In his New York Times column, “The Era of Urban Supremacy Is Over’,” Thomas B. Edsall addresses a major demographic trend that will put increasing pressure on the Democratic Party: “Most of the nation’s major cities face a daunting future as middle-class taxpayers join an exodus to the suburbs, opting to work remotely as they exit downtowns marred by empty offices, vacant retail space and a deteriorating tax base….The most recent census data “show almost unprecedented declines or slow growth, especially in larger cities,” William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, emailed in response to my query….From July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, “New census data shows a huge spike in movement out of big metro areas during the pandemic,” Frey wrote in an April 2022 paper, including “an absolute decline in the aggregate size of the nation’s 56 major metropolitan areas (those with populations exceeding 1 million).”….This is the first time, Frey continued, “that the nation’s major metro areas registered an annual negative growth rate since at least 1990.”….The beneficiaries of urban population decline are the suburbs….Even more damaging to the finances of major cities is the fact that the men and women most likely to move to the suburbs are among the highest-paid key sources of income and property tax revenues: workers with six-figure salaries in technology, finance, real estate and entertainment. Those least likely to move, in turn, are paid much less, working in service industries, health care, hospitality and food sales….There is a striking interaction between the Covid-driven exodus from the cities and changing racial and ethnic urban populations. From 2020 to 2021, the nation’s 56 largest metropolitan areas saw a cumulative decline of 900,000 in their white populations, Frey reported….In an August 2022 essay titled “White and Youth Population Losses Contributed Most to the Nation’s Growth Slowdown,” Frey wrote that, among the metropolitan areas with populations in excess of one million, “43 saw absolute declines in their white populations. Sixteen saw absolute declines in their Black populations, and six saw declines in Latino or Hispanic and Asian American populations.”

“The question facing large cities, especially the older cities in the North,” Edsall continues, “is whether they can break what urban experts now call an urban doom loop. The evidence to date suggests that things are not improving much….the percentage of days employees worked from home shot up from 5 percent to 60 percent in the early months of the pandemic and then began to decline, stabilizing at just over 25 percent for the last year….At the same time, employers are finding that the opportunity to work two to three days at home is a very attractive perk to be able to offer prospective hires and to keep valued workers. [economist Nicholas] Bloom found that, on average, employees view an offer to work part of the week at home as equivalent to an 8 percent raise….If that were not enough, Bloom reported that a survey of engineers and marketing and finance professionals found that working from home reduced quit rates by 35 percent….Looking at urban population shifts from 2019 to 2021, [founding fellow at the Urban Reform Institute Wendell] Cox observed that almost all substantial gains were in Sun Belt cities: Among the top 15 metropolitan population percentage gainers, 13 were in the South, with two in the West (Phoenix and Las Vegas). Austin had the strongest population growth (3.0 percent), followed by Raleigh (2.4 percent), Phoenix (2.4 percent) and Jacksonville (2.0 percent)….Ryan Streeter, the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, noted in an email that large cities, many in the North, “have grown too expensive (mostly because of housing but also because of taxes) and have been experiencing out-migration even before the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated that in important, and apparently lasting, ways.”

Edsall adds, “I asked Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and the executive director of the Urban Reform Institute in Houston, about the economics of major cities, and he replied by email: “The era of urban supremacy is over. The party that addresses this will win. These areas need infrastructure and tax structures that encourage building houses, particularly affordable single-family ones” — “houses that a couple who work at Walmart can afford….Migration to dense cities started to decline in 2015, when large metropolitan areas began to see an exodus to smaller locales. By 2022, rural areas were also gaining population at the expense of cities. The pandemic clearly accelerated this process, with a devastating rise in crime and lawlessness ….Politically, it would be devastating for the Democratic Party, which already faces voter anger over manifestations of urban dysfunction: homeless encampments, rising homicide rates, rampant crime and a sense of disorder on city streets and in city schools….In 2022 the poverty rate in Philadelphia was 22.8 percent; in Houston, 19.5 percent; Boston, 17.6 percent; New York, 17 percent, all well above the 11.6 percent national rate. In Los Angeles, 397 residents per 100,000 are homeless; in New York, 394; in Seattle-Tacoma, 349….The challenge facing cities is that dysfunction tends to engender dysfunction; downward spirals accelerate. Covid and remote work have transformed the face of urban America, just as the nation’s cities were becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. In many ways, this is a test. It would be difficult to measure the costs of failing to pass such a test.” Can Democrats lure workers and families back to the cities? Or can they figure out creative ways to build support among the new urban refugees who are sinking roots in rural and exurban communities? Can they do both? The Democratic party’s very survival likely depends on an affirmative answer to these three questions.

“There are two important off-cycle legislative elections this year— one in New Jersey and one in Virginia.,,” Howie Klein writes in “The Dems Have Ignored State Legislative Races For Too Long– And Has Paid A Price– That’s Changing” at Crooks & Liars Blue America. “New Jersey’s 80-seat Assembly currently has 46 Democrats and 34 Republicans and the 40 seat state Senate has 25 Dems and 15 Republicans. The Democrats lost 6 Assembly seats and one Senate seat in 2021. Hopefully they’ll be smarter about it this cycle— but I’m not counting on it. The state Democratic Party is so riven with corruption that it’s hopeless….Virginia has a better situation and, in fact, Blue America has already endorsed 8 candidates between the 2 Houses. The primary is June 20 for the November elections in the 2 chambers. All 40 Senate seats and all 100 House seats are up for grabs….In 2019, the Democrats netted 2 Senate seats, gaining control of both Houses and the governors’ mansion for the first time since 1993. It didn’t last long and 2 years ago, the Democrats lost the House of Delegates (and the gubernatorial race). Currently there are 22 Dems in the Senate and 18 Republicans. There are 52 Republican delegates and 48 Democrats. Post-redistricting, the Dems have a good shot at expanding their Senate majority and winning back the House of Delegates….Yesterday, reporting for CBS News, Aaron Navarro wrote that “Democrats defended every state legislative chamber in their control in 2022, the first midterm elections since 1934 in which the party in control did not lose a chamber. To replicate that record next year, they say they’ll need more money. A memo from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) sent to donors asks for an additional $10 million for 2024, as well as for Virginia’s legislative elections this fall and any special elections that may emerge in New Hampshire, where Democrats are just three seats away from flipping the state House. The memo pitches it to donors as an early investment to ‘protect the path to the presidency’ through building the party’s grassroots presence in presidential battleground states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”

It looks like Ron DeSantis’ efforts to enter the 2024 presidential contest as the master of his large state could be complicated by the fraught issue of abortion, as I explained at New York:

Florida governor Ron DeSantis visited Iowa as he prepares to announce he’s running for president, and his pitch to Republicans is contained in his new book’s subtitle: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. He can boast of turning his state into a national right-wing model where lockdowns aren’t tolerated and liberals are fully “owned” by a series of audacious state laws banning “wokeness” in all its forms. So far, it appears to be working, with DeSantis building a formidable head of steam to take on Donald Trump, who calls him a phony.

So Florida’s laws pertaining to abortion should be of special concern to anyone valuing reproductive rights. DeSantis and his party’s first pass on restrictive abortion laws could have been worse: Last April, just prior to the Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade, he signed a new law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest. Since well over 90 percent of abortions are performed prior to 15 weeks of pregnancy (depending on the estimate), it was inevitable that Florida’s anti-abortion lobby and the Republican Party it all but controls would not be satisfied. Indeed, more stringent bans were enacted in other southern states (notably next-door Georgia), making Florida a medical-travel destination for women seeking abortions that are illegal in their own jurisdictions.

But while DeSantis made it clear he would be happy to accommodate GOP hopes for a more draconian law if one were sent to his desk, the word around Tallahassee, according to one source plugged into Florida politics, is that he was blindsided when Republican lawmakers introduced a six-week ban amid signs that it would move rapidly toward enactment. (Republicans have legislative supermajorities that make Democratic opposition futile and a few GOP defections tolerable.) Now DeSantis must quickly calculate how this might help or hurt his presidential ambitions.

The path of least resistance for DeSantis is to sign the bill as an indication of the people’s will as reflected by the legislature without offering the new law as a national model. But anti-abortion activists no longer accept a “state’s rights” approach to abortion law now that the federal constitutional right to choose has been abolished. One major anti-abortion group, the Susan B. Anthony List, has made a 2024 litmus test out of support for a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks or fewer, preempting blue-state laws while allowing red-state laws that are even more restrictive, and other activists will likely follow. Allowing blue states to keep abortion legal as an exception to his general demands for “making America more like Florida” may enhance DeSantis’s general-election prospects, but that would be perilous in a Republican Party that has endorsed a full-on federal constitutional ban on all abortions in every national party platform since 1980. To activists who regard a fertilized ovum as a “baby” deserving full personhood rights, the kind of half a loaf DeSantis has previously championed just won’t be enough. They are especially powerful in Iowa, the first state on the Republican nomination-contest calendar, where DeSantis is polling about with Trump in terms of favorability.

The proposed Florida law does include an exception for rape or incest (though only if a court order or police report documents the cause of pregnancy), which puts Florida in sync with Trump’s otherwise incoherent position on what the law should be now that his justices have overturned Roe. DeSantis could try to nudge the law in one direction or another, but there is no position that can bridge the gap between respecting and abridging reproductive rights and no way for him to know which way Trump may weave on the subject. And DeSantis’s dilemma doesn’t just extend to the Republican primaries: An extremist position on abortion that might be helpful in wresting the nomination from the formidable Trump could be an enormous liability in the general election, where a solid majority of voters, including a sizable minority of Republicans, don’t want abortion outlawed.

A couple of factors complicate the Florida GOP’s freedom of action in this area. The state’s constitution includes an explicit right to privacy (similar to the right the Supreme Court inferred from the Constitution in Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe), which in the past has been held to confer a right to an abortion. Indeed, a state judge initially put the 15-week ban on hold on these grounds, but the hold was overturned pending a Florida Supreme Court review. It’s generally expected that DeSantis’s appointees to that court will let the law (and probably a subsequent six-week ban) take full effect.

More ominously for the forced-birth lobby is that Florida is a state with citizen-initiated ballot measures. It’s already likely that an abortion-rights ballot initiative will appear as early as 2024, and enactment of a six-week ban will make a pro-choice initiative even more likely to appear and then to overcome Florida’s 60 percent approval requirement for constitutional amendments. Pro-choice advocates have won every abortion ballot measure — including those in red states like Kansas and Kentucky — since Roe was reversed. It could be more than embarrassing to DeSantis if his state moves tangibly toward the cancellation of a GOP abortion law as he’s running for president on a pledge to make America one big Florida. It’s. not a great sign that one of Florida’s two Republican senators, the normally ultra-MAGA Rick Scott, has already come out against the six-week ban.

All in all, DeSantis’s easy acquiescence to radical abortion legislation could represent a rare political misstep, making him even more of an ogre than he already is to many swing voters while proving himself an ineffective would-be tyrant who can’t control events in his own state.

Guy Cecil, who is stepping down after eight years as chairman of Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA, talks with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about the long term strategies the Republican Party is using to change the structure of American politics in their favor, and what Democrats need to do to counter and match those strategies.

In “How Red States Are Fighting Their Blue Cities” at FiveThirtyEight, Monica Potts discusses a political conflict that is being played out in states across the nation. As Potts explains,

Preemption is an old, broadly used tool, and in the past decade, preemption bills have passed across the country, blocking local legislation on everything from culture-war issues to basic city governance. In Florida, a state Senate bill passed last week would prevent local governments from enacting rent control or rent stabilization. This year, other states are considering laws revoking local authority over school curriculum and punishing local district attorneys who don’t prioritize laws passed by the state legislature. Other states are threatening to take over whole chunks of city government. And there may not be much cities can do about it.

The tug of war between state and local power is an old one. Local governments, whose responsibilities are not outlined in the U.S. Constitution, have different levels of authority depending on the state, and it’s not always clear exactly what authorities localities have. “It is very much a gray zone,” said Christine Baker-Smith, a research director at the National League of Cities. “The only place where it’s clearly not a gray zone is when there is clear, clear guidance around a certain policy area.”

What has happened in the past decade is what many experts call a shift from “minimalist” preemption to “maximalist” preemption. An example of a minimalist preemption law is the minimum wage. No state can have a minimum wage that’s lower than the $7.25 set by the federal government,¹ but they can go higher, and cities and counties can pass laws that set even higher minimums than their states … as long as their state hasn’t forbidden it through preemption laws.

Potts notes that the trend accelerated “during President Barack Obama’s presidency,” when Republicans organized their takeovers of many state legislatures. She notes further, that “A 2020 Economic Policy Institute analysis found the use of preemption was more prevalent in southern states.” The conflict plays out in a range of policies, including:

In the past few years, at least 25 states have prohibited local governments from raising the minimum wage. Eighteen states bar municipalities from banning plastic bags. At least 20 states have laws that prevent cities from banning gas stoves. Oklahoma is considering a bill that would prevent cities from banning combustion engines. Forty-two states preempt local legislators from passing gun regulations.²

Florida is one of 34 states that preempts many local housing laws, allowing rent stabilization only in an emergency; the bill that passed the state Senate last weekwould remove even that ability. The bill passed unanimously, but that was likely because the housing preemption was wrapped in a much larger bill, which includes measures to encourage mixed-use zoning and incentivize development of affordable housing. The bill’s proponents said it would help fix the housing shortage.

Potts adds, “This year, as of March 8, at least 493 preemption bills have been introduced into state legislatures around the country on a range of issues, according to the Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), an organization that tracks certain preemption laws and advocates against them. Potts concludes,

For those who oppose what they call its overuse, preemption undermines the basic idea behind local governance — that communities get to set priorities that reflect their own values. Laurent said that preemption laws have a longer-term, corrosive effect on local participation. State legislatures are often influenced by special interests, she said, and preempting local action removes a tool people have to fight against that. “The entire purpose of having representatives is for folks to go up there and reflect the needs that your community has,” she said. “But unfortunately, that’s being silenced.”

Underlying this conflict is the brutal reality that the states have grossly disproportionate power in America. Thus Wyoming (population 570 thousand) has as many senators as California (population 39 million). Cities are also limited by their political boundaries. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas statistics are more relevant to the life of cities than tightly-drawn city boundaries, which balkanize urban political power to give state legislatures additional leverage. ‘Greater’ Atlanta, Philadelphia or Orlando are much bigger than their city limits. Los Angeles County, which includes about 140 incorporated cities, has more people than the 20 smallest states put together.

There are some fixes to help rectify this grotesque imbalance of political power, such as filibuster and Electoral College reform, urban annexation, preemption limits,  or admission of new states. But all of them require Democratic landslides to get anywhere. Plenty of Republicans are drinking Trump’s Kool-aid to help set the stage for big Democratic gains. But it’s up to Dems to get smart and close the deal.

There they go again. As Erin Doherty explains in “Why some in the GOP are floating upping retirement age for some Americans” at Axios: “Some Republicans say changes to entitlement programs, like upping the retirement age to prolong the initiatives, should be “on the table.” In other words, ‘Let’s keep seniors in the labor force longer, thereby reducing the employment opportunities for young people who are looking for decent entry-level jobs.” Dherty continues, “The big picture: Entitlement reform is a politically potent topic — and it’s one that could be a key part of presidential candidates’ messaging ahead of 2024….Medicare is one of the largest line items in the U.S. budget, and as the population ages, it’s expected to only get more expensive, Axios’ Caitlin Owens reports….Biden has zeroed in on Republicans’ views on health care and entitlements, saying his GOP foes want to cut Social Security and Medicare….Top Republicans, however, have insisted they are not going to propose cuts to Medicare or Social Security during debt ceiling talks….The retirement age has been raised before. In 1983, Congress voted to phase in raising full retirement age from 65 to 67, citing an increase in life expectancy and workers staying at jobs for longer periods of time….Driving the news: Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R), who is running for president in 2024, said she supports changing the retirement age for Americans who are in their 20s….”It is unrealistic to say you’re not going to touch entitlements,” Haley said on Fox News….”The thing is you don’t have to touch it for seniors and anybody near retirement. You’re talking about the new generation, like my kids coming up,” she added….Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy (R) also said Sunday that lawmakers should discuss raising the retirement age for Americans in their 20s….”Does it really make sense to allow someone who’s in their 20s today to retire at 62?” he added….Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) also said that raising the retirement age when it comes to receiving social security benefits “has to be on the table.”….”We do not want to take away those that are in retirement, or those that are heading into retirement, but if we’re talking about younger generations … then that should be on the table.”…./Go deeper… Biden sets new trap with GOP budget taunt.” If this sounds to you like a garden-variety GOP scam to screw young workers, while kissing up to senior voters, you re not alone.

For a deeper dive into GOP scams to shred Social Security, check out “Why The Right Hates Social Security (And How They Plan to Destroy It)” at Current Affairs, where Nathan Robinson interviews Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works.  Some highlights: “ROBINSON.  People do not talk enough about Social Security. Republicans want to kill Social Security but don’t like to talk about Social Security, partly because they know the conversation is a losing one for them. But that does not change the fact that every minute of every day, slowly, behind the scenes, they are working to destroy the program.” LAWSON. “Pitting the old against the young by telling the old they’re definitely not going to cut benefits and not to worry, and instead, they’re only going to cut the young people’s benefits; and telling the young Social Security is going to run out of money, they’re never going to get anything, and so they need to cut old people’s benefits—really stoking that intergenerational warfare with a divide and conquer strategy. But the main purpose of that Leninist strategy document is to say: lie to the people about what it is that we’re trying to do, because we have to destroy and gut Social Security, and the only way to do it is to lie. That has been their mantra and MO up to now.”ROBINSON. “It’s understandable why they feel hell-bent on destroying Social Security. As you point out, it’s not just to make exploitation easier—that’s part of it. But also, the success of Social Security disproves so many conservative talking points. It’s the government providing welfare or universal benefits to people, and it works. It makes people’s lives better and reduces poverty. One of the core conservative talking points is nothing government does can be done right. Everything it does to try and fix a social problem will inevitably backfire and cause disaster, misery, and bureaucracy. Social Security really undermines their case. LAWSON. “It’s a universal program of huge magnitude— there’s nothing really else like it, and it does all of that for less than 1 percent in administrative costs. Less than one penny of every dollar that you pay into the system is used to pay for the whole thing. And look at Wall Street—that’s why they hate it. They like people scrambling and not being able to have enough time and comfort to think about, “Why do these guys have all the money?” That’s true, but they’re also just straight up greedy. They look at it and think, “We should be the only ones who offer products like that, and tack on a 35 percent fee….They hate that they can’t get their greedy little hands on it. It really does disprove, backwards and forwards, the entire small “c” conservative, reactionary mindset. Yes, just like what the private health insurance industry operates on, “How can we get sick people to give us a portion of their wealth?”—which they successfully do. And that’s why they hate Medicare For All so much…”

Lawson’s comments continue, “They’re terrified of the people finding out about anything that guarantees healthcare, does a better job, works more efficiently than private insurance. They really don’t want people to find out that the VA [Veterans Affairs], which is fully socialized healthcare—different from Medicare For All, which is just one single payer—is consistently ranked higher than private insurance in terms of outcomes, quality, and what people feel about it….The New Dealers saw that there could be systemic responses, that not only mitigated the immediate effects of the Great Depression, but put in place systems that actually ameliorated all of those negative effects going forward….That’s what Social Security is. It not only took care of this desperate need in the Great Depression era, but it eliminated the poor houses going forward. The philosophical bent of Social Security is an ever-expanding system that delivers greater and greater economic security for more and more people. When FDR signed it into law, he said, “With this law, I laid the cornerstone that future generations can build upon.” And that’s what we have to recognize. For example, Medicare For All or a guaranteed national health system, is the most obvious one—you cannot pretend that you can have retirement or economic security if you can go bankrupt by getting sick or having an illness, especially now in the midst of the pandemic. And what we’ve seen, it’s more obvious than ever….You also, though, can’t have a secure retirement if you’ve been working your whole life for poverty wages. Poverty wages will follow you into poverty in retirement. So we need to increase wages. Instead of the Republican’s North Star of destroying things that work and hurting people, if you use as your North Star Frances Perkins’ vision for an America where if you played by the rules, did the things that most people want to do, and worked hard, the system would be there for you—including if it’s something that no one wants to think about, but happens to far more people than they think, like becoming disabled, ill or injured and can no longer work. Francis Perkins didn’t have that in the bill that was signed by FDR. We added disability later because we saw you can’t have economic or retirement security if you lose your wages because you become disabled….Hear the full conversation on the Current Affairs podcast.”

Sasha Abramsky reports that “The Progressive Takeover of Nevada’s Democratic Party Is Falling Apart” at The Nation, and notes that “Last weekend, the party took its vote and booted [Democratic Party Chair Judith] Whitmer from office, replacing her with Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno. The result wasn’t close: Whitmer lost by a more than three-to-one margin. Every one of the candidates for state party office backed by Monroe-Moreno’s “Unity” campaign won; every one of Whitmer’s candidates lost….The sort of posture politics practiced by Whitmer doesn’t cut it—probably not anywhere, certainly not in a complex swing state such as Nevada, with its core group of Democratic voters in Las Vegas and in Reno, and with deeply conservative hinterlands surrounding the big cities….Posturing aside, there’s a lot of good politics going on in Nevada—witness the recently introduced bill to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage for low-income mothers for the first year after they give birth; the cutting-edge water-recycling programs that are in place; the ambitious CO₂ reduction strategythat has been adopted. But that good politics gets put at risk, and the likelihood of GOP election victories grow, when leaders such as Whitmer fail to live up to the expectations of those who put them in power in the first place….Last year, Oregon Democrats nearly fell apart at the seams as their gubernatorial candidate, Tina Kotek, struggled to consolidate support, following the reputational collapse of outgoing Governor Kate Brown. It wasn’t that voters didn’t like Brown’s basic political philosophy; it was more that they saw her as having failed to deliver on basic quality-of-life issues—failing to tackle the housing crisis, to respond to rising crime, and so on. In other words, she talked a good talk but ended up walking a lousy walk. Throughout 2022, she was the most unpopular governor in the country. Kotek did eventually win, but only after a massive effort to distance herself from Brown and her legacy. In California, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin was recalled, not because he was far to the left of San Franciscans but because he was widely perceived to be incompetent at his job and unable to deliver outcomes that matched his soaring rhetoric….There are lessons in these elections: There is plenty of room for radical politics out West, and plenty of room for candidates looking to shake up the status quo. In many ways, it remains a petri dish in which new, and experimental, political ideas and alliances are cultivated. But at the end of the day, voters also want tangible results. Whitmer’s mediocre tenure, and her election defeat last week, is a wake-up call: If Democrats want to continue to hold power in places like Nevada, they need a party political machinery led by leaders who aren’t just idealistic but are also competent.”

Amy Walter takes a look at the 2024 election possibilities and pinpoints “Three Key Factors for Control of Congress” at The Cook Political Report. An excerpt:

History

(The Senate version): If you define history as the last two presidential cycles, Republicans are in the driver’s seat in 2024. Since 2016, only one Senate candidate, Republican Sen. Susan Collins, won in a state the presidential nominee of their party lost. If (recent) history repeats, Democrats would likely lose at least three seats — West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.

If your version of history extends to 2012, Democrats have a path to holding their majority. That year, six candidates (five Democrats and one Republican), won in states that the presidential nominee of their party did not. It also happens that two of those Democratic “overachievers” — Senators Joe Manchin and Jon Tester — are on the ballot this time around. Today, the question is whether Manchin (should he run for re-election), Tester as well as Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (whose state has since gone red) have the right combination of skill, luck and connection with voters to overcome the gravitational pull of polarization.

(House version). As my colleague David Wasserman has noted, the House hasn’t flipped in a presidential cycle since 1952 and hasn’t flipped to the party occupying the White House since 1948, when Harry Truman barnstormed against a Republican “do nothing Congress.” This has been the case even when the number of seats needed to flip was as small as it is this cycle. In 2000, Democrats needed just five seats to gain the majority in the House. They ended up gaining just one.

Turnout Turn-around 

One reason the House has only changed hands in midterm years is that lower turnout midterms tend to benefit the “out party,” while turnout in a presidential cycle is more evenly balanced. However, four straight cycles of higher-than-normal turnout and a more polarized electorate than ever have led to more unpredictable outcomes in the House. In 2020, Democrats were expected to pick up seats, but instead lost 12 and came within 30,000 votes of losing their majority. In 2022, Republicans underperformed expectations, winning their narrow majority by just 6,000 votes.

One way to look at the outcome of 2022 is to say that but for Democratic “underperformance” in dark blue states like California, Oregon and California, Democrats would have held the House. According to Wasserman’s calculations, House candidates in New York underperformed Biden’s 2020 margins on average by 13 points. In California and Oregon, Democratic House candidates underperformed Biden by 7.6 points.

Today, in New York and California alone, there are 11 GOP-held districts that Biden carried in 2020. Of those 11, five are districts Biden carried by double digits. In 2024, the thinking goes, “drop off” Democratic voters will return and, voila, there’s an 11-seat gain right there.

But, alas, it’s not that simple. The most existential threat to House Democrats is redistricting. As my colleague David Wasserman has expertly documented, Republican redraws in North Carolina and Ohio could put at least three to four Democrats in serious danger.

Another factor to consider is Democrats’ “overperformance” in 2022’s battleground states like Michigan and Ohio where abortion and weak GOP candidates helped juice Democratic turnout and dampen GOP enthusiasm.

In Michigan, for example, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin outperformed Biden’s margin in her Lansing-based district by five points. Democrat Dan Kildee won his 8th CD by 10 points, an eight-point improvement over Biden’s margin in that CD in 2020. In the Grand Rapids-based 3rd CD, Hillary Scholten outran Biden’s margin by five points.

In Ohio, Emilia Sykes won her Akron-based district by six points, a three-point improvement over Biden’s showing in that CD in 2020.

What happens when/if those less-than-enthusiastic Republican-leaning voters show up in 2024?

In 2020, for example, Pew’s verified voter survey found that 13 percent of the overall electorate that year had not voted in 2018. Those “midterm drop-off” voters ultimately supported Trump by 8 points.

The Republican Party has become more reliant on non-college white (and increasingly non-white non-college) voters. Those voters, however, are also the most likely to show up to vote only in presidential elections.

Intra-party Headaches

(GOP version): My colleagues David Wasserman and Jessica Taylor recently wrote about the challenges Republican leaders face in getting their preferred candidates through contentious primaries. On the Senate side, Taylor highlights five states — West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Montana — where potentially complicated primaries could hurt Republican chances of taking back the Senate if a divisive, less broadly-acceptable nominee emerges.

Wasserman looked at five GOP incumbents who are likely to face serious primary opposition from more MAGA-aligned challengers. While none of those five races should be competitive in a general election, “that doesn’t mean, however, that primary contests won’t have an impact on House control. If, for example, Republicans nominate more MAGA-oriented folks in swing/competitive districts like they did in 2022 (WA-03, OH-09), they could give Democrats more opportunities for victories.”

(Democratic version): Sen. Krysten Sinema’s decision to switch from Democrat to independent may have saved *her* a primary, but it’s given Democrats a huge headache. First, and foremost the DSCC and other Democratic allies will have to decide whether to support the official Democratic nominee (likely Rep. Ruben Gallego), or their Senate colleague who, while identifying as an independent, still caucuses with Senate Democrats.

Then there’s the question of what a three-way contest between Sinema, Gallego and a GOP nominee would look like. Recent polling in the state showing Gallego leading in a number of potential scenarios is a bit misleading. After all, unlike his potential challengers (Sinema and failed GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake), Gallego hasn’t been hit with millions of dollars of negative advertising. The five-term congressman represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district and has never received less than 75% of the vote. Moreover, it’s likely that Gallego will be attacked not just from Republicans, but from Sinema as well. A messy GOP primary only adds to the uncertainty of how this thing plays out in the fall. And the BIden campaign can’t afford a “Democrats in disarray” scenario in this must-win state either. Overall, it’s just a big mess.

On the House side, there were fewer instances on the Democratic side than the Republican side of extreme or weak candidates defeating the stronger, more ideologically-aligned candidate in 2022. Even so, Democrats would likely be short just four seats instead of five had Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader not lost his primary to a more progressive Democrat.

Competitive open seats to watch on the Democratic side include CA-47, where Democratic Rep. Katie Porter is retiring to run for Senate, and MI-07, where Rep. Elissa Slotkin is also running for Senate.

Earlier in her post, Walter notes that issues like an inflation surge could make a difference in many races.  We can add the possibilities of game-changing events near election day in particular states or districts, such as a scandal, mass shooting or environmental disaster. Barring any such events, the chances for a flip in party control of both houses of congress look pretty good — unless either party wins the presidency in a landslide.

It’s become common for Republicans to say they want to “move on” from Donald Trump because he’s unelectable in 2024. Democrats need to understand where these dismissals are coming from, and take them with a grain of salt, as I explained at New York.

There are plenty of reasons for Republican elites to oppose the renomination of Donald Trump next year. He’s erratic and selfish as a party leader. He’s repudiated many historic GOP issue positions that Republicans would love to bring back and implement. His constant boasting and lying is embarrassing. His conduct in 2020 was inexcusable to anyone who values the rule of law. And he’s not that much younger than Joe Biden, whose alleged decrepitude will be a major party talking point in 2024.

None of these concerns are terribly politic to say out loud; there’s a strong possibility that anyone who voices them will wind up in a scorching Truth Social post attacking RINOs and the party Establishment. So instead, would-be post-Trump Republicans prefer to talk about the 45th president’s alleged lack of “electability,” as The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein found when exploring the Trump-o-phobia of GOP elites:

“Jennifer Horn, the former Republican state party chair in New Hampshire and a leading Trump critic, told me that it’s likely the institutional resistance to him this time ‘will be stronger and more organized’ than it was in 2016. Doubts about Trump’s electability, she added, could resonate with more GOP primary voters than opponents’ 2016 arguments against his morality or fealty to conservative principles did. ‘His biggest vulnerability in a primary is whether or not he can win a general election,’ she said.”

That sounds superficially plausible to those of us who saw Joe Biden defy the odds and win the 2020 Democratic nomination because Democratic voters (even more than elites) considered him electable. In this high-stakes era of polarized politics, with the two major parties roughly equal in strength, everybody is looking for a sure winner. But is Trump really any less viable of a candidate today than he was during the 2016 primary, when he steamrolled his more “electable” opponents?

An odd amnesia seems to have obliterated memories of how completely screwed Trump initially seemed as a prospective rival to Hillary Clinton. According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages from that year, Trump trailed Clinton by nearly 20 points in trial heats shortly after he announced his candidacy. Yes, he did better in later polls, but despite the partisan hype, few people were convinced he would win. He was all but written off by a variety of party figures after the Access Hollywood tapes came out in October 2016. Republican senators Kelly Ayotte, John Thune, Deb Fischer, Mike Crapo, Cory Gardner, Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, and Dan Sullivan, as well as governors Gary Herbert and Bill Haslam, all renounced their support for him instantly. Then–Speaker of the House Paul Ryan told his members they should feel free to abandon their presidential nominee. How electable did he look then? Even when the furor had calmed down, there was a raging debate among pollsters and pundits aimed at Nate Silver’s allegedly too positive projection that Trump had a 29 percent chance of winning. And disputes about how so many people got so much of the 2016 election wrong dragged on for years.

So are we now supposed to believe that the Republicans who made Trump president in 2016 are going to write him off in 2024 because he can’t possibly win? The same Donald Trump who again defied the polls and nearly pulled off another shocker in 2020? And the same Republican voters who to a considerable extent believe Trump actually won a second time? This does not make a great deal of sense.

Some Trump critics suggest that the former president proved himself unelectable when “his” candidates (for the Senate, at least) did poorly in 2022. There’s some sleight of hand in that argument. Sure, some bad Senate candidates endorsed by Trump lost winnable races in 2022. But it’s a different matter to claim that they lost because of Trump’s support, showing how toxic his “brand” had become. The counterargument from MAGA-land, of course, is that just as Republican underperformed in the 2018 midterms, the 2022 results showed the GOP needs Trump on the ballot to win. It’s not an argument that’s easy to brush off.

Advocates for Trump’s non-electability also need to come to grips with the fact that (so far, at least) Trump is not looking particularly weak in head-to-head polls for a prospective rematch with Joe Biden. According to RCP’s averages of Trump-versus-Biden trial heats, the ex-president currently leads the sitting president by an eyelash (44.6 percent to 44.4 percent). How does the presumed beneficiary of all this fear about Trump’s electability do? Ron DeSantis trails Biden in trial heats 42.8 percent to 43.2 percent. There’s not much difference between the two Republicans’ performance against the incumbent, but again: Where’s the evidence that DeSantis is so vastly more electable that Republican should risk the wrath of Trump’s base (and even a possible third-party run) by dumping him?

I am reminded of the 1968 Republican presidential-nomination contest in which Nelson Rockefeller ran incessantly on the theme that he was more electable than Richard Nixon. But on the eve of the Republican convention when the deal would go down, Rocky was devastated by a poll showing Nixon running ahead of him against putative Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey. Anti-Trump Republicans would be prudent to come right out with substantive arguments about why it would be a bad idea to let Donald Trump slither back into the White House instead of hiding behind “electability” concerns that may soon be as ephemeral as Hillary Clinton’s unassailable lead in 2016. And Democrats should beware believing all the hype.

Claim it, Dems, the way David Dayen does in his article, “The American Rescue Plan’s Hidden Triumphs: Medicaid expansion in North Carolina and Eli Lilly’s insulin price cuts are largely due to the March 2021 law” at The American Prospect: “Because of the unlikely prospects for legislative progress between now and 2025 (sigh), pundits are closing the books on Joe Biden’s first-term legacy, which in most accounts begins and ends with three bills: the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. This narrative has a nice symmetry to it, establishing Biden as the restorer of industrial policy, preoccupied with reshoring U.S. manufacturing and improving underlying infrastructure….That’s certainly a big part of Biden’s first-term record, but it leaves out his most wide-reaching bill: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP), passed with little debate in March 2021. Because inflation happened to spike subsequently, commentary on the ARP has been mostly reduced to whether it was wise to engage in massive fiscal stimulus. (It was.) And because the bulk of the ARP constituted temporary programs, placing it into Biden’s lasting policy legacy might have seemed unnecessary….But over the last week, we’ve seen two unlikely victories for the administration and the public that can be directly traced back to the ARP, proving it to be an underrated piece of legislation that not only changed the government’s blueprint for how to manage a crisis, but altered several unrelated crises in America for good….Last week, the Republican-led legislature in North Carolina announced a deal to expand Medicaid, which, once it’s passed and signed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, will make it the 40th state (plus D.C.) to do so. Over 600,000 people are expected to get health care coverage under this deal, at no cost to the state….Another health care development last week seems at first glance more divorced from the ARP. Eli Lilly announced that it would cap out-of-pocket costs on its insulin medications for patients with private insurance, and reduce list prices for its most-used insulins. As Robert Kuttner explained in the Prospect, the list price change is the most impactful. An out-of-pocket cap means that the patient only pays a certain amount, but the insurer pays the rest, and usually spreads it out to patients through higher premiums. A list price cut means the drug company loses money. The Inflation Reduction Act’s cap on insulin out-of-pocket costs in Medicare certainly had an influence on Eli Lilly mirroring that for private insurance patients.”

At The Nation, Chris Lehman observes, “In making his reelection pitch, Biden has set a challenge for himself that few recent incumbent presidents have faced: He’s betting that he can defy the overall trend of public opinion and demonstrate that government can actually work, delivering material improvements in the everyday lives of Americans….On paper, that shouldn’t be a tall order for a president who has a battery of ambitious economic achievements to promote—not only the infrastructure package but the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act’s many subsidies to the tech sector, not to mention an economy performing close to full employment. But American politics has long pivoted on a wholesale distrust of government—or, perhaps more accurately, a commitment to divert it to blunter ideological aims, such as the great rolling hellscape known as Ron DeSantis’s policy agenda, or Donald Trump’s own fledgling reelection crusade to marshal federal resources behind right-wing education demagoguery. In a political era of movement-baiting viral memes, Biden’s infrastructure tour felt a bit like a civics class filmstrip….Still, there are potential hidden strengths in Biden’s focused appeal to government-directed enterprise. “I think he’s savvy enough to know the traditional paradox that Americans complain about government and don’t trust it, but they like its specifics,” says Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University. “I would think that an effective strategy is to keep telling people what he’s given them. I don’t know if he’ll do it, though. Democrats are still nervous about playing in the shadow of Republican presidents….Having been vice president when Obama pushed a big stimulus program and didn’t get credit for it—or even take credit for it—is on his mind. Second, I think he saw how, with the Affordable Care Act rollout, the more people experienced the benefits, the more popular it became—to the point that Republicans didn’t want to cut it. And finally, his age puts him in an era when that’s what you did: You boasted about what you did. That was just politics. He’s a different generation.” Lehman  continues, “But even if Biden is the man for this particular message, it’s still far from clear that the message will resonate in this historical moment. Despite his record, polling consistently shows that the public is underwhelmed by Biden’s Oval Office tenure so far, with more than 62 percent of Americans agreeing that he’s done little or nothing over the past two years. Especially troubling is the steady stream of polling indicating that majorities don’t think Biden has performed well in precisely the sort of economic initiatives that he’s going to run on—measures like infrastructure renewal and job creation….Of course, this is also what political campaigns are for—to hammer home achievements and policy agendas across the national landscape—and the 2024 cycle has yet to begin in earnest.”

Charles Pierce has some incisive comments on the soaring popularity of Kentucky’s Democratic governor at Esquire: “Politico spent several hundred words on Wednesday expressing wonder and awe that Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is favored in his run for re-election in a state the former president* carried by 26 points. The very fact this is considered remarkable is, in and of itself, remarkable….I know I’m just spitballing here—and I realize that this is completely contrary to the spirit of the age—but maybe it’s just because the guy is good at being governor and people like the job he’s doing?” Pierce quotes from the Politico article, which notes “Beshear will have all the advantages generally granted to incumbent governors: the power of the bully pulpit, sky high name ID and approval, and a deep warchest — as of the end of last year, he had over $4.7 million in the bank. A late January survey from Mason-Dixon Polling found that 61 percent of voters in the state approved of the job he was doing, and he had notable leads over potential challengers. Beshear has hosted regular “Team Kentucky” updates and has been ever-present for Kentuckians, who during his tenure in office have navigated the coronavirus pandemic and a string of natural disasters. And Democrats in the state point to a boom of economic growth during his tenure in office. A page on Beshear’s official website brags about delivering “the highest and second-highest revenue surpluses in the history of Kentucky, thanks to strong fiscal management and a hot, record-breaking economy,” which is anticipated to be a major theme in his campaign.” Pierce adds, “I suspect that Beshear’s popularity is enhanced by his resemblance to New Deal Democrats who did so much for Kentuckians in the hard times.”

Here’s a stunner: “More Americans now favor legal cannabis than legal tobacco, surveys show, signaling a sharp societal shift from an era when cigarette-smoking was legal pretty much everywhere and pot-smoking was legal absolutely nowhere,” Daniel De Vise reports at The Hill. ” Fifty-seven percent of American adults would support “a policy prohibiting the sale of all tobacco products,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in a research brief last month….A slightly larger majority, 59 percent, believe marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use, according to a Pew Research surveyconducted in October. Another 30 percent approve of cannabis for medical use alone. Only 10 percent of the American public believes marijuana should not be legal at all. …The findings reflect growing public consensus that cannabis is safer than tobacco, which the CDC considers the leading cause of preventable death. Studies have found marijuana less addictive than cigarettes and marijuana smoke less harmful to the lungs, although doctors caution that cannabis still poses many potential health hazards….Recent years have seen a remarkable rise in public opinion toward marijuana, whose legalization as a product for recreational sale began with the passage of state measures in Washington and Colorado in 2012.” Although cannabis is still illegal under federal law, “State by state, the national prohibition against cannabis is eroding. Marijuana remains entirely illegal in only three states, Idaho, Kansas and Nebraska, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for recreational use. Thirty-seven states allow medical marijuana, and 10 more permit low-potency marijuana derivatives.” The political fallout of the poll could get a bit tricky, since three of the top seven tobacco-producing states are purplish, NC, VA and GA.

Some statistical nuggets from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) regarding the increase of women in state legislatures:

• As a result of the 2022 election, a record number of women serve in state legislatures, holding 32.7% of all seats.
• The net gain in women’s state legislative representation as a result of election 2022 matched that of 2020, but the partisan trend differed. Gains for Democratic women were up in 2022 from 2020, while Republican women’s gains were smaller as a result of election 2022 than they were as a result of the 2020 election.
• A record number of women were state legislative nominees in 2022, but women were still just one-third of all state legislative nominees. While women were 48.3% of Democratic state legislative nominees, they were 24% of Republican nominees.
• The number of women in state legislatures went up in 32 states, down in 12 states, and stayed the same in six states between 2022 and 2023.
• In 2023, Colorado became the second state in U.S. history whose state legislature reached parity in women’s and men’s representation. Women maintained a majority in Nevada, the first state to reach gender parity in 2018.
• As of February 2023, women match or exceed men’s representation in six state legislative chambers: the Nevada House and Senate, the Arizona Senate, the New Hampshire Senate, the Colorado House, and the New Mexico House.
• CAWP’s data on women state legislators by racial and ethnicity will be available later this year upon receipt of racial/ethnic self-identification from newly-elected women legislators.

Also, “As of February 2023, a record high 2,414 (1,583D, 805R, 20NP, 6Ind) women serve in state legislatures, holding 32.7% of all seats; 1,822 (1,199D, 616R, 2NP, 5Ind) women serve in state houses and 592 (384D, 189R, 18NP, 1Ind) women serve in state senates, both record highs.1 Women are 20% of Republican and 48.4% of Democratic state legislators….Of all women serving in state legislatures as of February 2023, 65.6% are Democrats and 33.3% are Republicans, representing almost no change in the partisan gap in women’s state legislative representation; as of Election Day 2022, 66% of women state legislators were Democrats and 33.1% were Republicans. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of men state legislators are Republicans.”

Looking ahead, the CAWP report on state legislatures concludes:

“As a result of the 2022 election, women are nearing one-third of state legislators nationwide. While this is a notable milestone, gender parity in state legislative representation – achieved in only two states to date – remains distant. Partisan differences contribute to this reality, with Democratic state legislators almost at gender parity while women represent less than one-quarter of Republican state legislators nationwide. Expediting gender parity in state legislative representation will require closing this party gap from candidacy to officeholding.

Women’s state legislative power is not determined by numbers alone. Already in 2023, many women have ascended to key leadership posts in state legislatures, including 18 women who hold the top leadership position (speaker, senate president, or senate president pro tem) in their chambers. In these roles, women have even greater capacity to shape legislative agendas, determine policy strategy, and influence the trajectory of major policy issues that have been delegated to states from the federal government.

State legislative elections in 2023 – to be held in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia – offer the next opportunity for monitoring women’s representation as candidates, nominees, and officeholders. Moreover, being attentive to the retention of women already in state legislatures is important to understanding the overall progress toward gender parity. Finally, making significant gains in women’s state legislative representation will require identifying and taking advantage of opportunities for growth, building and/or bolstering in-state support infrastructures for women candidates and officeholders, and expanding focus beyond statewide and federal offices to make clear the importance of increasing women’s representation in state legislatures for both policymaking and building the pool of potential candidates for higher office.”

The state legislative figures for Democratic women are encouraging, since Democratic women lost one seat in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, while Republican women picked up two seats in both the Senate and House.

John Russo, co-editor of Working-Class Perspectives writes “Media stereotypes of military vets present them as right-wing and often reactionary, but as Steve Early writes in this week’s Working-Class Perspectives, that image ignores an important reality: working-class veterans are more likely to belong to unions than other workers. Veterans have led important labor battles, and, as Early’s profiles of today’s leaders makes clear, they are still fighting against the privatization of government services and for improving access for vets and others to higher education and health care.” An excerpt from Early’s Working-Class Perspectives article:

Even in the era of identity politics, one category of identity has largely been ignored: what UK journalist Joe Glenton calls “veteranhood.”19 million former soldiers — most of them working class — share a strong sense of personal identity as vets, but the media usually notices them only when they are involved in right-wing militias, white supremacist groups, and other MAGA-land formations. Some have noted their over-representation in U.S. law enforcement, which does reinforce  militarized policing, along with the better known Pentagon-to-police equipment pipeline.

Largely ignored is the positive role veterans from working-class backgrounds have played in key labor and political struggles since the mid-20^th century.  In the heyday of industrial unionism in the 1950s and ‘60s, tens of thousands of World War II veterans could be found on the front-lines of labor struggles in auto, steel, electrical equipment manufacturing, mining, trucking, and the telephone industry.  Today, about 1.3 million former service members work in union jobs, and women and people of color make up the fastest growing cohorts in these ranks.

Veterans are, according to the AFL-CIO, more likely to join a union than non-veterans. In a half dozen states, 25% or more of working veterans belong to unions. Vermont AFL-CIO President David Van Deusen sees veterans as “an underutilized resource for the labor movement,” particularly in high-profile organizing campaigns. No one, he believes, is better positioned to “expose the hypocrisy and duplicity of ‘veteran-friendly’ firms like Amazon and Walmart, who wrap themselves in the flag, while violating the rights of working-class Americans who served in uniform and the many who did not.”

That’s why former SEIU organizer Jane McAlevey recommends that unions today learn from the example of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the post-war era. . CIO organizers understood that former soldiers have “strategic value” in strike-related PR campaigns. Veterans also have “experience with discipline, military formation, and overcoming fear and adversity,” all very useful on militant picket-lines.

Tony Mazzocchi was a good example. After World War II,  he became a catalyst for change within the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) and the broader labor movement for five decades. A survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, Mazzocchi spearheaded labor’s fight for the 1972 Occupational Safety and Health Act, which now provides workplace protections for 130 million Americans.  During his storied career, Mazzocchi also campaigned for civil rights, nuclear disarmament, labor-based environmentalism, and single-payer health care….

Read the rest of the article here.