As a big fan of boring process issues, I have been watching the DNC engineer a major change in the presidential primary calendar, and explained it at New York:

Amid wails of distress from Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic National Committee has formally ratified a change in the party’s 2024 presidential primary calendar. Since 1976, Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s primary were the opening events of the Democratic nominating process; in 2008 they were joined by Nevada’s caucuses in the third position and South Carolina’s primary in the fourth. Under the new calendar, Iowa is out of the early going; South Carolina will move ahead of New Hampshire; and Georgia and Michigan will be added to the early “window” of states allowed to hold primaries before March. The new order of states was recommended by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee in December after a push from the White House. The DNC will give Georgia and New Hampshire until June to come up with a plan for their primaries that complies with the new calendar; in both cases, the state Democratic Party needs cooperation from Republican lawmakers to execute the changes and may or may not succeed.

It’s important to understand that Republicans plan to stick with their old calendar, as they can.  Indeed, back in April 2022, the Republican National Committee voted to lock in the traditional early-state order (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada) for 2024. And whatever the national parties decide, it’s state legislatures and parties that determine when primaries happen.

Odds are high that Democrats from Iowa and New Hampshire will hold unsanctioned 2024 contests. This will generate a lot of drama, but it probably won’t matter in this presidential cycle, assuming President Biden runs for renomination without significant opposition. The DNC has said it will revisit the calendar before the 2028 races, but it may signal an intention to preserve this year’s changes by placing heavy sanctions on states that go rogue (e.g., barring them from having delegations at the convention or sanctioning candidates that participate in unauthorized caucuses or primaries).

If, instead, national Democrats conclude that the 2024 reshuffling was just Biden’s way of rewarding the state that saved his bacon in the 2020 primaries (South Carolina) while punishing the states in which he finished fourth (Iowa) and fifth (New Hampshire), and making it even harder for anyone to challenge him, then all bets could be off for 2028. But displacing South Carolina from its new perch at the top of the calendar won’t be easy even with Biden having retired: As those who fought for so many years to displace Iowa can tell you, people will fight to stay No. 1.

Some choice excerpts from the media regarding Biden’s State of the Union Speech:

In “Joe Biden Reveals His Superpower: Acting Like a Pretty Normal Person,” Ben Mathis-Lilley writes at Slate: “He worked the crowd; he injected the word “folks” everywhere he could; he got mad and fired up. In what was largely a departure from the norm, he also played to the Republicans in attendance, goading them into peeved responses that he could then meet with a confident camaraderie…It made for a better speech. The presence of actual human energy in its early moments gave weight to the softer tone Biden took when he turned, in the second half of the night, to address matters of life and death—police brutality, foreign proxy war, and assault rifle massacres among them; you know, the modern-America subjects. This, in turn, contrasted with the patriotic verve of the evening’s quintessentially Bidenian conclusion, the Last True Idealist material that he takes such visible pleasure in delivering….An arc, a shape, a structure—a real speech, by a real-seeming human! It might even be the kind of thing you remember, years from now. Biden is surely hoping it can carry him, at least, through 2024″

“Feisty, combative and energetic, Biden seemed to relish in drawing a contrast with a Republican Party he treated at times with gentle but needling condescension, Alexander Nazaryan writes in “Energetic and pugnacious, Biden makes his case to the nation” at Yahoo News: “Lots of luck in your senior year,” he told GOP membersseeking to repeal last year’s Inflation Reduction Act….Pointing to the gain of 12 million jobs and record-low 3.4% unemployment, Biden argued that the United States had prevailed at a time when many other countries continued to flounder….“And to my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don’t worry,” Biden said with evident delight. “I promised to be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.”

From “A populist Biden gave perhaps the best speech of his presidency” by Nicholas Kristoff at The New York Times: “A populist Biden gave perhaps the best speech of his presidency.Biden is most eloquent when he doesn’t try to be, when he’s the guy from a working-class family in Scranton, Pa., with a dad who bounced among jobs and struggled for paychecks but even more to retain his tattered dignity….That’s the populist Biden who delivered the State of the Union address, giving perhaps the best speech of his presidency….When Biden talks about giant companies failing to pay taxes or ripping off consumers with invisible fees or charging unconscionable sums for insulin, those are talking points that resonate everywhere….Biden’s populism won’t win Republican votes in the House, but they frame the partisan divide in an authentic way that advantages Democrats, and they remind us that America can’t succeed when so many Americans are falling behind.”

At The Atlantic, David Frum writes “How Biden Successfully Baited Congressional Republicans: The old man has learned some new tricks.” that “Partisanship, populism, and patriotism were his themes. The speech was strewn with traps carefully constructed to ensnare opponents. He opened with a tribute to bipartisanship, but the mechanics of his address were based on shrewd and unapologetic hyper-partisanship. He anticipated negative reactions in the chamber—and used them to reinforce his message….Obama came to national attention in 2004 with a speech about the essential political and cultural unity of the American people. Biden made a few nods to that notion, but he’s plainly not betting on it. Instead, he pushed Republicans on pain point after pain point. He mocked Republicans who voted against his infrastructure but still show up at the groundbreakings….Like a boxer trying to goad his antagonist into leaving open a vulnerable spot for a counterpunch, Biden’s plan was to invite Republicans to make dangerous mistakes. This was a speech not of lofty phrases but of cunning ploys; one not for the ages, but one that will reverberate long enough to make a difference in November 2024.”

Tal Axelrod reports at ABC News that Biden cited an “Unemployment rate at 3.4%, a 50-year low. Near record unemployment for Black and Hispanic workers,” he said. “We’ve already created, with your help, 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years.”….Biden went on to boast of 300 bipartisan laws that he signed, maintaining that more could be on the way — if the House, under new GOP management, would work with him….”To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together and find consensus on important things in this new Congress,” he said. “The people sent us a clear message: Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere.”….”The idea that in 2020, 55 of the largest companies in America, the Fortune 500, made $40 billion in profits and paid zero in federal income taxes? Folks, simply not fair. But now, because of the law I signed, billion-dollar companies have to pay a minimum of 15%. God love them,” he said….”Under my plan, nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in taxes. Nobody. Not one penny. But let’s finish the job, there’s more to do,” he said. “No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter.”

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

Thanks to a spate of legislation passed at the end of the last Congress, combined with better-than-expected election results, the Democrats are feeling optimistic. That optimism very much extends to Biden himself. As he put it, when asked after the election what he might do differently in the next two years to change voters’ perceptions: “Nothing, because they’re just finding out what we’re doing. The more they know about what we’re doing, the more support there is.”

Since then, Biden has embarked on a road trip to help voters “know about what we’re doing”. He has visited Michigan, Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio and Baltimore, Maryland, touting the job-creating wonders of three big bills his administration has passed: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; the Chips and Science Act (semiconductors) and the Inflation Reduction Act (climate). Moreover, in a play for the working-class vote, he has been at pains to emphasise the blue-collar benefits of these bills: “The vast majority of [the] jobs … that we’re going to create don’t require a college degree.”

This week marks two years on the job for Biden and his administration, the halfway point of his presidential term. As he scrambles to limit the fall-out from the discovery of classified documents at his home, now seems an appropriate time to assess whether the Democrats’ early optimism was justified and whether Biden’s presumed strategy for the next two years is likely to work.

There are reasons for scepticism, the most obvious being the problem of the cultural Left, which cheerful propaganda about blue-collar jobs fails to address. The cultural Left has managed to associate the Democratic Party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech, race and gender that are far removed from those of the median voter. This represents a victory for the cultural Left, but has proved an electoral liability for the party as a whole.

From time to time, senior Democratic politicians attempt to dissociate themselves from unpopular ideas such as defunding the police, yet progressive voices within the party are still more deferred to than opposed. They are further amplified by Democratic-leaning media and non-profits, as well as within the party infrastructure itself. In an era when a party’s national brand increasingly defines state and even local electoral contests, Democratic candidates have a very hard time shaking these associations.

Biden clearly intends to do very little, if not “nothing”, about this problem. His administration is much happier talking about gun control than actually getting criminals off the streets and into jail. The burgeoning backlash against ideological curricula in schools, the undermining of academic achievement standards, the introduction of mandatory, politically-approved vocabulary, the absurdities of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programmes and the excesses of “gender-affirming care” are uniformly characterised by his party as nothing more than “hateful” bigotry rather than serious concerns. The out-of-control southern border, which is experiencing historically unprecedented levels of illegal immigration, has finally provoked an administration response, but its complicated mix of looser and tighter restrictions seems likely only to muddle things further, while provoking howls of outrage from allies in the influential immigrant advocacy community.

Peeking beneath the hood of the Democrats’ relatively good 2022 election results, it’s easy to see how this problem is likely to undermine their prospects in 2024 and put a ceiling on their longer-term political support. Consider the following: the Democrats lost the nationwide popular vote by 3 points (48-51) in 2022, along with control of the House; they lost the overall working-class (non-college) vote by 13 points, down 9 points from 2020; Hispanic support declined 11 points and black support declined 14 points. The Democrats did, however, clean up among white college graduate women in competitive House districts, carrying them by 34 points.

This sounds more like a stalemate, at best, rather than a surging Democratic Party. And a stalemate that was above all based on distaste for nutty Republicans rather than love for what Democrats have done or stand for. As several studies have shown, Trump-endorsed, Maga-ish candidates managed to wipe out a good chunk of the expected swing toward Republicans, paying a penalty of about 5 points in their support levels relative to more conventional Republicans. On the other hand, Democrats went into the election with double-digit disadvantages on immigration and the border (-24), reducing crime (-20), focusing enough on the economy (-20), valuing hard work (-15) and being patriotic (-10). Another pre-election survey by Stanley Greenberg found that voters’ top worries if Democrats won full control of government were “crime and homelessness out of control in cities and police coming under attack”, followed by “the southern border being open to immigrants”. As Greenberg noted: many Democrats “assumed that battling long-standing racial inequities would be [minority voters’] top priority. But that assumption becomes indefensibly elitist when it turns out these voters were much more focused on the economy, corporate power, and crime…” These voters, he added, cared more about soaring crime rates than the rise in police abuse, “yet Democrats throughout 2021 focused almost exclusively on the latter”.

Read more…

From “‘Go on offense’: Inside Democrats’ strategy to try to undercut GOP investigations and protect Biden” By Lauren Fox, Alayna Treen and Jeremy Herb AT CNN Politics: “Congressional Democrats are betting that a coordinated offense is their best defense against the coming Republican investigative onslaught….Democrats on Capitol Hill, at the White House, in agencies and in outside political groups are gearing up to do battle with the Republican committee chairs probing all corners of the Biden administration as well as the Biden family’s financial dealings….The significant effort at the outset is a sign of the danger the GOP investigations and their subpoena power pose to Biden’s political prospects heading into his reelection. The stakes of knocking down the GOP probes have only grown over the past month as Biden is now grappling with a special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents found at his private residence and office….Even before the first subpoena or hearing, Democrats have enlisted polling firms and focus groups to try and undercut the coming investigations and protect Biden with the 2024 campaign approaching….Their plans include launching sustained attacks against the two Republicans expected to lead the most aggressive probes: Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is also leading the new so-called weaponization of government subcommittee with a wide investigative mandate. Meanwhile, outside groups are planning to bring the fight local and visit more than a dozen Biden-leaning congressional districts to go after vulnerable Republicans involved in the investigations.”

In their article, “Democrats Hold Trifecta Power in Over a Dozen States. Will They Actually Use It? Republicans have used legislative majorities at the state level to undermine their opposition, but the Democratic Party has often failed to fight back. This is a chance to change that” at In These Times, Mark Engler and Paul Engler write: “On January 11, Michigan’s 148 state legislators took their seats to begin a new session, with Democrats enjoying a historic reversal of fortune. As recently as 2018, Republicans led all branches of state government. This situation has now flipped with Democrats controlling the state’s House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, and the State Senate for the first time in nearly 40 years….Last year’s elections presented other bright spots for progressives as well: Democrats also hold new trifectas in Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota. In total, the party now fully controls governments in 17 states, with combined populations that account for 140 million Americans — compared to the 137 million people living in the 22 states controlled by Republicans. This represents enormous progress from just over four years ago, when, prior to the 2018 midterm elections, 26 of the 34 states with trifectas were under Republican control….Democratic leaders in Michigan and beyond are now in a position to pursue a strong governing agenda. The question is: Will they take advantage of the opportunity? More specifically, will they use their power to enact changes that increase democratic participation and build progressive power for the long term?….With the new trifectas in place, Democrats have an opportunity to eschew a neoliberal vision of winning by moving to the center and instead pursue a strategy that creates the kind of grassroots power which can pay dividends for years to come. Such an approach would include repealing ​“right to work” laws and pursuing reforms that expand labor rights, support social movement organizing and bolster democratic participation….“We got ALL the gavels,” Michigan state Sen. Polehanki stated when Michiganders voted Democrats into power. ​“Get ready for some cha-cha-cha-changes here in Michigan.” Or as Ken Whittaker, executive director of the progressive group Michigan United, told Politico, ​“The people are on offense.”

“Any Democrat who thinks the party’s better-than-expected November midterm-election outcome was an affirmation of President Biden and the Democratic Congress policies and accomplishments will have a rude awakening reading the just-released NBC News poll,”  Charlie Cook writes at The Cook Political Report. “Conversely, any Republicans seeking support for their agenda would be equally hard-pressed to find it in the poll….Americans continue to be deeply pessimistic about how things are going in the country. Just 23 percent of adults nationwide say the country was headed in the right direction, while 71 percent say it is on the wrong track. Richard Wirthlin, President Reagan’s pollster, used to call this question “the Dow Jones indicator of American politics.” In eight of the last nine NBC News polls since October 2021, the wrong-track number has been at 70 percent or more, the longest period of sustained pessimism in the 34-year history of the poll (formerly the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll) since its inception in 1989….This pessimism should not be surprising as many people see themselves straining financially. While economic data show that the rate of inflation in the U.S. is slowing down, the public hasn’t yet felt it in their own lives. When asked how their family’s income is doing compared with the cost of living, just about 1 in 20 see their incomes rising faster than the cost of living, about a quarter (28 percent) feel they are staying even, and almost two-thirds (64 percent) feel that they are falling behind. In politics, given the choice between reality and perception, it is always wiser to go with perception….Given this, it should not be a surprise that Biden’s job-approval ratings are poor. Biden’s overall rating sits at 45 percent (18 percent strongly approve and 27 percent somewhat approve), while 50 percent disapprove (10 percent somewhat disapprove and 40 percent strongly disapprove).”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes, “Arguing over raising the debt limit is dumb. Arguing over how to make the economy grow for everyone is smart. President Biden hopes to use his State of the Union message on Tuesday to move the debate to the right question and make the case for the quiet revolution he has championed in our nation’s approach to future prosperity….Yes, Biden, the middle-of-the-road lover of compromise, consensus-building and comity, is a revolutionary — Ronald Reagan in reverse, if you will. He’s turning the nation away from the economic assumptions that took hold in the 1980s….The words we’ll hear on Tuesday about a move from “trickle-down” to “middle out” and “bottom up” economics are the sales pitch — but they are also a reasonably accurate description of policies that see robust government investments, worker rights and a green tech economy as the path to a new American century….Biden’s job Tuesday is to expose the contention that’s dominating the news right now as evasive shadow boxing — while bragging a bit about the record-breaking 12.1 million jobs created in the past two years. He can push Republicans (and the media) to talk not only about budget cuts and culture wars but also about whether the GOP’s agenda would do anything to solve immediate problems facing families or offer a plausible vision for long-term flourishing….The Biden blueprint, the outgoing director of the White House National Economic Council, Brian Deese, told me, involves “investing in high return areas of the economy like innovation and clean energy, reducing families’ costs in areas such as child care and elder care, and reducing the deficit by raising taxes on large corporations and the wealthiest.”

The long-awaited first Republican challenger to Donald Trump for 2024 is apparently arriving shortly, and I wrote about her at New York:

Ever since Donald Trump formally announced a 2024 presidential comeback bid last November, the big question has been when, exactly, one of the large number of potential Republican rivals would jump into the turbulent waters with him. There were credible reports that potential candidates were afraid to draw Trump’s concentrated fire. But now the Charleston Post & Courier reports that Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, will take the plunge on February 15.

The timing of the Haley announcement is odd, coming right after a show of force by Trump in South Carolina. At his January 28 event in Columbia, he demonstrated his support from the state’s Republican governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, senior U.S. senator, and three U.S. House members. Perhaps Haley is just playing catch-up or is concerned about preempting a rival presidential bid by the junior U.S. senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott (whom she appointed to the Senate). The Dispatch’s David Drucker believes she actually relishes the prospect of a one-on-one fight with Trump in the early going:

“What better way to distinguish herself versus Trump, DeSantis, and anyone else, than by becoming the second declared candidate in the primary? The contrast is stark. Republican voters can choose between a white, male, soon-to-be 77-year-old defeated former president who has led the GOP to three consecutive electoral disappointments, or a nonwhite woman in her early 50s, born of immigrant parents, with conservative bona fides on most critical issues that are unassailable.”

Being the first official Trump challenger will definitely provide priceless advertising for Haley’s on-paper credentials. In addition to the qualities Drucker mentions, Haley has checked the foreign-policy-qualifications box via her service at the U.N., something Ron DeSantis can’t match. She has shown excellent political instincts over her lengthy career (she got massive positive publicity for removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House grounds long after it had become a low-risk endeavor). Most of all, she has excelled in the essential Republican art of staying on good terms with Trump without looking like his toady.

Indeed, Haley’s odd relationship with Trump may soon be in a bright spotlight. She has offended him on multiple occasions, first by endorsing “L’il Marco” Rubio in 2016 while criticizing Trump, then by unsubtly letting it be known while serving in his administration that she was an independent player, then by harshly attacking his conduct on January 6. You can add to her sins against the 45th president that she is now breaking a promise to back him in 2024 if he ran. Yet he’s never gone medieval on her, and he seems strangely affectionate toward her even now, according to the Post & Courier:

“During his weekend campaign swing that included a stop at the S.C. Statehouse, Trump told national reporters he recently received a phone call from Haley. Trump said Haley told him ‘she’d like to consider’ a 2024 run of her own.

“’I talked to her for a little while. I said, “Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,'” Trump told reporters, adding that he would welcome the competition.

“’She called me and said she’d like to consider it, and I said you should do it.’

“Trump then reportedly told Haley, ‘Go by your heart if you want to run.’”

It’s possible this last comment from Trump should be translated as “Go ahead! Make my day!,” suggesting that he is prepared to tear her a new one in the weeks and months ahead. Or maybe he’s simply not that worried about Haley compared to the bigger threat posed by DeSantis.

So what kind of threat to either of these men is Haley ’24? Yes, she is the sort of candidate that might have been thought up by central casting. Originally, she was a politician from the hard-core, Jim DeMint-Mark Sanford wing of the South Carolina GOP who fit the Tea Party mood like a glove. But then she gradually made herself into a national-media icon of what post-Trump Republicanism might look and sound like. To conservatives of every hue, she’s unimpeachable on cultural issues, unobjectionable on foreign policy, and especially distinguished in the evergreen hobby of union-hating (she anticipated DeSantis’s attacks on perfidious corporations back in 2014 by telling potential investors in her state that they could take their “union jobs” elsewhere).

Haley’s ultimate problem as a presidential candidate is that she’s from a crucial early primary state. As Tom Harkin (whose presidential candidacy in 1992 took Iowa right off the table) could tell her, you don’t get much credit for winning your home state. But if she loses South Carolina, her candidacy will be dead as a mackerel.

Haley’s other big challenge is to overcome the perception that she’s really running for vice-president. She has been regularly featured on veep lists for Trump (even back in the 2020 cycle, when there were reports that the then-president wanted to dump Mike Pence in favor of her). And there’s not much question that Republicans need help with women voters, having placed a woman on their national ticket only once. And maybe that is her goal, or at least an acceptable consolation prize; despite years of being treated as a Republican star, Haley is only 51. But she’d better not wind up looking too weak in her home state, or the largely superficial image she has built as a political world-beater could vanish like a rare snowfall in the Carolina sun.

The following article is cross-posted from Simon Rosenberg’s blog at ndn.org:

Robert Reich’s “Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31.4tn debt” at The Guardian includes some message points Dems should find useful, including: “In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase….Meanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest….As the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052….The biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates….Hence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy….This means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs….So, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them….Both are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth….What should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.”

NYT columnist Thomas B. Edsall addresses a pivotal question facing the Democratic Party, “How Much Longer Can ‘Vote Blue No Matter Who!’ Last?” and quotes University of Mississippi political scientist Julie Wronski, who who sees Democrats as “a coalition of racial minorities (especially Blacks) and whites who are sympathetic to the inequities and challenges faced by minority groups in America. Racial identities and attitudes are the common thread that link wealthier, more educated whites with poorer minority constituencies….The Democrats’ biracial working-class coalition during the mid-20th century, in Wronski’s view, “was successful because racial issues were off the table.” Once those issues moved front and center, the coalition split: “Simply put, the parties are divided in terms of which portion of the working class they support — the white working class or the poorer minority communities.” But do Republicans really “support” the white working-class in any substantial way? Edsall continues, “the level of educational attainment is the line of demarcation between the two groups of white voters….By 2020, the white working class — defined by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis as “whites without four-year college degrees” — voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden, 67 to 32 percent, according to network exit polls. In the 2022 election, white working-class voters backed Republican House candidates at almost the same level, 66 to 32 percent.” The Republican’s ability to win 2/3 of the white workers who actually show up to vote is unchanged.

The backlash to the Supreme Court’s abolition of federal constitutional abortion rights is having some interesting new consequences, as I explained this week at New York:

For decades, the Republican National Committee has staked out a hard-core anti-abortion position. So now that a Republican-controlled Supreme Court has abolished the federal constitutional right to an abortion, you’d figure the RNC would take a moment to relish its victory. But you’d be wrong.

Instead, the RNC is lashing out at apostates. In response to 2022 Republican candidates avoiding the topic of abortion and to signs of strife in the party’s alliance with the anti-abortion movement, the RNC has passed a resolution scolding its members and urging them to keep the faith. It concludes with marching orders:

“WHEREAS, The Democratic Party and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the issue of abortion during the 2022 midterms, concealing their extremism while mischaracterizing and vilifying pro-life Republican candidates; and

“WHEREAS, Instead of fighting back and exposing Democratic extremism on abortion, many Republican candidates failed to remind Americans of our proud heritage of challenging slavery, segregation, and the forces eroding the family and the sanctity of human life, thereby allowing Democrats to define our longtime position; therefore, be it

“RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee urges all Republican pro-life candidates, consultants, and other national Republican Political Action Committees to remember this proud heritage, go on offense in the 2024 election cycle, and expose the Democrats’ extreme position of supporting abortion on-demand up until the moment of birth, paid for by the taxpayers, even supporting discriminatory abortions such as gender selection or when the child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome.”

In states where Republicans have the power to set abortion policy, the RNC doesn’t want any namby-pamby compromises allowing the majority of abortions to proceed (despite its characterization of Democrats as the real “extremists”):

“RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee urges Republican lawmakers in state legislatures and in Congress to pass the strongest pro-life legislation possible — such as laws that acknowledge the beating hearts and experiences of pain in the unborn — underscoring the new relics of barbarism the Democratic Party represents as we approach the 2024 cycle.”

If you aren’t familiar with the rhetorical stylings of the anti-abortion movement, the “relics of barbarism” business is an effort to tie legalized abortion to the slavery and polygamy condemned by the original Republicans of the 19th century (who would probably view today’s race-baiting GOP with a jaundiced eye). The “beating heart” reference is an endorsement of “heartbeat” bills banning abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detectable, roughly at six weeks of pregnancy or before many women even know they’re pregnant.

The resolution is really the announcement of a new hunt for RINOs on the topic of abortion. Some in the RNC worry that their politicians will become squishy on reproductive rights because their constituents (and many swing voters) don’t favor abortion bans and regret the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, as shown by 2022’s pro-choice winning streak on ballot measures and general Republican underperformance. This pushback by the RNC parallels the anti-abortion movement’s efforts to make extreme abortion positions (such as a national abortion ban) a litmus test in the 2024 Republican primaries, especially at the presidential level.

Will this counterattack stem the panicky retreat of Republican politicians who care more about winning elections and cutting taxes than “saving the babies,” as the anti-abortion activists would put it? I don’t know. But at this point, it’s another sign that the Dobbs decision wasn’t quite the clear-cut victory for the forced-birth lobby that it initially appeared to be.

 

Elena Schneider explains “How Democrats got sidetracked in their swing state of the future” at Politico, and writes:

“Republicans know that they have to win North Carolina in order to win a presidential race — there’s no other path for them. There are other paths for a Democrat to become president and not win North Carolina,” said [Roy] Cooper, who is now termed out of his governorship, in an interview with POLITICO.

Cooper argued that makes victories in places like Arizona and Pennsylvania in 2022 possible, as North Carolina soaks up resources that could go elsewhere. But Cooper said he’s still making the argument “to the president on down” that North Carolina should chart the top of their priority list in 2024.

However, Schneider notes,

Yet interviews with nearly a dozen North Carolina Democratic elected officials and strategists yielded a range of problems, including a weak in-state party infrastructure, a series of less-than-inspiring federal candidates and not enough investment from national Democratic groups. Unlike a number of other Sun Belt states, growth has not been driven by one major city but by a patchwork of regionalized metro areas, all with different media markets, and North Carolina’s urban and non-white populations have not grown at the same lightning speed as cities like Atlanta or Phoenix.

“I wouldn’t say it’s the next domino that will make it blue, on a presidential level, forever in the way we see in Virginia, Arizona and even Georgia, where the demographics and population changes are truly driving this,” said Corey Platt, a Democratic strategist who served as the Democratic Governors Association’s political director. “It’s a purple state that’s center-right on economics and a bit more center-left on social issues, and so it takes the right Democrat or the right Republican to win, and federally, we haven’t been able to thread that needle.”

And then there is the problem of money. Schneider quotes former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who said that electoral victory in NC frequently “comes down to who has more money, and the stats show it….Both parties can be accused of misreading North Carolina, but I would be shocked if Democrats leave it uncontested,” McCrory said, who lost a Senate GOP primary bid in 2022. “North Carolina can swing back and forth.” Schneider continues,

It all has big implications for 2024, as Cooper drives to make it a top priority for a Biden reelection and state Attorney General Josh Stein launches bid to succeed Cooper in what could be the most expensive gubernatorial race next cycle. A potential redrawn congressional map later this year could also pad the GOP’s slim edge in the battle for the House next year, now that the state Supreme Court leans conservative.

The size of North Carolina’s swings back and forth has shrunk, meanwhile, into a smaller and smaller pool of truly independent voters, making the days of backing President George W. Bush by 12 points — even with then-Sen. John Edwards on the Democratic ticket — and Democratic Gov. Mike Easley by 13 points in 2004 feel like ancient history. Mirroring national trends, North Carolina’s urban-rural divide reveals a stark partisan split — an intractable problem for Democrats, as the state boasts the second largest rural population, behind just Texas.

When Democrats fail to turn out their core base in urban corridors, Republicans’ rural edge becomes insurmountable. In 2022, Democrats struggled with just that, despite a history-making candidate on the ballot in Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court justice who is a Black woman. Instead, Democrats saw significant dropoff with young voters, urban voters and Black voters.

Statewide, African American turnout dropped by 6 points compared to 2018, another midterm year when there wasn’t a major statewide race atop the ticket. Voters over 60 made up a far larger share of the electorate  compared to millennials and Gen Z, while urban voters lagged behind the statewide turnout average, according to an analysis by Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College.

That turnout drop off, some Democrats argue, came down to cash. Republican outside groups significantly outspent their Democratic counterparts, giving now-Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) about a $50 million spending edge over Beasley. Republicans, meanwhile, note that Beasley outraised Budd in candidate cash by $24 million, which should’ve helped close some of that gap, since candidates get better rates on TV ads than outside groups.

“It’s almost impossible to overcome a $53 million outside spending gap that depresses votes for the Democratic candidate,” Cooper said. “I do think resources play a huge role and will play a huge role in 2024.”

It’s the “money is the mother’s milk of politics” argument, that has also been made to explain Democratic losses of strong, qualified candidates in senate races in Ohio and Florida in 2022. But NC, FL and OH have about half the percentage of eligible Black voters as Georgia, where Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock was re-elected. Yet racial demographics fail to explain why Democrats do so poorly in the state with the highest Black population percentage, Mississippi, where systemic black voter suppression is a Republican art form.

Schneider also writes that “Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel still believes that what works in North Carolina is to reach into that middle”:

“There’s a vast group of voters in the middle, and they don’t want people on the far right and they don’t want people on the far left,” said Nickel, who won an evenly divided congressional seat against former President Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Bo Hines. “Anyone who watched our race knows that we were running against extremism in both parties and on the issues that mattered to most folks in the middle.”

Looking forward, perhaps the winning Democratic formula for NC and other states looks something like: energized Black turnout +more money +smarter persuasion = Victory. There is substantial room for improvement in all three factors.