Christopher Ingraham’s Wonkblog post, “The non-religious are now the country’s largest religious voting bloc” provides a number of interesting observations about the role of religion in U.S. politics. It’s an evolving role, made more complicated by demographic transformations underway in particular states. But there are a couple of overriding points of interest, including:

More American voters than ever say they are not religious, making the religiously unaffiliated the nation’s biggest voting bloc by faith for the first time in a presidential election year. This marks a dramatic shift from just eight years ago, when the non-religious were roundly outnumbered by Catholics, white mainline Protestants and white evangelical Protestants.

These numbers come from a new Pew Research Center survey, which finds that “religious ‘nones,’ who have been growing rapidly as a share of the U.S. population, now constitute one-fifth of all registered voters and more than a quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters.” That represents a 50 percent increase in the proportion of non-religious voters compared with eight years ago, when they made up just 14 percent of the overall electorate.

My hunch is that it is a mistake to call the religiously unaffiliated a “voting bloc,” at least in the sense that they are not monolithic supporters of Democrats, Republicans or any other party. Indeed, as the above quote notes, only about one out of seven of them actually vote. It’s also a mistake to think of them as heathens, in that many will tell you they are believers, but they distrust “organized religion.” So it’s not like all of those who bother to vote are casting ballots that reflect atheistic convictions.

Nor are the religiously-affiliated paragons of high voter turnout. (I kid you not, in an interesting coincidence a few mintues ago, I was interrupted by the knock on the door by a member of  Jehova’s Witnesses, who do not vote at all as a matter of principle.) Ingraham shares the following Pew Research Center chart indicating the voter registration trends of the religiously affiliated subgroups and unaffiliated since 2008:

So the misnamed non-religious Americans are now 21 percent of registered voters, a 50 percent uptick from 2008, while “other religions” have increased their share of RVs from 9 to 11 percent and Catholics, white evangelical protestants and white mainline protestants have seen a decline in their share of the nation’s RVs.

Ingraham adds further,

The growth of the non-religious — about 54 percent of whom are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 23 percent at least leaning Republican — could provide a political counterweight to white evangelical Protestants, a historically powerful voting bloc for Republicans. In 2016, 35 percent of Republican voters identify as white evangelicals, while 28 percent of Democratic voters say they have no religion at all.

It doesn’t seem like this alone will force much change at the ballot box, especially in the context of 2016 politics. Trump, for example, is doing well with white evangelicals at the moment. But it’s not hard to imagine a significant decline in their support for him once the ad campaigns hit high gear and media coverage makes voters more aware of the Trump’s lifestyle and their minimal religious involvement.

Ingraham cites the “underperformance of the non-religious” at the ballot box as a key factor. But that should be a washout for the two parties, neither one reaping much advantage because of it. There is not much that can be done to target them as a group, outside of crafting political ads, even if their politics were monolithic, which is not the case.

But Dems should keep an eye on Latino Christian voters, many of whom may be inspired by Pope Francis’s commitment to social activism, coupled with Trump’s animosity towards their aspirations. Latino organizations are important, but it would be a mistake to assume they alone can increase voter turnout and ignore the Hispanic churches.

Even more consequential, however, are the votes of African American Christians, who tend to cast their ballots favoring Democrats by as much as a 9 to 1 ratio. The ‘Souls to the Polls’ movement could be influential this year, particularly in states that have not enacted voter supression measures to squeeze early voting opportunities and registration deadlines. The Republicans fear the ‘Souls to the Polls’ movement as much as any religious trend in America, and there is not much they won’t do to obstruct it, legal and otherwise.

There has been speculation recently that even Georgia could be in play in 2016 in terms of electoral votes, owing to the accelerating demographic transformation favoring Democrats in recent years. I will be surprised if that happens. But if it does, credit ‘Souls to the Polls’ and Black church activism in Georgia.

The late Rev. James Orange, one of the AFL-CIO’s star union organizers, once told me that the first thing he does when he begins a labor campaign anywhere in the south is visit the most influential preachers in town and make an appointment to meet with their congregations. No doubt the same should be true for Democratic political candidates. Clinton should work every major African American church in NC, FL and GA, and really in all of the swing states.

The Clintons have thus far done an excellent job of leveraging the power of the African American electorate in this campaign. For the remainder of the campaign, however, an even more energetic outreach to Black and Latino congregations can lead the way to victory in November.

After a stretch of very positive polling numbers, the Clinton campaign hit a rough patch this week, freaking out some Dems who thought the Clinton-Trump race was headed towards a blowout. I tried to offer some perspective at New York.

Yesterday, a lot of Democrats were upset about Quinnipiac battleground-state polls that showed Trump even with or leading Hillary Clinton in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. But there were mitigating factors: The Q-polls had been giving bad news to Hillary Clinton all year, and there were other recent polls showing her still holding a robust lead.  Still, those thinking she was in the process of building a landslide were disabused of the idea. Moreover, the polls have been showing that the FBI’s announcement of its findings in the email case were hurting rather than helping her.

Today you can expect an even stronger reaction to a CBS/New York Timesnational poll showing a 40/40 dead heat between Clinton and Trump.  The tie isn’t broken when Gary Johnson is added to the mix; it’s then 36/36 with 12 for the Libertarian. The last couple of polls from this outlet showed Clinton with a comfortable if not overwhelming lead.

The timing of this poll probably had a lot to do with the results: It was taken beginning the very day the FBI findings on Clinton’s email usage were revealed, subsequently dominating the news the whole time these pollsters were in the field. So it probably represents a peak reaction to that event. Unsurprisingly, Clinton’s ratings for being “honest and trustworthy” took a dive, to a dismal 28/67, as did her favorability ratio (28/54), shown as basically equal to Trump’s (30/54).

If there’s any silver lining for Democrats in these numbers, it’s that a poll taken at the worst possible time still showed her even with Trump. He’s not rising in the polls, either; she’s dropping. The subsequent endorsement she received from Bernie Sanders has probably improved her standing among both Democrats (where this poll gave her a 58/19 favorability ratio) and independents (19/62). And at present, it’s a fair guess her convention will be better managed and more positive than Trump’s. Even with this latest poll, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver’s polls-only projection gives Clinton a 66 percent probability of winning, though Trump’s odds have risen from 20 percent to 34 percent in pretty short order. And she got some good news, ironically, from Fox’s state polling, which showed her up ten points in Colorado and seven in Virginia, reinforcing the theory that she’ll do well in battleground states with a concentration of college-educated white voters and Latinos.

But as I observed yesterday, it’s really time for people expecting a runaway Clinton landslide to get a grip. It could still happen, particularly if the focus on the emails fades and Trump’s divisive character and dubious “ideas” get more attention, but a close race remains likely.

House Democrats will work a new theme to win seats in November, reports Carl Hulse at the New York Times: “After months of polling, focus groups and consultation with experts, Democrats have settled on “Stronger America: A New American Security Agenda,” unveiling it just in time to give lawmakers a chance to test it out over the coming seven-week break…All of that research comes down to one thing,” said Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, who is in charge of the party’s communications and messaging. “We are in an intense security environment. People are concerned about their security.”

“A massive new poll by Morning Consult finds Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would collect 320 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 212, far more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House,” reports Gabrielle Levy at U.S. News. What makes this poll with results for all 50 states a little more credible than other recent Trump-favorable polls trumpeted by conservatives is the sample size: 60,000.

“…The Sanders campaign will not further contest the makeup of the Democratic platform at the convention, even though Sanders did not get all the changes to the platform he had hoped for,” notes Greg Sargent at The Plum Line. “Previously, the Sanders campaign had intimated that — even after he endorsed Clinton — it would file minority reports indicating his disagreement with various aspects of the Dem platform, which could have perhaps led to continuing disillusionment among his 13 million voters, whom Clinton very much wants to win over starting now…This matters for two reasons: First, it shows that Sanders actually did get a great deal of what he had hoped for into the platform. And second, it suggests that, while there may still be some lingering conflicts over various matters involving rules, the convention will go a lot more smoothly than many had expected — and so will the process of Democratic unity.”

The Monkey Cage’s Josh Putnam explains why the “Never Trump” grumblers in the GOP are not likely to get much traction at the Republican convention.

A list of speakers for the GOP convention released this morning includes: Pastor Mark Burns; Phil Ruffin; Congressman Ryan Zinke; Pat Smith; Mark Geist; John Tiegen; Congressman Michael McCaul; Sheriff David Clarke; Congressman Sean Duffy; Darryl Glenn; Senator Tom Cotton; Karen Vaughn; Governor Mike Huckabee; Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Melania Trump; Senator Joni Ernst; Kathryn Gates-Skipper; Marcus Luttrell; Dana White; Governor Asa Hutchinson; Attorney General Leslie Rutledge; Michael Mukasey; Andy Wist; Senator Jeff Sessions; Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn; Alex Smith; Speaker Paul Ryan; Congressman Kevin McCarthy; Kerry Woolard; Senator Shelley Moore Capito; Dr. Ben Carson; RNC Co-Chair Sharon Day; Natalie Gulbis; Kimberlin Brown; Antonio Sabato, Jr.
; Peter Thiel; Eileen Collins; Senator Ted Cruz; Newt Gingrich; Michelle Van Etten; Lynne Patton; Eric Trump; Harold Hamm; Congressman Chris Collins; Brock Mealer; Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn; Governor Mary Fallin; Darrell Scott; Lisa Shin; Governor Rick Scott; Chairman Reince Priebus; Tom Barrack; Ivanka Trump; Attorney General Pam Bondi; Jerry Falwell Jr.
; Rabbi Haskel Lookstein; Chris Cox; Senator Mitch McConnell; Tiffany Trump; Governor Chris Christie; Donald J. Trump Jr.
; and Governor Scott Walker. Trump’s running mate will also get a slot and others will likely be added to the program. No Bushes, McCain, Kasich, Fiorina or Graham, and hey, where’s Palin? Don’t expect an empty chair, but there will be plenty of empty suits.

Not a shocker, but Alexander Bolton reports at The Hill that Gov. Mike Pence is the favorite running mate choice of the GOP estabs.

A tidbit from Laurie Goodstein’s NYT article on a Pew Research poll indicating that white evangelicals favor Trump by nearly 4-1 ratio: “The poll also found that Roman Catholics favored Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, over Mr. Trump by 17 percentage points — a significant shift from the 2012 presidential race, when Election Day exit polls showed Catholics split almost evenly between Mr. Romney and the Democratic incumbent, President Obama…The change is largely because of the support of Hispanic Catholics, who make up about one-third of Roman Catholics in the United States and favor Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump by an overwhelming 77 percent to 16 percent. White Catholics narrowly favor Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton, 50 to 46 percent, but Mrs. Clinton has a 19-point advantage among all Catholics who say they attend Mass weekly.”

Regarding recent horse-race polls, E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes in his syndicated column: “There is also no doubt that Hillary Clinton has suffered some damage from FBI Director James Comey’s sharp criticisms of her use of a private email server…Still, there is reason to believe that Clinton, like Bush and her husband, has an opportunity to win over new sympathizers, especially since voters have revised their judgments in her favor before. Her favorable ratings in the Gallup poll reached as high as 67 percent in late December 1998, and 66 percent in May 2012…Clinton almost certainly has more room to grow than Trump does, given her past high marks and the fact that even at her lowest points this year, Clinton’s favorability still has outpaced Trump’s in most surveys.”

Turns out Justice Ginsburg does regret making “ill-advised” comments about Trump, including calling him “a faker” following a GOP-driven media storm. But she didn’t say her comments weren’t true.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has provoked the ire of Donald Trump by calling him out on not releasing his tax returns. In so doing she also took a well-deserved poke at the media:

How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.

Trump, Ryan and other Republicans are bent out of shape about her breaking with the “nonpartisan” tradition of not having anything to say about presidential candidates. But that’s a pretty archaic tradition, considering how politicized the court has been under Roberts and Rhenquist, both of whom served as highly-partisan GOP voter suppression errand boys before their appointments as Chief Justice and who continued to vote for the Republican agenda during their terms (Roberts slightly less so). And no one has accused Justices Thomas, Alito or the late Justice Scalia of being insufficiently supportive of Republican priorities.

Then there was Alito’s mugging and head-shaking in disgust at President Obama’s comments on the court’s campaign finance ruling in the state of the Union speech back in 2010. You can go back a little earlier, to Bush v. Gore, if you need the emblematic partisan decision favoring the GOP.

Never a stickler for fussy notions about “decorum,” Ginsburg’s refreshing candor on Trump is no doubt driven by her concern that a “leader” of his calibre is a serious threat to our democracy. Her comments are well-protected by the first amendment, which for our Republican readers, is the one that comes before the half of the second amendment they so ardently embrace.

Republicans will surely continue blasting away at Ginsburg. But her point about Trump’s failure to release his tax returns is inarguable. As tax expert David Cay Johnston put it in his Daily Beast article, “New Evidence Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Taxes“:

The disclosure tradition dates to when Spiro Agnew resigned as vice president in 1973 and then plead guilty to a tax crime. President Richard Nixon was an unindicted conspirator in a felony for which his tax lawyer Edward L. Morgan went to prison for creating a fraudulent $576,000 tax deduction on his behalf—one of the specifications in the impeachment proceedings that never came to a vote because Nixon resigned in August 1974.

The way Trump plans to move past this is the same way he ducks every other controversial issue: he’ll restate his bogus excuse as often as is necessary until the press gives up. He’s going to wait it out or gin up some other controversial distraction to divert the press’s attention away from the issue. Past experience has given him every reason to believe that whatever questioning he’ll receive on the tax issue will be cursory, shallow, and easily ducked. Trump is, at this point, just taunting the press, and he has every confidence that they’ll react the way he wants them to.

It’s long past time to stop letting that happening, and Trump’s tax returns offer an excellent opportunity to reverse the easy press relationship he enjoys and start persistently challenging him on a matter that cuts to the core of his political identity.

As a master of the politics of distraction, as well as media manipulation, it is no surprise that Trump has tried to avoid complying with the growing demand for transparency on his tax returns. But it is disappointing and a little surprising that the major networks and newspapers have not badgered him until he does so.

At Brookings William A. Galston writes about a new Pew Research Center study which indicates that voter turnout may be significantly higher than in recent years. He argues that, despite relatively low enthusiasm for the presidential candidates, the three quarters of the “voters who care a lot about the outcome…will turn out in droves to vote against the candidate they despise.”

Galston explains that, while enthusiasm for tbhe two presidential candidates is low, interest is high, with 80 percent of the poll respondents saying they have thought “quite a lot” about the election. This is the highest share measured in the past quarter century. Another 85 percent are “following the news about the presidential candidates very or fairly closely, also a quarter-century high.” And, 74 percent believe “it “really matters” who wins the election,”up from 63 percent in 2012.

Galston cautions, however, that voters dislike “the tone and substance of this year’s campaign” and there ius a 15 percent increase from 2012 in the number of voters who say the campaign is “too negative.” Further, “A record 41 percent of voters say that neither major party candidate would make a good president. This negative evaluation is more widespread for Republicans (46 percent) than for Democrats (33 percent).”

Galston queries Pew researchers about the seeming contradiction between enthusiasm and interest, and they provided him with data indicating that:

It appears that turnout can be relatively high even when voter satisfaction with the candidates is low, and vice versa. On the other hand, turnout tends to rise and fall in tandem with measures of voter interest and involvement. We would need a serious statistical analysis over a longer period of time to confirm these generalizations. Still, it is plausible that the Pew findings are pointing toward a higher turnout in 2016 than in 2012, perhaps as high as in 2008, although it is hard to be confident of that.

“In this era of high polarization,” concludes Galston, “we have become accustomed to high levels of mutual disapproval between political partisans. This year, disapproval is high within as well as between partisan ranks, setting the stage for what promises to be one of the most negative campaigns that any of us has ever experienced.”

For Democrats, the case for optimism is that voters already feel they know Trump quite well, since he dominates the news nearly every day, while Clinton still has room to re-introduce herself to swing voters who will soon be paying more attention to her ads and the presidential debates. The notion is that many swing voters who have doubts about Clinton will modify their attitudes once they witness her performance in the debates, and her more thoughtful policies and mature temperament will stand in sharp contrast to Trump’s dubious qualifications and comments.

Yet, Trump is skilled at media manipulation, and all too many members of the press are willing to comply. Democrats are going to have to outwork Republicans to insure that Clinton gets a fair hearing and that her impressive qualifications shine through her adversary’s smoke screen.

Sen Bernie Sanders will join Hillary Clinton tommorrow at a Portsmouth New Hampshire high school, where he is expected to endorse her, reports John Wagner at Post Politics.

Eric Bradner of CNN Politics reports “…The party’s platform committee approved a final draft in the wee Sunday morning hours. Most notably, Clinton embraced Sanders’ call for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage — with Sanders making the concession that it would be phased in “over time.”…And Clinton’s campaign announced her support for a “public option” — a government-run alternative to private health insurance — bringing her closer to Sanders on health care…The result: Sanders is pleased enough with the platform, three Democratic sources said, that he has committed to a joint event with Clinton Tuesday in New Hampshire and is prepared to endorse her…”We got 80% of what we wanted in this platform,” top Sanders policy adviser Warren Gunnels told CNN.” Maybe now Democratic Hillary-haters and Bernie-bashers can give it a rest and get on the victory train.

Speaking of trains, I think this one left the station some time ago, and the platform provision now seems a tad on the timid side.

At The Fix, Aaron Blake discusses a new Pew Research Center poll indicating that Trump could finish behind Libertarian Gary Johnson with 18-29 year old voters. Note to Dems: One way to reduce young voter support of Libertarians is to flush out their “free market” approach to environmental protection, which is identical to the GOP’s “solution,” and point out that only Democratic candidates support anti-pollution measures.

Yet, it looks like young voter turnout may have driven the Brexit referendum outcome, reports at The Guardian’s political editor Toby Helm.

While academics and commentators ruminate about defining white working-class voters, “More millennials identify as working class than any other generation in recent history,” notes telesurtv.net, referencing an article in Jacobin magazine. “…According to data compiled by the General Social Survey over the last 40 years, millennials identify more with working-class positions than any other group. In 2014, about 60 percent of millennials identified as such.” Although about a third of them have a college degree, “they predominantly work in service industries such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare….Highly educated millennials face problems that are typically associated with working-class living conditions: unemployment, underemployment, a precarious work life, high levels of debt, and stagnant wages.”

Speaker Paul Ryan isn’t doing so hot — even with likely Republican voters in his district, according to a recent poll. As his GOP primary opponent puts it, ““Paul Ryan is the most open borders, pro-Wall Street, anti-worker member of Congress in either party,” Paul Nehlen said during a Saturday press conference, which was held in front of Ryan’s border wall surrounding his Janesville mansion. “Everything that Americans despise about their government, Paul Ryan represents…Can you name one time when Paul Ryan fought as hard for you and your family as he’s fought for corporate America?” Nehlen asked…The Nehlen campaign notes that Ryan’s 43 percent “represents a drop of more than 30 points since the Nehlen campaign began polling likely Republican primary voters earlier in the year.”

Mark Binker argues at wral.com that “HB2 unlikely to drive voter turnout, decisions” in NC and cites views that transgender bathroom hysteria issues are a washout with voters who have strong views are already decided on which candidates and parties they arte going to support. “I think the impact of HB2 is already baked into the cake, so to speak,” says NC State poly sci proff Steve Greene, quoted in the post.

Some pretty nasty sexual harrassment allegations are mounting against Fox News creator Roger Ailes, with six new women accusers coming forward, reports David Folkenflik at NPR. But it remains unclear if Ailes will resign or settle out of court, as did Fox star Bill O’Reilly.

Before the killings in Minnesota and Louisiana and then the massacre in Dallas seized national attention, it looked for a while like Donald Trump was going to stomp all over his fellow Republicans’ efforts to keep the focus on the Clinton email saga as it began to slip away. I wrote about the implications for the general election at New York:

It’s been noted far and wide that Donald Trump has managed to use the extraordinary force of his personality to dominate several news cycles with discussion of possible anti-Semitic imagery in his Twitter feed, the sunny side of Saddam Hussein, and other distractions. This has to have been extremely frustrating to Republicans who very badly wanted these same news cycles to be all about Hillary Clinton’s emails and FBI director James Comey’s censorious language about her conduct.

But there’s more to this problem than the opportunity costs of missing a chance to damage HRC. Trump is extremely dependent on earned media, to an extent we haven’t seen in a modern presidential candidate. NBC’s First Read today did one of its periodic updates of paid-media expenditures from SMG Delta, both nationally and in battleground states. And it’s pretty shocking:

“[T]he Clinton campaign and its allies are currently outspending Trump and his supporting groups over the airwaves by a 15-to-1 margin, $45 million to $3 million. And in the nine battleground states — now including Pennsylvania — it’s a 46-to-1 margin, nearly $43 million to $929,000.”

Speaking of Pennsylvania, remember all of the recent talk about Clinton not paying enough attention to the Keystone State? She’s still outspending Trump on P.A. media by more than a five-to-one margin.

Now, maybe this lopsided situation will be redressed somewhat thanks to Trump’s purported new fundraising success. But the fact remains that the candidate himself appears to hold paid media in low regard as a campaign resource.

That’s all well and good, and many political scientists think the value of paid-media spending is overestimated in presidential general elections so long as one side doesn’t have unchallenged command of the airwaves, making the other helpless to stop the bombardment. But Trump needs to get a move on to meet that challenge. And even if he does, his residual and habitual reliance on earned media means message discipline is absolutely crucial to his odds of victory in what is already an uphill battle. In a general election, he’s not going to be able to blot out the sky with fascinated and often positive media attention the way he did during the primaries. So his apparent inability to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em when it comes to commanding media attention is a real problem.

 

Patrick Healy reports at The New York Times that “Bernie Sanders Is Expected to Endorse Hillary Clinton Next Week.”

“Is the Working Class Really Furious at the Upper Middle Class?” asks Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. ” wouldn’t be surprised if members of the lower middle class are more resentful of elites today than they were in the past. But I’m awfully tired of hearing this asserted endlessly based on nothing much at all. Throw me a bone, folks. Give me some real evidence that the working class is angrier than it’s ever been. Anything will do. Polls. Surveys. NSA wiretaps. Something—other than the fact that Donald Trump has a following among a group of Republican voters who have been mad at the eggheads forever and mad at Democrats ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed. What have you got?”

“My independence is pretty clearly demonstrated when I de-endorsed Donald Trump,” the Illinois Republican told a local radio station. “I felt Donald Trump was too bigoted and racist for the land of Lincoln.” – from Jordain Carney’s post, “GOP senator touts break from Trump” about Sen. Mark Kirk’s 180 degree flip-flop on Trump at The Hill. Political observers believe Democratic candidate Rep. Tammy Duckworth has an excellent chance to defeat Kirk in November.

Esther Yu-Hsi Lee reports that a “New Poll Reveals That Americans’ Anti-Immigrant Attitudes Are Fueled By Racism.” Lee notes “…According to the poll commissioned by Vox in partnership with Morning Consult, a nonpartisan media and technology company, American voters are worried about immigrants mostly because they have racialized fears of crime and terrorism…The poll, which looks at Americans’ views on immigrants from various countries, found that white Americans tend to have negative opinions about immigrants from non-European countries. They’re least positive about immigrants from the Middle East, and also hold negative views about immigrants from Latin America and Africa. At the same time, however, white Americans have a much more positive view of European immigrants and Asian immigrants.”

“Democrats Plan Early Attacks Tying G.O.P. Candidates to Trump” reports Alexander Biurns at The New York Times. Burns explains, “The attacks, set to air on cable television and online, are an unusually early effort to nationalize the battle for control of Congress. They target 10 incumbent Republican lawmakers in areas where Mr. Trump is expected to run poorly, including Denver, San Antonio and the Chicago suburbs…In one of two ads, the Democratic committee accuses Republicans of enabling a “bully” with “ideas that threaten our country’s security.”…“Republicans in Congress are just standing by him,” the ad says. “But shouldn’t they really be standing up to the bully?”

“Trump may be trailing in the polls,” writes Zachary Roth at NBC News, “and his cash-strapped campaign may be struggling to build a viable operation in key swing states. But the new wave of Republican-backed restrictions on voting — which look set to keep Democratic voters from the polls — could wind up being Trump’s ace in the hole if the race is close this fall. Tight voting laws also could boost the GOP in a host of House, Senate, governor, and state legislative races.

Greg Sargent sums it up succinctly at The Plum Line: “Trump’s con game is simple. He is trying to win over working class whites with anti-China, anti-free-trade bluster and a vow to crush the dark hordes who make them feel threatened culturally and economically, while simultaneously retaining just enough good will (via his other proposals) from GOP-aligned elites to remain the nominee and be competitive. This is not ideological heterodoxy. It’s a smorgasbord of policy ignorance and indifference, opportunism, making-it-up-on-the-fly, and of course, good old fashioned flim-flammery….Now, to be sure, Trump probably will win a sizable victory among working class whites. But it is also likely that he won’t be able to win among them by a large enough margin to offset countervailing demographic realities…”

Campaign for America’s Future’s Dave Johnson has more to say on this topic in his post, “Exposing Trump’s Trade Appeal to Working-Class Voters for What It Is” (reposted) at Alternet.

Also at Mother Jones, Patrick Caldwell rolls out the rationale for the play-it-safe Democratic running mate option: “He’s No One’s Idea of a Liberal Hero, But Tim Kaine Is a Natural Fit for Clinton: Behind the Virginia senator’s moderate reputation is a history of quiet progressive activism.”

An incident involving strange images on Twitter all but engulfed the Trump campaign this week.  I tried to go a little deeper than the usual interpretations in explaining it at New York.

It’s difficult to believe Donald Trump is anti-Semitic. For one thing, his adored daughter Ivanka is a convert to Judaism, out of solidarity with her Jewish husband. For another, as a New York–based business tycoon, Trump has interacted frequently and cordially with Jewish colleagues, employees, investors, politicians, and members of the news media throughout his career.

That’s all the more reason to puzzle over the weaselly reaction of Trump and his campaign to allegations one of his Twitter blasts at Hillary Clinton borrowed anti-Semitic imagery from one of Trump’s anti-Semitic supporters. Trump has gone to great lengths to claim that the image in question isn’t what it is, and has in general done everything other than the obvious: apologize for screwing up and forcefully disassociate himself with his alt-right fan club.

In a thorough examination of the incident, Matt Yglesias hit on an important insight about Trump that goes beyond anti-Semitism:

“Trump has not acted to distance himself in any way from the anti-Semitic behavior of his followers. There’s been nothing remotely in the vicinity of Barack Obama’s famous race speech from the 2008 campaign, and Trump has consistently appeared angrier about being criticized for ties to anti-Semites than about the anti-Semitism expressed by many of his fans.”

Some might associate this reluctance to admit error, apologize, and then move on to Trump’s narcissism — those who endlessly admire themselves in every mirror are not prone to see or admit flaws.

But there’s something else going on that makes Trump’s supporters share the same reluctance to say they are sorry. He’s developed a cult of “political incorrectness” in which any sensitivity to others’ feelings is considered weakness, and the impulse to apologize for offensive remarks or behavior is dismissed as a surrender to bullying by elites and their minority-group clientele.

In his long, sympathetic meditation on Trump’s supporters for the New Yorker, George Saunders noticed this same phenomenon:

“Above all, Trump supporters are ‘not politically correct,’ which, as far as I can tell, means that they have a particular aversion to that psychological moment when, having thought something, you decide that it is not a good thought, and might pointlessly hurt someone’s feelings, and therefore decline to say it.”

In other words, there’s a tendency in Trumpland to view what most of us consider common decency as “political correctness,” which is to be avoided at all costs, most especially when the opprobrium of liberal elitists is involved.  It’s no accident, then, that Trump sometimes seems to court the appearance of impropriety, and defend examples of rudeness, crudeness, and bigotry even when he’s not personally guilty of perpetrating them.

Trump did not invent this strange mindset, of course. Right-wing talk-radio types have made a living from baiting liberals and women and minorities and then inciting listeners to express umbrage at the resulting outrage. Trump’s former rival and current supporter Dr. Ben Carson could not go five minutes on the presidential campaign trail without attacking “political correctness” as the source of all evil and as a secular-socialist stratagem for silencing the Folks by shaming them….

To use a phrase beloved of Trump’s great predecessor in political sin George Wallace, the mogul does not “pussyfoot around” in offending his detractors and those people — the pushy feminists and entitled minorities whose very presence profanes America in the eyes of many Trump supporters. Trump tells it like it is, which means he is not inhibited by a civility that masks nasty but essential truths.

Inevitably, this nasty but essential explanation of Trump’s appeal will annoy supporters and enemies alike, who insist on ascribing purely economic motives to those who have lifted him so shockingly high in American political life. Sorry, but I don’t think uncontrollable rage at having to “press 1 for English” or say “Happy Holidays” can be explained by displaced anger over wage stagnation or the decline of the American manufacturing sector. As Saunders said in another of his insights into Trump supporters:

“[T]he Trump supporter might be best understood as a guy who wakes up one day in a lively, crowded house full of people, from a dream in which he was the only one living there, and then mistakes the dream for the past: a better time, manageable and orderly, during which privilege and respect came to him naturally, and he had the whole place to himself.”

Such a guy may well be old enough to remember a time when he and people just like him could behave as though they had America to themselves. Nowadays that gets you hostile looks, a rebuke from HR, a shaming from moral authorities, and sometimes worse. But Donald Trump will fight for your right to offend in your own damn country. And some offenders will love him for it.

 

 

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight post, “Election Update: Swing State Polls And National Polls Basically Say The Same Thing,” should give Dems reason for optimism, but not overconfidence. Here’s the scary graph:

Nonetheless, Trump’s overall position has improved slightly. He has a 22 percent chance to win the election according to the polls-only forecast, as compared with a 19 percent chance when we launched last Wednesday. And in polls-plus, which also accounts for economic conditions, his chances have improved to 29 percent from 26 percent.

Boo!

Yes, that’s right, Dems. One of the top analysts of political statistics rates Donald Trump’s chances of being elected President at better than one out of four and only slightly less than one out of three on the eve of the GOP convention. It could happen.

Imagine a range of unlikely, but not-out-of-the-question scenarios, like a stock market/401K meltdown, a brutal terrorist attack, Clinton hitting the banana peel, or Trump somehow starts listening to smarter advisors etc. Or a perfect storm of all of the above, and yes, it could get worse.

But don’t bet on it. Silver is not giving due consideration to unquantifiable factors like: the Democratic ad storm that is about to cover Trump with a tsunami of well-earned shame; nor the bizarre circus that the GOP convention is getting ready to present; nor the ad campaign introducing Hillary Clinton as a person of exceptional seriousness, accomplishments and actual likeability. And then there will be the debates, which will spotlight the intellect and temperament of the two candidates. Oh, and don’t forget the impressive competence and management of the Clinton campaign in stark contrast to that of her Republican rival. Weighing all of that, a Democratic landslide is far more likely than a Trump upset.

The takeaway from the rest of Silver’s nuanced analysis offers a much more optimistic picture of Clinton vs. Trump polling, and he notes that “Clinton’s state polls tell a stronger story for her than the national polls do.” Given the realities of political polarization in America, she is doing as well as could be expected in early July.

Still, shite sometimes happens. The worst thing would be for Democrats to drift into complacency and overconfidence. That’s the danger.

Instead, Democrats must create more of a sense of urgency and excitement about this election, less based on fear of Donald Trump in charge of the world’s economy and the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile than on the opportunity to secure a working majority for progressive change. We’re not likely to see a better one for a long time.

Let’s not settle for a Clinton victory and a modest Senate majority. That’s a recipe for continued gridlock and political frustration. What is needed is an explosion of grassroots Democratic activism, including  energetic voter registration, education and turnout campaigns of unprecedented intensity. For those who want a better future for their children and a better America, that’s the challenge of the hour.