Every serious democratic strategist is aware of the systematic GOP attack that is now underway against the American system of government. It is being prosecuted at every level – from threats of violence against individual vote counters to new laws that give the GOP control over the entire process. 

Third Way has published a vivid, easy to read summary of the threat at the presidential level.¹
As they say:

This isn’t Rudy Giuliani and his clown car full of “lawyers” holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping…It’s not Sidney Powell threatening to “release the Kraken”…

This time the threat is coming from the core of the Republican Party. It is a systematic,
sophisticated, and serious plot to execute a coup. Their plan? To steal the 2024 presidential election – and it is well underway. 

Their plot has five distinct parts

1. Suppressing the Vote 
2. Installing Big Lie Vote Counters 
3. Threatening Election Officials
4. Seizing Legislative Control 
5. Sabotaging the Electoral College

Read the rest of the memo.

Erica Etelson, author of Beyond Contempt – How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide provides an extended analysis of this issue:

In “Who’s Soft on Russia? Meet the Republican Anti-Ukraine Caucus!,” William Saletan writes at The Bulwark: “Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the House of Representatives has voted on three measures specific to the war. The first vote, taken on March 2, was on a resolution that endorsed sanctions against Russia, reaffirmed Ukrainian sovereignty over territory seized by Russia, advocated military aid to Ukraine, and pledged to support the Ukrainian resistance. All six members of the progressive “Squad”—Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib—voted for the resolution. So did Rep. Barbara Lee, the Democrats’ foremost opponent of military spending. Not one Democrat voted against the resolution. But three Republicans did: Reps. Paul Gosar, Thomas Massie, and Matt Rosendale….On March 9, the House passed a bill to suspend oil and gas imports from Russia. Five of the seven Democratic leftists voted for the suspension. The two who voted against it—Bush and Omar—were joined by 15 Republicans who also voted no. In addition to Gosar and Massie, this time the list included Reps. Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Scott DesJarlais, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Glenn Grothman, Clay Higgins, Bill Posey, Chip Roy, and Tom Tiffany….On March 17, the House passed a bill to end favorable trade relations with Russia and its accomplice in the war, Belarus. Eight Republicans voted against the bill. Every Democrat, including the seven leftists, voted for it….The other side of the equation is the near-unanimity of support among Democrats, even from very progressive members, for standing up to Russia. Leftist Democrats generally oppose armed intervention, yet nearly all of them voted for sanctions against Russia and military aid for Ukraine….“We have to hold Putin accountable,” Pressley told her constituents at a town hall last week. Ocasio-Cortez, at her own town hall, applauded President Biden for refusing to be “walked over” by Putin. And in a progressive teleconference on the Ukraine crisis, Lee endorsed “security and military assistance” to the Ukrainians because “we’ve got to help them defend themselves.”….Many of the 21 House Republicans, however, don’t see it that way. They’ve swallowed a cocktail of isolationism, defeatism, partisan paranoia, and Russian disinformation.” No doubt nearly all of those 21 House seats are safe for Republicans. But maybe Putin’s horrifying war crimes can help defeat a couple of them — or taint the GOP ‘Brand.’

Could the Putinista ‘brand’ hurt the GOP’s image? Chris Cillizza reports at CNN Politics that “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created utter chaos in Eastern Europe. But it has clarified one thing in America: Vladimir Putin is a bad guy and Russia is a bad actor on the world stage….That story comes through loud and clear in recent polling from the Pew Research Center….More than 9 in 10 Americans (92%) said they have little or no confidence in Putin’s handling of world affairs, compared with 6% who said they had at least some confidence….In March, 70% of Americans called Russia an enemy….That clarity of public opinion on Russia and its motives should strengthen President Joe Biden’s hand as he seeks to deal with the crisis. The US is remarkably unified on that front — a rarity in such a deeply polarized environment….It also shines a particularly harsh light on the praise that former President Donald Trump and some of his allies lavished on Putin at the start of the conflict. There seems to be little appetite among the American public for people who see Putin in anything but a negative light.” Time is not on the side of Putin’s Republican defenders, since he has taken no steps to de-escalate the war against the Ukraine – amid mouting revelations of horrific atrocities.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. muses on the deepening partisan divisions in the U.S., and also notes an impressive contrast between America’s most heavily populated blue and red states:  “In his State of the State message last month, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, openly contrasted his state’s policies and health outcomes with those of three Republican-led states. He was especially pointed about the record in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged war on vaccine and mask mandates….“Our lockdowns, distressing as they were, saved lives,” Newsom said. “Our mask mandates saved lives. Your choices saved lives. California experienced far lower covid death rates than any other large state. Fewer than Texas, Ohio, fewer than Florida — 35 percent to be exact.”….Newsom spoke with pride about California’s liberal-leaning leadership, especially on climate issues. He repeatedly touted “the California Way” that rejected “exploiting division with performative politics and memes of the moment.” It was hard not to think that Newsom was laying out themes for a future presidential campaign.”

From “‘Horse race’ coverage of elections can harm voters, candidates and news outlets” by Denise-Marie Ordway at Journalist’s Resource: “When journalists covering elections focus primarily on who’s winning or losing instead of policy issues — what’s known as horse race reporting — voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffer, a growing body of research has found….In fact, policy issues accounted for 10% of the news coverage of the 2016 presidential election, according to an analysis Patterson did as part of a research series that looks at journalists’ work leading up to and during the election. The bulk of the reporting he examined concentrated on who was winning and losing and why….“The horserace has been the dominant theme of election news since the 1970s, when news organizations began to conduct their own election polls,” Patterson writes in his December 2016 working paper, “News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters.”“Since then, polls have proliferated to the point where well over a hundred separate polls — more than a new poll each day — were reported in major news outlets during the 2016 general election.”….Academic research finds that horse race reporting is linked to:

• Distrust in politicians.
• Distrust of news outlets.
• An uninformed electorate.
• Inaccurate reporting of opinion poll data.

Horse race journalism can also:

• Hurt female political candidates, who tend to focus on policy issues to build credibility.
• Give an advantage to novel and unusual candidates.
• Shortchange third-party candidates, who often are overlooked or ignored because their chances of winning are slim when compared with Republican and Democratic candidates.

From “Can Democrats Hold Georgia? The party did everything right to win the state in 2020—and the Republicans did everything wrong” by Bill Scher at The Washington Monthly. Scher’s article brings into sharper focus the Georgia 2021 upset that gave Democrats their thin Senate “majority.” As Scher writes,

In the preface of his new book, Flipped, the political reporter Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that in 2020 Georgia helped Democrats win back the White House and the Senate “with a formula that could serve as a template for the party in once bright-red territories elsewhere.”

That formula seemed counterintuitive to many Democrats accustomed to chasing swing voters. “Georgia Democrats mostly abandoned attempts to pose as moderate ‘Republican-lite’ figures and jettisoned all-out efforts to convert conservative voters with poll-tested talking points,” Bluestein writes. “Instead, leaders energized the party’s core constituencies—including many who rarely cast ballots—with policies that just a few years prior would have seemed unthinkable.”

….according to Bluestein, “old-guard Democrats insisted” that to get sufficient white support, “Democrats needed to run even harder to the middle.” But it was with the squarely progressive Ossoff and Warnock that Democrats essentially hit the 30-30 mark, with exit poll data showing each getting 29 percent of the white vote and the Black share of the electorate reaching 30 percent.

But does all credit go to the progressive platform and the Democrats’ complementary efforts to juice turnout among their base? Bluestein writes that the Democrats’ “hard work” was buoyed by “extraordinary fortune,” foreshadowing his account of the Republican circular firing squad that shot down rural conservative turnout, part of the reason why the Black share of the electorate was so high….The difference between the Democratic and Republican stories is that for the past few years, the Democrats effectively resolved their internal disputes, while Republicans found new ways to stick the shiv in each other.

….Abrams passed on the Senate while Ossoff and Warnock stepped up. And once they advanced to the runoff, their campaigns synergistically worked together. They had similarly progressive platforms that avoided far-left pitfalls that could have spooked the middle—neither embraced, for example, “Medicare for All” or “Defund the Police.”

….The Republican get-out-the-vote effort was similarly “staggering,” Bluestein writes. It was just undercut by Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the 2020 presidential election and denigrate the state’s Republican election officials. Bluestein notes that many of the approximately 750,000 Georgians who voted in the November general election but not in the January runoffs were in conservative rural areas. Some of the biggest declines were in areas where Trump spouted his nonsense at post-November rallies: Dalton and Valdosta. The president’s scorched-earth attacks on Kemp and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his declarations that the election had been a sham were bound to diminish turnout drives for Perdue and Loeffler.

As impressed as Bluestein is by what the Democrats accomplished, he ends the book on an uncertain note, pointing out that 2020’s turnout spikes cannot “be counted on without a global pandemic” encouraging easy absentee voting “and the polarizing presence of Trump on the ballot in 2022.” He concludes that we can’t yet determine “whether the suburban shift that had turned Republican bastions into Democratic territory was firm or a fluke.”

While Bluestein stops short of drawing definitive conclusions, Flipped does provide a road map. One, demographics aren’t quite destiny, but you sure want them moving in your direction. Two, run candidates who can energize base voters without alienating swing voters. Three, build a turnout operation to channel that energy. Four, stay united while Republicans squabble.

Will such a formula allow Democrats to flip other red states with significant Black populations? Not easily. For example, as Perry Bacon Jr. detailed for FiveThirtyEight, North Carolina doesn’t have quite as many African American voters as Georgia, and its pool of white non-college voters is particularly conservative on racial and social issues, making the 30-30 goal tricky to reach. But Stacey Abrams and the Georgia Democratic Party didn’t wait for the state’s demographic math to fall into place before building the necessary GOTV infrastructure. Flipped makes clear that flipping can take time and effort— and a little bit of unhinged stupidity from your opponents.

Democrats do need a thorough understaning of the pivotal Georgia flip of 2020-21, and Scher’s take on Greg Bluestein’s book brings it into a clearer perspective.

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

John Halpin makes an important point at The Liberal Patriot: most Americans aren’t particularly engaged by politics yet political parties must still figure our how to reach them. Hint: It’s probably not through your favorite political hobby horse.

“Here’s a suggestion for the two political parties: create a research and communications arm staffed only by people who don’t pay any attention to politics whatsoever and instead inhabit the sociological contexts most Americans occupy in terms of their families, workplaces, media consumption, and local peer groups. No fancy graduate school degrees required. No following Twitter feuds about people’s tone and issue priorities. No debates about Build Back Better or regime change or critical race theory or Trump’s stolen election fictions.

This new research arm could end up being the most valuable branch of party affairs because it is closer to the reality of vast numbers of Americans who couldn’t care less about politics and government.

As background for the new department, study the Pew Research Center’s excellent 2021 study on political typologies. This report presents more useful information about the public and the complex landscape of American political life than any ten “message” surveys around. Consider these important findings:

A scant 9 percent of Americans say they grew up in a family that talked a lot about politics at home. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans report not really discussing politics much if at all growing up. The reality facing the two parties is that most Americans are not socialized into politics in any meaningful manner.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot. Also relevant: Stealth Democracy by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse.

At Vox, Li Zhou answers a question many Democrats have been wondering about, “Can executive actions save Democrats in the midterms?” As Zhou writes, “In recent weeks, progressives have issued a dire warning for Democrats. If President Joe Biden doesn’t try to get more done via executive action, they argue, voters won’t turn out because they’ll feel like the party hasn’t delivered for them….“If the president does pursue and start to govern decisively using executive action and other tools at his disposal, I think we’re in the game,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told New York magazine in an interview this week. “But if we decide to just kind of sit back for the rest of the year and not change people’s lives — yeah, I do think we’re in trouble.”…In March, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) unveiled a slate of 55 executive actions they’ve recommended Biden take, including canceling student debt, changing rules around overtime pay so more workers are eligible for it, and reducing prescription drug prices.” Zhou opines, “When it comes to mobilization, progressives are correct. Democrats need to do more to energize their base after the party failed to pass the expansive social spending legislation and voting rights protections they promised to advance in 2020. Given their narrow majority in the Senate and the impasse they’ve faced there, it’s possible executive action might be the only route Democrats now have for certain policy changes.” However, “Whether executive action will be enough to stem their overall midterm losses, though, is unclear.” Zhou adds, “Executive actions could help rally many of the Democratic voters who’ve become disillusioned with the party’s leadership, though experts note that they’ll have to make sure these efforts don’t turn swing voters away. “Executive actions that relate to the economy historically have the potential to boost participation of the president’s base,” says the Brookings Institution’s Nicole Willcoxon.”

If you were wondering, “How Big Is the House Playing Field?,” Amy Walter has some answers at The Cook Political Report: “This week, Democratic and Republican campaign operations acknowledged that the House playing field is expanding. The NRCC added another 10 House districts to its already robust list of 72 Democratic-held targets. And on the Democratic side, the House Majority PAC announced it would be reserving nearly $102 million in advertising in a whopping 51 media markets for the fall campaign….Currently, RealClear Politics shows Republicans ahead by 3.6 points in the generic ballot tracker. If that holds up through Election Day, it will represent a 6.6 percent positive shift to Republicans from 2020 (Democrats won the national House vote by 3.1 points in 2020)….So, what would a 6.6 point shift to the right look like? At a very crude level, we could say that it would shift the 2020 vote margin in every CD, about 7 points more Republican. So, forample, a district that Biden carried 52 percent to 45 percent (+7) would become a jump ball (50-50) in 2022. Or, a better way to think of it is that any district that Biden carried by less than 7 points would be in danger of flipping to the GOP….The good news for Democrats is that (at this point) there are only 21 districts where Biden’s margin was fewer than seven points. Even if we expand that universe to include districts Biden carried by 8-10 points, that universe of potentially vulnerable Democratic-held seats expands only slightly….However, the good news for Republicans is that they currently hold eight of those 21 seats that Biden carried by less than seven points. In other words, it would make some of the most vulnerable GOP-held districts’s, like Rep. Don Bacon’s Omaha-based NE-02 (Biden +6) and Rep. Dave Schweikert’s Phoenix-based AZ-01(Biden +1.4), tougher for Democrats to pick off. But, these are “holds,” not flips, which lowers the ceiling for GOP gains….Another factor that may cap GOP gains is that Democrats don’t have to defend many Trump-won districts. Right now, Democrats represent only six districts (AZ-02, IA-03, WI-03, PA-08, ME-02, and OH-09) that Biden did not win. In 2018, Republicans were defending four times as many districts that Hillary Clinton had carried in the 2016 election.”

Sam Brodey writes that “Democrats are left to turn to that time-honored security blanket for the party in charge: pork projects” at The Daily Beast. “Thousands of so-called “earmarked” projects like these, scattered across hundreds of districts, were included in Congress’ $1.5 trillion annual spending bill that passed earlier this month. And Democrats believe they can spin this cash—which was a political liability not long ago—into a viable election backup plan….Earmarks—rebranded as “member-directed spending”—returned this year for the first time in over a decade, and they couldn’t have come at a better time for Democrats.’ Some House Democrats have been “advertising their earmark achievements as well, taking out Facebook ads, scheduling town halls with constituents, and appearing at countless ribbon-cuttings and huge check hand-outs. That could be just a preview of what’s to come for Democrats heading into the midterm season. Several party aides and operatives told The Daily Beast that lawmakers in challenging races should tout their earmark wins everywhere as often as possible….Martha McKenna, a Democratic strategist and campaign ad maker, said Democrats should “definitely” run on their earmarks—and, in general, should be “louder and more aggressive” in claiming credit for their local wins….“In a world where independent voters are turned off by partisan bickering, if we can cut through that and say, ‘This is a project your local Democrat got done and here’s the impact,’ that should be a message that cuts through,” McKenna said.”

Writing at The American Prospect, Jon Walker warns that “if Republicans win in 2022, Democrats are unlikely to win another trifecta for at least another decade, if not longer. In addition, if millions of people feel they have been burned by making the mistake of choosing to use the Democrats’ health care program, public opinion of the program could take a big hit. The ACA’s favorable rating has improved by five points since Democrats enhanced the subsidies, but remains at 58 percent, owing in part to implacable opposition from the right wing. Those numbers will likely rocket downward if the subsidy enhancements expire….On a separate track, previous pandemic relief measures included a “continuous coverage” option that gave states higher shares of Medicaid funding. Those changes end if the administration ends the public-health emergency created by COVID-19. The emergency could end as soon as this summer, according to published reports, which would instantly allow states to cull their Medicaid rolls and throw 12 million people, by one estimate, off public health insurance. Build Back Better would have stepped down the increased payments to states slowly, kept a small portion of them in place, and made it harder for states to disenroll lots of beneficiaries in one shot. But with Build Back Better dead, that’s gone too, imperiling millions of Medicaid patients, again just before the midterms….If Democrats miss the opportunity to permanently fix Medicaid and the ACA subsidies, it might not be possible to ever rebuild trust in the ACA or in the Democrats’ brand as the party of health care. It will be very hard to sell slowly building on the ACA if Democrats prove they can’t be trusted to ever do that.”

Like a lot of political and legal observers, I will be watching the U.S. Supreme Court closely in June or early July when it is expected to hand down a landmark decision on abortion. I wrote about how hard it is to anticipate the political fallout at New York:

As we await the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, generally regarded as the most serious threat to reproductive rights in 30 years, one big question is how the public will react to an outcome that significantly changes the legal status of abortion. With the two major political parties almost completely polarized on this issue, the reaction could have an immediate effect on the November midterm elections. Many Democrats think a decision overturning or significantly eroding Roe v. Wade might mobilize otherwise unenthusiastic pro-choice voters to show up at the polls (particularly the younger voters who often skip non-presidential elections). But many Republicans believe their own anti-abortion base might become eager to implement such a decision at the state level, boosting their midterm turnout as well.

A lot, of course, will depend on exactly what the Court majority does; a sweeping reversal of Roe would produce a different reaction than a more modest decision that makes it easier for states to enact abortion restrictions without completely eliminating a constitutional right to choose. But since the Mississippi law before the Supreme Court bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the Wall Street Journal has done some fresh polling on that kind of across-the-board restriction. It found that by a 48-43 margin, voters support a “15-week ban with exceptions for the health of the mother.”

So what exactly does this tell us? “Exceptions for the health of the mother” are extremely controversial among anti-abortion activists. They argue that doctors will exploit such a “loophole” to write a “permission slip” for virtually anyone seeking an abortion on “mental health” grounds, if nothing else. The distinctions between exceptions for the health of the mother versus exceptions only to save the mother’s life got a lot of attention during a 2008 presidential-candidate debate between Barack Obama and John McCain:

“McCain, in response to Obama’s stated support for health exceptions [to a late-term abortion ban], said that such exceptions have ‘been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything’ and made air quotes in reference to the ‘health’ of the woman when describing Obama’s ‘extreme pro-abortion position.’”

But health exceptions are very popular. According to Gallup, in 2011, 82 percent of poll respondents favored “physical health” exceptions to hypothetical abortion bans, and 61 percent favored specific “mental health” exceptions. That’s relevant since neither the Mississippi nor the Texas laws have “health of the mother,” or for that matter, “rape and incest” exceptions (those have strong popular support as well; an AP-NORC poll in June of 2021 found that 84 percent of adults, and even 74 percent of Republicans, favored rape-incest exceptions to any abortion ban). If the Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi law (much less the wildly more restrictive Texas law), you can assume opponents will emphasize the lack of exceptions while happy supporters will downplay them.

If the Court find a way to validate Mississippi’s law (or other 15-week bans) without going further, it’s unlikely that activists on either side of the abortion debate will draw much attention to the fact that 93 percent of abortions occur within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy by the CDC’s estimate. For reproductive-rights activists, that statistic might induce a bit of complacency about the immediate impact of a change in constitutional law. For anti-abortion activists, it would dramatize how far they have to go to reach their goal of eliminating all abortions.

It’s commonly said that Americans are “conflicted” or “confused” about their opinions on laws affecting legal abortion. One public-opinion expert, FiveThirtyEight’s Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, recently concluded that “many Americans just don’t like talking or thinking about abortion … They also don’t know a lot about the procedure or restrictions around it.” That may be the case for some people, but it’s also true, as Vox’s Sarah Kliff noted a number of years ago, that many people have deeply nuanced views that “[take] in all sorts of personal and circumstantial factors.” It’s not uncommon for people to oppose abortions on grounds of individual motivation (e.g., “convenience” or “recklessness about sex” that laws aren’t very good at addressing). At the same time, as public-opinion researcher Tresa Undem has reported, some abortion opponents want people seeking an abortion be treated with respect and given safe and affordable care:

“When it comes to ‘real life’ views on the issue — how people actually experience abortion — the numbers get even more intriguing. Among people who said abortion should only be legal in rare cases, 71 percent said they would give support to a close friend or family member who had an abortion, 69 percent said they want the experience of having an abortion to be nonjudgmental, 66 percent said they want the experience to be supportive, 64 percent want the experience to be affordable, and 59 percent want the experience to be without added burdens.”

“Yes, but —” could be a surprisingly common feeling about new abortion restrictions even among people who identify as “pro-life.”

The bottom line is that it is hard to predict how the public will react to the Dobbs decision. It will obviously depend on what exactly the Court does, along with what the majority signals could be coming in future decisions and the degree of alarm expressed in the inevitable dissents. But what may matter even more is how non-activists process the new landscape of abortion law and practice. They could surprise us all.

 

Ron Brownstein and others have offered important thoughts on potential 2022 turnout patterns, so I wrote about one of them at New York.

The 2008 presidential election introduced the idea of an “Obama Coalition” of young and non-white voters that would allegedly make Democrats increasingly unbeatable as demographics shifted in the U.S. It has not, of course, worked out that way. While Democrats have indeed won the popular vote in every subsequent presidential election since 2008, they haven’t approached Obama’s 7.2 percent popular-vote margin, and they came close to losing the Electoral College in 2012 and 2020, along with actually losing it in 2016. Meanwhile, Democrats have lost two of the three midterms since 2008. And things aren’t exactly looking sunny for 2022.

There are several reasons why predictions about Democrats’ increasing demographic invincibility haven’t panned out. One key problem, which became clear after the Democrats’ catastrophic 2010 midterms loss, is that they’ve aligned themselves with elements of the electorate least likely to turn out to vote in non-presidential elections. This “midterm falloff” problem with respect to young and non-white voters abated significantly in 2018, which helped to make it the rare good midterm for Democrats.

Then in 2020, a different problem for Democrats began to emerge: flagging performance among non-white voters, particularly the fast-growing Latino category. This trend has made Democrats more dependent than ever on young voters, who also are disproportionately people of color and/or multiracial.

Millennials and Gen-Zers together went for Biden by about 20 points in 2020 and were carried by Democrats about two-to-one in 2018. Though they aren’t identical, the two younger generational groups are more like each other than any of the older cohorts, as Ron Brownstein notes at CNN:

“Nearly half of Generation Z (currently defined as young people born between 1997 and 2012) are kids of color, more than one-third identify as secular without affiliation to any organized religion and a striking one-fifth in a recent Gallup survey identified as LGBTQ. Millennials (generally defined as those born between 1981 and 1996) don’t tilt quite so far toward change but are still far more diverse on each metric than older generations.”

Both groups are also much more likely than their predecessors to believe in a strong problem-solving government and in the urgency of challenges like climate change. They seem poised to eventually come to the rescue of Democrats as they replace the older, whiter, and more conservative cohorts that are literally beginning to die out, as Brownstein explains:

“The nonpartisan States of Change project … calculated that in 2016, millennials and their younger Generation Z counterparts accounted for a little less than one-third of eligible voters, far less than the nearly 45% represented by the baby boomers and older generations. By 2024, those numbers will more than flip: The group projects that millennials and Generation Z will account for nearly 45% of eligible voters, while baby boomers and older generations will shrink to about one-fourth. (Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980, stay constant at about one-fourth of the electorate throughout that period.)”

But these younger people will only save Democrats if they turn out to vote. And that seems unlikely in 2022, for two reasons. First, the strong across-the-board voter turnout in the 2018 midterm election appears to be an outlier; the election was basically a referendum on Donald Trump, whom younger voters really disliked. Second, while under-30 voters are not a ripe target for the Trump-era GOP, they aren’t very fond of Joe Biden, either. The president’s approval rating among 18- to 34-year-old voters according to CNN is currently 40 percent, quite low for such a pro-Democratic group. This makes robust youth turnout even more unlikely than it would have already been.

As Brownstein reports, under-30 turnout leapt from 13 percent in 2014 to 28 percent in 2018. And a study from Tufts University found that under-30 turnout also rose from 39 percent in 2016 to 50 percent in 2020. Without these surges, accompanied by a steady increase in the under-30 portion of the electorate, Republicans would almost certainly control Congress and Donald Trump would still be president.

Something closer to 2014 than to 2018 turnout among young voters is more likely in 2022, particularly given the restrictions on “convenience voting” (e.g., early voting by mail or in person) so many Republican-controlled state governments are enacting, which probably affect inexperienced voters more than others.

There are, however, some rays of midterm hope for Democrats. High levels of youth voting in 2018 and 2020 could help ensure that 2022 turnout won’t drop all the way back to 2014 levels, since past voting is correlated somewhat to future voting even in midterms. And one factor that boosted all sorts of Democratic turnout in 2018 — the bad policies, unsavory racism and sexism, and authoritarian contempt for democracy represented by Trump — isn’t entirely absent in 2022. This is one thing that the ex-president and his bitterest partisan opponents entirely agree on: the enormous desirability of a Trump-o-centric midterm election. Many Republicans, even those who love the man, privately wish he’d take a long vacation until mid-November. But he is almost biologically incapable of keeping a low profile.

Generational change in the electorate is more likely than ever to help Democrats, but not until 2024. What happens in the 2022 midterms is much iffier. Biden’s party needs some good real-world news between now and November, and if at all possible, an ever more reckless Trump restlessly preparing for 2024 with his usual mix of threats and self-aggrandizing lies.

Thomas B. Edsall’s NYT column, “What We Know About the Women Who Vote for Republicans and the Men Who Do Not” discusses a range of gender influenced attitudes related to partisanship, including “contradictory findings of a March 17-21 AP/NORC poll of 1,082 Americans on views of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” As Edsall writes:

In “Democrats take aim at Big Oil in lead up to midterms,” Zack Budryk reports at The Hill that “Democrats are looking to pin the blame on oil companies for high gas prices, potentially signaling an election-year goal of refocusing scrutiny on an issue that has dogged President Biden’s approval ratings….Two different House committee chairs have called for oil CEOs to testify on disparities between falling oil prices and consumer gas prices. While three companies rebuffed House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), several others are set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday….“While American families struggle to shoulder the burden of rising gas prices from Putin’s war on Ukraine, fossil fuel companies are not doing enough to relieve pain at the pump, instead lining their pockets with one hand while sitting on the other,” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and investigations subcommittee Chairwoman Dianna DeGette (D-Colo.) said in a statement Tuesday….A bicameral bill sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) would tax major oil companies on windfall profits and provide rebates to Americans from the proceeds….“What we’ve seen as a result of the Russian invasion is a lot of speculation and cartel behavior that has dramatically raised oil and gas prices,” Whitehouse said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “Note that the costs did not change, there has not been a similar spike in cost to match the spike in price. … This is a price increase of choice on the part of the big oil companies.”

In other oil and midterm politics news, Kevin Liptak reports “Biden considering releasing 1 million barrels of oil per day from strategic reserves” at CNN Politics. As Liptak writes, “President Joe Biden is weighing releasing a record amount of oil from US reserves as high gas prices persist. A plan being considered involves releasing around 1 million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the coming months, a person familiar with the deliberations says….The announcement could come as soon as Thursday, when Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks from the White House on gas prices….Biden earlier in the month announced a coordinated release of oil from the reserves in conjunction with other nations. He also released around 60 million barrels in November, which he said at the time was the largest release from the reserve in US history.” However, “Tapping the reserve — the stockpile of 600 million barrels of crude oil stored in underground salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas — generally has only a limited effect on gas prices because of how much oil can be released at a time, but would act as a political sign that Biden is continuing to confront the problem.” Liptak also reports that the governors of CA, GA and ME are pushing economic relief packages for gas consumers.

“Could Trump blow the midterms for the GOP?” Ryan Lizza, Rachel Bade and Eugene Daniels mull over the possibilities at Politico Playbook. Among their comments: “One of the few ways Republicans could potentially blow this electoral equivalent of a layup is if former President DONALD TRUMP suddenly returns to center court….Trump is not toxic for his party everywhere. Republicans did better than expected in House races in 2020 because of the high MAGA turnout Trump generated. But he’s deadly for the GOP in the decisive suburbs at the heart of 2022 politics. Recall how Virginia’s GLENN YOUNGKIN treated Trump like Voldemort, concerned that even uttering his name would repel potential supporters in NoVa….There is a debate among Democrats about whether there is any strategic value in making Trump the center of the election. The moderate Dems barely clinging to their seats insist they have no interest in talking about him. The make-2022-about-Trump faction insists that the only way to recreate the Dem surges of 2018 and 2020 is to recreate the Trump-saturated political environment of those years when right-leaning suburbanites flocked to the Dems….But that debate may be moot….This week’s convergence of 2020 election subversion news and wild Trump comments is a harbinger of things to come. The Jan. 6 committee’s major reports, when released this year, will force every candidate to discuss Trump and 2020. And as the midterms approach, Trump, who has big bets placed on dozens of candidates up and down ballots across America, will be a central player in campaigns everywhere, whether either party likes it or not.”

Some cogent observations from “The Media Is Not Ready for the Midterms” by Molly Jong-Fast at The Atlantic: “The Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, who has written extensively on this topic, has recommended the “truth sandwich”—the tactic by which a reporter properly quotes a lie by surrounding it with truth. Her advice for the media as the midterms approach? “The mainstream press (the reality-based press, to distinguish them from the right-wing press) should focus on what’s good for citizens and not the horse race aspect of the midterms, and they should call out lies clearly.” She added that she’d also like to see “more focus on voting rights and gerrymandering.”….When I reached out to Jon Allsop, the author of Columbia Journalism Review’s newsletter, his response was focused on the press not two-siding midterms stories: “Mainstream media should cover the midterms like they should cover any political story at the moment—by avoiding treating the two parties as equal and opposite ‘sides’ when they aren’t, especially when it comes to the preservation of U.S. democracy. I think that many reporters and editors have woken up to the Republican assault on democracy in recent years—and others didn’t need waking up in the first place—but good, urgent coverage of the threat still tends to get siloed away from the horse-race punditry, which still often seems to start from the premise that the track is even. We need to see more joined-up thinking here and that will require focus, which will be a particular challenge amid a news cycle dominated by war and with so many other important stories to cover.”….Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, told me that the media should “redraw the baseline for election-year conflict. Instead of just assuming it’s Democrats vs. Republicans in a familiar battle for control of government, start with a more urgent contest: those from both parties who still abide by the norms of American democracy vs. those who have demonstrated they do not—the Trump loyalists in the GOP, the Stop the Steal movement, the crazed conspiracy mongers, the Christian nationalists. Redirect the bulk of your reporting resources to this newer conflict, while keeping a careful eye on the ‘state of the race’ between the two parties.”….The idea that media should have a prodemocracy bias is a good one. It would help us focus on politicians straying from democratic norms, and highlight antidemocratic plays like disenfranchising voters.”

The following article excerpt by Stanley Greenberg, co-author of ‘It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!’  and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The American Prospect:

I was totally persuaded by William Galston and Elaine Kamarck’s 1989 study, The Politics of Evasion, when they wrote, “Too many Americans have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and inattentive in defense of their national security.” At the time, I too was tired of winning only one presidential election over two decades, and averaging 42 percent of the vote.

In their new report, The New Politics of Evasion, I share their analysis on many of the same problems that keep the Democratic Party “in the grip of myths that block progress toward victory.” Count me in as an ally when they write now that Democrats have taken “stances on fraught social issues … that repel a majority of Americans,” and have failed to defuse the oft-repeated contention that they want to “defund the police.” Count me in when they write that “social, cultural, and religious issues” are at least as real as “economic considerations” in determining how people vote. And they are right that imposing a “politics of identity” on Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans put Democrats out of touch with the priorities of these populations: ending the COVID crisis, providing affordable health care, and reopening schools, getting higher pay, and checking big corporate power.

I thank Galston and Kamarck for raising these issues. But unfortunately, you don’t get any further help from them on removing the blinders that keep you from seeing America.

(More Here)