Now that we have something more accurate than exit polls for examining the 2022 midterms, it’s time for a reconsideration of that election’s implications, as I noted at New York:

National elections are complicated phenomena. You can determine the results and their immediate consequences soon enough. But the internal dynamics of the electorate and the implications for future elections can take a while to grasp. At first, all you have are imperfect exit polls and pundit insights, and they sometimes produce equally imperfect conventional wisdom.

That’s what happened in the 2022 midterms. We know that Republicans managed narrowly to flip the U.S. House but fell short of expectations in that chamber, as well as in the U.S. Senate and to some extent state contests. There was a lot of talk about Democrats benefiting from highly motivated pro-choice voters upset about the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and Republicans suffering from extremist Senate candidates promoted by Donald Trump. Now we’re getting a clearer picture thanks to the Pew Research Center’s careful analysis of validated voters (those saying they voted and for whom Pew found voter files) from the midterms:

“In midterm elections that yielded mixed results for both parties, Republicans won the popular vote for the U.S. House of Representatives largely on the strength of higher turnout.

“A new Pew Research Center analysis of verified voters and nonvoters in 2022, 2020, 2018 and 2016 finds that partisan differences in turnout — rather than vote switching between parties — account for most of the Republican gains in voting for the House last year.”

So while Democratic turnout may have exceeded expectations, it didn’t exceed Republican turnout. And voters who did turn out overwhelmingly stayed with their own party:

“Overall, 68% of those who voted in the 2020 presidential election turned out to vote in the 2022 midterms. Former President Donald Trump’s voters turned out at a higher rate in 2022 (71%) than did President Joe Biden’s voters (67%) …

“Relatively small shares of voters defected from their partisan affiliation or 2020 presidential vote. Among those who voted for both president in 2020 and for a House representative in 2022, just 6% crossed party lines between elections or voted for third-party candidates in either election.”

Viewed in total isolation, this might be viewed as good news for Republicans going forward; that was how the New York Times interpreted the Pew numbers:

“The report serves as a warning sign for Democrats ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with early polls pointing toward a possible rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.

“Though Democrats maintained control of the Senate, all but one of their governor’s mansions and only narrowly lost the House, the Pew data shows that a larger percentage of voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2020 cast ballots in November than those who backed Mr. Biden did. People who had voted in past elections but sat out 2022 were overwhelmingly Democrats.”

But the midterm results and the Pew data on who voted and for whom should emphatically not be viewed in isolation from historic trends. There were two data points supporting the expectation that a “red wave” would form in November 2022. The first was the “midterm falloff” typically experienced by Democratic-leaning voter groups, particularly young and minority voters who have never participated in non-presidential elections in numbers matching the older and whiter voters who now lean Republican. The second is that traditional midterm voter backlash almost always afflicts the party that controls the White House. What the Pew analysis shows us is that the first phenomenon (a Democratic turnout falloff) indeed occurred, but the second (significant vote-switching away from Joe Biden’s party) largely didn’t. As so you had a small Republican ripple instead of a wave.

The other side of the “midterm falloff” coin is that turnout by pro-Democratic voting groups tends to improve in presidential elections. All else being equal, that means if Democrats can again hang onto their voters and they turn out at a higher rate, they should have an advantage in 2024. To put it another way, they should have lost significant ground between 2020 and 2022 but didn’t. The fact that Democrats didn’t do as well as they did in 2018, which the Times analysis emphasized, is extremely unsurprising: Republicans controlled the White House then, and Democrats did produce some vote-switching in their favor.

The exceptional party loyalty exhibited by 2022 voters found by Pew, it should be mentioned, refutes some of the impressions of unusual voter trends that pundits discerned right after the elections, some of them derived from iffy exit-poll findings. The exits showed Democrats carrying women by a robust eight-point margin (53 percent to 45 percent), which reinforced the belief the abortion issue changed the results significantly. The validated voter data showed Democrats carrying women by a more modest three-point margin (51 percent to 48 percent). On the other side of the ledger, exit polls showed Republicans winning 13 percent of the Black vote, more than double the percentage the GOP won in 2018. But Pew’s validated voter data showed Republicans winning just 5 percent of the Black vote, a point less than they won in 2018.

To be very clear, the Democratic advantage in 2024 that I’ve inferred from the Pew data is what would happen if only turnout patterns change in that election. Everything — from conditions in the country, issue salience, and the quality of candidates and campaigns — may not stay the same, which could mean a narrow GOP victory or the first comfortable win for Democrats (or for either party) since 2008. But there’s a reason Democrats were thrilled to come out of the midterms without bigger losses than they sustained, and there’s no reason to assume their position will become more tenuous in a presidential year.

At Daily Kos, Joan McCarter reports on ‘No Labels” and their embrace of “transparency” and writes that “NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard was valiantly trying to get No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson to answer any questions at all about the group’s funders, its deliberations on running a third-party presidential ticket, and how they’ll ensure they don’t spoil the 2024 race and put Donald Trump back in the White House. Jacobson was clearly uncomfortable being confronted with these questions and was awkwardly evasive while insisting that the group’s aims are totally transparent. Here’s a snippet tweeted by NBC.”

McCarter notes further, “You have no primaries or caucuses,” Hillyard pointed out. “There are rich people that are funneling millions of dollars to your effort. Why should the public trust that this is nothing short of a backroom deal?” Just look at the people who have been involved in this for 13 years, Jacobson answered, which is not an answer. It is, however, instructive; after all, Joe Lieberman is one of those people.

Hillyard also pointed out that No Labels is trying to have it both ways, insisting that it isn’t a political party so that it doesn’t have to disclose its donors. Jacobson tried to deflect, saying they aren’t a party but are “building a movement of the common sense majority” (here we go again) “and we’re getting ballot access in the 50 states, and we will never run a campaign.” Which is … what being on the ballot means: a campaign.”

McCarter’s article also provides this video clip from Hillyard’s interview of Jacobsen:

Thanks to Hillyard for reminding television audiences what good political reporting looks like.

In “A Liberalism That Builds Power,” David Dayne writes at The American Prospect: “Three major laws—the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—aim to subsidize domestic manufacturing and the supports underlying it. In the first few months, the public outlays have been matched by a surge of private investment, faster than any analyst expected….Unlike with other economic interventions, the Biden administration has strived to hit multiple policy goals in implementing these laws. Grants from the Department of Energy to support battery minerals projects require a community benefits plan, with labor and stakeholder engagement, diversity goals, and support for marginalized groups. Department of Commerce subsidies for domestic semiconductor facilities under the CHIPS Act had applicants lay out plans for access to child care. And Biden’s team is wielding other tools, like incentive bonuses, Buy and Build America mandates, prevailing-wage requirements, and even profit-sharing schemes, to make sure this industrial revolution benefits workers and communities, not just executives and financiers….This has spurred a backlash from corners of the center-left punditocracy. Combining domestic manufacturing, decarbonization, union jobs, and economic justice muddles the picture, say opinion leaders (and Prospect alumni) Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias. They believe that initiating “a liberalism that builds” demands precisely the opposite approach: loosening cumbersome bureaucracy, diminishing public input, and tearing down any barrier to the national abundance we need. These traditionally libertarian preoccupations are finding purchase among self-described “supply-side progressives.”….For decades, America delivered economic development subsidies without strings attached. Wall Street–fueled private corporations were first in line for those gifts, and they hoarded them. Whatever cheap goods or McJobs we got out of that transaction meant little without the shared prosperity and sustainability that America needs….A better option involves the government actively supporting the very groups that have been left out of past economic transitions, building the necessary coalition for long-term transformation. Success is not guaranteed—democracy is difficult—but the laissez-faire approach guarantees failure. In order to actually remove the barriers that have hollowed out our industrial base, the answer is not a liberalism that builds, but a liberalism that builds power.”

Geoffrey Skelley explains why “No Labels Is Chasing A Fantasy” at FiveThirtyEight: “It’s too early to evaluate whether No Labels’s candidate could be a spoiler for the Democratic nominee, but the group’s belief that it could mount a victorious campaign rests on several misconceptions about contemporary politics. First and foremost, the share of the electorate made up by independent moderates isn’t large enough to win a presidential election. Secondly, despite distaste for Biden and Trump, each remains well-liked by his party, reducing the potential draw of a No Labels candidate. Meanwhile, the group’s aim of markedly increasing turnout over 2020’s record-high mark will require the difficult task of getting even more low-propensity voters to turn out. Lastly, finding a candidate who could maximize No Labels’s appeal won’t be easy because there’s nobody named “moderate independent” who embodies the varied preferences held by voters disenchanted by the idea of another Biden-Trump matchup….No Labels can point to polling that ostensibly suggests a third-party bid could be competitive in November 2024. For example, a June survey by Suffolk University/USA Today found that 23 percent of registered voters said they’d support a “third party candidate” over Biden (34 percent) or Trump (32 percent). Similarly, No Labels’s own polling in December found 20 percent would back a “moderate independent,” not far behind Trump (33 percent) or Biden (28 percent)….But these numbers form more of a very hypothetical ceiling than a solid foundation for a new campaign. Frankly, an individual who embodies most of the values held by the politically mixed group of voters who said they’d support a third party or moderate independent probably doesn’t exist. As CNN’s polling analyst Ariel Edwards-Levy recently put it, “the nebulous idea of an alternative to the actual candidates” isn’t going to be on the ballot next year….From a public relations standpoint, No Labels understandably needs to maintain a veneer of competitiveness as it seeks to raise money and gain support. It could also have a long-term goal of backing candidates for president and down-ballot races in years to come, too. But the overwhelming likelihood is that a Democrat or Republican will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, and that a No Labels-backed candidacy will not have carried a single state in the 2024 election.”

From “Young voters are getting less likely to identify as Dems. It spells trouble for Biden” by Myah ward at Politico: “Joe Biden’s Gen Z whisperer has a warning for the president: Get going on addressing youth enthusiasm now, or it may be too late….John Della Volpe, one of the Biden 2020 campaign pollsters, has issued these admonitions in briefings with the president’s reelection team and in conversations with top White House aides….Having analyzed youth voter data for more than two decades, he told West Wing Playbook that voters under 30 today are less likely to identify as Democrats compared to spring 2019. More consider themselves independents, and fewer see politics as a “meaningful way to create change.”….The last three cycles saw historic levels of youth participation — and the cohort is as progressive as ever — but if these voters stay home in 2024 as a result of these shifts in attitudes, Della Volpe said, it could doom the incumbent president and Democrats….“I feel like it’s a responsibility to ring this alarm now, when there’s time to do something about it,” said Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. “These voters gotta buy into the values of the party and the candidates … and to appreciate the fact that politics can make a difference. You can’t do that in a full-week ad buy after Labor Day.” Meanwhile, Hannah Hartig, Andrews Daniller, Scott Keeter and Ted Van Green report at the Pew Research Center that, in the 2022 midterm elections “Voters under 30 continued to strongly support the Democratic Party, voting 68% to 31% for Democratic candidates. But this margin was somewhat narrower than in 2018. Republicans benefitted more from significant drop off in voter turnout among younger age groups between 2018 and 2022, since young voters tend to support Democrats. Voters under 30 accounted for 10% of the electorate in 2022 – similar to their share of all voters in 2018 (11%), but down from 2020 (14%).”

An update on the participation of women in the U.S. Congress as a result of the 2022 midterm elections from the  Center for American women and Politics; “As a result of the 2022 election, the number of women serving in the U.S. Congress marks a new high of 149 (106D, 42R, 1Ind), with women holding 27.9% of all seats; 124 (91D, 33R) women serve in the U.S. House, marking a new record in that chamber, while the 25 (15D, 9R, 1Ind) women serving in the U.S. Senate falls one short of the record. In addition, 4 (2D, 2R) women serve as non-voting delegates to the U.S. House….The number of women in the U.S. Congress increased by two (from 147 to 149) from Election Day 2022 to the January 2023, with net gains of one woman in both the U.S. House (from 123 to 124) and Senate (from 24 to 25). The number of Democratic congresswomen decreased by one overall (from 107 to 106) and in the Senate (from 16 to 15), and stayed the same in the House (91) from Election Day 2022 to the beginning of the 118th Congress (2023-2025).1 The number of Republican women increased by two overall (from 40 to 42) and by one in both the House (from 32 to 33) and Senate (from 8 to 9)….The small gains for Republican women in Congress as a result of the 2022 election have not yielded a significant increase in their representation within their caucus. As of January 3, 2023, women are 15.5% of the Republican members of the 118th Congress, nearly equal to their representation (15.2%) among congressional Republicans as of Election Day 2022. Likewise, Democratic women’s representation among Democratic members is almost equal between Election Day 2022 (39.9%) to the beginning of the 118th Congress (40.8%). Women continue to be significantly better represented among Democrats than Republicans in Congress, especially in the U.S. House.” Among the “multiple factors that likely contributed to this outcome”: “While the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the federal protections of abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in late June 2022 mobilized women voters and activists,it came after most candidate filing deadlines had passed. The continued efforts to both preserve and restrict abortion rights at the state and federal levels could have more notable influence in women’s candidacy calculations in future cycles.’

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, co-founder and politics editor of  The Liberal Patriot, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

On Tuesday, John Halpin introduced our new survey project on the important issues and political ideas shaping the 2024 presidential election. He recounted some of the findings from our initial 3,000 voter survey, the first of five we plan to do over the next year or so.

I’ll do the same here, focusing on a set of questions we asked to tap voters’ views on three culturally freighted issues that are sure to loom large in the impending campaign: immigration, climate, and transgender controversies. The data strongly indicate that Democrats’ positions on these issues appear to correspond closely to the views of the left of the party but not to the views of the rest of the electorate, especially those voters who occupy the electorate’s center ground.

Taking immigration first, we asked voters to choose from three options:

1. People around the world have the right to claim asylum and America should welcome more immigrants into the country;
2. America needs to secure its borders and create more legal and managed immigration paths to bring in skilled professionals and workers to help our economy grow; or
3. America needs to close its borders to outsiders and reduce all levels of immigration.

Under a quarter (24 percent) chose the first option, emphasizing the right to asylum and admitting more immigrants, which is closely associated with the Democratic Party. By far the most popular option was the second one, emphasizing border security and skilled immigration, which 59 percent favored. The draconian third option, which favors just closing the border and reducing all immigration was chosen by 17 percent. The latter two positions outnumber the permissive first position by three to one.

Among moderates, the second position was chosen by an overwhelming 66 percent and just 18 percent favored the permissive first position, not much more than the 16 percent who favor the draconian third position. Among the swing-y pure independent group, the story was similar: 62 percent chose the second position and the same number—19 percent—chose the first and third positions.

It’s clear Democrats do not occupy the center ground here.

Turning to climate and energy, we offered voters these three choices:

1. We need a rapid green transition to end the use of fossil fuels and replace them with fully renewable energy sources;
2. We need an “all-of-the above” strategy that provides abundant and cheap energy from multiple sources including oil and gas to renewables to advanced nuclear power; or
3. We need to stop the push to replace domestic oil and gas production with unproven green energy projects that raise costs and undercut jobs.

Once again, the Democratic-identified first position, emphasizing ending the use of fossil fuels and rapidly adopting renewables, is a distinctly minoritarian one, embraced by just 29 percent of voters. The most popular position is the second, all-of-the above approach that emphasizes energy abundance and the use of fossil fuels and renewables and nuclear, favored by 46 percent of voters. Another 25 percent—not far off the number backing the first position—flat-out support production of fossil fuels and oppose green energy projects.

Moderates are even more heavily skewed toward the all-of-the-above approach, favoring it by 58 percent, compared to 23 percent support for the rapid green transition and 19 percent for fossil fuels production. Similarly, 54 percent of independents support the all-of-the-above, energy abundance approach, with a mere 18 percent favoring a rapid green transition away from fossil fuels and a larger 27 percent group backing continued fossil fuels production.

Once again, Democrats seem out of touch with the median American voter on a critical issue.

This distance from the center is even more obvious when we take a look at voter views on transgender controversies. Here are the three choices we offered voters:

1. States should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice;
2. States should protect the rights of transgender adults to live as they want but implement stronger regulations on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors; or
3. States should ban all gender transition treatments for minors and stop discussion of gender ideology in all public schools.

The first position here, emphasizing availability of medical treatments for transgender children (euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming” care) and sports participation dictated by gender self-identification, is unquestionably the default position of the Democratic Party today. Indeed, to dissent in any way from this position in Democratic circles is enough to earn one the sobriquet of “hateful bigot”—or worse. Yet only about a quarter (26 percent) of voters endorse this position. Indeed, the most popular position of the three is the most draconian: that medical treatments for transgender children should simply be banned, as should discussion of gender ideology in public schools. That’s embraced by 41 percent of voters; another third of voters favor the second position, advocating stronger regulation on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors. Together, the latter two positions make it three-to-one among all voters against the Democratic position.

A mere 18 percent of moderate voters back the Democratic position. In contrast, a healthy 47 percent favor the stronger regulation of transgender medical treatments approach and another 35 percent want transgender medical treatments banned for children. And only 15 percent of independents are in favor of the “gender-affirming” Democratic position while roughly equal proportions (42 and 43 percent, respectively) back the middle regulatory approach and the total ban approach.

The rather startling unpopularity of Democratic positions in these areas and their obvious distance from the views of the electoral center raises the question of where these unpopular views came from. Part of the answer is that not all Democrats have been enthusiasts for these positions, but the ones that have been punch way above their weight in the party.

Consider how the views of “very liberal” Democrats—only slightly more than a quarter of the party—differ from other Democrats, spanning ordinary liberals, moderates, and the small number of conservatives. In each of these areas, overwhelming majorities of very liberal Democrats back the standard Democratic position. On immigration, 65 percent of very liberal Democrats support the permissive Democratic position but only 35 percent of other Democrats—and these Democrats are almost three-quarters of the party! On climate and energy, 69 percent of very liberal Democrats are all-in on ending fossil fuels and rapidly transitioning to renewables—but just a minority (44 percent) of other Democrats; instead more (48 percent) favor the all-of-the-above energy abundance approach. And on transgender issues, 71 percent of very liberal Democrats endorse the “gender-affirming” care approach but only 42 percent of other Democrats do so. Instead they favor stronger regulations on the treatment of transgender children (43 percent) or an outright ban on drugs and surgery for these children (16 percent).

So cultural leftism not only does not represent the views of most voters; it also doesn’t represent the views of vast segments of the very party—the Democrats—that is now identified with promulgating said cultural leftism. This is not how a big tent party should act. Many Democratic politicians appear to believe they can get away with indulging, if not promoting, such cultural leftism because Trump and the Republicans are so terrible. This is short-sighted. The best and surest way to beat Trump and Trumpism is to embrace the electoral center of the country (not to mention the views of tens of millions of their own partisans) and assure these voters that Democrats are their party and not beholden to an aggressive leftist minority in their own ranks.

At floridapolitics.com, A. G. Gancarski reports that “DeSantis Under 30% Approval With Women,” and writes, “As the First Lady launches “Mamas for DeSantis,” new polling suggests the Governor’s got trouble with women nationally….A survey conducted by The Economist and YouGov shows fewer than 3 in 10 women nationally approve of Ron DeSantis, a sign he may face difficulties with the opposite sex if he should be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024….In a survey of 1,500 adult citizens, just 29% of women regard the Governor favorably. “Very favorable” respondents make up 10% of the sample, while “somewhat favorable” makes up another 19%….Meanwhile, 45% of women regard the Governor unfavorably, with a total of 37% of the sample regarding him in a “very unfavorable manner.”….he Governor has 35% approval against 43% disapproval overall, with 42% approval among men against 48% disapproval with that gender.” Further, “Just 27% of independent voters approve of DeSantis, against 49% disapproval. Among moderates, 29% approve of DeSantis, against 41% disapproval….DeSantis’ problems with female voters may drive a lot of this negativity; the crosstabs do not break it down to that degree. Consistent with that read, other polling shows the Governor struggling with women….A June Civiqs survey reveals that 63% of women disapprove of the Florida Governor, with 60% of female independent voters and 93% of Democratic women against him….A June poll by The Economist and YouGov, also illustrates DeSantis is dragging with women voters, and is stronger with men.” This is the Republican who is 2nd only to Trump among GOP presidential contenders. No matter who the GOP nominates, they are in trouble with women voters.

Steve Benen has a juicy contribution to the GOP’s ever-increasing annals of hypocrisy at MSNBC’s ‘MaddowBlog, where he writes  “In 2009 and 2010, Republicans who opposed the Democrats’ Recovery Act started showing up at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, as if they deserved some credit for the economic package then-President Barack Obama used to help end the Great Recession. At one point, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put together a list of the House Republicans who tried to take credit for the investments, and the list included more than 70% of the House GOP conference….The phenomenon was so common, Democrats came up with a label for Republicans who condemned the Recovery Act, except when it helped their constituents: “Highway Hypocrites.”….to fully appreciate the scope of the GOP hypocrisy, look no further than the party’s approach to infrastructure investments that wouldn’t exist if Republicans had their way. AL.com had a reportyesterday, for example, with a succinct headline: “Tuberville praises $1.4 billion for broadband he voted against.”….The Alabaman has plenty of company. Some GOP members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation this week also celebrated broadband investments from the Biden administration, which they voted against. Republican Sen. John Cornyn yesterday touted federal funds to boost broadband expansion efforts in his home state of Texas, while neglecting to mention that those funds only exist thanks to legislation that he voted to kill…..Tuberville, for example, argued in his online missive yesterday, “Broadband is vital for the success of our rural communities and for our entire economy. [It’s] great to see Alabama receive crucial funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts.”….And therein lies the problem: If broadband is vital, and these funds are “crucial,” why did Tuberville vote against the investments?….I’ve lost count of how manycongressional Republicans have touted, celebrated, taken credit for, or some combination thereof infrastructure investments that they voted against — and in several instances, condemned as “socialism.”

“Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency, ” Thomas B. Edsall writes in his New York Times column. “the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings, an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers….These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:

While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.

….Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate….As a result of these trends toward intraparty consensus, there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Democratic defections to the opposition, as the party’s voters have become less vulnerable to wedge-issue tactics, especially wedge issues closely tied to race….From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the “Transformation” paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”….Most important, Abramowitz wrote, the

rise in ideological congruence among Democratic voters — and especially among white Democratic voters — has had important consequences for voting behavior. For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared, with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.

Edsall continues, “Three Supreme Court decisions handed down in the last week of June — rejecting the Biden administration’s program to forgive student loan debt, affirming the right of a web designer to refuse to construct wedding websites for same-sex couples and ruling unconstitutional the use of race by colleges in student admissions — are, in turn, quite likely to increase Democratic turnout more than Republican turnout on Election Day….Politically, one of the most effective tools for mobilizing voters is to emphasize lost rights and resources….This was the case after last June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to abortion and in the 2022 midterm elections mobilized millions of pro-abortion-rights voters. By that logic, the three decisions I mentioned should raise turnout among students, L.G.B.T.Q. people and African Americans, all largely Democratic constituencies….Kyle D. Kondik, the managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ballat the University of Virginia Center for Politics, published “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” last week….“We are starting 260 electoral votes’ worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik wrote, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”…In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need 10 more Electoral College votes to win and the Republican nominee would need 35….The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.”….Among the key voters who, in all likelihood, will pick the next president — relatively well-educated suburbanites — Trump has become toxic. He is, at least in that sense, Biden’s best hope for winning a second term.”

We now have a starting point for the 2024 presidential nominating contest, and the date seems to have been something of an accident, as I observed at New York:

It’s official: Republicans’ first-in-the nation Iowa Caucus is set for January 15, 2024. That means the voting phase of the 2023 Republican presidential-nomination contest will begin in about six months, on a federal holiday.

Iowa Republicans have given themselves an unnecessary headache by scheduling their caucus to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. State chairman Jeff Kaufmann claims they did this without “considering it.” Now Kaufmann is trying to spin the miscalculation as a “tribute” to MLK, but it won’t be a good look for the famously non-diverse Republicans of Iowa to be engaged in full-time presidential politicking when others are reflecting on King’s provocative and progressive legacy. The burden of defending that decision will likely fall, ironically, on the two Black presidential candidates competing in Iowa, Tim Scott and Larry Elder.

While the specific date of the Iowa Caucus had been up in the air until now, the GOP calendar was expected to start early in 2023 owing to some failed efforts by other states to displace Iowa and New Hampshire. Some of this maneuvering was encouraged by the Democratic National Committee, which felt freer to tamper with the calendar as its 2024 contest isn’t competitive. The big development for Republicans was the Nevada legislature’s vote to create a February 6 presidential primary, which led New Hampshire’s secretary of state to move its primary to January 23. Iowa’s decision maintains the traditional eight-day gap between Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina Republicans (who do not have to vote on the same day as Democrats) will round out the early states with a primary on February 24. Then other states are free to hold primaries or caucuses beginning in March.

So we are once again virtually guaranteed a snowy-evening launching point for the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Iowa Republicans have a significantly simpler caucus process than the opposition; Democrats’ convoluted if time-honored system of affinity groups, delegate-equivalents, and multiple votes crashed the Democratic caucuses in 2020, contributing to the DNC’s decision to take away the state’s first-in-the-nation status and ban presidential caucuses altogether. Republicans just show up, hear some speeches, eat a few cookies and vote for their presidential favorite in a straight balloting that’s easy to tabulate. Perhaps with the excess time a moment to commemorate a conservative take on the MLK legacy will be obligatory in 2024.

Meanwhile, Iowa Democrats will likely have caucus meetings on January 15. But in deference to the DNC’s wishes, they are not inclined to complete or announce any votes on presidential preferences or the allocation of any delegates on the traditional caucus night. It appears they will have a separate vote-by-mail process for their real decisions, which will be announced when the initial phases of the presidential-nominating contest are safely past. So Joe Biden will not have to compete in rogue Iowa caucuses, and if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Marianne Williamson happen to show any strength in Iowa, we likely won’t know about it until Biden has romped to victory in sanctioned primaries.

All the national attention, then, will be on the Republicans engaged in an individual struggle for survival and a collective effort to keep keep current front-runner Donald Trump from wrapping up the 2024 nomination before the first warm weather of spring arrives.

From Mike Allen, Erica Pandey and Jim VandeHei of Axios comes news in an e-blast of yet another disturbing Gallup Poll about levels of “confidence” in American institutions. The authors’ take is how good it is that 65 percent of poll respondents say they have confidence in “small business.” OK, that’s a pretty good thing, although it seems reasonable to wonder why it isn’t even higher, small biz being the “backbone” of American capitalism and all that. I guess that roughly a third of Americans have had some sour experiences with independent contractors etc.

Still, compared to other ‘institutions’ in the USA, small biz is doing pretty good. The same poll reports 43 percent having confidence in police; 32 percent for churches; a walloping 27 percent for the U.S. Supreme Court;  26 percent for both public schools and large tech companies; a miserly 14 percent in television news and a pathetic 8 percent in congress.

Few will be shocked by these poll figures. Cynicism abounds, some media and many pollsters reinforce it, and let’s face it, we do have a hell of a lot of actual corruption in America – so much so that flashes of integrity or generosity by public institutions are often reported as hot news.

The Axios team notes a “partisan divide in confidence. Republicans’ confidence in organized religion (49%) exceeds that of Democrats (25%). Democrats’ faith in organized labor (39%) tops that of Republicans (15%).” No shockers there. Perhaps we should be glad that at least there is no great partisan divide in confidence in small business, with just a 2 percent divide between Dems and Republicans. Hard up for positive news, the Axios team requests upbeat reports from readers about “your favorite local businesses.”

But I remain pretty disturbed by the 8 percent confidence in “congress.” Granted, it’s not exactly a hot flash. Declining faith in “congress” has been a staple of polls for a long time. What bothers me the most is that I can’t count the many times I’ve tried to correct even my fellow liberals, when they bad-mouth “congress” for inaction on America’s many problems. Highly-partisan Democrat that I am, it is nonetheless absolutely true that Democrats have done a hell of a lot better job of passing needed and even popular reforms in one house of congress than have Republicans, only to see them crushed by the GOP in the other house of congress again and again.

Yes, those Republicans were elected and their votes are valid. But Mitch McConnell outed their purely obstructionist strategy when he urged blanket opposition to all of President Obama’s proposals, regardless of their merit. Even before that, Newt Gingrich’s scorched earth partisanship put a brutal end to the normal comity between Democratic and Republican members of congress that once produced historic and urgently-needed reforms like the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964-5. Trump and his twisted entourage piled on the polarization with gusto.

It’s hard to have an honest disagreement with George Lakoff’s argument that the public, even many Democrats, are routinely suckered into using preferred Republican terms in talking about the fate of needed reforms in our national and local legislatures. In large part, it is collateral damage of the triumph of ‘both sidesism,’ ‘whataboutism,’ or ‘false equivalence’ journalism. Whatever you want to call it, it distorts  public debate and makes political accountability increasingly difficult.

Despite the “liberal bias” that has been attributed to flagship press, like the New York Times and Washington Post, major media has too often been an eager partner with Republican propagandists in blaming “congress.” Republican wordsmith/strategist Frank Luntz has prospered for being openly candid about the necessity of using biased lingo to advance his party’s cause. The sad truth is that, with some exceptions, ‘the press’ has been an easy play for Republican propagandists.

Democrats, liberals, progressives, ‘the left,’ moderates and all others who don’t buy into the wingnut view of American politics, take note: It’s not “congress” that deserves condemnation for inaction; it’s Republicans who deserve it, even though many commentators are reluctant to say so.

Geoffrey Skelley explains why “Why Biden Probably Won’t Get A Serious Primary Challenger” at FiveThirty Eight: “….while Democrats remain concerned about Biden’s age, one ingredient is missing before there can be a significant primary challenge against him: unpopularity. The fact is, Democrats mostly approve of Biden’s performance as president. He has also made overtures to progressives, potentially stymieing a source of potential unrest — although the threat of former President Donald Trump’s return has helped maintain party unity, too. If we look back at incumbent presidents who encountered fierce opposition for renomination in the recent past, each faced substantial discontent over administration policies and/or ideological opposition from a frustrated party faction. Without such conditions, top-tier Democrats with White House ambitions are unlikely to risk upsetting leaders and donors in their party by launching a campaign against Biden. Time will tell whether Biden’s approval among Democrats will drop low enough to invite a serious primary challenge. But as of right now, Biden looks likely to avoid one….some of Biden’s hypothetically most compelling challengers, like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, occupy roughly the same ideological zone as Biden, making it harder to differentiate themselves on issues besides age. (Whitmer is now national co-chair of Biden’s campaign.) Meanwhile, Biden has potentially avoided a notable challenge from his left: Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Biden’s two highest-profile progressive opponents in 2020, have backed his reelection bid….Across polls of Biden’s approval rating conducted in June that included crosstab data for Democrats, an average of 77 percent of Democrats approved of Biden’s performance.² This puts him below Trump’s approval among Republicans in two polls from the summer of 2019, but almost exactly in line with former President Barack Obama’s among Democrats in two polls from the summer of 2011.”

In “The Emergence of the Anti-MAGA Coalition: There’s a voting bloc that hates Donald Trump, despises MAGA, and could help Democrats win the House and hold the White House next year,” Michael Podhorzer shares some insights about Democratic prospects at The Washington Monthly, including: “In 2016…Suddenly, white non-college voters became the “it” constituency for political analysts, an obsession that continued into 2022. Democrats must win over these voters, pundits proclaimed, or they had no electoral future….Seven years later, that advice seems misguided.” Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO and founder of the Analyst Institute, the Research Collaborative and the Defend Democracy Project, notes further “Since 2016, Republicans have lost 23 of the 27 elections in the five swing states Democrats need to win the presidency—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Such an outcome was hardly preordained. When Trump took office, Republicans held four of the five governorships in those states and six of their ten U.S. Senate seats….But Republicans haven’t just failed to make gains in those states. Last year, they were clobbered. It was a midterm where the out-of-power party, a party running against such an unpopular president, lost ground for the first time….Ignore those who complain that anti-MAGA rhetoric is “divisive” and might turn off swing voters. In the 2022 midterms, the expected “red wave” was blunted by what I call a “Blue Undertow”—but only in the 15 states where a MAGA candidate was in a competitive, big-ticket race, where MAGA’s dangerous agenda would have gotten more attention. That’s one likely reason Democrats faced such stunning losses in California and New York; it simply didn’t occur to Democratic base voters there that their ballots could be the difference between a MAGA-majority U.S. House and a chamber that could continue passing Biden’s agenda….Key purple state voters reject MAGA when the choice is clear because of the new anti-MAGA majority. Winning that majority over does not rely on finding a perch in the political center. On the contrary, victory for Democrats with these voters relies on making the choice of democracy versus fascism explicit.”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. gets philosophical and ruminates on the power of hope in Democratic politics, and writes, “hope is a demanding virtue, not a sunny disposition. It accepts reality, acknowledges obstacles and insists, as the bard of hope Barack Obama put it, “that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”….This aspiration became so central to Obama’s political life that the word itself came to be seen as partisan. Campaigning in the 2010 midterm elections, Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee two years earlier, coined a memorable dismissal: “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for ya?”  Dionne, continues, noting “the celebrated work of Anne Case and Angus Deaton on “deaths of despair” among working-class Americans from suicide, alcohol-related diseases and drug overdoses. The loss of hope typically followed the loss of well-paying jobs and the collapse of communities….Deaths of despair, Case and Deaton found, were especially common among lower-income Whites. Black Americans, perhaps from their long experience overcoming discrimination and oppression, showed measurably higher rates of resiliency. But Graham notes that in recent years, suicide rates have been rising sharply among young Black Americans, and deaths from drug overdoses among Black men have shot up, too. Restoring hope is a moral and policy imperative across racial lines….It’s also an imperative in our politics, as Wake Forest University scholar Michael Lamb argues in “A Commonwealth of Hope,” a fascinating revisionist view of the political thought of St. Augustine. Contrary to a popular perception of Augustine as an otherworldly thinker who accents “darkness and pessimism,” Lamb sketches a persuasive portrait of a thinker who “encourages a realistic hope for a better form of community not only in heaven but on earth….Lamb highlights the high cost of despair in politics, which he argues “can license apathy or fatalism, encouraging citizens to withdraw from politics rather than stretch toward difficult political goods.” Dionne concludes, “Democracy cannot work if citizens are demoralized and demobilized by such despair. You don’t have to be a sucker for the hopey changey thing to see why we need a rendezvous with hope — in our individual lives and in our common life, too.”

Yesterday TDS cross-posted an article by David French, regarding the ‘joy’ of community that unites MAGA America. French makes a strong case that MAGA culture creates a potent sense of belonging that can translate into voter solidarity. In last year’s midterms we saw a kind of community emerge among Democrats, a community based on fear in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Politics suddenly got real for a large number of women voters and their families, rooted in the realization that Republicans really do want to meddle in and limit the most personal decisions women can make about their own reproductive choices. It did not end particularly well for Republicans. But that doesn’t not mean that the same kind community can work as well again for Democrats, regardless of the economic and other realities we will be facing in November, 2024. Sure it can help, especially because Republicans seem to be doubling down on passing anti-choice measures in state legislatures across the nation. But, as Dionne suggests in the article noted above, Democrats can also benefit from advocating a more appealing vision of hope. It’s the vision thing that Republicans are just not very good at. They have understandable difficulty in painting a hopeful picture of a future based on tax cuts for the already rich,  deregulation, banning books and dubious justifications for Trump’s trashing democracy. Not a lot of material there for a Reaganesque ‘morning in America’ rant. President Biden and Democrats, on the other hand, now have a track record of leadership for bipartisan accomplishments, including major initiatives in re-industrializing America, which lend credibility to their “hopey-changey” vision. But Dems must spell out the details of a credible economic vision for the future, which includes more good jobs, thriving communities, expanded educational opportunities for all, a cleaner environment, safer communities and a foreign policy we can be proud of – in stark contrast to everything the Republicans have been doing. President Biden has genuine bragging points on some of these goals already. He and Democrats must make sure voters know exactly what they have accomplished, and what they plan to do in the next four years – and put it all in inspiring detail.

The following article by NYT opinion columnist David French, author of “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation,” is cross-posted from The New York Times:

I’ve shared this fact with readers before: I live in Tennessee outside Nashville, a very deep-red part of America. According to a New York Times tool that calculates the political composition of a community, only 15 percent of my neighbors are Democrats. I’ve been living here in the heart of MAGA country since Donald Trump came down the escalator. This is the world of my friends, my neighbors and many members of my family. That is perhaps why, when I’m asked what things are like now, eight years into the Trump era, I have a ready answer: Everything is normal until, suddenly, it’s not. And unless we can understand what’s normal and what’s not, we can’t truly understand why Trumpism endures.

It’s hard to encapsulate a culture in 22 seconds, but this July 4 video tweet from Representative Andy Ogles accomplishes the nearly impossible. For those who don’t want to click through, the tweet features Ogles, a cheerful freshman Republican from Tennessee, wishing his followers a happy Fourth of July. The text of the greeting is remarkable only if you don’t live in MAGAland:

Hey guys, Congressman Andy Ogles here, wishing you a happy and blessed Fourth of July. Hey, remember our Founding Fathers. It’s we the people that are in charge of this country, not a leftist minority. Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family, and they’re coming after you. Have a blessed Fourth of July. Be safe. Have fun. God bless America.

Can something be cheerful and dark at the same time? Can a holiday message be both normal and so very strange? If so, then Ogles pulled it off. This is a man smiling in a field as a dog sniffs happily behind him. The left may be “coming after you,” as he warns, but the vibe isn’t catastrophic or even worried, rather a kind of friendly, generic patriotism. They’re coming for your family! Have a great day!

It’s not just Ogles. It’s no coincidence that one of the most enduring cultural symbols of Trump’s 2020 campaign was the boat parade. To form battle lines behind Trump, the one man they believe can save America from total destruction, thousands of supporters in several states got in their MasterCrafts and had giant open-air water parties.

Or take the Trump rally, the signature event of this political era. If you follow the rallies via Twitter or mainstream newscasts, you see the anger, but you miss the fun. When I was writing for The Dispatch, one of the best pieces we published was a report by Andrew Egger in 2020 about the “Front Row Joes,” the Trump superfans who follow Trump from rally to rally the way some people used to follow the Grateful Dead. Egger described the Trump rally perfectly: “For enthusiasts, Trump rallies aren’t just a way to see a favorite politician up close. They are major life events: festive opportunities to get together with like-minded folks and just go crazy about America and all the winning the Trump administration’s doing.”

Or go to a Southeastern Conference football game. The “Let’s Go Brandon” (or sometimes, just “[expletive] Joe Biden”) chant that arises from the student section isn’t delivered with clenched fists and furious anger, but rather through smiles and laughs. The frat bros are having a great time. The consistent message from Trumpland of all ages is something like this: “They’re the worst, and we’re awesome. Let’s party, and let’s fight.”

Why do none of your arguments against Trump penetrate this mind-set? The Trumpists have an easy answer: You’re horrible, and no one should listen to horrible people. Why were Trumpists so vulnerable to insane stolen-election theories? Because they know that you’re horrible and that horrible people are capable of anything, including stealing an election.

At the same time, their own joy and camaraderie insulate them against external critiques that focus on their anger and cruelty. Such charges ring hollow to Trump supporters, who can see firsthand the internal friendliness and good cheer that they experience when they get together with one another. They don’t feel angry — at least not most of the time. They are good, likable people who’ve just been provoked by a distant and alien “left” that many of them have never meaningfully encountered firsthand.

Indeed, while countless gallons of ink have been spilled analyzing the MAGA movement’s rage, far too little has been spilled discussing its joy.

Once you understand both dynamics, however, so much about the present moment makes clearer sense, including the dynamics of the Republican primary. Ron DeSantis, for example, channels all the rage of Trumpism and none of the joy. With relentless, grim determination he fights the left with every tool of government at his disposal. But can he lead stadiums full of people in an awkward dance to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People? Will he be the subject of countless over-the-top memes and posters celebrating him as some kind of godlike, muscular superhero?

Trump’s opponents miss the joy because they experience only the rage. I’m a member of a multiethnic church in Nashville. It’s a refuge from the MAGA Christianity that’s all too present where I live, just south of the city, in Franklin. This past Sunday, Walter Simmons, a Franklin-based Black pastor who founded the Franklin Justice and Equity Coalition, spoke to our church, and he referred to a common experience for those who dissent publicly in MAGA America. “If you ain’t ready for death threats, don’t live in Franklin,” he said.

He was referring to the experience of racial justice activists in deep-red spaces. They feel the rage of the MAGA mob. If you’re deemed to be one of those people who is trying to “destroy our country and our family,” then you don’t see joy, only fury.

Trump’s fans, by contrast, don’t understand the effects of that fury because they mainly experience the joy. For them, the MAGA community is kind and welcoming. For them, supporting Trump is fun. Moreover, the MAGA movement is heavily clustered in the South, and Southerners see themselves as the nicest people in America. It feels false to them to be called “mean” or “cruel.” Cruel? No chance. In their minds, they’re the same people they’ve always been — it’s just that they finally understand how bad youare. And by “you,” again, they often mean the caricatures of people they’ve never met.

In fact, they often don’t even know about the excesses of the Trump movement. Many of them will never know that their progressive neighbors have faced threats and intimidation. And even when they do see the movement at its worst, they can’t quite believe it. So Jan. 6 was a false flag. Or it was a “fedsurrection.” It couldn’t have really been a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government, because they know these people, or people like them, and they’re mostly good folks. It had to be a mistake, or an exaggeration, or a trick or a few bad apples. The real crime was the stolen election.

It’s the combination of anger and joy that makes the MAGA enthusiasm so hard to break but also limits its breadth. If you’re part of the movement’s ever-widening circle of enemies, Trump holds no appeal for you. You experience his movement as an attack on your life, your choices, your home and even your identity. If you’re part of the core MAGA community, however, not even the ruthlessly efficient DeSantis can come close to replicating the true Trump experience. Again, the boat parade is a perfect example. It’s one part Battle for the Future of Civilization and one part booze cruise.

The battle and the booze cruise both give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging. They see a country that’s changing around them and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at a Trump rally, surrounded by others — overwhelmingly white, many evangelical — who feel the same way they do.

Evangelicals are a particularly illustrative case. About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement. Even among actual churchgoing evangelicals, political alignment is often so important that it’s hard to feel a true sense of belonging unless you’re ideologically united with the people in the pews around you.

During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail.