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.

A brutal truth about political messaging from NY Times frequent commenter Mathew Carnicelli: “I think the Democrats are hideous at shaping message,” he said. “They try something for about 10 minutes and when it doesn’t poll well immediately, they drop it. With Republicans, they keep repeating the same message until people believe them.”
Alternet’s Kali Holloway explains “How Delusional Nostalgia Is Killing the White Working Class.” Holloway rounds up data from several public opinion surveys, including The 2015 American Values Survey, and notes “On “reverse racism,” half of white Americans overall agree “discrimination against whites is as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” But the socioeconomic divide on this opinion is fairly vast. Among working-class whites, a solid majority, 60 percent, believe the tables have turned and anti-white discrimination equals that faced by other historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. But just 36 percent of college-educated white Americans cosigned this idea. Blacks and Hispanics overwhelmingly reject the notion, by 75 and 71 percent, respectively.”
Just a few weeks before he leaves office, outgoing Democratic Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky has issued an executive order that immediately granted the right to vote to about 140,000 nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences. As Erik Eckholm reports at the NYT, “Kentucky had been one of just three states imposing a lifetime voting ban on felons unless they received a special exemption from the governor. Florida and Iowa still carry the lifetime ban…Convicted criminals in Maine and Vermont do not lose their franchise in the first place and can cast ballots from prison….Despite the policy changes in many states, almost six million Americans are prohibited from voting because of felony offenses, according to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group. The racial disparity is acute: Nationwide, the organization estimates, one in 13 black men cannot vote, a far higher rate than for other groups.”
At The Nation Juan Cole weighs in on the terminology dust-up regarding terrorists-who-claim-to-be-Muslims: “For Baghdadi to call his band of human traffickers, rapists, drug smugglers, and looters the “Islamic State” is rather like a Mexican drug cartel adopting the moniker “the Vatican,” and our adopting that term thereafter (“The Vatican kidnapped 30 people today”) when reporting on its violence. Journalists would resist such linguistic coercion in the case of Catholics; they should resist it in the case of Muslims as well.” Further, adds Cole, “The language of war elevates terrorists to the very status to which they aspire: that of legitimate combatants…The young men recruited by the late petty thief Abdelhamid Abaaoud were, it should go without saying, not soldiers; they were delinquents outfitted with bombs and machine guns instead of stilettos…Abaaoud and his partners in crime deserve no military stripes.”
Arit John of Bloomberg explains “How Snapchat fits into Bernie Sanders’s strategy,” and provides insight into how the platform can be used in political campaigns. “…There is some data to indicate that, while 2016 might not be the Snapchat election, it is, at least, a natural fit for a candidate such as Sanders. Thirty-seven percent of the app’s 100 million daily users are 18- to 24-year-olds, according to the company. After the Aug. 6 Republican debate, Snapchat said 18- to 24-year-olds were more likely to watch the platform’s five-minute “live story” of the debate than watch the debate live on television. Two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-old Snapchat users are likely voters and about a third of all 18- to 34-year-old likely voters use the app, according to an online poll commissioned by Snapchat and conducted by Global Strategy Group and Public Opinion Strategies from Oct. 15-25.”
AP News Wire’s “Democrats planning multi-year strategy to recapture seats” reports on the DNC’s 19-page comeback plan. “Across the nation, Democrats hold 3,172 of the 7,383 seats in state legislatures, or 43 percent. Of the 99 legislative chambers, Democrats only have a majority in 30…The report says the party needs to develop and deploy a “clear, values-based message,” strengthen state parties, protect the right to vote, prepare for redistricting after the 2020 elections and recruit a new generation of leaders.”
Ezra Klein and Alan Abramowitz engage in dialogue at Vox about Nate Silver’s contention that Trump most likely won’t win his party’s nomination. Abramowitz is not so sure, and cites indicators of Trump’s strength: “What I think is different is Republicans are tuned in to a much greater degree than they were at this point in previous nomination contests. You can see that in polling when you ask whether voters are paying attention, and you can see that in ratings for the debates. The idea that voters aren’t tuned in yet and won’t make up their minds till January or later may not prove as true as it has in the past…Because of the higher level of interest and attention this year, these early polls may be more predictive of what’s likely to happen…Trump isn’t only leading in national polling. He’s leading in every state poll I’ve seen. He seems to be ahead in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, Nevada.”
At Salon.com Heather Digby Parton addresses concerns about the term “fascism” being used too loosely in describing Donald Trump, and offers plenty of examples indicating he merits the term. Parton quotes CNN’s M.J. Lee: “”Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it,” tweeted Max Boot, a conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is advising Marco Rubio…”Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is fascism. Period. Nothing else to call it,” Jeb Bush national security adviser John Noonan wrote on Twitter…Conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who has endorsed Ted Cruz, also used the “F” word last week: “If Obama proposed the same religion registry as Trump every conservative in the country would call it what it is — creeping fascism. Parton adds,”…In his book, “Rush, Newspeak and Fascism” David Neiwert explained that the dictionary definition of the word often leaves out the most important characteristics of the philosophy, which are “its claims to represent the “true character” of the respective national identities among which it arises; and its mythic core of national rebirth — not to mention its corporatist component, its anti-liberalism, its glorification of violence and its contempt for weakness.” If that’s not Donald Trump I don’t know what is.”
One shudders to think who will show for this.

In his National Journal article, “Forget the 2016 Polls: Nobody Knows Anything Yet,” S.V. Dáte writes, “At the same point in the 2012 race, just over two months be­fore the Iowa caucuses, pizza-chain ex­ec­ut­ive Her­man Cain had a clear lead in Iowa, while even­tu­al winner Rick San­tor­um was at 4 per­cent.”
Citing “large per­cent­ages of re­spond­ents who say they still have not settled on a can­did­ate,” Dáte notes some interesting technical reasons why early polling is less influential:

Layered onto this fun­da­ment­al lack of deep voter in­terest are the lo­gist­ic­al dif­fi­culties in mod­ern polit­ic­al polling. More and more Amer­ic­ans do not have home land­lines any­more, only cell phones. And those num­bers, by law, must be manu­ally dialed, driv­ing up costs. The ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­ans, re­gard­less of what type of phone they have, do not an­swer in­com­ing num­bers they don’t re­cog­nize. These factors pro­duce a re­sponse rate in sur­veys of 8 per­cent, com­pared to 80 per­cent or so a few dec­ades ago.
And then there are the sample sizes, of­ten so small that the mar­gins of er­ror are lar­ger than the spreads among a host of can­did­ates. An ABC News/Wash­ing­ton Post poll re­leased this week­end had Trump lead­ing na­tion­ally with 32 per­cent, Car­son in second at 22 per­cent, and then 10 can­did­ates ran­ging from Sen. Marco Ru­bio at 11 per­cent down to Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham and former Sen. Rick San­tor­um at 1 per­cent.
But be­cause the sample size of 423 Re­pub­lic­an re­spond­ents pro­duces a 5.5-point mar­gin of er­ror, those 10 can­did­ates from Ru­bio to San­tor­um were stat­ist­ic­ally tied.
John Dick, founder of the polling and re­search firm Civic Sci­ence, said such de­pend­ence on ob­vi­ously im­pre­cise sur­veys is ac­tu­ally do­ing voters a dis­ser­vice. “It is cat­egor­ic­ally ir­re­spons­ible, in my opin­ion,” Dick said.

As with church attendance and charitable contributions, notes Dáte, there is also the tendency of too many poll respondents to say they will vote, but don’t show up at the polls on election day. “A Fox News poll re­leased on Sunday sim­il­arly had 79 per­cent of re­spond­ents say­ing they are likely to vote…If 77 or 79 per­cent of re­gistered voters truly wind up vot­ing in their primar­ies, it would shat­ter turnout re­cords across the coun­try.”
The early polls are consequential in other ways. Dáte acknowledges the power of early polls in attracting contributions and in selecting those who get to participate in televised debates, which has played a significant role in the subsequent allocation of media attention.
The polls are of interest to the candidates themselves as a way to pinpoint weaknesses with different demographic groups, define the popularity of policy positions and geographic vulnerabilities. But for those following political campaigns, using the polls to determine who is actually leading the horserace is pretty much a waste of time.

Hip hop artist and social activist Killer Mike has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for President. Here is his introduction of Sanders at an Atlanta rally, at which he also called for free education, universal health care and restoration of the Voting Rights Act.

At The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky posts what may be the best article written anywhere about Donald Trump’s campaign, “Who in GOP Will Finally Stop Trump?: Party leaders could summon the courage of their predecessor Margaret Chase Smith, who stood up to Joseph McCarthy when it mattered. That is, if any of them have the stones to do it.”

I’m still not sure it’s 100 percent clear that Donald Trump really understands that he’s a neo-fascist. He may not know enough history to be fully aware of the now-undeniable odor of his rhetoric and campaign. He may think a member of a racial minority being beat up and called a “n***r” by his racial-majority supporters at a rally, and his own joking about it, is just a little incident; something for which there’s no larger historical context. I know he allegedly had the book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed, but I still think he’s doing most of this on instinct rather than with intellectual intention because I doubt he knows enough about fascism for it to be the latter.
But stop and think about this: I just wrote a paragraph musing on whether the leading candidate for president of the United States from one of our two major parties is knowingly fascist. We’re at the point where we’re debating whether the Republican Party frontrunner is or is not objectively a fascist.

Trump’s GOP opponents are either too intimidated or incapable of calling him out. Of the Republican candidates, notes Tomasky, only former Gov. Jim Gilmore has spoken out against Trump’s “fascist talk.” Where are the others, asks Tomasky? Do any of them have the mettle that it took to speak out against McCarthyism?

And that brings us to the question: Who in the Republican Party is going to step up here? Because this is A Moment for the GOP, make no mistake. It’s a historical moment, and when your leading candidate is joking about his supporters beating people up at rallies and musing about religious ID cards for around (ahem) 6 million of your citizens, it’s time to say something.
Reince Priebus, after the last election, called on his party to be more inclusive. Is this what you had in mind, Reince? How about the other leading candidates? Is this where you want your party to be taken? Karl Rove and others in the professional political class–will they say anything, if not out of moral principle then at least to try to protect their party’s candidates from down-ticket disaster?
And most of all, what about the party’s graybeards and elder statesmen? Looking at you, John McCain. How about a little “Straight Talk” now, about a man who proposes to come into your state, where there are an estimated 300,000 or so unauthorized immigrants, and break up families because one of them’s illegal and the other is not?

The GOP has deliberately pandered to and exacerbated the worst prejudices of their voters. As Tomasky notes, “this predicament raises the interesting question of how one-third of their voters came to admire a neo-fascist and open racist in the first place. Gee, it can’t have anything to do with the kind of rhetoric and “harmless jokes” about the current president and about the 47 percent that Republican leaders have winked at for seven years, can it?”
If the Republicans need a role model to end their groveling to bigotry, Tomasky has one:

There’s precedent for the courageous path, should anyone choose to take it. On Feb. 9, 1950, Joe McCarthy gave his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, charging that communists were working in the State Department. The months that followed were very much like these last five months of the Trump ascendancy, as the official party stood mute in the face of the hysteria created by one of its number.
Then in June, one Republican senator said “enough.” Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was a freshman senator, having taken her husband’s seat. She took to the Senate floor and gave a 15-minute speech (PDF), which has gone down in history as her “Declaration of Conscience,” that all of us, starting with leading Republicans, ought to be reading this week. Two choice excerpts:
“As a Republican, I say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the Republican Party faces a challenge today that is not unlike the challenge which it faced back in Lincoln’s day. The Republican Party so successfully met that challenge that it emerged from the Civil War as the champion of a united nation–in addition to being a party which unrelentingly fought loose spending and loose programs.”
“The Democratic administration has greatly lost the confidence of the American people… Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

Tomasky notes that six of Sen. Chase’s fellow Republicans “signed with her a statement of principles that began: “We are Republicans. But we are Americans first.” So that’s what people can do in the face of extremism, if they want to.” Those seven Republicans stood up for American values and earned a place of honor in our history as genuine patriots who put their country before politics.
Where, we must ask, are their heirs?