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

The basic contours of the 2024 election are coming into view. The two sides might be loosely described as “Brahmin Left” and “Populist Right.”

“Brahmin Left” is a term coined by economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues to characterize Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and increasingly dominated by highly educated voters and elites. The Brahmin left has evolved over many decades and certainly includes today’s Democratic Party.

Consider the class split in the latest New York Times/Siena poll. Among college-educated voters, Biden is favored by 22 points. Among working-class (noncollege) voters, Trump is favored by 13 points. That’s a 35-point gap. Compare to the 2020 election, where the gap was “only” 22 points (plus 18 points for Democrats among college voters and plus four for Republicans among noncollege voters). And in that election, modeled estimates by the States of Change project indicate that Trump carried the working-class vote in 35 out of 50 states, including in critical states for the Democrats like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as in states that are slipping away from the party like Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas. The results from the NYT/Siena and other polls suggest Democrats are unlikely to do better among working-class voters in these states in 2024.

Another indicator of the Brahminization of the Democratic Party is the current distribution of congressional seats. Democrats now dominate the more affluent districts while Republicans are cleaning up in the poorer districts. Marcy Kaptur, who represents Ohio’s working-class 9th district and is the longest-serving female member of the House in American history, has said of this pattern:

You could question yourself and say, well, the blue districts are the wealthiest districts, so it shows that the Democrats are doing better to lift people’s incomes. The other way you could look at it is: how is it possible that Republicans are representing the majority of people who struggle? How is that possible?

How indeed. Kaptur has a two-page chart that arrays Congressional districts from highest median income to lowest with partisan control color-coded. The first page is heavily dominated by blue but the second, poorer page is a sea of red. You can access the chart here. It’s really quite striking. Overall, Republicans represent 152 of the 237 Congressional seats where the district median income trails the national figure.

In light of all this, consider how Democrats are proposing to run in 2024. First, they are not going to back down an inch on the party’s commitment to cultural leftism, a key marker of the party’s Brahmin turn. Indeed, they believe the abortion issue currently gives them cover in this area due to the Dobbs decision, where the party has been able to occupy center ground in opposition to significant parts of the GOP who wish to ban the procedure. But crime isn’t the abortion issue. Immigration isn’t the abortion issue. Race essentialism and gender ideology aren’t the abortion issue. Even the abortion issue isn’t the abortion issue once you get past opposing bans and start having to deal with the nitty-gritty of setting some limits on abortion access (as the public wants).

The fact is that the cultural left in and around the Democratic Party has managed to associate the party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech, and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median working class voter (including the median nonwhite working-class voter). These unpopular views are further amplified by the Democrats’ “shadow party” (as John Judis and I put it in our forthcoming book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?), the activist groups, think tanks, foundations, publications and websites, and big donors, and prestigious intellectuals who are not part of official party organizations, as well as within the Democratic Party infrastructure itself, all of which are thoroughly dominated by the cultural left.

As a direct result of these associations, the party’s—or, at least, Biden’s—attempt to rebrand Democrats as a unifying party speaking for Americans across divisions of race and class appears to have failed. Voters are not sure Democrats can look beyond identity politics to ensure public safety, secure borders, high quality, non-ideological education, and economic progress for all Americans.

Instead, Democrats continue to be weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curricula and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy, and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding the party—making it more working class oriented and less Brahmin—is very difficult, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately undercut by a torrent of criticism. Judging from Biden’s actions so far, I don’t see him taking that decisive action and being willing to buck that kind of criticism. No “Sister Souljah moment” seems likely this cycle.

The Democrats’ refusal to back down on any of their cultural left commitments is twinned to aggressive attacks on GOP excesses, real and imagined, on culture war issues and linking those excesses to a “MAGA” Republican Party (and Trump of course) they characterize as anti-democratic and perhaps even fascist. This plays well with Democrats’ college-educated supporters, but less well with working-class voters who simply look at Democrats’ commitments and rhetoric differently.

As David Brooks noted in a recent piece that has earned him the wrath of the online left:

Members of our [highly-educated] class…segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas: San Francisco, D.C., Austin and so on. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent…. Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we support policies that help ourselves. Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China. Open immigration makes our service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put downward pressure on our wages.

Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like “problematic,” “cisgender,” “Latinx” and “intersectional” is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.

We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.

After this social norm was eroded, a funny thing happened. Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that.

This is the raw material a populist right campaign—whether Trump’s or, I believe, any other Republican candidate’s—will make good use of. The Democrats, as an unrepentant Brahmin Left party, will be highly vulnerable among working-class voters to such attacks.

They do believe, however, that they have an ace in the hole that can overcome these liabilities with working class voters: “Bidenomics.” The idea is that the improving economic outlook, especially lowered inflation, plus the jobs generated by the Democrats’ various spending bills, will endear these voters to the Democrats and allow them to overlook the other things they don’t like about the party and the Biden administration.

So far, this approach has decidedly not worked. As many outlets have reported, voters remain deeply unhappy about the economy and unconvinced by the Bidenomics pitch. In the most recent CNN poll, working-class voters give Biden just a 32 percent approval rating on the economy and a 24 percent rating on handling inflation; about four-fifths characterize the current economy as poor. And in the most recent CBS poll, most hadn’t heard much about Bidenomics and of those who had the term was mostly associated with higher inflation.

None of this should be surprising. Liberal journalist David Dayen points out, in a notably sober take on the situation:

The dominant economic story in the country during the Biden presidency is the spike in inflation. While the jobs numbers are prodigious, changes in employment by definition affect a smaller number of people than the price of everything, which affects everyone.

When inflation “goes away,” that doesn’t mean that every price reverts back to its previous level. For the most part, the rate of price increases just levels off. Anyone pissed off about prices at the grocery store is still going to be pissed off, because they’re still high relative to where they were in 2021….

The main prices that have fallen already are on gas and energy, but that has ended, in part because of the ongoing heat wave, which prevents refineries from running at full capacity and increases demand for air-conditioning. The positive trends on consumer sentiment are if anything going to go down in the near term, as the most publicly visible posted prices in the country rise….

What’s left of Bidenomics has long time lags: Manufacturing plants aren’t built overnight, bridges aren’t repaired instantly. Of course it won’t trigger an immediate reaction among the public.

Another problem with Bidenomics is that so much of it is bound up with Democrats’ commitment to a rapid clean energy transition based on renewables. This approach is simply not very popular with working-class voters (though it is wildly popular with Democrats’ liberal college-educated supporters) and, on current evidence, that situation seems unlikely to change anytime soon. Indeed, the populist right attack on Bidenomics is likely to target both the association with inflation and with the Democrats’ maximalist green agenda.

So Brahmin Left vs. Populist Right does indeed seem to be our lineup for the 2024 election. Either side could win. But no matter which side does, the contradictions at the heart of this clash are unlikely to be easily resolved without substantial changes in orientation by at least one of the parties. Brahmin Left and Populist Right can both win elections. But neither seems capable, without considerable change, of building the kind of broad, durable coalition capable of unlocking the country’s potential for a new era of dynamic growth and universal uplift.

In his Washington Post column, “Immigration can be fixed. So why aren’t we doing it?,” Fareed Zakaria unveils a common-sense approach to solving a problem that has bedeviled Democrats for too long. As Zakaria writes,

In May, it seemed obvious that the United States was going to face an unmanageable border crisis. In the previous fiscal year, there were about 2.4 millionapprehensions of people trying to enter the United States at the southern border. And the authorities were about to lose the provision of Title 42 implemented in March 2020 that allowed them to swiftly expel migrants at the border as a pandemic-prevention measure. But the end of the pandemic meant that temporary power also had to come to a close.

In fact, as it turned out, there was no crisis. The number of encounters with migrants at the southern border actually dropped by a third, from about 7,100 per day in April to about 4,800 per day in June, according to the latest available data. Why did this happen?

Here’s an excerpt from a worthy screed, “Trump’s Kryptonite: How Progressives Can Win Back the Working Class” by The Editors of Jacobin: “In November 2021, together with Jacobin and YouGov, the CWCP [Center for Working-Class Politics] published findings from our first original survey experiment, designed to better understand which kinds of progressive candidates, messages, and policies are most effective in appealing to working-class voters….Among other things, the survey found that voters without college degrees are strongly attracted to candidates who focus on bread-and-butter issues, use economic populist language, and promote a bold progressive policy agenda. Our findings suggested that working-class voters lost to Donald Trump could be won back by following the model set by the populist campaigns of Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman, Matt Cartwright, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, and others….we designed a new surveyexperiment in which we presented seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to a representative group of 1,650 voters. We assessed a vast range of candidate types (23,100 distinct candidate profiles in total) to better understand which candidates perform best overall and among different groups of voters….Our aim was to test which elements of economic populism are most effective in persuading working-class voters, how the effects of economic populist messaging change in the face of opposition messaging, and how these effects vary both across classes and within the working class….Overall, we find that progressives can make inroads with working-class voters if they run campaigns that convey a credible commitment to the interests of working people. This means running more working-class candidates, running jobs-focused campaigns, and picking a fight with political and economic elites on behalf of working Americans.”

Jacobin Editors continue, “Running on a jobs platform, including a federal jobs guarantee, can help progressive candidates. Virtually all voter groups prefer candidates who run on a jobs platform. Remarkably, respondents’ positive views toward candidates running on a jobs guarantee were consistent across Democrats, independents, and even Republicans. Candidates who ran on a jobs guarantee were also popular with black respondents, swing voters, low-propensity voters, respondents without a college degree, and rural respondents. Across the thirty-six different combinations of candidate rhetoric and policy positions we surveyed, the single most popular combination was economic populist rhetoric and a jobs guarantee….Populist “us-versus-them” rhetoric appeals to working-class voters, regardless of partisan affiliation. Working-class Democrats, independents, Republicans, women, and rural respondents all prefer candidates who use populist language: that is, sound bites that name economic or political elites as a major cause of the country’s problems and call on working Americans to oppose them….Running more non-elite, working-class candidates can help progressives attract more working-class voters. Blue- and pink-collar Democratic candidates are more popular than professional and/or upper-class candidates, particularly among working-class Democrats and Republicans. Non-elite, working-class candidates are also viewed favorably by women, Latinos, political independents, urban and rural respondents, low-propensity voters, non-college-educated respondents, and swing voters….Candidates who use class-based populist messaging are particularly popular with the blue-collar workers Democrats need to win in many “purple” states. Manual workers, a group that gave majority support to Trump in 2020, favor economic populist candidates more strongly than any other occupational group. Low-propensity voters also have a clear preference for these candidates.” The Jacobin Editors have more to say on this topic, and you can read the full report on which the editorial is based here.

At The New Republic’s ‘The Soapbox,” Alex Thomas explain how “Direct Democracy Is Upending the GOP’s Radical Agenda.” As Thomas writes, “Like the Kansas vote on abortion a year ago, the Ohio vote yielded a much higher voter turnout than Republicans had hoped for. And make no mistake: The defeat of Ohio’s Issue 1 is undoubtedly due to that large turnout. However, there’s little evidence to show that ballot measures drive turnout in general elections. In the upcoming general election—which seems destined for a rematch between Biden and Trump—experts generally agree that ballot measures’ effect on turnout will be difficult to quantify as the top of the ticket offers such a divisive matchup….But that doesn’t negate the importance of ballot issues or their effect on the political landscape. Professor Daniel Smith of the University of Florida told me that ballot measures “have these spillover effects; it could be not only turnout but increasing political knowledge and civic engagement. Increasing political participation more generally because citizens are now being asked to exercise their voice.”….On Tuesday, Ohioans turned out in droves to exercise their voices and to retain their ability to exercise their voices. The early voting figures alone tell a story—at least 578,490 Ohioans turned in early ballots for the Issue 1 vote. Only 288,700 Ohioans voted early in the 2022 election, according to The Columbus Dispatch. But while the effort to limit direct democracy was defeated in Ohio, there’s no indication that Republicans are likely to slow their efforts to silence the will of their constituents….Of course, the political landscape of America is much different than it was at the turn of the century. Voters are more engaged. The 2020 election featured the second-highest percentage of voter participation in American history. And in post-RoeAmerica, there’s no indication that voters are more likely to stay home—even if Republicans in Ohio, and other state legislatures around the country, dearly wish that they would.”

Excerpts from “Democrats Really Need to Win Back Young White Male Voters From the GOP” by Ameshia Cross at The Daily Beast: “It’s commonly known that younger voters lean more liberal, which is a major part of why Democrats make stronger appeals to get young people to the polls when compared with Republicans. But one large group of younger voters currently tilts in the opposite direction—18-year-old white males….Twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservativeversus identifying as liberal, according to a survey by Monitoring the Future….This is a big deal. In the latter term of the George W. Bush presidency and into the early days of Barack Obama’s time in the White House, liberal boys outnumbered conservatives. Those days might be long gone. Conversely, more young women continue to identify as liberal. Teen girls have doubled their support for Democrats in the decade between 2012 and 2022….But why are 18 year-old boys leaning more conservative, and what about the age of Trump appeals to them? Part of the answer is an embrace of toxic masculinity ….Though the Fox News juggernaut—and lesser-watched conservative counterparts like The Blaze, Newsmax, and OAN—are predominately viewed by an older generation of white male conservatives, their talking points are regurgitated on new media that’s more likely to be seen by younger people….With thin margins of victory in races from the presidency to city councils, even slight changes in voter attitudes are worth a second look. Democrats need to find a message to these voters that the toxic masculinity of Trump and the MAGA movement is not the way forward for this country, and that they are not victims of modernity….Democrats cannot simply hope that as the older Fox News-viewing population dies off that their politics will go with them. The newfound growth in conservative identification among young white males shows that the battle for justice, equality, and a sustainable future is far from over.”

You’d figure non-white candidates for president would be particularly unlikely to descend to old-school racist tactics. In at least one case, you’d figure wrong, as I observed at New York:

The record number of non-white candidates running for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination is a source of pride for Republicans who deny their party has become a MAGA white-nationalist cult. But the candidates themselves often seem to be walking a tightrope when addressing the overwhelmingly white Republican primary electorate. The two South Carolinians in the race are good examples: Black U.S. senator Tim Scott and Indian American former governor Nikki Haley have both touted their ability to overcome racial discrimination as a personal triumph while denying systemic racism is still a problem for the country.

Indian American tech tyro Vivek Ramaswamy hasn’t spent a lot of time talking about the discrimination he might have faced; his whole claim to fame, thanks to lavish attention from Fox News, is being a crusader against “woke corporations” and anything like anti-discrimination policies in the public or private sectors. Predictable as that stance may be, Ramaswamy is now blazing new trails as a non-white candidate peddling racist dog whistles. During an appearance in Iowa over the weekend, his gratuitous attack on Juneteenth as a “useless” holiday that should be replaced with an Election Day holiday drew chuckles and applause from the all-white audience.

Ramaswamy called Juneteenth a “made-up” holiday “imposed under political duress” after the killing of George Floyd.         This actually represented a two-cushion shot to the far-right side of the table. His suggestion that we make Election Day a national holiday was accompanied by proposals to get rid of early and electronic voting and impose a national voter-ID system. I’m pretty sure Ramaswamy is too smart to believe the various forms of convenience voting came out of nowhere in 2020 to thwart Donald Trump. They have been spreading state by state for many decades, often promoted by Republicans. So the premise for his dismissal of Juneteeth comes right out of the MAGA fever swamps..

But the idea of Juneteenth’s arising from nowhere after Floyd’s death is either deeply ignorant or malignantly cynical. Juneteenth commemorations of the last slaves to learn of their emancipation in 1865 date back to 1866; the first state Juneteenth holiday was established in Texas in 1980; and before Joe Biden made it a federal holiday, 49 states had official observances. Ramaswamy’s glib dismissal of Juneteenth as “redundant” is even more insulting. Yes, the emancipation of slaves was the first step in the struggle for justice and equality for which Martin Luther King Jr. died, but both the destruction of slavery and the end of Jim Crow were distinct and momentous occurrences in U.S. history.

As anyone with access to Google can establish, Ramaswamy was singing a different tune about Juneteenth when the holiday was commemorated less than two months ago, when he called it “a celebration of the American Dream itself.”

Even then, Ramaswamy was anxious to make sure no white folks imagined that Juneteenth provided any reason for self-examination or discomfort. But he didn’t call it “useless.” I guess he needed some attention that his vast personal wealth couldn’t buy. Or perhaps he wanted to show Trump, his much-admired role model, that he really was learning the ropes.

Some observations from Washington Post syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. about the “Ohio GOP’s Scam Referendum”:

When you do everything you can to rig an election and still lose, you have a problem. Voters in Ohio told the state’s Republican Party on Tuesday that it has a big problem, and they sent that message to the GOP nationwide.

In addition to the damage the Ohio abortion referendum would have done if it passed to women’s rights and future referenda in the state, it also pissed away an estimated $20 million taxpayer dollars, according to Republican state senate president, Matt Huffman, on a project that was doomed to fail. But that’s probably a conservative estimate of the true economic cost of the election, because making the threshold for referenda passage 60 percent could have set the stage for cascading taxpayer costs well into the future. As Spencer Kimball reports at cnbc.com, “More than just abortion rights were at stake in Tuesday’s vote. The 60% threshold could have also threatened efforts to raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $15 through a referendum that is expected to be on the ballot in November of 2024….If approved, the wage hike would go into effect in stages, and reach $15 in 2028.” The would translate into lost tax revenues and lost disposable income for a lot of Ohio citizens. Then there is the cost of making future referenda that could save Ohio taxpayers money a bad bet. And if the measure had passed, Ohio taxpayers would surely be shelling out more millions for state and local education, medical care and welfare programs. But it is a safe bet that none of the groups who lobbied so hard for the doomed referendum would be making contributions to help cover such expenses to any state entitlement programs.

Some ‘looking ahead’ considerations on Ohio’s political future from “Don’t Look Now, But Ohio Might Be A Swing State Again” by Phillip Elliott at Time: “Ohio, objectively, has grown more partisan in recent years. Rural counties have deepened their hue of red and the urban ones have gone darker blue. But the shift leftward in Ohio’s cities is lagging others in the region. (A terrific London School of Economics political science blog explains that data here.) But the basic gist is this: Ohio’s three biggest cities—Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—are politically closer to Des Moines and Indianapolis than reliably blue Philadelphia, and thus insufficient offsets in otherwise red states. For instance, strategists can count on 70% support for Democratic nominees in Philadelphia, while Cincinnati broke for Biden with 57% support. And, unlike other states that went blue, Ohio’s three biggest counties account for just 44% of the population; Philadelphia makes up for 57% of Pennsylvania’s population. Ohio skeptics argue there just aren’t enough voters in Ohio’s big Democratic cities to offset deficits in suburban and rural areas….Yes, but this might not be the whole story. Brown, the state’s senior Senator, is on the ballot next year, and he’s one of national Democrats’ top priorities for defense-at-all costs. Democrats can afford to lose just one of the 23 incumbent seats on the map next year and stay in power. Brown already announced he is running again, and the Republican race to challenge him is likely to become a messy affair on par with the nasty 2022 primary for the seat being vacated by Sen. Rob Portman. For Democrats facing a tough map of defending seats in Montana, West Virginia, and Arizona, any breathing room in Ohio is a welcome development….With both Biden and Brown on the ticket in Ohio in 2024, Democrats might just have a shot at breaking the Trumpist hold over the Buckeye State. The abortion-minded vote this week only adds to the optimism—perhaps ill-placed, admittedly—that Ohio may be poised to roar back to swing-state status. After all, Brown has been preaching Ohio’s competitive nature to anyone who will listen, and his ear on Ohio’s political tuning fork is as good as they come.”

FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley addresses a question of interest to southern Democrats, “Could A Democrat Actually Win Mississippi’s Governorship?” As Skelley writes, “Mississippi’s contest for governor will offer little primary drama because Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley are all but guaranteed to face each other in November. But their impending clash will test how Republican-leaning Mississippi is, as Reeves isn’t especially popular and Presley has about as good a résumé as Democrats could hope for in the Magnolia State….First elected in 2019, Reeves is seeking a second term as governor, but his tenure hasn’t exactly attracted rave reviews. Morning Consult’s polling in the second quarter of 2023 found that he was tied for the dubious title of least popular governor in the country with a +6-point net job approval rating (48 percent of registered voters approved of him and 42 percent disapproved). Such middling ratings have been a regular thing, as Reeves has never surpassed 52 percent approval in Morning Consult’s surveys. Back in January, 57 percent of voters told Siena College/Mississippi Today that they’d prefer someone else to be the next governor, while just 33 percent backed Reeves….Presley, who I’m mandated by the journalism deities to report is a second cousin of Elvis Presley, is completing his fourth term representing the northern third of Mississippi on the state’s three-member Public Services Commission….Presley has won all four elections for his post by double digits (he was unopposed in 2019) despite his district’s sizable GOP lean: In 2020, then-President Donald Trump carried Presley’s seat by 23 percentage points. Presley’s moderate image — he describes himself as “pro-life” — and focus on less divisive issues like expanding broadband access have undergirded his success. Along those lines, Presley has made tax reductions a central feature of his campaign, including an ad in which he cuts a car in half with a metal saw to talk up his proposal to halve the state’s license plate tax.” However, Reeves does have better head-to-head poll numbers and more money. “The election is about three months away,” notes Skelley, “and Presley can’t be written off entirely, but Reeves is clearly favored.”

David Dayan explores some of the reasons why “It’s Natural That People Feel Bad About the Economy Right Now” at The American Prospect, including: “The dominant economic story in the country during the Biden presidency is the spike in inflation. While the jobs numbers are prodigious, changes in employment by definition affect a smaller number of people than the price of everything, which affects everyone….When inflation “goes away,” that doesn’t mean that every price reverts back to its previous level. For the most part, the rate of price increases just levels off. Anyone pissed off about prices at the grocery store is still going to be pissed off, because they’re still high relative to where they were in 2021. In fact, companies continued to raise prices on food in the second quarter of this year, even as supply disruptions eased. An opportunistic trend of volume dropping and profits rising, which means that companies are taking more margin per unit, has taken hold. We may finally be seeing the limits of this profit-skimming, however; Wall Street investors are starting to punish companies that aren’t increasing sales. If companies chase volume with discounts, consumers will see some relief….The main prices that have fallen already are on gas and energy, but that has ended, in part because of the ongoing heat wave, which prevents refineries from running at full capacity and increases demand for air-conditioning. The positive trends on consumer sentiment are if anything going to go down in the near term, as the most publicly visible posted prices in the country rise….It takes time for these sentiments to fade, even when the economy really has turned around. Ronald Reagan didn’t see the benefits of a stronger economy until a year or so after unemployment began to fall; Bill Clinton and Barack Obama saw the same dynamic. Those rebounds were slow, about a point a month between the summer before their re-elections and Election Day. (Obama’s was even slower, as his economy rebounded more slowly.) You could see this kind of imperceptible change for Biden, if consumer confidence continues on its upward path.”

In the wake of yet another pro-choice ballot measure victory in Ohio, I offered some thoughts at New York:

During the half-century when Roe v. Wade was law, anti-abortion advocates and their Republican allies frequently complained that the right of “the people” to determine abortion policy had been stolen by the unelected Supreme Court. It became a classic “wedge issue” benefiting the GOP, as frustrated traditionalist Catholics and conservative Evangelical Protestants left the Democratic Party in droves, providing votes and grassroots muscle to the GOP for decades. This legacy culminated in the devil’s bargain that cultural conservatives struck with Donald Trump in 2016.

Well, in the 13 months since the newly reactionary Supreme Court created by Trump reversed Roe and “the people” regained that right (which in reality meant the right to deny other people reproductive rights), voters in red and blue states alike have wherever possible used this freedom to restore the rights the courts and Republican legislators have sought to steal. It happened again on Tuesday in Ohio, the Republican-trending former battleground state where voters decisively rejected a sneaky GOP bid to make it harder to write abortion rights into the state’s constitution through a ballot initiative in November.

This is the seventh statewide abortion-ballot measure since Roe was reversed, and pro-choice forces have won every one of them, even in conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and now Ohio. When Ohio voters (more than likely) enact the constitutional amendment Republicans failed to block, the tally will be 8–0. And in 2024, voters in at least seven other states will decide on measures to protect or deny abortion rights.

If the rout continues, giving “the people” control over abortion policy may be quite the pyrrhic victory for the anti-abortion movement and even more so for the GOP whose electoral fortunes could be caught in the powerful backlash to Roe’s reversal. That backlash is already the prime suspect in the disappointing 2022 midterm results for Republicans who expected a “red wave” that never quite materialized. But the depth and breadth of popular commitment to abortion rights going into what may be an apocalyptic 2024 presidential cycle remains significantly unclear.

It should be understood, however, that the option of using “direct democracy” to restore abortion rights via citizen-initiated constitutional amendments that circumvent Republican legislators (as has now happened in both Michigan and Ohio) is available only in a total of 16 states. Voters may also fight back in cases where GOP lawmakers are trying to abolish state constitutional abortion rights that have been recognized by state courts and need voter ratification of their handiwork (that’s what happened in 2022 in Kansas and Kentucky). But to a significant extent, the fate of the right to choose in many politically contested states will continue to depend on partisan control of major offices, including legislative chambers, governorships, and in some cases elected judges. And that’s aside from the power of Congress to preempt state abortion laws if one party or the other secures a trifecta and can overcome a Senate filibuster. So even in states with no abortion ballot test on tap in 2024, the subject will very much be on the ballot via the two polarized pro-choice and anti-abortion major parties.

The pro-choice state-ballot-measure winning streak, the impact of the subject on key 2022 races, and bountiful polling showing pro-choice majorities in all but the most conservative corners of the country have combined to convince many Republican operatives and even elected officials that the subject is a loser for the GOP. When Donald Trump said just that at the beginning of 2023, it produced a lot of consternation among anti-abortion advocates who had previously adored him for his successfully redeemed promise to appoint justices who would overturn Roe. The Ohio results will convince even more Republicans that the 45th president was right. Perhaps they will even whisper to their abortion-obsessed allies in and beyond religious conservative circles to show some patience, keep their mouths shut, and help the GOP obtain enough power to give their friends what they want when political conditions are more favorable.

But now that Roe is gone, abortion politics is a 24/7 business, and anti-abortion activists are out of patience; that’s particularly true among the newer and more militant organizations like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life. They are eager to use the competitive Republican presidential-nomination contest to increase, not hide, their leverage over the GOP, and Trump’s candid remarks on abortion politics have encouraged his rivals to pledge greater allegiance to the cause. Mike Pence and Tim Scott have both leapt to embrace the hard-core position of favoring a national six-week abortion ban. Ron DeSantis has punctuated his effort to run to Trump’s right by bragging to Iowans about the six-week ban (deemed “too harsh” by Trump) he signed in Florida.

It’s possible Trump will cruise to the nomination without renewing the vows underlying his marriage of convenience to the anti-abortion movement, and abortion will recede as a 2024 campaign issue. But national Democrats, who know a good wedge issue when they see one, almost certainly won’t let general-election voters who is pledged to protect abortion rights and who has worked hard to abolish them. We don’t have a partisan breakdown of the vote from Ohio (the state does not have voter registration by party), but there were clear indications the “No on Issue 1” coalition included quite a few Republican voters, as did the similar pro-choice coalitions in other states with previous abortion-ballot measures. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has presented county-level data comparing 2020 partisan-vote margins to abortion-ballot measures in Ohio and five other states (California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Montana) and the results are striking:

“In Ohio, about one-fifth of counties that voted for Trump in 2020 opposed Issue 1. The same pattern held in the six states included above. Of the 510 counties included in the analysis, only two counties that voted for Biden in 2020 also opposed access to abortion. Among Trump-voting counties, 81 supported that access.

“To use the parlance of political observers, abortion, particularly when presented to voters directly, is an effective wedge issue for the left.”

In a hypothetical Biden-Trump general-election rematch, a significant number of anti-Trump Republicans and Republican-leaning independents will be under pressure to defect to Biden, as a decent number did in 2020. Abandoned pro-choice swing voters of every background will have another reason to conduct their own protest against the GOP, or at least split their tickets.

The prominence of the issue will be enhanced in the media and the minds of voters by conspicuous abortion-rights ballot measures that will face 2024 voters in DeSantis’s Florida, and perhaps in ultra-battleground Arizona. It’s a bad look for today’s allegedly populist, anti-elite GOP to deny people fundamental rights or even the power to determine policies affecting their fundamental rights. Abortion rights could be the populist cause of the next decade or so. That’s a real problem for Republicans.

There are lots of good reports about yesterday’s vote in Ohio on the Republican plan to undermine both reproductive rights and democracy in the state. But Howard Wilkinson’s “Ohio’s GOP just learned voters are not as gullible as they think” at wxvu.org explains it with panache:

Nice try, Ohio GOP.

Issue 1, the incredibly bad deal you were offering Ohioans, failed miserably.

A solid majority could not figure out why, for heaven’s sake, they would agree to allow 41% of voters to shoot down an idea for a state constitutional amendment.

The 60% threshold was a miserable flop; and so too was another piece of Issue 1, which would have made it nearly impossible for any citizen-driven initiative to get on the ballot.

And the only thing you accomplished was to make Ohio taxpayers foot the bill for an August special election and waste the tens of millions of dollars both sides spent on this pointless campaign.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, the GOP measure was defeated by nearly 14 percent. Calling the vote a “GOP disaster,” Wilkinson adds, “Kyle Kondik, an Ohio native with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said “This is a classic example of the old saying in politics, ‘pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.’ ”

This was an election that never should have happened. In fact, last December, the Republicans in the Ohio legislature did away with August elections altogether.

[Republican Secretary of State Frank] LaRose was all in favor of that. But when it became clear that the only way they could stop the November abortion rights amendment was with the 60% ballot initiative, he was all for the legislation to hold an Aug. 8 special election.

A coalition of over 250 organizations from across the political spectrum in Ohio were busy declaring victory early Tuesday night.

In recent years, Ohio has morphed into a reddish state. Democrat Sherrod Brown still holds a U.S. Senate seat, but he has a tough re-election campaign for November 2024. However, this vote shows the power of coalition building for Democrats, as well as the folly of the GOP’s efforts to undermine democracy. Further,

The Ohio Democratic Party has become very good at getting people out since the Obama wave of 2008. This special August election was no exception. It drew 642,000 early voters and the results skewed heavily Democratic.

The Ohio Republican Party has struggled in trying to convince its base to cast ballots early at the boards of elections or by mail. Republican voters tend to vote on Election Day, and that was the case in Tuesday’s results.

….The 60% threshold may be too high a bar for abortion rights groups to reach — although a USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows 58% support for abortion rights in Ohio.

….As odious as the 60% threshold was to opponents of Issue 1, the requirement about gathering petition signatures to place a constitutional amendment was even worse.

The standard since 1912 has been that petitioners have to gather the signatures of 5% of voters from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Issue 1 would apply that to all 88 counties, which proponents believe would give more power to Ohio’s smaller, rural and reliably Republican counties….It would mean that one county — one — out of 88 could effectively prevent any proposed constitutional amendment, good or bad, from reaching the ballot.

Also this:

The most effective tool the One Person/One Vote campaign came from an unknown source — a meme that went viral on social media a month or so ago that made the issue plain and simple, and probably had a big impact on undecided voters or voters who were having a hard time understanding what exactly Issue 1 would do.

It was very simple: A box which showed the score of a fictional football game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines. The score said, “Ohio State 59, Michigan 41.”

Then it pointed out that, under Issue 1, the team with 41 points would be declared the winner.

Simple and understandable.

And a gut punch for anyone who roots for the Buckeyes.

But not nearly the gut punch this election turned out to be for the Ohio GOP.

Ingenious.

The Republicans have deployed football metaphors in politics for ages. They must be grinding their teeth at being creamed by Dems using one so creatively in a football-crazy state.

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

The latest New York Times/Siena poll has made an impact and underscored the Democrats’ vulnerabilities on many fronts. The poll found Trump and Biden tied in a 2024 trial heat 43-43, with 16 percent saying they are undecided, would vote for another candidate or not vote at all. There are many striking demographic patterns in this result but one of the most striking has been little talked about: Biden’s weakness among nonwhite working-class (noncollege) voters. Biden leads Trump by a mere 16 points among this demographic. This compares to his lead over Trump of 48 points in 2020. And even that lead was a big drop-off from Obama’s 67-point advantage in 2012.

This evolving weakness among nonwhite working-class voters is a direct threat to the massive margins Democrats need to maintain among nonwhite voters to achieve victory. That is because these working-class voters are two-thirds to three-quarters of the nonwhite vote so the direction they trend in will drive the nonwhite vote as a whole.

Why is this happening? The beginning of wisdom is understanding that the nonwhite working class is not particularly progressive while the Democratic Party has become more so. In the Times poll, these voters overwhelmingly say they are moderate-to-conservative, with less than a quarter identifying as liberal. This has created increased contradictions between the Democratic Party and the nonwhite working-class voters they have relied upon for huge margins to make up for shortfalls elsewhere.

Data from a recent 6,000 respondent survey conducted by AEI’s Survey Center on American Life (SCAL) and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) exposes these contradictions by allowing the views of moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters to be examined in detail. My analysis shows the following differences between the Democratic Party and nonwhite working-class voters:

1. Structural racism. Is racism “built into our society, including into its policies and institutions”, as held by current Democratic Party orthodoxy, or does racism “come from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions?” In the SCAL/NORC survey, by 61 to 39 percent, moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters (70 percent of whom are moderate, not conservative) chose the latter view, that racism comes from individuals, not society. In stark contrast, the comparatively tiny group of nonwhite college graduate liberals favored the structural racism position by 78 to 20 percent. White college graduate liberals were even more lop-sided at 82 to 18 percent. That tells you a lot about who influences the Democratic Party today and who does not.
2. Public safety. Voters were offered a choice between “we need to reallocate funding from police departments to social services”  and “we need to fully fund the budget for police departments.” Nonwhite moderate-to-conservative working-class voters supported full police department funding by 63 to 36 percent. But nonwhite college grad liberals favored moving police department funding to social services by 69 to 30 percent and white college grad liberals the same by a whopping 76 to 22 percent. Hmm.
3. Transgender athletes in team sports. Should “transgender athletes… be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity” or should they “only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” By a staggering 70 to 26 percent, moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters chose the second option, that sports team participation should be determined by birth gender, directly contradicting current Democratic Party doctrine. But nonwhite and white college grad liberals are exactly the reverse, endorsing the Democrats’ gender identity stance by 40 points each. Again, it is easy to see to whom today’s Democratic Party is really listening.
4. Renewable energy. As the Democrats rush headlong into an energy transition to replace fossil fuels with renewables, this too threatens to leave most nonwhite working-class voters behind. In the SCAL/NORC survey, when given a choice between the country using “a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources” and the current Democratic approach, phasing “out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only”, moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters endorse the continued use of fossil fuels by an overwhelming 75 to 25 percent margin. In contrast, the much smaller group of nonwhite college grad liberals favor getting rid of fossil fuels completely by 64 to 36 percent and liberal white grads feel the same by 66 to 34 percent.
5. Biden administration accomplishments. Nor is the nonwhite working class particularly happy with what the Biden administration has accomplished. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters believe Biden has accomplished not that much or little or nothing during his time in office. But 65 percent of nonwhite college grad liberals disagree, saying Biden has accomplished a great deal or a good amount. White college grad liberals are even happier, with 76 percent giving Biden two thumbs up.

Further confirmation of the divorce between the median nonwhite working-class voter and current Democratic Party practice and rhetoric is provided by The Liberal Patriot’s new survey of American voters conducted by YouGov.

1. Moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters give Biden just a 35 percent approval rating on handling inflation. These voters prefer Republicans to Democrats on building up America’s manufacturing capacity, on ensuring American energy independence, on maintaining a strong military and defense, on protecting American interests around the world, on being patriotic, on fighting crime and ensuring public safety and on standing up for free speech and freedom of religion (!).
2. Moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters overwhelmingly believe the Democratic Party has moved too far left on both economic and cultural/social issues. On economic issues, 72 percent of these voters say Democrats have moved too far left. On cultural and social issues, 69 percent say the same.
3. And consider the transgender issue again. Here are the three choices offered voters in the TLP/YouGov survey:

• States should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice;
• States should protect the rights of transgender adults to live as they want but implement stronger regulations on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors; or
• States should ban all gender transition treatments for minors and stop discussion of gender ideology in all public schools.

The first position here, emphasizing availability of medical treatments for gender-confused children (euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming” care) and sports participation dictated by gender self-identification, is unquestionably the default position of the Democratic Party today. Indeed, to dissent in any way from this position in Democratic circles risks being labelled a “hateful bigot”—or worse. Yet a mere 17 percent of moderate-to-conservative nonwhite working-class voters endorse this position. Indeed, the most popular position of the three is the most draconian: that transgender medical treatments for children should simply be banned, as should discussion of gender ideology in public schools. That’s embraced by over half (52 percent) of these voters; another 31 percent of them favor the second position, advocating stronger regulation on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors. Together, the latter two positions make it about five-to-one (!) among these voters against the Democratic position.

Possibly none of this will matter if Trump’s third indictment makes a bigger dent in his standing than his first and second indictments did. But I would not count on it. It still seems likely beating Trump or any other Republican will still be very challenging. Democrats should think very carefully if they can afford an image and policy commitments that are so unattractive to so many nonwhite working-class voters. In 2020, very few Democrats thought their support against the hated and presumably toxic Trump could possibly slip among nonwhite working-class voters. But it did. I wouldn’t be so sure it couldn’t happen again.

At his blog, No Mercy/No Malice, business analyst Scott Galloway crunches some numbers and logic in his post “Trump and Math,” and writes: “I don’t know, nobody does. However, I believe it is increasingly likely Donald Trump withdraws from the race for president as the result of a plea deal. Why? A: math….Facing prosecutions in at least three jurisdictions, it’s likely, if he is not reelected, Trump will be tried, convicted, and sent to prison. I don’t believe this will happen, as a plea deal serves everyone’s interests. Trump and the prosecutors, I speculate, will settle for a lifetime ban on serving in public office in exchange for the resolution of criminal proceedings against him. As the political map comes into focus, a plea deal will emerge as the best outcome for Trump. And as the knock-on effects of imprisoning a former president become a reality, a deal will also become the best (or least bad) outcome for the nation….President Trump is an obese 77-year-old male. Any sentence to a prison facility is likely a death sentence. Attorneys general wield the power of possible incarceration. Even more compelling? The prospect of survival — avoiding death behind bars. Incarceration, balanced against a life (post-deal) of golf clubs, sycophants, and porn stars weighs heavily on even the most delusional psyche….Federal prosecutors rarely lose: In 2021, 94% of defendants charged with a federal felony were convicted. State and local prosecutors convict at high rates as well — the Atlanta office expected to indict Trump boasts a 90% conviction rate. Of those convicted by the feds, 74% received prison time. In cases for mishandling national security documents specifically, the DOJ regularly obtains multiyear prison sentences. And the documents case against the former president is notable for the weight of the evidence, including audio of him sharing military secrets he admits he hadn’t declassified, the sensitivity of the papers, and his blatant obstruction — offenses the DOJ and courts take very seriously….It’s not any one case that cements Trump’s fate, but the compounding risk of several (indictments). Generally, defendants have a 3 in 10 chance of escaping an indictment without prison. A 30% chance of prevailing, four times in a row, is just under 1%.”

Galloway rolls out some caveats, including Trump’s formidable economic resources, possible legalistic glitches and the difficulty of selecting a jury that doesn’t have at least one bull-headed Trumper. Galloway adds, “Still, let’s improve his odds of exoneration from 3 in 10 to 8 in 10 — only a 20% chance in each case that he’s convicted and sent to prison. The math is still ugly: 0.8⁴ = 0.41 which means Trump has only a 41% chance of escaping prison, even when given remarkably favorable, exceptional, odds. The most favorable math still lands him in prison.” Galloway sees two potential ‘get out of jail cards,’ for Trump: “1) He retakes the White House, or 2) he (see above) reaches a plea deal.” There may also be a delayed ‘get out of jail’ card: Biden wins, then, after a while, pardons Trump for his federal convictions after he does some time. Pardons for state convictions would have to be negotiated with Governors. A lot of Democrats are hoping for an orange jump suit perp walk for Trump. After that, the appeal of Trump behind bars until his demise would have a limited shelf-life for many. Not much political cost to a term-limited Biden for being Mr. Nice Guy after a few months and making a gesture of reconciliation toward Trump’s supporters. The central goal of getting Trump and his democracy-trashing coterie permanently out of political office would have more enduring value, as would the lesson learned about the onerous personal costs of getting involved in coups against democracy. Of course, none of these scenarios may materialize. In any case, the important strategic play for Democrats is to seize every opportunity to leverage Trump’s mess to make possible a Democratic landslide that includes deep down-ballot victories. Democrats haven’t had a high-functioning, working majority of congress since the days of LBJ. Imagine what Biden’s second term could do with one.

In “Don’t Expect Biden to Get Credit for the Economy Anytime Soon,” Bill Scher explains at The Washington Monthly: “Despite near-record low unemployment, respectable Gross Domestic Productgrowth, wages outpacing inflation, and disposable personal income rising, Joe Biden’s job approval numbers have been stuck in the low 40s. Even more perplexing, approval for his handling of the economy is usually a tick worse than his overall job approval….In turn, several commentators are openly wondering: Why hasn’t Biden gotten credit for the improving economy?…But the better question is: How long does it take for any president to get credit for an improving economy?…But to expect Biden to reap immediate political benefits is unrealistic, considering recent history. Prices have been rising for over two years. During that period, wages have outpaced inflation only in the last two months (even though, as Washington Monthly contributing writer Rob Shapiro has noted, inflation-adjusted disposable personal income has been rising since the middle of last year). Past presidents have needed much longer stretches of good economic data before the public gets generous with political credit….Furthermore, what people feel about the economy often differs from what the data shows. A mid-1990s survey project conducted by the Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University found that in the summer of 1996, when GDP growth was robust, 42 percent of respondents felt the economy was only growing slowly, while another 37 percent believed the economy was either stagnant, in recession, or depression. So even if you are dismayed, don’t be surprised by the newly released July CNN poll showing that 51 percent think “the economy is still in a downturn….The Post/Kaiser/Harvard researchers offered several possible reasons for the disconnect between positive economic data and public acceptance, one of which was “the media tend to emphasize the aspects of the economy that are getting worse and to pay less attention to the evidence that the economy is improving.” That’s why presidents should aggressively sell their own story, as Biden has begun to do with his “Bidenomics” strategy, and not expect the press to connect the data points.”

Alice Chapman and Yurij Rudensky flag “A Brazen Attack on Direct Democracy in Ohio” at the Brennan Center webpage. Subtitled “Conservative legislators are seeking to end majority rule by slipping in a constitutional amendment in a low-turnout August special election,” their article explain ns, “For decades, conservatives in Ohio have kept themselves in charge through extreme gerrymandering. But that’s not enough for them. Now this supermajority is going after one of the few remaining checks on their power: the citizen ballot initiative, a state constitutional right since 1912 that enables Ohio voters to enact state laws directly, without legislative approval. The conservative legislators are aiming to make the ballot initiative so difficult to pull off that voters will fail or will be too daunted to try. To enact these changes, lawmakers need to get a proposed constitutional amendment past voters. So they’ve called a special election on … August 8, a sleepy time when voter turnout is low. This is a sneak attack on democracy….Early voting is already underway on Issue 1, the measure that, if passed, would make future ballot initiatives difficult if not impossible to introduce and pass. The amendment would add onerous signature-collection requirements and require a 60 percent supermajority vote for passage. Just as threats to undermine election results are on the rise, partisan extremists are also looking to steal power away from voters by taking away this form of direct democracy….In Ohio, the strategy is clear: Put an unpopular antidemocratic measure to a vote in a month when families are on summer vacation, college students are away, and turnout is notoriously low. Describe it on the ballot in confusing language. Then count on out-of-state billionaires to flood the airways with ads to drive a small segment of voters to the polls. Illinois billionaire Richard Uhlein, fresh from bankrolling election denialist candidates and Jan. 6 insurrectionists, donated $4 million dollars….The legislature’s effort to restrict citizen initiatives is part of an alarming national trend. Ohio is following a playbook from Arizona, North Dakota, Florida, and Wisconsin, among others to erode an American tradition that for more than a century has served as a bulwark for democracy….Precisely because referenda have served as a check against gerrymandered legislatures and other political corruption, they’re now squarely in the crosshairs of powerful politicians.”