An excerpt from “What Friends Owe Friends: Why Washington Should Restrain Israeli Military Action in Gaza—and Preserve a Path to Peace” by Richard Haas at Foreign Affairs. “The case for the United States working to shape Israel’s response to the crisis and its aftermath rests not just on the reality that good if tough advice is what friends owe one another. The United States has interests in the Middle East and beyond that would not be well-served by an Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza, nor by longer-term Israeli policies that offer no hope to Palestinians who reject violence. Such U.S. aims are sure to make for difficult conversations and politics. But the alternative—of a wider war and the indefinite continuation of an unsustainable status quo—would be far more difficult and dangerous….The United States should urge Israel, first in private, then in public if necessary, to orient its policy around building the context for a viable Palestinian partner to emerge over time. By contrast, Israeli policy has, in recent years, seemed intent on undermining the Palestinian Authority so as to be able to say there is no partner for peace. The aim should be to demonstrate that what Hamas offers is a dead end—but also, just as important, that there is a better alternative for those willing to reject violence and accept Israel. That would mean putting sharp limits on settlement activity in the West Bank; articulating final-status principles that would include a Palestinian state; and specifying stringent but still reasonable conditions the Palestinians could meet in order to achieve that aim….Getting there would require a U.S. willingness to take an active hand in the process and show a willingness to state U.S. views publicly, even if it means distancing the United States from Israeli policy. ” And if Biden’s leadership can make a significant contribution to peace in the Middle East, it will provide a boost to his image as the adult in the room when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

In “The House GOP Is Irretrievably Broken” at The Nation,  Joan Walsh suggests a new approach for Dems: “No Republican is likely to get 217 votes from Republicans only. Everybody in that party hates everybody else, and some of them seem to hate everybody. The next speaker will have to be elected with Democratic votes, perhaps just a handful of moderate defectors. If a GOP candidate gave Democrats some concessions—bigger roles on committees, a way to avert a government shutdown in November, calling off or at least slow-walking the bogus Joe Biden impeachment inquiry—maybe they’d win more than a handful of Democratic votes, but they’d almost certainly lose even more Republicans….I’ve said this many times: In a sane world, reporters and pundits would be hammering Republicans about one solution that should be obvious: that five or so Republicans join all 212 Dems and back Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. People laugh at me when I suggest that, but here’s my point: Of course it’s virtually impossible given the current political gridlock. But it’s not the job of reporters to be cynical and rule out solutions; it’s their job to posit solutions and ask why they’re not on the table….If Republicans do find a sacrificial moderate—some are surfacing Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole, one of McCarthy’s most loyal lieutenants—you’ll hear the pundit class bleating for Democrats to make him speaker. As I was writing, former Meet the Press host David Gregory, now a CNN analyst, proved me right, telling Poppy Harlow: “I actually have my eye on Democrats. How long are Democrats going to stand by in the world of identity politics, and zero-sum politics, and not be part of any solution?” There is not even a GOP speaker nominee yet, but Gregory thinks Democrats are part of the problem anyway….I’ll be here pushing the obvious solution—that some combination of Republicans in districts Biden won and those about to retire break ranks and join Democrats to elect Jeffries as speaker. It’s highly unlikely. But it shouldn’t be. The media has helped create the climate in which it’s unthinkable.”

“Last week, I wrote a column puzzling why no mainstream Democrat is challenging President Biden for the nomination, given the strong demand among Democrats for a different and younger nominee.”  Jonathan Chait writes at New York magazine. “It remains mysterious to me.”….Dan Pfeiffer offers a reasonably strong response that still fails to satisfy my curiosity. Pfeiffer, a former aide to President Obama, argues that the main challengers are largely unknown. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker “were mentioned but still have relatively low name ID among the Democratic electorate,” in a CNN poll. He concludes, “a primary challenge would be a massive longshot with potentially devastating consequences for the primary challenger and the incumbent.”….I think that argument may capture why private polls might not show an alternative standing a strong chance to beat Biden. And perhaps it would also explain why challengers have stayed out of the race — if they are surreptitiously taking polls and finding Biden holds a commanding lead, which some insiders have speculated but remains unknown, they would sensibly decide not to run against him….But I think this misunderstands the nature of such a race. Name recognition is extremely important in an ordinary presidential primary. Contested primaries typically involve a lot of candidates, and a big component of winning is getting the media to give you a lot of coverage so voters think of you as a contender. 2020 had an enormous field of contenders, most of whom never received serious coverage…But a race with one main contender against Biden would have a different dynamic. (This assumes the contender had a credible background, such as having won statewide office or some other well-established record.) The campaign would draw a lot of media attention. Name recognition would pretty quickly cease to pose a major obstacle. The question would be whether the candidate could look to Democrats like a better candidate than Biden….Yes, it’s early, and yes, the polling has limited value this far from an election. An improving economy offers a highly plausible scenario for how the dynamic of the race could change for the better….That said, I can’t escape the conclusion that Democrats are treating a highly risky plan as though it were a safe one, locking themselves in to a single-track strategy, and leaving themselves little recourse if the plan falters.”

Harold Meyerson writes in “Investing in Disinvested AmericaThe Biden administration’s manufacturing subsidies are disproportionately flowing to red states and districts” at The American Prospect: “Like Lyndon Johnson once he became president, Joe Biden has deliberately sought to build on Roosevelt’s New Deal legacy. He is surely the most pro-union president since FDR; he is reviving the long-overdue regulation of big business; his social proposals in the Build Back Better bill of paid sick leave, affordable child care, and free community college would have extended the social provisions of the New Deal; and his commitment of funds and tax credits to revive America’s industries and infrastructure has clear echoes of Roosevelt’s public investments….That those commitments of funds also have a specific regional focus, though, isn’t often viewed as a central feature of Bidenomics. A Washington Post article from this August headlined “5 Key Pillars of President Biden’s Economic Revolution” said that the five were: Run the economy hot; Make unions stronger; Revive domestic manufacturing through green energy; Rein in corporate power; and Expand the safety net….,Those are indeed five key Bidenomics pillars. But there’s a sixth, or, at least, a crucial addition to the one about reviving domestic manufacturing: Locating that revival in regions that private capital has long abandoned….I don’t for a moment think that the Biden people believe investments of any size will enable Biden to carry South Carolina, Tennessee, or other solid-red states in 2024. I do think they believe it can help him in swing states like Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, and add an insurance point or two in a state like Michigan. That said, most of his campaign jaunts have been to states and districts where he can claim credit for a new plant springing up. Even if he’s in the reddest of red states, the thinking goes, his message can seep across state lines and may swing some votes that really matter….By revitalizing communities with the shops and eateries and everything needed to serve a new workforce, these projects, if they continue to spring up as they’ve done so far, can bring new life to Disinvested America. Placed alongside Biden’s pro-union actions, his campaign against monopolies and overpriced medications, his as-yet-unrealized plans to help families navigate child care and sick leave and the costs of college, his resurrection of American industry and the places from which it fled affords him just one more way he can answer the question of Which Side Are You On….Biden has yet to convince most Americans—especially those whose local economies will benefit the most from those policies—that he is, in fact, very much on their side. His resurrection of American manufacturing comes with no guarantee of electoral success. But in its long-term effect on American well-being, as Biden once famously said, it’s a big fuckin’ deal.”

A very old hypothesis essentially attributing Republican extremism to southern influences popped up again this week, so I addressed it at New York:

Having grown up in the authoritarian police state of the Jim Crow South, I am acutely aware of the racism that dominated the politics of my home region while white supremacists had the former Confederacy in their grip, and that persisted in various ways even as they lost power. So I am sympathetic to the argument that the roots of today’s twisted Republican Party trace back to the peculiar white southern conservatism that migrated into the GOP during and after the civil-rights movement. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie revives this “southern coup” hypothesis in a meditation on the death of Republican prophet (and later anti-Republican writer) Kevin Phillips and the rise of Louisiana’s Steve Scalise. But I think it’s a bit anachronistic. The MAGA movement that has now conquered the GOP is a thoroughly national phenomenon drawing on reactionary and “populist” impulses from every region of the country.

There’s no question that the rapid defection of the South from its ancient Democratic allegiances to the GOP that began with Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964 was a major factor in the narrow victory of Richard Nixon in 1968 (for which Phillips was the whiz-kid demographic analyst). But as Phillips pointed out in his seminal 1969 book, The Emerging Republican Majority, southern white conservatives angry about civil rights were just one component of the new coalition that just three years later gave Nixon a vast landslide win that captured nearly every former citadel of Democratic power. There were the Catholic working-class ethnic voters (soon to be known as “Reagan Democrats”) of the urban Northeast and Midwest, who had their own racial and economic grievances with LBJ’s Great Society; rural midwestern and western “populists” bridling against federal regulations; and, throughout the country, white suburbanites defending their quality of life from rising crime and creeping taxes. Yes, racism pervaded much of this newfangled conservatism, but it was native to much of white America, not just imported from the South.

It’s plausible to argue that there was a particular ferocity to southern white conservatism — perhaps based on Evangelical culture and/or a racialized approach to issues like labor relations and public education — that has come to characterize conservatism elsewhere. But just as country music is a national (and even global) cultural force whose southern heritage is increasingly incidental, there’s a point at which white conservative Republican politics became truly national as well, blending southern and non-southern traditions.

When Connecticut Yankee turned Texan George H.W. Bush became president in 1988 by catering to the Christian right in the primaries and running openly racist ads in the general election, was he representing “the South”? How about that much-discussed avatar of harsh partisanship Newt Gingrich, the Pennsylvania-born Army brat from a suburban Georgia district that could have been relocated to just about anywhere in the country without changing its character? Did the South slowly strangle the moderate Republican tradition in its ancestral northeastern stomping grounds, or did the GOP come to represent a coalition of homegrown cultural and economic conservatives in unlikely places such as New York? It’s often been noted that the harsh anti-labor and anti-government themes Scott Walker championed in Wisconsin made the 21st-century politics of that once-progressive state feel like 20th-century “southern” politics. But at a certain point, you have to stop treating a national political movement as some sort of interregional infection; it’s more like an ideological pandemic.

That point was surely reached when Donald Trump came along and conquered the Republican Party with a speed that showed how ripe it was for a sharp turn toward authoritarian populism in all its forms, from southern cultural and religious grievances to western anti-government paranoia to the midwestern protectionism and isolationism that gave Trump his “America First” motto.

It’s really no accident that Trump was a quintessential New Yorker who moved to the least “southern” spot south of the Mason-Dixon line, just as it’s no surprise that Ohioan Jim Jordan has outflanked Louisianan Steve Scalise on the right in the House GOP conference. Sure, there remain some distinctively southern MAGA folk such as the Alabaman Tommy Tuberville and arguably even Marjorie Taylor Greene, a wealthy Atlanta suburbanite who basically bought a rural-and-small-town congressional seat. But those battling to restore the “American greatness” of government of, by, and for conservative Christian white people hail from fever swamps located in all 50 states.

From “CNN Poll: Americans’ views of the Republican Party and its congressional leaders have worsened amid House leadership crisis” by Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy:

Among the public generally, impressions of the Republican Party are deeply negative. Nearly three-quarters disapprove of the way the GOP’s leaders in Congress are handling their jobs (74%, up from 67% in January), and 52% have a negative impression of the Republican Party overall (up from 45% in December). Approval for GOP leadership in Congress has dropped sharply among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, from 58% approval in January to 44% now.

And Americans’ expectations have dimmed that the Republican majority in the House could bring positive changes on the federal budget (43% expected a mostly positive effect in December, 18% now say there has been a positive effect), oversight of the Biden administration (35% expected a positive effect, 23% say there has been one), immigration laws (32% expected a positive effect, 17% say there has been one) or the level of cooperation within the federal government (23% expected a positive effect, 16% say there has been one).

However, the poll also includes some bad news for Democrats:

But the Republican Party’s challenges have not improved the public’s view of Democrats. Just 35% approve of the way Democratic leaders in Congress are handling their jobs, down from 40% in January, and half have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party (50%), up from 44% in December….most Americans expressing anger at both parties’ handling of the country’s problems – the public continues to prefer the Republican Party’s leadership to that from the White House: 54% say they have more confidence in Republicans in Congress than in President Joe Biden to tackle the major issues facing the country, while 45% have more confidence in Biden’s leadership, unchanged since this summer.

All of the usual caveats apply. It’s just one poll and it’s just a snapshot thirteen months before the 2024 elections. And then there is the question, will discontent with both parties benefit 3rd party candidates?

A noisy dog has stopped barking with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to withdraw from the Democratic nominating contest and run as an independent. I took a look at this development at New York:

Much of the limited buzz about nuisance candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropping out of the Democratic presidential contest and launching an attempted general-election independent run has focused on the question of whom the conspiracy theorist might help or hurt in a general election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That’s understandable, in part because of the likelihood of another extremely close two-major-party race in November 2024 and in part because of Kennedy’s combination of high name ID and a potentially bipartisan well of support (or, as he likes to put it, a “horseshoe” coalition of left and right “populists” whose distrust of pretty much every institution makes them credulous customers for the cranky stuff he’s peddling). There’s also a rush of donations to RFK Jr. now that he’s rid himself of the light yoke of party loyalty.

The truth is we don’t have a good way of assessing a Kennedy independent candidacy until we see if he has the money and moxie to get on the ballot in competitive states. It won’t be easy, now that the adulatory treatment he has been getting from conservative media as a burr under Biden’s saddle may come to an abrupt end.

But we do know the absence of the Kennedy name on Democratic primary ballots next year is an unambiguous boon to the incumbent. With only the lightly regarded Marianne Williamson (polling at under 4 percent nationally in the RealClearPolitics averages) facing Biden (unless you take pundit Cenk Uygur’s newly announced candidacy seriously, which I don’t), he can run as the all but unanimous Democratic favorite who need not campaign for the nomination or even look or sound defensive about refusing to debate intraparty opponents. Even though his Democratic support has dropped since he was polling at around 20 percent in the spring and has been stagnant since the summer, he was still regularly hitting double digits in the polls and couldn’t be entirely ignored (he was, after all, doing about as well as the much-ballyhooed Republican Ron DeSantis). By contrast, Williamson is an asterisk, comparable less to the incumbent than to “Some Dude” perennial candidates.

Gone with RFK Jr.’s Democratic candidacy, moreover, is any fear of an embarrassingly poor showing in New Hampshire, whose rogue primary he could not enter and that media folk might find themselves unable to ignore (particularly with conservative media inflating every Kennedy vote into a repudiation of the incumbent). The Biden write-in effort that New Hampshire Democratic leaders have been quietly undertaking to overwhelm RFK Jr. in the Granite State should have even less trouble swamping Williamson.

Kennedy also takes with him, via his departure from his ancestral party, any lingering affection of Democrats for him in tribute to his famous relatives (I speak as someone who idolized his father and is pained to see his name profaned so vividly). What’s left is a veteran scandalmonger and misinformation peddler who belongs to no party because no party really wants him. Biden and Democrats are well rid of him.

As Democrats ponder the political consequences of RFK, Jr.’s decision to run for President as an Independent, Amanda Marcotte riffs on the topic at Salon, and writes: “Could Kennedy pull votes away from Trump? Trump’s campaign team certainly seems to think so, at least according to Shelby Talcott at Semafor. She reports that “internal campaign polling suggests his expected third party bid could draw more votes from Trump than President Joe Biden in a general election.” In their typical self-aggrandizing style, a Trump campaign member told Semafor they plan on “dropping napalm after napalm on his head reminding the public of his very liberal views.”….They may find that this is a more difficult task than their belligerent rhetoric suggests. Because the slice of voters Trump and Kennedy could be competing over aren’t defined by political beliefs that map neatly onto concepts like “liberal” or “conservative.”….Right now, polling data is all over the place on whether Kennedy would be a spoiler for Trump or Biden….As voters learn more, Kennedy’s almost certainly going to lose his already weak Democratic support while turning a few heads among Republican voters, especially the 25% who are QAnoners. The party leadership on both sides seems to get this. It’s why Democrats are shrugging Kennedy off, while the RNC sent out a panicked email titled, “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.” It’s possible that Kennedy’s campaign will offset whatever damage Cornell West’s Independent run may do to Democratic prospects. But it’s also possible that RFK could end up hurting Democrats more than helping them. Harry Enten reports a CNN Politics that “A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this past week among likely voters finds former President Donald Trump at 40%, Biden at 38% and Kennedy at 14% in a hypothetical November 2024 matchup. The 2-point difference between Biden and Trump looks a lot like other surveys we’ve seen and is well within the margin of error.”

Ali Swenson shares some similar observations at apnews.com: “Republicans attacked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday as the longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist launched an independent bid for the White House, reflecting growing concerns on the right that the former Democrat now threatens to take votes from former President Donald Trump in 2024….“Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. He labeled Kennedy’s campaign “nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”….Kennedy, a member of one of the most famous families in Democratic politics, was running a long-shot primary bid and holds better favorability ratings among Republicans than Democrats. Even Trump just two weeks ago said of Kennedy, “I like him a lot. I’ve known him for a long time.”….Aware of the risk that Kennedy could pull votes away from Republicans, Trump allies have begun circulating opposition research against Kennedy designed to damage his standing among would-be conservative supporters….The Republican National Committee published a fact sheet before Kennedy’s speech titled “Radical DEMOCRAT RFK Jr.” that lists times he supported liberal politicians or ideas. The document also listed times he supported conspiracy theories about COVID-19 or “stolen-election claims” related to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections that Democrats lost to President George W. Bush….Polls show far more Republicans than Democrats have a favorable opinion of Kennedy. He also has gained support from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, including his vocal distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which studies have shown are safe and effective against severe disease and death.”

The ever-quotable Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has a few choice words about the G.O.P.’s growing inability to govern, cross-posted here from “‘What Is Broken in American Politics Is the Republican Party” at Politico: “It has been clear for some years that what is broken in American politics is the Republican Party. The roots go back for decades — starting with Newt Gingrich’s arrival in the House in 1979. But the current chaos was triggered, ironically, by the self-proclaimed “Young Guns” — Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy — when they went around the country in 2009 recruiting tea party radicals, exploiting their anger after the financial collapse and the backlash against Barack Obama, promising to blow up the establishment in Washington with the hopes that they could use that anger to catapult themselves into the majority. Their expectation was that once these tea party radicals were in the House, they could co-opt them. Instead, of course, they were co-opted. John Boehner was the first victim of the Young Guns, but now all three of the Guns have been shot down by their own gang. Cantor lost his seat to a tea party radical; Ryan suffered the same fate as speaker as John Boehner, forced to leave by the radical right. And now McCarthy, the last one standing, has been taken out by the same forces in an even more dramatic manner….Donald Trump was in some ways a logical extension of the nihilistic, radical politics that emerged in the two decades before his emergence as a presidential candidate and president. But he was an accelerant, not the cause. The GOP transformation into a radical cult was there before he became its leader, and was itself shaped and incited by the rise of tribal media and social media, and advanced by gerrymandering and other political tools that insulated a minority in the country from the consequences of their radical statements and actions. McCarthy paid the price — but we will all pay a heavier price with an ungovernable House dominated by a lunatic fringe that is now at the center of the GOP.”

Substack star and Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson offers some insights about President Biden that Democrats may find encouraging, amid all the handwringing about his age and competency, quoted here from “‘An end of American democracy’: Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s historic threat” by David Smith at The Guardian: “I was not a Biden supporter, to be honest. I thought we needed somebody new and much more aggressive, and yet I completely admit I was wrong because he has, first of all, a very deep understanding of foreign affairs, which I tended to denigrate….“I thought in 2020 that was not going to matter and could I have been more wrong? I think not. That really mattered and continues to matter in that one of the reasons Republicans are backing off of Ukraine right now is that they recognise, for all that it’s not hitting the United States newspapers, Ukraine is actually making important gains. A win from the Ukrainians would really boost Biden’s re-election and the Republicans recognise that and are willing to scuttle that so long as it means they can regain power here. His foreign affairs understanding has been been key….“The other thing about Biden is his extraordinary skill at dealmaking has made this domestic administration the most effective since at least the Great Society and probably the New Deal. You think about the fact that Trump could never get infrastructure through Congress, even though everybody wanted it….“The question going into 2024 is: will people understand that Biden has created a government that does work for the people? Whether or not you like its policies personally, he is trying to use that government to meet the needs of the people in a way that the Republicans haven’t done since 1981. He is a transformative president….”

At The New Republic’s Soapbox, TNR Editor Michael Tomasky interviews Navin Nayak, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Here’s a cross-post of Tomasky’s introduction, followed by the video of the interview:

It’s one of the most frequent and familiar complaints of rank-and-file liberals: Democratic messaging, especially on the economy, stinks. A new poll from NBC News will surely only add fuel to the fire, as it shows the Republicans with the largest lead on the question of which party can better handle the economy since 1991—at 49 percent to 28 percent. Everybody has ideas and suspicions about why Democrats struggle to break through. Navin Nayak, the president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has studied the question intensely with his staff. And the situation is … not good.

Nayak has put together a PowerPoint presentation that is a hot commodity in progressive Washington. He’s been showing it to groups of insiders and elected officials, and here, in this edition of Tomaskycast,you’ll get to see some of the slides yourself. Nayak and his team looked at every press release, Facebook post, and tweet put out in 2022 by Democratic candidates for federal office—some 570,000 pieces of communication. And they found that, “to our surprise, only 5 percent mentioned the words ‘economy’ or ‘economics.’” Even including words like “workers,” “wages,” and “jobs” only raised the number to 11 percent. Small wonder the Republicans come out ahead in those polls.

There’s a feast of useful information in this interview for anyone who really wants to understand the details on the hole in which Democrats find themselves. The news isn’t all bad: By 68 percent to 32 percent, people say they do support the core Joe Biden message of investing in the middle class over the Republican message of investing in businesses and letting them spread the bounty. But as Nayak says, among Democrats there is “a real recognition that there isn’t message clarity, and there isn’t a simple thing that Democrats from across the country and from top to bottom repeat.”

The following article by Gannon University History professor Jefff Bloodworth is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Riffraff. The Masses. Hoi Polloi. Working Class. The Silent Majority. The Great Unwashed.

“The People” have many synonyms. But “Middle American” best describes the demographic upon which every national election swings. Legendary Columbia University sociologist Herbert Gans defines Middle Americans as lower middle and working-class families between the thirty-first and seventy-first income percentiles. They are the working stiffs who are average in jobs, income, and schooling; a high school educated clerk or truck driver, of any race—that’s a Middle American. And Democrats have steadily lost them.

A broader grouping than working class, income alone does not define a Middle American. In his 1989 classic, Middle American Individualism, Gans outlined how income and a “popular individualism” renders them a distinct class. Reared in environments of economic insecurity, Middle Americans prize personal economic security more than anything. Their pursuit of economic autonomy is defined by self-reliance and an individualist ethos. These values and sensibilities are key to understanding Middle America’s political behavior.

Politically, Middle Americans support a version of “moral capitalism.” Moral capitalism is not socialism; Middle Americans think free enterprise and rugged individualism are just fine so long as labor receives a fair share. But any system that shortchanges labor loses legitimacy in Middle America and risks populist uprisings.

Moral capitalism was born on the nineteenth century populist frontier, and it subsequently evolved into the organizing principle that held rural and urban Democrats together. Moral capitalism was the philosophical basis of the Populist movement in the 1890s. Rejecting small government orthodoxy, populists looked to the state to make the urban, industrial economic order into a moral political economy. When markets failed, moral capitalists sought state interventions—but ones that reflected their individualist code. Social Security exemplifies this attitude: funded by dedicated payroll taxes, to Middle Americans the program is an earned benefit and not welfare.

Harry S. Truman’s GI Bill and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Medicare program followed the script Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote with Social Security. “Earned benefits,” recipients served in the military or labored a lifetime to merit eligibility. Not coincidentally, these programs are politically sacrosanct with most Middle Americans.

Oxford University historian Gareth Davies calls this underlying bargain “opportunity liberalism.” The state provides citizens equality of opportunity. Individuals offer grit and labor. And Middle Americans rewarded Democrats with votes.

By founding federal activism and social insurance programs on Middle American individualism, opportunity liberals defeated laissez-faire conservatism and created a liberal political consensus. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, entitlement liberals gained the political upper hand inside Democratic politics and policy circles. Seeking equality of results, they pushed a guaranteed income and single-payer healthcare as well as an array of unearned benefits. Moral capitalism, however, cuts both ways: Middle Americans revolt against economic systems andpolitical ideologies that ignore the bond between labor and economic security. Middle Americans came to distrust a liberalism that, in their eyes, dispensed unearned benefits. To them, it was not a moral capitalism, and many turned right as result.

Middle American was once rightfully synonymous with working-class whites. In 1975, nearly nine of ten Middle Americans were white, and in 1980 and 1984 Ronald Reagan won an average 61 percent of the white working-class vote. Because Middle America comprised two-thirds of the entire electorate, Reagan won in landslides. Post-1965 immigration, however, has remade American and Middle American demography. In 1980, whites were 80 percent of the overall population; today, that number has fallen to 60 percent. Indeed, almost half of today’s Middle Americans are non-white. These demographic changes have transformed American politics.

Bill Clinton combined a rising non-white population with the educated middle class, women, and enough white Middle Americans to win the presidency twice. He did so by emphasizing work and opportunity. In effect, he pushed opportunity liberalism back to the party’s rhetorical center.

Read more…

In his article, “What this year’s labor strikes mean for America’s working class” at The Hill, Andy Levin, distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, adds clarity to current reporting about the dramatic increase in labor union strikes and other organized worker actions. As Levin writes, “It wasn’t too long ago that a working-class job, meant a middle-class life….  I grew up in Michigan in the 1970s, when some of us went off to college but many more went straight into factories, construction and other industries. My friends’ working-class jobs provided a type of stability and security that feels elusive in 2023….Even if there was only one parent working outside the home, families owned their houses. There was plenty of food. Health insurance covered illness or injury without the threat of bankruptcy. Our parents could buy us a bike and maybe even take us “Up North” on a little vacation. … But now, in Michigan and throughout the country, the type of working-class prosperity that surrounded me as a kid exists mostly in the memories of people my age or older….In the 20^th century world I was born into, the American labor movement showed we could build a relatively inclusive economy in which work really paid by giving voice and power to workers in construction, manufacturing, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, transit, trucking and more. And while that world has eroded, now, in 2023, workers across the economy are showing us that this can be our future again.” Levin notes the impressive gains UPS Teamsters made as “the largest group of working people under one contract” and adds ‘Simply put, the UPS employees’ win for themselves provides a boost to the whole working class….Now, the UAW is building on this momentum….Poll after poll shows that despite potential disruptions in auto production, Americans are siding with the UAW rank and file….Whether you are a member of an established union at GM or fighting to create a new one at REI, you are amplifying the same question: Can we have livable jobs in America in the 2020s?….Until we update our laws to guarantee that workers who form a union can get a fair contract within a half year or so, we will not be able to rebuild the middle class in this country.” And therein lies a great unmet and almost unarticulated challenge for Democrats in congress and state legislatures — to become increasingly visible advocates for worker rights and better living standards, and to promote labor unions as the most effective vehicle for improving the living standards of America’s working-class.

Levin concludes, “Labor economists can tell you that many jobs will continue to require high school plus an apprenticeship, short-term credential or on-the-job training. We must help students and workers get the training and credentials they need to do the work of advanced manufacturing, information technology and more. But we must also organize society so that work really pays, including for the huge number of people who will devote themselves skillfully to jobs across multiple sectors that don’t require college degrees…. This is what the UAW strike is really about. Through unions, workers can create an America that more closely resembles the shared prosperity of my childhood than the “trickle down” world my children have inherited. All the rank and file are asking for is solidly middle-class wages, good benefits, dignified retirement and the sanity of regular and predictable hours like the people I grew up with had. Union workers built the middle class in the 20^th century, and they are the best people to rebuild it in the 21^st.” Democrats should also remember that their fate is much  intertwined with the survival and growth of a more organized labor force. Unions not only provide Democratic candidates with needed funds for their campaigns; they also provide an enormous pool of campaign volunteers, who help promote Democratic candidates and get out the vote. That’s why Republicans have put so much energy into weakening and destroying unions, in addition to their donors’ desire to keep wages low. Also, labor unions create community among working people, places and occasions to gather, to affirm their solidarity and visibility as creative and effective advocates for a better society.

But here and there, local Democratic groups have done an exceptionally-good job of spotlighting worker rights.  As Erik Gunn reports in “Democrats push an agenda to restore worker rights” at the Wisconsin Examiner, “Flanked by a phalanx of union members in trades ranging from carpentry to teaching, Democrats in the Legislature rolled out a 10-bill collection Thursday to enshrine workers’ rights in state law after a decade and a half of measures rolling back those rights….“The people of our country are rising up and standing together to demand better wages, benefits, treatment and a higher quality of life,” said Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) at a news conference to announce the initiative….She pointed to union organizing, activism and contract fights at Colectivo and Starbucks coffee shops, Leinenkugel brewery and UPS as well as the prospect of a looming job action by the UAW in the auto industry….“Right now, union popularity is soaring, with seven out of 10 Americans having a positive view of labor unions, because labor unions are getting real results that improve both the economic and safety conditions for the workers they represent,” Shankland said….“As our state continues to grapple with a historic worker shortage, putting forward pro-worker policies is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do. We know that pro-worker legislation will help us recruit and retain the skilled workforce needed for our workers, businesses, economies and communities to thrive.”….With Republicans holding a supermajority in the Senate and just a few seats shy of that number in the Assembly, Shankland acknowledged the difficulty of advancing the measures, but said she wasn’t giving up on getting bipartisan support for at least some of the agenda….In an interview, she asserted that data shows the Walker-era laws harming workers’ rights have also harmed the economy….“We know we have a demographic issue in Wisconsin — our workforce is aging,” Shankland said.  “And we believe that the key to the workforce shortage is treating workers with the dignity and respect they deserve and have earned through their loyalty and hard work and productivity.”

Democrats should also champion worker rights as a top priority for endorsing Supreme Court and appeals court nominees.  The way it is now, the public hears very little about the views of court nominees regarding worker and union rights, even though adults spend half their waking lives, five days a week, on the job. We hear plenty about potential high court nominees and judge appointee records and views regarding abortion, affirmative action, LGBTQ rights, the environment and a broad range of social issues. Think of all the media coverage in recent years about whether or not a baker had to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple vs. how little media attention was provided to any worker rights cases. A lot of this falls on the failure of the press to provide adequate coverage of worker rights cases. But it’s nonetheless up to Democrats and Democratic office-holders to help raise awareness of worker rights issues to the point where big media can no longer ignore job-related issues. As Eve Tahmincioglu, Celine McNicholas, and Daniel Costa report at The Economic Policy Institute, “The Supreme Court has played an important role in the decades-long campaign to erode workers’ rights in this country. In particular, the Supreme Court has issued rulings that have undermined everything from workers’ rights to form unions, the ability to build strong unions, and health and safety on the job. This term, the Supreme Court once again sided with corporations in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters to make it easier for employers to sue unions over their decision to strike.” Compare the media coverage of this case with the aforementioned cake case. The E.P.I. article provides details about important worker rights rulings that got very little big media coverage. With disapproval of the Supreme Court at an historic high, wouldn’t now be a good time for Democrats to make a loud case for a more worker-friendly Supreme Court?

The deal went down on this some time ago, but it’s still worth noting the official demise of the First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses, as I did at New York:

The death rattle of the hallowed First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses took a while to subside. But now it’s done. Yes, Iowa Democrats will still get together in precinct gatherings on January 15, the same day when Iowa Republicans caucus to formally launch the 2024 Republican nominating contest. But thanks to a national party mandate insisted upon by President Joe Biden, there will be no presidential preference balloting at the Democratic caucuses. A separate, mail-in ballot process will culminate in the announcement of the results on March 5, Super Tuesday, safely outside the “early state” window Iowa once dominated, and in the midst of a cascade of votes that will confirm Biden’s nomination.

Iowa’s defenestration from the early-state window was caused by three interrelated factors that came together to overcome the first-in-the-nation tradition. First, Democrats have moved decisively to outlaw caucuses as a method for awarding national-convention delegates, compared to more open and inclusive primaries. Second, Iowa was deemed far too unrepresentative of the country demographically to maintain such a highly influential position on the nominating calendar. And third, the last Democratic Caucuses in 2020 were a huge mess with the state party unable to report the results on Caucus Night (though arguably national party mandates helped make that happen). You could add as a fourth, decisive factor: Biden’s poor performance in Iowa en route to his nomination and election; certainly the White House owed the state no favors.

As Politico reports, Iowa Democrats hope their cooperation in what is after all an uncontested nomination contest in 2024 will give them a chance at reentering the early-state window in the future, albeit not likely in its old premier position. And as the Des Moines Register notes, the state party’s surrender eliminates a collateral threat to Iowa Republicans who might have faced a calendar challenge from New Hampshire if Iowa Democrats conducted something that looked like a primary before the Granite State’s event (which by state law must occur first).

Now the only apparent troublemakers left in the presidential nominating arena are New Hampshire’s Democrats, who have no choice but to follow state law and conduct a presidential primary on January 23; the DNC has demanded New Hampshire give way to the vastly more diverse South Carolina as the first primary state and vote instead on February 6, the same day as Nevada’s primary. The Republicans who control New Hampshire’s legislature have refused to play ball, leaving their Democratic counterparts to hold a rogue event that will cost New Hampshire at least half its delegation to the Democratic convention in Chicago next year, while creating the possibility of an embarrassing upset of President Biden, who won’t participate in a primary that defies his own calendar rules.

Most recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly reduced the risk of that happening by indicating he plans to withdraw from an allegedly “rigged” Democratic nominating contest to run as an independent, leaving Marianne Williamson as Biden’s only foe with any significant support. To be safe, New Hampshire’s Democratic leaders are planning a Biden write-in effort.

No matter what happens in New Hampshire, the whole show will begin in Iowa on January 15 strictly on the GOP side of the partisan divide. Republicans, after all, aren’t that hung up on diversity and are still okay with caucuses and highly unrepresentative delegate award systems. Meanwhile, sad Iowa Democrats may well feel their caucus traditions on January 15 like a missing limb.

The best election campaigns do a good job of both turning out supporters and winning over a healthy share of “persuadable” voters.

Turnout is more of a science – good campaigns know where most of their supporters are and take tried and true steps to get them to the polls. It’s not an exact science, since people keep moving and changing their minds, and sometimes it’s not enough. But you can’t win an election without a solid turnout effort, unless your candidate is a really good one.

Persuasion, on the other hand, is more of an art. there are some tried and true rules for winning hearts and minds. But they don’t always work as planned, either, and these voters can be found in many demographic groups. Yet no campaigns win important elections without persuading a significant number of previously uncommitted voters to support their candidates.

America is so polarized now, that even identifying persuadable voting groups is increasingly difficult.  At The Wall St. Journal, Aaron Zitner and Kara Dapena share some interesting statistics about persuadable voters in their graph-rich article, “A Quarter of Americans Can’t Decide Whom to Vote For. What Do We Know About Them?” including:

….most voters say their choice for president is already settled, if their options are Biden and Trump. That leaves a small but meaningful share of voters, 26%, as “up for grabs,” or persuadable. And these voters are conflicted: They don’t think Biden is doing a good job but dislike some of Trump’s personal qualities. They have a sour view of the economy but favor abortion rights. The findings give clues to how each party will try to reach these voters in the coming months.