From “Polls Show 5 Democratic Socialist Positions Have Traction With Republicans” by Dan Gooding at Newsweek: “As Republicans and some moderate Democrats increasingly portray democratic socialists as out of step with mainstream America, polling suggests a more complicated reality—a majority of Republican voters support several of the economic policies championed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and prominent figures on the party’s left flank…The disconnect highlights a recurring feature of American politics. While “socialism” remains a negative label for many conservatives, specific policy proposals often perform far better when voters are asked about them directly…Recent polling has found notable Republican support for ideas including paid family leave, raising the minimum wage, taxing billionaires, expanding government health coverage and slowing the rapid expansion of AI data centers…The findings come as the rise of democratic socialist-backed candidates such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has fueled renewed debate inside both parties about how far left Democrats should move ahead of this year’s midterms…Republicans have frequently sought to tie Democrats to the DSA, arguing the organization’s agenda is outside the political mainstream.” More here.

In “US-Canada trade war could make these everyday items pricier,” Elizabeth Buchwald writes at CNN Politics: “The United States and Canada are barreling toward a deeper trade war after last-ditch efforts to strike a deal collapsed Friday…The failed efforts resulted in President Donald Trump enacting 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods early Saturday morning. Canada is preparing to retaliate with “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs starting September 8, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced over the weekend…American businesses have a few options: stop importing the impacted goods altogether until they run through their inventory, pay the exorbitant tariff or switch suppliers…However, Canada may have been selected in the first place because it offered a cost or logistical advantage that isn’t easily replicated elsewhere. Companies that move their purchases, when possible, could therefore end up paying more anyway…And with the war in Iran already driving up energy and transportation costs, businesses have less room to absorb another hit. That increases the chances that at least some of the tariff costs ultimately land on consumers…If Ottawa proceeds with its retaliatory duties, Trump is all but certain to fire back, making the trade war with America’s second-top trading partner even more painful for both sides…For now, though, here are three areas where Americans could start to see goods get more expensive: (More here).

Ali Bianco’s “Why Mikie Sherrill thinks vets can build back power for Democrats” puts a fresh take on Democratic strategy at Politico. As Bianco explains, “If Democrats are searching for a figurehead to lead the party back from the brink, they may start looking more toward someone like New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill…The former Navy helicopter pilot has enlisted for a new mission: to establish herself as an influential operator for the midterms, with an eye toward putting Democrats back on the right footing with voters as the 2028 presidential election looms. Just seven months into her tenure, she’s kicking off a fall of cross-country travel with a slate of endorsements in some of this cycle’s most competitive districts…Following a summer primary season that’s pitted the insurgents against the establishment, Sherrill’s betting that a group of veterans with backgrounds rooted in public service like her, eschewing ideological identities or factions, could be the path back to power come November — and beyond…“The fight isn’t moderates versus DSA candidates,” Sherrill told POLITICO on the road this week. “The fight is if we are going to have strong people in the Democratic Party that are going to actually make change to make people’s lives better, or people who you can just expect more of the same.”…Sherrill’s fixation on veterans as the way to rebuild power for the Democratic Party comes down to a universal truth she’s identified among voters across the political spectrum right now: a desperate desire for change.” More here.

Many political commentators will find “‘I Was Surprised!’ CNN Data Guru Reveals ‘Most Likely’ Midterm Election Outcome” by David Gilmour at Mediaite via AOL a revealing read. As Gilmour writes,  “CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten found a Democratic sweep of Congress is now the single “most likely” midterm outcome after crunching thousands of polls, a result he admitted surprised him…Enten laid out four possible scenarios for control of Washington in a video uploaded to YouTube on Monday, assigning a 52% chance to Democrats winning both the House and Senate…“I was surprised by this before we started cracking the numbers, but that is why we do it,” Enten said. “It’s the numbers. Don’t blame me. The numbers are the numbers.”…The projection rests partly on Senate polling that Enten said shows Democrats competitive even across states that have recently leaned Republican. He pointed to Democratic leads of 9 points in North Carolina and 3 points in both Maine and Ohio, along with a 2-point advantage in Texas and a competitive race in Iowa…Under the map Enten presented, Democrats could emerge with a 52-48 Senate majority. Even if Republicans captured Michigan, he said, Democrats could still finish with 51 seats…Enten also pointed to President Donald Trump’s political standing as a major factor facing Republicans. He showed polling showing just 24% of Americans believe Republican policies have “helped” their cost of living, compared with 55% who say they have “hurt” their financial position…“That is very, very bad news,” he warned, pointing out the issue as one that got Trump elected in 2024…Additionally, the president’s net approval rating, Enten added, is 20 points underwater and the analyst said he’d gone back through the “history books” to find “there were only two other presidents who had a sub-20 net approval besides Trump at this point of midterm cycle.” More here.

From “Working-Class Voters Are Winnable for the Left. Here’s How.” by Ned Rust at Jacobin:

In a new report from the Equality Action Center, Joan C. Williams and Jared Abbott lay out a sensible, pragmatic approach to what has always seemed a Sisyphean task: explaining to progressives how they can turn more people on to their politics than they turn off. In so doing, Williams and Abbott offer a means to block one of the misanthropic right’s signature moves: playing populist and turning the working class against a college-educated left that wants to address our system’s fundamental injustices.

The report is essentially a “For Dummies” coalition guide for progressive smarties (especially social justice advocates, political candidates, and funders) that shows how to recognize and redirect the antisocial, prejudicial habits of their class and channel them toward the common goal of taking populism back from the Right.

Much of the guide’s wisdom comes down to the broad working class’s perception that college-educated voters are too focused on problems that don’t affect workers’ lives. Citizens scrabbling just to get by are turned off when they see elites focusing on issues that may be real and significant but that they perceive are at a distance from the pressures they face to put food on the table, collect a paycheck, and pay the rent.

Wage-earners certainly are not mostly anti-LGBT, anti-international, anti-immigration, anti-art, anti–gun control, anti-abortion, anti-democracy, or anti-environment. But they do prioritize issues directly connected to their economic and social precarity. This is not hard to understand, and progressive and the Left — if they hope to win the trust of working-class voters — need to remember it.

This is exemplified by the biggest priority gap in the survey: the 40-point delta (90 percent versus 50 percent) between liberal college-educated voters and no-four-year-degree working-class voters on “defending democracy.” The issue was the second-highest priority for the college set, but just the nineteenth (of the twenty-five priorities Williams and Abbott tested) for the working class. Food, jobs, health, wages, and safety outpoll any four-syllable word used by a group that’s uphill from you.

More here.

Amidst the early 2028 Democratic presidential buzz, I offered some historical context at New York about the precocity of two possible candidates:

There’s plenty of talk in Democratic circles about the need for “generational change,” which isn’t surprising given the proximate end of a political era dominated by the likes of Donald Trump (born in 1946), Joe Biden (1942), Bernie Sanders (1941), Chuck Schumer (1950), Mitch McConnell (1942), and Nancy Pelosi (1940). By the same token, it wouldn’t require anyone particularly immature to show a younger face for party leadership than we’ve seen for a while. But while some have discussed placing a ceiling on the age of people qualified to serve in high office, how about a floor? Yes, there are constitutional minimums for federal office (you must be 25 to serve in the House, 30 to serve in the Senate, and 35 to become president), set when life expectancies were significantly shorter. But how about more informal expectations of when politicians are mature enough to become, say, leader of the free world?

This isn’t just an abstract issue. Either of two potential 2028 presidential candidates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born in 1989) and Jon Ossoff (1987), would, if elected that year, become the youngest chief executive in U.S. history. The current record is held by Theodore Roosevelt, who was elevated to the presidency at the age of 42 when William McKinley was assassinated in 1901. The youngest man to be elected to the presidency was John F. Kennedy, who was 43 when he was inaugurated after winning the 1960 election. We have had some relatively young recent presidents: Bill Clinton was the third-youngest to take office at 46, and Barack Obama was fifth at 47. But since then, the trend has obviously gone sharply in the other direction. Overall, the median age of presidents upon taking office is 55.

There have certainly been presidential candidates as young as AOC and Ossoff. We all remember Pete Buttigieg running credibly for president in 2000; he had just turned 38 when he basically tied Bernie Sanders for top spot in the Iowa caucuses that year. But there have been youngsters who got farther down the road to the White House than Mayor Pete. When William Jennings Bryan won his first of three presidential nominations in 1896, he was 36 years old. General George B. McClellan won the Democratic presidential nomination to face Abraham Lincoln in 1864 at the age of 37. Four years earlier, John C. Breckinridge won the presidential nomination of the pro-southern wing of a divided Democratic Party at the age of 39. Maybe Democrats really are the perpetual party of youth.

But it’s their very youth that may convince AOC and Ossoff (and, yes, Pete Buttigieg too) that they don’t need to rush into a perilous and against-the-odds presidential race in 2028. Look at some parallel political lives. We don’t tend to think of Kamala Harris as a geriatric presidential wannabe; she ran the first real vibes-based campaign with lots of energy and even felt the need to recruit a prematurely aging “everybody’s dad” figure (Tim Walz) as her running mate. Nobody seems to think, moreover, that Harris will be over the hill in 2028. AOC will be the same age as Harris was in 2024 in the year 2049. That same year, Jon Ossoff will be 62, or 16 years younger than Joe Biden was when he was elected president.

So what’s the hurry? Becoming a political has-been in your late 30s or early 40s is pretty sad. It’s possible, of course, that 2028 could become a now-or-never moment for a young candidate. That could be the case, in fact, for the GOP front-runner, Vice-President J.D. Vance, who, if elected in 2028, would displace Clinton as the third-youngest president. It’s unlikely that Vance will ever have a better chance to become president of the United States than as Trump’s designated successor (if that’s what he turns out to be). Perhaps it’s a matter of taste, but Vance doesn’t strike me as someone who will grow on us all with perpetual exposure. But AOC and Ossoff might mellow with a bit of age and become familiar yet still exciting possibilities.

A couple of charts from “CNN Data Guru Exposes Huge Drop in Trump’s Core Supporters” by Cameron Adams at yahoo! news:

More here.

A long, long time ago, Democrats briefly held midterm national political conventions, sometimes called “mini-conventions.” Republicans are having their own this year, and some Democrats may envy the initiative. They shouldn’t, as I explained at New York:

Democrats hope that midterm voters only have one thing when they head to the polls in November: their opinion of Donald Trump. If, as is usually the case, the midterms are principally a referendum on the job performance of the occupant of the White House, then Republicans are going to lose, barring some extremely unlikely revival in Trump’s popularity, which took a nosedive shortly after his second term began and has not recovered. Yes, Republicans have put a fat thumb on the scales via unprecedented gerrymandering of U.S. House districts and have a big financial advantage. But in the end, they can’t overcome any national fixation on giving Trump a bad report card for his tumultuous second term.

As it happens, the president is insisting on giving Democrats exactly what they want: keeping the attention on him. That is certainly the likely upshot of the first-ever GOP midterm convention being held in Dallas in less than three weeks, just before early voting begins in parts of the country. Check out this announcement from the man himself on Truth Social and ask yourself if there is any chance the mini-convention won’t be the most self-absorbed Trump-o-centric event ever:

“THE GREATEST RALLY OF THEM ALL

“THE MIDTERM CONVENTION is coming to Dallas, Texas, September 9th and 10th. It will be a Rally like never before — Incredible!

“For the first time EVER, Republicans from all across our Great Country will come together for a Midterm Convention to celebrate our Tremendous Victories and Success, showcase our incredible Candidates, and prepare for the most important Midterm Election in History. Our Movement is bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. We have MADE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND WE ARE GOING TO CELEBRATE THIS TREMENDOUS AND TOTALLY UNPRECEDENTED SUCCESS! The Radical Left Lunatics are trying to destroy our Country, but they have failed, and will never be successful, unless we allow that to happen — AND WE WON’T!

“We are going to WIN the Midterms, protect and cherish our Country, and make it GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. Be there, September 9th and 10th — It will be like nothing else. The Music, Excitement, and Importance of this Evening will be at levels never seen at a Convention or Political Event. I will be with you both nights, and rarin’ to go. See you in Dallas! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Other sources invariably describe the clambake in Dallas in similarly insular terms: It’s a celebration, a self-congratulation, and above all a rally to preach to the preassembled choir while also raising some money, the commodity the GOP least needs going into the midterm home stretch, notes Politico:

“Instead of a traditional convention in which the parties conduct business or elect delegates, the states parties are framing the convention slated for Sept. 9 to 10 in Dallas — which chairman Joe Gruters is calling ‘Trumpapalooza’ — as a way to raise money for local candidates.

“’It’s not just a convention. We’re not going to be voting on anything. This is to rally the troops,’ Denton County GOP Chair Melinda Preston said.”

Some state parties are distributing tickets by lottery and others are selling them for a pretty penny. But either way, no one is likely to be there who doesn’t believe Trump is the greatest president ever and that polls showing otherwise are all rigged. So when the president comes out for what are likely to be two long evening speeches, the spectacle will confirm that he entirely defines his party. If there is any swing-voter message at all, other than the ungrateful stupidity of people who don’t recognize we’re living in a golden age of peace and prosperity, it will be that the opposition “Dumocrats” are treasonous socialists or even communists who are consciously devoted to the destruction of the Republic. That won’t leave much time to articulate an affordability agenda or convince voters on the fence that the war with Iran will soon end.

Why are Republicans doing the opposition the favor of making the midterms all about Trump? For one thing, of course, the president’s ego demands it. But there is some method to the madness. Based on the poor results of the 2018 midterms and special elections for years now, Republican strategists are convinced that they need to functionally place Trump on the ballot to turn out his base. That this will also have a baleful effect on swing voters is considered beside the point: Without an energized MAGA base, Republicans won’t even be in the vicinity of victory. And so they are making a virtue of necessity with the biggest, loudest, most abrasive Trump rally one could imagine, while hoping that swing voters can be convinced to climb aboard or at least stay home by a savage crusade of lies about a Bolshevik takeover of the opposition party.

As the president says, it will be “like nothing else,” in the sense that the midterm convention will be exactly like every other MAGA rally you’ve ever seen but distilled to a raw essence. Since Trump will have to share the stage at the next actual Republican convention in 2028 with his proposed successor, the Dallas confab may be his last opportunity to strut his own stuff without a single distraction. And, for once, it will be a Trump show Democrats can enjoy.

 

New Republic Editor Michael Tomasky writes in “Why Don’t Leftie Candidates Do Better Among Working-Class Voters?” linked here via Yahoo News, that “Non-college working-class voters are more skeptical than more educated voters are. I say that not to praise or damn one group or the other. It’s just, I think, the reality. It stems from the fact, more glaringly true in this country with each successive generation, that for the educated class, things like opportunity and advancement and the confidence that one’s children will live better lives are far more real than they are for working-class people. Working-class people’s lives in these last couple of decades have just gotten much harder, inching ever closer to the precipice of job loss, default, indignity. Working-class people live in regular if not constant fear of these things. Educated people, in an economy that leans more and more toward rewarding them, do not…Therefore, educated voters and non-college voters hear politicians’ promises through very different ears. To educated voters, big promises about government improving people’s lives sound great, or at least plausible. To non-college voters, those promises sound like just more empty talk. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that to non-college voters, the bigger the promise, the phonier it sounds. They hear promises about free health care for all, and they think yeah, right, that’s never gonna happen in this country. Their experience has taught them not to believe, and for the most part, you can’t blame them…It’s true that it’s not fair that social democrats—and again, most of these candidates are really social democrats, not democratic socialists—should pay the electoral price for this…”

Tomasky continues, “After all, it wasn’t they who’ve been screwing over the working class for four decades. But they’re stuck with the reality that the screwing has made working-class people extremely suspicious of those promising them big things…So what’s the solution? Well, the only real solution is to win office in sufficient numbers to deliver on the promises to the point that working people do see genuine improvement in their material conditions. But that’s going to take a lot of time. A decade, maybe more… “In the meantime, I think the best progressive candidates can do is first and obviously, stay away from topics like prison abolition; but second and more importantly, really just explain things to working-class voters in a way that understands and assumes their skepticism. Aspirational rhetoric appeals to educated voters. To non-college voters, it just sounds like more fluff. Tell them, specifically and concretely, why their rent keeps going up, who’s doing it to them, and how you’re going to go after the people doing it. And explain clearly and specifically how your Republican opponent is on the side of the rent-raisers. Dot-connecting of that sort seems to me more likely to win working-class votes than lofty rhetoric and big promises.”

From “How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism” by Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach at The Boston review: “Democrats can keep debating whether to stand five degrees or fifteen degrees left of center, fine-tuning messages drowned out by the latest Trump spectacle. They can chase moderate voters our data shows won’t materialize while their base stays home. They can maintain faith that reasonableness will eventually triumph…Or they can accept the evidence: the old rules are dead. In a nationalized media environment with an authoritarian movement capturing one major party, electoral politics has become existential conflict. This requires not moderation but mobilization, not positioning but purpose, not just messaging but genuine reform to prove that Democrats will fight for democracy itself by first attacking the corruption that rots it from within…Scholars of democratic breakdown know that moments like this demand institutional coordination, civil society mobilization, and the political courage to name and confront the authoritarian threat on its weakest flank. Every democracy facing this challenge has learned you don’t defeat authoritarians by being more reasonable. You defeat them by being more determined and by uniting the country against their most visible vulnerability: their corruption.” More here.

As one of the respondents to the Boston Review article, William A. Galston writes in “Public Opinion Is Only Party Malleable” that “I am sympathetic to Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach’s argument that the term “moderation” conceals more than it reveals and threatens to mislead party reformers who seek to strengthen the Democratic Party as a bulwark against autocracy. I fear, however, that much of their argument is open to the same criticism…The authors lead off by intimating that Kamala Harris might have won with a less moderate campaign. Maybe so, but they offer no evidence. In reality, she lost for several reasons: because she was the successor to an unpopular president from whom she did nothing to separate herself; because the issue of reproductive rights, on which she bet heavily, receded in importance compared to the 2022 midterm elections; because the Biden administration was seen (rightly, in my view) as having botched the two issues—inflation and immigration—whose salience rose the most relative to 2020; because her campaign did not even try to counter Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them” attack ad that served as effective synecdoche for a host of unpopular progressive stances on cultural issues; because Trump was seen as a stronger leader more likely to bring needed change and better equipped to handle a crisis; and finally, because messaging about democracy being “at risk” did not work the way her campaign expected. Some 73 percent of voters regarded democracy as “threatened,” but Trump beat Harris by 50 to 48 in this group. He did even better among the 4 in 10 voters who saw democracy as “very threatened,” carrying them by 52 to 47.” More here.

From “Voters Think Billionaires Earned Their Wealth Through Exploitation, Not Hard Work‘ at Data for Progress:

This summer, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. Yet, in 2025, nearly 2 in 5 Americans could not afford a $400 emergency expense. As the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and voters are recognizing how extreme wealth not only exploits the working class, but also negatively influences politics.

New polling from Data for Progress finds that voters think they are more likely to become homeless than a millionaire or billionaire, and reject the idea that billionaires obtain their wealth through innovation and hard work, instead seeing them as exploitative and a sign of a dysfunctional, anti-working-class economy.

Voters are unfavorable toward both trillionaires (54%) and billionaires (52%), and are closely split on their favorability of millionaires. Voters become more intensely unfavorable as the amount of wealth increases, while positive intensity does not change.

…In a split test, respondents were asked if they think they are personally more likely to become homeless or to become a millionaire (Split A) or a billionaire (Split B).

Around 3 in 5 voters say they are more likely to become homeless than to become a millionaire, including 71% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and 48% of Republicans.

…Voters are even more likely to say they are closer to homelessness than to becoming a billionaire, including 67% of Democrats, 54% of Independents, and 65% of Republicans…

More here.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman makes “The Case for a Medicare Buy-In Option” at paulkrugman.substck.com and writes: “Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for Michigan Senate on a platform advocating Medicare for All, aka single-payer health insurance. As I argued Tuesday, this makes a lot of sense in policy terms. Many healthcare experts would choose single-payer if designing a healthcare system from scratch. That’s not a hypothetical: my friend the late Uwe Reinhardt, who taught me much of what I know about healthcare economics, played an important advisory role in creating Taiwan’s highly regarded healthcare system — where he really could start from scratch — and argued successfully for single-payer…Furthermore, as I pointed out Tuesday, the United States is already most of the way to single-payer in terms of dollars spent: the government de facto pays for about two-thirds of health insurance and extensively regulates the rest. Except as providers of supplemental care, there is really no net positive added by private insurers. In fact, for basic health insurance coverge, private insurers are a net negative because they impose excessive administrative costs and often engage in fraudulent overbilling.”

Krugman continues, “The political obstacles to replacing private health insurance with a Medicare-like system are formidable, although arguably less formidable now than they were when Obamacare was created. As I’ll argue shortly, there’s a strong case for a soft transition in which people can choose to be covered by Medicare via a public option. But before I get there, let’s talk about why, in the realm of healthcare, there’s tension between good policy and political realism…Why won’t making the legitimate case that Medicare for All is the best system be enough to win the political argument? The pervasive corruption of our political environment by corporate and right-leaning money is part of the answer. Health insurers may be parasites, but parasites make campaign contributions. Other players will also spend big to fight single-payer. Drug companies, in particular, don’t want to see the U.S., like healthcare systems almost everywhere else in the world, bargain down their prices and reduce their monopoly power. And MAGA is against anything that would improve the health and well-being of average Americans…But it’s not just about money-driven corruption. Ordinary voters are inherently conservative, not in the left-right sense, but because they are understandably wary of change. El-Sayed does a very good job of making the case that most of the 183 million Americans now covered by private insurance would get better coverage under Medicare for All, and would pay less in additional taxes than they now pay in insurance premiums. But expecting most Americans to trust that promise is overoptimistic…Although Americans are extremely negative about what they think the federal government does, however, they are much more positive about what the federal government actually does. And no major government program is as popular as Medicare, which has an 82 percent favorable rating.”

Krugman adds, ” So it may be possible to defuse attacks on a single-payer healthcare system by portraying the plan as more Medicare, not bigger government…However, Americans suffer a disconnect between the general and the specific on the topic of private healthcare insurance. Americans have strongly negative views, verging on hatred, about the insurance industry. Luigi Mangione, who is expected to plead guilty to the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, has become a folk hero in some quarters. Yet 77 percent of Americans with private health insurance report being satisfied with their coverage. So any mandate that moves Americans away from private coverage to a government system they haven’t yet experienced is likely to face stiff resistance…What, then, should Democrats of good will — that is, people who want their fellow citizens to have affordable access to quality healthcare like citizens of every other advanced country — support? Should they call for an all-out effort to implement the best policy – Medicare for All — that is likely to face significant pushback and political roadblocks, albeit unjustified? Or should they settle for a strategy that is likely to involve a more drawn-out process to achieve universal coverage, but is also more likely to turn into reality?…For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that Medicare for All is as unrealistic politically as it was even a decade ago. Americans really do deeply distrust the health insurance industry, and a massive advertising and lobbying campaign by that industry, like the one that helped kill the Clinton health reform in 1993, might well backfire. ”

Krugman concludes, “And the right-wing propaganda apparatus has surely been damaged by its fealty to Trump, which would hamper any attempt to demonize healthcare reform the way the right demonized Obamacare in its early years…That said, a rapid transition to Medicare for All looks unlikely. Bear in mind that such a transition would require higher taxes, so that it would be necessary to persuade people that these taxes would be more than offset by lower premiums. And this would be a hard sell…But there is an alternative: A public option, better described as Medicare Buy-In. Allow individuals, and possibly more important, employers, to sign up for Medicare benefits, paying actuarially fair premiums to Medicare reflecting the health status of their workers. There’s no obvious reason a public option would be any harder to implement than payments to the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private insurers, which are also supposed to be actuarially fair…A healthcare system in which many Americans under 65 buy into Medicare would not immediately deliver all the advantages of full Medicare for All. Some people and employers, despite the disadvantages, might retain private insurance. And some people, who currently either choose to be uninsured or fall through the cracks, might remain uninsured. It would lack the clarity of a system in which every citizen knows that they are entitled to care…But it would be far better than what we currently have. Moreover, a system in which private health insurance is a rump industry, covering a dwindling fraction of the population, would be a better starting point for a full transition to universal coverage…So that’s my idea of how we should proceed. But I’m not going to denounce people who want to be more ambitious, to push more quickly for full Medicare for All. For now, the crucial thing is to elect people who really are committed to providing Americans with the healthcare they deserve.”

The following article, “Introducing The Long View with Ruy Teixeira and Michael Baharaeen,” is cross-posted from welcomestack.org. Baharaeen is editor in chief of the Long View and former chief political strategist of the Liberal Patriot. Teixeira is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, former politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of  Where Have All the Democrats Gone?:

“One of the defining features of modern American politics has been nonstop change. Across 12 federal elections since the turn of the century, ten have produced a change in party control of at least one of the House, Senate, or presidency. By comparison, just six of the prior 20 elections produced any change at all. And after three back-to-back, two-term presidencies between 1992 and 2016, each of the last three elections has ended with a new winner.

A series of major events and disruptions to daily life has further hastened the political instability of this era. The “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the 9/11 attacks and the financial crisis led trust in government to crater. Massive technological changes gave us new filters through which to see the world and others in it, helping to precipitate popular uprisings and social movements but also generating growing estrangement from our fellow citizens, worsening political and cultural polarization and tribalism, and a crisis of shared epistemology. The Covid pandemic exacerbated all of this.

The consequences have been grim. Americans have grown less trusting of their institutions and each other. Politics, increasingly informed by cultural attitudes, has become a more salient part of many people’s identities. The two parties have each become more ideologically homogenous, more tribe-like. All this has put even greater pressure on the country’s political system. Fewer people trust election results or view their political opponents as legitimate. Meanwhile, growing numbers believe election outcomes matter “a great deal” and that the other “side” represents a threat to their values and way of life. (And dissent or criticism from one’s own side is rarely considered cause for self-reflection and instead often viewed as heresy.)

As the political stakes have risen, America’s two parties have become myopic, rarely looking more than two years ahead at any given time because the next election is always “the most important of our lifetime.” This has created bad incentives for them and their supporters. Republicans, who currently control both chambers of Congress and the presidency and have an ideological majority on the Supreme Court, have won the latest battles. Yet their embrace of Donald Trump and MAGA, who practice a deliberate politics of division rather than addition, has turned off a generation of young people—especially young women—who may never vote for them.

Democrats, meanwhile, made clear that they are okay with shedding the support of more culturally conservative (or even moderate) white working-class voters—many of whom had voted for Obama, twice—in exchange for a new base that is more affluent, educated, culturally progressive, and politically active, sometimes called the “Brahmin left.” While this exchange has brought them increased success in lower-turnout, off-year elections, it also contributed to the movement of both the Electoral College and Senate toward Republicans and enabled Trump’s comeback in 2024.

In this environment, it often seems political actors are incapable of seeing the bigger picture and making decisions that are strategically sound. Though some partisans on both sides still understand the wisdom and value of persuasion—of winning converts and meeting voters where they are—many others have concluded that they simply don’t want to build coalitions that include people who might be more sympathetic to some of the other side’s views or policies. They believe those people are suspect, and that closing ranks with other like-minded people will make “our side” stronger.

To be sure, one advantage of these changes is that both parties now have higher floors of support than they once did, as more voters have been polarized into one camp or the other. But the trade-off has been a cap on how large their coalitions can ever really grow. Neither one enjoys landslide victories anymore, and national elections are increasingly decided by the thinnest of margins, raising the stakes of election outcomes. It’s an unstable system in which turnover is constant and majorities are rarely around long enough to affect lasting change.

In essence, we have a “politics without winners.” (In fact, the biggest winners in modern politics are the polarizing forces selling rage bait. To support our work to build something better, please fully join our community by becoming a paid subscriber today.)

But we also know that most Americans disapprove of this type of politics and want a change. They’re exhausted by political tribalism and the two parties’ inability to work together on behalf of the country. As a sign of their displeasure, many have shed party affiliations together: the share of Americans identifying as independents sits today at its highest point ever. This has left fertile ground for either party to build a dominant, enduring electoral majority—if one of them is willing to take the long view of politics.

Which brings us to the purpose of our new publication. Cards on the table: we lean more toward the left side of the spectrum, and much of our analysis and commentary will thus be focused on Democrats and the liberal tradition. In that way this project will serve as something of an intellectual successor to the Liberal Patriot, where both of us previously wrote.

We will also dive into related themes that the two parties—and Americans more broadly—will hopefully find worthwhile, including:

• Politics without winners. The gist of this idea, mentioned above, is that neither Democrats nor Republicans appear at this juncture concerned with doing the hard work of building a broad, ideologically and demographically heterodox coalition capable of winning an era, not just the next election. They are instead more concerned with mollifying their respective bases, staying on the right side of interest groups, and winning with as few members of the “other side” as possible. If neither party is willing to forge a different path, the constant churn of political change will endure for the foreseeable future.
• Structure of the shadow parties. “The groups” (or the “shadow party”) and other forces have taken advantage of weak formal party structures—especially on the Democratic side. Though they are not well-understood, they have immense power in shaping the party’s policy agenda and messaging. Yet, their priorities and views are often at odds with not just the median American but with the very constituencies they purport to represent. If the Democrats hope to reclaim that power for themselves, they must first understand who these groups are and how they have come to play such an influential role in the party.
• The median voter. Though the term has been invoked often enough in some spaces that it has become a punch line, it’s still a good reminder to political elites not to lose sight of what ordinary Americans believe and care about—to be willing to meet them where they are and not get too far out of step with them or tell them that their views are “unacceptable.” We appreciate the sentiment expressed by our friends at Welcome, who saythey “work for the center of the country, not the center of the [Democratic] party.”
• Political moderation. There is a great deal of misunderstanding in American politics surrounding the term “moderate.” Lately, some seem to think it’s simply a synonym for the “establishment.” Others believe it means “landing in the exact middle” or having no real convictions. But it’s actually a guiding framework for ensuring our politics are governed not by the extremes but in between them. The inclusion of political moderates in our parties is important because most Americans themselves are not strong partisans, and it remains vital to have effective guardrails against more extreme factions that would, if given the chance, lurch the country in a direction the overwhelming majority disagree with.
• (De-)polarization. Political divisions have existed in virtually every society ever, and we would never suggest it’s possible or even desirable to completely avoid them. But toxic political and cultural polarization clouds our judgment and makes us more tribal, which in turn stresses our experiment in self-government. The worse these trends grow, the harder it will be to build a healthier politics.
• Patriotism. America has its faults, just like every society throughout history. But it has also done an immense amount of good in the world and made great progress over time toward fulfilling its founding ideals, and it’s important to acknowledge this. However, there is a growing strain of anti-Americanism at home that is not only bad, per se, but unproductive as a way of improving life here. Reformers cannot fix a country they do not love. While reflexive or coerced patriotism is not healthy either, a strong national and civic identity can benefit all citizens.
• Prosperity and growth. Voters have lost faith in the ability of either party to deliver prosperity and growth. Worse still, some prominent figures, particularly on the political left, have questioned whether the goal of growth is even worthwhile. Yet, few things are more important to the average voter than strong economic growth and the opportunities it presents for upward mobility and a prosperous life. As we confront the momentous economic transformation driven by AI, this challenge to the parties will only grow in importance.
• Civic culture. An underrated factor behind America’s political malaise is the decline of shared activities, spaces, and culture. As technological advances have made it easier to live life on screens at home, Americans have been spending less time in groups and more time alone. There are fewer opportunities to truly know our neighbors, making it more likely that our understanding of them will be filtered through the distorted lens of social media. The country desperately needs a revival of its civic institutions to help bring people of different backgrounds together and break down superficial barriers.
• The working class. There has been much debate recently about what it means to be “working class” in America: is it tied to income, education, both, or something else entirely? No matter how one defines it, this cohort clearly has an immense amount of influence on the country’s politics. It is thus worth trying to better understand working-class Americans and their concerns, beliefs, and voting habits.
• The Democratic Party. We have previously written at length about our thoughts on the state of the Democrats, and that will continue in this publication, especially in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential primary. What will the party stand for in the post-Trump era? Who will lead it? Which factions will have the most influence? And are they setting themselves up for long-term success or succumbing to short-term thinking again?

As we write about these themes and more, we will be guided by old-school liberal values. We will maintain a commitment to ideological pluralism, free speech, and civil discourse, and no topic will be off-limits. We will strive to approach our analysis and commentary in a manner that is pragmatic, intellectually curious, and open to a good-faith exchange of ideas. At the same time, we will reject extremism, purity, dogma, and reflexive partisanship. We will also bring a data-driven approach to everything we do, and do our best to engage with information that may contradict or complicate our priors.

For now, The Long View will be a two-year project with Welcome that will go through the final night of the 2028 Democratic National Convention. We hope you will join us as we embark on this new venture.”

Click on the article link in the introductory paragraph to subscribe.

Some excerpts from “The Red Scare Returns to America. This time, though, it is pure farce” by Katherine Stewart at The Contrarian:

“With their party’s popularity in freefall, leading Republicans have identified a new message to unite around. The Democrats, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, will lead America down “the dark road of death to communism.” President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with religious right leaders such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spiritual leader Doug Wilson, have made equally histrionic claims. The Red Scare has returned to America, only this time it is pure farce. Still, this is dangerous stuff and will appeal to some voters. The pro-democracy coalition must confront it directly and forcefully.

…Republicans point to the candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America who have won their races — never mind that others have failed. Notwithstanding the presence of some noisy individuals on the fringes whose years-old tweets have received extraordinary amounts of attention, the politics of the Democratic Party remain, on balance, closer to the center than even those modest proposals…it’s about distracting from the current administration’s corruption and incompetence, criminalizing dissent, and laying the groundwork for authoritarianism.

What to do? This is no time for Democrats, progressives, and others in the pro-democracy coalition to return to the familiar defensive crouch. Rather, they must blow the whistle on this effort to distract from the failures and corruption of the worst administration in American history…Welcome to Trump’s America! We are now a country where dear leader and his friends use every lever of government to direct money away from you and into their pockets.

…In America today, we have a Cabinet, with a collective net worth around $7.5 billion, making policy for the benefit of billionaires; we have major AI investors “regulating” AI; and defense contractors overseeing defense contracts (especially when one of the president’s sons is involved). And we have sectors of the corporate world supplying Trump with free legal services, ballrooms, and whatever else he craves at any given moment. The difference between this and state socialism is that, under the Trump administration, profits are privatized while the costs are spread out among the population.

…The fear that powers the Red Scare is just the fear that American might one day become the free, fair, and democratic society that it has always promised to become.”

McCarthyism played out decades ago, and this twisted version will be a tough sell to the centrist Democrats, Independents and swing voters they want to get. It’s hard to see much value added for Republicans here. Voters who would buy into such infantile hysteria while Republicans rob the U.S. treasury blind were probably already set against Democrats. And after all, Trump and his GOP enablers are the ones who support Russia. Expect Republican midterm candidates to squirm like greased snakes when they ‘splain why they oppose giving Ukraine what it has asked for to defend their country against Russia.