Democracy: A Journal of Ideas has a forum on taxation and revenue-raising needed to help fund n needed reforms, featuring more than a dozen articles by top experts. Here is a teaser from one of the articles, “The Right Way to Tax the Rich” by Brian Galle, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute:

Taxing the accumulated wealth of America’s ultrarich should be a top tax-reform priority for the next administration. To be sure, there are other low-hanging tax-policy fruit, such as reversing recent giveaways to businesses large and small, and putting the United States back on a path to share in historic global commitments to tax multinational firms more effectively. But the ultrarich, and billionaires in particular, have become perhaps the central story in U.S. political life. They dominate campaign spending, and have bought up influential spots in media, infrastructure, and the President’s Cabinet. Tax policy alone cannot repair that problem, of course. But it can do far more than it does today. Indeed, by one recent estimate from researchers at my home institution of University of California, Berkeley, the wealthiest billionaires pay only one-third the effective income tax rate that top earners faced under President Ronald Reagan.

The key word in that sentence is “effective.” Taxing the ultrarich isn’t likely to be as simple as just raising the tax rates they face. Because most of the wealth and power of the ultrarich derives from growth in the value of investment assets, we face a series of practical, legal, and even constitutional challenges in designing an effective tax that can reach a meaningful share of their stockpiles of earnings.

These challenges are solvable, as I explain in great detail in my recent report from the Roosevelt Institute, “How to Tax the Ultrarich.” Briefly, the United States should follow the path of other countries in instituting a tax on wealth, or alternatively an income tax on individuals’ annual accumulations of value that today escape the U.S. tax system. But to satisfy recent demands from the Supreme Court, that tax would not be imposed annually, but rather deferred until taxpayers choose to sell their property. At sale, the taxpayer would pay a higher rate, with the exact rate set so that the taxpayer cannot get any net “time value of money” benefits from deferral. (The time value of money is the extra investment gains taxpayers get from being able to set aside and invest money they would otherwise have paid in tax.) This same system can help to repair our currently dysfunctional regime for intergenerational transfers of wealth as well.

The Multiple Challenges to Taxing Wealth…

Let’s unpack the challenges in a bit more detail, then return to a more detailed version of the possible solution. The core problem we have in the income tax today, both in the United States and around the world, is that income taxes are largely built around what’s known as the “realization” principle. The realization principle is the notion that we should measure income from investment assets only when they are sold (or otherwise disposed of). That approach reflects early-twentieth-century limits on a tax administrator’s capacity to verify what assets a taxpayer owns and how much they are worth. And yet, even as early as 1909, some taxpayers did have to report and pay tax on annual changes in their investments’ value. For instance, that was how the U.S. Treasury implemented the definition of “income” under the corporate income tax, which predated the 1913 adoption of the modern individual income tax.

More here.

“Trump’s approval rating drops among White working-class voters,”Polls shown declining approval for President Donald Trump among White working-class voters and rural voters, but that doesn’t mean they’re all swinging to Democrats in the midterms” according to Chris Kenning at USA Today. An excerpt: “Since Trump first ran for president a decade ago, White working class and rural voters have been an important base of support, drawn to his vows to bring back manufacturing and crack down on immigration. In 2024, 2 in 3 White working-class voters backed him, according to research group PRRI’s post-election survey. Trump won 69% of the rural vote in 2024, according to Pew Research Center exit polling…But polling over recent months has shown rising disapproval from those groups, reaching majorities in some polls, especially on the economy – fueling a potential new vulnerability for Republicans heading into midterm elections that will determine control of Congress…A CBS News-YouGov poll in May found 54% of White, noncollege voters disapproved of Trump’s performance, up from 32% in February 2025. That disapproval hit 49% in a June NPR/PBS/Marist poll and 51% in an April Fox News poll. Among rural voters, a June Reuters/Ipsos poll found 48% disapproved of Trump, up from 34% the month after he returned to office…“The decline is significant given that White working-class voters were a pretty stable support between 2016 and 2020 for Trump after trending Republican since the early 1990s,” said Noam Lupu, a Vanderbilt University political science professor…The main driver of the discontent is higher prices for necessities like gas and food, pushed up by the Iran war and tariffs, experts said…an April NPR/PBS/Marist poll found 44% of White noncollege voters said they were more likely to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate than for a Republican, up from just 30% ahead of the 2018 midterms. That could come into play in rural states…In Iowa, for example, which Trump carried by 13 percentage points in 2024 and whose six House seats are held by Republicans, The Wall Street Journal reported that the race for governor and two of its four House seats are now rated as toss-ups amid rural economic angst.” More here.

From “Susan Collins May Be Chuckling, but She’s in Far Worse Trouble Now” by Editor Michael Tomasky at The New Republic: “…Collins could well be in far more trouble with a new Democratic nominee. Kamala Harris beat Trump by seven points in the state. And as I noted above, in a recent poll, respondents said that for Congress, they’d choose a Democrat over a Republican by 53 percent to 42 percent. On top of that, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Hannah Pingree, who will be at the top of the ticket, looks like she’s going to beat her Republican foe by around 15 points. That means Collins is going to have to convince a lot of independents to switch from the D column to the R one as they move down the ballot from governor to senator…And what’s going on now, nationally and in Maine, is a strong anti-Trump sentiment—and a GOP incumbent senator who voted to confirm 22 of Trump’s 23 Cabinet nominees…What the Maine Democratic Party, and to some extent the national Democratic Party, has to do here is run a process that is widely accepted as having two qualities: It must be transparent, and it has to feel fair. The party needs to give voters and citizens regular updates on the process—this is happening today; this is happening next Tuesday—so that everyone feels they’re in the loop and no one feels sandbagged. And it needs to feel fair so that in the end, everyone at least feels that they need to accept the outcome.” More here.

Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman write at The Hill: “For Democrats, the opening is real and the timing could hardly be better. Just 32 percent of registered voters say the country is “on the right track” per Economist/YouGov polling…Likewise, Trump’s approval ratings continue to hover near record lows — 40 percent approve versus 58 percent disapprove per RealClearPolitics. And on the economy, which the housing bill could have addressed, it’s even lower, sitting at just 36 percent approve…Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot is steady at 6 points according to RealClearPolitics, but among Hispanics and independents, Democrats have a 34 and 15-point edge, respectively, according to Emerson polling…Aside from bringing the Senate to a virtual halt, the optics of Trump refusing to sign a housing bill until he gets his way on the SAVE Act, which Thune has repeatedly told Trump can’t pass, are ideal for Democrats. Republicans had been counting on a very public ceremony to show voters that they are committed to lowering costs, but Trump’s actions robbed them of an excellent opportunity…The campaign ads write themselves: “The president wants to make it harder for you to vote rather than make it easier for you to live” as one political strategist said in a recent interview…” More here.

It’s easy enough to rebut election-deniers with compelling evidence from dozens of court decisions and studies of election integrity. But that won’t stop them from being on midterm ballots in significant numbers. Read “All The Places Election Deniers Could Be in Charge of Elections After the Midterms” by Khaya Himmelman at Talking Points Memo, who says: “In an increasingly ominous trend, there are currently hundreds of election deniers on the ballot for the 2026 midterm elections. And although history has shown election denialism is not a winning campaign strategy, it continues to be a powerful force in the right-wing movement, from President Donald Trump on down…According to the nonpartisan non-profit States United Action, there are at least 140 election deniers currently running for statewide and congressional office. In statewide races, there are at least 42 election deniers running in 23 states. And in congressional races, there are at least 98 election deniers running in 25 states…“We’ve been tracking this movement since right after the 2020 election. And one thing we can say about the election denial movement now is that it seems to be more powerful than ever,” Kelly Rader, research director at States United Action, told TPM…“In some ways it reflects how election denial has matured into an organized movement,” Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations for Campaign Legal Center, similarly told TPM… “Election denial is no longer just a collection of fringe activists and isolated candidates making unsupported claims of election fraud,” Fischer added. “It’s really evolved into a well-funded, coordinated infrastructure of activists and advocacy organizations that has transformed the fringe conspiracy theories into a cornerstone of the conservative movement…Of particular concern are the election denial candidates running for secretary of state positions, potentially putting an elected official who has denied the integrity of a free and fair election at the helm of election administration in a particular state.” More here.

From “What Trump Voters Say About The Economy Now As His Approval Slips With White Working-Class Voters” by Tomas Kassahun at USA Today:

The latest poll numbers from various sources show that Donald Trump is facing growing disapproval from white working-class voters, mainly because many are concerned about how the president is handling the economy. According to USA Today, data from CBS News, NPR, Fox News and Reuters/Ipsos show a similar trend in Trump’s latest approval ratings.

What does the latest data show about Donald Trump’s approval rating?

According to a CBS News-YouGov poll published in May, 54% of white noncollege voters disapprove of Trump’s performance. That number increased from 32% in February 2025.

Another poll from NPR/PBS/Marist, published in June, surveyed the same demographic and found that 49% of voters disapprove of Trump’s performance.

Meanwhile, a Fox News poll from April showed a 51% disapproval rating for Trump. In June, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found a 48% disapproval rating for the president. That number increased from 34% earlier this year.

“The decline is significant given that White working-class voters were a pretty stable support between 2016 and 2020 for Trump after trending Republican since the early 1990s,” Noam Lupu, a Vanderbilt University political science professor, told USA Today.

Why the working class showing increasing disapproval of Donald Trump

The increasing cost of essentials such as gas and food, caused by the war with Iran and tariffs, appears to be contributing to the growing disapproval of Trump.

Ashton Reed, a 22-year-old voter who was laid off from his HVAC job, is among those concerned about the economy. Although he voted for Trump in 2024, Reed is disappointed with the results.

More here.

Yesterday, J. P. Green shared a report on potential U.S. Senate candidates to replace Graham Platner. Already the list has grown, as Aaron Navaro, Sophia Viahakis, Kaia Hubbard, Joe Walsh, Gabriella Biello, and Maria Sullivan report at cbsnews.com. Additional candidates include:

David Costello

A native of Bangor and former government official in Maine and Maryland, David Costello previously ran against Platner for the Democratic Senate nomination, and said that if Platner dropped out, “I’m back in.”

Costello won 8.1% of the vote in last month’s primary, trailing Platner (72.1%) and Maine Gov. Janet Mills (19.2%), who had suspended her campaign but remained on the ballot. He was also the Democratic nominee in the 2024 Maine Senate race, though the winner of that race — incumbent Sen. Angus King, an independent — caucuses with Democrats.

Costello raised just over $30,000 from donors and lent his campaign more than $100,000 during this year’s Senate run.

Valli Geiger

State Rep. Valli Geiger, a close ally of Platner’s, has indicated interest in replacing him on the ballot.

The 70-year-old told WMTW that Platner was supporting her bid. But she later clarified that she is one of “several people” who have supported Platner and with whom he was speaking.

A nurse and resident of the coastal town of Rockland, Geiger has served in the state Legislature for three terms.

…Paige Loud

Paige Loud, a 29-year-old social worker, filed to run for Senate shortly before Platner ended his campaign. After he dropped out, Loud wrote on social media that “Mainers deserve more than a hand-picked replacement whose morality only kicked in at the last minute.”

Loud ran in the Democratic House primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District last month, coming in fourth place with 10.4% of the vote. She contributed around $30,000 to her own campaign and raised about $17,000.

…Jordan Wood

Jordan Wood, who previously sought the Senate seat last year before dropping out to run in a House race, announced he’s hoping to replace Platner on the ballot.

Wood, a 36-year-old native of Lewiston, Maine, previously worked as chief of staff to Democratic Rep. Katie Porter before founding an organization focused on combating election denialism. He launched his campaign for Senate last year before pivoting to run for a House seat to replace moderate Democratic Rep. Jared Golden in Maine’s red-leaning 2nd Congressional District, where he fell short last month.

…”If I am a nominee for Senate, I’ll lead the fight to pass Medicare for All, pass sweeping anti-corruption reform, and stand up to Trump’s lawlessness,” he said.”

So a new possibility about the raging debate on the direction of the Democratic Party is emerging, and I gave it a stab at New York:

The big debate among Democrats this year is whether the renewed energy being exhibited by the progressive wing of the party reflects an ideological development or something else. Unsurprisingly, there are many voices suggesting a long-awaited “pivot to the left” by Democrats is finally underway, as Ben Davis, a Democratic Socialist who worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, wrote in The Guardian:

“After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left. Democrats want fighters, and they want a politics rooted in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided in smoke-filled rooms. We still need moderate Democrats to win those pesky median voters, for now. But the party’s leadership is deeply out of touch with its base. A leftist wave is cresting across the country.”

For many left-bent progressives, this trend, if it’s real, is long overdue. The recent history of the Democratic Party, in their minds, has been a long and terrible saga of centrist disappointment and even betrayal of the rank and file and their interests. From Carter to Clinton to Obama to another Clinton to the doddering Biden and the hapless Harris, centrists promoted a duopoly beholden to oligarchical elites and complacent with militarism and mass incarceration. The center-left gave us Donald Trump and then let him return to power, they reason, so why should centrists be trusted to turn the country around? Isn’t it the left’s turn to be in charge?

At the same time, Trump and his mouthpieces are promoting the same “Democrats pivot to the left” idea in luridly cartoonish Red Scare colors. Trump now routinely refers to progressives of any hue as “the communists.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is singing the same song:

“It’s insane to see how far left the Democrat Party has moved to where now literally it’s a Bolshevik Revolution. I mean, the Communists have taken over. This is not your father’s Democrat Party, and it’s really the candidates that they’re nominating that are the far-left extremist lunatics.”

But there could be something else going on that has little to do with ideology, much less “socialism” or “communism.” That’s what G. Elliott Morris concludes in a deep dive on the polling data underlying the “progressive surge” in Democratic primaries:

“I think the data conclusively shows Democratic primary voters aren’t being drawn primarily to the leftism of these DSA candidate, but rather their anti-party orientation. …

“Among self-described moderates — just a fourth of the party — Schumer polls at just bare even and Jeffries lands at 61/100, effectively tied with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pete Buttigieg.

“On a comparative basis, it’s worth emphasizing the finding that Bernie Sanders is viewed as the most favorable Democratic figure even among self-described moderate Democrats. In absolute terms, every left-wing ‘insurgent’ figure … lands above 50 with moderates: Mamdani, the highest profile Democratic Socialist in America, lands at 57 — seven points above Schumer.”

So even Democrats who self-identify as nonprogressive prefer progressive politicians to “moderates” like themselves. Why is that? Morris believes it’s clear Democrats of every hue are furious with “the Establishment,” and not just because “the Establishment” isn’t fighting Trump hard enough or successfully enough:

“In public statements Schumer, Jeffries, and Hickenlooper each put roughly two-thirds to four-fifths of their substantive rhetoric into attacking Trump or the GOP. For the left, their conflict is with the establishment. Looking at the language of these groups, it’s like candidates are living in different worlds.”

In other words, “the left” is winning support from voters who are indifferent toward or perhaps even opposed to its ideological agenda but who are now gravitating toward politicians who are demanding change. It’s the same impulse that fed the once-shocking rise of Donald Trump among Republicans. Voters are, if possible, less enchanted about the status quo than they were in 2016, but for obvious reasons Trump and his party can no longer fully harness that angry energy.

So if this analysis is correct, what should Establishment Democrats — or, for that matter, “moderates” — do about it? Yelling more loudly about “fighting Trump” has its limits; as we’ve learned over the last year and a half, promising to “fight” a party with trifecta control of the federal government can guarantee a disappointing result. But what Democratic voters seem to crave is a commitment to change that goes a lot deeper than getting rid of Trump and returning to the status-quo ante. Does that mean they need to all become “socialists”? No, not necessarily: There are “radical centrist” types of pro-change politics available too, like demanding more accountable government that gets things done. With the right tone, an “abundance” centrist enraged by bureaucratic and interest-group resistance to housing construction and infrastructure projects might strike some of the same anti-Establishment chords as a Democratic Socialist. What does seem clear is that today’s breed of Democratic voters are not longing for a return to “normalcy,” as Joe Biden famously offered in 2020. More important than moving left or moving right is just moving.

The meltdown of Graham Platner’s campaign for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat now held by Susan Collins, in combination with the Supreme Court ruling, which “rolled back a longstanding restriction on the use of party funds to directly benefit candidates,” makes winning a Democratic majority of the U.S. Senate highly problematic at best and highly unlikely at worst. As Fredreka Schouten and John Fritze report in “How the Supreme Court’s campaign finance ruling gives Republicans a major midterm boost” at CNN Politics,”The Republican National Committee, for instance, entered June with more than $125 million in available cash and no unpaid bills. By contrast, the Democratic National Committee had a negative balance, with nearly $15 million remaining in its coffers but more than $18 million in debt…“The DNC is in an atrocious fundraising position,” Sean Cooksey, a former Federal Election Commission chairman who previously served as Vance’s chief legal adviser in the White House, told CNN. In a social media post earlier this month, Cooksey predicted a favorable ruling would leave Republicans “with nuclear weapons” and the DNC with “one of those Wile E. Coyote guns with a flag that says Bang!” Platner’s meltdown was just the icing on the cake. Even before he decided to pull out of the race, the Supreme Court ruling alone may have doomed Democratic hopes for a Sente majority. Still it’s not impossible that Dems can pull it off. But they have to run the best possible substitute for Platner.

At Axios, Josephine Walker reports “These Democrats could replace Platner in Maine’s Senate race,” and writes: “Former State Senate President Troy Jackson was the third-place finisher in Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial primary and is widely viewed as progressives’ preferred candidate…Jackson’s blue-collar background and existing statewide campaign infrastructure could ease a transition to a Senate campaign…Outgoing Gov. Janet Mills sought the Senate nomination before suspending her campaign as Platner surged in the polls.” However, “Mills has not committed to reentering the race. She is 78 and has said she would serve only one term if elected.”…Former gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah is best known for leading Maine through the COVID-19 pandemic as director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 2019 to 2023…Jordan Wood is a former congressional aide who worked in Washington and later served as executive director of a pro-democracy organization focused on election integrity…Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is coming off a failed gubernatorial bid, giving her an existing campaign organization, donor network and statewide name recognition…She was previously the Democratic Senate nominee in 2014, losing to Collins by over 30 percentage points…Dan Kleban is a political newcomer and the co-founder of Maine Beer Company…He says he relates to voters because of his working-class roots, student loan debt and describes himself as a pragmatic, “get-shit-done Democrat.” There was some buzz about actor Patrick Dempsey or political commentator Heather Cox Richardson entering the race, but both of them have said it isn’t going to happen.

In “Graham Platner and the Working-Class Fetish. This bloc won’t be wooed by cosplay and pandering,” Matthew Cooper writes at Washington Monthly: “One lesson: Do not fetishize working-class voters. Court them, of course. Obviously, this bloc has befuddled Democrats in recent years. But the idea that nominating a working-class Democrat would sway working-class voters was always reductionist and absurd. Democratic Brahmins like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did just fine with working-class voters. Sherrod Brown grew up in a comfortable home and went to Yale. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio three times in part because of his connection with working-class voters, and today he faces good odds of returning to the Senate from a Buckeye State that’s gotten tougher for Democrats. Working-class voters have supported Republican billionaires like the president and candidates such as Jim Justice, the U.S. senator and former governor from West Virginia who ran an inherited coal empire, for gosh sakes. The notion that they need to see someone like themselves in higher office is condescending…I don’t know the best way for Democrats to win enough working-class voters to take back the U.S. Senate and the presidency, but Platneresque pandering surely isn’t it. This magazine has presented a series of ideas as both good policy and good politics to woo these voters—vigorous antitrust enforcement, widespread broadband access, Medicare prices for all, outreach to rural voters, and avoiding cultural pitfalls such as the ungainly phrase “LatinX,” among many others. But there’s no panacea. This huge and heterogeneous bloc will need to be wooed because there is no such thing as a white knight with a gravelly voice perfect for truck ad voiceovers. “Identity politics” is often a cheap and meaningless charge aimed at minorities or liberals. But in Platner’s case, identity really was everything. Biography was destiny. The personal was political.” More here.

You want some good news? Try Emily Singer’s “Here’s another sign that Democrats are building a blue wave” at Daily Kos, which includes these observations: “Historic trends and current polling have shown that November’s midterm elections are very likely to be a blue wave, with Democrats favored to win control of the U.S. House, flip multiple gubernatorial mansions and state legislatures, and possibly even take back the Senate…For the third month in a row, Democrats gained more new voter registrants than Republicans, according to pollster John Couvillon, who has been tracking party registration data for years…Couvillon found that Democrats added 83,000 new registrants in June, while Republicans added 64,000…Democrats out-registering Republicans reverses what had been a bad trend for the party, as the Democratic Party had seen membership dwindle since 2020…In fact, the Democratic voter registration slide was one of the early signs that the 2024 election was not going to go Democrats’ way. That year, according to Gallup, more people identified with Republicans than Democrats…But now that trend is flipping… Even more promising for Democrats is that new Democratic registrants are popping up in places that have competitive statewide contests…For example in Nevada—where Democrats are trying to win back the governor’s mansion this fall—Democrats added 5,020 new voters in June while Republicans added 1,820…In Iowa—where Democrats are looking to flip the governor’s mansion, a U.S. Senate seat, and as many as three U.S. House districts—Democrats added 25,245 new registrants in June while Republicans added 14,781…And in Nebraska—home to a sleeper Senate race and multiple competitive House contests—Democrats gained 559 voters in June while Republicans lost 126 registrants.” More here.

Support among Democrats for a single-payer health care system never went away. But it’s definitely front-and-center again, as I explained at New York:

With the recent upsurge of outspoken progressivism in Democratic primaries, Medicare for All has returned as a chief policy demand. M4A (as it’s often abbreviated) is the favored poll-tested moniker for a single-payer health-care system that would provide universal public insurance regardless of age or means. It has been associated strongly with Bernie Sanders, who first offered single-payer legislation in the House way back in 1993 and introduced what is now the gold-standard proposal in the Senate in 2017, right after his first presidential campaign. But more than that, support for M4A has been the policy proposal that instantly separates progressive sheep from centrist goats in the Democratic ranks.

In the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, support for M4A as opposed to incremental health reforms building on Medicaid or Obamacare was a topic all the candidates had to address. For at least one, future vice-president and 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris, waffling on M4A helped derail a once-promising candidacy.

While support for Medicare for All did not go away after 2020, it did take a back seat to the Biden legislative agenda that virtually all Democrats supported, which focused on non-health-care priorities, aside from efforts to shore up existing programs that had been scaled back during Trump’s first term. And after Trump’s return to the White House in 2024, Democrats were in the minority in Congress and very much on the defensive as the GOP hammered Medicaid in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and threatened to gut Obamacare this year.

But now that Democrats can envision themselves controlling Congress next year and reconquering the White House in 2028, they’re being forced to articulate policy goals more elaborate than resisting Trump and defending the status-quo ante. And as always, Medicare for All is attractive to Democrats as a relatively simple health-care policy panacea, and as a signal to left-bent activists and voters alike that the candidate embracing it is a true progressive unafraid of offending either centrist donors or private insurance companies and their investors. M4A is particularly catnip to insurgent Democratic candidates who want to show their anti-Establishment bona fides and their hostility to timid Democratic incrementalism. At a time when health-care costs are a critical component of an affordability crisis that remains the top voter concern for Americans across the political spectrum, expanding the wildly popular Medicare program to cover everyone seems less radical than ever.

Strong support for Medicare for All has become a must-have credential for candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and like-minded activists and influencers. And so, as Axios reports, it’s an old idea whose time has come round again:

Democratic socialist and progressives’ success in this year’s primaries is evidence of new enthusiasm for Medicare for All plans that many centrists have long dismissed as costly pipe dreams.

The health affordability crisis and widespread frustration with the medical system are fueling a new appetite for big-government solutions to address drug prices, insurance premiums and long-term care costs.

“This does feel like a moment where the Democratic base is looking for bigger ideas that go beyond incremental policies,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of policy at KFF.

Non-incumbent Democratic Senate candidates like Juliana Hatton of Illinois (who won a highly competitive primary in March) and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan (the current front-runner in that key race) have used support for M4A to differentiate themselves from ho-hum Democratic Party foes. And several House insurgents sponsored by DSA (Pennsylvania’s Chris Rabb, New York’s Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, and Colorado’s Melat Kiros) or Bernie Sanders’s Our Revolution outfit (California’s Aisha Wahab, Mai Vang, and Randy Villegos) have made strong Medicare for All advocacy a key differentiator from other Democrats. It seems certain that if Democrats do flip either congressional chamber in Congress, there will instantly be a demand for proactive health-care reform legislation, and M4A is likely to have more support than ever.

The cost of Medicare for All remains its biggest problem — perhaps even a bigger problem than ever given the recent explosion in health-care costs. It’s not just the cost of expanding Medicare eligibility to non-seniors that’s a huge cost center; most proposals like Sanders’s also expand the medical services covered, and most crucially, eliminate copayments and premiums. In that respect, it’s not Medicare for All we’re talking about, but Medicare for Free for All, which is another proposition entirely.

Still, as the clearest and most coherent health-care reform idea on the table, and no more “socialistic” than the health systems already in place in most of the world (and less than many), M4A remains the progressive default position on a topic that grows more urgent every year. It’s Democratic centrists who need a reboot of their mostly reactive thinking on health-care policy going into the post-Trump era. Perhaps some hybrid of subsidized private health insurance with a robust “public option” — what Texas Senate candidate James Talarico cleverly calls “Medicare for Y’all” — will become the lower-cost alternative to Medicare for All, but not just because it’s less ambitious and closer to the status quo. That’s not a good message for Democrats right now.

According to a new Harris Poll conducted online  from 28 May-6 June 2026, among a nationally representative sample of 4,100 US adults, as reported by Gaya Gupta at The Guardian:

Ninety-five per cent of Americans believe the US is suffering an affordability crisis, as many report trouble with the rising cost of groceries and gas…Despite stable employment and record-high stock markets, more Americans believe the overall economy is getting worse (57%) than in February (46%), when the poll was last conducted and before the war in the Middle East sent gas prices soaring. Fewer people today also believe the economy is getting better (16%, compared with 28% in February) and more say their financial security has gotten worse….The affordability struggle crosses party lines: about half of all Democrats, Republicans and independents say they are having trouble affording everyday necessities like gas and groceries. Two-thirds of Americans – including 49% of Republicans – said they have little faith that the federal government will improve the cost-of-living crisis they face…

While 49% of Republicans said the economy was getting better in February, just 27% said the same in the new poll. Meanwhile, 38% of Republicans say the economy is now getting worse compared with 22% who said the same in February…Even rural Americans, a strong base for Republicans, are feeling more pessimistic: 64% say the economy is getting worse, compared with 46% who said the same in February…Rural Americans were also the most likely to say that good job opportunities have disappeared over the past year and that tariffs have negatively affected American manufacturing jobs in the past year. More here.

Excerpts from. “Working-Class Zeroes” by Jack Butler at The Wall Street Journal. Journal: “The best way for politicians to appeal to voters now, especially those considered “normal” or “working-class,” is apparently to assume the worst of them…The belief that voters aren’t merely tolerant of authenticity, even—especially—in the form of indecency, but actively seek it out, isn’t only held by Democrats. In an interview last week, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat challenged Vice President JD Vance on the Trump administration’s “tone of aggressive uncharity to people who aren’t on board with the administration’s policies.” Mr. Vance disputed this contention. “Tonal arguments are ways of, frankly, policing working-class ways of communication and covering them in elite preferences,” he said…In this understanding, only prissy establishmentarians object to coarse rhetoric, which is the true expression of both working-class policies and the working-class argot…Yes, there are people whose early and consistent obsession with the idea of wielding power drives them to a kind of ruthless box-checking and ladder-climbing that can seem robotic…It’s hard to think of a more egregious put-down of voters than that their leaders can better represent them by acting worse. Voters themselves can decide how they feel about this condescension.” More here.

In “Democratic insurgents are winning on economics, not culture,” David C. Barker writes at Brookings: “Some recent Democratic congressional primaries have led a segment of observers to conclude that, as one political observer noted, it’s “Bernie’s party now.” Despite the leftist-versus-centrist scorecard being muddled overall, with moderates scoring victories in several key contests, many Democratic Party stalwarts are wringing their hands at what looks like an unmistakable leftward trajectory…Indeed, candidates backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other self-described democratic socialists—such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—have racked up a string of successes. In June, a series of incumbent U.S. lawmakers were unseated by insurgent progressive challengers in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Denver…In the main, the 2026 primaries have not been a story of center versus left. They’ve been insurgent versus establishment, outsider versus insider, populist versus elitist, pugilist versus accommodationist. The winner in Pennsylvania is a firefighter. The winner in Ohio is an iron worker. The winner in Montana is a former smokejumper. Platner is an oyster farmer. All are fresh political faces. Across the country, the Democratic rank and file are exhorting their Washington wannabes to confront the conventional order, echoing, in form if not content, the populist clamor that has remade the Republican Party.” More here.

Bhaskar Sunkara writes in “Progressives are winning in American cities. Can they win rural voters too?” at The Guardian: “Andrew Mamo, a spokesperson for the centrist recruitment outfit The Bench, put a number on it: leftwing candidates have “a ceiling of 30% in swing districts”, even as they clear 50% in New York City…The easy reply is that DSA now has chapters in 47 states across the country and a few wins in the heart of Trump country. That’s true, and it isn’t enough, because even if we don’t trust Mamo’s number, the broader progressive movement is plainly struggling across much of the country…As Jared Abbott of the Center for Working Class Politics noted, of the nearly 100 members of the Congressional Progressive caucus in 2024, exactly one represented a mostly rural district: Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico…Bernie Sanders, the most successful socialist in American history, endorsed nobody like her in 2022. Rural and rural-suburban districts make up 41% of the House and a larger share of most state legislatures. Democrats have often figured out how to win a thin majority without them. They haven’t figured out how to keep one, and they won’t, because the system isn’t built for a party crammed into a dozen metros.” More here.

“As historian Michael Kazin has demonstrated in his party history, What It Took to Win, Democratic successes have mainly resulted from advocacy for the economic interests of the working and middle classes, and against opponents who champion the interests of the rich,” Harold Meyerson writes in “Encircling the Royalists: Democrats finally show up to the class war” at The American Prospect. When Democrats fail, it’s often because they’re reluctant, or simply opposed, to advocate against the domination of big money, which also weakens their standing as working-class champions… FORTUNATELY FOR DEMOCRATS, the very rich have been hard at work convincing the public to hate their guts. Where Steve Jobs was once hailed as an innovator providing smartphones to the world, with a personal profile that tended more toward asceticism than conspicuous consumption, the current crop of Silicon Valley billionaires are not only ostentatious in their spending but overtly hostile to employee rights, consumer interests, democratic forms of government, racial egalitarianism, and, at least in the case of Elon Musk, normal life. Through their indifference to the effects of social media on children (and the rest of us), and their huge investments in AI and the data centers required to power it, they’ve become the promoters of the most widely feared 21st-century phenomena. Not since John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Henry Clay Frick have we had such a crop of oligarchs. That the Musks and the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs and the Brins, the Thiels and the Andreessens have turned themselves into the financial base of Trumpism—both the man and his madness—has likely created a reciprocal downward pull on the approval rating of both Trump and themselves…Democrats should be climbing over each other to welcome their hatred.” More here.

From “Sorry, Democrats: Your Midterm Hopes Are Probably Overblown. Republicans still hold major advantages in American politics — this year and beyond” by John. B. Judis at Notus.org:

In May, I visited Ohio, where former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is mounting a strong challenge to current Republican Sen. Jon Husted. President Donald Trump has won Ohio by significant margins in the last three elections. As two Youngstown State professors explained to me over lunch at the Golden Dawn Restaurant, his appeal, at least in the Mahoning Valley where Youngstown is located, was both economic and cultural. “He was rough and tumble,” Paul Sracic, a politics professor, told me. “The very things that make him despised in mainstream Washington, D.C., and places like that, are why he’s loved here.” He added, “Well, and the economic message, right? I mean, even though none of it has come true.”

But now Brown has a chance to upend that dynamic. In fact, he might be the only candidate who could pull this off. He’s a genuine populist who, better than most national Democrats, understands why so many blue-collar voters have abandoned his party. “Democrats don’t talk to workers enough, and don’t listen to workers enough,” he told me in a Zoom interview after I had returned home. Brown is more widely known in Ohio than Husted — who was appointed in 2025 to fill the seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance — and has a far more compelling persona. He lost his Senate seat in 2024 by just three points, while Trump carried the state by 11. Brown and his supporters believe the national Democratic ticket cost him the election, and there is some truth to that.

I didn’t find evidence of widespread defections among Trump voters in the Mahoning Valley or in suburban Toledo; some acknowledged, in the words of one small businessman from Warren, Ohio, that Trump can be a “boorish ass,” but they still like him and don’t care for Brown. Yet I suspect that some Trump voters will decide to stay home in 2026 for lack of enthusiasm. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers regional head Austin Keyser, who is based in Youngstown, told me that members who voted for Trump “probably aren’t going to be real excited to come out and vote for a Trump-endorsed candidate.”

Brown, meanwhile, should benefit from growing Democratic support in Ohio’s suburbs like those adjoining Cincinnati and Columbus. Cincinnati’s Hamilton County was once solidly Republican, but most county officials are now Democrats. One of the last holdouts — Anderson Township, a suburb of Cincinnati — elected Democrats to two of its three Board of Trustee positions this April. “The Democrats have been motivated,” Tom Hodges, one of the two winners, told me. “Probably primarily anti-Trump. So, they have had energy on their side to get organized and get things done.”

More here.