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.

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.