJ poll found that 63 percent of them now disapprove of Trump and 62 percent intend to vote Democratic in November.”

Lachlan Markay and Sam Stein of CNN report on Tom Steyer’s “impeachment crusade,” the activities of his “foremost political vehicle, NextGen Climate Action,” and how his involvement might impact the midterm elections. Markay and Stein note that NextGen “has raised more than $16 million during the 2018 election cycle. And more than half of those funds have been passed along to other groups or spent on political activity in support of specific candidates…The group has donated millions more to leading left-wing political organizations, including prominent Democratic groups such as opposition research group American Bridge 21st Century, labor union-backed super PAC for Our Future, and, most recently, a $1.5 million contribution to a new state-level political outfit called State Victory Action…NextGen Rising, the youth turnout entity housed in one of Steyer’s nonprofit groups, has been highly active in 10 states, including the crucial battlegrounds of Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Virginia.” While many Democrats worry that the impeachment initiative could backfire, as it did with President Clinton, others argue that calling attention to Trump’s impeachable offenses has helped position Democrats as a clear alternative for the midterms.

The pivotal role labor unions played in helping to elect Conor Lamb brings a reminder that unions are one of the most important elements of a winning Democratic coalition, and a healthy labor movement is critical for Democratic prospects. “Today, both the Gallup and the Pew polls show public support for unions at its highest level in years: 61 percent at Gallup; 60 percent at Pew, a good 20 to 35 percentage points higher than the approval ratings of President Trump and the Republican Congress,” Harold Meyerson writes in The American Prospect.  “Among Americans under 30, unions’ approval rating is a stratospheric 76 percent. As was the case in the 1930s, pro-union sentiment has grown only after the recovery was well under way…Unions’ new members are not merely younger; they also are increasingly either professional or technical workers. In 2003, 34 percent of all union members were professionals or techs; today, that figure has risen to 42 percent…Should the Democrats recapture the federal government after the 2020 elections, they will need to do something that no Democratic Congress has mustered the will to do in the last 70 years: Change labor law to bolster workers’ right to organize—and, if the Democrats can figure out how to do so, do the same for workers who are independent contractors and temps. They will have strong public backing to make such changes. The anti-plutocratic, pro-democratic politics of the young in particular apply not just to the polity, but to the workplace as well.”