The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

1. We must put a lot more money in the closing weeks into Latino media, both Spanish- and English-speaking. Even more importantly, we need to invest far more than we have so far in Latino field operations for voter registration and GOTV. We are not yet maximizing our vote with this crucial constituency, and we have relied too much on the dislike of Trump among Latinos to drive GOTV. We need boots on the ground, and we need to give people a reason to vote for Hillary, not just against Trump. This, as you will see, is a repeated theme of mine.

2. We must invest a lot more money and attention into social media. Despite the big fundraising edge that Clinton has had over Trump, the Trump campaign has spent more on social media. He spent at least $19 million on social media in July and August alone. Hillary’s lagging poll numbers among young people are due in part to the fact that we are not paying as much attention to the media platforms they use as Trump has been.

3. We must get all the Bernie voters we can get. Admittedly, there are some Bernie bros who will reject Bernie’s plea, and almost every other progressive leader’s plea, to vote for Hillary. But there are still plenty of Bernie people who are genuinely torn. Only a tiny percentage of them will vote for Trump. Most are still deciding between Stein, Gary Johnson, Hillary, and not voting at all.

We need to make a sustained, positive, heartfelt series of pitches to them, to convince them that Hillary will get some good things done. Yes, we need to remind them that Trump will do the horrible things he has said he would do, but mostly we need to inspire and motivate them. Hillary Clinton has embraced a large number of progressive economic and social issues that Bernie voters care a lot about, like free college for most people and doing something big about climate change, and we need to make that case to the Bernie folks.

4. What all of these strategies have in common is the simple idea that we must make a much stronger case about voting for Hillary, not just voting against Trump. A campaign that is all negative with no positives will drive down voter turnout, so that only the people who always vote end up voting, giving us a Republican electorate. Check out 2010 and 2014 to see that electoral dynamic — the people who always vote are older, whiter, and better off than Democratic base groups. Disliking a candidate is rarely enough to get people off their butts and into the voting booth.

Could younger voters actually prevent Clinton from winning the election? Ronald Brownstein addresses the possibility at The Atlantic:

Clinton struggled among Millennial voters in her 2008 primary campaign, her 2016 primary campaign, and in the 2016 general election. Against Donald Trump, Clinton has two big advantages—a policy agenda that polls show largely matches Millennials’ own preferences, and an opponent even more unpopular with them than with the public overall. But she also must overcome her own long history of failing to connect with this growing group of voters—a failure that is increasingly worrying Democrats as the overall race tightens.

“This could very easily be the difference between winning the election or not,” said Andrew Baumann, a Democratic pollster who is regularly polling Millennials during this campaign. “If she ends up with them at 50 percent [of the vote] or 55 percent or 60 percent, those are hugely different scenarios.”

In simplest terms, Clinton’s problem is that large numbers of Millennials have never warmed to her as a national candidate.

Brownstein shares figures showing Clinton’s deficit with Millennial voters vs. Obama in 2008 and against Sanders during this campaign’s primary season, in which Sanders bested her in 25 of 27 primary and caucus states. Brownstein notes that Clinton leads Trump in polls so far, but “show her failing to consolidate the enormous share of Millennials who express unfavorable views about Trump. Instead, many of those voters now say they will support libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party nominee Jill Stein.” Brownstein shares some poll results:

 A survey of Millennials in 11 battleground states released last week by Baumann’s firm, the Global Strategy Group, for Project New America and NextGen Climate presents the same daunting contrast for Clinton. In that survey, 75 percent of Millennials say they view Trump unfavorably, 73 percent describe him as a “racist,” and 70 percent say he is “unfit to protect our country from major threats.” But among likely voters, this survey again found Clinton drawing 48 percent, to Trump’s 23 percent, 13 percent for Johnson, and 8 percent for Stein.

Brownstein notes that there has been some improvement in Clinton’s poll numbers with younger voters since July. Clinton’s deficit with Millenial voters is apparently not about policy. Clinton supports all of the right policies favored by younger voters, but “Big majorities of Millennials, the polls show, view her as untrustworthy, calculating, and unprincipled.”

It can be argued that young voter turnout rates have not been all that impressive. But close margins in key swing states could make them a pivotal constituency.

As the numbers noted above make clear, it’s not that Millennials prefer Trump: it’s more that too many of them are, at this late date, considering casting their ballots for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson. Clearly Democrats have work to do to improve Clinton’s credibility and image, but also to educate these voters about Johnson’s right-wing economic policies, which couldn’t be much more detrimental to their interests and prospects.

The New York Times editorial board opines today on “The Success of the Voter Fraud Myth” and offers a credible explanation. First, some facts about voter fraud, from the editorial:

Last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that nearly half of registered American voters believe that voter fraud occurs “somewhat” or “very” often. That astonishing number includes two-thirds of people who say they’re voting for Donald Trump and a little more than one-quarter of Hillary Clinton supporters. Another 26 percent of American voters said that fraud “rarely” occurs, but even that characterization is off the mark. Just 1 percent of respondents gave the answer that comes closest to reflecting reality: “Never.”

As study after study has shown, there is virtually no voter fraud anywhere in the country. The most comprehensive investigation to date found that out of one billion votes cast in all American elections between 2000 and 2014, there were 31 possible cases of impersonation fraud. Other violations — like absentee ballot fraud, multiple voting and registration fraud — are also exceedingly rare. So why do so many people continue to believe this falsehood?

More to the point, why is the GOP so successful in selling this snake oil? As the editorial puts it, “How does a lie come to be widely taken as the truth?…The answer is disturbingly simple: Repeat it over and over again. When faced with facts that contradict the lie, repeat it louder.”

The editorial correctly attributes this “mass deception” to “Republican lawmakers.” Further,

Behind closed doors, some Republicans freely admit that stoking false fears of electoral fraud is part of their political strategy. In a recently disclosed email from 2011, a Republican lobbyist in Wisconsin wrote to colleagues about a very close election for a seat on the State Supreme Court. “Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” he wrote. “I obviously think we should.”

Sometimes they acknowledge it publicly. In 2012, a former Florida Republican Party chairman, Jim Greer, told The Palm Beach Post that voter ID laws and cutbacks in early voting are “done for one reason and one reason only” — to suppress Democratic turnout. Consultants, Mr. Greer said, “never came in to see me and tell me we had a fraud issue. It’s all a marketing ploy.”

A few well-crafted googles will retrieve many more such examples. And yes, it does have the intended effect of targeting  African American voters, who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, in particular. The editorial cites a study which found that, in elections from 2006 through 2014 “voting by eligible minority citizens decreased significantly in states with voter ID laws and “that the racial turnout gap doubles or triples in states” with those laws.”

In addition to the effectiveness of repetition, and despite the discriminatory intent, voter i.d. laws are unfortunately a fairly easy sell. Polls have indicated that large majorities of survey respondents favor voter i.d. laws (80 percent in this Gallup poll reported August 22nd). On a common sense level, requiring some sort of identification just seems reasonable when put in simplistic terms, especially to “low-information” voters who may not be aware that many low-income people and people in high-density urban areas often don’t have a driver’s license, or an “official” i.d.

The tougher sell for Republican politicians is restrictions on early voting, which are also designed to target African American citizens. Republican office-holders have been able to get away with it in many states mostly because they have gerrymandered hefty majorities in state legislatures, despite the fact that polls indicate early voting is broadly-popular, even with Republican rank and file (74 percent in the  Gallup poll noted above). Republican officials are reduced to phony “early voting is too expensive” arguments when confronted. They should be confronted on this topic more frequently and more intensely.

One reason repetition works so well in fostering myths about voter fraud is that the GOP echo chamber and message discipline are so efficient. You will often hear the exact same verbiage in sound bites and buzz-phrases from conservative commentators on radio and television and in print and digital media.  There is also an unofficial blackout of honest discussions about voter suppression among higher-brow conservative columnists, who don’t want to sully themselves with cheesey arguments, lying about voter fraud and favoring voter i.d. and restrictions on early voting.

Democrats are going to need a landslide election or two to cut into the GOP’s domination of state legislatures. But Dems should also focus on developing a more efficient echo chamber, so they can also benefit from repetition in challenging the myth of voter fraud. Message discipline doesn’t come as easy to the Democratic Party, with its more diverse constituent groups. But there is surely room for improvement in the way Dems “market” reforms and hone the messages needed to make the sale.

At U.S. News Stan Greenberg, CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, co-founder of Democracy Corps and author of “America Ascendant,” reports on “The Trans-Partisan Trade Revolt: Voters of both parties are pressuring politicians to oppose corporate influence over trade.” Noting that “A stunning 62 percent of white working class men oppose the [TPP] deal, a third strongly,” Greenberg argues that Hillary Clinton’s critique of the proposed deal resonates well with two significant groups of voters: “We should avoid some of the provisions sought by business interests, including our own, like giving them or their investors the power to sue foreign governments to weaken their environmental and public health rules.” Greebeerg adds, “That is the kind of message that moves the most pro “free trade” Democrats to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership but also engages the Republican base voters activated by Trump.”

In his nationally-syndicated column, “What have you got to lose with Trump? For working class, a lot,”  E. J. Dionne, Jr. quotes from President Obama’s recent speech in Philadelphia that “across every age, every race in America, incomes rose and the poverty rate fell,” that “the typical household income of Americans rose by $2,800, which is the single biggest one-year increase on record” and that 3.5 million people were lifted out of poverty, “the largest one-year drop in poverty since 1968”? Dionne adds, “He wasn’t exaggerating. The median household income hit $56,516 in 2015, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from 2014, and the gains of Americans with lower incomes were bigger than those of the well-to-do. We have a long way to go to ease our inequality problems, but we haven’t seen broadly shared income growth like this since the late 1990s when, as Clinton would point out, her husband was president.” Dionne continues, “Should blue-collar voters risk blowing the gains by taking a chance on Trump? Obama had something useful to say about this Tuesday: “He spent most of his life trying to stay as far away from working people as he could. And now this guy is going to be the champion of working people? Huh?”

Paul Krugman addresses a question of growing concern in his “The Conscience of a Liberal” blog at The New York Times, “Why Are The Media Objectively Pro-Trump?” Krugman explains, “…It’s not even false equivalence: compare the amount of attention given to the Clinton Foundation despite absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, and attention given to Trump Foundation, which engaged in more or less open bribery — but barely made a dent in news coverage. Clinton was harassed endlessly over failure to give press conferences, even though she was doing lots of interviews; Trump violated decades of tradition by refusing to release his taxes, amid strong suspicion that he is hiding something; the press simply dropped the subject.”

At slate.com Jim Newell’s “Gary Johnson Is Not Worth Any Liberal’s Protest Vote: He’s a free-market ideologue who would work to undermine large pieces of the left’s program” notes: “…in Thursday’s fresh new New York Times/CBS News national poll…Clinton and Trump are tied at 42 percent apiece in a four-way race. “The third-party candidates draw their strongest support from younger voters,” the Times writes. “Twenty-six percent of voters ages 18 to 29 say they plan to vote for Mr. Johnson, and another 10 percent back Ms. Stein,” about the same as in the just-released Quinnipiac poll.

Kevin Drum’s Mother Jones post “Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?” shows that the Libertarian presidential candidate’s economic policies are more right-wing than those of Trump on some major issues. At Rolling Stone Tessa Stuart has Johnson quotes on many of these issues.

“The share of religiously “unaffiliated” people in the country — atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” — increased from about 16 percent in 2007 to about 23 percent in 2014, according to a Pew Research study last year…A Pew poll this year found that religious “nones” make up one-fifth of all registered voters in the country — about in line with the percentage of white evangelical Protestants, who comprise a crucial piece of the Republican coalition…In the Pew poll this year, more than a quarter of Democratic and Democrat-leaning voters were religiously unaffiliated. Overall, about two-thirds of the unaffiliated said they supported Mrs. Clinton over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — about in line with the percentage who supported President Obama at the same point in 2012 over Republican nominee Mitt Romney.” — from David Sherfinski’s “Candidates face rising ‘nontheist’ voting bloc” at the Washtington Times.

NYT reporter Michael Wines has unearthed a host of videos and quotes by Republican officials bragging about and acknowledging their efforts to suppress voting and voting rights of groups who tend to vote Democratic. Among those quoted, Todd Allbaugh, 46, a staff aide to a Wisconsin Republican state legislator, explains why he quit his job and party: “I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.”

Charlie Cook spotlights a mistake the Clinton campaign may be making, which he has seen in many other campaigns: “One of the biggest mis­takes that cam­paigns make is to over-sched­ule a can­did­ate…A lot of can­did­ates are over-sched­uled, something that of­ten leads to polit­ic­al mis­takes, men­tal er­rors, or health is­sues. Some­times it is the fault of cam­paign op­er­at­ives pil­ing too much in­to the sched­ule; oth­er times, it is a can­did­ate who won’t say no, adding events to an already full sched­ule. But bad things hap­pen to ex­hausted can­did­ates. Either their brains lose track of their tongues, or they break down phys­ic­ally, of­ten at in­op­por­tune times… It would be per­fectly nor­mal for someone with a back­break­ing sched­ule to dial it back and re­cu­per­ate. Be­sides, it could double as some quiet de­bate prep.”

Both Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium and Sabato’s Crystal Ball poll analysts see a very clear narrowing of the presidential race improving Trump’s chances. But their analyses probably does not reflect the disgust of swing voters in reaction to Trump’s ugly, unapologetic walkback of his birther lies. Wang does qualify his analysis of this political moment by citing the plausible scenarios in Glen Thrush’s Politico post, “5 reasons Trump might fall in autumn: The GOP nominee’s surge is real, but perishable.”

I was glad to read that the Clinton campaign is going to put some effort into reaching out to voters, especially young voters, who are considering casting their ballots for Libertarian or Green Party presidential candidates.

As Jonathan Martin and Amy Chozick report at The New York Times, “Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies, unnerved by the tightening presidential race, are making a major push to dissuade disaffected voters from backing third-party candidates, and pouring more energy into Rust Belt states, where Donald J. Trump is gaining ground.” Chozick and Martin add that “leading Democrats have been alarmed by the drift of young voters toward the third-party candidates.”

Green nominee Stein and Libertarian Johnson are together inching into double-digit territory in some recent polls. I think there is a belief that Stein voters are generally Naderite Democrat-haters and therefore not persuadable, while Johnson draws more from Republicans, which has historically been the case with the Libertarians.

But this year is a little different, as the authors note,

The New York Times-CBS survey this week showed, in a four-way race, both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton receiving 42 percent, with Mr. Johnson drawing 8 percent and Ms. Stein 4 percent.

What is striking is that Mr. Johnson, despite being a former Republican governor who supports limited government, appears to take just as many votes from Mrs. Clinton as he does from Mr. Trump. When asked to choose between the two major party nominees, 23 percent of Mr. Johnson’s supporters said they would back Mrs. Clinton while 20 percent said they would favor Mr. Trump.

Martin and Chozick report that the Clinton campaign hopes to enlist Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Al Gore to focus on reversing the drift of young voters toward the Libertarians and Greens. Sanders and Warren, in particular, are held in very high regard by young voters, and they have the credibility to get a hearing with those who are genuinely persuadable. Gore’s experience in 2000 is instructive, even if he doesn’t have the juice to excite today’s younger voters.

Pro-Democratic Super-PAC Priorities USA is also going to make a significant contribution to the project. “We’ll be launching a multimillion-dollar digital campaign that talks about what’s at stake and how a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump, who is against everything these voters stand for,” said Justin Barasky, a strategist for Priorities USA.”

That’s the meme all Democrats should repeat until it sticks: “A vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential candidate is, in effect, a vote for Trump.”

This is a good project the Clinton campaign should support — but not at the expense of investing in African American GOTV projects in swing states, which is certainly where they can elicit the most pivotal Clinton votes for every dollar and minute invested.

Grudgingly credit Republicans with doing an effective job of branding Clinton as “not trustworthy,” albeit with skimpy evidence. Republicans have long relied on the power of sheer repetition to implant their memes, and it is working better than ever in 2016. It’s a dark art, but it works frighteningly well, as they have refined their techniques. Sadly, too many in the traditional media have proven to be gullible accomplices.

As for the Green Party, it is disappointing that it has degenerated into a spoiler role with respect to the Presidential election. The Greens could do a lot of good if they would focus on down-ballot contests, while supporting the Democratic nominee, who is always far better than the Republican on environmental concerns. They could really improve the Democratic Party by electing savvy environmentalists who could strengthen the Democratic environmental comittment at the grass-roots level — a far more promising strategy than going down in a blaze of glory while contributing to the election of Trump.

Of the two candidates, Johnson may be more of an asset to Trump this year, since he draws less-informed liberal voters, who are hustled by the Libertarian stances on personal freedoms like same-sex marriage and smoking marijuana, while ignoring the fact that the Libertarians are like Republicans on steroids with respect to economic policies. Johnson does draw some support away from Trump in terms of the shrinking number of moderate Republicans. But some of them may also be otherwise ready to vote for Clinton, when reminded that Johnson is astoundingly clueless about foreign policy.

Stein’s suporters are more in the vein of inflexible hard-core lefties. The Greens have morphed into more of an all-purpose Naderite/Democrat-bashing party. The environmental movement deserves a political organization that focuses more on an anti-pollution reform agenda.

In the recent past, third parties have helped the Democratic presidential candidate by dividing conservative voters and drawing them away from the Republicans. Indications are that it could be different this year, with Johnson drawing slightly more from Clinton, owing to the success of GOP parroting the “untrustworthy” meme. When addressing young voters, especially, Democrats should repeat their own meme with equal fervor and dedication, “A vote for the Libertarian or Green presidential candidate is, in effect, a vote for Trump.”

“If you see the poll averages and models settle into a steady Clinton lead of 2 points or less, or have the race tied or Trump ahead, then Clinton backers can break out their worry beads,” observes Charlie Cook in his post “The Race Tightens, But It’s Still Clinton’s to Lose” at the Cook Political Report. “Trump supporters can take heart at the recent tightening, but I don’t think we are anywhere near a tossup race yet.”

Simon Maloy nails Trump and the false equivalency lapdogs masquerading as journalists in his Salon.com post, “Trump’s successful tax dodge: Months of lying and stonewalling somehow aren’t a major scandal: Donald Trump Jr. confirmed that his dad’s tax info will remain hidden and that transparency hurts Trump politically”

At Roll Call Jason Dick explains why “Democrats Believe Long Shots Can Deliver a House Majority.”

But Maddowblog’s Steve Benen reports “The New York Times’ Upshot…maintains a frequently updated forecasting model showing which party is favored to control the Senate in the next Congress. A month ago, by a roughly two-to-one margin, Democrats were favored to be in the majority. As of this morning, however, according to this model, there’s a 51% chance Republicans will be in charge…Daily Kos has its own projections, and it too shows the GOP favored to keep its Senate majority. The Huffington Post’s forecasting model tilts even more heavily in the Republicans’ favor.”

Meanwhile Susan Page, focusing on Chester County, PA, argues at USA Today that “A suburban tide against Trump could sink his election bid.” Seh quotes Ruy Teixeira: “In Donald Trump, you have a perfect storm of a candidate in terms of pressing buttons to sending white, college-educated voters, particularly women, in the other direction,” says Ruy Teixeira, co-director of “States of Change,” a nonpartisan project that studies the impact of demographic trends on elections. “These are not voters who are protectionist or anti-immigrant. He represents a type of Republicanism or strand of the Republican Party that they probably like the least.”

Here come the Koch Brothers big money to rescue Republicans down-ballot. “Of its roughly $250 million budget for the election, Freedom Partners said it would spend $42 million on TV and digital advertising, all told. The rest will now be focused on its ground game in addition to voter contact by phone and mail, and events.”

Apropos of my post on health care yesterday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee reports on a new push for a “Senate resolution calling for every American to have the choice of a public health insurance option.” According to the announcement, “With Hillary Clinton actively campaigning on big ideas like a public option, debt-free college, and expanding Social Security benefits, Democrats will earn a mandate in 2016 to govern boldly and progressively in 2017. Bernie Sanders’ partnership with Senate leaders and grassroots groups on this push shows increasing Democratic unity around big progressive ideas…Hillary Clinton called for a public option on May 9 and reaffirmed this support in a big economic speech on August 11.”

“Is Arizona A Swing State This Year?” Jude Joffe-Block reports on the latest developments at npr.org.

Reporting on the possibilities for women office holders in this year’s election, at The American Prospect  Peter Dreier offers some statistics to ponder: “Since the 1970s, the number of women in Congress and in other levels of government has steadily grown. Women now comprise 20 percent of the Senate, 19.3 percent of House members, 24.6 percent of state legislators, 12 percent (six) of the nation’s 50 governors, and 19 percent of the mayors of the nation’s 100 largest cities. Even so, American women still are still far less represented in government than their international peers…There are currently 20 women in the Senate—14 Democrats and six Republicans—according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University…Twelve women—including three incumbents—are currently running for ten Senate seats. (There are 34 Senate races this year)…If things break well for the Democrats, the next Senate could have 24 women—19 Democrats and five Republicans. This would be a record number of women in the Senate.”

The following article by managing editor of the blog Working-Class Perspectives John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies and coordinator of the Labor Studies Program at Youngstown State University and visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor at Georgetown University and Georgetown University Professor Sherry Linkon, faculty affiliate of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and editor of Working-Class Perspectives, is cross-posted from Moyers & Company:

When Mitt Romney dismissed the 47 percent of voters who, he predicted, would support Barack Obama “no matter what” as “victims” who depend on government assistance, liberal critics called foul. The quote, caught on video by a bartender at a Florida fundraiser in September 2012, reinforced Romney’s image as an elitist whose interests were firmly aligned with the wealthy. Not surprisingly, Democrats repeatedly used the line against Romney, and while we can’t blame his defeat in that year’s election on that one line, it sure didn’t help, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio.

Last Friday, Hillary Clinton said the following:

You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of these folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket – and I know this because I see friends from all over America here – I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas – as well as, you know, New York and California–but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Read more…

As Donald Trump began to climb in polls last week, there were reports of panic among GOP Beltway types. I explain the phenomenon at New York:

Non-Republicans may be forgiven for feeling confused by a report from BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins that many Republican insiders are privately freaked out by the renewed possibility that Donald Trump could actually be elected president. Wasn’t their horror toward Trump mostly a matter of fearing he’d be a disastrous loser who’d drag the whole ticket down with him? If he’s doing well enough to be a threat to win, won’t that make it infinitely easier to hang on to a Republican-controlled Congress?

These are good questions, but the truth is GOP-insider fear of Trump was never just about his 2016 general-election prospects. Some Never Trump conservatives sincerely fear the man on some of the same grounds many liberals feel. Others are worried about what Trump is doing to conservatism itself.

But there is an underexamined reason for a secret GOP desire to see the mogul lose in November: The immediate future of the Republican Party could actually be pretty rosy under a President Hillary Clinton. Unless the GOP loses the House along with the Senate, it should have the power to pretty much stymy anything the 45th president tries to do. If they hang on to the Senate, their obstructionist power might extend to Supreme Court and other appointments. Either way, 2018 would be set up as a boffo year for the “out party” up and down the ballot. The Senate landscape that year is already astoundingly positive for Republicans, and there’s no reason to think the GOP will immediately lose the midterm-turnout advantage that proved so useful in 2010 and 2014. Indeed, a President Trump is about the only thing that could screw up 2018 for Republicans.

A third straight Democratic term in the White House, moreover, would greatly improve Republican odds to finally break their presidential losing streak in 2020. That’s an even bigger deal than you might immediately imagine, since that’s the election year that will determine control of the state legislatures that will conduct congressional and state redistricting for the next decade. By contrast, a 2020 reelection campaign for President Trump would be a dicey affair, particularly since he’s pretty likely to draw a primary opponent.

And then, of course, there’s the big X factor for those Republicans who don’t care for Trump: If he loses, he could quite possibly be disposed of quickly as a factor in Republican politics. Yes, Republicans would have to figure out some way to keep the white ethno-nationalist passions he aroused at bay or better yet channeled in a more constructive direction. But there’s a good chance Republicans could treat the near disaster of 2016 as a cautionary tale and go back to fighting among “movement conservatives” and “reformocons” and pragmatists over control of the party, perhaps even finding ways to detoxify the party for Latino and millennial voters.

If Trump wins, of course, you can add to his prestige as the Republican who broke the Democrats’ grip on the White House the vast patronage powers of the executive branch and the even greater power of presidents to define their party in the public’s eye.

Yikes!

Democrats everywhere have work to do in order to make the most of the unprecedented opportunity presented by the 2016 election. But there is nonetheless a need for thinking longer-term, beyond 2016, to reconnect with core Democratic party values as we chart a better future for America.

So take a mini-break with Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins, authors of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, who have an interesting post up at Vox, “Health reform: trying to achieve Democratic goals through Republican means: American policy compromises Democrats’ pragmatic goals with Republicans’ ideological objections.”

Grossman and Hopkins explain,

During the congressional debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Republicans successfully undermined overall popular support for the law by characterizing it as a “government takeover” of the American health care system — even though most of its specific provisions remained quite popular with the public.

As many frustrated Democrats pointed out, the ACA was far from the exercise in single-payer socialized medicine implied by Republican critics. In fact, the law’s structure is striking for the many ways in which it attempts to avoid conservative accusations of “big government” liberalism.

Republicans favor federalism over nationalization. The ACA creates state-based insurance exchanges and uses state Medicaid partnerships to deliver services.

Republicans favor private sector implementation over increasing government bureaucracy. The ACA delivers benefits mainly through private insurance companies.

Republicans favor free market incentives. The ACA uses internet-based shopping marketplaces, which allows consumers to compare prices and requires insurers to compete for their business.

In an earlier era, back when Republicans would actually negotiate in good faith, the ACA would have been considered a moderate Republican bill, grudgingly suported by Democrats. Many Democrats would still describe it that way, even though nearly all of today’s Republicans bash the ACA at every opportunity.

Hopkins and Grossman go on to argue that Democrats are trapped in a frame of Republican making. “Political leaders typically pursue the goals of Democratic constituencies using tools and approaches that respond to conservative critiques of big government…the Republican Party characterizes each set of new initiatives as expanding the role of government in violation of constitutional values.”

To pass the ACA, Democrats had to adjust, not only to their constituent group concerns, but also to conservative criticism, to get anything passed. “Democrats have even internalized conservative criticisms of federal agencies and programs,” say the authors, “As a result, public policy responds to conservative critiques.”

Grossman and Hopkins present some startling charts, showing that “big government” in the sense of a dominant federal sector, is largely a myth. The actual increase federal employees since 1946 has been miniscule in both real and percentage terms. Most of the growth in the government workforce has been at the state and local level, which Republicans certaimly prefer to a growing federal sector. Worse, they show that, despite the perception of ‘big government’ domination, a lot of what should be in the public sector has been privatized

Public policy increasingly relies on private sector government contractors and recipients of competitive grants (usually nonprofits) to deliver services. Although it is difficult to measure the size of this “shadow government” with precision, it now eclipses that of the direct federal workforce.

While federal government and goveernment grantee employment and the military personnel, has been fairly stable since 1990, there has been an enormous uptick in spending on federal contractors. More gravy for the private sector.

The authors present data showing that, “American social welfare spending nearly matches that of large European nations — but a large fraction of our welfare spending passes indirectly through private companies, usually employers.” America’s “subsidized private welfare expenditure” share of gross domestic product is enormous compared to that of other nations, which opens up irresistible turf for private sector corruption. We get the knee-jerk parroting of the “big government is wasteful/corrupt” meme in the media, while the private sector often loots taxpayers, with very little in the way of media accountability.

To provide an example of wasteful spending in health care, I recently had an asthma attack which required about 3 hours of routine hospital treatment and monitoring, nothing all that extraordinary. The bill was over $8K, with the profits being gobbled up by various private sector health contractors. Three months later, my out-of-pocket share remains unclear. Shortly afterwards, my nationally-respected health insurer dumped me because of my new zip code.

A few years before that, I cut my hand on a broken glass and had to get some stitiches at a different hospital. When the bill came, I noticed a $60 charge for “tray removal.” I asked the billing office what that meant, and the staff responded, “That’s when they took off the first bandages and put them in a tray and emptied it.” No doubt, millions of Americans have similar stories.

Grossman and Hopkins write, “Democrats have collectively expanded the scope of government authority but have been forced to implement their initiatives in cooperation with the private sector, by relying upon market competition and tax incentives, and by decentralizing services to states, localities, contractors, and grantees.”

On balance, the Affordable Care Act has been a step forward in terms of providing health security for additional millions of Americans who had been denied decent coverage, although a number of Republican governors and state legislatures have weakened the ACA by refusing to accept Medicaid Expansion.

Democrats must create a consensus that quality health care for all Americans should be the top national security priority. All evidence suggests that the private sector can’t meet this challenge. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton favors reforms that strengthen the ACA’s coverage to include every citizen and every illness and condition. After electing Clinton and a working Democratic majority of congress, Democrats and progressives should urge Clinton to press the case for a single-payer health care system.

This weekend Christian Right leaders held their most important election-year clambake, and the dynamics were fascinating, as I noted at New York.

As a couple of thousand Christian Right activists gathered in Washington for the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit this weekend, it was more obvious than ever that the GOP is straining the loyalties of the faithful. The star attraction, Donald Trump, was, after all, the fifth-place finisher in the presidential straw poll at last September’s VVS.

But like a long-suffering spouse, the Christian Right is sticking with Donald Trump as we head toward Election Day because he is convincingly the enemy of its enemies and is willing to make a few key gestures in the direction of the righteous, albeit in a clumsy and offhand way.

None of the Christian conservative leaders who have made opposition to Trump (e.g., Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention) a matter of conscience were allowed near the podium of the VVS. Still, much anxious rhetoric was aimed at those who are thinking about voting third or fifth party or staying home. Former representative Michele Bachmann characteristically used the most extreme words possible to condemn that temptation, comparing the election to the choice God gave the Hebrews in presenting his covenant with them: “I have set before you life and death. Which will you choose?”

But while there may be some questions about turnout rates on the margins, you did not get the sense listening to Trump address the gathering that he is especially worried about this particular slice of the electorate. He did not bother to mention abortion or same-sex marriage (though his promises to appoint “Federalist Society” Supreme Court justices in the mode of Antonin Scalia was a well-understood dog whistle on those subjects), which may be a first for a Republican nominee talking to this kind of gathering.

As has been his habit when in Christian Right company of late, Trump placed greatest emphasis on promising something of interest almost exclusively to evangelical clergy: repealing the “Johnson Amendment” that prevents candidate endorsements and other electioneering from the pulpit for tax-exempt religious (and for that matter nonreligious) organizations.

As Amy Sullivan has pointed out, the evangelical rank and file don’t appear to support this idea — yet it always gets big applause from the leadership, and also illustrates the purely transactional nature of Trump’s appeal to politically active Christian Right elites. They really have nowhere else to go now that Trump has conquered the GOP, yet he’s willing to promise them a tasty policy snack that makes it easier for them to swallow their misgivings about supporting this crude philistine.

For the benefit of the more credulous, Trump’s running-mate Mike Pence, the designated conservative whisperer of the ticket, came along and told the VVS attendees on Saturday that “at the very core, the very heart, of this good man is … a faith in God and a faith in the American people.” This is about as convincing as James Dobson’s unsupported claim that Trump is a “baby Christian,” like one of those ancient barbarians who converted to Christianity but needed a while to figure out the new faith was incompatible with slaughtering prisoners or keeping concubines.

Trump mostly has faith in himself and in the golden calf of worldly success. But he’s the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, and thus leader of that mess of pottage for which Christian Right leaders have exchanged their birthright. So what are they to do?

They cheer.

Selah.