Gabriel Debenedetti’s Politico post “Democrats sweat the details in Georgia special election: Party officials fear the potentially demoralizing effect of a defeat” may be overstating the psychological effects of a possible Ossoff defeat in the GA-6 election this Tuesday. The party pros are not going to fold up in the fetal position if their candidate doesn’t win. They will be focused on the next important race within hours. And savvy observers know that Ossoff has already won in two important ways: First, getting to “toss-up” status in the polls one day out is a major accomplishment in a suburban, white majority southern district. And second, given Georgia’s track record with respect to voter suppression, it is quite likely that Ossoff would have won the district without a run-off, had there been no voter suppression. Ossoff, a smart, but not particularly charismatic candidate, has already demonstrated the application of Goethe’s insight, “Boldness has genius and magic in it” — especially for Democratic candidates.

On the other hand “If Ossoff can pull off this victory in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, it will deliver a much-needed positive jolt to the party apparatus,” writes Paul Kane at PowerPost…”An Ossoff win, just a week after Northam’s convincing primary victory, would signal that the Democratic establishment is still alive and kicking…An Ossoff victory — far from a sure thing — would also signal that the GOP, despite controlling all of Washington, remains more beset by ideological divisions and personality disputes than the Democratic Party. Neither party appears particularly unified, but Democrats have been bracing for anti-establishment candidates’ knocking off party veterans in the same manner that Republicans have endured in recent years.”

So now there’s a TV ad that tries to link Ossoff to Kathy Griffin’s sense of political humor and the Scalise shooting, as Julia Manchester reports at The Hill. “The unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting Republicans,” the ad’s narrator says…“When will it stop? It won’t if Jon Ossoff wins on Tuesday,” the narrator continues.” Of course the Handel campaign was all crocodile tears in denouncing the ad. My hunch is that any voters dumb enough to fall for this one were a lost cause anyway. But it’s probably too much to hope that it will actualy help Ossoff with the very few remaining ‘swing voters.’

There have been more than 150 mass shotings this year already, with only one by a guy who claimed to be a progressive and who  expressed hatred for Republicans. Guess which incident got the most coverage. In addition to President Trump’s encouragement of violence during his campaign, the displays of hypocrisy, demonization and political amnesia among haters of Democrats have been off the charts. One conservative radio host, Jesse Lee Peterson has chartacterized Democrats as “children of Satan.”

Fenit Nirappil reports at The Washington Post that Virginia Democrats are unifying behind Ralph Northam’s gubernatorial campaign to defeat Republican Ed Gillespie, founder of the Repubican ‘Freedom Caucus,’ which has done so much damage to the tone of American politics.

Some encouraging stats from the VA governors elections, reported by Holly Stouffer of WHSV-TV: “Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam secured his spot with 303,429 votes in the Democratic primary. Ed Gillespie had 160,039 votes in the Republican primary…If you take a look at the overall totals for the governor’s race, there’s nearly a 200,000 vote difference between the Democrats and Republicans across the state…More than 540,000 people voted for the two Democrats and the Republican side had around 360,000 voting for the three candidates on the ballot.”

And Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley note at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, “Solid African-American turnout is also a Northam priority, and his apparently robust performance with that bloc of voters is helpful. His new running mate might help in that regard, too. Attorney Justin Fairfax (D), an African-American lawyer, won the lieutenant gubernatorial primary after he narrowly lost a 2013 primary for attorney general. There’s some evidence that having a black candidate on the statewide ticket can help with black turnout. Rounding out the Democratic statewide ticket is Attorney General Mark Herring (D), who deferred to Northam in the gubernatorial race and is seeking reelection to an office he only won by a minuscule margin in 2013.”

Here’s an ad being tweaked for use in the campaigns to defeat Republicans Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Dean Heller (Nev.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), and Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R):

There is such a thing as “good guilt,” at least in the political sense, and Javier Panzar’s L.A. Times post, “These Democrats feel guilty for sitting out the 2016 elections, and they aren’t waiting to register voters for the midterms” shows how it can work.

Watching Senate Republicans struggle in the darkness with their health care bill this week, I began to realize how difficult a task they have brought upon themslves. I outlined their main problem at New York:

[A]t a meeting with Republican senators, [the president] reportedly called the House-passed American Health Care Act “mean” and a “son of a bitch.” Assuming he did not mean these words as complimentary, they were definitely embarrassing, given his stout support for and intensive lobbying on behalf of the self-same “mean son of a bitch” bill in the House.

But there is another possible explanation: Maybe the president has just been indulging his taste for polls. As two political scientists writing for the New York Times explain, the AHCA is not just unpopular nationally: It’s unpopular everywhere:

“We found that Republicans have produced a rare unity among red and blue states: opposition to the A.H.C.A.

“For example, even in the most supportive state, deep-red Oklahoma, we estimate that only about 38 percent of voters appear to support the law versus 45 percent who oppose. (Another 17 percent of Oklahomans say they have no opinion.) Across all the states that voted for President Trump last year, we estimate that support for the A.H.C.A. is rarely over 35 percent. A majority of Republican senators currently represent states where less than a third of the public supports the A.H.C.A.”

Might this matter in 2018? The GOP senator thought to be most vulnerable, Dean Heller of Nevada, is from a state where the approval ratio for AHCA is a really dismal 28/53. Perhaps the second-most-vulnerable Republican senator, Jeff Flake, is a bit luckier: Arizonans only disapprove of AHCA by a net margin of 14 points. Given the evidence that support for Obamacare had a negative effect on Democrats running in 2010, some warning signs should be flashing for congressional Republicans generally.

And that brings us back to Trump’s comments and the really difficult political maneuver the GOP is trying to pull off in the Senate. Senators very much need their bill to be perceived as much less damaging to the American health-care system than the House bill. But at the same time, it needs to be close enough in reality to the House bill that the ultimate House-Senate conference product can still get through the lower chamber.

Presumably Trump is focused on the first task of suggesting — or pretending — there’s a world of difference between the two pieces of legislation. So maybe the leak of his derisive comments was intentional. But someone in the White House needs to be calling up key House Republicans to explain that this is all for show.

At Democracy Now, Greg Palast explains “How Racist Voter Suppression Could Cost Jon Ossoff the Georgia Election.” Voting rights groups have registeted over 86,000 new voters, but 40,000 of those applications are “missing,” according to Nse Ufot of the New Georgia Project. “To be very clear, Jon Ossoff would be the congressional member right now,” says Dee Hunter, director of the Civil Rights Center of Washington, D.C., quoted in the article. “He really would have won the previous special election but for a combination of systemic voter suppression tactics and techniques.”

“Senate likely to miss its Obamacare repeal deadline: The prospects of Republicans meeting their deadline of a Senate health care vote before the end of the month are bleak — and growing more so by the day,” reports Jennifer Haberkoprn at Politico. “…The Senate could still rush to get the bill passed in two weeks…But it’s unlikely they’ll make it. Even if they resolve their biggest disagreements, they still have to write the rest of the bill, send the full text to the Congressional Budget Office, await the agency’s score and keep 50 Republicans together through a lengthy series of procedural votes on legislation that would reshape one-sixth of the American economy — all with Democrats trying to slow them down every step of the way.”

At The Atlantic Russell Berman explores “How Democrats Would Fix Obamacare,” and notes, “The Democratic ideas fall roughly into two categories: proposals that might attract support from Republicans as part of a short-term fix if the repeal effort fails, and those that will only be viable if the party can retake one or both chambers of Congress in 2018. Murray’s renewed call for a public insurance option— which would compete with private insurance in the marketplace—almost certainly falls in the latter bucket. Democrats fell a few votes shy of including a public option in the 2010 law, but the idea faces staunch opposition from Republicans and insurance companies who see it as a slippery slope to a completely government-run health-care system.”

Robert L. Borosage writes at The Nation that  “Infighting Is Good for the Democratic Party: Given recent failures, isn’t it time to debate ideas and strategy?” As Borosage explains, “…This isn’t about a consensus politics, in which the only question is which team—the red shirts or blue shirts—wins the game. The challenge is how to forge a broad majority for fundamental change in a country desperately in need of it…Democrats need a big debate about what can be done—and there is no better time to have it then when the party is out of power. The populist revolt that is roiling politics here and abroad isn’t going away. The Sanders-Warren wing of the party has energy and passion. They are armed with a narrative of what went wrong, a bold agenda for change, and a growing grassroots organizing and funding capacity. The debate within the party isn’t a diversion or a liability. It is a necessary step to recovery.”

“About 61% of us think Trump tried to obstruct or impede the Russia inquiry, a survey from the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found.” — From Josh Hafner’s USA Today article, “Most Americans think Trump committed a felony, poll shows.”

In his New York Times column, Thomas B. Edsall addresses a topic of paramount interest to ‘big tent’ Democrats, “Where Democrats Can Find New Voters.” Among his insights: “Democrats, however, know that they need to get more votes from workers without college degrees, and that their best opportunity to do so is among service workers…More than half of low-paying service jobs are held by women, many of them minorities, who are much more sympathetic to the Democratic Party than men generally and white men in particular…Union officials estimate that there are 64 million workers across the country who make less than $15 an hour. “Only half are registered, and only half of them voted. 48 million of them did not vote in 2016,” one union leader, who asked not to be identified so that he could be forthright, told me.” Edsall quotes politcal pollster and Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg: “I think there really is potential for Democrats to gain here. This is a real insight into what is possible.”

Reid Wilson writes at The Hill that “Democrats have, in effect, built themselves into a geographic box, one that hinders their ability to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives and makes it difficult to win the Electoral College and the White House…While clustering may be good economics, it doesn’t make a winning political coalition. Democratic voters are overwhelmingly likely to live in deep-blue congressional districts and less likely to live in swing states critical to both parties’ paths to winning the Electoral College…Only five of the nation’s 50 largest cities delivered margins for Clinton large enough to swing entire states her way: Denver, Portland, Ore., Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., which has three electoral votes.”

The Plum Line’s Paul Waldman hones in on current Democratic strategy and identifies three critical goals: “Find a way to defeat the GOP health-care bill..Maximize the chances of winning the House in 2018 (the Senate is theoretically possible but much tougher)” and “To paraphrase Mitch McConnell, make Donald Trump a one-term president…the primary power available to congressional Democrats in all these battles is their ability to raise a stink — to ask tough questions in hearings, to give interviews, to go on television and rail at the administration’s misdeeds and the villainy of the other side’s policy proposals. Which it sure looks as though they’re doing, even if they’ll surely make some mistakes along the way.”

In their Monkey Cage post, “More states are registering voters automatically. Here’s how that affects voting,” Robert Griffin, senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center write: “…We analyzed Oregon’s automatic voter registration system — a result of the 2015 law known as Oregon Motor Voter (OMV). We found that in less than a year, OMV registered over 270,000 new voters, and more than 98,000 of them voted in the 2016 election. Compared to citizens already registered, these automatic registrants were significantly younger and lived in places that had lower incomes, lower levels of education, more racially diverse populations and lower population densities. And while programs that register more voters are usually thought to benefit Democrats, we found that wasn’t entirely the case…We don’t know yet whether Oregon’s results represent automatic voter registration systems everywhere. If they are, then we can expect increased voter registration, resulting in an electorate that better represents U.S. citizens as a whole.”

My immediate reaction to the Alexandria shootings was to propose a universal condemnation of political violence, as articulated at New York:

In the wake of the horrifying mass shooting of five people at a Republican congressional baseball practice today, we will hear a lot of understandable but not necessarily meaningful talk about overcoming partisan differences. There will also be some opportunistic efforts to use the incident as a weapon to paint legitimate criticism of the president or his party in the lurid colors of this abominable act.

It will be helpful if the former impulses outweigh the latter, and we can only hope the president’s initial remarks on the shootings, and the gestures of unity in the Capitol, are signs of a more careful tone.

What the moment really calls for is something more specific and meaningful: a mutual denunciation of political violence and the potential incitement of political violence by Democrats and Republicans, the right and the left. What happened in Alexandria this morning was not an exercise in “Trump-hatred” or progressive political protest, but an act that violates the most basic norms of a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law. Left-of-center people — a group that includes myself — need to examine their consciences and their words to ensure that we in no way give even the slightest sense that violence against political opponents might ever be justified. We cannot leave the impression that we think the Alexandria shooter took legitimate grievances just a bit too far.

Instead of pointing fingers at the political factions or parties or ideologies to which the alleged shooter belonged, right-of-center people need to examine their own consciences and words, particularly given the temperature of their own discourse today on social media. A good starting point for conservatives would be renunciation, once and for all, of rationales for the Second Amendment that suggest the population needs to arm itself in order to shoot police officers and members of the military in case a government they consider “tyrannical” appears.

Redrawing the essential line between violent and nonviolent political activity will not always be easy. But if the civil-rights movement, led by women and men suffering from much greater injustices than today’s keyboard warriors of political conflict will ever experience, was able to find and hew to the right side of that line, so can we.

At The Boston Globe, Victoria McGrane and Astead W. Herndon explain why “Trump impeachment is wrong 2018 election message, Democrats say.” As McGrane and Herndon write,

Given how unlikely it is that the House Republican majority would approve articles of impeachment (no American president ever has been impeached when his own party controlled the House), the real political prize for Democrats is winning the House in 2018.

And making impeachment the major theme of 2018 elections is not a winning formula, at least not yet, in the view of party strategists.

Electing Democrats and flipping the House to Democratic control is the only way to provide a real check on Trump’s reckless ways, they argue. And the way to do that is by maintaining a focus on pocketbook issues, criticizing the Republican policy agenda, and, in swing districts, winning over some who voted for Trump in 2016 and may be turned off by strident talk of impeachment.

That emphasis makes sense for several reasons. If Democrats took the bait and made impeachment their central priority, they would look pretty ineffectual if it didn’t happen, which remains at least a strong possibility. They would also become the new ‘Party of No,’ which is also risky, since voters are growing tired of do-nothing government which investigates more than it legislates.

That is not to say that Dems should avoid getting involved in moving impeachment of Trump forward. It’s really about not making it the Democratic party brand. Democrats can’t dodge their responsibility to defend America’s national security, which Trump has grotesquely compromised. They should be eager participants in the impeachment process when the time is ripe. But Democrats who make impeaching Trump the focal point of their identity as a 2018 candidate risk courting defeat.

Another strategic argument against Democratic candidates leading the campaign for impeachment is that Republicans really ought to be held more accountable for their Frankenstein. They created the climate that nurtured the Trump disaster, and they should be forced to spend their time, energy and resources on getting rid of him. Trump’s impeachable offenses are also a wedge that can further divide the Republican Party, thereby helping Democratic candidates to chart a path to victory.

There is also an argument that Pence could be even worse for Democrats, since he doesn’t have Trump’s immaturity and arrogance, and might end up looking like a significant improvement to scandal-weary voters. In the worst case scenario, Pence could legally serve as President for 10 years or longer. Dems should not rush to give him that opportunity.

“…At this early stage,” report Herndon and McGrane, “many party leaders contend, putting impeachment front and center in House races across the country would be a mistake. Most elected Democrats are proceeding with extreme caution, avoiding the word impeachment and in most cases refusing to straight-out accuse Trump of committing crimes.” Further,

Strategists say Democrats are right to tread a careful line. Focusing 2018 messaging on impeachment — at least at this early stage — runs the risk of getting ahead of public sentiment. Democrats are better served, they say, by talking up the Republican effort to replace the Affordable Care Act. Polls show the House-passed GOP bill, which would cause an estimated 23 million people to lose insurance, is highly unpopular with voters of all political stripes.

“Impeachment is so high-stakes that you have to be very careful moving forward with that,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “The waters are so muddy now, with Comey and Mueller, and the committees looking into that. I’d certainly focus on health care, where Republicans look very vulnerable.”

Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC, in a recent memo offering guidance on political messaging, cautioned Democrats against losing focus on health care. Trump’s ongoing crisis does not necessarily rub off on House Republicans, it said.

As the chorus for impeachment grows, Democrats will likely face increasing pressure to get out in front of the effort to rid America of Trump. But Democrats should keep focused on the essential task — creating a message that brands Democrats as the only political party that fights for working people of all races and their families. Give Trump and the GOP the room they need to self-destruct, while Democratic candidates show American voters what serious leadership looks like.

In his article, “How attitudes about immigration, race and religion contributed to Trump victory,” Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz discusses four reports just released by Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. Balz reports that “The findings are based on online surveys, including one after the election with a sample of 8,000 people who had participated in other such surveys in 2011, 2012 and mid-2016. The surveys were conducted by the firm YouGov” and address “the appeal of candidate Trump, the multifaceted coalition that came to support him, political divisions that continue between and within the parties, and how certain issues came to prominence in 2016.”

Much of the study covers some familiar ground. Balz shares the views of George Washington University political scientist John Sides, who notes that,

“…Attitudes about immigration, feelings toward black people and feelings toward Muslims became more strongly related to voter decision-making in 2016 compared to 2012.”…Sides argues that, even before 2016, there was “an increasing alignment between race and partisanship” and among whites there was “an increasing division based on education,” with non-college-educated whites moving away from the Democratic Party, especially after the election of Obama in 2008.

“The shifts among white people overall and white people without a college degree occurred mostly among white people with less favorable attitudes toward black people,” he writes. “No other factor predicted changes in white partisanship during Obama’s presidency as powerfully and as consistently as racial attitudes.” But he also notes that there also were clear divisions between white Democrats and white Republicans in their evaluations of Muslims and their attitudes toward immigration…What did change between 2012 and 2016 was the increased significance in voters’ minds of issues about immigration and attitudes toward blacks and Muslims, among whites both with and without college degrees.

The study apparently did not provide metrics indicating how much of any such attitude change was amplified by Trump’s immigrant-bashing and xenophobic rants, nor to what extent real attitude changes were a function of growing economic insecurity experienced by the survey respondents. Trump’s Electoral College win — let’s not forget that he lost the national popular vote — may well have been a one-time souffle of fears and resentments that he was able to serve up in the rust belt, NC and FL at a particular moment.

Balz adds that “Economic stress also was a factor, with those who expressed negative views about the economy in 2012 “more likely to express key negative cultural attitudes in 2016,” according to a news release summarizing the findings.” However, writes Balz, Sides also found that there was “no statistically significant relationship between trade attitudes and vote choice in either election [2012 or 2016]. Nor was the widely discussed issue of economic anxiety more important in 2016 than in 2012.”

Balz shares a “typology of the Trump Coalition” presented by Emily Ekins of the Cato Institute. As Balz writes:

She labels his core constituency as “American Preservationists” who comprise about a fifth of his supporters, and are less loyal Republicans than are other Trump voters. They lean economically progressive, think the political systems are rigged and have “nativist immigration views and a nativist and ethnocultural conception of American identity.”

About 1 in 3 Trump supporters are “Staunch Conservatives.” Ekins writes that they are “steadfast fiscal conservatives, embrace moral traditionalism and have a moderately nativist conception of American identity and approach to immigration.”…“Free Marketers,” a quarter of Trump supporters, hold more moderate-to-liberal views on race and immigration and supported Trump primarily because of their dislike for Clinton. “Anti-Elites,” about a fifth of the Trump coalition, are motivated by a belief that the political systems are rigged but take a more moderate position on immigration, race and national identity. She labeled a small fraction of his supporters as “The Disengaged” and said they feel unable to influence political and economic institutions.

The typology seems excessively rigid, however, since most voters hold overlapping constellations of priorities and concerns that change from day to day. In addition, the scandals and failures of the Trump Administration since election day have whittled his supporters down to the hard core, as his tanking approval ratings suggest.

As for relevance to the 2018 midterm elections, the erosion of Trump’s credibility since last year raises furhter doubts about how many of his former supporters are going to vote for his fellow Republicans in 2018. It remains equally unclear how many are going to even show up at the polls.

In her New York Times op-ed, “Increasing Voter Turnout for 2018 and Beyond,” Tina Rosenberg does an excellent job of distilling current issues associated with voter turnout and reforms needed to improve turnout. An excerpt:

One way for campaigns to get their voters to the polls is to recruit a good candidate who can inspire voters and run a competitive race…Then there’s painstaking fieldwork. All campaigns do it, but Donald P. Green, a professor at Columbia, said that many do it wrong. With Alan S. Gerber, Green wrote “Get Out the Vote,” which collected evidence from randomized controlled trials about what gets candidates’ supporters to the polls. “There’s a strong consensus that one of the few things that actually does increase turnout is contact, preferably in person,” said Green. “Shoe leather really works.” Especially when it’s a neighbor doing the door knocking.

…Even in 2018, pro-turnout factors will be undercut by numerous structural barriers — long-term obstacles intended to preserve the dominance of rich, white, older people by suppressing the votes of poorer, younger minorities.

Nevertheless, in the last few years, many states and cities have begun institutional reforms that make voting easier.

Denver is a leader. Coloradans have long been among the nation’s most enthusiastic voters, and last November, Denver set a personal best: 72 percent of those registered voted — much more than in most major cities. (The percentage was 67 in 2008, and 63 in 2012.)

“For us, this is a customer service issue,” said Amber McReynolds, Denver’s director of elections. “Whatever we can do to better serve our voters, we’re going to do.”…Denver mailed a ballot to every registered voter. Voters could fill it out at home and then mail it in or bring it to a drop box. Mailed ballots could be tracked with bar codes…Voting at home was popular; 92 percent of voters chose to do it. Those who did go to a polling place could do so anywhere in the city — near home or near work…There were other modernizations: People could register and vote on the same day. Those who moved had their voter registration changed automatically when they updated their driver’s license.

…The Illinois legislature, for example, just adopted automatic registration, by unanimous votes in both houses. If the governor signs it, then citizens who have contact with state agencies, including the motor vehicles department, will be automatically registered unless they decline.

Oregon was the first state to institute automatic registration, but now there are eight, as well as Washington, D.C. They include red states: Alaska, Georgia and West Virginia. Momentum is growing; so far this year, 32 states have introduced proposals to institute or expand it.

Rosenberg discusses a range of other remedies for low voter turnout, and she also calls attention to the problem of voter suppression. Also read reports by The Nation’s Ari Berman and others who cover the problem of voter suppression — the very deliberate practice of rigging and twisting election laws and otherwise interfering to prevent people of color and young voters from casting ballots.

The technical fixes to confront voter suppression are much-needed. But it’s also important that the Republican Party do some soul-searching about their commitment to prevent citizens from voting, based mostly on their race. The way it is now, with GOP control of all three branches of government, they see little need to change their commitment to voter suppression. Not one conservative pundit has even ventured a comment on this issue.

Gone are the Republican patriots of an early era who understood that their party should try to win the votes of all races, if they truly believed in democracy. Now it’s wink, wink, ‘voter fraud is the real problem,’ — a meme that no Republican leaders actually believe is the truth.

The only way to compel Republicans to take an honest look at how essentially unAmerican and morally compromised their party has become on the issue of free and fair elections is a resounding defeat at the polls. That should be the top priority for Democrats, certainly — but also for voters who want to restore balance and integrity to American government.

Celinda Lake, Daniel Gotoff, & Olivia Myszkowski explain why “Absent a MoreProgressive Economics, the Democrats Will Lose” at The American Prospect/Democratic Strategist roundtable on ‘The White Working Class and the Democrats’: “…Too many times, our party has been guilty not just of sins of omission—failing to stand up to the Republicans on critical issues, or even providing the GOP cover in some cases (as when some congressional Democrats supported the Bush tax cuts and the war in Iraq)—but of commission, too. The Obama administration’s embrace of the financial industry early in his first term, combined with its decision not to prosecute any of the individuals and institutions responsible for the economic collapse of 2008, led to a new low point in the Democratic Party’s credibility as a check on Wall Street. In the 2010 midterm elections, voters who blamed Wall Street for the country’s economic problems preferred Republican candidates by a margin of 16 points, despite the Democratic Party’s efforts to deliver a message against Wall Street special interests…Given this reality, it is not particularly surprising that the party has yet to articulate a clearer, more credible, and more commanding vision for the economic revitalization of the country, the middle class, and, more specifically, the hollowed-out communities in which many white working class voters struggle.”

In the same forum, Guy Molyneux, partner and senior vice president at Peter Hart Research Associates, writes, “…Trump will lose ground if and when white working-class voters see that he is not delivering for them, and is in fact serving others. Democrats must aggressively contest Trump’s core promise to the white working class: that he is putting the government to work for them. Much of Trump’s actual agenda is of course devoted to helping millionaires and large corporations. Our job is to make it impossible for working-class Americans to miss, or deny, that reality…In terms of a broader message, Democrats’ traditional economic populism offers a starting point, but we need to also borrow a bit from Trump’s playbook. We must speak not only about inequality and unfairness in our economy, but also about politicians who use their political power on behalf of corporations and the wealthy…We now have a tremendous opportunity to leverage public disgust with government, while focusing it on its proper target: Republicans’ determination to use government power to enrich the rich and empower the powerful. ”

“We need to start winning the trust of working-class voters through year-round, in-person engagement,” writes Matt Morrison, the deputy director of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO,” also at the roundtable on The White Working Class and the Democrats. “In those conversations and subsequent communications efforts, we need to change the narrative so voters’ frustrations are refocused on the appropriate targets instead of on other working-class people who are different from them. By doing so, we can defuse right-wing messages that target “others” and negate demands for racial justice….We must engage voters with face-to-face conversations that are as much about listening as talking. It’s this kind of organizing that persuades the skeptical and mobilizes the committed. As Andrew Cockburn has noted in Harper’s Magazine, “Of all the ways to get people to come out and vote tested by the academics, one emerged as the absolute gold standard. Talking to them face-to-face, the longer the better, turned out to have a dramatic effect. … [T]he effect is infinitely more cost-effective than any traditional media-heavy approach.””

The McCaskill Smackdown:

In his PowerPost article, “Inspired by Sanders, activists push Democrats to the left — or out of the way,” David Weigel notes an important distinction between two different kinds of populism:  “Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a freshman who has become the face of the Justice Democrats political action group, which was set up to beat “corporate” incumbents in primaries, said there was such a thing as too much negativity…“There’s a populism that goes after a villain, and there’s a populism that’s aspirational,” Khanna said. “Aspirational populism cuts across the party. It means talking about single-payer health care. It means the bill I’m working on with [Sen.] Sherrod Brown [D-Ohio] to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. Six months ago, people said that was crazy. And now everyone who might run in 2020 is calling and asking if they can endorse it.”

Ronald Browstein writes at The Atlantic: “If the continued decline of blue-collar whites is the principal warning sign for Republicans in the new figures, the red light flashing most brightly at Democrats is the disappointing turnout among minorities. Though Trump presented a uniquely polarizing and provocative foil, the Census figures showed that turnout in 2016 sagged among Hispanics and skidded among African Americans….Among Hispanics, the States of Change analysis found that turnout declined slightly among those with a college education (down from nearly 71 percent in 2012 to just over 68 percent in 2016) and among those without (from just under 44 percent last time to just under 43 percent this time). Overall, the Census put total Hispanic turnout at just under 48 percent, which is within the narrow range of 47 percent to 50 percent over the past four presidential elections that has frustrated Democrats hoping for larger gains and greater impact.” — from Ron Brownstein’s article ..The most positive sign for Democrats was state-level Census data showing Hispanic turnout surging in Arizona and improving somewhat more modestly in Nevada and Colorado, all states where the party made a significant organizational effort. (Surprisingly, the Census data show Hispanic turnout declining from 2012 in Florida and slipping modestly in Virginia and North Carolina.)…In 2016, turnout sagged to about 73 percent among college-educated African Americans (down from nearly 80 percent in 2012) and to about 56 percent among those without degrees (down from over 63 percent in 2016). Overall, the Census data showed turnout among eligible African Americans dropped fully 7 percentage points from 2012 to 2016, the biggest drop over a single election for the group since at least 1980. In the battlegrounds that tipped the election to Trump, state-level Census data show black turnout plummeting in Wisconsin; skidding in North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio; and declining more modestly in Michigan and Pennsylvania.”

Those who are concerned about the deployment of pro-Republican groups to provoke physical confrontations and intimidation of Democratic voters should check out “Bikers for Trump dip toe into local politics with Handel-Ossoff contest” by Tamar Hallerman at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As Hallerman writes, “It wasn’t exactly your typical Saturday afternoon sight in this sleepy Sandy Plains neighborhood: almost a dozen barrel-chested, leather-clad bikers — led by a quartet of clean-cut high school students, no less — going door to door asking if these 6^th District voters plan to support Republican Karen Handel…“We’re here to put Karen Handel where she needs to be,” one of the bikers told a voter at his front door, “in D.C. supporting President Trump.”…So members of the group – some from as far as Florida – dropped in on a Handel campaign event Saturday at Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q in Marietta. The contrast in style was striking: Handel, sporting boat shoes and a white collared shirt, shaking hands with the bikers, clad in leather vests with patches stating “all my ammo is dipped in pig’s blood…“This is not about Karen Handel. It’s about the Republican Party,” said Strzalkowski. “We support Karen Handel because she supports President Trump.”

At FiveThirtyEight.com Harry Enten explains why “Democrats Have A Slight Edge In The Georgia 6 Runoff But the race is too close to call,” noting that “The race remains too close to call. Ossoff’s lead is slim, especially given the past accuracy of special House election polling, and we simply don’t know what to expect voter turnout to be in Round 2 compared with Round 1. Still, it’s significant that Ossoff has maintained and even widened his lead as voters make up their minds, because it suggests that undecided voters aren’t overwhelmingly Republican. It’s possible that Handel will pick up the vast majority of the remaining undecided voters in the campaign’s final days, but there’s no reason to expect that to happen… If the current polling holds, Handel’s just a normal polling error away from winning — but she, not Ossoff, needs that error. Either way, this one’s probably going down to the wire.”

“If Republicans don’t act fast, Democrats will pitch their plan for single-payer, universal health care as a choice between something that costs individuals less vs. more, that is simpler vs. more complicated, that leads to greater equality vs. more inequality,” writes freaked out Republican strategist Ed Rogers in The Washington Post. “Republicans should be on the lookout. While we try to muddle through repealing and replacing Obamacare, Democrats are sharpening their message on health care. In their race to the left, Democrats are increasingly calling for a full-fledged single-payer system. And considering Republican credibility on repeal-and-replace is damaged, if not shot, the Democrats’ message will be compelling to a lot of voters who sense nothing but confusion from the GOP. The momentum is shifting, and the stakes are getting higher for Republicans…And in this fight, Republicans cannot just become the party of no. If Republicans fail to stand up and speak with clarity, we may be forced to defend the remnants of Obamacare as the best option to ward off socialized medicine. The public senses confusion, and the Democrats sense an opportunity. Time is running out.”

I used to live in the Sixth Congressional District of Georgia. I can assure you the people of that suburban area have never seen a political fight quite like the special election runoff contest between Karen Handel and Jon Ossoff. I offered an update at New York this week:

Ossoff has led Republican Karen Handel in all four public polls released since the April 18 first round. The latest, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shows the Democrat up 51 percent to 44 among likely voters.

Early voting in the district is looking significantly stronger than it was in the first round, with nearly 70,000 votes cast already, and a trajectory of perhaps 100,000. Ossoff handily won among the 55,000 early voters in the primary, when the total vote was only 159,000. So this could be another good sign for him, although, as Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman says: “The extraordinary pace has Republicans optimistic they’ve awoken their dormant base.”

Lord knows they are trying. Earlier pro-Handel ads from national GOP groups focused on linking Ossoff to Nancy Pelosi, depicting the whole Ossoff campaign as a stealth effort to give San Francisco another congressman. The idea was to remind sixth-district Republicans that the mild-mannered, bipartisan-sounding young man was in fact a Democrat. But now anti-Ossoff ads have taken on a frantic urgency and some of the most over-the-top mischaracterizations of an opponent in living memory. The fake-Trump-beheading Kathy Griffin (who offered an unsolicited endorsement of Ossoff in a tweet not long ago but otherwise has no connection to the campaign or to the candidate) has replaced Pelosi as the demon-figure, as in a new ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The message, which is about as subtle as a 5 a.m. jackhammer, is that any Republican who doesn’t bother to vote against Ossoff will be enabling “childish radicals” (an allusion to Ossoff’s youth, which apparently makes him suspiciously similar to the window-smashing anarchists in the ad) to destroy the country. The ad even mentions President Trump, which Team Handel has generally avoided in this district he only won by a single point last year. The capper is a quick, grainy image of Griffin high-fiving a young man. It’s actually fake-Trump-beheading photographer Tyler Shields, but in the flash of a moment he could sure pass for Jon Ossoff. It should be reasonably clear Republicans are counting on older voters to win this thing.

The two candidate debates (there could be more, though none have been confirmed) have been largely wonky affairs punctuated by Handel stressing Ossoff’s inexperience and residency outside the district and Ossoff calling Handel a “career politician.” Handel did make one gaffe in the first debate, saying she didn’t support a “livable wage,” but that was probably not a game changer in this wealthy, conservative district.

With the airwaves super-saturated from now until June 20, the outcome of this election probably depends on the ground game. One theory about why early voting is so high is simply that voters want to get off the campaigns’ contact lists and stop the constant phone calls and knocks on the door, which are occurring at levels Georgians have never before experienced. The silence after June 20 will be deafening.

In her Washington Post column “Time for Democrats to unite around Medicare for all,” Katrina vanden Heuval calls on progressives to press the case for universal health insurance:

As complicated as health care is, the case against Trump’s health-care bill is simple. Trump promised to provide “insurance for everybody”; the American Health Care Act passed by the House last month would cause 23 million Americans to lose their coverage. Trump promised not to cut Medicaid; the AHCA would slash more than $800 billion from the program. Trump promised to protect people with preexisting conditions; the AHCA would allow discrimination against such patients. As National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro put it, Republicans are essentially proposing “a 21st Century version of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ ”

For Democrats, opposing Trump’s plan, which a measly 8 percent of Americans support in its current form, is a no-brainer. But with health care emerging as the American people’s top concern , according to recent polls, Democrats would be wise to seize the moment, go on the offensive and rally around a bold alternative to the Republican Party’s backward vision. It’s time for progressives and Democrats to unite behind Medicare for all.

Under a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system, the United States would join virtually every other Western country in recognizing health care as a fundamental right and providing insurance for every citizen. It would reduce the burden on employers, which bear the brunt of the cost of insurance today, and it would bring down overall health-care costs because Medicare is more efficient than for-profit private insurance…

Public opinion data indicate that majority support for such a system has arrived. As vanden Heuval writes,

Contrary to how it is often portrayed, this is not some left-wing fantasy but an idea with widespread across-the-aisle support. An April survey from the Economist/YouGov showed that 60 percent of Americans support “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American,” including a majority of independents and nearly half of self-identified Republicans. Likewise, a Gallup poll conducted last month found that a majority of Americans would like to see a single-payer system implemented. (Given how deeply Medicare is woven into the fabric of our society, I prefer the term “Medicare for all” over the wonky “single-payer.”)

The Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction, but far short of the broader health security that would be provided by a universal, single-payer, Medicare for all system. Americans are ready for serious health care reforms. But the Republicans have shown they can’t deliver it. Democrats now have a unique opportunity to lead the way forward.

Perhaps the best reason reason to energize a ‘Medicare for all’ movement is that it will literally save lives, help millions of Americans to heal more quickly and prevent a lot of unnecessay illnesses. Every day of delay exacts a heavy cost in lives lost and Americans staying sick longer than necessary. And toward what end — bigger profits for health insurance companies?

Health care is the central, progressive reform — the one that is most urgently-needed for a thriving democratic society. It’s the reform that can re-inspire the confidence of citizens in their government. It can also position the Democratic Party as the most credible choice for voters who believe we can do better.

Universal health security is a simple, easy to understand principle, and Medicare for all is the most credible way to get it. It is an easier sell than yet another set of ‘reforms’ in a for-profit system. Many who believe in economic competition and a strong private sector also understand that taking the profit motive out of our health insurance system is really the only way to cover everyone.

Some may argue that Medicare for all is a radical reform that will scare a lot of voters. Which voters? Not those who have no health insurance. Not those who are paying too much out-of-pocket for skimpy coverage. Not those who are fed up with the ever-increasing premiums of for-profit unsurance companies.

There is some legislation already pending, as vanden Heuval reports:

A bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) in the House has 112 co-sponsors, representing a solid majority of the Democratic caucus, up from just over 60 in the last Congress. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who made Medicare for all a central plank of his presidential campaign platform, is preparing to introduce a bill in the Senate. And last week, supporters of Medicare for all scored a big victory when the California Senate advanced a state-level single-payer bill that DeMoro hailed as a “moral model” for the country.

Yes, the Republicans have the votes to defeat a Medicare for all bill. But that’s not a good reason to campaign for something weaker. They are going to defeat anything Democrats propose, at least until the midterm elections. So why not use the opportunity to brand the Democrats as the party that has a serious proposal to cover everyone and build a movement for a healthier society?

Win or lose, a stronger Medicare for all campaign can educate millions of voters, help take the boogeyman out of the term “socialized medicine” and advance the day when everyone has health security, just like in other industrialized nations. It’s a much more appealing alternative than fighting for another ‘reform’ bill that leaves millions uncovered.

Some may say “yes, Medicare for all is the best goal, but we have to get there gradually.” The legislation should provide adequate time for health insurance companies to diversify assets and reallocate their resources. But ‘delay’ too often translates into ‘never,’ and America has been postponing a reckoning with our failed health care system for many decades.

For Democrats, the leadership challenge is clear. As civil rights leader Dorothy Height once put it, “If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.”