One of the underlying issues in the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsements of Donald Trump is the bizarre claim that he’s a man of peace. I addressed that idea at New York:

Donald Trump is famously hostile to U.S. aid to Ukraine and to national security alliances generally, even such time-honored institutions as NATO. He has also been outspoken for years about his opposition to “forever wars” like George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. At the same time, he is one of the most belligerent men ever to occupy the Oval Office. He loves military pomp and circumstance, he pushed regularly for increased Pentagon spending as president, and his basic formula for peace is to terrify potential adversaries with his remorseless willingness to inflict unimaginable casualties while ignoring or violating every traditional principle of limited war. He is also very interested in deploying the U.S. military against migrants from Mexico, domestic protesters, and even criminal suspects. He models himself on Andrew Jackson, who similarly stood for a policy of strict neutrality in overseas affairs matched with a clearly announced determination to kill anything that moves if malefactors cross him or his country. Some observers call this posture “isolationism,” but it is more accurately described as unilateralism, in which national interests unmodified by treaties, alliances, or moral considerations justify any conceivable military action (or inaction).

So it’s interesting to watch ex-Democrats famous for their opposition to “militarism” embracing Trump as an antiwar candidate. These include former Democrat then independent-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, and 2020 Democratic-presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. In his long and rambling speech endorsing Trump on August 23, Kennedy listed Trump’s willingness to end (presumably on Russia-friendly terms) the war in Ukraine as one of three “existential issues” on which the two men agree. Shanahan similarly called “antiwar” one of the key principles supporting a “unity movement” between MAGA and her own preoccupations.

In endorsing Trump on July 26, Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 after calling it an “elitist cabal of warmongers,” said of the Republican that she was “confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”

The very idea of Donald Trump as a man of peace is problematic, but presumably if the only national-security issue you care about is ending U.S. support for Ukraine, he’s your guy. Yes, some “doves for Trump” credit him with a determination and willingness to reduce the risk of nuclear war, notwithstanding his opposition to the nuclear nonproliferation treaties that kept the Cold War from turning hot. But a more honest assessment of the 45th president’s posture is that he has perfected the so-called “madman theory” once embraced by his predecessor (in office and in spirit) Richard Nixon, which means keeping the peace through sheer terror at the president’s unpredictability and indifference to human life. You can argue that Trump might succeed in intimidating other leaders into accepting his policy dictates. You cannot genuinely believe he will make the world a less violent and more stable place.

There are, to be clear, other reasons for the conduct of these and other doves for Trump. Kennedy and Shanahan are clearly angry at Democratic efforts to keep them off the ballot and at establishment liberal mockery of their subscription to a vast range of conspiracy theories involving alleged corporate capture of government agencies (not that this is a concern of Trump’s). Gabbard has revived an old cultural conservative strain of her political career and is regularly blasting Democrats for “wokeness.” It seems unlikely that there is a reservoir of voters concerned principally with the power of the military-industrial complex and the resources devoted to national defense who look at Trump and see a comrade. If he stands up at one of his rallies and flashes a peace sign rather than the clenched fist of vengeance, maybe it would do him some good.

The following article, “Build, Baby, Build:  Kamala’s commitment to the care economy is great, but she needs to commit to the construction economy as well” by Harold Meyerson, is cross-posted from The American Prospect:

That hardy perennial of American politics, the gender gap, is not only alive and well but alive and huge among the young. The New York Times/Siena poll of battleground states from earlier this month revealed that among voters under 30, males put Trump ahead of Harris by 13 percentage points, while females favored Harris over Trump by 38 percentage points.

This doesn’t mean that young men without college degrees are all that conservative. A PRRI poll of Gen Zers shows that a majority supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage. What they don’t see is an economy in which they have a place, chiefly because, well, it doesn’t. As culture tends to follow (at a distance, to be sure) the economy, they also see a culture that doesn’t value working-class men’s work as it once professed to do (though it was only when unions were powerful that that work was appropriately valued economically).

In a sense, these young men are canaries in a coal mine—detecting, in advance of many others, the economy’s diminished need for certain kinds of manual labor (like coal mining). The jobs that Kamala Harris is highlighting—those in what she calls “the care economy”—involve forms of manual labor, too, but not those that historically or culturally have been deemed “masculine,” which encompasses jobs in construction, transportation, and manufacturing. With neither the job security nor the income to support a family, these young men also fall short of the criteria that would make then “marriageable males”—a term the great sociologist William Julius Wilson used to explain how the “crisis of the Black family” was rooted in Black men’s disproportionate relegation to the informal economy where pay was low and benefits nonexistent. That crisis has now broadened into a crisis of the working-class family, as marriage rates in working-class America have fallen well below those in more upper brackets.

What some of these young men see in Trump, then, is the rhetoric and posturing of hypermasculinity, even though it’s really pseudo and performative hypermasculinity (see, e.g., trotting out Hulk Hogan to attest to Trump’s alleged toughness). There’s hardly anything concrete on offer for them in Trump’s policies, but there’s symbolism galore.

Democrats in general and Kamala Harris in particular can counter this—not that there’s anything they can do to eliminate this yawning gender gap, but there are ways that they could knock a few points off it through the miracle of smart policy. I have in mind Harris’s plans to increase the housing stock by three million units, through federal subsidies to first-time homebuyers and tax breaks to housing developers. This obviously would be welcomed by workers already employed in the building trades, but she should expand her goals, and the number of housing units, so that it would more clearly address those young working-class voters—disproportionately male—who’d welcome work in those trades. That would entail committing more federal dollars not just for the housing itself, but also for apprenticeship programs, more specifically, those programs run by the building trades unions. That could entail actually partnering with those unions through a new agency that would in some way resemble the Civil Works Administration (CWA) of the New Deal.

The CWA is not as well known today as the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed millions of Americans on basic construction and maintenance jobs like road paving. The CWA employed skilled construction workers on more ambitious construction jobs (dams, aircraft carriers, and the like), but like the WPA, it brought Depression-era Americans back into the workforce. What we need now is a program that addresses the shortage of housing, andaddresses it in part by reaching out to young working-class Americans, teaching them the skills required to build that housing, and funneling them into the kind of union-scale (ideally, unionized) jobs that would enable them to make a family wage.

Such a program would expand the diminishing need for manual labor, which is at the root of young working-class men’s frustration with—and despair about—the economy. Making it a federal program that provides entry into remunerative private employment is not only good policy; it can be good politics, too. Simply offering tax breaks for builders and subsidies for buyers, as the Harris-Walz ticket is doing, provides good talking points, but is far too indirect and muted a message to impact swing voters. Elevating this to the level of a distinct federal commitment, to a distinct program with a budget and a name, would have greater impact. Alongside the commitment to a care economy, a commitment to a build economy could provide a way to shrink that gender gap. And in an election where every percentage point will matter, a little shrinkage could go a long way.

In his article, “Kamala Harris Has Got a Game-Changing Plan for Labor in Her Hands. As vice president, she helped devise an ambitious blueprint to advance unions. Now she just needs to make it a bigger part of her campaign” Timothy Noah writes at The New Republic: “The biggest substantive change since candidate Joe Biden stepped aside in favor of candidate Kamala Harris, at least where domestic policy is concerned, is much less discussion of labor unions. As Labor Day approaches, Harris needs to shore up her bona fides. As it happens, Harris herself has already created a plausible blueprint for organized labor’s path forward. With the hard work done, all she needs to do now is talk about it….in her speechannouncing the plan Harris did allow that “you should be able to join a union if you choose”….Walz has a stunningly good labor record as governor, especially in passing last year of a sort of mini–PRO Act, S.F. 3035, which banned captive meetings by management during union drives; required a minimum of six paid sick days for full-time employees; and banned noncompete clauses in employment contracts….no Democrat has ever won the White House without a working-class majority, going back 100 years. There is one exception: Joe Biden in 2020. But that occurred under the unusual circumstance of his opponent visibly mismanaging a deadly epidemic (a fiasco that the voting public, sadly, no longer seems to remember). As I’ve further pointed out, unions are more popular today (with approval levels of 67 to 68 percent) than at any time since the 1960s. Even affluent suburban voters support a more leftist economic agendathan anything we’ve heard from Harris….Harris created a useful blueprint on labor issues. That was the February 2022 report of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment,….Harris should talk up the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which a federal judge recently blocked. It’s a letter-perfect example of the Democrats’ new mantra that they, and not the GOP, are the party of freedom. Just as women should be free to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term, men and women should be free to work wherever they choose….Madame Vice President: You’ve done a splendid job persuading Democrats not to be fearful of your opponent, but rather to embrace a more joyful (and less weird) vision of government. Please don’t let linger any fear of labor’s enemies among the donor class. You have a record on organized labor, and in large part the task force report is it. Don’t let that be a secret.” Read the whole article for more details.

As long as you are at The New Republic you might as well give a listen to Greg Sargent’s “the Daily Blast,” in which he interviews one of the sharpest Democratic strategists, James Carville, who shares his insights and hunches about the presidential election, which have a way of coming true. You can also listen to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

It never ends with you know who, the convicted felon presidential candidate. Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report in “Trump indicted again in election subversion case brought by Jack Smith” at Politico that “A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. has reindicted Donald Trump on four felony charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election….The 36-page indictment, secured Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith, is an attempt by prosecutors to streamline the case against Trump to address the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that concluded presidents enjoy sweeping immunity from prosecution for their official conduct….The new indictment removes some specific allegations against Trump but contains the same four criminal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. It’s a signal that Smith believes the high court’s immunity decision doesn’t pose a major impediment to convicting the former president.” However, “The development is unlikely to alter the reality that a trial in the case before the November election looks impossible. In fact, the new indictment could drag the case out further — defense attorneys often seek delays after prosecutors revise criminal allegations.” Further, “The new indictment seeks to rely on a distinction the Supreme Court drew between a president’s private actions (which can be the subject of criminal charges) and actions that stem from a president’s official powers (which now carry a large degree of immunity)….In addition to the election subversion case, Smith has also charged Trump in Florida with hoarding classified documents and obstructing justice. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed that case last month — a decision that Smith is appealing….Trump also faces criminal charges in Georgia for interfering with the 2020 election results in that state. And in May, he was convicted in New York of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star.” If you are thinking that increasing numbers of America’s swing voters would like to put his mess behind them, you are not alone.

The Daily Kos staff has sharable post, “Trump bores his supporters, while Harris racks up Republican endorsements,” which includes, “The list of pro-Harris Republicans just got over 200 new names.”On Monday, a group of over 200 former Republican officials endorsed Kamala Harris for president. These officials—who worked for the late Sen. John McCain, Sen. Mitt Romney, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush—represent the last three Republican administrations and the two Republican presidential candidates before Trump… They all share a single message: “[R]e-electing President Trump would be a disaster for our nation.”….Despite the way some Republicans want to spin this, those endorsing Harris aren’t all junior clerks from some obscure agency. They are chiefs of staff, press secretaries, legislative directors, campaign chairs, and top advisors. They are high-ranking agency officials, U.S. attorneys, and a former director of the National Security Council…. These are people who worked closely with former Republican presidents and past candidates, all lining up to say that Trump isn’t worthy of the office.” According to their statement, “We’re heartfully calling on these friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family members to take a brave stand once more, to vote for leaders that will strive for consensus, not chaos; that will work to unite, not divide; that will make our country and our children proud. Those leaders are Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.”….In the meantime, Trump cannot muster the endorsement of his former vice president, defense secretary, chief of staff, White House national security adviser, Homeland Security adviser, or White House communications director. These are people who worked directly with Trump. They saw how he behaved in office and know how he treated the responsibility of being behind the Resolute desk. They are not supporting his attempt to return to that office.”

We all look at poll numbers, but it’s important to read them in a way that improves your knowledge rather than making you doubt they matter at all, as I tried to explain at New York:

With Democrats’ substitution of Kamala Harris for Joe Biden, it’s looking very much like the very close election we originally envisioned for November has returned. And why shouldn’t it have? There has been exactly one comfortably decided election in this century (Barack Obama’s 2008 victory over John McCain), the two major parties are in equipoise, and three-time Republican nominee Donald Trump has polarized American politics to an almost incredible degree.

Now, an increasingly attentive public is paying a lot of attention to the presidential election. It’s a good time to review some of the mistakes people tend to make in seeking to follow and interpret the polls.

Don’t get fooled by outliers.

When a poll favorable to one candidate or the other comes out, that “team” is very likely to hype the numbers as absolutely true and predictive of a great landslide to come (that’s particularly true of Trump’s MAGA fans; Democrats have been burned by poll-driven irrational exuberance too many times). Some pollsters are prone (deliberately or not) to partisan bias, but any one survey by any pollster can, for statistical reasons, turn out to be an outlier.

There are two simple ways to avoid the temptation to overreact to individual polls: (1) utilize polling averages, which tend to greatly reduce the importance of outliers, and (2) look at trends in the results found by specific pollsters over time.

This year, there are a host of polling averages available. Some (notably RealClearPolitics and, to a lesser extent, Decision Desk HQ) use simple arithmetical averaging without any adjustments or weighting of results, while others (FiveThirtyEight, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and FiveThirtyEight founder and now independent analyst Nate Silver) have sophisticated methodologies that seek to place a premium on higher-quality and more recent data. I personally prefer FiveThirtyEight’s averages, which are easy to navigate and aren’t quite as loaded with junk polls as RCP’s. But any of the above averages are a lot better than reliance on any one pollster or any one result.

Pay attention to margins of error and other methodological issues.

In close races where small swings in polling results can seem huge (particularly those in which the lead, however small, changes hands), it’s easy to forget that every reputable poll is accompanied by a “margin of error” reflecting the size of the sample and thus the likely range of possible underlying numbers (which, in turn, is modified slightly by a “confidence interval,” which is typically 95 percent). A recent national poll from Emerson College showing Harris leading Trump by a 50-46 percent margin had a margin of error of 3 percent, which means the results for either or both candidates could be off by that percentage. Thus a relatively robust Harris lead is actually “within the margin of error” (amounting to 6 percent in terms of the difference between the candidates) and could be misleading. To put it another way, no really close lead is safe and could represent an illusion.

The margin of error can become really large in subsamples of particular parts of the electorate (e.g., voters under 30, voters with or without a college education), which some pollsters compensate for with “oversamples” of particular groups of interest. When you see a poll with a finding that seems really odd (such as Trump leading among young voters or ringing up 30 percent of Black voters), always look for the size of the sample and the margin of error. This is why large-sample polls (all else being equal) are generally more reliable and why state polls are typically less accurate than national polls.

Until fairly recently, there was a very strong preference among polling experts for surveys based on live telephone interviews, until (a) cell phones began replacing landlines in households and (b) the unwillingness of Americans to respond to phone-poll solicitations began making it very difficult (and expensive) for old-school pollsters to get a representative sample. Now there remain “gold standard” pollsters (e.g., New York Times–Siena or Ann Selzer’s Iowa poll) that rely almost entirely on live-caller surveys but that now pay extra attention to the design and weighting of samples (e.g., by comparing them to verified voter files from the most recent election). There are also perfectly reputable polls that utilize refined, online voting “panels” and other methods. Pew found after the 2022 midterm elections (when pollsters had an excellent record) that “17% of national pollsters used at least three different methods to sample or interview people (sometimes in the same survey), up from 2% in 2016.”

FiveThirtyEight’s database of pollster ratings remains an essential tool for separating good from bad polls, based not just on accuracy but on transparency (pollsters who won’t tell you how they reach their results should not be trusted). But in general, you should beware of small-sample, one-day polls that are clearly designed to grab headlines.

Don’t confuse poll release dates with survey dates.

For varying reasons, pollsters (or, more often, the media outlets that pay for and sponsor polls) don’t always release polling data the minute it’s collected. So it’s possible a “new” poll will represent old data. For example, some media folk jumped on a Fairleigh Dickinson poll of the Harris-Trump race that was released the day after the Democratic National Convention ended and that showed a “post-convention bounce,” even though much of the polling was conducted before the DNC began. Keeping in mind the gap between the surveying and the reporting of results is important any time people look for a “bounce” from some significant event (particularly a candidate debate). Indeed, it’s wise to wait a few days after such an event to look for polling data since much of the impact is likely to come from secondary coverage rather than live viewership.

Pay attention to respondents’ likelihood to vote.

It obviously matters a lot whether the people polled and reported as favoring one candidate or another actually turn out to vote. But it’s not always easy to separate the participating sheep from the nonparticipating goats until fairly close to Election Day. This is why most pollsters stick with samples based on registered voters until they conduct a “switchover” to likely-voter surveys shortly before early voting begins (others, like Times-Siena, offer both registered-voter and likely-voter results much earlier).

There are different forms of “likely-voter screens” with different strengths and weaknesses. Some focus on stated voter intentions, which can overestimate turnout because people don’t like to admit they might find something better to do on Election Day than fulfilling their civic obligations. Others emphasize past voting behavior, but that obviously doesn’t work for newly eligible voters and may miss surges in turnout among voters who did not participate earlier (this has been one factor frequently cited as contributing to the underpolling of Trump voters in 2016 and especially in 2020). Likely-voter screens are especially important in non-presidential elections, when turnout is often low and variable.

Much higher percentages of registered voters participate in presidential elections, making assessments of likelihood to vote somewhat less essential. In the past, the application of likely-voter screens has often produced improved numbers for Republican candidates since they were disproportionately drawn from segments of the electorate most likely to vote (e.g., older voters). That may be less true in the Trump era, in which Democrats have improved their performance among both highly educated and older voters, while Republicans are doing better among non-college-educated voters who aren’t quite as likely to vote.

Finally, it should be noted that some polls (typically “issue polls” that don’t measure candidate preferences and some job-approval or favorability polls) don’t even screen for voter-registration status but use samples of “adults.” These results should be taken with a few grains of salt.

Be aware of polling errors.

One by-product of this era of close elections and partisan balance is that polls can get the outcome “wrong” even if they are reasonably accurate. It’s also important to note that national presidential polls estimate the national popular vote, not the results in the Electoral College (both George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 won the latter while losing the former, and in 2020 Trump came within a whisker of winning while pretty decisively losing the popular vote). So, for example, in 2016 the final polling averages at RealClearPolitics showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump by 3.2 percent. She won the national popular vote by 2.1 percent. That’s a pretty small error. But sparse state polling gave no hint that Trump was going to win the historically Democratic states of Michigan and Wisconsin — and thus the election. So when Trump did win by the equivalent of an inside straight, a lot of shocked observers felt betrayed by the polls, and some concluded they were worthless. They weren’t — at all — but they were, of course, not flawless.

Polling error was actually more evident in 2020. RCP’s final averages showed Biden leading Trump by 7.2 percent; he actually won the popular vote by 4.5 percent, a margin small enough to get Trump within reach of another inside straight in the Electoral College. Postmortems of this relatively poor showing didn’t reach any clear conclusions, but explanations often focused either on the pandemic conditions that greatly affected both polling and voting or on a continued problem pollsters were encountering in identifying Trump voters. Either explanation was consistent with the excellent record of the polls in 2022, when the pandemic had subsided and Trump wasn’t on the ballot. So there’s no reason to assume the polls will be right or wrong in 2024. But Harris supporters will pray that she is far enough ahead as voters vote that she can win in the Electoral College. And a big win might also reduce the very high odds that Trump and his supporters will again fight against certification of a defeat.

Some insights from “Time for Change Model Predicts Close Election with Slight Edge for Kamala Harris” by Alan I. Abramowitz, author of The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump, at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

The assumption underlying the Time for Change model, which has an excellent track record in predicting the outcomes of presidential elections since 1992, is that the results of these contests are largely determined by three factors: the popularity of the incumbent president, the state of the economy, and the number of terms that the president’s party has controlled the White House.

Not surprisingly, the more popular the incumbent president and the stronger the economy, the better the candidate of the president’s party tends to do. Less obviously, the incumbent president’s party does better when it has held the White House for a single term than when it has been in power for two terms or longer. That is the “Time for Change” factor, and it has a surprisingly strong relationship with the results of presidential elections. Since World War II, the candidate of the president’s party has won 7 of 9 elections after a single term in office but only 2 of 10 elections after two or more terms in office. The public appears to be more reluctant to vote for a change in direction in Washington after only four years than after eight or more years and in 2024, Democrats will be defending the White House after only four years in office. So even though Harris is not a first-term incumbent running for reelection, she does benefit from something of an incumbency bonus in the model because she is seeking just a second straight term for her party in the White House.

Abramowitz notes, further:

Plugging in President Biden’s net approval rating of -18% in late June and the estimated second quarter growth rate of 2.8% in real GDP along with the fact that Kamala Harris will be defending the White House after a single Democratic term in office, the Time for Change model predicts narrow Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. The predictions are a Democratic margin of 2.6 percentage points in the national popular vote and 281 electoral votes, only 11 more than the minimum of 270 needed to win an Electoral College majority.

Based on these results, clearly the safest prediction that we can make about the 2024 presidential election is that it is likely to be very close. Both the predicted popular vote margin of 2.6 percentage points and the predicted electoral vote margin of 24 votes are much smaller than the standard errors of the two regression equations. Adding to the uncertainty of the predictions are the highly unusual circumstances of the 2024 election, especially the replacement of the incumbent president at the top of the Democratic ticket by the incumbent vice president. These results are based on the assumption that Kamala Harris will enjoy the normal advantage that goes to the candidate seeking just a second-straight party term in the White House (typically this person is an incumbent who was elected to the party’s first term in the previous election, but Harris is not).

It certainly would not be shocking if Donald Trump were to win either the popular vote or the electoral vote in the 2024 presidential election. It would also not be shocking if the outcome turns out to be an Electoral College misfire, a split between the popular vote winner and the electoral vote winner. That has happened twice since 2000 and it almost happened again in 2020. Nevertheless, both the popular vote and the electoral vote models give a small advantage in the 2024 presidential election to the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz over the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance.

Harris has thus far waged a remarkably effective campaign, leading up to Labor Day. If she can hold the current trend line for ten  more weeks, Abramowitz’s ‘Time for Change’ model will look even stronger.

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

Democrats are not just happy, they are ecstatic. Harris has surged into a modest lead over Trump in national polls and is doing well enough in swing states for her to be a slight favorite (53-47) to win the Electoral College and therefore the election. The Democratic National Convention seems to be a smashing success with delegate enthusiasm at a fever pitch.

The enthusiasm is understandable. They thought they were going to lose, now they think they’re going to win. Everything is going great!

But that’s them—partisan, liberal-leaning Democrats who are no doubt fully reflective and then some of the increasingly college-educated character of their party. Working-class voters however can restrain their enthusiasm.

Let’s take a look at some data. First up, the new Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll.

1. In this poll, Harris is ahead of Trump by 3 or 4 points, depending on whether other candidates are included on the ballot test. But among working-class (noncollege) voters, Harris trails Trump by 7 points while leading among college-educated voters by 20 points. This is both somewhat worse than Biden did among working-class voters in 2020 (deficit of 4 points) and somewhat better than Biden did among college-educated voters (advantage of 18 points).

2. The same pattern applies to white voters; Harris is doing somewhat better than Biden 2020 among white college voters but somewhat worse among white working-class voters. And among nonwhiteworking-class voters she is still underperforming. Biden carried these voters by 48 points in 2020; Harris is ahead by only 29 points.

3. Among the working class, Trump gets a 47 percent retrospective job approval rating while Harris gets just a 34 percent rating. Among the college-educated, it’s just the reverse: Harris gets 47 percent job approval and Trump gets only 38 percent.

4. Working-class adults are still significantly more pessimistic about the state of the nation’s economy than the college-educated: 78 percent say the economy is not so good or poor compared to “only” 62 percent among the college-educated.

5. On the all-important issue of the economy, working-class respondents trust Trump over Harris by 15 points. But the college-educated trust Harris over Trump, albeit by a small margin (3 points). The pattern is exactly the same on inflation/rising prices, which was asked separately.

6. Despite Harris’s recent tough talk (well, commercials) on the border, working-class adults trust Trump over Harris to handle the border situation by 16 points while the college-educated deem them equally trustworthy. Interestingly, Hispanics actually trust Trump over Biden by 3 points to handle the border.

7. On crime and public safety, working-class adults trust Trump over Harris by 9 points, while the college-educated are the reverse, trusting Harris over Trump by 9 points.

8. Finally, Trump is slightly favored by the working class (one point) over Harris on “protecting American democracy” while the college-educated trust Harris over Trump by a wide margin (20 points).

The Democrats—still the college-educated party after all these years! Next up: The new CBS News poll. Several questions here highlight the different—and more jaundiced—attitudes of working-class voters compared to college voters. (Note: CBS does not report an overall education split but only whites by education.)

1. In terms of their personal/household situation, 60 percent of white working-class voters say, “I have just enough to meet my basic expenses” or “I don’t have enough to meet my basic expenses.” By comparison, just 35 percent of white college voters make such a gloomy assessment. And 72 percent of white working-class voters describe the national economy as fairly or very bad.

2. The poll asked voters what they thought would happen with the price of food and groceries if Harris or Trump is elected. White working-class voters believe by 43 points that these prices will go uprather than down if Harris is elected but believe by 26 points that these prices will go down not up under a Trump presidency. White college grads are less negative on Harris by 11 points and less positive on Trump by 21 points.

3. The poll also asked voters about what might happen at the border with migrant crossings under Harris or Trump. White working-class voters by 45 points think migrant crossings under Harris would increase rather than decrease, while under a Trump presidency they believe by an overwhelming 75 points that such crossings would decrease not increase. Again, white college voters are much less likely to see a Harris presidency as increasing border crossings or a Trump presidency as decreasing these crossings.

And finally, the latest Fox News poll.

1. In terms of favorability, working class voters give Harris a 44 percent favorability rating and Trump a 52 percent favorable rating. College-educated voters are basically the reverse: they give Harris a 54 percent favorability rating and Trump just a 38 percent rating.

2. Consistent with the Post ratings on which candidate voters trust on key issues, working-class voters prefer Trump over Harris on the economy by 13 points, on crime also by 13 points, on foreign policy by 17 points, and on border security by 27 points (on the latter, even Hispanics trust Trump over Harris by 17 points). In contrast, college voters favor Harris over Trump on the economy by 6 points, on crime by 7 points and on foreign policy by 10 points. And they “only” favor Trump over Harris on border security by 5 points.

Now, none of this is to say that Harris doesn’t have better issues with working-class voters that are important, particularly abortion but also health care. And it is also true that Harris has made up significant ground with these voters since Biden cratered in the polls shortly before he dropped out. But the yawning gap between the views of working-class and college-educated voters remains, as does the gap between their voting intentions (the latter confirmed by sources of running crosstab averages—see here and here).

When Democrats are feeling frisky, they would do well to remember this. Most of their activists live and work in environments where they are surrounded by other college-educated voters as do most of those who cover and write about politics. Their universe is different from that of working-class voters; what plays so well in their college-educated bubble does not typically play nearly as well in the universe inhabited by working class voters.

But, Democrats might say, we are working on this! Harris is taking backall of her unpopular stuff. We’re now tough(er) on the border—at least in commercials and in our platform (love the land acknowledgement!). We’re going to bring prices down with our anti-price-gouging plan! We’re trying on our patriotism hat again! And how about what Barack Obama said!

On the latter, it is true that Obama has not forgotten the ancient wisdom of the Obama era. But hey, he’s Obama so I’m not sure how many points the Democrats get for that.

In truth, most of what Democrats are doing and saying today amounts to, as befits their status as a Brahmin left party, a kind of Brahmin populism. It combines a mild-mannered and scattershot populism—a far cry from Bernie Sanders’ class-oriented populism of 2016—with an underlying commitment to a very wide array of social justice and “equity” issues that the working class detests.

The more-or-less plausible goal is to reconstitute the Biden coalition of 2020. They may or may not make it. But they shouldn’t kid themselves on the underlying weakness of their coalition. They are notreconstituting the Obama coalition or anything close to it, as I showedin a recent analysis. As Michael Cuenco tartly points out:

Consider that when Obama last ran, the Midwest was still known as an impenetrable Blue Wall, while Florida and Ohio were still purple states. When Bill Clinton gave his acceptance speech in 1996, the Democrats were competitive throughout large swathes of the South. During that period, they had gone on to win not just Clinton’s Arkansas and Al Gore’s Tennessee, but states such as Kentucky and Louisiana too.

The story of the last three decades has been one of political success for Democrats, who have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight elections. Yet it is also one of narrowing political constituencies and pyrrhic victories, as the party attracted college-educated professionals at the expense of the non-college-educated majority. In particular, non-college-educated whites were lost, but in recent years they have increasingly been joined by significant numbers of non-college-educated minorities. As recently as 2007, “56 percent of voters without a degree were Democrats or leaned Democratic, while 42 percent were Republicans or GOP leaners”; today, Republicans hold “a six-percentage-point advantage over the Democratic Party,” according to Pew Research.

Of course, the selection of Tim Walz as Harris’s running mate is supposed to help the Democrats claw back some of that lost working-class support. Besides the obvious point that vice-presential picks typically don’t matter much, this seems doubtful given his own electoral record in Minnesota, where his support as governor has skewed toward highly-educated metro areas.

Indeed, even granting Walz the sincerity of his advocacy on economic issues, he fits quite comfortably into the Democrats’ current Brahmin populism. As Gregory Conti points out in an excellent Compact article on the vice-presidential picks:

Tim Walz’s ascension looks…to be fully in keeping with the [Democrats’ shifting coalition]. For if woke has peaked, Harris seems not to have known it when she selected him. Given that Harris appears now to want to backtrack from and minimize her distinctly far-left messaging in 2019-20—which ranged from the sublime (working to bail out rioters and affirming the righteousness of the disorder of summer 2020, calling to decriminalize illegal border crossings, endorsing a ban on fracking) to the ridiculous (getting sucked in by the Jussie Smollett hoax)—it is curious that she made Walz her running mate. For there is nary an enthusiasm of contemporary cultural progressivism that he has not indulged to the hilt. Reflecting the left’s recent hostility on the subject, he has no affection for—or understanding of—the American tradition of free speech. He was a Covid-maximalist, both in his personal conduct and far more importantly in public policy, having set up a snitch line for reporting transgressions of the state’s innumerable and ineffective NPIs and vigorously defending school closures. In contrast to the trend of European social democracies toward greater caution on the issue, Walz has made Minnesota a spearhead for gender-affirming care for children….This is not the record of Joe Biden in ’08, or Tim Kaine in ’16, but something close to a replay—and perhaps a magnification—of the Harris persona in ’20.

In sum, it’s a long road back to the working class for the Democrats. As they leave their convention, with visions of electoral sugar plums dancing in their heads, they should remember that they still have far to go.

From “Early Voting Set to Begin in the 2024 Election: What to Know” by Aneeta Mathur-Ashton and Julia Haines at U.S. News: “Election Day is less than 80 days away, but voters in more than a dozen states will be able to vote as early as next month….In Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, voters can cast their ballots as early as Sept. 16, less than 10 days after Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump face off for a debate, the first since she took over the Democratic ticket in July. The candidates are circling a second debate, reportedly in October, that could potentially occur after early voting has begun in some states….The landscape of the race has changed dramatically in the last few weeks and voters in these states will fill out their ballots well before millions of other Americans, with other states starting early voting later in October. Some offer early voting in person, while others offer the option by way of absentee ballots.” Here’s the skinny on three possible  swing states, which have early voting dates in September: “All elections in Arizona must support early voting, including ballot-by-mail voting and in-person early voting. Early voters receive a ballot at their voting location and must not take the ballot away from the location….Voters on the Active Early Voter List can request to receive a ballot by mail. The completed ballots can be dropped off at official ballot drop-off sites or voting locations throughout the county that issued them and have to be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5….The last day to register to vote in the state is Oct. 7….Voters in Pennsylvania can cast a ballot as soon as Sept. 16. Voters can pick up their ballots at county election offices and have the option of filling them out there, mailing them in or dropping them off later. The last date to apply for a mail ballot in person is Oct. 29 at 5 p.m., and the last date to drop it off is 8 p.m. on Election Day….Matt Heckel, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State, says the state handles early voting differently than other states….“Once a county’s ballots are finalized and printed, a registered voter can apply for their mail ballot in person at their county election office, complete it, then submit it all in one visit,” Heckel says….Voters in the [VA] commonwealth will have the chance to cast their ballots in person and by ballot drop-off as early as Sept. 20, according to Andrea M. Gaines, external affairs manager with the Virginia Department of Elections….Voters can apply to vote by mail and, after receiving a ballot, can return it by mail, in person to a local general registrar’s office by 7 p.m. on Election Day or to a drop-off location. If returning a ballot by mail, it must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by the office by noon on Nov. 8.”

Among the  numerous articles about the effects of RFK, Jr.’s endorsement of Trump, here’s what G. Elliott Morris and Mary Radcliffe write about it in “How much momentum will RFK Jr.’s endorsement give Trump?“at ABC News via 538: “Kennedy’s bid failed to garner enough support to contend in any state, and support for him in national polls fell by nearly half after President Joe Biden dropped out of the running to be the Democratic Party’s nominee….Our analysis of the polling data suggests Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump will have a minimal impact on the race. Kennedy, who has consistently polled around 5 percent since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee, was drawing roughly equally from both Trump and Harris, with that support coming from both traditionally Democratic and traditionally Republican groups. His endorsement of Trump may marginally help the Republican among white, male, and older voters. But the effect of his departure on overall support for either candidate will be small.” Morris and Radcliffe deploy a couple of wonky methods to crunch available polling and demographic numbers to reaffirm their argument that the effect will be small. But sometimes small effects swing elections.

Nebraska is not considered a swing state at the moment. But it could be consequential in the presidential election, as Ed Kilgore recently noted. Meanwhile,  Margery A. Beck of Associated Press reports that “Nebraska voters will choose between two competing abortion measures to either expand abortion rights or limit them to the current 12-week ban — a development likely to drive more voters to the polls in a state that could see one of its five electoral votes up for grabs in the hotly contested presidential race….Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen announced Friday that the rival initiatives each gathered enough signatures to get on the November ballot, making Nebraska the first state to carry competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022….Nebraska also becomes the last of several states to put an abortion measure on the November ballot, including the swing states of Arizona and Nevada where abortion ballot measures could drive higher voter turnout. Others are Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and South Dakota. New York has a measure that supporters say will effectively guarantee access, though it doesn’t mention abortion specifically….One of the initiatives, like measures on ballots elsewhere in the U.S., would enshrine in the state constitution the right to have an abortion until viability or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. Organizers said they submitted more than 207,000 signatures….The other measure would write into the constitution the current 12-week ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the pregnant woman. Organizers said they submitted more than 205,000 signatures….It’s possible voters could end up approving both measures, but because they’re competing and therefore cannot both be enshrined in the constitution, the one that gets the most “for” votes will be the one adopted, Evnen said.”

At The American Prospect David Dayen addresses an important, but largely ignored question of consequence , “Will the Senate Take Off the Handcuffs?” As Dayen writes, “In the Democratic National Convention hall, in side events in hotel ballrooms and conference centers, and on the campaign trail, lawmakers and candidates are promising big change. They have promised to codify Roe v. Wade and end the assault on reproductive rights. They have promised to end gerrymandering and voter suppression in a pair of consequential voting rights bills, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act. They want to address affordable housing, and child care, and paid family and medical leave, and child poverty; they want to transform the tax code; and so on….To accomplish all of this, or at least to make it unencumbered by artificial constraints and rules and processes, they need to end the circumstance whereby a minority of members in the U.S. Senate get a veto over everything the chamber does. At the heart of the entire agenda that this convention’s pitch is predicated upon is the imperative to reform the filibuster….Republicans will not vote for abortion rights or voting rights; under a 60-vote Senate, those bills will fail. You could technically get tax reform and care economy investments done the way it was done in 2022 in the Inflation Reduction Act, by using budget reconciliation. But that carries with it complicated rules about spending limitations within the ten-year budget window….The only way to ensure the full agenda can be passed without constraints is by ending the filibuster….“The two folks who have been most opposed to filibuster reform are Manchin and Sinema, and both are retiring from the Senate,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), at a pen and pad briefing on the sidelines of the DNC. The inference is that, with Manchin and Sinema out of the way, the Senate can get on with doing the people’s business….The filibuster has evolved into a constant block on progress. Democrats are promising to change the world, but will they change the Senate rules to make that happen?” All of which presupposes that Dems hold their Senate majority in November.

Like a lot of Democrats, I’m exhausted at the end of this exhilarating week, but did want to offer my insta-reaction to Kamala Harris’s big speech in Chicago that I wrote for New York:

Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech was relatively simple, almost stripped back, but laser-focused on a few objectives: introducing herself with autobiographical details that other speakers have been citing all week; defending herself forcefully against the attacks to come on her intelligence, strength and common-sense policy objectives; and making a clear and concise case against Donald Trump. She did not bother to defend the Biden administration’s record, and presented herself as focused on the future. It will not be easy for Republicans to depict this tough-sounding, highly articulate woman citing traditional American values and speaking to a crowd of flag-waving delegates as a “communist” or a “radical leftist” or unintelligent, as Trump has often done. And while she did not descend into wonkiness, she did describe enough of a policy agenda to create a real debate with Trump and his party.

As for her delivery, the contrast between Harris’s crisp, forceful, coherent and succinct presentation and Trump’s rambling screed in Milwaukee will be grist for the mill for some time. Indeed, this should make Democrats savor the upcoming debate, where there is every prospect for Harris to show up her opponent as the narcissistic would-be tyrant she spoke of in this speech. It was a fine start for the short sprint to November 5, and it showed she is not complacent but is determined to fight for swing voters while keeping her base excited.

Now on to the debate!

There are lots of good “takeaway” articles about the Democratic convention (See here, here, here and here, for example)  Nearly all of the wrap-up articles note how well-produced it was and cite it as likely to produce a nice ‘bump’ of indeterminate length for Harris-Walz. Here are some excerpts from “Democrats rejoice as ‘joyful’ Kamala Harris puts them back in the game,” Ed Pilkington’s analysis at The Guardian:

On Tuesday, the Obamas added their own ideas on how to tackle Trump. Focus by all means on fears of a possible second Trump presidency – “the deep pit in my stomach”, as Michelle put it – but also bring him down to size, make him look as small as he is.

A good point, and somebody needed to say it. Pilkington notes, further:

It was fitting that the most forceful put down of Trump during the week came from Harris herself. “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she said. “But the consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious.”

She invited her audience to contemplate what Trump would do if he were returned to power, fortified by the recent US supreme court ruling that makes him largely immune from criminal prosecution.

“Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails,” Harris said, “and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency.”

A party leader unleashed. A new mood of positivity and optimism. Fresh ways to hit Trump. The Democratic party emerges from the convention in much more robust health than it entered it.

Also,

Messages were pumped out designed to soothe the doubts of wavering voters. A Harris presidency would be tough on crime, good for your family’s budget, lower your middle-class taxes, secure the border – and do all this with compassion and kindness, not the other side’s disparagement and hate.

The convention repeatedly bashed Trump for overturning abortion rights, driving the point home with heart-wrenching accounts from women denied health care in states with abortion bans, including a woman raped by her stepfather aged 12 and a second woman who miscarried in her bathroom having been turned away from hospital.

“This is what’s happening in our country because of Donald Trump, and he is not done,” Harris said.

In addition,

Latest polls put Harris just a few points up over Trump in battleground states like Wisconsin without which Harris will have difficulty prevailing. That’s a dramatic improvement on Biden, but it is still well within the margin of error.

Meanwhile, Trump is not letting up on his pursuit of darkness. As Harris was preparing to address delegates on Thursday, he was down at the US border with Mexico scaremongering about “hardened criminals pouring into our country”.

Will it work? Nobody knows.

What Democratic strategists do know is this. If they let their party faithful leave Chicago, turn off the TV, sit back and relax as they bask in the glow of so much talk of joy and freedom and a new beginning, then they lose.

As conventions go, this one had many more ups than downs. On the whole, was it was much better than any other in recent memory. Democratic leaders and rank and file should now prepare for the Republican’s all-out assault and mobilize an unrelenting counter-attack, one which will show that 2024 Democrats are ready to win.

E, J, Dionne, Jr. explains how “Harris can seal the deal this week by being new, improved — and loyal” at The Washington Post: ““New and improved.” It’s one of marketing’s most hallowed slogans. The idea behind it is doing wonders for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Hanging on to the benefits of offering a brand-spanking new choice to Americans while remaining loyal to President Joe Biden is one of Harris’s central challenges at her party’s convention this week. Getting it right will make her president….What’s remarkable is that switching candidates has also reduced Democratic vulnerabilities on issues that were working for Trump. In a poll from the Financial Times and University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business released last week, 42 percent of voters said they trusted Harris more to handle the economy, compared with 41 percent for Trump. That’s a seven-point improvement over Biden’s July numbers….So, on one of most vexing issues facing Democrats, Harris has room to level the playing field or tilt it in her favor. She’s trying to do this by offering fresh policies and emphasizing issues that had slipped from the top of Biden’s agenda — notably family leave, child care and elder care.”

Kyle Kondik reports that “North Carolina Moves to Toss-up, Setting Up November Battle for Magnificent Seven Swing States” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “The polling bolsters the case for North Carolina to be a Toss-up, given that the race there is basically a tie right now, and its polling is broadly in line with the other 7 states (although there is, of course, variation). The familiar 2000-2020 electoral pattern of Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina being redder than Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin is also present in the polls. It is perhaps a little surprising to see Nevada polling among the redder group (at least in the “average of averages”), although Harris is actually slightly ahead in 2 of the 3 averages in Nevada. Regardless, Nevada is the one state on this list where we have a fair amount of experience with polls understating Democrats. On the flip side, Democratic margins were routinely and often heavily overestimated in Wisconsin polls in both 2016 and 2020, so it being the second-bluest state in these averages merits a little skepticism too….We do think Michigan is still the best candidate to be the bluest state among these in 2024 again, and North Carolina the best candidate to be the reddest, but it wouldn’t take much to change this alignment in some way. It’s not a stretch to imagine Arizona moving to the left of Nevada, given that the latter is more working-class and thus perhaps more amenable to the current GOP than historically Republican but more suburban-focused Arizona. We addressed the differences between Georgia and North Carolina above. Again, we’re skeptical North Carolina will be more Democratic than Georgia, but there’s also not a ton of daylight between the pair, currently. And all 7 of these states are close enough that we think they should be grouped together in our ratings, at least at the moment….Now that the election is getting closer and we are almost past the conventions, the polls probably should carry more weight, imperfect instruments though they are. We’ll be watching to see if Harris can maintain or build upon these polling numbers after the Democratic National Convention concludes. If so, it may be that one or more of these “Magnificent Seven,” to borrow the famous movie title, won’t be Toss-ups anymore.”

 In “The New Silent Majority that will deliver a Blue Wave” J. Nash Bowie writes at Daily Kos: “Yes, polling shows a close race. I think the polls are wrong (in terms of percentages—the trends are probably more accurate). I think there is a new Silent Majority in this country who are ready to move beyond the chaos, hostility, and division. They are young adults who don’t answer pollsters. They are suburban and rural wives who don’t want to make waves by coming out in support of Democrats but who know how important it is to elect them. It is Black and Latino voters who had tuned out over the last couple of years but who will come home in big numbers. It is disaffected Republicans who can’t stand Trump (a lot of whom voted for Nikki Haley in the primary) and who recognize the dangers of Project 2025. I strongly suspect that polling is not capturing these voters….This is not just wishful thinking or naive “unskewing”. Over the last two years, we’ve seen polling consistently miss outcomes that favor Democrats and liberalism. The last example is just a few days ago in Wisconsin when the GOP tried to slip in two constitutional amendments to disempower the Democratic governor in a petty act of revenge—polling had those amendments passing by 3-10 points and they ended up going down to defeat, one 57-43 and the other 58-42. There are dozens of examples like this, and almost none going the other way….I know that predicting a Democratic win evokes the horror of 2016 and the hand-wringing mantra, “Don’t get complacent!” (nevermind that 2024 is almost nothing like 2016). The win I’m predicting is based entirely on the expectation of hard work, a large volunteer army, smart strategy, flush campaign coffers, and high energy. And so far, this expectation is bearing out in ways far beyond my wildest dreams. As far as I can see, Democrats are the polar opposite of complacent right now.”

As a admirer of RFK and his brothers, this report, “RFK Jr. expected to drop out of race by end of week, plans to endorse Trump: Sources” at abcnews.com and many others like it at various news outlets, felt like a gut punch. The extended Kennedy family, which includes Sargent Shriver, who ran as a vice presidential candidate on McGovern’s ticket, played such a storied role in the modern Democratic Party. JFK brought a rare spirit of hope to the nation before he was assassinated. His brother and campaign manager, RFK, enhanced the party’s commitment to compassion and eloquence before he was assassinated. Teddy Kennedy was a tireless Democratic senator who led his party’s opposition under Republican presidents. All were strong, no-nonsense Democrats, leaders of vision who built bridges of hope, not walls of division. Along comes RFK, Jr. to pervert this great legacy. If he endorses Trump it will be a sad, twisted conclusion to his family’s remarkable role in history. I remember thinking as recently as a few weeks ago, ‘surely he will drop out and endorse the Democratic ticket.’  I hope he reconsiders his endorsement.