Ryan Mancini reports that “Rural America more optimistic about future of US” at The Hill, and notes, “While polling in recent years has shown Americans to be worried about the nation’s future, rural America has a more optimistic outlook, according to a new American Communities Project (ACP)/Ipsos poll...The poll showed that 59 percent of people living in “Rural Middle America,” which pollsters classified as largely white, rural communities with middle-income residents and 24 million people, have a positive outlook on the country’s future. This grew from what respondents said in 2024, at 43 percent…Other groups saw a growth in optimism since last year, with 67 percent of people living in “Aging Farmlands” and “Evangelical Hubs” each up from 48 percent and 51 percent, respectively…The primary issue that “Rural Middle America” respondents said they face is inflation and increasing costs. But this number saw a slight drop from last year, with 74 percent worried in 2025, down from 79 percent last year…Rural Middle America” saw immigration as another major issue facing the country, at 31 percent. Narrowed down further, 14 percent of respondents in this group saw immigration as an issue within their community…“Rural Middle America” showed slightly less concern about the growth of political violence than last year. In 2025, 23 percent saw it as a major issue, down from 27 percent last year. Corruption inched up a percentage point for “Rural Middle America,” from 18 percent in 2024 to 19 percent…The ACP/Ipsos survey was conducted Aug. 8 to Sept. 4 and included 5,489 respondents. The margin of error is 1.8 percentage points.”

In “House Rating Changes: Six Moves Toward Democrats, Although Topline Remains Close,” Kyle Kondik report at Sabto’s Crytal Ball: “Despite the haze over the House battlefield thanks to a flood of mid-decade redistricting, Democrats remain favored to flip the House majority next year…The one thing that could really change the House calculus would be a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Section Two of the Voting Rights Act. A maximally positive ruling for Republicans issued early enough in the cycle could allow them to add multiple safe seats in the South ahead of next year’s elections…With six states having redistricted so far, the median House seat by presidential performance has actually shifted slightly toward Democrats, a finding that is both subject to change and also somewhat surprising given Republican ambitions at the start of 2025’s redistricting battle…we do think a couple of first-term Northern Virginia Democrats are trending away from being true Republican targets next year, regardless of redistricting. While Rep. Eugene Vindman (D, VA-7) has a credible announced Republican opponent in state Sen. Tara Durant (R), among others, last year was probably the time for Republicans to win this district, when it was both open and competitive at the presidential and House levels. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D), Vindman’s predecessor, carried her old district by a margin identical to her 15-point statewide win. The same is the case for Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D, VA-10), who won a surprisingly close 4.5-point victory in 2024. The aforementioned Jones, who was the weakest statewide Democrat this year, carried VA-10 by 11 points. Aside from the promising signals in this month’s returns, both Vindman and Subramanyam will now have incumbency, as well as what will likely be a better environment for Democrats than when they last ran. So we are upgrading each in our ratings: Vindman moves from Leans to Likely Democratic, and Subramanyam moves from Likely to Safe Democratic…Additionally, we’re moving a couple more Democrats off our Likely Democratic list and into Safe Democratic: Reps. Hillary Scholten (D, MI-3) in the Grand Rapids area and Kim Schrier (D, WA-8) in a district that covers some of Seattle’s suburbs and exurbs as well as redder, more rural turf. Kamala Harris won WA-8 by 6 points and MI-3 by 8 points in 2024, with the incumbents doing a little better than that. There’s not much reason to think either are in any danger in 2026.” More here.

Perry Bacon interviews Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica, who explains why “Anti-Corruption Politics Are the Way for Democrats to Crush Trumpism” at The New Republic. Further, notes, Bacon, “The Democrats need to become a party centered on fighting government corruption, oligarchy, and other issues that don’t cut along traditional ideological lines, says Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford University and author of the On Data and Democracy newsletter. In the latest edition of Right Now, Bonica argues that many voters don’t think in the left-right terms that political junkies do. These Americans think basically politicians are corrupt and ineffective, leading them to keep ejecting whichever party briefly has control in Washington. Instead of Democrats mindlessly following polls and trying to demonstrate “moderation,” Bonica says they could appeal to the big bloc of people either not voting or swinging between the parties, by taking stands such as limiting how much billionaires and corporations can spend in politics and banning members of Congress from trading stocks.” Watch the video at The New Republic here.

“Donald Trump has never polled well,” Bill Scher writes in “Trump’s Poll Numbers Just Entered the Danger Zone.  In November, for the first time in his second term, the president’s average job approval dropped below 45 percent. That spells trouble for the 2026 midterms” at Washington Monthly. “. While in office, in the Real Clear Politics job approval averages, he has never cracked 50 percent, save for a brief period at the beginning of his second term. His average favorability rating—which, unlike job approval, is measured while out of office—never has at all…But in a polarized era, in elections including third-party candidates determined by the Electoral College and not the popular vote, keeping these numbers above 45 percent has been for Trump—shall we say—good enough for government work. About three weeks before his 2024 presidential victory, Trump managed to push his favorability rating above 45 percent for the first time since the spring of 2022. And Trump kept both his job approval and favorability numbers above 45 percent throughout this year…Until now…Trump’s favorables dipped below 45 percent in August and have tracked around 44 percent since then. More striking is the decline in Trump’s job approval rating since the run-up to the shutdown. Since September 21, the president’s approval rating has declined by four points, from 46.3 to 42.3 percent…Of course, with a year before the midterm elections, Trump has time to regain three points or more and give the GOP a puncher’s chance to hold the House next year. And to get there, he’s hardly above gimmicky ideas—recently, he mused about $2,000 government checks sent to most Americans… Yet what should unnerve Republicans is that Trump’s second-term agenda is already firmly in place—including tariffs, deportations, civil servant layoffs, and the One Big Beautiful Bill—and the public is unimpressed. Only 36 percent of Americans say the country is on the “right track,” down seven points since June.” More here.

From “Record anxiety over medical costs gives Democrats their opening by Alex Samuels at Daily Kos:

So, “How Many Republicans Will Defy Trump and Vote to Release the Epstein Files?” is a question Julianne McShane addresses at Mother Jones. As McShane explains, “On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will finally vote on the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. If passed, the bill would force the Department of Justice to release all unclassified records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors, including flight logs, names of people and entities with ties to Epstein, sealed settlements, and internal DOJ communications related to the case…The Tuesday vote—which was first reported by Politico on Friday, citing three anonymous sources—has been a long time coming. The bill was first introduced in the House by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in July; in early September, he and co-sponsor Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) put forth a discharge petition to force the legislation out of the Rules Committee for a floor vote. Last week, when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) finally swore in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), they secured the last signature needed to make the legislation eligible for a vote…Now, the question is whether enough House Republicans will turn on President Donald Trump—who has been doing everything he can to tank the vote—to move the bill forward. Only four Republicans—Massie, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)—signed onto the discharge petition, and CNN reported that the White House held a meeting with Boebert in the Situation Room to pressure her to take her name off of it. (She declined.) Trump has called the effort to release the files “a Democrat hoax” but, confusingly, also ordered the DOJ on Friday to investigate Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats…But at least some on the right appear undeterred. On ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning, Massie said he expects “a deluge of Republicans” to vote for the bill, adding, “There could be 100 or more.” (On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Khanna offered a more conservative estimate, of at least 40 Republicans he expects to vote in support of the bill.)” More here.

At Semafor, David Weigel writes that “Poll: As Trump loses ground with Latinos, Democrats still lag,” and explains: “New polling from the Latino polling group Equis finds that President Donald Trump has lost most of his 2024 gains with Latino voters, but Democrats haven’t won those voters back…The “pulse check” study of 2,000 registered voters, taken before the Nov. 4 elections, found 68% of Latino voters disapproving of how Republicans handled the “cost of living.”…That was higher than the share who disapproved of sending military units into cities (62%), but the support for Trump on both questions has plunged since last year. Yet only 45% of Latino voters viewed Democrats favorably…“What we’ve seen is this feeling of not knowing who is leading the party, and not visibly seeing leaders fighting against the Trump administration,” said Maria Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez, director of research at Equis. “I think that there will be so many opportunities in the coming months to fight on affordability.” Weigel shares the following chart:

If you think the transgender issue of the 2024 election was a one-time concern, for Democrats, you should read “What’s Next in the Transgender Wars” by Joseph Figliolia, who writes at The Dispatch: “For years, there has been a growing chorus arguing that, in an era where Americans are increasingly devoid of faith and transcendent meaning, our sublimated religious impulses have found a new home in our political sphere, turning every policy debate into a zero-sum game with existential stakes. Add to this our social media echo chambers and the algorithms that highlight outlier positions on the left and right, and it’s no wonder that we assume the worst about our political rivals… Nevertheless, few issue areas in our political discourse are as tense as the discourse surrounding transgender issues, particularly the medical transition of minors. Indeed, the discourse is likely to be reignited, with NPR recently reporting that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to issue two proposed rules later this month which would prohibit Medicaid and CHIP reimbursements for pediatric medical interventions for dysphoric minors, and Medicaid and Medicare funding for any hospital that renders these practices…Ironically, both the “affirming” and what I’ll call the “restrictionist” camps are united by compassion for what they perceive as highly vulnerable and exploited groups, yet they diverge radically in how they define those groups and their needs. In the spirit of lowering the political temperature, I think it is useful to map out some of the basic assumptions underlying the affirming and restrictionist perspectives. Although years of research—and my own value judgments—have led me to conclude that the available evidence supports the restrictionist position, I view this exercise as a good-faith attempt to help readers, and each camp, better understand the nature of the debate…after the success of Trump’s “they/them” ad in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, some within the Democratic Party have suggested moderating on transgender issues… The recent success of Democrats like Zohran Mamdani in New York City—who promised to set aside $65 million for “affirming care”—has convinced some that the left should instead double down on transgender rights. Of course, New York is not representative of America. But the fact remains that the debate over pediatric medical transition is not going anywhere. The U.S. is functionally divided into “affirming” sanctuary states and states that prohibit physicians from treating dysphoric minors with medical interventions.” More here.

Check out “How To Win the Midterms: Yasmin Radjy on her New Campaign Initiative Ground Truth” by Jennifer Rubin ands Yasmin Radjy at The Contrarian. As Rubin and Radjy writes, “Yasmin Radjy, Executive Director of Swing Left, unveils their new initiative Ground Truth, a deep-canvassing strategy aimed at not only speaking to voters face-to-face, but implementing their feedback directly into a candidate’s policy proposals. As Radjy and Jen discuss voter frustration and distrust of a “broken system,” it becomes clear how vital a grassroots campaign for voters is needed to take back the House in 2026…Yasmin Radjy: Jen, you, as… I think this is the second time that you are one step ahead of us. You’re, like, you’re previewing what we will be sharing soon, so the answer is yes, we are going to definitely be sharing more seats very, very soon, but I think there’s a couple factors that we’re weighing, so I cannot wait to share the updated list with you. They won’t be super surprising. Right now, we are… we’ve got 14, defensive districts and 8 offensive districts. And we really… I think the balance that we have here is we’ve gotta focus on the most competitive districts, so we’re talking about Democrats who won their races by 3 percentage points or less. Republicans who, won their races that we need to defeat, by either 4 percentage points or less, or The Republican won by more, but Kamala Harris won the district, so people split their tickets, so districts like Mike Lawler’s, where people assume he’s a moderate, even though he’s not. So we’re starting there, and then there is a dynamic that I’m sure you’re familiar with, because so many of your listeners and viewers are the same folks who volunteer and give to Swing Left. That a lot of folks are feeling a level of, sort of, paralysis about giving to house races, volunteering for house races, because they’re like. there’s so many redistricting fights, it’s a whack-a-mole game, and so I can’t keep track, so I’m not gonna do anything. And so, what we will be sharing soon, and I can’t wait to share with you, is, first of all, what, how our California map has just changed with Prop 50, which is very exciting. Thank you to your home state, to my home state. But then also, to your point. we’ve got to get a little more aggressive, right? But we also, I think there is a risk when we are both riding high from these incredible wins in 2025, we are riding high on, you know, we won back so many voters that we lost in 2024, maybe everything is different, and I think our job is to stay really sort of steady, pragmatic. We consider ourselves the smart political friend of so many people who don’t know where to put their time, where their dollars, to make sure that we are winning the House. And there is a reality of the math is still the math. These are districts that are still… there’s only so many, and unfortunately it’s a shrinking number rather than a growing number, with a redistricting asterisk, of competitive races, and so we’ve got to stay the course.” More here.

The following article, “The Great Affordability-Washing of the Democrats” 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:

The Democrats have a new mantra: “affordability.” It played a starring role in Democratic gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia and in the surprising mayoral victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City. By all accounts, this was an effective message even controlling for other factors like the light blue to deep blue nature of these states and municipalities, the overrepresentation of Democratic-friendly educated, engaged voters in these elections, and the general unpopularity of President Trump.

Affordability is an area of deep vulnerability for Trump and his party since they promised to fix Biden and the Democrats’ mismanagement of the economy and are not viewed as having done so. According to Silver Bulletin’s polling aggregates, Trump’s handling of the economy is 18 points underwater (approval minus disapproval) and an astonishing 28 points underwater on handling inflation (34 percent approval vs. 62 percent disapproval). Other data show that general views of the economy have not improved since Trump took office, that most believe Trump’s policies are actually making the economy worse and that more see the economy getting worse rather than better in the coming year.

In such a situation, it would be political malpractice not to focus on this vulnerability, neatly encapsulated in the term “affordability.” Everything just costs too damn much! Democrats have taken to this approach delightedly, whether moderate or fire-breathing progressive. It provides a convenient way of changing the subject when other issues, particularly cultural ones, come up where their views are decidedly less popular. Pay no attention to those other issues: we Democrats are affordability people!

Will this work? Well, it did in 2025. Indeed, it worked so well that one Democratic commentator declared it a new “theory of everything” for the Democrats and there has been general euphoria that—finally!—a way has been found to neutralize the toxic image the party has developed over time. In short, Democrats hope to affordability-wash their party brand and be reborn as a party that cares for little beyond making ordinary citizens’ lives easier and better. But can the Democrats really wash away their political sins so easily?

There are reasons to be skeptical that affordability, despite its utility as a campaign trope, has such magical powers. Start with the ongoing struggle between moderates and progressives within the party. Their differences were temporarily suppressed during the 2025 campaigns, where everyone latched onto the affordability message, but in the aftermath these differences are coming to the fore. Mamdani’s victory in New York City has put wind in the sails of the good ship Progressive; now is not the time they say to bow “at the altar of caution.” Such candidates are running hard to the left in many Democratic primaries and Democrats could well find themselves with their own version of Republicans’ Tea Party problem from the early 2010’s where insurgents undermined GOP electoral fortunes.

Case in point: progressive darling Graham Platner is running strong against Janet Mills for the Maine Senate Democratic nomination. In past social media posts, Platner referred to himself as a communist, disparaged the police, and criticized Maine’s rural white people for being “stupid” and “racist.” And then there’s his “Totenkopf” tattoo historically associated with the Nazis. Not ideal; recent polling indicates that with this baggage Republican Susan Collins would easily vanquish him in a general election.

After balanced information about Platner, he trails Collins significantly. After a positive paragraph reflective of Platner’s bio and current campaign messaging, and a negative paragraph summarizing the recent news about him and reflecting likely Republican messaging in a general election, Collins gets above 50 percent and Platner trails her by 9 (42 percent Platner / 51 percent Collins)—the same margin by which Democrats lost the 2020 Maine Senate race.

Without flipping Collins’ seat, Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate are extremely small. In general, Democrats are in desperate need of moderate candidates who can overcome, rather than reinforce, the negative weight of the party’s image—an image which cannot be magically affordability-washed away in purple-to-red states. This imperative is underscored by this chart from Lakshya Jain on how Democrats would do in Senate contests outside of Maine and North Carolina even if 2026 is a 2018-type blue wave (D+7.3) election.

The starkness of this challenge is underscored by the difficulties of being truly moderate in today’s Democratic Party. As liberal Ezra Klein admitted, apropos of the 2025 results:

If Democrats want power in the Senate in any significant numbers ever again, they’re going to need to be competitive in places where they used to be able to win elections. Places like Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Alaska. But they’ve not really been competitive there for some time.

So I don’t know how much I think this was a positive test of that…Abigail Spanberger is a moderate in Virginia and Zohran Mamdani is a democratic socialist in New York City…But also by any historical measure of politics, they’re actually just not that far apart. Abigail Spanberger is a moderate within the current Democratic Party, but she is not a moderate from the perspective of 1998.

The thing about all three of these figures is that none of them challenge Democrats in any significant way, except maybe Mamdani, from the left…I don’t think the question of what you would need to do to win an election in Ohio, Florida and Iowa is answered yet.

Indeed not. The fact of the matter is that Democrats can’t just sprinkle affordability pixie dust over their candidates—they actually need to move their left-trending partyto the right in important ways. As noted in the big New York Times feature on “Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win”:

The success of candidates like [Democrat Marcy Kaptur, who successfully defended her House seat in a district that Trump won easily] demonstrates that America still has a political center. Polls show that most voters prefer capitalism to socialism and worry that the government is too big—and also think that corporations and the wealthy have too much power. Most voters oppose both the cruel immigration enforcement of the Trump administration and the lax Biden policies that led to a record immigration surge. Most favor robust policing to combat crime and recoil at police brutality. Most favor widespread abortion access and some restrictions late in pregnancy. Most oppose race-based affirmative action and support class-based affirmative action. Most support job protections for trans people and believe that trans girls should not play girls’ sports. Most want strong public schools and the flexibility to choose which school their children attend…

[Trump’s] extremism offers an opportunity to the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is governing in ways that put the Republican Party out of step with public opinion on taxes, health insurance, abortion, immigration, executive power and more. If Democrats were willing to be less ideological—less beholden to views that many liberal activists, intellectuals and donors genuinely hold but that most Americans do not—they would have the opportunity to build the country’s next governing majority.

And without that, they won’t. In many ways, Democrats just don’t realize what time it is. The eras of racial preferences and adjacent DEI policies, of “no human being is illegal,” of gender ideology and treating biological sex as a mere technicality, of tolerance for social disorder in the name of kindness, of climate hawks and net-zero maximalism, of spending that doesn’t produce commensurate results, of shoddy but “progressive” governance—they are all coming to their ends. The Democrats must find their way in this strange new world for which their most ideological supporters—those “liberal activists, intellectuals and donors”—are unprepared. They cannot just affordability-wash their political sins away. Their problems are embedded too deeply and the skepticism of ordinary voters too entrenched for such a superficial fix to work.

Without knowing what horrors may lie in the Epstein Files, you can pretty clearly see it’s dividing Trump from elements of his MAGA base, as I explained at New York:

November 12 was a very busy day in the White House as Donald Trump’s congressional allies worked overtime to end the longest government shutdown in history. But it does not appear the president was spending any time burning up the phone lines to Congress to ensure the reopening of the government. Instead, he was worried about something unrelated: trying to talk House Republicans into removing their signatures from a discharge petition forcing a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a mostly Democratic-backed bill to make the Justice Department disgorge all its material on the late sex predator and his associations.

Trump spoke with one signatory, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who also met with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel on the subject in the White House. She did not change her mind. Trump also tried to reach another, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who sent the president a message explaining why she, too, would turn down his blandishments, as the New York Times reported: “Ms. Mace, who is running for governor, wrote Mr. Trump a long explanation of her own history of sexual abuse and rape, and why it was impossible for her to change positions, according to a person familiar with her actions.”

And so from the White House’s point of view, the worst-case scenario happened despite Trump’s personal lobbying. When recently elected Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in after a long and very suspicious delay, she quickly became the 218th signature on the discharge petition, and House Speaker Mike Johnson duly announced the chamber would vote on the Epstein Files bill next week.

This is really odd for multiple reasons.

First of all, one of the most important political stories of 2025 has been the abject subservience of congressional Republicans to Donald Trump. They’ve rubber-stamped nearly all of his appointees, even some they probably privately considered unqualified; devoted much of the year to developing and enacting a budget reconciliation bill that they officially labeled the “One Big Beautiful Act” to reflect Trump’s distinctive branding; stood by quietly as he and his underlings (at first DOGE honcho Elon Musk and then OMB director Russ Vought) obliterated congressional prerogatives in naked executive-branch power grabs; and regularly sang hymns of praise to the all-powerful leader. But the Epstein-files issue appears to be different. Politico reports that House Republicans expect “mass defections” on the bill forcing disclosure now that a vote cannot be avoided. That’s amazing in view of Trump’s oft-repeated claim that any Republicans interested in the Epstein-files “hoax” are “stupid,” or as he has most recently called them, “soft and weak.”

Second of all, Boebert and Mace are Trump loyalists of the highest order. Boebert always has been a MAGA stalwart. And after some earlier rifts with Trump, Mace has become a huge cheerleader for him, backing him over Nikki Haley in 2024 and receiving his endorsement for her own tough primary contest last year. Mace desperately needs and wants his endorsement in a multicandidate gubernatorial primary next year. That she spurned his request to back off the Epstein Files discharge petition speaks volumes about how important it is to her to maintain solidarity with Epstein’s victims right now. That seems to be the primary motive for Boebert as well, as the Times noted a couple of months ago:

“Ms. Boebert, who grew up moving around the country and living with different men her mother was dating, has been less vocal [than Mace] about her own experiences. But she has also alluded to abuse and trauma. In her memoir, Ms. Boebert wrote that one of the men she lived with for a time in Colorado when she was young was verbally and physically abusive to her mother.

“During her divorce last year, Ms. Boebert was also granted a temporary restraining order against her ex-husband, Jayson Boebert, after she said he was threatening to harm her and enter the family’s home without permission.”

Third of all, it’s important to remember that Epstein in particular, and the idea of a cabal of elite sex traffickers in general, are highly resonant topics for elements of the MAGA base. Boebert and a third Republican signatory of the Epstein-files discharge petition, Marjorie Taylor Greene, first came to Congress closely identified with the supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, in which Epstein and his global-elite friends are key figures. Indeed, as my colleague Charlotte Klein observed this summer, discussion of the Epstein files has for years served as a routine conservative dog whistle to QAnon folk:

“‘All of this gives more mainstream right-wing figures an opportunity to take advantage of some of that QAnon energy: They can use Epstein’s story as a way to nod to the QAnon theories of widespread Democratic child-sex trafficking and to bolster their own audiences,’ said Matthew Gertz of Media Matters. ‘You can run segments on it on Fox News in a way that you just can’t about QAnon, and so that makes it a much broader right-wing story.’”

Trump himself has often fed this particular beast, as Karen Tumulty reminds us in arguing that this is a “wedge issue” dividing the president from his otherwise adoring followers:

“Trump was stoking conspiracy theories about Epstein at least as far back as the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2015. Asked for his opinion of Bill Clinton, Trump replied, ‘Nice guy.’ Then he added: ‘Got a lot of problems coming up in my opinion with the famous island. With Jeffrey Epstein.’”

Interestingly enough, the president now seems to be going back to the idea that the Epstein Files isn’t a problem for him at all, as can be seen from a Truth Social post on November 14:

“The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do. Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish. Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem! Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”

This doesn’t just beg, but scream the question: If this is a Democrat Problem, why not release the files like your base wants you to do?

This is an issue for him that he cannot wave or wish away.

 

From “Johnson shifts strategy on Epstein files vote – as GOP leaders brace for mass defections” by Annie Grayer, Manu Raju and Kristen Holmes at CNN Politics:

House Speaker Mike Johnson decided to quickly schedule a House vote on an effort to force the release of all of the Jeffrey Epstein case files once the calculation was made that it couldn’t be stopped.

The decision marked a shift in strategy for Johnson and the White House, who had long sought to delay the process, ​three sources told CNN.

House GOP leaders are bracing for a significant number of Republicans to break from President Donald Trump and support the bipartisan bill led by GOP Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna calling for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files — as supporters push for a veto-proof majority.

Republican sources say there’s a broad cross-section of the conference willing to support the plan — and it will be hard to limit defections.

“No point in waiting,” one House GOP leadership source familiar with the strategy shift told CNN.

A House GOP lawmaker said of the speaker’s decision: “If you got to do it, might as well do it quickly.”

Massie told CNN on Wednesday that his hope is that a veto-proof majority will pressure the Senate to act over Trump’s opposition. It would require two-thirds of the House — or 290 votes if all members are present — for a veto-proof majority.

“If we get less than two-thirds vote when it comes up for a vote, I think it’s an uphill battle,” Massie said. “But if we are somehow able to get two thirds vote here in the House, [that] puts a lot of pressure on the Senate, and also, if the Senate does pass it, that’s a very serious step for the president.”

A Senior White House official told CNN that Trump was made aware ahead of time that Johnson was going to expedite the vote, and that the two had spoken about it.

“It was made clear to President Trump, and he understands that this is an inevitable reality,” the official said.

More here.

The CW has it that the government shutdown, at least the way it ended, was a setback for Democrats. I suggested otherwise at New York.

There’s a lot of ill-suppressed glee among Republicans right now, along with recriminations among Democrats, about the end of the longest government shutdown ever. Eight Democratic senators were able to undercut a few hundred of their colleagues by ending a filibuster against a bill to reopen government, exhibiting both weakness and disunity. (Though there’s no telling how many holdouts privately agreed with the “cave.”) Worse, Democrats failed to secure an extension of Obamacare premium subsidies they repeatedly demanded.

So were Republicans the “winners” and Democrats the “losers” in the shutdown saga? Maybe now, but maybe not later. As the New York Times’ Annie Karni observes, the short-term stakes of the shutdown fight may soon be overshadowed by more enduring public perceptions of what the two parties displayed:

“[Some Democrats] assert that in hammering away at the extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of next month, they managed to thrust Mr. Trump and Republicans onto the defensive, elevating a political issue that has long been a major weakness for them.

“And in holding out for weeks while Republicans refused to extend the health tax credits and Mr. Trump went to court to deny low-income Americans SNAP food benefits, Democrats also honed their main message going into 2026: that Republicans who control all of government have done nothing to address voters’ concerns that the cost of living is too high”.

Trump’s clumsy and insensitive handling of the SNAP benefit cutoff was an unforced error and a gift to Democrats. But just as importantly, by “losing” the Obamacare subsidy–extension fight, Democrats may have dodged a bullet. A deal on that issue would have cushioned or even eliminated an Obamacare premium price hike that will now be a real problem for Trump and the GOP. Republicans appear to have no health-care plan other than the same tired panaceas involving individual savings plans that allow health insurers to discriminate against poorer and sicker Americans — precisely the problem that led to passage of the Affordable Care Act and has made Obamacare popular.

The big takeaway from Democrats’ election sweep this month is that “affordability” is a message that accommodates candidates ranging from democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to centrist Abigail Spanberger and that plays on tangible public unhappiness with Trump’s broken promises to reduce the cost of living. That Republicans emerged from the government shutdown having abundantly displayed their lack of interest in soaring health-care costs and persistently high grocery costs positions Democrats exactly where they hope to be next November.

In addition, the election wins showed that rank-and-file Democratic voters and the activists who helped turn them out were not particularly bothered by the year’s many ideological and generational collisions over anti-Trump strategy and tactics. The Democratic “struggle for the soul of the party” that Republicans and Beltway pundits love more than life itself may manifest itself more visibly during 2026 primaries. But when general-election season arrives, there’s every reason to believe Democrats will stop fighting each other and focus on flipping the House — and in a big-wave election, maybe even the Senate — and destroying the governing trifecta that has enabled so many Trump outrages this year. It’s one thing to debate endlessly how to “fight” and “stop” Trump. It’s another thing to be given a clear opportunity to do just that at the ballot box.

The expiration of the shutdown deal on January 30 could in theory produce another government shutdown and another set of expectations to be met or missed. But “winning” the current shutdown won’t in itself improve Trump’s lagging job-approval ratings, or the incoherence of his economic policies, or the fears his authoritarian conduct instills. That’s the GOP’s problem and Democrats’ opportunity.

 

In “Here Is How an Obamacare Deal Might Actually Work,” Jonathan Cohn writes at The Bulwark: “THE FIGHT OVER THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN appears to be over. But the fight over what to do about those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies hasn’t stopped—and the chance to do something about them hasn’t run out, either…Yes, the House is about to vote to reopen the government, thanks to a short-term funding bill that got through the Senate with the support of all Republicans and eight Democrats. But precisely because that legislation does nothing to extend those expiring “Obamacare” subsidies, the problem at the heart of the fight hasn’t gotten better…If anything, it’s about to get worse…More than 20 million Americans are in the process of discovering their health insurance is going to be a lot more expensive next year. They disproportionately live in places like Florida, Arizona, and Kansas that voted for Trump in the last election. That’s going to keep the political pressure on Republicans—and it could create an opportunity for action at one of two coming inflection points…The first will be in December, when Democrats get to hold a vote on extending the Obamacare subsidies. That vote was one of the few concessions the eight Democrats wrung from Senate GOP leaders as a part of the deal to reopen the government. It will force yet another high-profile debate over the subsidy policy, at a time when even some GOP lawmakers say they want to do something. And that might just be enough to sway House Speaker Mike Johnson, who so far has refused to say whether he’d allow a vote in his chamber.” More here.

From “Top House Democrats vow to oppose shutdown bill over healthcare funding: Democrats are demanding an extension of tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans set to expire at end of year” by Chris Stein at The Guardian: “As House Republican leaders move to hold a vote on legislation to reopen the US government, top Democrats vowed on Tuesday to oppose the bill for not addressing their demand for more healthcare funding…The House rules committee will consider the bill on Tuesday evening, setting the stage for it to come to the House floor on Wednesday. Top House Democrats oppose it, with the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling it a “partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people…The House’s largest ideological caucus, the centrist New Democrat Coalition, has announced its opposition to the measure…“While New Dems always seek common ground, our coalition remains united in opposition to legislation that sacrifices the wellbeing of the constituents we’re sworn to serve,” chair Brad Schneider said…“Unfortunately, the Senate-passed bill fails to address our constituents’ top priorities, doing nothing to protect their access to healthcare, lower their costs or curb the administration’s extreme agenda.”…The sentiment appears much the same in the Congressional Progressive caucus, where chair Greg Casar called the measure “a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them.”

Alan I. Abramowitz, author of “The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump,“ explains why “The 2025 Elections and Future of the Democratic Party: Why Spanberger and Sherrill Provide a More Plausible Model for Success than Mamdani” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2024 presidential election set off a wave of soul-searching among liberal pundits and Democratic Party leaders. Perhaps the central question that Democratic leaders and their political allies have been debating since last November has been whether Democrats should respond to their 2024 defeat by moving closer to the center of the ideological spectrum in order to appeal to swing voters or by adopting populist positions on economic issues in order to win back white and nonwhite working-class voters who stayed home or voted for Trump in 2024…One year after Donald Trump’s victory, the 2025 off-year elections produced dramatic victories for Democratic candidates across the country. Perhaps the three highest-profile wins for Democrats were in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests as well as the New York City mayoral race. In this article, I examine the results of exit polls in these three elections to try to understand what implications these results have for the ongoing debate over the future direction of the Democratic Party…Two common themes emerge from the results of all three of these Democratic victories—growing concern with inflation and rising disapproval of Donald Trump’s conduct in the White House. Beyond these common elements, however, we see that the Democratic victors in these elections took very different approaches in appealing to their electorates. The two gubernatorial candidates, Spanberger and Sherrill, while highly critical of President Trump, campaigned as pragmatic moderates with records of working across party lines. In contrast, Zohran Mamdani ran for Mayor of New York as a Democratic Socialist, proposing drastic reforms aimed at expanding city services while raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations.”

Abramowitz continues, “Democrats won decisive victories in all three marquee races that were decided last Tuesday. However, the coalitions that the two moderate gubernatorial candidates assembled were quite different from the one that the Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate assembled and are much more likely to provide a path to success for future Democratic candidates who are not running in Democratic strongholds like New York City. Zohran Mamdani won his election fairly easily because the New York City electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic and tilts decidedly to the left ideologically. The coalition he assembled was disproportionately made up of white liberals. That’s a group that makes up a much larger share of the electorate in New York City than in Virginia, New Jersey, or most of the rest of the country…Some of the differences between Mamdani’s results and those for Spanberger and Sherrill undoubtedly reflected the different types of opposing candidates that they faced. While Spanberger and Sherrill each had only a single significant opponent (the Republican nominee), Mamdani had two—a Republican and a former Democrat. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, was extraordinarily weak and ended up receiving only 7% of the vote. Mamdani’s main rival was former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. However, Cuomo was no electoral powerhouse. His reputation had been badly damaged by allegations of inappropriate sexual advances by several former female staffers that eventually led to his resignation from office. After losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, Cuomo ran as an independent in the general election and openly appealed to Republican voters. Cuomo was actually endorsed by President Trump. The fact that a substantial minority of Democrats and a majority of independents were willing to vote for Cuomo was less a reflection of his strength as a candidate than of Mamdani’s weakness among moderate voters—a group that will be much more crucial to Democratic success in swing states and House districts in the 2026 midterm elections.”

Abramowitz shares this chart:

David Dayen explains “The Most Frustrating Thing About the Shutdown Cave” at The American Prospect:

My colleague Bob Kuttner has ably explained the particulars and the political dynamics of the sudden surrender on the government shutdown from eight Senate Democrats (with Chuck Schumer’s tacit support), what I’m calling the Cave Caucus. Senators dissatisfied with this deal are going to deny unanimous consent to draw out the conclusion, in part to let the situation sink in for the House, where the reaction has been sharply negative. But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) only needs his own party members to get the bill passed, and he has delivered tough votes throughout the year. I don’t think House Republicans will rescue the Cave Caucus.

I share a lot of the frustrations expressed all over social media. But the biggest one for me comes on page 12 of the continuing resolution that advanced in the Senate last night. There, the drafters demonstrated that they have every ability to constrain Donald Trump and OMB director Russ Vought’s desires and stop the consolidation of executive power. But they only did it in one area, to grab one necessary vote for passage, not because they care about Congress’s relevance as an institution. That this Senate knows how to restore the power imbalance in Washington and chose not to is almost worse than completely ignoring it.

On the details, I do agree that the existing dynamics, particularly with air travel chaos and the Trump administration losing ruling after ruling on food assistance (including one just last night), were actually pushing Senate Republicans to bow to their president and eliminate the Senate filibuster, or at least create some semantic carve-out for government spending that would end the filibuster in all but name. The Cave Caucus was likely mindful that their power to dictate events is tied to the rule by minority in the Senate, and they stepped in front of that process like human shields.

I also agree that for Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Dick Durbin (D-IL)—the two Cave Caucus members who are retiring next year—the real goal was to preserve their three-bill “minibus” appropriations package, which is objectively better than the usual work product and preserves some funding Trump wanted out. It in no way makes up for the cave, but it speaks to how parochial interests and turf wars in Congress often play an outsized role in outcomes. Shaheen and Durbin weren’t thinking about the national Democratic position of giving up on health care improvements right after a big electoral victory and Republican chaos; they wanted their little bill to pass.

But I have been arguing consistently throughout the shutdown that Democrats were running into problems by saying one thing in public and another in private. The public argument of the shutdown was about Affordable Care Act subsidies, and Democrats didn’t have much of a policy plan for what to do if Republicans just said no. Politically, they reset the conversation to friendly turf; getting Republicans to express their bonkers health care ideas out loud is where Democrats want to be. But it was easy to see where this impasse would lead. In fact, on October 6 I wrote that the endgame would look something like Republicans offering an “assurance” of negotiations or a vote as long as short-term funding passes, and Democrats deciding that was a real rather than a dubious offer. Of course, that’s what happened.

But there was a behind-the-scenes factor in the shutdown too, namely, that Trump was making a mockery of the appropriations process by withholding funds and dismantling agencies and rescinding programs. The Democratic counteroffer had provisions for a “No Kings” budget, to stop the withholding and rescinding of funds. But because that was largely in private, without any momentum behind it politically, that was destined to flounder.

Yet Senate Democrats needed Tim Kaine’s vote, and Kaine represents a large number of federal workers in Virginia. So after the rest of the Democratic caucus balked on a straightforward cave, the Cave Caucus decided to reverse Trump’s firings of federal workers, in a way that reveals their options to use the power of the purse.

More here.

When I first heard that 8 Senate Democrats “caved” to the Republicans to help end the shutdown, I was disappointed. After reading more about it, it looks like Democratic leadership played their hand as best they could. Their cards were good through the election and Dems had an almost unified front against cutting a bad deal with Republicans, and they won everywhere. After the election, however, some of the eight senators believed the the utility of their shutdown cards went south. Many would disagree, and argue that Dems could leverage more concessions from Republicans. But consider what Democrats gained by the deal to end the shutdown this week: There won’t be 42 million people losing their SNAP benefits or going hungry at Thanksgiving, unless the Trump Administration succeeds in blocking SNAP; Government workers will finally get paid for their labors and Thanksgiving travelers will not be blaming Democrats in airport interviews about canceled flights and safety concerns; Rep. Grijalva will be sworn in, and the Epstein mess will finally be addressed in a big way; There will be no Filibuster reform, as threatened by Trump. (It probably wasn’t going to happen anyway, but who knows?); None of the Democratic senators who ‘caved’ are up for re-election next year, so there won’t be any loss of Democratic senate seats because of their voting to end the shutdown; The government will be re-opened because of Democratic initiative; The Republicans will totally own the huge increase in health care expenses forced on consumers, or they will have to lower those costs. There will be a vote on this, unless Republicans dishonor their agreement, which would be a really bad look, and voters would notice. Republicans have working majorities of the House and Senate, occupy the White House and have a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices. They were going to eventually get their way. But at least Democrats were able to stomp Republicans in the ’25 elections.  For those who like their history raw and real, last night on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell explained how a conscious and co-ordinated switch among five Democratic senators, under the creative leadership of Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted against the compromise, forced 271 Republicans to support an increase in the budget for SNAP and make other concessions, which benefitted the public. Watch a video of O’Donnell’s lucid explanation for a clear understanding of what actually happened.

Since the devil is always in the details, read “What’s in the legislation to end the federal government shutdown” by AP’s Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro, who writes at Chron: “What’s in and out of the bipartisan deal drew sharp criticism and leaves few senators fully satisfied. The legislation provides funding to reopen the government, including for SNAP food aid and other programs, while also ensuring backpay for furloughed federal workers the Trump administration had left in doubt…But notably lacking is any clear resolution to expiring health care subsidies that Democrats have been fighting for as millions of Americans stare down rising insurance premiums. That debate was pushed off for a vote next month, weeks before the subsidies are set to expire…It would next go to the House, where lawmakers have been away since September but were being told to prepare to return to Washington this week. Then, it’s to Trump’s desk for his signature…Yet in a breakthrough for what’s considered a more normal appropriations process, the package also includes several bills to fully fund other government operations including agricultural programs and military construction along with veterans’ affairs for the full fiscal year, through September 2026…Additionally, the package ensures states would be reimbursed for money they spent to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, and the Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, running during the shutdown…The Democrats failed to secure their main demand during the shutdown, which was an extension of the health care subsidies that many of the 24 million people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act rely on to help defray costs…Instead, the package guarantees a vote on the issue in December — which was not enough for most of the Democrats, who rejected the deal and voted against it…The stopgap measure reinstates federal workers who had received reductions in force, or layoff, notices and protects against such future actions. It also would provide back pay for federal workers who were furloughed or working without pay during the shutdown — something that’s traditionally provided but that the Trump administration had threatened was not guaranteed.”

Here’s what some Democratic leaders said about the deal, as reported by Miranda Jeyaretnam at Time magazine: “The seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats who sided with Senate Republicans on the bill were Jeanne Shaheen (D, N.H.), John Fetterman (D, Pa.), Tim Kaine (D, Va.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D, Nev.), Dick Durbin (D, Ill.),  Maggie Hassan (D, N.H.), Angus King (I, Maine), and Jacky Rosen (D, Nev.)…Rand Paul (R, Ky.) was the sole Republican to vote against the bill…Kaine defended his vote, saying the deal “guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do,” and he expressed confidence that that vote would ultimately result in an extension of those subsidies…“Lawmakers know their constituents expect them to vote for it, and if they don’t, they could very well be replaced at the ballot box by someone who will,” Kaine said in a statement…Shaheen said in a statement that the deal “gives Democrats control of the Senate floor—at a time when Republicans control every level of power—on one of our top legislative priorities.”…“This is a major step that was not predetermined,” Shaheen said. “But weeks of negotiations with Republicans have made clear that they will not address health care as part of shutdown talks—and that waiting longer will only prolong the pain Americans are feeling because of the shutdown.”…But several Democrats criticized the promised future vote as far from a guarantee…“I am unwilling to accept a vague promise of a vote at some indeterminate time, on some undefined measure that extends the healthcare tax credits,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D, Conn.), told reporters before the vote. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) called it a “policy and political disaster for the Democrats to cave.”…California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office posted on X, “Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!”…Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D, Mich.), who had been part of earlier talks around a funding deal, ended up voting no, as did Sens. Jon Ossoff (D, Ga.), Tammy Baldwin (D, Wis.), and Peter Welch (D, Vt.)…“I was involved for many weeks then over the last couple weeks, it changed,” Slotkin told reporters on Sunday evening, adding that she was not involved in final negotiations. “I always said it’s got to do something concrete on health care and it’s hard to see how that happened.”…Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, N.Y.) said in a post that the average monthly ACA benefit per person of $550 outweighs that of SNAP at $177. “People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives,” she wrote.”

Aaron Blake shares “6 Takeaways from the Governmentent Shutdown Deal” at CNN Politics. A teaser from the fifth takeaway: “5. Republicans still have an Obamacare problem — and this could exacerbate it…The best case for Democrats’ strategy is this: They were never going to get Trump and GOP leaders to commit to extending the Obamacare tax credits as part of a shutdown deal. But they could force an issue that’s a significant GOP liability, cast a spotlight on it and even force Republicans to take some tough votes and squirm a little…Regardless of whether that was actually the best Democrats could do, the pressure being applied on the GOP on health care isn’t insignificant…With around three-quarters of Americans supporting the tax credits, this issue poses very real political problems for Republicans. A recent Pew Research Center poll also showed health care was the GOP’s worst issue among a dozen tested, with 42% favoring the Democratic Party’s approach, compared with just 29% for Republicans’…Look at none other than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pleading with her party to renew these tax credits. Or the July memo authored by Trump’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, making the case that letting the subsidies lapse could spell political disaster for the GOP in the midterms…If nothing else, this record-long shutdown could spotlight the choice Republicans are about to make. By voting for a deal that does not extend the subsidies and therefore allows premiums to skyrocket for millions of Americans, Republicans will have made it clearer that this is what they fought hard for. They’ll be put on the record on the issue in an even starker way when the Senate takes a separate vote on the subsidies…If that measure were somehow to pass, it could pressure Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote in the House too…While Democrats want these tax credits extended from a policy standpoint, you could argue that the best thing for them from a raw-politics standpoint is for Republicans to reject them — and for voters to remember it come 2026…Republicans are already having to deal with explaining the major Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big agenda bill over the summer. And unlike those cuts, which are delayed until after the 2026 midterms, these premium increases will go into effect quickly…At the very least, Democrats have continued to fertilize a potent political argument on bad issue for the GOP.” Check out the rest of Blake’s takeaways right here.