From William Galston’s Wall St. Journal column, “Making Our Roads ‘Shovel-Ready’: Hillary Clinton offers a valuable proposal for an overdue upgrade of U.S. infrastructure.”:

On Sunday, with less national fanfare than the announcement deserved, Hillary Clinton released a major proposal to boost infrastructure investment by $500 billion, much of this over the next five years. The plan includes three principal financing mechanisms: direct public investments, subsidies to reduce interest costs on taxable infrastructure bonds, and a national infrastructure bank that would leverage $25 billion in public seed capital that would support up to an additional $225 billion in direct loans, guarantees and other forms of credit enhancement.

You can almost hear the conservative knee-jerk response, “So who is going to pay for all of this?” Galston has an answer. But first he explains that all Americans are going to pay, and pay dearly if we continue to do nothing about our crumbling infrastructure, a point that should always be underscored. The opportunity costs of infrastructure repair have become untenable:

The case for action is clear. Over the past three decades, America has systematically underinvested in infrastructure by about 1% of GDP each year, resulting in a shortfall of trillions of dollars. The nation’s roads, highways, bridges and dams are aging, imposing extra costs (an estimated $377 annually per driver) to operate a motor vehicle while exposing everyone to increased risk. Many ports and the transportation networks that support them are becoming impediments to the efficient flow of trade. Anyone who has traveled outside the U.S. knows that many American airports are far from world class…Each year of delay raises project costs substantially.

Further, adds Galston,”In the most recent Global Competitiveness Rankings issued annually by the World Economic Forum, the U.S. stood…only 13th for infrastructure quality as a whole, 14th for roads, 15th for railways and 16th for electrical-supply systems.”
As for financing the needed infrastructure upgrades, Galston notes that “The principal source of funding for surface transportation, the 18.4 cents per gallon gas tax, has not been raised since 1993, and resistance to any further increase is intense, especially in rural areas and small towns whose residents typically drive long distances for work, shopping and medical services.” He argues for exploring “new strategies, including the more leveraged use of scarce public funds to reduce interest rates on taxable bonds and attract private capital for infrastructure” and “routing more project choices through an infrastructure bank with an independent board and skilled technical experts.”
“Western democracies such as Germany and Canada generally grant permits,” Galston points out, “including environmental reviews–for major infrastructure projects in two years or less,” He applauds Clinton’s plan’s to “cut red tape” and “streamline permitting,” which is “in sharp contrast to the fragmented U.S. system wherein an aggrieved group can thwart decisions for years.”
Gaston warns, however, that by tying up proposed projects in ‘regulatory knots,’ the U.S. has become irrationally timid about fixing broken-down public facilities that serve all Americans. Meanwhile “other democracies can plan, fund and execute projects in less time than it takes in the U.S. to complete the required environmental-impact statements.”
It may be that the time is fast approaching when a coalition of Democrats and a handful of Republicans who are fed up with their party’s knee-jerk obstruction of urgent public works projects, can help the nation achieve the needed upgrades. But Galston believes there must also be a consensus “to strike a better balance between parochial concerns and the public interest.”
Galston is surely right that Clinton’s plan is the most detailed, credible set of infrastructure improvement proposals yet presented. Forging the consensus needed to move forward will likely require an electoral spanking for infrastructure obstructionists, parochial and otherwise.

Trump may get the headlines with his daily outrages, but a new poll brings some very good news for Sen. Bernie Sanders: “A stunning new poll by Quinnipiac suggests Bernie Sanders is the most electable candidate in either party to be the next president of the United States,” says Brent Budowsky, reporting at the Observer News. Budowsky says further,

In the Quinnipiac poll Mr. Sanders would defeat Republican frontrunner Donald Trump by 8 points, while Hillary Clinton would defeat him by only 6 points. Mr. Sanders would defeat Ben Carson by 6 points, while Ms. Clinton would defeat him by only three. Mr. Sanders would defeat Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz by 10 points, while Ms. Clinton would defeat him by five. Mr. Sanders and Ms. Clinton would both defeat Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio by one point.

Budowsky takes a stab at the why behind the numbers, and explains:

First, Mr. Sanders has very high ratings for integrity, trust and authenticity in an election year where large numbers of voters feel strong distrust for major political figures and media institutions.
Second, Mr. Sanders embodies a pure play candidate for a progressive populist agenda that has powerful and, I would argue, majority support from American voters.
Mr. Sanders campaigns against the corruptions of money that plague American politics–in favor of major reforms of Wall Street to make our financial system more fair, for a free public college education financed by a transaction tax on Wall Street speculation, for an increase in social security benefits at a time when next year Americans will receive no cost of living increases in social security benefits, and for a Medicare-for-all health care program that would dramatically lower health care costs far more than ObamaCare or GOP plans to repeal ObamaCare without offering any credible alternative.
These positions all have strong support from voters and are offered by a candidate with a strong reputation for championing major reforms and income inequality with high levels of credibility and trust.

For a little icing on the Sanders cake, Sam Frizzell reports at Time Magazine that the Senator has another good news story percolating:

With less than four days until TIME’s Person of the Year poll closes, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is holding on to a strong lead over some of 2015’s most influential people.
The Vermont Senator had 10.5% of the vote in the reader poll as of Thursday morning, well ahead of Malala Yousafzai, who is in second place at 5.2%. Trailing Sanders is Pope Francis, at 3.8%, TIME’s 2013 Person of the Year. Sanders is far ahead of other presidential candidates, including Republican Donald Trump (2%) and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (1.3%).

Sen. Sanders has been around long enough to know such poll leads can evaporate as fast as they appeared. What may prove a source of more enduring satisfaction for the Sanders campaign, however, is that his progressive policies are getting traction across the political landscape — and that would not have happened without his leadership.

After the latest gun massacre in San Bernardino, and before a whole lot was known about the killers and their motives, there was already a sense of ennui setting in among Beltway elites about the tedious gun policy debate that would soon set it. At New York today, I wrote about this deplorable refusal to deal with the gun policy issue:

Liberals need to understand, however, that it’s precisely this fatigue, and the underlying assumption that both sides in the perpetual “gun debate” are equally to blame for its unproductive nature, that is the secret weapon of the NRA and Second Amendment ultras everywhere. There are obviously many other things that are relevant to a gun massacre, from possible terrorist links to mental-health issues. But gun policy should always be in order after a gun massacre.
That’s not how the King of False Equivalency, National Journal columnist Ron Fournier, sees it, of course. In his first post-San Bernardino piece, he excoriates gun-control advocates (among whom he placed himself) for offending the tender sensibilities of all those gun-control opponents who are piously calling for prayer rather than legislation.

Re­pub­lic­ans are do­ing more than pray­ing. They’re not do­ing nearly enough, from my vant­age point, but if we’re go­ing to move bey­ond verbal wars and ac­tu­ally start fix­ing this prob­lem, the first step is to ac­know­ledge the oth­er side’s point of view. Un­der­stand it. Re­spect it. Then ex­ploit it.
For ex­ample, couldn’t a smart group of gun con­trol ad­voc­ates seize on the Na­tion­al Rifle As­so­ci­ation’s talk­ing point about men­tal health and work to­ward ma­jor re­forms of the U.S. sys­tem?

Does a single soul other than Ron Fournier think the NRA will expend an ounce of its vast political capital fighting for reforms in the U.S. mental-health system? I doubt it. And why should they? They are not the National Rifle and Mental Health Association. And so the injunction to gun-control advocates to find some way to work with Wayne LaPierre after changing the subject from guns is a counsel of surrender and despair.
If the next mass-killing spree in this country is conducted by dynamite, harpoons, or crossbows, and liberals talk about gun control, Fournier and other critics will have a point. But not this time. And it really doesn’t matter if certain elites find the topic boring.

Unfortunately, we may not have to wait that long to come to grips with this issue all over again.

Looks like the mass shooting in San Bernadino may spark yet another round of Islamophobia, egged on by right-wing media. The tragedy has also ignited a fierce debate among voters about the value of politicians’ “thoughts and prayers” vs. gun control again.
WaPo’s Sean Sullivan reports “How the 2016 presidential candidates are reacting to the California mass shooting.” Maybe it’s time for the media to make Republicans flesh out the “thoughts” part of their “thoughts and prayers” bromide a bit.
The FiveThirtyEight Gang, Nate Silver, Micah Cohen and Harry Enten have a conversation to test Silver’s view that Donald Trump probably ain’t gonna get the GOP nomination. Among Silver’s more persuasive points: “Polls don’t mean much at this stage and aren’t very predictive…A polling front-runner wins more often than not when the front-runner is at 50 percent in the polls, like Hillary Clinton is now. But Trump’s at 25-30 percent nationally and a bit less than that in Iowa…It’s not just that Trump has no support from his party. It’s that the party is actively looking to stop him because he’d be a catastrophe as their nominee.” I’m going way out on a limb here and say that any crazy thing can happen, especially with such a large field of flawed candidates.
NYT’s First Draft explains why “Senate Republicans Up for Re-Election Are Urged to Keep Distance From Donald Trump“: “”Let’s face facts. Trump says what’s on his mind and that’s a problem,” wrote Ward Baker, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Our candidates will have to spend full time defending him or condemning him if that continues. And, that’s a place we never, ever want to be. It is certain that all GOP candidates will be tied in some way to our nominee, but we need not be tied to him so closely that we have to engage in permanent cleanup or distancing maneuvers.””
The Upshot’s Nate Cohn explains how the Trump campaign impacts the debate about the pros and cons of telephone vs. online polls.
NYT conservative columnist Russ Douthat concedes “Whether or not we want to call Trump a fascist outright, then, it seems fair to say that he’s closer to the “proto-fascist” zone on the political spectrum than either the average American conservative or his recent predecessors in right-wing populism…Trump may indeed be a little fascistic, but that sinister resemblance is just one part of his reality-television meets WWE-heel-turn campaign style. He isn’t actually building a fascist mass movement (he hasn’t won a primary yet!) or rallying a movement of far-right intellectuals (Ann Coulter notwithstanding). His suggestion that a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his rallies might have deserved to be roughed up was pretty ugly, but still several degrees of ugly away from the actual fascist move, which would require organizing a paramilitary force to take to the streets to brawl with the decadent supporters of our rotten legislative government.” Scant comfort, that.
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza sheds what was left of his already diaphanous nonpartisan veil to offer this advice directly to Bush III and Right to Rise, his Super-PAC: “Take all of the ad time Right to Rise has reserved in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and turn the firehose on full blast against Trump. I am talking about a sustained ad campaign whose sole aim is to disqualify Trump — not boost Bush. Sure, Bush and Right to Rise have jabbed at Trump — and a John Kasich super PAC has gone into full attack mode against The Donald — but no one other than the Bush forces have the money to maintain a sustained negative ad campaign against Trump in, at least, the first three voting states…Bush — and the broader establishment that he represents — needs to understand that these are desperate times for them. Standing on the sidelines is no longer a viable option. Waiting for someone else to do it won’t work. Someone needs to step up and try to take Trump out if, indeed, the establishment believes that The Donald as the party’s nominee is a catastrophic situation…No one is better positioned — or has less to lose — than Bush and Right to Rise. It’s time to take a chance.”
Washington Post op-ed columnist Harold Meyerson has some simpler advice for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to help build unity among Democratic progressives: “She should say that if elected president, she’d subject the Wall Streeters to a higher tax rate than anyone else.”
Crystal Ball’s Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik provide some insight into calendar considerations for any independent candidacy bid by Donald Trump, or anyone else: “The calendar will help to determine whether there’s a truly prominent third-party candidate on the ballot. Filing deadlines for independent presidential candidates vary by state, but a majority fall in August. That is after the conventions — 38 states’ deadlines are after the RNC ends on July 21 — but not so far after them that a spurned candidate could easily turn around and get on many state ballots. A candidate who wants to get on every ballot will have to start much earlier than that: For instance, the deadline for an independent to get on the ballot in Texas, the second-biggest state, is May 9. So maybe it would be helpful to the Republicans if Trump hangs around in the primary — so long as he doesn’t win the nomination — just long enough for a national third-party bid to be out of reach.”

Barbara Ehrenreich’s “What Happened to the White Working Class? Downward mobility plus racial resentment is a potent combination with disastrous consequences.” at The Nation provides one of the more instructive subtitles in recent literature about the political psychology of this huge demographic group.
Ehrenreich delves into the reasons for the downtick in white working class longevity. But her insights into the political attitudes of white workers ought to be of particular interest to Democrats who want to build an enduring progressive majority. Addressing this concern, Ehrenreich notes:

But something more profound is going on here, too. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman puts it, the “diseases” leading to excess white working-class deaths are those of “despair,” and some of the obvious causes are economic. In the last few decades, things have not been going well for working-class people of any color.
I grew up in an America where a man with a strong back–and better yet, a strong union–could reasonably expect to support a family on his own without a college degree. In 2015, those jobs are long gone, leaving only the kind of work once relegated to women and people of color available in areas like retail, landscaping, and delivery-truck driving. This means that those in the bottom 20% of white income distribution face material circumstances like those long familiar to poor blacks, including erratic employment and crowded, hazardous living spaces.

Ehrenreich adds that “the public and psychological wage” benefit white workers enjoyed under segregation, which W.E.B. Dubois cited 80 years ago, has shrunk considerably as a result of African American advancement. As she explains,

Today, there are few public spaces that are not open, at least legally speaking, to blacks, while the “best” schools are reserved for the affluent–mostly white and Asian American along with a sprinkling of other people of color to provide the fairy dust of “diversity.” While whites have lost ground economically, blacks have made gains, at least in the de jure sense. As a result, the “psychological wage” awarded to white people has been shrinking.
…The culture, too, has been inching bit by bit toward racial equality, if not, in some limited areas, black ascendency. If the stock image of the early twentieth century “Negro” was the minstrel, the role of rural simpleton in popular culture has been taken over in this century by the characters in Duck Dynasty and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. At least in the entertainment world, working-class whites are now regularly portrayed as moronic, while blacks are often hyper-articulate, street-smart, and sometimes as wealthy as Kanye West. It’s not easy to maintain the usual sense of white superiority when parts of the media are squeezing laughs from the contrast between savvy blacks and rural white bumpkins, as in the Tina Fey comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. White, presumably upper-middle class people generally conceive of these characters and plot lines, which, to a child of white working-class parents like myself, sting with condescension.

Ehrenreich continues, “Poor whites always had the comfort of knowing that someone was worse off and more despised than they were; racial subjugation was the ground under their feet, the rock they stood upon, even when their own situation was deteriorating.”
If ‘comfort’ is too strong a word for the way most white workers feel about racial advantage, the belief that your social group, once proudly middle class, is becoming an economically-depressed demographic can move political attitudes rightward. And when media stereotypes and political propaganda feed memes that people of color are benefitting disproportionately from the taxes of white workers, it feeds the resentment. Certainly the GOP has made President Obama the lightning rod for crystallizing this meme.
It’s a message built on endlessly repeated lies, and one which Democrats have thus far failed to adequately challenge and correct. While some white workers undoubtedly crave the sense of superiority their parents experienced during the segregation era, most white workers today are likely more focused on preventing their families from sinking into economic hardship. For Republicans, the task is to convert this fear into racial resentment, and they have done so on a grand scale.
Democrats are going to have to do a better job of demythologizing the GOP memes and stereotypes. It will also require a more energetic “branding” of the Republican party as the party of the wealthy, which squanders trillions of taxpayer dollars on war and corporate privileges. But there is also the even more formidable challenge of branding the Democratic party as the party of working people and their unions, the party of making the minimum wage a living wage, of full employment, comprehensive health care for all citizens and affordable higher education. That’s a political brand that could win enough white workers to insure a stable majority for many years to come.

For a sharply observed analysis of GOP candidate Donald Trump’s failed effort to secure endorsements from African American pastors, read Goldie Taylor’s Daily Beast post, “Black Pastors Confront Trump Over ‘Slurs.'” As Taylor observes,

As The Daily Beast reported over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the GOP frontrunner was set to meet Monday with dozens of high profile black pastors and hold a subsequent press conference to tout an unprecedented group endorsement. As the sun set Sunday night–and several prominent preachers backed out–many questioned whether the event would even happen.
Pressed by their congregations and by a not-so-holy war that broke out on social media, some of the invited ministers issued flat denials, saying they agreed only to discuss key issues with the candidate and that endorsements were never a part of the bargain. Two of the biggest names on the nightclub-esque promotional flier, Los Angeles-based Bishop Clarence McClendon and Brooklyn-based Bishop Hezekiah Walker, announced Sunday they would not attend. Both issued statements on social media.
…Early Monday, Trump blamed the controversy on young black activists, saying in an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “Probably some of the Black Lives Matter folks called them up and said, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be meeting with Trump because he believes all lives matter.'”
With expectations dampened, a small but resilient group of mostly black pastors stepped into a media scrum Monday afternoon to talk about the much publicized, now private meeting with Trump. There was no promised live-stream and no radio broadcast.

In other words, it was a messy little circus. Worse for Trump, it provided Taylor with an opportunity to review Trump’s record on issues of concern to African Americans:

The Republican brand is toxic in most quarters of the black community. That said, the media avail felt more like a gambit to change the optics rather than an earnest effort to bring new hope to distressed communities. Trump, who has been busy alienating black voters with his nationalistic, almost barbaric approach to the campaign trail, is clearly in need of a healing…The numbers, however, are clear. Since the late 1960s, after the passage of the civil rights acts, Republican support from black voters has wallowed in the single digits.
…Responding to an open letter from 150 faith and academic leaders published Friday by Ebony challenging the group to rethink endorsing Trump, Bishop Scott directly questioned the ethics of the magazine’s management…”By siding with a presidential candidate whose rhetoric pathologizes Black people, what message are you sending to the world about the Black lives in and outside of your congregations?” the letter read. “Which Black lives do you claim to be liberating?”
Embracing a roomful of black pastors and persuading a few to endorse him certainly aren’t enough to erase what has been–arguably–Trump’s history of racial animus and outright bigotry…Despite his claims, one could argue that Trump has been in a position to create jobs in predominantly African American communities and simply has not done so in any meaningful way. His office towers, residential units, and golf resorts are built almost exclusively in wealthy white enclaves.

“As I sat cross-legged holding a recorder in front of the bank of microphones Monday,” Taylor continues, “I wondered why Trump’s decades-long career as a real estate developer has yielded almost no investments in the black community. A review of financial records revealed that few, if any, charitable contributions have been given to programs that directly benefit African American children. Then, too, according to the company website, there is not a single black executive or key senior leader at The Trump Organization.”
As you might expect, there are accounts of Trump unleashing torrents of bigotry toward African Americans. Taylor cites one example: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” he famously told a colleague. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
“Long before he recklessly retweeted false statistics that painted black people as criminally pathological,” Taylor adds. “Trump was sued for housing discrimination. And there are reports that black employees at an Atlantic City property were kept out of view whenever Trump visited.”
Not a record that is likely to inspire significant numbers of America’s most reliably progressive constituency to suddenly embrace a Republican candidate for president. Thing is, Trump may not be the worst of his GOP colleagues, when it comes to racial injustice, just the loudest. Every other GOP candidate has provided tacit, if not aggressively overt support for suppression of African American votes, and Trump has said or done nothing to stand up against it.

At Washington Monthly Political Animal, Martin Longman’s The Media Treatment of the Clintons Never Improves comments on an Associated Press article which has been put up on the Fox News website with a headline that appears designed to disparage Hillary Clinton. As Longman writes,

Let’s take a look at this Associated Press piece that is being prominently featured at the Fox News website. The headline writers certainly tried to make it appealing to those who are opposed to another Clinton presidency: Clinton opened State Department office to dozens of corporate donors, Dem fundraisers.
But, once you open the article and start reading, you encounter the following disclaimer (emphasis mine):
it’s basically a smear to publish a piece like this one from the Associated Press, especially when you are unwilling to spell out your double standard and really justify the rationale behind it. And the headline writers take advantage, too, to get the clicks they’re after.
This story says that Hillary Clinton did nothing unusual, illegal, or even unethical, but that’s not the impression the story and the headline leaves, is it?
Haven’t we seen enough of this kind of media treatment of the Clintons over the years?

A Fox News headline distortion is no surprise. But somehow, we still expect better from AP. The nation’s most widely-read news agency has nurtured and featured many fine writers over the years, and lowering its standards to allow poorly-sourced Hillary-bashing is a disappointment.

Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz addresses the formidable challenges facing Democrats, not only in winning the 2016 presidential election, but also in reducing the GOP’s edge down-ballot\.

…The realities and the contradictions of the politics of this divided era…have left Democrats in control of the White House and big cities and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and a majority of state governments. These contradictions and the challenges for both parties are well explored in the new book, “America Ascendant,” by Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg.
Not surprisingly, given his partisan leanings, Greenberg is and long has been bearish about a Republican Party that he sees as fighting against irreversible trends in the makeup and attitudes of the future America. But those conclusions do not lead him to offer unabashed enthusiasm for the future of the Democrats at a time of wrenching economic and cultural changes.
Greenberg sees his own party as having fallen short in addressing many of the economic and other conditions that have soured so many people on a political system that they feel has ignored their interests in favor of the privileged or the elites.
He argues that, unless Democrats find a way to break through the disaffection and indifference and deal with the structural economic issues, their ability to energize enough support to command a true governing majority will continue to escape them. As he writes, “The rising American electorate could be the Democrats’ salvation — but that electorate first has to be engaged and motivated to vote.”

As Bill Clinton’s pollster in the 1992 presidential campaign, which Balz notes “restored the Democrats to power in the White House, after Republicans had held it for 20 of the previous 24 years,” Greenberg provided a unique perspective on Clinton’s political skills as “a new Democrat” in a telephone interview with Balz.

…He was best known for his advocacy of welfare and education reform…But Greenberg noted that Clinton also has had a strong streak of populism, advocating higher taxes on the rich, decrying the salaries of chief executives and declaring his roots in the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Clinton was both left and right at the same time, and in doing so he managed to expand the appeal of his party.
“Clinton had a formula for making the Democratic Party electable nationally,” Greenberg said. The formula included taking advantage of some of the demographic and voting trends of the time — greater support for Democrats among college-educated women and suburban voters — while bringing back some of the white industrial-class workers who had defected to Reagan and the Republicans.

Balz adds that Clinton was instrumental in converting states in “the industrial heartland and elsewhere,” including Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California and New Jersey, “from general election battlegrounds into Democratic strongholds. He also helped Democrats find ways to carry Ohio in four of the past six presidential elections.”
President Obama inherited a much more difficult set of economic challenges, explains Greenbers, including widening economic inequality, as well as the Bush meltdown. “His economic project was the recovery,” Greenberg said of Obama. “But that only takes you back to where we were. What I argue is that there are big structural economic and social problems, and the reason why this new majority is disengaged is because Democratic leaders have not addressed these problems.”
“The huge losses suffered by Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections,” explains Balz, “have put Republicans in control of the House and the Senate and expanded their hold on a majority of the governorships…” However, says Balz, “Greenberg still sees a much brighter future for the Democrats than for the Republicans. But he acknowledged that he turned out to have been overly bullish about his party’s prospects in 2014. “We made assumptions that 2010 was atypical,” he said. “I didn’t think ’14 would be as bad as ’10. I didn’t think this new majority would be as disengaged as it was in ’14.”
Balls call it “a lesson worth remembering for Democrats as they watch the Republicans struggle among themselves. But the stakes couldn’t be higher for Democrats, and for the nation, as Balz explains:

If Republicans win the presidency in 2016, they would then control nearly everything — the White House, the House, probably the Senate and certainly a majority of governorships. If Democrats hold the White House, they might win the Senate but probably would not have the House and would be in a distinct minority in the states. If they lose the White House, they would be virtually wiped out of power.
For Democrats, that means a victory in the general election still would represent only a down payment on the future and a continuing struggle to implement the kind of progressive economic agenda that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have begun to talk about in their campaigns.

The challenge for Democrats is clear, says Balz: “…Even if Democrats win the White House next year, they must still build down from there, and from their urban base build outward. Unless they do that, neither Democrats nor Republicans will be able to claim the kind of majority support that they desire — and the country will remain divided, at odds, and not easily governed.”
Also in the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne, Jr. observes in his latest column,

One of the tasks of political analysis is to make sense of conflicting information, and a new book by Stanley Greenberg, who was a political scientist before he became a Democratic pollster, does not shy away from the messiness of our social and electoral landscape. My Dickensian “best of times, worst of times” analysis is drawn partly from Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant.” In it Greenberg sees Republicans in a long-term demographic “death spiral.” But the book is also unsparing in acknowledging that Democratic weaknesses among older white and rural voters leave the GOP “almost unopposed in nearly half of the states.”

Dionne applauds Greenberg’s “resistance to gloom about America’s future,” and continues, “only the dysfunction of our politics will keep our country from having another good century. Yes, we face real threats, including terrorism. But we are not paying enough attention to our strengths, including the advantages of a social diversity that is causing such unease among many of our fellow citizens.” Further, says Dionne,

The power of Greenberg’s analysis is that he doesn’t dismiss the anger of these Americans, so many of whom are rallying to Donald Trump. Written before Trump’s rise, the book doesn’t mention him, but Greenberg treats what has become the Trump constituency with a heartfelt empathy.
The sorts of voters who rally to Trump have reason to be upset, he says, because the very economic and social changes that contribute to growth also create “stark problems for people and the country that leave the public seething, frustrated, and pessimistic about the future . . . .” There are no wage gains for most, “working-class men have been left marginalized,” and the proportion of children being born to single parents has soared.
Greenberg is open to changes in our mores and insists that progressive policies on family leave, pay, taxes and prekindergarten programs are more plausible responses to these problems than sermonizing. But if his book provides Democrats with good news about their national political advantages, it pointedly challenges them to address rather than ignore or dismiss the reasons for the thunder on the right.

Dionne concludes on a note of optimism and challenge: “‘The citizenry is ready for a cleansing era of reform that allows America to realize its promise,'” Greenberg writes. It would be helpful if the campaign gave us more reason to think he’s right.” A worthy challenge, and one which cries out for bold Democratic leadership.

Sean McElwee probes “The truth about the white working class: Why it’s really allergic to voting for Democrats” at Salon.com. Among McElwee’s findings, “I examined raw vote shares among working class whites, and then vote shares among working class whites in the South (the former 11 states of the Confederacy) and non-South. Immediately, it is obvious that a key divide is the South/non-South distinction: only 28 percent of Southern working class whites identify as Democratic, compared with 40 percent of non-South working class whites.” McElwee also makes a strong case that Dems have failed to register, educate and turn out low-income voters in their base.
Syndicated Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. observes, “One of the tasks of political analysis is to make sense of conflicting information, and a new book by Stanley Greenberg, who was a political scientist before he became a Democratic pollster, does not shy away from the messiness of our social and electoral landscape. My Dickensian “best of times, worst of times” analysis is drawn partly from Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant.” In it Greenberg sees Republicans in a long-term demographic “death spiral.” But the book is also unsparing in acknowledging that Democratic weaknesses among older white and rural voters leave the GOP “almost unopposed in nearly half of the states.””
It may be wishful thinking on the part of Republican strategists, but there is already talk in at least one conservative e-rag that the “GOP establishment to back Hillary if Trump nominee.”
But has the long-awaited tanking of Trump finally begun? It looks like his Trumped-up African American pastors endorsement extravaganza has been scaled back.
Trump has denied that he recently mocked a physically-disabled reporter. But these two photos from the incident raise doubts. People with disabilities, their families and friends include a hefty part of the voting public. In 2010 there were more than 56 million disabled people in the U.S, according to the Census.
At Daily Kos Steve Singiser considers an interesting question:, “Another barrier to Democratic down-ballot majorities: Are Democratic voters more ‘bipartisan’?” and notes, “there is more to the gradual decline of Democratic support at the state legislative level than mere gerrymandering. This week, we explore the possibility that Democrats are hamstrung, even if slightly, by a tendency of their “soft” supporters being more willing to reach across the aisle and support legislative Republicans than the converse. Indeed, we have heard much about asymmetric polarization. The decline in split-ticket voting (which has been well documented), it appears, may be happening asymmetrically, as well.” Singer and Kos crunched relevant data and found that only 13.4 percent of state legislative seats are in ‘split ticket’ legislative districts, with 62 percent held by Republican officeholders occupying seats carried by President Obama in 2012. Only 38 percent were Democratic officeholders in districts carried by Romney in 2012.
Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast post, “The GOP’s Climate Moderates Are Losing” explains that the few GOP presidential candidates who address climate change seriously have no real chance of nomination — which should help Democrats turn out and win young voters.
Does Rand Paul’s dismal performance as a presidential candidate make his senate seat vulnerable? Joseph Gerth reports at the Louisville Courier Journal that Democrats are shopping around for a challenger. “Talk in the party has largely settled around actress Ashley Judd and state Veterans Affairs Commissioner Heather French Henry, and there are some in the party who are holding out hope that some wealthy business person who’s not been involved in politics before will step forward.” Despite recent Democratic Kentucky Democratic losses, state party Chair Patrick Hill adds, “”We have some strong candidates who might be able to take advantage of some excitement on the national level.” John Cheves of the Lexington Herald Leader reports that the just re-elected Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes “has declined to say if she’ll make another run for higher office, such as challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in his re-election bid next year.” If Clinton is nominated the Democrats’ 2016 candidate, however, she will certainly consider running to take advantage of the possibility of a strong turnout of women.
Hunter Walker explains why “The shooting at Planned Parenthood put GOP 2016 hopefuls in a ‘politically uncomfortable’ position” at Yahoo.com.