The following article by Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent, is cross-posted from The Seattle Medium:

Democrats are increasingly worried about a potential drop in Black voter turnout next year, particularly among Black men, their most loyal constituency, who played a pivotal role in securing President Biden’s victory in 2020 and are crucial to his bid for reelection.

The Washington Post analyzed the Census Bureau’s turnout survey and found that Black voter turnout saw a significant ten percentage-point decline in last year’s midterms compared to 2018, a more substantial drop than among any other racial or ethnic group.

While Democrats initially downplayed these warning signals due to other victories in 2022, such as gaining a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and Senator Raphael G. Warnock’s reelection in Georgia, the decline in Black turnout has become a significant concern for the party as they look ahead to the next presidential contest in 2024.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and author, with John B. Judis of the forthcoming “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Back in 2016, neither Trump nor Clinton were widely liked. But Trump got some important help among a key group that amounted to about a fifth of voters: those who didn’t like either of them. Trump’s advantage among these “double haters” helped him win the presidency. This cycle a key role will likely be played by a similar group, also amounting to about a fifth of voters: those who like neither Trump nor Biden.

These “double haters” at this point seem to lean toward Biden. But closer scrutiny of this group, afforded by a 6,000 person survey from the Survey Center on American Life (SCAL), suggests Democrats’ hold on this group is not at all secure. First, while the SCAL survey also finds that double haters lean toward Biden against Trump, a matchup of Biden against DeSantis finds the same group leaning toward DeSantis and even more heavily. So the Biden support here is quite soft.

Moreover, a huge swathe of these double haters—about 40 percent—at this point are noncommittal when asked to choose between Biden and Trump. This group, like double haters in general, displays jaundiced attitudes toward both parties in most areas. But there are some notable divergences in these attitudes that indicate considerable vulnerability for Biden and the Democrats. Consider the following.

1. Undecided double haters consider both parties “too extreme” but more (59 percent) think that about the Democrats than think that about the Republicans (54 percent).
2. Among this group, a mere 28 percent think the Democratic Party “shares my values;” a considerably larger share (42 percent) think Republicans share their values.
3. About half think the Democrats “look down on people like me”. Less (42 percent) feel that way about the Republicans.
4. Just 36 percent think Democrats “look out for the working class” compared to 45 percent who think that about the Republicans.
5. On patriotism and valuing hard work, attitudes toward the parties are essentially inversions of each other. By 63 to 37 percent, undecided double haters say “patriotic” does not describe the Democratic Party. But by 59 to 41 percent they say patriotic does describe the Republicans. Similarly, by 60 to 40 percent, they say “values hard work” does not describe the Democrats. In stark contrast, by 64-36 percent, they believe Republicans do value hard work.

Democrats’ vulnerability is underscored by views among this group on contentious issues dividing Republicans and Democrats. Take the issue of racism in our society. Is racism “built into our society, including into its policies and institutions”, as Democrats contend, or does racism “come from individuals who hold racist views, not from our society and institutions?” In the SCAL survey, by 64 to 34 percent, our undecided double haters chose the latter view, that racism comes from individuals, not society.

Or consider the question of transgender athletes participating in team sports. Should “transgender athletes… be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity” or should they “only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” By a staggering 75 to 20 percent, those who dislike both Trump and Biden but currently can’t choose between them, choose the second option, that sports team participation should be determined by birth gender.

The same pattern can be observed on issues ranging from the funding of police departments to the “greatness of America” to the continued use of fossil fuels: views associated with the Republicans are much more popular with this swing group than those associated with the Democrats. On the latter issue, when given a choice between the country using “a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources” and the current Democratic approach, phasing “out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only”, they endorse the continued use of fossil fuels by a thumping 80 to 20 percent.

All this suggests Democrats have much work to do—and Republicans have considerable opportunity to take advantage of their vulnerablities. Right now, Plan A for the Democrats seems to rely on the projected success of “Bidenomics,” along with an intransigent refusal to compromise on cultural and green issues beloved by the party’s liberals and aggressive attacks on Republicans as racist reactionaries, if not fascists. The success of Bidenomics, especially as it might translate into a sunny mood about the economy among voters, remains speculative. That puts a lot of weight on the intransigent refusal and aggressive attacks part of the strategy.

Certainly Democrats can point to issues like abortion where Democrats do have an advantage, even with the swing group discussed here. But perhaps they should consider a Plan B, where the success of the Bidenomics pitch is not assumed and compromise is not anathematized. As I have argued previously, Democrats have generally dealt with culturally-freighted issues by some combination of ignore(change the subject) and attack (our opponents are hateful bigots who want to roast the planet). The latter now seems like the preferred Democratic approach. But there is a third way, if you will, that would fit nicely into a Plan B.

That approach is to defuse. This means moving aggressively to neutralize vulnerabilities in cultural areas by (a) dissociating the party from extreme positions in their own ranks; and (b) embracing a common-sense approach to these issues which typically aligns well with both Democratic values and public opinion.

The defuse approach relieves Democrats of the need to defend a multitude of unpopular, controversial practices—thereby giving voters the impression that Democrats are unwilling to draw any lines anywhere against the activist left—and allows them instead to occupy the moral and policy high ground against Republican attacks on common-sense moderation. That’s way better than the situation they currently find themselves in on many cultural issues where the Democratic image is defined by the most leftward position pushed by activists.

In the hand-to-hand combat likely to define the 2024 election, Democrats can ill afford to leave any swing voter behind. They should accept the fact that many, many voters are likely to dislike both Trump and their own standard-bearer. A little compromise is a fair price to pay for reaching more of these voters and having a better chance of victory—especially when we consider what the price of losing might be.

If this doesn’t work, what will? At Politico, Gary Fineout reports, “Florida Democrats see a possible path to winning America’s once-foremost battleground state: Abortion and marijuana….National Democrats had all but written off Florida as a lost cause — a former purple state turned solid red by the MAGA movement and Gov. Ron DeSantis. But key party leaders in the state, desperate to turn things around in 2024, are confident that citizen initiatives dealing with abortion rights and recreational marijuana legalization could fuel turnout and boost the party’s chances….“It will have a transformative impact on the election,” said former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat who was swept out of office last year amid Florida’s red wave and is now running for the state Senate….When Democrats gathered in Miami Beach this month to raise money and strategize about 2024, they were buzzing about the prospect of what such high-profile citizens initiatives could mean. Republicans, they said, could suddenly find themselves at a disadvantage….Democratic volunteers and paid canvassers will help gather signatures for the pot and abortion amendments when they go out into the field….There’s no guarantee right now that either the abortion rights or recreational marijuana initiative will make the 2024 ballot. The pot amendment, funded almost entirely by the marijuana giant Trulieve, has already gotten over 1 million signatures, more than enough to qualify. But Florida’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court still needs to approve the initiative and state Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody has asked the high court to reject the measure….Organizers for the abortion rights initiative, which would create a constitutional amendment banning restrictions on abortion before about 24 weeks, say they have gathered more than 400,000 signatures and are on pace to reach one million in the next couple of months. If approved, it would block Florida’s current ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy and this year’s six-week ban, which remains in limbo until the state Supreme Court decides on a legal challenge to the bans….The hope is also that the abortion and marijuana initiatives will provide an incentive for infrequent voters to turn at the polls. And even if it’s not enough to help Biden win Florida — which Trump won in 2020 — it may make a difference in down-ballot contests.” At present 26 states allow some form of ballot initiative.

Talking Points Memo Editor Josh Marshall provides a fresh take on the “Is Biden too old to run for president?” issue, and writes: “If you’re a Democrat into politics mostly as an observer, Joe Biden’s been carrying the torch for three years. You cheer his victories, of which there have been quite a few. You smack down the unfair criticisms. You share Dark Brandon memes when he pulls a rabbit out of a hat. You’re invested. Certainly not everyone is. But it’s in the nature of partisanship that most are. And by definition the people serving under Biden almost certainly are. And they’re in power….All of this applies almost infinitely more when you’re actually in the midst of the reelection campaign. We can imagine an alternate universe in which a few months after taking office Biden announced that because of his age and the unique mission of the 2020 election he wouldn’t run for reelection. A key reason this doesn’t happen is because people elect a president to be president and a huge amount of a president’s power is bound up in the expected reelection campaign. Have that announcement and I can close to assure you there’s no infrastructure bill or Inflation Reduction Act. It’s not just announcing you won’t seek reelection. It’s basically announcing you’ll barely be in power during your first term….In any case, now we’re in the midst of the campaign. Does it worry you that concerns about Biden’s health could weaken his reelection bid? Yes? Well me too. But certainly the best way to weaken Democratic chances of holding the White House is to suddenly kick off a totally open primary contest, very late on the calendar, with a host of strong and eager contenders and no clear standout winner….Throwing this debate wide open again with no warning would be about the best way imaginable to wrongfoot the party going into a general election and greatly increase the chances of defeat. And this doesn’t even get into the separate though related issue of racial and gender inclusion. Should it be another white man? That’s a tough sell. Can it be easily denied to the black woman who is the incumbent vice president and has the position that would normally have the inside track on the succession?” We could also ask, if Biden quits, will it look like he is caving to ageist prejudices? Would this piss off high-turnout senior voters enough for a big bunch of them to stay home on Election Day, or worse?

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes about the downer vibe the GOP has successfully deployed to darken the public’s perception of President Biden’s victories. No, it’s not a majority of American voters; but it could be a big enough slice of the electorate to do the needed damage. Dionne writes, “Republicans might be damaging their long-term prospects with extremist tactics, but Democrats must confront an unhappy reality: The GOP’s merciless personal and ideological warfare, particularly in the House, is making it much harder for President Biden to sell his achievements….The poisonous nature of our politics nurtures a sense of exhaustion with public life that works against any incumbent, especially one trying to convince voters that the government is making their lives better. As members of the party that believes in public action, Democrats are especially hurt by a mood of frustration and cynicism….The GOP’s efforts to insert often unsupported accusations into the news cycle muddle Biden’s comeback campaign. “If you’re Biden, you have a really good story to tell,” [pollster Geoff] Garin told me, “but it’s almost impossible to communicate effectively in this media environment.”….”Biden is also consciously rebuffing Reagan’s trickle-down economics, arguing that government intervention in the economy is essential to “growing the middle class,” the magic words meant to appeal to the diverse coalition the president needs to assemble….If Biden is to have a recovery akin to Reagan’s, his campaign will have to reverse the perceptions of the two parties and dispel 2022’s memories….This will not be an easy climb.” Of course the real progenitor of the “exhaustion” is Trump, who has done more to make U.S. politics a bickering hellscape than anyone. It’s not just the volume; it’s the relentless echo chamber, trying to blame all discontents on Biden and Democrats.

Dionne continues, “A Morning Consult poll this month found 68 percent of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track; only 32 percent think it’s on the right track….The promising news for Biden is that the “right track” number was up eight points from about a year ago, and it rose 13 points among Democrats, from 41 percent to 54 percent….Preventing this trend from taking hold is why Republicans are doing all they can to accentuate the gloomy. If their over-the-top attacks on Biden make you want to give up on politics, GOP leaders will be able to declare “mission accomplished.”….Getting this message across is vital, said Navin Nayak, president of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. His group’s research shows Republicans have a “built-in, decades-long advantage as the party that’s focused on the economy that makes it harder for Democrats to break through.” Democrats, he added, “don’t talk enough about the economy,” and their economic goals are unclear to voters…..Democrats have to do a better job of confronting the  GOP propaganda and pinning the “divisive” label on Republicans. Dems must also brand the Republicans as phonies, who show up at ribbon-cutting events for projects they voted against. Big media is doing a good job of publicizing Trump’s responsibility for the January 6th mob violence/coup attempt, his confiscation of top secret documents and his outrageous phone call urging the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to flip the Electoral College. But big media is not good at holding the Republican Party accountable, partly because they are afraid of appearing one-sided. It falls to Democrats to do more to place blame on Republicans who are enabling Trump. They must say that in interviews. Crank up the volume and the frequency of political ads, craft irresistible memes for social media and script sound bites that will be repeated because they are catchy. Brand the GOP as corrupt whiners. They will provide the material. The trick is to do all this while making substantial, steady, positive leadership the Democratic brand. It’s a tall order. But it must be filled. Such a messaging campaign doesn’t have to persuade everyone, just enough swing voters.

Like most Democrats, I’m annoyed by Republican pols who brag they will kick our butts in a general election. I’m glad to report the most annoying braggart of them all, Ron DeSantis, has been getting his comeuppance, as I noted at New York:

As Ron DeSantis tries to catch up to Republican presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump, the Florida governor’s campaign has been making aggressive assertions that he has an advantage in terms of his “electability” against Joe Biden. The case for DeSantis being the better Republican general-election candidate has had less to do with any direct evidence than with the fading memories of his strong reelection performance in 2022, compared to the mixed results of Trump-endorsed midterms candidates and, of course, his loss to Biden in 2020.

But truth be told, a lot of DeSantis’s electability claims are more about Republican voters’ presumed lack of trust in Trump, which isn’t all that well established. In fact, a new Monmouth survey of Republicans shows Trump has an electability advantage over DeSantis. It’s not even very close. If you directly ask Republicans which candidate is stronger against Biden, Trump wins pretty clearly:

“Regardless of whether you currently support Donald Trump, which of the following statements comes closest to your view about which Republican has the best chance to win in 2024.”

Forty-five percent said Trump was definitely stronger and another 24 percent said Trump was probably stronger. Only 13 percent said any other Republican is definitely stronger, and 18 percent said some other Republican is probably stronger. Directly comparing Trump and DeSantis, 47 percent said the Florida governor was weaker than the former president; 22 percent said he was stronger.

It’s not just Monmouth showing DeSantis’s loss of an electability advantage (if he ever had one). As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes, this problem shows up in early state polls as well:

“Fox Business polls in the key primary states of Iowa and South Carolina tell the same tale.

“In Iowa, 45 percent said Trump would be the most likely to defeat Biden, while 23 percent picked DeSantis. And in South Carolina, Trump’s edge on this measure was threefold: 51 percent to 17 percent.”

In recent weeks, DeSantis has deemphasized the argument that he’s more appealing to swing voters and instead focused on out-Trumping Trump by running to his right on immigration, crime, COVID-19, and federal spending. It’s possible he’s abandoning his once-obsessive electability pitch altogether and is going after hard-core “very conservative” and/or ultra-MAGA voters. Some right-wing Republicans believe, improbably, that swing voters actually want stridently ideological candidates rather than any sort of squishy centrists. And in the end, a candidate can’t win the general election at all without winning the nomination. More likely, Team DeSantis is going after today’s Trump voters by abandoning anything like moderation and perhaps making electability an afterthought. It’s a good way to make yourself unelectable altogether.

Nathaniel Rakich reports “16 States Made It Harder To Vote This Year. But 26 Made It Easier” at FiveThirtyEight, and writes:

Two years ago, the biggest battles in state legislatures were over voting rights. Democrats loudly — and sometimes literally — protested as Republicans passed new voting restrictions in states like Georgia, Florida and Texas. This year, attention has shifted to other hot-button issues, but the fight over the franchise has continued. Republicans have enacted dozens of laws this year that will make it harder for some people to vote in future elections.

But this year, voting-rights advocates got some significant wins too: States — controlled by Democrats and Republicans — have enacted more than twice as many laws expanding voting rights as restricting them, although the most comprehensive voter-protection laws passed in blue states. In all, 39 states and Washington, D.C., have changed their election laws in some way this year….

Some political commentators have argued that making it harder to vote matters less than the integrity of vote counting. Although Republicans are louder complainers about vote theft, Democrats may have more reason for concern. Indeed, since both Trump and Putin are heavily-invested in Trump winning the presidency in 2024, it’s hard to imagine their minions not doing whatever they can to corrupt the count.

But no political commentators have provided a persuasive analysis that Democrats should simply ignore voter suppression, although there are legitimate questions about the amount of resources to commit to fighting against it. Rakich continues,

….According to data from the Voting Rights Lab, a pro-voting-rights organization that tracks election-law legislation, state legislators introduced 566 bills restricting voter access or election administration that year, 53 of which were enacted. This year hasn’t been quite so busy, but as of July 21, 366 laws with voting restrictions had been proposed and 29 had been enacted.

All but one of those 29 new laws¹ came in states where Republicans have full control of the lawmaking process: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana,² Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. Five of the laws include provisions that tighten voter-ID requirements, 11 include provisions that interfere with election administration and 13 have at least one provision that targets mail voting.

For Democrats the most worrisome state has to be Georgia in terms of presidential electoral votes, since Trump won all of the others in 2020. But Democrats could lose even more Senate and House of Reps seats in the other states through voter suppression and partisan redistricting.

But there is good news for Democrats in terms of recent electoral reforms, as Rakich notes:

….As of July 21, according to the Voting Rights Lab, 834 bills had been introduced so far this year expanding voting rights, and 64 had been enacted. What’s more, these laws are passing in states of all hues. Democratic-controlled jurisdictions (Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Washington) enacted 33 of these new laws containing voting-rights expansions, but Republican-controlled states (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming) were responsible for 23 of them. The remaining eight became law in states where the two parties share power (Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia).

Events permitting, Democrats should be able to pick up at least a few House seats in 2024, thanks to these reforms. The Senate is a bit trickier to suss out.  The caveat, according to Rakich: “That said, not all election laws are created equal, and the most comprehensive expansive laws passed in blue states.” In any case, hard-fought battles over redistricting will continue into the foreseeable future.

Clearly, there is every reason for Democrats to strengthen their state parties as an essential precondition to building a working majority in congress.

As a political history fanatic, I quickly read and then wrote about this history-based insight on 2024 at New York:

There isn’t much question that the likeliest scenario for the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch between 2020 winner Joe Biden and 2020 loser Donald Trump. Allegedly, this is a pairing most Americans don’t want (it’s actually a bit hard to tell since Democrats nearly all despise Trump and Republicans nearly all despise Biden, meaning a “rematch” begins by displeasing half of the electorate). But the polls show Biden crushing Robert Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson in the primary and Trump far ahead of 12 intraparty opponents, so anything other than a rematch would be quite a surprise.

But Biden vs. Trump: Part II will not simply be a replay of the 2020 election. Most obviously, conditions in the country have changed with the winding down of the COVID-19 pandemic and the winding up of the economy, along with renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine and all the partisan controversies that have accompanied this latest phase of divided U.S. government.

Perhaps most important, there will be a new incumbent president on the ballot in 2024. But as Jonathan V. Last observes, Biden won’t be the only president on the ballot if Trump wins the GOP nomination:

“No one living has seen an election in which two presidents have run against one another.

“And that changes everything …

“One of the (many) advantages an incumbent president has is that he has proven that he can do the job.

“This sword has two edges: An incumbent’s presidential record can be attacked. Some voters may like it. Some may not. But at the lizard-brain level, they have all seen him sitting at the big desk in the Oval. They know what he looks like as president.

“At the risk of stating the obvious: Joe Biden is president of the United States. Donald Trump used to be president of the United States.”

So in a Biden-Trump rematch, both candidates will have already passed the plausible-president threshold, and both have a recent presidential record to defend. As Last points out, this hasn’t happened since 1892, when former president Grover Cleveland faced incumbent president Benjamin Harrison, who had narrowly defeated Cleveland (while losing the popular vote) four years earlier. Then as now, the rematches came in an extended period of closely contested presidential elections. Then as now, the electorate knew both candidates very well.

But there are some big differences between the 19th-century and 21st-century rematches. For one thing, Harrison’s 1892 defeat was preceded by a financial panic and recession that cost his Republican Party an incredible 93 House seats (out of a total of 332) in the 1890 midterms. The 2022 midterms, by contrast, were a near dead heat with modest Republican gains in the House. But the even bigger difference is that the Cleveland-Harrison transition in 1889 was peaceful. The 2021 transition was perpetually contested by the loser and eventually by a mob that invaded Congress and tried to stop the final certification of the winner. Indeed, those events are an important — to many voters, a central — part of Trump’s record as an incumbent.

The horrific culmination of the first Biden-Trump election has frozen the vast majority of partisans in place as a rematch approaches, with most Democrats regarding Trump as a lawless rogue who had to be impeached twice, and most Republicans regarding Biden as a usurper who stole the White House from its rightful occupant. Conversely, most Republicans view the Trump administration as an era of peace and prosperity, while most Democrats view the Biden administration as a return to normalcy and constitutional governance. It’s unclear how many voters will engage in any judicious comparison of the records of the two presidents, and it’s entirely possible the result will be determined by voters who must decide which of them they dislike the least.

But beware of anyone telling you there is some infallible historical precedent governing a 2024 rematch. As has been so often the case since Trump won the 2016 election in an upset that overturned previous infallible historical precedents, we’re in unexplored political territory.

“The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization transformed the politics of abortion, turning an issue that once mattered mostly to conservative Christians into a powerful voting issue on the left,” Amelia Thomson-Deveaux writes at FiveThirty Eight. “But new polling suggests that the decision could also be reshaping the way abortion-rights supporters think about the issue — specifically, whether abortion is something that should be regulated by the government at all….A new and intriguing finding from PerryUndem, a nonpartisan research firm, suggests that a significant chunk of abortion-rights supporters may now oppose anygovernment restrictions on abortion — even limits on later abortion that were largely uncontroversial before Dobbs. The researchers asked 4,037 registered voters if they supported a constitutional amendment establishing reproductive freedom. Half of the sample read an amendment identical to the ballot measure that passed in Michigan in 2022; the other half read the same amendment except the researchers removed language that allowed the state to regulate abortion after viability, or when a fetus can live outside a woman’s body….PerryUndem found that respondents who received the version of the ballot measure with no government regulations included were 15 percentage points more likely to say they would “definitely” vote for it: Forty-five percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with no restrictions, while 30 percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with a viability restriction. The results were particularly pronounced among Democrats and women of reproductive age (ages 18 to 44), who were much more likely to support the version of the amendment without restrictions….While just one initial finding, this survey lines up with other public opinion research suggesting that over the past few years, a subset of Americans have gotten more supportive of unrestricted abortion in the late second and early third trimester of pregnancy. That’s a big shift from just a short time ago, when pressing to expand viability limits was a political lightning rod for Democratic politicians in states like New York and Virginia. And if that shift turns out to be real, it may create new opportunities — and new challenges — for abortion-rights supporters who are pushing for ballot measures like the one that passed in Michigan last year.”

In his post, “Donald Trump Is Running to Stay Out of Prison. Say It, Democrats!,” at The New Republic’s ‘Soapbox,’ Editor Michael Tomasky writes: “As we anticipate the third and fourth indictments of Donald Trump, both of which look like they might land before school starts, I am reminded that presidents all think about their place in history. George Washington did—he was careful, for example, not to do certain things that would carry the whiff of monarchical ambition. He eschewed a third term that he could easily have won because he knew that he was setting the precedent for all who would follow him….But let’s be clear about Trump’s main motivation. Yeah, he wants to be president. He wants to corrupt and destroy democracy, bask in the radioactive glow of his sycophants’ blubbery praise over his perfect phone calls to Putin, start the mother of all culture wars, and all that. But mostly: He wants to stay out of prison….As we know, it is official Justice Department policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted. So for Trump, being president for the next four years would in essence wipe these indictments off the books. As for criminal trials that started before he was sworn in on January 20, 2025, should he win? Easy peasy. He can pardon himself. Come on. You think he wouldn’t do it? You think he couldn’t count on the right-wing media to endorse it as no big whoop and look at those stupid fulminating libtards, along with a chorus of right-wing, Leonard Leo–anointed constitutional “scholars” to explain why it’s all fine?”

From “Biden looks to put North Carolina on ’24 map: Without the Tar Heel state, Democrats say, Republicans don’t have a path to the White House” by Myah Ward at Politico: “Biden lost the Tar Heel state to Donald Trump by just 1.4 percentage pointsin 2020, and a Democrat at the top of the ticket hasn’t managed to turn North Carolina blue since Barack Obama did in 2008. Now Biden’s team sees opportunity in 2024 amid a fresh abortion ban, a contentious, expensive gubernatorial race and steady population growth that has ballooned urban and suburban areas….State and local party leaders are pointing to North Carolina as the next Arizona or Georgia for Democrats. They’re calling on the Biden campaign and DNC to invest heavily in the state because without it, they say, Republicans don’t have a path to the White House….“I think the road to reelection will run through North Carolina this time. And we’re encouraged by the [Biden] campaign’s early commitment to our state,” said Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a member of the president’s national advisory board. “It’s pretty clear that they have decided that North Carolina is going to be one of their targeted states … I told the president that this investment is going to be critical to his reelection, and that I believe we can win this state for him.”….The Biden campaign came out early in May with a strategy memo outlining its 2024 path to victory, including its plans to target the Tar Heel state. The DNC and campaign have already run ads in North Carolina this cycle, including on television and on two billboards in Charlotte and Rocky Mount highlighting Biden’s economic agenda.”

At Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Mike Lux responds to “deliverism” — the notion that “if Democrats deliver genuine, tangible benefits to working-class and poor people, they will win more elections.” In his article, “Bidenomics, Storytelling, and Community,” Lux writes: “Democrats will have to overcome long-term cynicism and bitterness about the decline in economic fortunes for the two-thirds of voters without a college degree (as well as a whole lot of people with college degrees). And the Republican spin machine that vilifies not only Democrats but any government effort to lift up regular folks won’t be easy to overcome either. But the combination of Biden’s economic policy wins and a successful reframing of the trickle-down versus Bidenomics debate gives Democrats their best opportunity in a long time to begin to win the hearts and minds of working-class voters….Writers Matt Stoller and David Dayen coined the term “deliverism,” which argues that if Democrats deliver genuine, tangible benefits to working-class and poor people, they will win more elections. Stoller and Dayen have plenty of cautions and caveats to that formula—especially that policies need to be more far-reaching than most legislative measures for voters to notice—but the fundamental idea of deliverism is a critical one that the Biden team is counting on….I would add that part of our challenge is to expand progressive media, especially at the local level, and that our organizing needs to include community building to address the isolation voters are feeling….Passing big policy changes is not the only thing we have to do, but it is the first big thing we have to do. The path to electoral success still has to have at its center the enactment of policies that truly and deeply improve working-class voters’ lives….This isn’t either/or. We need good progressive policies, but we also need deeper organizing, better storytelling, more innovative ways of getting the story out, and a long-term vision of a better society for working families….Over the long run, a decade of fully flowered Bidenomics—where we build on the good things that were passed in 2021-22 and add important components like child care, affordable housing, a higher minimum wage, and a permanent expanded child tax credit—gives us an opportunity to change the dynamics. If we combine these policies with deep organizing, good storytelling, and innovative ways of delivering the story, we will have real potential to break loose big chunks of working-class voters. Democrats could start to consistently compete again in states like Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and more of the South, as well as winning in more of rural America….An America where progressive policy wins make a better life possible for most people will restore our democracy for the long term, and make the Democratic Party the party of working people again.”

Daniel A. Cox and Ruy Teixeira have an article, “The 2024 Presidential Election: Evolving Political Coalitions and Familiar Partisan Divisions” up at the Survey Center on American Life of the American Enterprise Institute. Among their observations:

Political coalitions are complicated and fluid, and they evolve in response to emerging issues, political leaders, and public priorities. A new survey, conducted among more than 6,000 adults living in the United States by the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, reveals deep fissures currently dividing the American electorate and how they crosscut and define today’s Republican and Democratic parties.

The new survey, detailed below, finds an American public torn between optimism and pessimism for the country but, perhaps surprisingly, largely maintaining faith in the ability of individuals to attain the American dream. Less surprisingly, the public expresses far less confidence in current political leaders’ ability to put the country on the right course. Instead, the public is divided, both between and within parties, on what key priorities political leaders should address.

Despite the partisan rancor so prominent in our country today, supporters of both parties declare a preference for candidates who can appeal to moderate voters rather than remain consistently liberal or conservative. Moreover, when political parties have more moderate reputations, they are generally viewed more favorably than when they are operating at the ideological extremes.

In the early days of the 2024 presidential campaign, we find the probable candidates—Joe Biden on the Democratic side and Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis on the Republican side—to be fairly evenly matched in voters’ current preferences, and we reveal key weaknesses in the coalitions they would hope to assemble to support their candidacies.

However, at least at this early stage, DeSantis appears to be the somewhat stronger Republican challenger. Biden remains a weak incumbent, but his leading opponents have their own liabilities. For example, Biden is viewed without enthusiasm among young voters, a key Democratic constituency, while Trump appears to be losing support among one of his strongest previous constituencies: white evangelicals.

Cox and Teixeira review the data on “American Optimism and pessimism,” “The American Dream,” and “America’s Most Pressing problems.” Regarding the 2024 presidential election, they note:

Neither Biden nor Trump is especially well regarded by the American public. Roughly four in 10 Americans have favorable views of Biden and Trump (41 percent vs. 38 percent, respectively). A majority of Americans view the current and former presidents negatively. Sixty percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, and 54 percent have an unfavorable view of Biden. However, Trump engenders much stronger negative feelings than Biden does. Nearly half (48 percent) of Americans have a “very unfavorable” view of Trump, compared to 38 percent with a correspondingly negative view of Biden.

Biden also has a slight advantage over Trump among partisans. Eighty percent of Democrats have a favorable view of Biden, while 75 percent of Republicans view Trump favorably. Nearly one in four (23 percent) Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Fewer (18 percent) Democrats have an unfavorable opinion of Biden.

They analyze the Trump, Biden and DeSantis coalitions, and write:

Americans hold nearly identical views of the country’s primary political parties’ ideological profiles. Almost seven in 10 (66 percent) Americans believe the Democratic Party is liberal, including 37 percent who say the party is very liberal. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of Americans say the Republican Party is conservative, including 39 percent who say the GOP is very conservative.

Not only do Americans have similar views about the ideological profiles of the Democratic and Republican parties, they generally agree about how the parties have changed over time. Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe the Democratic Party has become much more liberal (40 percent) or somewhat more liberal (27 percent) in recent years. Six in 10 (60 percent) Americans say the Republican Party has become much more conservative (37 percent) or somewhat more conservative (23 percent).

Cox and Teixeia probe the depth of divisions among various constituencies and conclude:

Our country is divided, but not hopelessly so. Faith in the American dream remains strong, and interest in partisan moderation is considerable. But the 2024 election seems likely to present Americans with a choice between candidates who fail to generate much enthusiasm outside of hard-core partisans. The findings in our survey suggest there are abundant opportunities for both parties to reshape political coalitions in their favor, even if they currently seem reluctant to step outside their comfort zones. These opportunities will be explored in depth in a forthcoming AEI report on the evolution of party coalitions from early American history to the present day.

This upcoming report will trace the evolution of American political coalitions from early American history through the current partisan stalemate. The core political dynamic of this period—close elections with power alternating between the parties—is unusual in a historical perspective and suggests a failure of the American party system. But it is likely also a phase that will pass and be replaced by one dominated by a relatively stable majority coalition. Either party may have a path to becoming that next majority. But for either party, that would require a greater awareness of the nature of its failure, which in turn requires a greater awareness of the modern evolution of the party coalitions, the changing demographics and priorities of the electorate, and what it takes to build a durable majority.

The authors have much more to say in this thoughtful and data-rich exploration of the 2024 presidential campaign 16 months from Election Day.

Democrats should get ready for ever-increasing GOP efforts to suppress the votes of college students. Charley Mahtesian and Madi Alexander write in “‘This Is a Really Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP” at Politico that “In state after state, fast-growing, traditionally liberal college counties….are flexing their muscles, generating higher turnout and ever greater Democratic margins. They’ve already played a pivotal role in turning several red states blue — and they could play an equally decisive role in key swing states next year….Name the flagship university — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, among others — and the story tends to be the same. If the surrounding county was a reliable source of Democratic votes in the past, it’s a landslide county now. There are exceptions to the rule, particularly in the states with the most conservative voting habits. But even in reliably red places like South Carolina, Montana and Texas, you’ll find at least one college-oriented county producing ever larger Democratic margins.” Mahtesian and Alexander dive into the specifics of several college towns and the counties where they are located, and it’s all bad news for the GOP. They note further that “The American Communities Project, which has developed a typology of counties, designates 171 independent cities and counties as “college towns….Of those 171 places, 38 have flipped from red to blue since the 2000 presidential election. Just seven flipped the other way, from blue to red, and typically by smaller margins. Democrats grew their percentage point margins in 117 counties, while 54 counties grew redder. By raw votes, the difference was just as stark: The counties that grew bluer increased their margins by an average of 16,253, while Republicans increased their margins by an average of 4,063….None of this has gone unnoticed by the GOP, which is responding in ways that reach beyond traditional tensions between conservative lawmakers and liberal universities — such as targeting students’ voting rights, creating additional barriers to voter access or redrawing maps to dilute or limit the power of college communities. But there are limits to what those efforts can accomplish. They aren’t geared toward growing the GOP vote, merely toward suppressing Democratic totals. And they aren’t addressing the structural problems created by the rising tide of college-town votes — students are only part of the overall phenomenon.”

The dccc.org web pages have an exposé of some of the Republican House members who voted against expansion of high speed internet, which would lower costs for their constituents. An excerpt: “REMINDER: David Valadao Voted Against Expanding High-Speed Internet and Lowering Costs in CA-22.  “Today, the DCCC is reminding voters in CA-22 that David Valadao voted against the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which just announced massive savings for 2,298,429 California families…The ACP will expand high-speed internet access to help qualified households in California save up to $30 a month on internet costs….More than 14 million Americans lack access to high-speed internet. This massive investment in California will provide families tools to access jobs, education, health care services, and more. House Democrats are laser-focused on lowering costs, creating better-paying jobs, and expanding opportunity in every zip code – unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Valadao.…DCCC Spokesperson Viet Shelton: “David Valadao’s vote against lowering costs for Californians is just another indication of his failure to deliver. While Valadao is spending time in the House majority chipping away at reproductive freedom and petty political fights, House Democrats are taking bold action to lower costs and deliver for everyday families.” The DCCC post features similar exposes with links to more detailed reports for Republican House members: Mike Garcia (CA-27); Young Kim (CA-40); Ken Calvert (CVA-41); Michelle Steele (CA-45); Scott Perry (PA-10); Bryan Steil (WI-1); Lauren Boebert (CO-3); Marionette Miller-Meeks (IA-1); and David Schweikert (AZ-1). Citizens and journalists in these districts are invited to ‘share their shame.’

At Yahoo News Marquis Francis and Andrew Romano report that “As public support for reparations for African Americans remains stubbornly low, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll reveals one major roadblock: Donald Trump voters believe that racism against white Americans has become a bigger problem than racism against Black Americans….The survey of 1,638 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 13-17, shows that among 2020 Trump voters, 62% say that racism against Black Americans is a problem today — while 73% say that racism against white Americans is a problem….Asked how much of a problem racism currently is, just 19% of Trump voters describe racism against Black Americans as a “big problem.” Twice as many (37%) say racism against white Americans is a big problem….Trump voters and self-identified Republicans — overlapping but not identical cohorts — are the only demographic groups identified by Yahoo News and YouGov who are more likely to say racism against white Americans is a problem than to say the same about racism against Black Americans. A majority (51%) of white Americans, for instance, think racism against people who look like them is a problem — but overall, far more white Americans (72%) say racism against Black Americans is a problem.” Perhaps rigorous analysis of the phrasing of the questions would help shed more light on the survey responses. The poll will likely fuel heated discussions about affirmative action, reparations, set-asides and other compensatory programs based on racial discrimination. But creative policy ideas like affirmative action based on socio-economic status could help build bridges between racial groups for coalition action.

Speaking of coalitions, one of the enduring truths of politics is that no interest group can achieve its top political goals without some support from other groups. All too often interest groups become so narrowly-focused that they alienate potential supporters who perceive something like ‘Well their goal seems reasonable enough, but they don’t care about me, so I’m not going to do anything to help them.” Republicans have skillfully exploited this tendency with a range of ‘divide and conquer’ tactics for decades. The antidote is a conscious effort to build coalitions of diverse interest groups rooted in the understanding that we can all do better if we help each other. MLK had an eloquent take on what he termed “the art of alliance.” Among his insights: “The future of the deep structural change we seek…lies in new alliances.” Also, “The ability of Negroes to enter alliances is a mark of our growing strength, not of our weaknesses” and “In a multiracial society, no group can make it alone…To succeed in a pluralistic society, and an often hostile one at that, the Negro obviously needs organized strength, but this strength will only be effective when it is consolidated through constructive alliances with the majority group.” Further, said King, “A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a common interest into which they merge. For an alliance to have permanence and loyal commitment from its various elements, each of them must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others….If we employ the principle of selectivity along these lines, we will find millions of allies who in serving themselves also support us, and on such sound foundations unity and mutual trust and tangible accomplishment will flourish.” After Dr. King was assassinated, his widow, Coretta Scott King  leveraged these principles in working with multi-racial coalitions for a wide variety of progressive causes. By the time she organized the 20th Anniversary March on Washington in 1983, she secured the endorsements of more than 800 diverse organizations for the MLK holiday. Not a bad template for a stronger Democratic Party.