Andrew Prokop explains “Why Republicans are favored to win the Senate — and how Democrats could stop them” at Vox:

In the past decade, there have been 20 individual Senate elections where a seat ended up flipping to the other party. The vast majority of those races (16 of 20) had the same partisan outcome as either the presidential race that year or, in midterm years without a presidential contest, the most recent one. Senate races have been falling in line with the state’s presidential party preference. “Mismatched” senators, who represent a state their party’s presidential nominee lost, are becoming rarer.

From that perspective, Democrats have a pretty okay map in 2022. In the two most recent midterm cycles, they were badly exposed, with several incumbents in states the Republican presidential candidate just won. This year, they have none at all. (They do have three such seats coming up in 2024, which will be a major challenge, but that’s a problem for another time.) Meanwhile, there are two GOP-held seats in states Biden narrowly won, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, on the ballot.

But that’s likely too optimistic for Democrats. Another way to think about the map is that there are six true swing states with races this cycle. At least once in either 2016 or 2020, Trump either won or came quite close to winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire. Nevada, meanwhile, trended right relative to the country between 2016 and 2020, though Biden still won it….Senate seats in these states are in great danger of slipping out of Democrats’ grasp.

But while Senate race outcomes have become more correlated with national partisanship, individual candidates do frequently overperform or underperform the overall trend. Democrats’ Senate chances likely hinge on whether enough of their candidates can escape this partisan gravity, arguing either that they’re not just another Democrat, or that their opponent is a uniquely unfit Republican.

Prokop shares some indepth analysis of races in the six states, and provides this chart to illustrate Democratic hopes for picking up Senate seats:

History, as well as current polls, indicate that Democrats are facing an unusually tough combination of Biden’s lagging approvals numbers and a deteriorating party image. As Prokop writes, Democratic hopes require that “unique dynamics among candidates in individual races break in their favor.”

At Politico, Burgess Everett spotlights Senator Elizabeth Warren’s ideas for Democratic midterm election strategy in the next few months: ““We’ve got nearly 200 days. If we don’t deliver, if we don’t get up off our rear ends and make it happen, we’re in real trouble,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview in her office on Tuesday. “But if we do deliver, if we can get some tangible results that touch people’s lives, then we can go to the polls in November with our heads held high.”….She wrote a New York Times op-ed last week claiming Democrats are “headed toward big losses in the midterms” without delivering on their goals, sat for a lengthy Crooked Media podcast interview to push the party to make deals on issues it ran on in 2020, then did a rare three-network sweep on the Sunday shows….Warren is offering a prescription that’s in keeping with her policy-wonk identity during the 2020 primary. She wants anti-price gouging legislation and a ban on lawmaker stock trades on the Senate floor ASAP and quick work on a drug pricing and tax reform bill to wash away the bad taste of Build Back Better’s failure….she also wants President Joe Biden to cancel student loan debt, raise overtime pay and use executive actions to bring down drug prices. With the evenly divided Senate struggling to pass even a $10 billion coronavirus bill, it’s a tall order; still, Warren is pitching her revitalized agenda as a vital antidote to conservative framing of the election….She wants Democrats to put a bill allowing the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging responsible for costly consumer goods and “dare the Republicans to vote against it. A clean, simple bill….Let’s put it to the Republicans. Do they care about price gouging from the perspective of helping the consumers?”

“As we assess the Senate map right now, we do currently see the Republicans as favorites to take the majority,” Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman write at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “This is because, of the most competitive seats — the ones we call Toss-ups — Republicans are defending just 1 (Pennsylvania) and Democrats are defending 3 (Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada). And while we’re holding at a Toss-up rating in all of these races, there are some indications that the Republicans are better-positioned in several if not all of them.” Kondik and Coleman provide a map reflecting the latest trends in public opinion:

Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate race ratings

Robert Kuttner takes a more optimistic view of Democratic midterm prospects for the Senate at The American Prospect: “Conversely, several Democratic pickups seem possible, notably the open seat in Pennsylvania, which Biden carried in 2020, as well as in Wisconsin, another Biden state, and where far-right incumbent Ron Johnson is a lightning rod for Democratic turnout. Elsewhere, Republicans face a divisive primary in Ohio, where Democrats have a strong candidate in Tim Ryan. In the open seat in North Carolina, a competitive state with a Democratic governor, Democratic chances depend on the degree of voter suppression. In Missouri, Republican incumbent Roy Blunt barely won the seat in 2016. Blunt is retiring, and the leading contender for the Republican nomination is Eric Greitens, who resigned as governor after accusations of abuse by a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair….The most serious at-risk incumbent is Raphael Warnock of Georgia, because of the degree of that state’s voter suppression. In New Hampshire, however, Sen. Maggie Hassan got lucky when her strongest potential opponent, Gov. Chris Sununu, decided not to make the race. In Arizona and Nevada, both blue-trending states, vulnerable incumbents Mark Kelly and Catherine Cortez Masto could well hold their seats given decent mobilization.”

From “Our commitment to Ukraine will be tested. Americans must stay strong” by Washington Post columnist Dionne, Jr.: “While the widespread solidarity with a people under siege is a refreshing break from cynicism and division, it’s easy to fly a flag and swoon over a fluent and courageous leader. It’s harder to stick with a commitment that will entail spending billions of dollars on behalf of a faraway people….Inevitably, some share of Americans will express sentiments that always arise about engagements abroad, even when no U.S. troops are involved: Why are we sending money to Kyiv and Odessa instead of Kansas City and Omaha?….The question should be taken seriously, and leaders of both parties will have to join in answering it convincingly. Remember how bipartisan support for the Marshall Plan after World War II was critical to its success. We and our allies must keep faith with Ukraine, even if the cost is high. The price of Russian success in subjugating Ukraine would be even higher, not only to Ukrainians but also to democratic countries everywhere. Aggression cannot be rewarded….Progressives are wary of throwing money at the Pentagon. They rightly argue that advocates of high levels of military spending typically turn around and insist on stringency when it comes to domestic needs, especially those of the least advantaged. Conservatives are often wary of foreign aid. And when they back big defense budgets, they never seem willing to increase taxes to pay for what they say we need….But in this moment of emergency for democracy, we must put aside our disharmony….The truth is that the United States is wealthy enough to do right by both Kyiv and Kansas City — and standing up for Ukraine now is an investment in a more secure future. The cost of bolstering Ukraine today pales in comparison to the price of allowing Putin’s treacherous adventure to succeed.”

Ed Burmilla shares some creative ideas for “How Biden Can Save Democracy From the GOP” at The Nation.

Experience indicates that, with few exceptions, midterm election outcomes are reliably linked to the incumbent President’s approval rate. Noting that “Biden’s approval rating has plummeted among younger voters more than among any other group. Sanctimonious lectures about the obligation to Vote Blue No Matter Who seem unlikely to motivate young people to the polls,” Burmilla advises:

“Federally reschedule marijuana and expunge federal marijuana-related convictions. Pitch it to timid moderates as boosting tax revenue and freeing up police resources to deal with serious crimes, if you must. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service conservatively concluded that “the President cannot directly remove marijuana from control under federal controlled substances law, [but] he might order executive agencies to consider either altering the scheduling of marijuana or changing their enforcement approach.” Surely all the Ivy League brainpower that makes up modern Democratic administrations can construct a plausible case for doing even more than the CRS is willing to advise. This is low-hanging fruit; the House has passed a bill along these lines. Yet Biden remains coy. Younger voters and communities most directly affected by the woefully unequal ways “justice” is doled out in this country are overwhelmingly opposed to our antiquated federal drug laws. Democrats have no path to victory without those votes. This doesn’t even rise to the standard of a tough choice; it’s an easy call, and long overdue.”

Also, strengthening worker leverage in collective bargaining could help Biden’s image and the Democratic brand with all workers, including the young. As Burmilla writes,

“Keep pushing with the National Labor Relations Board. The recent organizing success in the service industry signals the direction of the wind among the younger, mostly non-college-educated voters we’ve heard so very much about Democrats’ struggling to woo. The NLRB just recently called for an end to employer-mandated anti-union sessions. Keep going. Do more than give Amazon warehouse workers a pat on the back for their organizing efforts. Redefine the Reagan-era Meyers Industries standard of “concerted activities” that gives workers the right under the National Labor Relations Act to “engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Interpretations of this vague phrase were narrowed to employers’ advantage in 2019; the current administration has the same powers today that the Trump NLRB had then. Close the numerous and embarrassingly obvious loopholes in Duty to Bargain, the fundamental concept that gives workers input into decisions made on their behalf by an employer. Currently, management can shutter a workplace and relocate it by fiat simply by claiming that work at the new location “varies significantly from the work performed at the former plant.” Upsetting the Chamber of Commerce by revising employer wish-list fodder like that is a risk worth taking today. Anti-labor sentiment exists in the electorate, but how many voters for whom that is a deal-breaker are not already voting Republican?”

In addition,

“Act on student debt. You’re tired of hearing it. You’ve heard all the arguments. A president staring down a 34 percent youth approval rating needs to suck it up and do it already. We are creeping toward de facto loan forgiveness anyway with the repeatedly extended deadlines for restarting federal student loan repayment. Even the person Trump put in charge of the issue calls for loan forgiveness, admitting that the overwhelming majority of student debt is never, ever being repaid and serves only to burden and discipline borrowers. And even the noted Marxist-Leninists at… Forbes note that Biden not only has the power to do this unilaterally but there are multiple ways he could do it. A choice between standing before young voters cajoling “C’mon, vote, man!” and “Look at what I just did for you, like I promised… Now it’s on you,” is no choice at all.”

Burmilla writes in his conclusion, “This isn’t guaranteed to work. But the strategy in which the threat is enormous and the response is timid is—historically, even logically—bound to fail. If the stakes are as high as we are regularly told, leaving bold options on the table makes no sense.”

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

Are Democrats Fiddling While Rome Burns?

That’s been more or less my point of view and that of a few others like David Shor. It’s a positive step though that more and more left-leaning analysts are coming to share that viewpoint. The latest is G. Elliott Morris, as expressed in a recent commentary on his substack newsletter.

“[M]any Democrats do not seem to be taking the prospect of being locked out of power for the short- to medium-term seriously enough. If Republicans win back the House in 2022, take back the White House in 2024, and defend a very favorable map in 2026, Democrats may not regain full control of the federal government until 2028 or 2030. To quote [Ross] Douthat: “The political landscape after 2024, however, might look more like liberalism’s depictions of its Trump-era plight.”…

I have to say [that progressives’ current strategy]…. sounds like more of the same strategy that got Democrats where they are today. That is not to say [their policies are] not the normatively or morally right thing to do. If I had my way, Democrats (including Joe Manchin) would immediately expand universal child care, pass a public option for government-subsidized health care, and dramatically radicalize their approach to climate policy. As a bonus, most of those things in isolation are popular with a majority of voters.

Instead, my argument is that this unified progressive agenda does nothing to bring back into the fold the conservative working-class voters — mainly white, but growing significantly more Latino recently — who have abandoned the Democrats and caused the structural disadvantages that are dragging them down today. The party needs a renewed identity as a pro-worker party, not one where coastal elites control the party line on policy and messaging. And it needs to be substantially more diverse in its approach to talking to voters in different areas of the country; messages that work in young, diverse urban cores do not work in educated white suburbs or shrinking exurbs.”

Ah but how to do that? That is what every Democrat should be thinking hard about instead of acting like they live in a different country than they do.

I ran across an important distinction between two meanings of a term we hear a lot, and wrote about it at New York:

In an examination of the many, many statements Republican politicians are making these days about allegedly improper election procedures or voter conduct, the Washington Post’s Philip Bump made a crucial distinction that often gets lost in all the rhetoric:

“Maybe there was rampant fraud, maybe there wasn’t. But everyone could agree that the election was rigged against Trump by the very elites he was trying to disempower.

“One of the earliest articulations of this approach came from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). He argued that the law expanding voting access in Pennsylvania was unconstitutional, implying that this gave Biden an unfair advantage. The law, passed by Republicans, had gotten to the state’s Supreme Court, with the chief justice saying that even if the law was invalid, the votes weren’t — a preview of how many similar allegations about ‘rigging’ would play out.”

In other words, you didn’t have to believe illegal conduct had occurred to claim that an election was “rigged.” Some Trump backers were using the term pretty much the same way Bernie Sanders supporters deployed it against Hillary Clinton and the Establishment Democrats behind her during the 2016 primaries: an unfair advantage baked into election laws and procedures, not a violation of them. A big difference, of course, is that Sanders supporters were alleging the system discouraged maximum voter participation, while MAGA folks allege the opposite: that pro-Democratic “elites” made it too easy for people to vote legally.

Trump’s inner circle, of course, has used “rigged” in an ambiguous way. Sometimes he and his 2020 campaign staff alleged (but never substantiated) actual lawbreaking, as in the wild November 19, 2020, presser when Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell promoted all sorts of sinister, even global, conspiracy theories. But other times Team Trump simply complained about the rules themselves rather than their violation. That was the idea behind all the litigation over extended deadlines for casting ballots by mail. There was too much legal voting by the wrong people.

As Bump notes, a lot of Republicans nestle their rhetoric into that sweet spot between complaints about illegal voting and complaints about politically inconvenient (and thus unfair!) voting. A recent reelection ad from Alabama Governor Kay Ivy is a classic. “The fake news, Big Tech, and blue-state liberals” stole the election from Trump by sending “absentee ballots to everyone and their brother” and allowing “corrupt curbside voting,” says Ivey. Does that mean she is claiming that those ballots were cast illegally? Or is it just that these practices make it too easy for Democrats to vote, which is unfair to Republicans? She doesn’t tell us, and Bump thinks that’s deliberate:

“Curbside voting is ‘corrupt’ because … why? Because of fraud? Or because it’s an expansion of access in more Democratic areas? That it could be perceived as either, of course, is the point. If expanding the vote in general is treated as dishonest or illegal, as above, then you can simply wave your hand at any tool for making voting easier as something to be avoided at all costs.”

A trio of nuggets mined from Charlie Cook’s “The Concrete Theory of Politics” at The Cook Political Report:

Cook writes that “like freshly poured concrete, the perceptions, impressions, and convictions of voters in a given election cycle are soft and somewhat malleable at first but gradually get harder and harder over time. With seven months until the general elections, Democrats will soon need a chisel to chip away at them.”

Put another way, Democratic campaigns should never count on voters being forgetful or forgiving. Positive accomplishments often have a short shelf-life in politics. But negative attitudes harden over time. I used to sometimes think, “Don’t worry about this or that particular screw-up – It’s along way until November.” Wrong. Voters do sometimes forgive and move on. But counting on it is a losing strategy.

Cook also writes, “This column has repeatedly argued that the political impact of inflation is far greater than of unemployment, or for that matter, interest rates or any other economic indicator. Since 1948, U.S. unemployment has averaged just under 6 percent, so let’s define a low unemployment rate as under 4 percent and a high rate as over 8 percent—a difference of about 4 percentage points. Yet when it comes to inflation, basically 100 percent of Americans are affected. One could say that inflation is 25 times more powerful than unemployment. While high interest rates hurt a lot of people—anyone with a credit card or who is borrowing money to buy a house or car—inflation still affects more people, and by a greater amount. That is why politicians ignore the threat of inflation at their own peril, particularly if they are perceived as having ignored, denied, or exacerbated it.”

Don’t even fantasize that the low unemployment rate or Biden’s adept handling of the Ukraine crisis is going to win any new votes in November. Voters are being hammered every day at the gas pump, supermarket and loan office. They need to blame someone. The party that occupies the white house and holds the House speakership and Senate majority leader’s office provides an awfully-convenient scapegoat.

In his third nugget, Cook notes, “Voters tell pollsters that they are mad at Democrats for not delivering on their promises. The reality was that the promises were never realistic and were never deliverable.”

To paraphrase a Cook nugget from another column, “You don’t bet the ranch on a pair of threes,” as Biden and Shumer did with their multi-tentacled social infrastructure delusions of grandeur. Pelosi actually had the votes. But 48 dependable Democratic Senators is not a working majority. True, this is a lot easier to say with hindsight. But Dems need to learn the lesson to avoid this booby trap in the future.

Instead, Dems would do well to emulate the post-it note a consultant friend used to put on her computer: “Underpromise, overdeliver.”

A frequently-heard Democratic lament goes something like “Jeez, how come Democrats get blamed for everything, while Republicans get away with murder?” Perhaps it’s because Republicans have a very limited vision – tax cuts and deregulation for the rich, deliverable promises made in closed-door meetings with lobbyists. They throw in a paltry tax cut for workers sometimes. But that’s the essence of their agenda, coupled with a disciplined echo chamber that effectively slimes Democrats as inflation-prone socialist spendthrifts who diss white working-class voters.

There is just not enough time between now and November for Dems to correct this toxic branding. That’s a multi-year project. But it’s not like a majority of voters are in love with Republicans. Dems may be able to reduce the damage in November with concerted, unrelenting attacks on specific Republicans for their financial ‘improprieties.’ Corruption is their genetic malady – it’s always there. And not just individual candidates. A fierce ad campaign should expressly target their party as well. It would have the virtue of being truthful.

As is often the case, I noticed a public opinion data point and riffed on it at New York:

In the midst of a meditation on “Bidenism,” Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. offered this provocative thought: “Ultimately, I wonder whether we have simply entered an era in which presidents are always going to be unpopular.”

It really is worth thinking about. Joe Biden had a brief period of relative popularity for the first few months of his presidency, but his job-approval rating went underwater last summer and seems to have stabilized in the low 40s. Donald Trump never reached 46 percent in his job-approval ratings, according to the FiveThirtyEight averages, and for the most part stayed about where Biden is today. Barack Obama struggled to stay popular even though he took office in 2008 with what looked like a strong popular mandate. According to Gallup (the best source for comparing presidential approval ratings over time), from March 2010 until March 2016, Obama’s approval rating was regularly below 50 percent, except for a brief season of relative popularity felicitously centered on the 2012 elections. His average Gallup approval rating was 47.9 percent, the lowest since Jimmy Carter’s presidency. George W. Bush’s average rating was just a bit higher at 49.7 percent, though that’s misleading; the insane spike in approval he got immediately after 9/11 (reaching 90 percent) skewed his numbers.

 In the 21st century, then, presidents have indeed not been very popular compared with their late-20th-century predecessors. Gallup averages show Bill Clinton at 55.1 percent, George H.W. Bush at 60.9 percent, and Ronald Reagan at 52.8 percent.

Why are presidents becoming more unpopular? Polarization is one obvious factor; partisans increasingly dislike opposing-party presidents regardless of who they are or what they actually do in office. But as Bacon points out, presidents like Biden (and Trump and, arguably, Obama and George W. Bush) also suffered from intraparty rifts:

“The parties are increasingly divided internally. So the wing of the party that lost the primary — for the Democrats today, that’s younger and more progressive voters — might never be fully satisfied with a president from the same party but opposite wing.”

There is a silver lining to that particular problem. Partisans who aren’t happy with their party’s president may still vote for their team in a midterm:

“Biden’s support has plunged among all demographic groups, including Democrats, Black voters and voters under 40. But those three groups in particular don’t include a lot of conservatives. It is possible that many voters who are lukewarm about Biden will ultimately still vote Democratic.”

And, for that matter, they may vote for Biden in 2024 if he runs again, especially if his opponent is Trump or some other MAGA demagogue like Ron DeSantis. Trump punched above his favorability numbers against the marginally less unpopular Hillary Clinton in 2016 and modestly overperformed his approval ratings in 2020.

But there’s another anchor dragging down presidential popularity: Self-identified independents have regularly disliked both Trump and Biden more than the public at large has. As long as they are (relatively speaking) disengaged from politics and mistrustful toward politicians, independents may rarely if ever find a president they can wholeheartedly favor, even if conditions in the country are sunny.

And if conditions are perceived as cloudy to stormy, as they are right now (despite low unemployment, high economic growth, and a world in which American troops are not — thus far — deeply entangled in a foreign war), no president is going to be surfing a wave of high approval. There may be, as Bacon notes, specific things about Biden that have disappointed some Democrats and a lot of independents while enraging Republicans. But in general, being unpopular could now just be a part of the job.

 

In his New York Times column, “With or Without Trump, the MAGA Movement Is the Future of the Republican Party,” Thomas B. Edsall writes that “The fissures in the Democratic Party are on display for all to see, since it is the party in power, but the divisions in the Republican Party and the conservative movement are deeper, wider and far more threatening.” Democrats hope the the fissures are threatening to the GOP’s future success. Edsall points out that Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in part because of an unusually large GOP field in 2016. Trump skillfully rallied immigrant-fearing and liberal-hating voters. He awakened this dormant, but large bloc, created for them a sense of community and threaded the Electoral College needle to win a victory with a popular vote loss. Edsall sees the primary fissure in the GOP as the gap between Trump’s ardent supporters, who fear immigrants and despise ‘wokeness’ and the more genteel corporate elites, who indulge woke policies and who have been bringing low-wage immigrants into the U.S. for decades. Edsall is surely right that the MAGA ‘movement’ is going to be around for the forseeable future, even though Trump’s personal future is much in question. But it’s doubtful that Trump supporters actually blame corporate Republicans more than they blame Democratic liberals for immigration problems. Maybe Democrats could benefit by more energetically publicizing the fact that Republicans (corporate leaders) have done more to increase immigration for decades, in order to drive wages down and profits up.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. argues at The Washington Post that it is “Attorney General Merrick Garland’s obligation to decide sooner rather than later whether the Justice Department’s own investigation and the Jan. 6 committee’s work justify an indictment of Donald Trump. If the evidence is there (and public comments from committee members suggest that the panel has it), Garland’s department must prosecute him….Worry about what might or might not look “political” is itself a political consideration that should not impede equal justice under the law. If a president is not above the law, a defeated former president isn’t, either.” Further, Dionne, writes, “The committee deserves praise for its painstaking thoroughness. But its decision not to hold a major public hearing this year until it finished investigative work has allowed people’s attention to drift away from the ongoing threat to our democracy….With the Jan. 6 committee expected to hold hearings soon — in May or early June — it is urgent that its members deliver a clear and compelling account of what Trump did and why it matters….Garland cannot allow an understandable uneasiness over prosecuting the incumbent president’s leading political opponent to compromise his obligation to enforce the law and protect U.S. institutions from violent coup efforts….It was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who said, in reference to Trump, that “former presidents are not immune from being held accountable.” The Jan. 6 committee should make Trump’s law-breaking clear. Garland should act. And McConnell should stand by his words.”

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik reports on  “House Ratings Changes: 11 Moves All in Favor of Repubicans,” and writes that “The bulk of these changes either move marginally competitive Republican-held seats to the Safe Republican category or move Democratic districts from Likely Democratic to the more competitive Leans Democratic column….Republicans remain strong favorites to win the House majority….If we had to guess, today, what Republicans would net in the House, we’d probably pick a number in the 20s. So that means our ratings are probably at least a little bit friendlier to Democrats than perhaps they should be. However, we do have several more seats rated Leans Democratic (15) compared to Leans Republican (8), which is one way of indicating how the playing field could grow. On the other hand, our ratings also reflect the possibility of a Democratic comeback in which they limit Republican advances.Still, don’t be surprised to see more House updates from us later this year in which all or nearly all of the changes are in favor of Republicans. It’s just that kind of cycle, at least for the time being….Our full House ratings are available here.”

Christian Paz makes the case that “Crime will affect the midterms, but not in the way you think” at Vox: “As political issues, crime and public safety carry a heavier cost in local elections, where policy is made and the voters most affected by and worried about crime are concentrated. The progressive-moderate tension within the Democratic Party is also more pronounced on this issue because many debates on policing and public safety are happening in municipalities dominated by Democrats. With growing discontent with Democratic governance in general, crime might just be one of a laundry list of Republican attacks, and not the decisive issue for control of Congress that many doomsayers are claiming it will be….As inflation, gas prices, rising interest rates, and housing affordability all sour the national mood, “it makes me believe it’s even less likely now that crime is going to be featured centrally in a lot of campaigns, because of how effectively Republicans are going to be able to use the inflation issue against Biden and Democratic members of Congress,” Dan Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told me….crime tends to be more of a motivator for conservative base voters. Swing voters don’t tend to live in cities and inner-ring suburbs where crime is a bigger problem. That geographic sorting leaves Democrats to fight among themselves — and face backlash from Democratic voters.”

At Politico, Jeff Greenfield gives George Orwell’s “Road to Wigan Pier” a fresh read, finds parts of it to be highly relevant to our recent experience in the U.S. and uses it as a springboard for some well-stated observations about the Democratic Party’s failure to rally the working-class. As Greenfield sets the stage:

“Why are we Democrats losing the working class? Why do they like our policies but vote for the party that comforts the comfortable? What’s wrong with our messaging? What’s wrong with our candidates?”….Odd as it may seem, a partial answer can be found in the works of a writer who never set foot in the United States and who has been dead for more than 70 years. When George Orwell traveled to the Depression-ravaged north of England in 1936, his intention was to chronicle the horrific conditions in the mines, the towns and the homes of the people who lived and worked there. (His account of the near starvation, the hellish conditions in the mines, the sights, sounds and smells of life are still riveting all these decades later).

“It is in the second half of his book, “The Road to Wigan Pier,” where Orwell deals with a broader question: If socialism is the way toward providing a fairer, more decent life for those with the least, why has it not succeeded politically? His answer — one that unsettled his Left Book Club’s publisher — was that there was a deep cultural chasm between the advocates of socialism and those they were seeking to persuade….“I am,” Orwell wrote, “making out a case for the sort of person who is in sympathy with the fundamental aims of Socialism … but who in practice always takes flight when Socialism is mentioned.

Nowhere is this ‘deep cultural chasm’ wider than in the gap between the language of workers and upper middle-class lefties:

“Orwell, himself a socialist, argues first that “Socialism in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the [relatively well-off] middle class.” In its language, it is formal, stilted, wholly distant from the language of ordinary citizens, spoken by people who are several rungs above their audience, and with no intention of giving up that status….“It is doubtful whether anything describable as proletarian literature now exists … but a good music hall comedian comes nearer to producing it than any Socialist writer I can think of.”

Might that help explain why George Bush II and Trump connected to white working-class voters better than did Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton? Bush II and Trump were arguably America’s worst presidents. But their language sounded more ‘real’ than that of their adversaries. True, Gore and Clinton won the overall popular vote. But their share of white working-class votes declined in relation to that of  previous Democratic presidential nominees.

Greenfield adds that “Democrats have not found a way to draw clear, convincing lines separating the most militant voices in their party from the beliefs of a large majority of their base. Consider Orwell’s argument that the language of the left is “wholly distant from the language of ordinary citizens.” Many of today’s Democrats seem intimidated by the preferred phrases of the week, even if few of them embrace or recognize such language. (A recent survey revealed that only 2 percent of Hispanics prefer the term “Latinx” to describe themselves.)” Greenfield writes further,

We saw how clearly the extremes can drag down the party after the disappointing results of the 2020 down-ballot elections, and again after last November’s Democratic loses in Virginia, Long Island and local races across the country. Most Democrats, including President Joe Biden, do not support defunding the police. But a failure to make that argument repeatedly, in the bluntest of terms, permitted that notion to take root. As House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn noted, “defunding the police” comes across a lot like the “burn, baby, burn!” chants of the 1960s riots. Most Democrats are not proponents of teaching critical race theory in public schools. But the broader argument that the United States is fundamentally a nation conceived in white supremacy, where skin color is the essential aspect of a citizen’s life, has in fact been on display in some of the redoubts of the left’s political power. It’s instructive that San Francisco Mayor London Breed helped lead the successful fight to recall three school board members who were pushing for the renaming of local schools named after, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Breed more recently declared a “state of emergency” in her city’s Tenderloin District where random acts of violence against property and people have become endemic.

In her blunt comments, Breed seemed to align herself with New York City Mayor Eric Adams who has promised a “crackdown” on lawlessness and a return to some of the policing tactics that former Mayor Bill de Blasio had rejected. (It’s an intriguing political possibility for Democrats that two of the voices most in sync with a more “working class” perspective on crime are the Black Mayors of two famously liberal cities.)

Greenfield notes “one of the more striking shifts within the Democratic Party: the loss of effective political figures that speak to working- and middle-class voters.” Also,

Democrats have another problem that Orwell might have recognized; its “messaging” is increasingly crafted by people who are too much like me: born and raised in the big city, product of an elite law school, a working life whose tools are words, ideas — not hammers and nails. To say that my friends, colleagues and I are distant from the life of “regular” Americans is a significant understatement.

Former Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has described the image of his party this way: “coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist — a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles. The problem isn’t the candidates we nominate. It’s the perception of the party we belong to.”

It is of course painfully obvious that in turning to Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes, voters are rewarding a party awash in hypocrisy that barely disguises its own elite roots and its own coddling of the privileged. It is, in fact, a measure of the Democrats’ failure that so many ordinary Americans embrace a figure whose father illicitly supplied the money that enabled his rise, who repeatedly imported undocumented immigrants to work on his properties, who reputedly stiffed those who worked for him, whose father’s doctor helped him evade the draft, and whose tax cuts flatly violated his campaign pledge to make the rich pay more.

Greenfield adds that “The economic core of Democrats’ arguments — a higher minimum wage, lower prescription drug costs, a better chance for college education, with programs paid for by higher taxes on the affluent and mega-rich — enjoy broad public support.” He concludes “But the danger to the left that Orwell described remains, as Democratic polling warns, “alarmingly potent.” An electorate where many find the party “preachy” and “judgmental” will falter on this side of the Atlantic now, just as it did thousands of miles away and decades ago.”

Read the rest of Greenfield’s Politico article.

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

In my latest at The Liberal Patriot, I look at Democratic prospects for the 2022 election, what, if anything, they can do to improve those prospects and what they need to learn from the likely election outcome.

“How bad will the 2022 election be for the Democrats? In all likelihood, quite bad. Biden’s approval rating is bad, his rating is worse on the most important issue, the economy, and it is truly terrible on high profile, contentious issues like crime and immigration. Democrats are behind on the generic Congressional ballot, despite the tendency of this measure to overestimate
Democratic strength. The results of special and off-cycle elections indicate a very pro-GOP electoral environment. And midterm elections are typically bad for the incumbent party anyway.

So there are not a lot of good signs here. In fact, hardly any. The prospect of a very serious wipeout does seem plausible. A case along these lines for the Senate was made by Simon Bazelon on Matt Yglesias’ substack newsletter. His approach was very simple. Estimate what the Democratic disadvantage on the Congressional ballot is likely to be at the election (-4.5) and compare that to Biden’s advantage in 2020 (+4.5). That suggests a 9 point pro-GOP shift in the national electoral environment which, applied across states would imply no Senate pickups for the Democrats from the Republicans and the loss of their on-cycle Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire Senate seats (and control of the Senate) to the GOP. The outlook for 2024 is even worse, implying that even good Democratic performance in the Presidential contest could still leave the Democrats with only about 42 Senate seats.

As for the House, variants of the same approach by Amy Walter and Henry Olsen suggest Democratic losses could reach 25-40 or so seats. That of course is much, much more than the Republicans need to flip control of the House.

What passes for optimism here can be gleaned from Alan Abramowitz’ 2022 election forecasting model, presented on Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz uses a very simple model, predicting House and Senate seat swings from generic Congressional polling and seat exposure in each body for the incumbent party. Walking in Bazelon’s estimate for the future Congressional ballot margin, Abramowitz’ model predicts a loss of around 23 House seats and little, and perhaps no change, in the Senate.

What can the Democrats do to avoid their apparent upper bound of losses and wind up closer to Abramowitz’ prediction? One approach it to emphasize the “roaring” economy with strong growth and historically low joblessness. The problem here is that inflation has eaten up workers’ wage gains from the hot economy so that real wages have actually gone down in the last year by 2.7 percent. And people just generally hate inflation and encounter it constantly in their daily lives. That and continued supply chain difficulties account for voters’ sour outlook on the economy. It is unlikely that Democrats can talk people out of these views by emphasizing something they already know (the job market is good!)”

Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot!