The following article, “Democrats and the Siren Call of Culture Denialism” by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Just about a year ago, right before the beginning of Trump’s second term, I published a piece on “The Democrats’ Culture Denialism.” At that point, I observed that Democrats were resisting—strenuously resisting—coming to terms with the role of cultural issues in their stunning 2024 election loss. Indeed, they were desperately clutching at any possible interpretation that would downgrade the importance of these issues and obviate the need to change their associated positions and priorities. I wondered whether this delusional attitude could possibly persist as Trump’s second term unfolded; surely they would come to their senses as they lived through the real world consequences of their defeat.

Well, I’m not wondering any more. Democrats, it turns out, just cannot resist the siren call of culture denialism. The last year has shown over and over again that culture denialism just makes too many things too easy for too many in the party and avoids too many fights that too many Democrats don’t want to have. In short, they have chickened out. It’s the victory of coalition management over coalition expansion.

The liberal commentator Noah Smith is one of the few Democrats willing to clearly call out how little Democrats have changed since their epic 2024 loss.

I have seen zero evidence that progressives have reckoned with their immigration failures of 2021-23. I have not seen any progressive or prominent Democrat articulate a firm set of principles on the issue of who should be allowed into the country and who should be kicked out.

This was not always the case. Bill Clinton had no problem differentiating between legal and illegal immigration in 1995, and declaring that America had a right to kick out people who come illegally.

I have seen no equivalent expression of principle during the second Trump presidency. Every Democrat and progressive thinker can articulate a principled opposition to the brutality and excesses of ICE and to the racism that animates Trump’s immigration policy. But when it comes to the question of whether illegal immigration itself should be punished with deportation, Democrats and progressives alike lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

Every Democratic policy proposal I’ve seen calls to refocus immigration enforcement on those who commit crimes other than crossing the border illegally. But what about those who commit no such crime? If someone who crosses illegally and then lives peacefully and otherwise lawfully in America should be protected from deportation, how is the right-wing charge of “open borders” a false one?

More generally, I have seen no attempt to reckon with why Americans were so mad about immigration under Biden. I have seen no acknowledgement that Americans dislike the violation of the U.S. law that says “You may not cross the border unless explicitly admitted under our immigration system.” I have seen zero recognition of the anger over quasi-legal immigrants’ use of city social services and state and local welfare benefits.

I have not seen any Democrat or progressive even discuss the concern that too rapid of a flood of immigrants could change American culture in ways that the nation’s existing citizenry don’t want. Nor have American progressives looked overseas and wondered why the people of Canada and (to a lesser degree) Europehave forced their own governments to decrease immigration numbers dramatically in recent years…

Nor have I seen much attempt to grapple with many other issues that hobble the progressive movement—the unfairness of DEI, the blatant permissiveness toward crime and disorder in blue cities, the dependence of progressive governance on useless or corrupt nonprofits, the unpopular stands on certain trans issues, and so on. Those issues aren’t as important as immigration and inflation, but they contribute to a general perception of the progressive movement and the Democratic party as being out of touch with the masses and unserious about governing.

Of course, the occasional Democrat has at least poked gingerly at some of these issues. But as a general assessment of Democratic movement on cultural issues, Smith is correct. By and large, the party has not budged.

Consider the trans issue which loomed so large in the 2024 election and where Democrats are indisputably on the wrong side of public opinion. Axios recently asked 20 Democrats viewed as possible contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination the following questions: “Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports? Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones? [W]hat is your response to the question: ‘Can a man become a woman?’”

Of the 20 contenders, 17 (!) declined to provide answers. Of the three that did (Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, and Rahm Emanuel) only Emanuel provided unhedged answers and even here to only two of the questions: Can a man become a woman (no) and should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports (no).

Read more…

A fresh look at some recent polls shows that it’s really not 2024 any more, as I noted at New York:

In his description of a new survey from the New York Times–Siena outfit, Nate Cohn nicely sums up a trend every political observer outside the MAGA fever swamps has probably noticed: “The Voters Who Have Taken a U-Turn on Trump.”

“When President Trump took office for his second term one year ago, he was — at least compared with his usual polling — relatively popular.

“His approval rating was above 50 percent, and he had made enormous breakthroughs among groups that have traditionally voted Democratic, like young, nonwhite and lower-turnout voters. It had some of the markings of a potential political realignment …

“The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even likelier to disapprove of Mr. Trump than they were then, while he retains most of his support among older and white voters.”

No wonder the president fired off a Truth Social post denouncing the results and threatening to sue the Times. But there was nothing all that startling about the poll. The sources of Trump’s sagging job-approval numbers are sometimes missed by those fixated with looking for defections from his base or “splits” in the Republican Party. The Times-Siena poll shows Trump’s job-approval rating from self-identified Republicans at a robust 86 percent. But among independents, it’s a sour 34 percent, with 48 percent strongly disapproving of his job performance. Similarly, 54 percent of under-30 registered voters and 53 percent of non-white registered voters strongly disapprove of the job the president is doing. Without much question, the same cluster of issues that fed Trump’s strong 2024 performance in such demographic groups is weakening him now, as Cohn notes:

“And over our last two polls, the voters who have soured on Mr. Trump — those who say they voted for him in 2024 but disapprove of him today — have been likeliest to cite an economic issue as the biggest problem facing the country: 44 percent of the Trump defectors cite economic issues, compared with just 24 percent of other voters.

“This is a familiar story. The economy was one of the biggest reasons these same voters flipped to supporting Mr. Trump in the first place. In the last campaign, these voters disapproved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy, said it was the most important issue, and said they thought Mr. Trump would handle the issue well. Today, all of those conditions have flipped, and these voters have as well.”

Trump is now suffering from incumbency at a time when voters remain unhappy with conditions in the country, particularly with respect to the economy and the cost of living. And in the Times-Siena findings, as in other polls, a lot of voters don’t think Trump is paying much attention. A startling 69 percent of under-30 voters and 67 percent of non-white voters, along with 62 percent of self-identified independents, say the president is “generally focused on the wrong issues.” So he’s in a poor position and isn’t helping himself when he launches overseas adventures and interminably celebrates his alleged accomplishments. And even in areas where he has traditionally had robust support, like immigration enforcement, his record is alienating swing voters. Seventy-six percent of under-30 registered voters, 73 percent of non-white registered voters, and 71 percent of self-identified independents say ICE tactics have “gone too far.”

All these numbers track recent polling trends that have been in place for months. And the story is quite familiar. According to the Silver Bulletin averages, Trump’s net job-approval rating is currently minus-13.9 percent. That’s squarely between the minus-12.2 percent approval Joe Biden had at this point in his presidency and the minus-16.6 percent Trump himself posted at this point in his first term. In 2018, Trump lost control of the House, as did Biden in 2022. Trump will turn 80 before the midterms; Biden turned 80 shortly thereafter. In the newly released Silver Bulletin generic congressional ballot averages, Democrats currently have a 5.3 percent advantage (it’s at 4.6 percent at RealClearPolitics and 4.9 percent at Decision Desk HQ). They need a net gain of just three seats to flip control of the U.S. House. According to the ratings by the authoritative Cook Political Report, the House landscape is beginning to tilt blue: Of 18 races rated as “toss-ups,” 14 are for seats now held by Republicans. Particularly now that Trump’s gerrymandering drive appears to have been largely and perhaps completely countered by Democrats, it won’t take much of a breeze to wreck the presidential party’s current trifecta in Washington.

So it’s a bad sign for Trump that his winning 2024 coalition is showing definite and persistent signs of shrinking back to its pre-2024 shape and dimensions. He can rage against “fake polls” all he wants. But it’s not looking good for the 47th president in November.

Timothy P. Carney reports on “Pennsylvania’s Blue Wave” at aei.org and writes:

MECHANICSBURG, Pennsylvania — Pennsylvania is arguably the swingiest of swing states.

The Keystone State has voted for the winner in each of the last five presidential elections, and it has been a tipping point in each of the past three elections.

It is one of only four states with one Democrat and one Republican in the Senate. In the state government, Republicans and Democrats have split power for the past decade. The state House of Representatives is divided 102 to 101.

But this will not last.

A blue wave is likely to hit Pennsylvania this year, easily carrying Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) to reelection, and very possibly handing the state Senate, and thus a governing trifecta, to Democrats. In fact, the blue wave already began two months ago as Democrats dominated in local elections and statewide judicial races in 2025.

It’s true that President Donald Trump has revived Republican fortunes in this state. Not only did he win twice, but he also had large coattails, helping Republicans win the Senate races in 2016 and 2024.

But Trump will never be on a ballot here again, and that ought to make Republicans even more worried about today’s political currents. This may not be a mere tidal wave. Tidal waves eventually recede. The 2025-2026 Pennsylvania blue wave looks to instead be a sea change, in which the Keystone State becomes solidly Democratic for a decade or more.

Pennsylvania After Trump

The key dynamic in Pennsylvania politics is the political realignment in which the working class is becoming solidly Republican, while upper-middle-class suburbanites are becoming more Democratic.

This realignment isn’t limited to Pennsylvania, and it didn’t start with Trump. Still, Trump put the realignment into overdrive, and Pennsylvania is where it’s most visible.

When Trump ran in 2016, no Republican had won the state since 1988, and former President Barack Obama had won it pretty easily. Then Trump came by and made massive gains in the coal country of central Pennsylvania and in steel country around Pittsburgh.

You can explain Trump’s 2016 outperformance of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney just by counting four adjacent counties running from former steel country south of Pittsburgh, Fayette County, to Blair County in central Pennsylvania, with Cambria and Somerset in the middle. These counties have far lower incomes and educational attainment than the rest of the state, and they handed Trump his victory: Trump’s excess margin of victory across the four counties, compared to Romney, more than covers Trump’s statewide margin of 44,292 votes in that election. This is Trump country.

Look at Philadelphia’s collar counties, and you see the opposite trend: The upper-middle-class suburbs, especially Chester and Montgomery counties, tacked hard toward the Democrats.

More here.

Samuel Benson and Alex Hernandez report “Latino voters powered Trump’s comeback. Now they’re turning on his economy” at Politico, and write: “In 2024, economic anxiety and immigration concerns drove Latino voters to President Donald Trump. Those same issues are beginning to push them away…Across the country, the cost-of-living woes and immigration enforcement overshadowing Trump’s first year back in office are souring Hispanic businesspeople, a key constituency that helped propel him to the White House. In a recent survey of Hispanic business owners conducted by the U.S. Hispanic Business Council and shared exclusively with POLITICO, 42 percent said their economic situation is getting worse, while only 24 said it was getting better. Seventy percent of respondents ranked the cost of living as a top-three issue facing the country, more than double the number that selected any other issue…In 2024, Trump won 48 percent of self-described Hispanic or Latino voters, the highest mark for a Republican presidential candidate in at least a half-century, driven largely by economic anxiety. But polling shows Trump’s approval among Latino voters cratering as their satisfaction with the economy and immigration enforcement plummet…In a November POLITICO Poll, a plurality — 48 percent — of Hispanic respondents said the cost of living in the U.S. is “the worst I can ever remember it being,” and a majority (67 percent) said responsibility lies with the president to fix it…According to a November Pew Research poll, about two-thirds (68 percent) of U.S. Hispanics say their situation today is worse than it was a year ago, and just nine percent say it is better; 65 percent of Latinos disagree with this administration’s approach to immigration, and a majority (52 percent) said they worried they, a family member or a close friend could be deported, a ten-point increase since March…Trump’s favorability rating among Hispanics is now at 28 percent, per a recent The Economist/YouGov poll, 13 points lower than it was in February of last year.” More here.

At Brookings, William A. Galston explains why “The economy weakened support for President Trump in 2025 and may do so again in 2026“: “Driven largely by public discontent over persistently high prices, approval of Donald Trump’s performance as president declined substantially in 2025. What the public saw as the president’s inadequate focus on the economy made things worse. At the same time, many of Trump’s disappointed 2024 supporters could shift back toward him if the economy improves…At year’s end, the president’s overall job approval averaged about 43%. He does reasonably well on immigration, crime, and foreign affairs—the issues that dominated his first year in office. He does much worse on the economy (41%), inflation(36%), and health care (32%).¹ Unfortunately for him, the people care more about the latter list than the former: 66% of Americans identify either the economy, inflation, or health care as the top issue facing the country, while 24% pick one of the issues to which the president has devoted most attention…Economic concerns remain dominant, and the public’s assessment offers the president little encouragement. Only 27% rate the state of the economy as excellent or good, compared to 72% who evaluate it as fair or poor. Eighteen percent say that they are better off, but 36% say the reverse. Twenty-three percent think the economy is improving, but 53% say that it is getting worse…This helps explain why almost six in 10 Americans say that President Trump is focusing on the wrong things. Only 16%think that he is spending most of his time on domestic issues, and the invasion and possible occupation of Venezuela won’t help those numbers. Seventy-three percent say that he is not spending enough time working to lower prices…The public’s perception of misplaced priorities has consequences. Only 38% believe that Trump cares about “people like you,” while 62% think that he does not.”

Galston continues, “Economic expectations for 2026 are not bright. Most Americans think that tariffs will continue to push up prices, and only one-third believe that their family’s finances will improve, down from 48% last June. Twenty-three percent think that the economy is getting better, compared to 53% who think that it is getting worse…Increased public confidence in Democrats’ ability to manage the economy has contributed to the 4.5-point edge Democrats now enjoy in the midterm vote for the House of Representatives. Still, 40% of the electorate is willing to change its mind about Trump’s job performance, and they overwhelmingly cite the economy as the issue that could move them. If this happens, Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections would brighten…There is some evidence that the first year of Trump’s second term could have longer-term consequences for the American party system. After the 2024 election, analysts speculated about a realignment that would transform Republicans into a multi-ethnic, populist, working-class party. Now this prospect seems remote. Many of the groups that moved strongly toward the Republicans in 2024—independents, Hispanics, young adults—have moved away and should be regarded as swing voters…Republicans’ populist credentials have been tarnished. Sixty-five percent of the people think that the Trump administration’s policies favor the wealthy, compared to just 12% who think they are oriented toward the middle class. Not surprisingly, populist sentiments remain strong. Eighty-one percent of Americans, including 66% of Republicans, believe that the rich in the U.S. have too much power. Sixty-two percent say that taxes on billionaires are too low. Fifty-seven percent believe that the government should try to reduce the wealth gap between the rich and the poor…Progress is another core element of the creed. Each generation is supposed to do better than the last. But now, only 15% of Americans believe that today’s children will grow up to be better off than their parents, while 51% think that they will be worse off. Republicans and conservatives share this pessimism.”

In “A New Low for American Workers: The share of American income going to labor is at its lowest level since measurements began,” Harold Meyerson writes at The American Prospect: “Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this month show that the labor share of the nation’s GDP hit the lowest point it’s been at since the BLS began measuring such things in 1947. In that year, the labor share—that is, the pay and benefits that American workers claimed—stood at 70 percent of the nation’s income, with the remaining balance going to profits and other investment income…In the third quarter of 2025, the labor share stood at 53.8 percent. That means that the share of the nation’s income going to workers over the past 78 years has declined by roughly 16 percent, as the share going to investors has grown by the same amount…It’s not all that hard to identify the reasons behind America’s epochal transformation from a nation that honors work to a nation that honors investment. In 1947 America, when the labor share stood at 70 percent, more than one-third of the workforce was unionized, and taxes on the highest incomes routinely exceeded 70 percent. But for the heirs of the Rockefellers and the Fords, we were billionaire-poor, even as record numbers of working-class Americans found themselves, for the first time, able to buy houses…It’s only been in the past 10 or 15 years—beginning with the emergence of Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign—that the existence of this redistribution became widely visible as a national problem. Today, however, with the crises of affordability in housing, health care, education, and even food affecting scores of millions of Americans, we’re beginning to see a politics—potentially, a majoritarian politics—devoted to curtailing this upward redistribution and bringing some of the nation’s income back to those who actually do its work.”

The big strategic and policy argument among Democrats at the moment is whether the increasingly popular slogan of “abolish ICE!” makes sense politically, or is even the right position morally. I weighed the pros and cons at New York:

For two overriding reasons, Democrats are intensively debating what to say and do about the future of ICE. First and most obviously, that agency is running wild in Minneapolis and other cities, pursuing a very deliberate policy of terrorizing immigrant communities and their allies in order to (a) encourage “self-deportation” and (b) titillate Donald Trump’s MAGA base. ICE has become the tip of a spear that seems aimed not only at mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, but at the military occupation of politically hostile territory by an increasingly authoritarian administration.

Second, an appropriations package that includes money for ICE (along with the rest of DHS, plus multiple other federal agencies) has become the flash point in another potential (if partial) government-shutdown cliff on January 30, which is when the stopgap-spending bill that ended last year’s total government shutdown expires. Many Democrats within and beyond Congress want to dramatize their opposition to what ICE is doing by voting against the new money, even though (as other Democrats argue) it won’t stop ICE for a moment thanks to the special slush fund for mass deportation created by last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

While nearly all Democrats oppose both current ICE tactics and Trump’s entire mass-deportation regime, the funding fight has exposed an increasingly large gulf between those who advocate abolishing ICE and those who seek to reform the agency. The latter camp isn’t necessarily a solid bloc; there’s language in the above-mentioned spending bill that authorizes body cameras and other measures for ICE accountability that some reformers consider inadequate. But without question, ICE abolition advocates have a lot of momentum among congressional Democrats and ICE resisters nationally (including, notably, Mayor Zohran Mamdani). One very recent poll from Economist-YouGov showed self-identified Democrats favoring the abolition of ICE by a margin of 77 percent to 19 percent (Americans generally were split right down the middle on the proposition). So is this the line in the sand the party generally should draw? Has Trump’s toxic immigration crackdown now made ICE abolition a mainstream position with little political downside?

While “Abolish ICE” may be the only position emotionally consonant with justified outrage over its agents’ conduct, it’s not necessary at all if the goal is simply to radically change the immigration-enforcement status quo. ICE has been around since 2003. Its agents weren’t masked until March 2025. ICE (along with the allied Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations agencies) wasn’t deployed to achieve mass deportation until a Trump executive order one year ago yesterday. The administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden didn’t publicly defend brutal tactics or accuse immigration-enforcement protesters of being “terrorists.” Columnist Will Bunch recently spoke out in opposition to Democratic efforts to reform ICE on grounds that “You can’t reform fascism.” Were the Obama and Biden administrations “fascist”?

More than a few progressives (and particularly advocates for undocumented immigrants) did indeed believe that enforcement of immigration laws generally, and deportation practices specifically, were too harsh during past Democratic administrations. In 2020, famously, most Democratic presidential candidates called for the decriminalization (or, in some cases, abolition of felony charges for immigration violations) of illegal border crossings. The national debate over lax immigration enforcement then played an unquestionably major role in Trump’s return to power in 2024. And as recently as September, a Washington Post–Ipsos survey showed only 29 percent of Americans trusted Democrats more than Republicans on immigration policy.

So despite widespread and steadily increasing public disapproval of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, Democrats aren’t on such solid ground that they can embrace some total abandonment of immigration enforcement without courting political peril. There’s no evidence that Americans actually want the “open borders” stance that Republicans have falsely accused Democrats of embracing in the past. Embracing it now makes little sense. The broadest and strongest position for Democrats right now is the abolition of both mass deportation and ICE terror tactics, alongside a new path to citizenship for noncriminal immigrants and fairer and more uniform enforcement of immigration laws without the sort of violence and cruelty perpetrated and celebrated by Trump, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller. If they need a slogan, it might be: “End ICE As We Know It.” Anyone who thinks such a position represents a surrender to MAGA needs to remember how and why these terrible people rose to power in the first place.

In “Hell Cats vs. Hegseth: Meet the military women who are fighting to win purple districts for the Democrats and put the defense secretary on notice,” Joan Walsh writes at The Nation: “In 2018, they called themselves “the Badasses”—a cadre of female national-security and military veterans running for Congress as Democrats, in what turned out to be a wave of anti–Donald Trump victories and a landslide for women candidates. All five—Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin and Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, both ex–CIA officers; New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill and Virginia’s Elaine Luria, both ex–Navy officers; and Pennsylvania’s Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran—won their contests in purple districts that year. They emerged as an effective force of center-leaning liberals that challenged Trump and then helped President Joe Biden enact his social-welfare and infrastructure agenda. In 2024, Slotkin was elected to the Senate, and in 2025, Spanberger and Sherrill won landslide victories to become the governors of their states. Only Luria lost her seat, in 2022; she’s running again this year and has a good chance to take it back…In 2026, their counterparts are the “Hell Cats,” four female Democratic military veterans seeking to follow the Badasses’ battle plan to win congressional seats in purple districts. They are Arizona’s JoAnna Mendoza, a retired Marine challenging Representative Juan Ciscomani; New Jersey’s Rebecca Bennett, a Navy pilot officer taking on Representative Thomas Kean; and Maura Sullivan, a New Hampshire Marine looking to replace Representative Chris Pappas, who is running for an open Senate seat. There’s also Cait Conley, a West Point graduate, former National Security Council official, and Army veteran with six tours overseas and three Bronze Stars, who is up against New York’s Hudson Valley Representative Mike Lawler in one of the only three districts won by Kamala Harris in 2024 that is still held by a Republican. They could be key to the Democratic Party assuming control of the House in 2027, since it will need just three seats to flip the chamber.” More here.

In “CNN poll finds majority of Americans say Trump is focused on the wrong priorities,” Jennifer Agiesta, Ariel Edwards-Levi and Edward Wu write at CNN Politics: , “Public opinion on nearly every aspect of President Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House is negative, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with a majority of Americans saying Trump is focused on the wrong priorities and doing too little to address cost of living…A majority, 58%, calls the first year of Trump’s term a failure…There’s hardly any good news in the poll for Trump or the Republican Party entering a critical midterm year, with the president’s handling of the economy looming as the defining issue in key House and Senate races…Asked to choose the country’s top issue, Americans pick the economy by a nearly two-to-one margin over any other topic. The poll suggests Trump is struggling to prove that he’s addressing it. And it finds broad concerns over Trump’s use of presidential power and his efforts to put his stamp on American culture…Views of economic conditions have remained stable — and largely negative — for the past two years, with about 3 in 10 rating the economy positively. What’s changed in the latest poll is the increased pessimism about the future: Just over 4 in 10 expect the economy to be good a year from now, down from 56% just before Trump was sworn in last January…A 55% majority say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country, with just 32% saying they’ve made an improvement. Most, 64%, say he hasn’t gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods. Even within the GOP, about half say that he should be doing more, including 42% among Republicans and Republican-leaners who describe themselves as members of the “Make America Great Again” movement.” More here.

From “Backlash to Trump has been more severe in his second term” by G. Elliot Morris at Strength in Numbers: “In the first year of Donald Trump’s first term as president in 2017, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans (or independents who leaned toward the Republican Party) dropped just 2 percentage points — from 42% in 2016 to 40% by Q4 of 2017. I predict it will surprise many people to hear that the Democrats didn’t actually change their advantage in party ID much at all in Trump’s first term, expanding their advantage to +7 in 2018 from +6 in 2016…In Trump’s second term, however, the Republican Party is shedding members at a much higher pace. Gallup released its latest party identification data this week, and the numbers show Republican identification dropped from 46% in 2024 to just 40% in Q4 of 2025 — a 6-point decline, triple the 2-point drop during Trump’s first term…While many pundits covered Trump’s 2024 win as a new dominance for the right in American politics, it’s clear now that the apparent new apex of GOP loyalty was more of a phantom swing, perhaps an election-year shock driven by inflation and an unpopular Democratic president. There were a lot of soft Trump supporters who were willing to identify with the GOP in a moment of incumbent backlash, but didn’t stick around when Trump inevitably did what was all very well predictable ahead of time…III. Will 2026 be another blue wave?…The question now is whether Democrats can convert this party ID advantage into a big midterms victory. They will need to do that if they want to deliver on their promises of reining in Trump. But party ID advantages don’t automatically translate into votes — ask Democrats circa 2010 or 2014. In both years, Democrats held advantages in party identification but lost badly because their voters didn’t show up…But when you combine a 6-point decline in Republican identification with strong generic ballot numbers (and a tendency for the party in the White House to lose ground over the election year — see my post from Tuesday!), sustained special election overperformance, and an engaged base showing up to protests, you have the ingredients for a wave. Redistricting is the big unknown variable for 2026, but of course, that wouldn’t blunt a big Democratic popular vote victory, just the number of seats they win.” Read more here.

n his NYT opinion essay, “Trump Unmasked,” Thomas B. Edsall puts Trump on the couch, quotes some psychological experts, including Ian Robertson, an emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College in Dublin, who notes, “In a Feb. 12 Irish Times article, “A Neuropsychologist’s View on Donald Trump: We’re Seeing the Impact of Power on the Human Brain,” Robertson described the frenzied opening days of the second Trump administration:Deports manacled immigrants, closes AIDS-prevention programs, starts and stops and restarts a tariffs war, vows to cleanse Gaza of its troublesome inhabitants and demands that all Israeli hostages be released by Hamas by midday on Saturday or he would “let hell break out.”…This activity, Robertson continued, fuels an aggressive, feel-good state of mind, particularly in dominant, amoral personalities such as Trump’s. It also creates a restless, hyperactive state of mind, which, when combined with a feeling of omnipotence, fosters the delusions that you can snap your fingers and sort every problem…”  Edsall comes to the following conclusion: “Over the past week, it felt as though Trump was even more intensely compelled to publicly announce his determination to dominate everything in sight, and anyone who wants to block him had better watch out…Perhaps most spectacularly, during a Jan. 7 interview with four Times reporters, Trump was asked if there were any limits on his global powers…He replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”…“I don’t need international law,” he added…Trump may think his own morality and his own mind are the only constraints on his otherwise limitless power, but if we are dependent on either — not to mention Trump’s sense of empathy, compassion or sympathy for the underdog — we are in deep trouble. The nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large need to figure out how to place restraints on this ethically vacuous president, or we will all suffer continued and ever-worsening damage.”

Trump’s health care “plan” is the same old nothing burger the GOP has been pushing for decades. As Jonathan Cohn explains in “Trump’s ‘Great Healthcare Plan’ Is Not Great. It’s Not Even a Plan” at The Bulwark: “DONALD TRUMP ON THURSDAY rolled out what he is calling “The Great Healthcare Plan” and the single most important thing to know about it is that it’s not really a plan…A real plan would have details and numbers, plus experts on standby to explain and defend it. It would reflect weeks of behind-the-scenes work, and represent the beginning of a serious, persistent effort to get a bill through Congress. That is not what the White House produced…The online summary is just 350 words and fits on a single printed page. The extended “fact sheet” clocks in at just 825 words. There are days Trump writes more than that in his posts on Truth Social…And it’s not like those 825 words are dense with policy substance. About a third is a summary of some modest—er, “historic”—executive actions Trump has already taken. The rest is a list of ideas either Trump or Republicans in Congress have endorsed before, with no guidance on the specifics that it would take to turn them into legislation….None of this is surprising. Trump has been promising to release plans for “great” health care throughout his two presidential terms, going back to the very first days of his initial campaign when he was launching his crusade to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “I am going to take care of everybody,” Trump boasted in a 2015 CBS News interview. “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

An excerpt from “The Bankruptcy of the Democrats’ Elvis Presley Approach to Immigration” by Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot:

Of course, there is much not to like about how ICE has gone about their business, all of which has been copiously documented. This has been red meat to those sectors of blue America and their political representatives whose revealed preference is not to deport anyone.

The ICE/interior enforcement issue hits the Daily Double for the “In This House, We Believe” crowd. No human is illegal. Check. Kindness is everything. Check. These may be utterly useless as guides to effective, sustainable immigration policy but they sure do get the juices flowing.

That’s why, from Los Angles to Minneapolis, Democratic activists have felt completely justified in interfering with ICE activities and Democratic politicians in refusing to cooperate with a duly constituted federal law enforcement agency. And that’s why, especially with the tragic recent death of Renee Good, calls of “Abolish ICE!” are beginning to ring out across wide sectors of the Democratic Party. There is no good ICE, only bad ICE. There is no legitimate ICE, only illegitimate ICE.

This is the logical terminus of an attitude that starts with no human being is illegal and kindness is everything. Since ICE’s remit is that illegal immigrants are, in fact, illegal and that the law must be followed, even if the outcome is not particularly kind, it only makes sense to get rid of the agency.

This is a terrible idea in so many different ways. As a very useful new memo from the reform Democratic group Searchlight points out:

[S]aying you want to “Abolish ICE”…means that you support getting rid of the agency responsible for enforcing immigration and customs laws, creating a lawless system where people who enter the country illegally can stay here indefinitely, leaving no agency charged with finding and removing them. This will, inevitably, incentivize others to come to the United States illegally. “Abolish ICE” is not some proxy for more humane immigration enforcement, or to change ICE’s culture to adhere to due process, or to impose accountability on rogue officers. It’s advocating for an extreme.

Unless you truly believe that the United States should not have an agency that enforces immigration and customs laws within our borders, and you want to increase illegal immigration, you should not say you want to abolish ICE…[W]e will always need a federal agency charged with deporting people who are in the United States illegally.

That’s clearly correct as a matter of policy. Democrats need to reflect that in how they talk about ICE or the momentum will continue to shift toward those in the party who simply want to get rid of the agency entirely.

And that would be a disaster. The reasonable—and popular—desire to reform ICE practices would inevitably be subsumed in a contentious debate about abolishing the agency. This is not likely to turn out well for the Democrats despite the solid basis in public opinion for some reform and pullback of ICE activities. Abolishing ICE will likely never be generally popular, despite its sky-high popularity with Democrats where there has been a recent spike in support.

Instead, as the Searchlight memo points out, Democrats will be setting themselves up for a rerun of the “Defund the Police” debacle, also driven by a viral incident (and also in Minneapolis!). A maximalist demand like “Abolish ICE” will serve only to signal a lack of Democratic commitment to immigration enforcement, just as defund the police signaled a lack of Democratic commitment to public safety. This is highly undesirable both for the Democrats politically and for the general cause of reforming ICE practices.

Trump’s border crackdowns in his first administration. Seizing on some well-publicized excesses, Democrats pilloried Trump for being cruel and inhumane and promised to be different. And they were! They were kind and humane—and also completely ineffective at controlling the border and preventing abuse of the asylum system once they got back in power, producing the huge wave of illegal and irregular immigration that discredited the Democrats and helped Trump win the 2024 election….

Democrats instead need to get beyond mindless slogans like “Abolish ICE” and blanket opposition to everything ICE does and embrace what I have termed immigration realism. That approach means taking on board the following realities of immigration into this rich country of ours:

1. Many more people want to come to a rich country like the United States than an orderly immigration system can allow.
2. Therefore, many people are willing to break the laws of our country to gain entry.
3. If you do not enforce the law, you will get more law-breakers and therefore more illegal immigrants.
4. If you provide procedural loopholes to gain entry into the country (e.g., by claiming asylum), many people will abuse these loopholes.
5. Once these illegal and irregular immigrants gain entry to the country, they will seek to stay indefinitely regardless of their immigration status.
6. If interior immigration enforcement is lax, such that these illegal and irregular immigrants do mostly get to stay forever, that provides a tremendous incentive for others to try to gain entry to the country via the same means.
7. If you provide benefits and dispensations to all immigrants in the country, regardless of their immigration status, this further incentivizes aspiring immigrants to gain entry to the country by any means necessary.
8. Tolerance of flagrant law-breaking on a mass scale contributes to a sense of social disorder and loss of control among a country’s citizens, who believe a nation’s borders are meaningful and that the welfare of a nation’s citizens should come first.
9. There is, in fact, such a thing as too much immigration, particularly low-skill immigration, and negative effects on communities and workers are real, not just in the imaginations of xenophobes.

10. If more immigration is desired by parties or policymakers, from whichever countries and at whatever skill levels, then immigration should be regular, legal immigration and approved by the American people through the democratic process. Backdooring mass immigration over the wishes of voters because it is “kind” or “reflects our values” or is deemed “economically necessary” leads inevitably to backlash. Wheelbarrows full of econometric studies on immigration’s aggregate benefits will not save you.

Obviously, the current Democratic vogue for treating all ICE activities as illegitimate and susceptibility to dumb maximalist slogans like “Abolish ICE” points them in precisely the wrong direction for dealing with the thorny and complex realities of the immigration issue. They’re just setting themselves up for future failure.

In short, it’s time to stop coddling the “In This House, We Believe” crowd and adopt a serious, grown-up approach to immigration and immigrants…

More here.

Don’t look now, but it’s already time for the DNC and the states to figure out the 2028 Democratic presidential primary calendar, so I wrote an overview at New York:

The first 2028 presidential primaries are just two years away. And for the first time since 2016, both parties are expected to have serious competition for their nominations. While Vice-President J.D. Vance is likely to enter the cycle as a formidable front-runner for the GOP nod, recent history suggests there will be lots of other candidates. After all, Donald Trump drew 12 challengers in 2024. On the Democratic side, there is no one like Vance (or Hillary Clinton going into 2016 or Joe Biden going into 2020) who is likely to become the solid front-runner from the get-go, though Californians Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris lead all of the way too early polls.

But 2028 horse-race speculation really starts with the track itself, as the calendar for state contests still isn’t set. What some observers call the presidential-nominating “system” isn’t something the national parties control. In the case of primaries utilizing state-financed election machinery, state laws govern the timing and procedures. Caucuses (still abundant on the Republican side and rarer among Democrats) are usually run by state parties. National parties can vitally influence the calendar via carrots (bonus delegates at the national convention) or sticks (loss of delegates) and try to create “windows” for different kinds of states to hold their nominating contests to space things out and make the initial contests competitive and representative. But it’s sometimes hit or miss.

Until quite recently, the two parties tended to move in sync on such calendar and map decisions. But Democrats have exhibited a lot more interest in ensuring that the “early states” — the ones that kick off the nominating process and often determine the outcome — are representative of the party and the country as a whole and give candidates something like a level playing field. Prior to 2008, both parties agreed to do away with the traditional duopoly, in which the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary came first, by allowing early contests representing other regions (Nevada and South Carolina). And both parties tolerated the consolidation of other states seeking influence into a somewhat later “Super Tuesday” cluster of contests. But in 2024 Democrats tossed Iowa out of the early-state window altogether and placed South Carolina first (widely interpreted as Joe Biden’s thank-you to the Palmetto State for its crucial role in saving his campaign in 2020 after poor performances in other early states), with Nevada and New Hampshire voting the same day soon thereafter. Republicans stuck with the same old calendar with Trump more or less nailing down the nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire.

For 2028, Republicans will likely stand pat while Democrats reshuffle the deck (the 2024 calendar was explicitly a one-time-only proposition). The Democratic National Committee has set a January 16 deadline for states to apply for early-state status. And as the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher explains, there is uncertainty about the identity of the early states and particularly their order:

“The debate has only just begun. But early whisper campaigns about the weaknesses of the various options already offer a revealing window into some of the party’s racial, regional and rural-urban divides, according to interviews with more than a dozen state party chairs, D.N.C. members and others involved in the selection process.

“Nevada is too far to travel. New Hampshire is too entitled and too white. South Carolina is too Republican. Iowa is also too white — and its time has passed.

“Why not a top battleground? Michigan entered the early window in 2024, but critics see it as too likely to bring attention to the party’s fractures over Israel. North Carolina or Georgia would need Republicans to change their election laws.”

Nevada and New Hampshire have been most aggressive about demanding a spot at the beginning of the calendar, and both will likely remain in the early-state window, representing their regions. The DNC could push South Carolina aside in favor of regional rivals Georgia or North Carolina. Michigan is close to a lock for an early midwestern primary, but its size, cost, and sizable Muslim population (which will press candidates on their attitude towards Israel’s recent conduct) would probably make it a dubious choice to go first. Recently excluded Iowa (already suspect because it’s very white and trending Republican, then bounced decisively after its caucus reporting system melted down in 2020) could stage a “beauty contest” that will attract candidates and media even if it doesn’t award delegates.

Even as the early-state drama unwinds, the rest of the Democratic nomination calendar is morphing as well. As many as 14 states are currently scheduled to hold contests on Super Tuesday, March 7. And a 15th state, New York, may soon join the parade. Before it’s all nailed down (likely just after the 2026 midterms), decisions on the calendar will begin to influence candidate strategies and vice versa. Some western candidates (e.g., Gavin Newsom or Ruben Gallego) could be heavily invested in Nevada, while Black proto-candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Wes Moore might pursue a southern primary. Progressive favorites like AOC or Ro Khanna may have their own favorite launching pads, while self-identified centrists like Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg might have others. Having a home state in the early going is at best a mixed blessing: Losing your home-state primary is a candidate-killer, and winning it doesn’t prove a lot. And it’s also worth remembering that self-financed candidates like J.B. Pritzker may need less of a runway to stage a nationally viable campaign.

So sketching out the tracks for all those 2028 horses, particularly among Democrats, is a bit of a game of three-dimensional chess. We won’t know how well they’ll run here or there until it’s all over.

 

From “Contrarian Calls To Action: A how-to guide for making a difference for democracy” by Tim Dickinson, Sierra Stone and Morgan Copeland at The Contrarian:

Democracy is not a spectator sport. Whether you want to exercise your right to vote, join a protest, call your congressperson, run for office, or keep tabs on the week’s hottest issues and protests, The Contrarian has you covered.

Here are our top suggestions for getting involved in the days ahead. These are heated times; we encourage non-violent and lawful activism.

Counter ICE

• Contact your members of Congress to demand a full, transparent investigation into the killing of Renee Good by an immigration agent in Minneapolis. Include calls for justice and accountability. (Find resources to connect you with your legislators below)

• Demand a fight over Homeland Security funding. Democrats such as Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) are leading efforts to slash the mass-deportation budget, vowing “not one dime” for Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Department of Homeland Security funding is part of budget negotiations that must be completed before January 30. Democrats have rare leverage to slash ICE spending or at least impose meaningful reforms, including unmasking federal agents. But some in the party may be looking to duck another showdown and could use your encouragement. Watch our own how-to video here.

• Support the impeachment of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. In the wake of ICE’s deadly shooting, Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL) has called for Noem’s removal, alleging “obstruction of Congress,” “violation of public trust,” and “self dealing.” With more than 50 House Democrats cosponsoring the impeachment, you have an opportunity to thank your lawmakers or encourage others to get on board.

• Help targeted community members protect themselves from ICE. When federal agents are out in force, many immigrants and citizens of color alike are afraid to leave their homes. Families in Minneapolis (and before them in Chicago and elsewhere) have been demonstrating how to show solidarity:

• Distribute know-your-rights cards to help inform neighbors of their constitutional protections regardless of immigration status.

• Hand out whistles to blow if deportation agents are spotted in your neighborhood. (Honking your car horn works, too.)

• Organize carpools for the children of affected parents or offer to do a grocery run or other essential errands.

• Create volunteer teams to monitor neighborhoods near schools and bus stops to ensure it’s clear for kids to move about.

• Record interactions between federal agents with community members and distribute evidence of abuses widely on social platforms and to the media.

Defend the Fed

• Pressure lawmakers to stand up for the independence of the Federal Reserve. The Trump Justice Department has opened an investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, ostensibly over renovations to Fed offices. Powell released an extraordinary video calling the probe a “pretext” meant to intimidate him into taking Trump’s orders on interest rates. The issue is creating a wedge in the GOP that can be exploited. Top Republican senators, including like Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and banking chair Thom Tillis (R-NC) are expressing their disapproval of DOJ’s overreach, and even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was “unhappy” with the investigation.

Honor MLK

• To honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr. on the January 19 federal holiday, search Mobilize.us for an event or google for an MLK Day of Service volunteer opportunity near you.

Upcoming Protests

More here.