Some insights from “Biden gets a rare hand from Big Business in quest to ease consumer pain: The bully pulpit has produced some interesting results. But how consequential are they?” by Adam Cancryn at Politico: “Just weeks after Biden used his State of the Union to call for crackdowns on insulin prices and “junk fees,” a handful of companies are starting to comply on their own. They’re taking voluntary steps meant to lower patients’ medical bills and make it easier for families to fly together.” This is kind of a BFD. When was the last time you remember a President persuading big biz to lower prices on life-saving meds? Cancryn continues, “The moves have handed Biden a surprise set of wins ahead of an expected reelection bid likely to hinge on his handling of the economy and elevated consumer prices. And within the White House, they’ve injected fresh momentum into a broader domestic agenda built on delivering what the president frequently describes as “a little bit of breathing room” for cash-strapped families….“The president has made clear for over a year now that a top priority is bringing down costs for folks,” said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council and one of the officials spearheading the junk fee initiative. “The fact he’s willing to sharply call out certain behavior and highlight it is encouraging these corporations — at least some of them — to come along with us.”….In a similar vein, three major airlines — United, American and Frontier — are eliminating extra fees often faced by parents wanting to ensure they can sit with their children on flights, a practice Biden slammed last month as akin to treating kids “like a piece of luggage.” Still, they’re keeping the web of other seat and baggage charges that have become the industry norm.” True, such jawboned reforms are not as solid as legislative reforms, and they can be retracted any time. But considering the GOP’s obstructionist posture, credit Biden with doing what he can help consumers and people with health issues, while Republicans can’t come up with even modest health care or consumer reforms. The challenge for Dems is to publicize it.

James G. Chappel discusses “The Frozen Politics of Social Security” at The Boston Review, and writes: “Social Security is back in the news. Some Republicans are angling to reduce benefits, while Democrats are posing as the valiant saviors of the popular program. The end result, most likely, is that nothing will happen. We have seen this story before, because this is roughly where the politics of Social Security have been stuck for about forty years. It’s a problem because the system truly does need repair, and the endless conflict between debt-obsessed Republicans and stalwart Democrats will not generate the progressive reforms we need….More than any other single institution, Social Security keeps the United States from becoming a truly Dickensian world of poverty and despair….Social Security, believe it or not, has a utopian heart: the idea that all Americans deserve a life of dignity and public support once they become old or disabled. This vision does, for now, remain utopian: many Americans are right to worry that, without savings or private pensions, their older years will be just as precarious and austere as their younger ones. Social Security is nonetheless the lynchpin of the U.S. welfare system, such as it is. In 2022 some $1.2 trillion flowed from the system to nearly 66 million people. Most of those people are retired workers, but not all of them. Millions are the spouses or dependents of retired workers; millions more are disabled people, or the spouses or dependents of the disabled. All in all, about one in four Americans over the age of eighteen receives benefits from Social Security. If not for Social Security, almost 40 percent of older Americans would be living in poverty….It is not going too far to say that the Social Security system, more than any other single institution, keeps the United States from becoming a truly Dickensian world of poverty and despair.”

“Despite this dire situation,” Chappel continues, “there has not been a congressional vote, even in committee, on major reforms to Social Security since 1983. This has not been for lack of trying, at least among Democrats. In both the House and the Senate, there are serious bills, with significant support, to salvage the program. The most well-developed, known as Social Security 2100, has more than 200 cosponsors in the House. It’s an audacious bill, planning to expand Social Security benefits for the first time since the 1970s, focusing especially on the caregiving workforce. And in the Senate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have put forth an even more ambitious plan, which would raise taxes and benefits while expanding the program’s solvency for decades….Still, the odds of anything happening with these bills are low, at least for now. In addition to the expected Republican intransigence, Democrats themselves are not united. The relevant division is between a politics of incrementalism and a politics of bold reform and expansion. Social Security 2100 is on the less ambitious end of the spectrum, especially as it has recently been rewritten to keep Biden’s promise of not raising taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year. As such, the bill does little to address the solvency issue. The Social Security Expansion Act in the Senate is bolder and does more to address both equity and solvency—but few Democratic senators have cosponsored the bill, leaving it oceans away from the required votes….For all their differences, these bills in the aggregate show that Social Security is perfectly capable of providing a vehicle for progressive welfare reform: any of them would do wonders, most obviously for seniors and disabled workers. But all of us, too, would benefit from knowing that something like a livable income was headed our way at the tail end of a serpentine labor market that has almost completely stopped providing traditional pensions. Despite all this, the enormous energy in recent years around expanding Medicare and Medicaid has not been matched by attention to Social Security: the politics around it have languished.” Chappel has much more to say about the history of Social Security, the reasons for the current predicament and potential fixes in this political moment. read his article for more observations.

Rachael Russell shares an update on abortion polling and politics at ‘The Downballot” at Daily Kos. Among her observations: “So we’ve done a lot of polling on abortion, like a lot of other groups in the last year or two. We actually started back in September of 2021 when Texas enacted its crazy vigilante abortion bill for a six-week ban. And since then we’ve really been tracking pretty consistently around abortion rights and access and perception of those, how there has been a steep increase in Americans feeling like the right is at risk in their own state, and nationally….We have consistently found that Americans support access to abortion, and don’t believe the government should take that decision from a patient seeking care. Most recently with the attacks on prescription abortion medication at the state level, we have been tracking support for keeping this medication legal and support for allowing patients to access this medication….We found that by, I believe it was a 37-point margin, Americans support allowing women to legally use prescription abortion medication to end an early abortion at home. This was, I believe around three in five, almost two in three Americans saying that they support this right. This included independents, Democrats and very narrowly Republicans are split, though Republican women have also said that they support this access to abortion medication by a 10-point margin. So we’ve tested some messages to see what Americans view as the most convincing reason to support or to keep abortion medication legal, and we found the most successful message is to focus on its safety and effective record for over 20 years, and being FDA-approved as well as being able to be used as lifesaving treatment for miscarriages….I believe it’s seven in 10 Americans found that those reasons were convincing to keep medication abortion legal. Americans overwhelmingly support the right to access abortion. They absolutely oppose national abortion bans, and this sort of backdoor national abortion ban is something that the American public, if it is to happen, is not going to be happy about. Along with our abortion tracking, we’ve also been tracking favorability of the Supreme Court. While this is a federal court, I know it’s different, but I think it’s really instilling a federal court as a political institution. If these federal courts as well as the Supreme Court continue to curtail access to abortion, we’ll continue to see a decline in their favorability and trust in the institution just generally.”

As part of an effort to keep up in some detail with Republican presidential machinations, I took a deeper look at Mike Pence’s 2024 strategy, such as it is, at New York:

It’s easy to dismiss former vice-president Mike Pence’s presidential ambitions as he moves closer to a declaration of candidacy for 2024. He is nationally famous for two contradictory things: his toadying conduct toward Donald Trump through nearly the entire administration and his courageous refusal to help steal the 2020 election on January 6 (after quite a bit of equivocation). With Trump running again and Florida governor Ron DeSantis looking likely to consolidate support among Republicans who want to move on from the 45th president for various reasons, it’s easy to see Pence fading from sight — like his friend and fellow Hoosier veep Dan Quayle, whose 2000 presidential bid has been justly forgotten.

In early polls, Pence has been battling newly announced candidate Nikki Haley for a distant third place in the 2024 GOP primary. And he has the unenviable combination of high name recognition and relatively low popularity among Republican voters, limiting his growth potential. The one thing Pence does possess that Haley and other potential rivals appear to lack is a strategy for a breakthrough. It begins in Iowa, and it harkens back to one of the more notable upset victories in recent GOP-presidential-contest history: Mike Huckabee’s win in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.

That year, Mitt Romney (then advertising himself as the “true conservative” candidate) was widely expected to win Iowa as a springboard to challenging early front-runners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Instead, he was trounced by the underfunded Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who skillfully campaigned among Iowa’s large conservative Evangelical population as one of their own (in muted contrast to Romney, the former LDS bishop). Huckabee subsequently ran out of gas (and money), but his Iowa performance touched off the demolition derby that eventually produced the McCain-Palin ticket. It’s no accident that Chip Saltsman, the man who ran that successful caucus campaign, has popped up in Pence’s orbit this year.

Pence isn’t the first Republican to follow the Huckabee blueprint. Rick Santorum tried a similar path in 2012, narrowly upsetting Romney in Iowa via a highly targeted appeal to conservative Evangelicals along the Pizza Ranch circuit of grassroots appearances. So did Ted Cruz in 2016. One of Cruz’s victims, ironically, was Huckabee, whose follow-up presidential candidacy was crushed between the big wheels of the Cruz and Trump campaigns — a fate that could await Pence if he stumbles even a little.

The key to the Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz victories is the fact (as of the last competitive caucuses in 2016) that close to two-thirds of Iowa Republican caucus-goers are self-identified born-again or Evangelical Christians — a much higher percentage than in New Hampshire (where in 2016, they were only 25 percent of Republican primary voters). Cruz, for example, beat Trump in Iowa by clobbering him among Evangelicals by a 34-22 margin.

Pence, of course, has been a Christian-right stalwart for most of his career and was a key validator for Trump in that segment of the GOP base. There’s even some anecdotal evidence that conservative Evangelical supporters of the joint Trump-Pence project have not joined the general MAGA anger at the faithful veep, as Christianity Today noted not long after January 6:

“For evangelicals who backed Trump, ‘I think that actually many within this community were more stung by Trump’s open criticism of Pence than by what Pence chose to do in his refraining from exercising a questionable power,’ said Scott Waller, politics professor at Biola University.”

The former veep’s proto-campaign activities lately have shown quite the preoccupation with religiously oriented audiences and pre- or anti-Trump conservatives. While Trump and others were preparing to whoop it up at this year’s CPAC gathering outside of Washington, DC, here’s what Pence was doing, according to the Associated Press:

“In explaining why Pence declined to attend this year, his aides cited a full schedule of events, including a Club for Growth donor summit; a trip to South Carolina, where he will speak at the evangelical Bob Jones University; a speech at the conservative Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan; and a Students for Life of America event in Florida.”

Pence will have the perfect testing ground for an Evangelicals-first strategy in Iowa, where slow and steady campaigning is not only effective but essential, thanks to the long buildup to Caucus Night and the dominance of activists among those who show up. But he will, obviously, have to deal with Trump and DeSantis — assuming the Florida governor runs. And while Pence has uniquely strong ties to Iowa’s Christian right, the entire 2024 field will almost certainly share his focus on culture-war issues — notably, attacks on “woke” public schools in the name of “parental rights” and demands for public subsidies for private (and often religious) schools, which are both major themes for Iowa Republicans this year. Pence has managed already to get to the right of his rivals on abortion, echoing the demands of anti-abortion organizations for a federal ban on all abortions as a 2024 litmus test (DeSantis has banned abortions after 15 weeks in Florida, while Trump has annoyed his anti-abortion allies by insisting on exceptions for rape and incest).

It would be smart to watch what some of Iowa’s key Christian-right leaders say and do about Pence’s candidacy. In particular, the man often regarded as Iowa “kingmaker” (or at least weather vane), Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader, has backed every recent caucus winner. If Pence is going to go anywhere, he needs a lot of Evangelical street cred.

Pence’s path to a viable candidacy runs through Iowa, but it is very narrow and full of potholes, and it’s not clear where he’ll go from there if he does better than expected. New Hampshire has always been rocky ground for candidates of the Christian right (George W. Bush lost there in 2000, Huckabee finished a poor third in 2008, Santorum was a distant fifth in 2012, and Cruz lost to Trump in 2016 by a three-to-one margin). And while the next state on the calendar, South Carolina, is full of Pence-friendly Evangelicals, it’s the base of one or, perhaps, two rivals (Haley and Tim Scott), and Trump has already locked up significant support among Republican leaders there.

At this point, Pence has little choice but to trudge ahead — placing one foot in front of the other and hoping his competitors either falter or damage each other irrevocably. It’s a turtle-versus-hare strategy at best. But probably one that a career plodder like Pence can execute well.

Yahoo senior editor Mike Berbernes has a good update on the Biden Administration’s sanctions against Russia. Some excerpts:

When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, the United States and its Western allies swiftly put in place an unprecedentedly harsh series of sanctions designed to isolate the Russian economy from the rest of the world and undercut Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to fund his war effort.

At the time, President Biden said the sanctions — which targeted everything from Russia’s fossil fuel industry to its financial sector and individuals with ties to the Kremlin — would “impose severe costs” on the Russian economy. At first, that appeared to be happening. Russia’s currency, the ruble, abruptly dropped in value, citizens swamped banks looking to withdraw cash and hundreds of international companies ended their operations in the country. Forecasts predicted that Russia’s economy would contract dramatically in the intervening months, with some economists saying it would collapse entirely.

But a year later, Russia is in much stronger shape than many had predicted. The ruble has regained its value. Russia’s oil exports, the lifeblood of its economy, have stayed steady as countries like China, India and Turkey have bought up supplies that used to go to Europe. The standard of living for everyday Russians hasn’t changed. Most important, Putin’s war machine has the funding to continue its assault on Ukraine.

Berbernes notes, however, that “Russia’s surprising ability to endure the West’s economic assault during the past year has fueled debate over whether the sanctions — which have caused a huge disruption to global markets, especially energy — are working at all.”  Further,

Optimists say disappointment about the impact of sanctions largely comes from misconceptions about what they’re designed to do. They argue that no level of economic punishment was ever going to win the war or lead to Putin’s being ousted from power. The real goal, many say, is to slowly chip away at Russia’s economic stability until it becomes increasingly difficult to fund the war and Russian citizens gradually start to feel the costs of the conflict.”

Many experts see signs that Russia is quickly exhausting the emergency measures it used to keep itself afloat, which could lead to a serious decline over the next year. Others say the sanctions have dramatically undercut Russia’s long-term economic prospects, which will steadily decrease Putin’s power on the global stage in the coming years and decades.

But pessimists fear that Russia is well positioned to weather the sanctions for as long as it needs, thanks to its powerful trading partners, its ability to evade lax enforcement and the West’s reluctance to risk creating a spike in energy prices by aggressively targeting Russia’s oil and gas industries. There’s also danger, some argue, that the focus on sanctions might draw attention away from the most important thing Ukraine’s allies should be doing: pouring in huge amounts of military and financial support so the war can be won on the battlefield.

Berbernes then shares perspectives of ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’ about the future of the sanctions success, including:

“The confusion around the effectiveness of sanctions stems from a lack of clarity about their goals. … First, Western countries are trying to send a strong signal of resolve and unity to the Kremlin. Second, sanctioning states aim to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war. Third, Western democracies are betting that sanctions will slowly asphyxiate the Russian economy and in particular the country’s energy sector. When judged on the basis of these criteria, sanctions are clearly working.” — Agathe Demarais, Foreign Policy.

And,

“​​The most significant roadblock to sanctions being effective is the failure of Western governments to use their full diplomatic leverage to pressure many governments to cease trading with Russia or allow their banks and corporations to continue doing business in Russia. This failure continues to make life harder for Ukrainians as the war goes on.” — Frank Vogl, Inkstick

Putin may be betting on Biden losing the presidency next year, in which case there is a realistic chance that a Republican president will end or weaken the sanctions. Biden may be underestimating the ability of the Russian people and/or their military leaders to resist Putin’s invasion and also the importance of China and other countries support of Russia.

It’s impossible to measure the effectiveness of sanctions alone, since Zelensky and the Ukrainians are waging an amazing resistance to the Russians thus far. President Biden certainly knows that American voters don’t have the patience for indefinitely subsidizing the Ukrainian military. But Biden also has access to military, economic and political intelligence that no journalist has, and it could be that Putin is closer to collapse than we know, in which case Biden could come out of this in a stronger political position than ever.

If you have any creative ideas for your Democratic congressional rep, now would be a good time to give him/her a jingle at 202-224-3121 (works for all House members) and share them. As Michael Schnell reports at The Hill: “House Democrats are gathering in Baltimore for their annual issues conference this week to chart a path back to the majority in 2024.’ Dems will be “capitalizing on the legislative achievements they secured in the first two years of President Biden’s term, when they had the upper hand in the lower chamber. But success is far from certain as Republicans hammer Democrats on issues including rising costs and the southern border, and several high-profile and high-stakes battles loom this year….“All of us share the same goal,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said during Wednesday’s opening press conference, “and that is to safeguard the progress that we have made for the last two years, and to make sure that Democrats take the House again in 2024.”….Democrats’ dominance on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in the last Congress — controlling each chamber and the White House — propelled the caucus toward a number of legislative accomplishments that Biden signed into law….The party claimed victory with the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package and a $740 billion tax, climate and health bill — both of which were passed along party lines — in addition to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act and gun safety bill.” Not a bad showing, given the highly-polarized political climate in America. “Democrats have to flip at least five seats next November to retake control of the chamber, an undertaking that the caucus is already gaming out. Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on Wednesday that there are 18 Republican-held seats in districts that Biden won in 2020, calling the map “incredible opportunity.”

Every now and then I like to skewer headline writers for their myriad sins, unfairly ignoring the fact that most of them are pretty good. Occasionally, they produce gems, like “You probably won’t get any student loan relief, thanks to a GOP-controlled Supreme Court” over an article by by Ian Millhiser at Vox. It is a rare headline that allocates responsibility with such precision. Even the subtitle is good – “At the end of the day, the most important question in US law is which political party controls the Supreme Court.” The article also makes some good points, including “If you were hoping that your student loans would be forgiven under a program that President Joe Biden announced last summer, you should, unfortunately, make other plans….On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases, Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown, that ask the Court to strike down the student loan relief program. That program would provide $10,000 in relief to most borrowers who earned less than $125,000 a year during the pandemic, and $20,000 in relief to borrowers who received Pell Grants….The Brown case is laughably weak, and no justice appeared to believe that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear this case. But the Supreme Court only too needs to assert jurisdiction over one of these two cases to kill the loan relief program, and the Court appeared likely to split along party lines in the Nebraska case. Though there is an off chance that Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett might break from their fellow Republican appointees, all six of the GOP-appointed justices appeared inclined to kill the program.” Millhiser addresses some of the complexities at issue, then concludes, “Meanwhile, the Court’s Republican appointees seemed more concerned that giving too much power to a presidential administration is itself inherently dangerous, and thus the Court must create some extratextual limits on the administration’s power. Under this approach to the law, the ultimate decision whether to cancel student loans rests not with any elected official, but with the Court itself….And, with six Republican appointees and only three Democrats on the Court, that means that it is likely that no one will have their loans forgiven.” Student loan debtors take notice.

Some perceptive insights from “What Are The Most Vulnerable Senate Seats In 2024?” a FiveThirtyEight chat session: “geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): In the grand scheme of things, Tester’s decision is one of the most important of the cycle. If he hadn’t sought reelection, Democrats would have been cooked in Montana….Tester’s ability to outrun Montana’s red partisan lean is a critical part of this. Former President Donald Trump carried Montana by 16 percentage points in 2020, placing the state roughly 21 points to the right of the country as a whole. In that same election, a relatively popular Democratic governor (Steve Bullock) still lost 55 percent to 45 percent against GOP Sen. Steve Daines. But Tester has survived a presidential cycle before, defeating a strong opponent (Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg) in 2012, even while Mitt Romney was carrying the state by 14 points. The state may be a tad redder now than it was back then, but Tester makes this election a toss-up instead of probably a “Solid Republican” race.” That’s good for Dems’ Senate prospects, but Tester might also make a first-rate presidential candidate, should the need arise. “geoffrey.skelley: As for Slotkin, she seems like a solid candidate for Democrats. Having worked for the CIA and Defense Department before entering congressional politics, she’s got a background in national security that might appeal to more centrist voters. She’s also a very strong fundraiser. To that point, her Senate campaign brought in $1.2 million on its first day….She won’t necessarily make people on the left happy, but Michigan is a purplish state and Slotkin has won on purple turf three times now in varied environments: In 2018, she beat an incumbent in a very Democratic-leaning cycle; in 2020, she held onto her seat in a more neutral presidential year; and in 2022, she won reelection by a larger margin than ever before, even though that was a more favorable year for the GOP nationwide.”

Looking at the larger picture Nathaniel Rakich and Alex Samuels note: “alex: ….candidate quality on the Democratic side is so good. The Democrats in the toughest 2024 races are arguably among the party’s strongest. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia (assuming he runs for reelection), Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tester have all been battle-tested in their respective red states, and they’ve all overcome their states’ Republican leans — even in presidential years…..nrakich: Yeah, Alex, as you allude to, the Senate map is really bad for Democrats this cycle. They are defending eight seats in states with FiveThirtyEight partisan leansthat are redder than the nation as a whole. And as a reminder, they currently have just a 51-49 majority in the Senate (thanks to three independents who align with them), so they can afford to lose only one seat if Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris win reelection. (And if they don’t, Democrats can’t afford to lose any!)….alex: If Manchin runs for reelection, he would easily be the most endangered Democratic incumbent given that West Virginia went to Trump by nearly 40 points in 2020. When Manchin was on the ballot last, in 2018, he was able to convince Republicans to split their ticket — but I think that’ll be really hard for him next year since it’s a presidential cycle and the top of the ticket could influence his chances down-ballot. (For what it’s worth, reader, the last time he was on the ballot in a presidential year, in 2012, Manchin won by 24 points, while Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won the state by nearly 27. But partisan polarization has only gotten worse since then.)….geoffrey.skelley: ….Whereas Tester clearly outran the Democratic presidential ticket in 2012, Brown did about as well as President Barack Obama that year. And while Brown also won in 2018, he faced a very weak Republican opponent in then-Rep. Jim Renacci. So Brown may not be quite as much of an outperformer as some think…..alex: Brown is an interesting test case, Geoff, given that he’s the only Democrat to win a nonjudicial statewide race in Ohio since 2012. But between him, Tester and Manchin, I’d argue that Brown is in the best position given his populist street credand the fact that he’s found success working with Republicans while bucking conservative trends in his state.”….Color me skeptical, and I might regret saying this come next year, but I actually don’t think that the Democrats’ Senate outlook is that dire. If Manchin runs, their chances don’t look terrible; even without him, Democrats could hang on if Republicans struggle with candidate-quality issues again. Who knows.”

I’ve been watching Joe Biden skillfully trap Republicans into swearing off Social Security and Medicare cuts this year. Now he’s smoking them out on other head care programs, as I explained at New York:

President Biden has done a great job in preemptively going after Republican schemes to secure cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of a debt-limit deal. He has GOP lawmakers squabbling with one another and scrambling to take these ancient targets of conservative malice off the table.

But now Biden is amplifying his message about Republican bad intent to warn of threats to other key federal programs, the Washington Post reports:

“Today, during a trip to Virginia Beach, President Biden pivoted his attack on House Republicans as they remain in a standoff over raising the debt ceiling. Biden argued that spending cuts demanded by Republicans in exchange for raising the limit would do severe damage to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and Medicaid — two programs that Democrats have used to significantly expand health-care coverage. ‘Health care hangs in the balance,’ he said.

“On a stage surrounded by signs calling for ‘affordable health care,’ Biden pointed to the dozens of attempts Republicans have made to repeal the ACA. ‘If MAGA Republicans try to take away people’s health care by gutting Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act,’ the president said. ‘I will stop them.’”

The White House issued a statement challenging the House GOP to disclose its plans for Obamacare and Medicaid, the programs they incessantly if unsuccessfully went after for much of the Trump administration. The statement served as a reminder of what would have happened had any of the various GOP health-care plans known as Trumpcare — which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and turned Medicaid into a block grant run by the states — been enacted:

“More than 100 million people with pre-existing health conditions could lose critical protections … Up to 24 million people could lose protection against catastrophic medical bills … Tens of millions of people could be at risk of lifetime benefit caps … Millions of people could lose free preventive care … Over $1,000 average increase in medical debt for millions covered through Medicaid expansion.”

And the really big numbers will be repeated again and again:

“40 million people’s health insurance coverage (through Obamacare) would be at risk.

“An additional 69 million people with Medicaid could lose critical services or could even lose coverage altogether.”

These arguments were pretty effective in the fight to stop the repeal of Obamacare, and they haven’t gotten any weaker with time.

It’s not just going to be old folks on Social Security and Medicare who will be hearing often from the president and his surrogates as the debt-limit fight and the 2024 campaign proceed. It will be the many millions of people relying on Obamacare health-insurance regulations and subsidies and on Medicaid benefits (including the families of seniors receiving long-term nursing care through Medicaid). If Republicans play Whac-a-Mole by shifting their domestic-spending budget demands from the most popular programs to slightly less popular ones, it looks as if Biden and the Democrats will already be there warning, “Hands off!” It may or may not work over the short and the longer term, but it’s better than letting the GOP succeed with vague anti-spending promises that later turn into lethally specific cuts.

In one of his recent Washington Post columns, E. J. Dionne argued that “President Biden and the nation’s Democratic governors want to talk about jobs, incomes, child care, health care and who wields economic power. Republicans, led by many of their own governors, want the fight to be all about a packet of cultural issues connected to race, LGBTQ rights, the schools and religion — “woke fantasies,” in the shorthand of Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s response to Biden’s State of the Union address.”Further,

“There is a subtext to this debate: Leading figures in both parties have decided that the future of American politics rests in the hands of working-class voters. With the most affluent voters now largely sorted by ideology, the “working middle class” in the poll-tested phrase popular among politicians, will be getting a lot of love.”

Biden’s bet — and it’s a wager many successful Democratic governors made last year — is that Democrats can win back blue-collar voters. This means not just gaining ground among Whites without college degrees but also winning back Hispanic voters who have drifted toward the GOP, and boosting turnout among the Black working class.

Dionne says “Declining faith in government’s capacity to make a difference in their economic lives has pushed many working-class voters to cast ballots on cultural issues, some closely connected to race….And many Democrats argue that non-economic issues, particularly abortion rights, have been key to the party’s advances among suburban swing voters.”

“Non-economic issues” its a useful term,. especially for abortion rights, which is far more real to most voters than any of the other issues lumped in the sloppy “culture war” basket. It also highlights the importance of economic issues, which remain the Democrats’ best hope for electoral success.

Republicans are masters of the art of political distraction. It is essential for their political survival. They love talking about ‘critical race theory’ and ‘the transsexual agenda’ and making phony claims about duly-certified elections being a conspiracy against everyone who isn’t a self-identified liberal. Republicans hate talking about economic issues because they have nothing to offer in that all-important category, other than the lower taxes, which they end up giving to the already wealthy far more often than the ‘working middle class.’

Dionne makes a convincing case that Democrats should look to their Governors, who think of themselves as “the get-stuff-done caucus,” not without good reason. Republicans hold a House majority and Senate Democrats can’t get any traction anyway, thanks to the idiotic 60-vote requirement for cloture. But there are a very few states, Michigan being exhibit “A,” in which Democrats have the authority to pass popular legislation.

The Senate is paralyzed. Maybe Tim Ryan should be glad he isn’t stuck on that hampster wheel. It’s not a great place right now for Democrats who want to get stuff done. All that could change if Dems take back a House majority in ’24 and somehow hold their Senate majority, against the odds. Until then, it’s Governors, like Whitmer, backed by a Democratic legislative majority, who are in a position to shine.

Dionne quotes NY Governor Kathy Hochul, waxing nostalgically about FDR’s superpower, connecting with working-class voters. FDR was a unique rich guy, who actually cared about working people and it showed. JFK tried to mine that vein, before he was cut down, and LBJ actually delivered some meaningful reforms to help the ‘working middle class,’ before he got bogged down in Vietnam.

But maybe Democrats shouldn’t talk so much about their great leaders of the past, since it highlights their absence in the present. Intelligent voters know that there are no more Lincolns and FDRs, and that today’s situation is very different anyway. What hasn’t changed is the need for political leaders who, rather than get distracted by culture wars, stay focused on economic reforms that can help improve the lives of the ‘working middle-class’ and also support abortion rights. Therein lies the path to Democrats’ future success.

The following article excerpt by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Abundance Problem

Abundance means just what you think it means: more stuff, more growth, more opportunity, being able to easily afford life’s necessities with a lot left over. In short, nicer, genuinely comfortable lives for all.

That’s what voters, especially working-class voters, want. But that’s not what they have. Recent Echelon Insights data show more voters think owning a home in a safe neighborhood with good schools is “out of reach” for the average American family (47 percent) than believe that is “financially within reach” (41 percent). That net negative score of 6 points is matched by views on the feasibility of caring for an elderly family member. And views are even more negative on whether starting a small business in financially within reach (-14), saving up for retirement excluding Social Security (-21), sending a child to college (-28), dealing with a major illness (-33) and raising a child on one parent’s income (-34).

Other Echelon Insights data find just 35 percent of working-class (non-college) voters saying they “can comfortably afford” paying their mortgage or rent on their current household income “without having to cut back in other areas”. Only 30 percent of these voters say they can comfortably afford medical and prescription drug costs; on child care it is 4 percent; on a vacation, 20 percent; on going out to eat, 37 percent; on insurance, 29 percent; on transportation, 34 percent; on new clothes, 29 percent; on saving for retirement, 15 percent; and on placing money in an emergency fund, 21 percent.

Whatever that is, it ain’t abundance. Of course, some of this has to do with the baleful effects of high inflation. Over the last two years, workers’ wages have actually lost ground relative to inflation. This is particularly true for workers in the middle of the income distribution. Compared to a year ago, prices are up 28 percent for fuel oil, 27 percent for utility gas, 15 percent for transportation, 12 percent for electricity and 11 percent for groceries. While overall inflation has abated relative to the middle of last year, it clearly remains a large presence in workers’ lives.

In light of all this it is unsurprising that voters’ views on the economy and the effects of Biden administration policies are distinctly negative. In a recent CBS News poll 53 percent said Biden’s policies have made the economy worse, compared to 27 percent who say his policies have made it better. The analogous figures on “your own family’s finances” are 49 percent vs. 18 percent; on inflation, 57 percent vs. 22 percent; and on gas prices, 55 percent vs. 21 percent.

Recent Gallup data found half in the country saying they are financially worse off today than they were a year ago, the highest level since 2009 in the midst of the Great Recession. Among the working class, the level saying they are worse off than a year ago is even higher.

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In her article, “Why Are Republicans Going After ‘Wokeness’ Instead of Going After Biden?,” Amy Walter writes at The Cook Political Report: “What makes Americans angry also propels them out to vote. The key for political campaigns, however, is to make sure that the issue motivating their base isn’t also: a) getting the other side’s base super engaged; and/or b) turning off independent-leaning voters you need to win a general election….After the 2020 election, for example, many moderate Democrats blamed their losses at the House level on liberals’ over-emphasis on things like “defunding” the police and support for fewer restrictions on immigration. While those issues may have motivated younger voters and/or voters of color to show up to the polls for Democrats, they also turned off swing voters in battleground districts….In 2022, the abortion issue—normally a base motivator for the GOP—did more to turn out the Democratic base than to motivate an already engaged GOP one….For example, a post-election survey by the progressive group Navigator Research found that among those who “somewhat” disapproved of President Biden’s handling of the economy—13 percent of the electorate—voters backed Democrats over Republicans by a greater than two-to-one margin (net +36; 65 percent Democratic candidates to 29 percent Republican candidates)….I asked Bryan Bennett, the senior director of polling analytics at the Hub Project (the sponsor of the survey), for a profile of these somewhat disapprovers to try and figure out what may have caused them to vote for a Democratic candidate, even as they were “meh” on Biden….What they found was that these voters “pretty overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020 (net +40; 68 percent Biden to 28 percent Trump to 4 percent other) and had a more Democratic-leaning profile.” In other words, these are the types of voters who Democrats should be getting to vote for them….The Navigator survey found that the overall electorate picked inflation as the top issue (45 percent), with abortion and jobs tied for second place at 30 percent. However, among those “somewhat disapprovers,” abortion was their top issue at 41 percent, with inflation a close second at 37 percent. In other words, for the overall electorate, inflation was 15 points more important than abortion, while for ‘somewhat disapprovers’, abortion was four points more important than inflation.”

As regards transgender rights, “One of the biggest targets for “anti-woke” legislation is transgender issues and kids,” Walter continues. “According to the website Track Trans Legislation, 38 states have seen anti-trans bills proposed in 2023, including 107 bills that focus on health care restriction for youth and 75 bills that address school/curriculum issues….On its face, this is an issue that not only gets support from conservatives, but also finds acceptance across a more broad cross-section of the public. Washington Post columnist David Byler wrote that the public “has recently become less open to transgender rights” quoting surveys showing that “sixty percent of American adults reported last summer that they oppose including options other than ‘male’ and ‘female’ on government documents. Fifty-eight percent favor requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth. Forty-one percent say transgender individuals should be required to use the bathroom corresponding to their sex at birth (31 percent disagree and 28 percent don’t have a position). And Americans are roughly evenly split on whether public elementary schools should teach about gender identity.”….One of the reasons to talk this up, of course, is not simply to motivate the base, but to lure Democrats into a fight on terrain that is more challenging for them. Democrats would rather fight Republicans on issues where they have a noted advantage, like protecting Social Security and Medicare, than on things like gender identity where their coalition is divided….the Economist’s G. Elliot Morris noted that a recent Economist/YouGov poll found that while 58 percent of independents say “whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth,” almost 75 percent of independents also think there is “a little” or “a lot” of discrimination against transgender people in the US….The survey also found, Morris said, that “independents are generally opposed to things like puberty blockers for minors and transgender kids playing on sports teams, but also oppose banning books about trans youth.”….In other words, independent voters see a line between keeping kids safe and discriminating or targeting kids.”

From “The Five Day Workweek Is Dead” by Christian Paz at Vox: “And the pandemic has only intensified that push. Record numbers of Americans across economic sectors quit their jobs in what was eventually dubbed the Great Resignation. Whether it’s hourly retail workers frustrated with contingent schedules or more highly paid salaried employees tired of working 60-hour weeks, there is “a broader consensus now that our work should sustain us,” Deutsch said. “Our whole life should not be at the mercy of a job that does not allow us to thrive.”….More livable schedules have had success elsewhere in the world. Companies in Japan, New Zealand, and elsewhere have experimented with shorter workweeks in recent years, often reporting happier workers who are actually better at their jobs. But one of the largest and most high-profile recent experiments took place in Iceland, where local and federal authorities working with trade unions launched two trials of a shortened workweek, one in 2015 and one in 2017. In the trials, workers shifted from a 40-hour work week to 35 or 36 hours, with no cut to their pay. It wasn’t just office workers who participated — the trials included day care workers, police officers, care workers for people with disabilities, and people in a variety of other occupations….The results were impressive, according to a report on the trials published by Autonomy, a UK-based think tank that helped analyze them. Workers reported better work-life balance, lower stress, and greater well-being. “My older children know that we have shorter hours and they often say something like, ‘Is it Tuesday today, dad? Do you finish early today? Can I come home directly after school?’” one father said, according to the report. “And I might reply ‘Of course.’ We then go and do something — we have nice quality time.” Democrats would be wise to pay close attention to the movement for a shorter workweek. People want more time with their families, and for personal growth and development, and the shorter workweek is the key reform that can bring it to them.

You have probably read or heard about the daunting odds Democrats face in holding on to their U.S. Senate majority in 2024. In the House, however, Dems have better prospects, as Kyle Kondik writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “The overall battle for House control in 2024 starts as a Toss-up….Relatively similar numbers of Democratic and Republican seats start in the most competitive Toss-up and Leans categories, although Republicans start with a few more targets in large part because of the likelihood that they will benefit from redistricting in North Carolina and Ohio….Big blue states California and New York, where Republicans have made key gains over the past couple of cycles, loom large as Democrats plot a path back to the House majority….Sources on both sides of the aisle generally believe that the House playing field is not going to be that large. Part of it is that redistricting slightly reduced the number of truly competitive districts, and the North Carolina and Ohio maps could chip away at that number a little further. But Republicans also probably will not be casting as wide of a net as they did in 2022, as they came up empty in many districts where Biden did better than he did nationally. That includes arguably red-trending but still blue districts like the ones held by Reps. Frank Mrvan (D, IN-1), Henry Cuellar (D, TX-28), and Vicente Gonzalez (D, TX-34). Republicans were hoping that another turn of the realigning wheel in these places after Donald Trump made them more competitive in 2016 and/or 2020 would flip them red in 2022, but that didn’t happen. So Republicans may not push as hard in these districts as they did last time….Our overall ratings show 212 seats rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Republican, 201 rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Democratic, and 22 Toss-ups. Splitting the Toss-ups evenly, 11-11, would result in a net GOP gain of a single seat. Democrats need to net 5 seats to win the majority. Again, we think this is reflective of an overall Toss-up House race to start.”

One of the most important political tasks for Democrats is to expose phony “moderation” among Republican pols who have charmed the mainstream media into thinking they are alternatives to Trump and DeSantis. In that spirit, I listened to a key speech by Tim Scott and wrote about it at New York.

With initial curiosity and then growing dismay, I watched a video of Senator Tim Scott delivering what came across as a presidential campaign preview in Iowa this week (it was officially the politically convenient starting point for the Republican’s “Faith in America listening tour“). It’s hard to recall a more stridently asserted expression of belief that the route to national peace and unity requires the subjugation of one party by the other.

You wouldn’t know that from some of the media coverage of Scott’s speech. The Hill called it “an encouraging speech — a step back from the gloomy and distressed messaging other Republicans have focused on, centered on the Biden administration, early in the campaign.” CBS News reported that Scott “brought a message of ‘a new American sunrise,’ articulating a positive vision that sets him apart from some possible rivals who have focused more on the cultural divides in the nation.” That’s not at all what I heard. The Washington Post was closer to the truth in calling Scott’s speech a “combative presidential vision,” though the Post also brought up Scott’s past criticisms of Donald Trump and Republican racism, which decidedly did not make it into the remarks he delivered at Drake University in Des Moines.

Not to mince any words, the Scott speech was a relentlessly partisan screed accusing Joe Biden and “the left” of pursuing a “blueprint for ruining America.” Take out the references to Scott’s personal experiences and it could have been delivered by Trump or Ron DeSantis. The senator included just about every standard right-wing attack line. He talked about Democrats wanting to “replace law and order with fear and chaos”; about “indoctrinating kids with nonsense like CRT” while “trapping them in failed public schools”; about subjecting workers to “union bosses”; about liberals “persecuting Christians” and “empathizing with killers while prosecuting” anti-abortion protesters;” about Biden “keeping our minerals in the ground.” He attacked “woke corporations” and “politicians … getting communities hooked on the drug of victimhood” — presumably excluding the communities of conservative Christians whose sense of victimhood he encouraged. And he accused “liberals” of “suggesting” something I have never once heard in my many decades of following politics: that “people like my mama would have a dignified and better life than if I had not been born” (though yes, “liberals” might have suggested having a child was her decision to make, not a politician’s).

Throughout the speech Scott treated “Democrats” as synonymous with every marginal leftist opinion ever uttered (which “woke prosecutors” was he talking about in his attack on Democratic coddling of criminals? The one that San Francisco’s overwhelmingly Democratic voters tossed out of office?). And in the heart of the speech Scott asserted that Biden and his party had broken with “two and a half centuries” of consensus American values. He didn’t quite call Biden a traitor, but that was certainly the clear implication.

So what’s all this media talk about Scott exuding optimism and predicting an American “sunrise”? Is he positioning himself as a kind of Republican Barack Obama, calling on the country to unite across party and ideological lines? No: The “sunrise” business was a proclamation of what could happen if conservatives restored their control of the country, with a GOP presidential candidate carrying “49 states.” Maybe this was a sly reference to the Republican Party prioritizing electability in 2024, but it could just as plausibly be interpreted as a call for a one-party authoritarian state. At the very end of his remarks Scott made a vague reference to a hope that Americans could “again tolerate differences of opinion,” but that may have simply been an echo of his earlier attacks on Big Tech suppression of conservative voices. And in one of the few specific examples of the spectacular GOP future we can expect, Scott credited the Trump tax cuts with creating a virtual economic paradise — until the evil woke left began to implement its “blueprint for ruining America.”

Presumably, Tim Scott will keep spreading this “upbeat message” of partisan and ideological warfare as he tours the country in the coming weeks, like some sort of MAGA Johnny Appleseed. If people really listen, they may stop talking about him as the GOP’s antidote to the raw political passions of the recent past.

From Mike Lux’s  Executive Summary of  “A Strategy for Factory Towns,” a report by American Family Values:

Hard times, effective right-wing messaging, the demise of local news, and sometimes the Democratic Party itself have led to big changes in the voting and opinions of people living in small and midsized towns that have been most impacted by deindustrialization and increased Big Business power in the economy. But these Factory Towns voters are not lost causes to the Democratic Party, and we cannot afford to write them off. They comprise 48% of the voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, and if we continue to lose ground with them, the entire region will become more and more like Iowa and Missouri – tough states for the foreseeable future. However, if these counties start to move back toward the Democrats, that kind of progress could be the linchpin to building sustained Democratic majorities that can usher our country into a more progressive future.

This report is part of a continuing effort by American Family Voices to do on-the-ground research and data analysis to understand the thinking and motivation of working-class voters, and to recommend strategies that can begin to rebuild the Democratic Party’s and progressive movement’s historic connection to America’s working class.

The project focuses on voters in “Factory Town” counties in six key states: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These states were Ground Zero in 2016, breaking down the “Blue Wall” critical to Democratic victories. Joe Biden did just enough better in 2020 to help win back Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but these communities in all six states remain very tough for Democrats and will be among the most highly competitive counties for 2024.

Despite the challenges, this is a moment where Democrats have an opportunity to make more gains. Biden and the Democratic Congress have passed substantial legislation that can bring progressive change, all the way down to the community level, over the next two years. The president’s policies, background, and genuine affinity for these working-class communities make him an ideal leader for this effort.

This report combines data from our most recent polling, Facebook and digital analytics, and comparisons of county-by-county elections results in 2022 to the past decade of state election results. The report closes with recommendations on how Democrats and progressive issue advocates should move forward with Factory Towns voters and counties.

Here is the bottom line in our findings:

1. The presidential horse race numbers are very competitive in these counties, but Republicans are stronger in terms of the economic frame.

2. Voters have negative opinions of both parties: this presents both challenges and opportunities for Democrats. Voters in these counties tend to think Democrats lack an economic plan, but they see the GOP as the party of wealthy corporations and CEOs.

3. Populist economics and the Democratic economic policy agenda play very well in these counties. These voters respond best to an agenda focused on kitchen-table economic issues.

4. Contrary to conventional wisdom, populist economic messaging works much better than cultural war messaging. Our strongest Democratic message on the economy beats the Republican culture war message easily. The Republican economic message is a bigger threat to us.

5. Community building needs to be at the heart of our organizing strategy.

6. I recommend that Democrats and progressives make major investments in local field organizing and door-to-door, special events that build community, online community building, existing local media and progressive media targeted to these counties, and progressive organizations that make sure voters know how to benefit directly from the Biden policy initiatives of the last two years.

Read The Poll.