I got a strong sense of deja vu from a comment by Lara Trump this week, and fired off a warning at New York:

A dark specter hanging over the 2024 presidential election is the possibility that Donald Trump will again declare victory on Election Night based on deliberately false accusations about voting by mail. Lest we forget, that was the foundation for all of Trump’s efforts to reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, up to and including the January 6 insurrection: the idea that it was Democrats who “stole” the election by stuffing the ballot box with fabricated mail ballots counted after Election Day had ended (that wasn’t the only phony “fraud” allegation made by Team Trump, but it was the one made most often).

In the run-up to the Trump-Biden rematch, Republicans and the candidate himself have sent mixed signals about the legitimacy of voting by mail, mostly suggesting it’s inherently fraudulent yet encouraging MAGA voters to use it as a sort of fighting-fire-with-fire strategy. But the crucial if totally counterfactual idea that Democrats will look to see how many votes they need on Election Night and just make up enough mail ballots to reverse a Trump victory is being kept alive by Trump’s daughter-in-law, the new Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, in an interview on Fox News. Per Raw Story:

“Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump argued Sunday that ballots should not be counted after elections are over.

“’You cannot have ballots counted, Maria, after elections are over,’ Trump opined. ‘And right now, that is one of the many lawsuits we have out across this country to ensure that just that happens, that we have a free, fair, and transparent election.’

“’So in Nevada, as you pointed out, we are saying we want, on election day, that to be the last day that mail-in ballots can be counted,’ she added. ‘And we’ve been very successful in a lot of lawsuits.’”

Taken literally, this argument is absurd. An election isn’t “over” until the votes are counted. Trump’s 2020 victory claim was based on the candidate arbitrarily declaring the election “over,” conveniently, when he was momentarily ahead. Even in the era before widespread voting-by-mail, close elections often weren’t resolved until days or even weeks after Election Day, as anyone who remembers 2000 (or countless other elections with respect to downballot contests) can tell you. Slow counts are sometimes as attributable to safeguards against election fraud as to any sort of funny business.

Lara Trump’s reference to a lawsuit in Nevada, however, suggests a much narrower issue: Nevada is one of 17 states where mail ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they are received by election officials within a specified time. This practice has sometimes been demonized by Republicans seeking conspiracy-theory legitimization for election defeats (notably in 2018, when early GOP leads in California congressional races melted away once late mail ballots were counted). But it raises a question critics of voting-by-mail never seem to answer: When does voting happen in the first place? When a vote is cast or when it is tabulated? If it’s the former, why isn’t the act of filling out, sealing, and placing a ballot in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service as definitive an act of voting as marking a ballot in a polling booth? Arguably the postmark-rather-than-receipt deadline is fairer and more rational at a time (in 2024 as in 2020) when expedient delivery of mail by a troubled USPS is by no means assured.

Of the 17 postmark-deadline states, only two (Nevada plus North Carolina) are likely presidential battleground states, so it won’t be easy for Team Trump to pin an election defeat on that practice. But complaints about Election Day being extended by larcenous Democrats, however bogus, are part of the pall Republicans are trying to cast over the entire 2024 election. If Trump wins, our election system will retroactively become golden in MAGA-land, or perhaps we will be told Trump’s immense popularity will have overcome Democrat and Establishment efforts to count him out. If he loses, the election was “rigged” and patriots need to to un-rig by any means necessary.

We’ve been warned.

Opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall probes reasons why “The Happiness Gap Between Left and Right Isn’t Closing” at The New York Times and rolls out some nuggets, including: “There is a difference in the way the left and right react to frustration and grievance. Instead of despair, the contemporary right has responded with mounting anger, rejecting democratic institutions and norms….In a 2021 Vox article, “Trump and the Republican Revolt Against Democracy,” Zack Beauchamp described in detail the emergence of destructive and aggressive discontent among conservatives….Citing a wide range of polling data and academic studies, Beauchamp found:

• More than twice as many Republicans (39 percent) as Democrats (17 percent) believe that “if elected leaders won’t protect America, the people must act — even if that means violence.”

• Fifty-seven percent of Republicans consider Democrats to be “enemies” compared with 41 percent of Democrats who view Republicans as enemies.

• Among Republicans, support for “the use of force to defend our way of life,” as well as for the belief that “strong leaders bend rules” and that “sometimes you have to take the law in your own hands,” grows stronger in direct correlation with racial and ethnic hostility.

Trump himself has repeatedly warned of the potential for political violence. In January, he predicted bedlam if the criminal charges filed in federal and state courts against him damaged his presidential campaign….Before he was indicted in New York, Trump claimed there would be “potential death and destruction” if he were charged.” Edsall quotes scholars in the fields of psychology, sociology and public health to pinpoint many of the sources of liberal discontent. The lowest income voters, most of whom are Democrats also have some good economic reasons to be less happy than most Republicans.

“Six months before the most fateful election of our lifetimes, we are entering that moment in the campaign when model makers rush onstage hawking their presidential predictions,” Walter Shapiro writes at The New Republic. “And, no, we are not talking about hobbyists who put ships in a bottle or glue together plastic replicas of World War II fight planes. These model makers are election theorists from academia, economic forecasting firms, and polling websites who offer their presidential forecasts based on their proprietary formulas—many of which are blithefully unconcerned with the identities of the actual White House contenders…. To oversimplify a bit, these mathematical approaches to political soothsaying involve combining some variant of presidential approval ratings, economic growth numbers, the inflation rate, prior election returns, and an exclusive blend of herbs and spices to reveal who is going to win long before anyone votes….Almost nothing scares Democrats more than those ominous three words: “presidential approval rating.” But context is badly needed…. Gallup, which has been charting presidential popularity for more than 70 years, recently released a report showing that Joe Biden’s approval rating at the beginning of the fourth year of his presidency is lower than that of any elected president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. Even Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump—three incumbents who failed to retain the White House—had Biden beaten at this point in their respective presidencies.”

Shapiro continues, “On the surface, it looks dire since it is obvious that how voters rate a president’s job performance will play a major role in shaping their ballot choices….Until 15 years ago, approval ratings were volatile and presidents routinely polled well over 60 percent in Gallup surveys. In the wake of the Gulf War in early 1991, George H.W. Bush had a stunning approval rating of 89 percent. Two years later, Bush was a former guy. Bill Clinton’s approval rate hit 73 percent at the end of 1998 as he was being impeached. And in early 2004, as the Iraq War was fast becoming a quagmire, George W. Bush was still polling over 60 percent….But since the early months of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009, no incumbent has hit the 60 percent mark. There are many causes for the unprecedentedly sour mood in the electorate, including enhanced partisan passions. My own guess is that the Great Recession of 2008–2009 may have permanently upended voter trust in any president….Stunningly, Trump never once in his presidency broke the 50 percent mark in the Gallup numbers—he would still go on to win more than 74 million votes, the second-highest total of any presidential candidate….If you must brandish a historical precedent, I have one for you that did not show up on the Gallup roster of the nine elected presidents who polled better than Biden. The Gallup list did not include Harry Truman because of the technicality that he took office after the 1945 death of Franklin Roosevelt…. In April 1948, Truman limped home in the Gallup Poll with a dispiriting 36 percent approval rating. That, by the way, is lower than Biden’s current numbers. And as history junkies may recall, Truman pulled off the biggest upset in modern politics. Maybe it is time for Amtrak Joe to dust off the revered tradition of a whistle-stop tour of the Midwest.”

Some “economic confidence” notes from the Gallup poll: “With Americans less optimistic about the state of the U.S. economy than they have been in recent months and concern about inflation persisting, their confidence in President Joe Biden to recommend or do the right thing for the economy is among the lowest Gallup has measured for any president since 2001. But Biden is not alone in facing a skeptical public, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, and presumptive presidential nominee Republican Donald Trump garner confidence ratings below 50%….Forty-six percent of U.S. adults say they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence in Trump to do or recommend the right thing for the economy, while fewer say the same of Biden (38%), Powell (39%), and Democratic (38%) and Republican (36%) leaders in Congress….These findings are from Gallup’s Economy and Personal Finance poll, conducted April 1-22. During the poll’s field period, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest Consumer Price Index data showing that inflation remains stubbornly elevated, though nowhere near the 40-year highs seen in 2022….Americans’ confidence in these key leaders is driven by partisans’ differing views. Broad majorities of Republicans express confidence in the economic competence of Trump (86%), their party’s presumptive presidential nominee, and 82% of Democrats do the same of Biden….Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are confident in their own party’s congressional leaders (80% vs. 67%, respectively). Democrats (56%) are also more confident than Republicans (30%) in Powell’s handling of the economy. Few in either party are confident in the opposing party’s presidential candidate or congressional leaders….Roughly one-third of independents say they are confident in Biden, Powell and both parties’ congressional leaders. Trump earns higher confidence from independents (45%).”

Excerpts from “Democrats Just Took the Lead In This Poll Average and No One Noticed” by Bill Scher at The Washington Monthly:

In last Tuesday’s newsletter, charting Joe Biden’s clearest Electoral College path, I noted his recent improvement in national and some swing state polling averages from Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight since March.

While Biden has made modest gains, he still doesn’t lead in any of those averages.

However, there is another poll average where, on April 22, Democrats took the lead for the first time in five months:

The Real Clear Politics generic congressional ballot test average.

Generic congressional ballot tests are poll questions that ask which party’s candidate you would choose to represent your congressional district.

Scher asks, “Does this mean Democrats are well-positioned to take back the House?,” and answers:

In the Real Clear Politics generic congressional ballot test average, Republicans led their widest lead of the year, 2.6 points, on March 6, just before Biden’s State of the Union address. As of May 7, Democrats now lead by 1.4 points.

A slightly less dramatic but similar story is told in the FiveThirtyEight average, with a Republican lead around 1 for most of January and February, Democrats tying at the end of February, followed by a series of tiny lead changes. As of May 1, the last reported result, Democrats are up 0.7 points.

Should Democrats feel good at all about such a small lead? Doesn’t gerrymandering favor Republicans so much that Democrats need a big polling lead—and big national popular vote lead on Election Day—to take back the House?

Not so.

Scher continues, “Back in 2021, for the Monthly, I wrote that “When Democrats won control of the House in 2018 and 2020, their share of the popular vote (53.4 percent and 50.3 percent, respectively) was roughly equal to their share of the House seats (54 percent and 51 percent, respectively).” Further,

The 2022 midterm House national popular vote also tracked the House seat share. Republicans won 50.6 percent of the popular vote and 51 percent of the seats.

Of course, a tiny lead within the margin of error six months before Election Day tells us nothing about the final outcome beyond the necessity for determined get-out-the-vote efforts.

But if Democrats maintained a 1 point polling lead, would that be enough to win the House? Or has there been systemic bias among pollsters inflating the Democratic numbers, and therefore, requiring Democrats to build up a large polling lead to ensure at least a narrow Election Day victory?

Scher notes further, “In August 2022, writing for Real Clear Politics, I observed, “In the 10 House elections for which RCP produced a generic congressional ballot average, Democrats outperformed the poll average four times.” Also,

And in the November 2022 midterm, the polling averages were darn close, with slight GOP overperformance. Republicans won the House national popular vote by 2.8 points. The Real Clear Politics generic ballot average was 2.5 and FiveThirtyEight‘s was 1.2.

Wider divergences are possible, but the widest since 2012 was in 2020, when the Democratic House popular vote margin underperformed the final Real Clear Politics average by 3.7 points. More often, the final margin is within 2 points of the poll average.

Scher concludes: “So while a 1-point margin in the generic congressional ballot test average may not be quite enough to instill confidence in the prospect of a Democratic House takeover, it certainly means Democrats are competitive with six months to go.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the new Book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Two things are clear about the 2024 campaign at this point. One is that Biden is still trailing Trump: he’s behind nationally in both the RCP and 538 running averages, as well as in every single swing state. The other is that his two great vulnerabilities are the economy/inflation and immigration, generally the two most important issues to voters. Indeed the latter now sometimes eclipses the former in importance as it has in the Gallup poll for the last three months.

Immigration was very important in the 2016 election as well. One way David Shor frequently illustrated the dynamic in 2016 relative to 2012 was with a simple two by two table illustrating that the big swing toward Trump in 2016 was among voters who both (1) supported universal health insurance and (2) opposed “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Put simply, Obama did way better than Hillary Clinton among voters who were both populist/progressive on health care and conservative-leaning on immigration.

Could we see the same dynamic this year, with Trump making decisive gains among such voters? The basis for it certainly seems to be there. It has been widely noted that not only has the immigration issue become more salient but also that voters are now open to a wide range of tough approaches to dealing with the illegal immigration problem. Some of the relevant findings were reviewed by the Post’s Aaron Blake in an article, “Harsh deportation tools are just fine with many Americans.” And a recent Axios poll found a majority of the public supporting mass deportations of illegal immigrants, including a shocking 42 percent of Democrats.

Findings from a brand new poll of over 4,000 voters from The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint confirm this pattern of support for tough measures against illegal immigration. My analysis of the data also shows an enormous overlap between these conservative leanings on illegal immigration and strong support for populist/progressive measures on health care. These cross-pressured voters could play a decisive role in November’s election just as they did in the 2016 election.

Here is what I found:

1. The TLP/Blueprint poll tested 40 different policy ideas associated with the Biden and Trump campaigns. The strongest issues for Biden were generally proposals around health care, most of which were wildly popular. One example was, “Increase the number of prescription drugs that Medicare can negotiate the price of for seniors.” The proposal was supported by 81 percent of voters with just 6 percent opposed for a cool 75 points net support. Those who supported the proposal also supported using “existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border” by 57 points (72-15).

2. Similarly, supporters of more Medicare price negotiation on prescription drugs also supported deputizing “the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States” by 46 points (67-21).

3. Nor do these Medicare price negotiation supporters blink at the idea that we should “restrict the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.” They support this proposal by 40 points (63-23).

4. More draconian proposals on dealing with illegal immigration also generate solid support among those favoring a stronger Medicare role on prescription drug prices. For example, these pro-Medicare populists favor the idea that we should simply, “Round up undocumented immigrants, detain, and deport them to their home countries” by 24 points (58-24).

5. The pro-Medicare populists also favor building “a full wall on the US-Mexico border” by 20 points, with 56 percent in favor and 36 percent opposed. They even think it would be a good idea to “change federal law so that drug traffickers can receive the death penalty” (55-33)!

6. A similar dynamic can be observed in some other areas of Democratic vulnerability. Among supporters of an increased Medicare role in prescription drug pricing, we also find overwhelming support for increasing “funding for police and strengthen[ing] criminal penalties for assaulting cops” (72 percent to 17 percent).

7. It is also interesting that some aspects of Democratic approaches to climate/energy issues fit this pattern. For instance, our pro-Medicare populists net oppose requiring “auto companies to sell more electric vehicles after 2030” (45-40). They also are narrowly in favor of repealing “subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles” (41-40).

8. I also looked at another super-popular Biden health care idea, “Require pharmaceutical companies to charge American consumers the lowest price they charge consumers in foreign countries” and the related super-popular proposal, “Protect Medicare and Social Security from funding cuts or increases in the age of eligibility.” You see the exact same pattern: voters who support these populist ideas overwhelmingly want a much tougher approach to illegal immigration.

These cross-pressures then are very real, just as they were in 2016, and are undoubtedly undermining Democrats’ ability to capitalize on their immensely popular health care proposals. Could these pressures produce the kind of shift in 2024 relative to 2020 that so helped Trump in 2016? The basis is certainly there.

I looked at support/opposition to increasing the Medicare role in prescription drug pricing and support/opposition to the most popular proposal for cracking down on illegal immigration, using the president’s executive powers to directly stop illegal crossing at the southern border. I found that, comparing reported vote in 2020 to expressed vote preference today, the big shift toward Trump occurs precisely among those who both support an aggressive Medicare role in drug pricing and support using presidential powers to stop illegal border crossing.

There’s a lesson there for Democrats should they care to take it. Apparently, the idea of using Biden’s executive powers to stop illegal border crossing is under consideration at the White House, but, predictably, nothing has happened yet in the face of fierce opposition from the usual suspects. The recent decline in illegal border crossings from insanely high to merely very high (due to a crackdown in Mexico not by US authorities) may also be breeding some complacency about the issue in Biden-land despite the scathing message sent by the polls.

This seems unwise. Especially since the ace in the hole the Biden campaign was counting on— voter appreciation of the strong economy finally kicking in—may turn out to be only a deuce. Both the Michigan consumer sentiment index and the Conference Board consumer confidence index went down last month and basically have made no progress since January. Morning in America it’s not.

The Democrats would appear to need all the help they can get. The immigration-health care nexus reviewed here suggests they may be leaving votes on the table by failing to take strong action on illegal immigration. The specter of the 2016 election looms over this campaign and, like a hanging, should concentrate the mind.

Washington Post syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “The Supreme Court’s Republican bias hangs over the Trump immunity case: The conservative justices must navigate a crisis moment of their own making,” and writes that “As members of its 6-3 conservative majority ponder how and when they will rule on Donald Trump’s absolute immunity claim, they should understand how much they have already done to paint themselves as instruments of the Republican Party and the political right. They have created a crisis moment….the conservative justices seem hellbent on taking a side in the searing partisan battle that is dividing the country into closely matched halves, at a cost to its own legitimacy and the nation’s confidence in the rule of law….Add to this the invention of the “major questions doctrine,” through which the court has seized the power to strike down executive agency actions of “vast economic and political significance” unless Congress clearly authorized them. It’s a move that allows the court’s conservatives to throw out any regulations and executive actions by Democratic administrations that they don’t like….Trump’s contention is both absurd and dangerous to a free republic. Yet in last week’s oral arguments, most of the conservative justices were more eager to worry about entirely hypothetical problems future presidents might confront than to deal with the facts before them involving a president who plainly tried to overturn a legitimate election….If the court delays its ruling until late June or forces the trial court to litigate new issues it might raise, it knows it will be delaying Trump’s most important trial until after this year’s election. The court already fed skepticism about its motives in December when it denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request for the court to bypass the appeals process and fast-track a hearing on matters Smith knew the justices would want to address….There is a way for the court to prove its willingness to suspend partisanship at least some of the time. Instead of wasting precious time to rule on issues not directly raised by this case, it could take up Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s suggestion that it confine itself to answering the question Trump raised: “whether all official acts [by a president] get immunity.” She proposed that it wait for a case that “actually presents” the issues that preoccupy the conservatives….One of her fellow justices has made an excellent argument for this approach. “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more,” Roberts wrote in a 2022 opinion. In the Trump case, he would do a lot for the court’s reputation by following his own advice and bringing another conservative with him.”

Gary Langer reports on a new a new ABC News/Ipsos poll at abcnews.com: “Locked in a tight race for the presidency, Donald Trump prevails in trust to handle most issues in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, yet President Joe Biden scores competitively on key personal attributes — leaving wide open the question of who’ll prevail come Election Day, now six months away….Excluding people who say they wouldn’t vote, Trump has 46% support, Biden 44%, in this national survey of more than 2,200 adults. (Nearly all the rest say they’d pick someone else.) Among registered voters, it’s Biden 46%, Trump 45%. Among likely voters, it’s Biden 49%, Trump 45%, again not a significant difference….A five-way contest doesn’t change the picture in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates with fieldwork by Ipsos. This finds the race at 42% for Trump and 40% for Biden, with 12% for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2% for Cornel West and 1% for Jill Stein. (That, of course, assumes Kennedy, West and Stein are on the ballot in all states, an open question.) Among registered voters in the five-way race, it’s 42-42%, Biden-Trump, and Biden is a non-significant +3 or +4 points in likely voter models….Kennedy gets 12% even though 77% of his supporters say they know “just some” or “hardly anything” about his positions on the issues. Notably, his supporters are more apt to be Republicans or GOP-leaning independents (54%) than Democrats and Democratic leaners (42%, a slight difference given sample sizes), and in a two-way race, they favor Trump over Biden by 13 points. That may explain why Trump attacked Kennedy as a stalking horse in social media posts last week….Another result finds a potential risk for Trump in his current trial in New Yorkon charges of falsifying business records to hide a payoff to a pornographic actress who says they had sex, which he denies. Eighty percent of Trump’s supporters say they’d stick with him even if he’s convicted of a felony in this case. But that leaves 20% who say they’d either reconsider their support (16%) or withdraw it (4%) — easily enough to matter in a close race.” Among the usual caveats, it is a national poll, not a swing state poll with a fairly small sample (2260). Langer presents more polling data readers can access by clicking on this link.

In “Democrats launch early efforts to persuade undecided voters” at The Hill,  Amie Parnes observes “In an election where enthusiasm is low and voters are lukewarm on support for both parties’ candidates, Democrats are focusing on early persuasion in battleground states to help sway so-called surge voters — the part of the electorate who sat out during the 2016 presidential race but backed Biden during the 2020 cycle.,,,The Democrats say they’re seeing a need to launch these efforts earlier than usual because of the unprecedented race between Biden and former President Trump and threats from third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr…. This week, for example, the progressive activist group MoveOn is intensifying the persuasion phase of a $32 million election program, which will engage those much-desired voters, sources tell The Hill….Biden lags Trump across several polls, which have strategists saying the early contact is essential….Organizers at MoveOn say issues like abortion and the fight for democracy have shown to be motivating for Democratic-leaning voters….MoveOn’s persuasion efforts will be handled by three “personalized contacts,” the sources say, which include phone, postcards and through in-person door-knocking, the sources say….In 2020, the group took part in get-out-the-vote efforts much later in the cycle, in August. But it didn’t focus as much on persuasion, something they say is needed during this election….“We believe that this strategy is key to doing the important work to successfully persuade voters and supply them with the information they need to protect their progress and their freedoms from Donald Trump and MAGA,” said Britt Jacovich, a press secretary for MoveOn….One source familiar with the AFL-CIO’s efforts says there is a specific focus on the Rust Belt states and having discussions on health care, wages and other issues….“There’s so much noise and the only way to cut through that noise is conversation,” the union source said. “People don’t want the political speak.”….in key battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — the former president has a slim advantage over Biden, according to surveys published Tuesday from Emerson College Polling/The Hill, but the difference is within the survey’s margin of error….“When you’re in power and your side controls the White House, there is a tendency for your side to become complacent, and that’s where the turnout message becomes important,” said Rachel Bitecofer, a political strategist and author of the new book, “Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts: How To Save Democracy By Beating Republicans At Their Own Game.”….A lot of these surge voters are not paying attention to the daily news … The more contacts those people have to vote and vote Democrat, the better.”

Some thoughts from Politico’s “Don’t Forget the Backlash to the ’60s” by Jeff Greenfield, five-time Emmy Award-winning political analyst: “Most media retrospectives of the 1960s celebrate the marchers, the protests, the peace signs along with the compulsory Buffalo Springfield lyrics (“There’s something happening here/ But what it is ain’t exactly clear”). The reality is those upheavals were an enormous in-kind contribution to the political fortunes of the right. And if history comes even close to repeating itself, then the latest episode will redound to Donald Trump’s benefit….Ronald Reagan centered much of his 1966 campaign for governor of California on attacking the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. He pledged to “clean up the mess at Berkeley,” and denounced the “beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates” who fueled “anarchy and rioting.”….He proposed that a code of conduct be imposed on faculty to “force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency.” He won election by a million votes.” And that was in liberal California. Greenfield continues, “The backlash against the left was a key part of the 1968 presidential race. Richard Nixon famously ran a campaign on “law and order” — highlighting both urban and campus unrest. One commercial featured scenes of protest, as Nixon argued that “in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies a resort to violence.”….The scenes of violence in Chicago outside the Democrats’ 1968 presidential convention, meanwhile, further contributed to the notion that left-wing lawlessness had gotten out of control. It was a nightmare event for Hubert Humphrey’s beleaguered presidential campaign, one where the public overwhelmingly sided with the Chicago police, not the demonstrators. (And, of course, guess where Democrats are holding their 2024 convention: Chicago.)….The political consequences of the upheaval became clear. While the doomed liberal campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy draw most of the focus in retrospectives of the era, the fact is that in November of 1968, Nixon and Wallace combined for 57 percent of the vote, close to the levels of historic landslide wins of LBJ in 1964 and Reagan in 1984….It may be that the months of summer, or a meaningful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, will dampen the heat on American college campuses. But if the turmoil continues, history suggests that it will be another significant burden on Biden’s fight for a second term.”

Everyone knows that Donald Trump can’t be trusted on abortion policy (or many other things). But his particular lies on abortion are worth noting, as I explained at New York.

There is no exercise more exhausting and probably futile than examining a Donald Trump speech or social-media post for lies, half-truths, and incoherent self-contradictions. But it’s important on occasion to highlight some very big whoppers he tells that are central to his political strategy. It’s well known that Trump’s own position on abortion policy has wandered all over the map, and it’s plausible to suggest his approach is entirely transactional. Now that he’s staked out a “states’ rights” position on abortion that is designed to take a losing issue off the table in the 2024 presidential election, he’s telling two very specific lies to justify his latest flip-flop.

The first is his now-routine claim that “both sides” and even “legal scholars on both sides” of the abortion debate “agreed” that Roe v. Wade needed to be reversed, leaving abortion policy up to the states:

This claim was the centerpiece of Trump’s April 9 statement setting out his position on abortion for the 2024 general election, as CNN noted:

“In a video statement on abortion policy he posted on social media Monday, Trump said: ‘I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended.’ Later in his statement, Trump said that since ‘we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,’ states are free to determine their own abortion laws.”

This is clearly and demonstrably false. The three “legal experts” on the Supreme Court who passionately dissented from the decision to reverse Roe are just the tip of the iceberg of anguish over the defiance of precedent and ideological reasoning underlying Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Society of American Law Teachers immediately and definitively issued a “condemnation” of the Dobbs decision. When the case was being argued before the Supreme Court, the American Bar Association filed an amicus brief arguing the constitutional doctrine of stare decisis required that Roe be left in place. None of these views were novel. Back in 1989 when an earlier threat to abortion rights had emerged, 885 law professors signed onto a brief defending Roe.

Sure, there was a tiny minority of “pro-choice, anti-Roe” liberals over the years who claimed resentment of the power of the unelected judges who decided Roe would eventually threaten abortion rights (not as much, it turns out, as the unelected judges that decided Dobbs). And yes, there have always been progressive critics (notably Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) of the particular reasoning in the original Roe decision, but by no means have any of them (particularly Ginsburg) favored abandoning the federal constitutional right to abortion even if they supported a different constitutional basis for that right. So Trump’s claim is grossly nonfactual and is indeed not one that any self-respecting conservative fan of Dobbs would ever make.

The second big lie that Trump has formulated to defend his latest states’-rights position is that he’s just supporting the age-old Republican stance on the subject, as he has just asserted at Truth Social:

“Sending this Issue back to the States was the Policy of the Republican Party and Conservatives for over 50 years, due to States’ Rights and 10th Amendment, and only happened because of the Justices I proudly Nominated and got Confirmed.”

Yes, of course a growing majority of Republicans have favored reversal of Roe as a way station to a nationwide ban on abortion, but not as an end in itself. The GOP first came out for a federal constitutional amendment to ban abortion from sea to shining sea in its 1980 party platform, and every single Republican presidential nominee since then has backed the idea. There have been disagreements as to whether such a constitutional amendment should include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. But the last GOP presidential nominee to share Trump’s position that the states should be the final arbiter of abortion policy was Gerald R. Ford in 1976, as the New York Times reported at the time:

“[Ford] said that as President he must enforce the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that forbids states to ban abortions. But he has come out in favor of a constitutional amendment that would overturn that ruling and return to the states the option of drawing up their own abortion laws.”

Ronald Reagan, who challenged Ford’s nomination in 1976 and was already a proponent of a “pro-life” constitutional amendment, and the GOP formally adopted that position in 1980; four years later, it adopted its long-standing proposal that by constitutional amendment or by a judicial ruling the protection of fetal life under the 14th Amendment should be recognized and imposed on the country regardless of what states wanted. Anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser noted this well-known history in a not-so-subtle rebuke to Trump’s revisionist history, as NBC News reported:

“’Since 1984, the GOP platform has affirmed that 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn babies and endorsed congressional action to clarify this fact through legislation,’ Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement to NBC News. ‘Republicans led the charge to outlaw barbaric partial-birth abortions federally, and both chambers have voted multiple times to limit painful late-term abortion. The Senate voted on this most recently in 2020. In January 2023, House Republicans also voted to protect infants born alive during an abortion.’”

It’s pretty clear that anti-abortion activists know Trump is lying about both Roe v. Wade and the GOP tradition and will support him anyway. But the rest of us should take due notice that the once and perhaps future president’s word on this subject, including his current pledge to leave abortion policy to the states, cannot be trusted for even a moment. Absent the abolition of the Senate filibuster (which, lest we forget, Trump backed as president out of impatience with the Senate’s refusal to bend the knee to his every demand), there isn’t going to be a complete federal ban on abortion in the foreseeable future. But Trump can be counted on to use the powers of the presidency to make life miserable for women needing abortion services, among the many “enemies of the people” he wants to punish.

The following excerpt of the podcast transcript of  “Why I’m Optimistic We Will Win This November – My Latest 2024 Election Take (5/1/24)” by Simon Rosenberg is cross-posted from his blog, Hopium Chronicles:

As I reviewed last night, here’s my basic take on the 2024 election right now:

Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. We have a very strong case for re-election.

The Democratic Party is strong, unified, raising tons of money and winning elections all across the country.

And what do they have? They have Trump, the ugliest political thing any of us has ever seen, leading a party far more a raging dumpster fire than a well- oiled political machine.

One of the things I discussed was my take on recent polling. Here’s what I am seeing now…..(all polls can be found on 538)

In 538’s national Presidential polling average Biden has gained 1.7 pts against Trump in recent weeks, and the general election head to head is essentially tied. We’ve also seen a 3.5 pt gain for Democrats in recent months in 538’s Congressional Generic (which party will you support for Congress), and Dems now have a slight lead though it too is essentially tied. A majority of the national polls this week have the Biden tied or ahead, with 3 – Marist, Ipsos and FAU showing small Biden leads. It’s a close, competitive election with Dems gaining some ground in recent weeks.

In the battle for control of Congress, our Senate candidates all show modest but consistent leads, and Navigator Research has found our House candidates in better shape than Rs in the battleground. Lots of work ahead but this early data is encouraging.

In the Presidential battlegrounds, both polls this week – CBS and Emerson – had all the states they polled inside margin of error. The CBS poll was a little more favorable to Biden than Emerson but again what both found was the battleground states up for grabs.

I’m also coming to believe that these “bad candidate” problems Republicans had in 2022 are occurring again this year, and is going to become material in many of the battleground states this year, particularly in Arizona, North Carolina and possibly Wisconsin too. Kari Lake and the 1864 fiasco are going to be huge drag on the GOP in Arizona. Bat shit crazy Mark Robinson is going to be a big drag on the Rs in North Carolina based on recent polling, and a very not ready for prime time Eric Hovde is already struggling in Wisconsin. The strength of our candidates in the battleground right now – and their weakness – is an increasingly important part of how 2024 is unfolding.

Part of the reason Hopium has been focusing so much on Arizona and North Carolina for our political work is that given how extreme and wild the top of the ticket is in both states I think more is possible in both states this year. And let’s be very clear – if Biden wins AZ and NC we are going to win the election this November.

Rosenberg adds that “as people move from being an adult to registered voter to likely voter to actual voter and are faced with pulling that lever for MAGA Trump and Republicans lose ground. As voters get get closer to voting, and go through the process of having to consider the options in front of them, a meaningful number just can’t go for MAGA and either don’t vote or choose another option (Haley, the Dem). This 2024 MAGA ugliness and extremism is too much for too many, and the GOP coalition doesn’t stay together, Republican candidates struggle, underperform and lose, again and again.”

Further, “every day we need to do more, worry less. For doing more is what is going to make sure we win this November.” In addition, “There is an area I think of enormous opportunity for us in the coming months – we go bring our coalition back together and keep theirs splintered and unhappy with the MAGA takeover of their party.”

Rosenberg cautions that Dems have to stop the leakage of support from Latino and African Americans. Regarding the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the nation’s campuses, “The bottom line – I think the protesters are blowing it right now. While we should always support peaceful protests, these protests have not been as peaceful as many profess, and they should not and cannot interfere with the millions of students taking their finals and graduating in the coming weeks.”

Click on this link to read more of Rosenberg’s podcast transcript and to hear his entire podcast.

Having seen a lot of material of questionable utility on a key 2024 issue, I decided to explore it at New York:

The Israel-Hamas war has become an abiding presence in U.S. political discourse in the past six months. President Joe Biden has been lambasted by both a small but visible minority of Democrats who oppose his support for Israel as it wages war in Gaza, and Republicans who say he hasn’t done enough to back Israel and curb pro-Palestinian campus protests. But for all the noise and heat in the air on this subject, it’s still unclear whether the conflict in the Middle East will be a significant factor in the November presidential election.

Polling on Americans’ attitudes toward the conflict and its domestic fallout has been erratic and difficult to compare, as various pollsters have taken very different angles on the subject. But the “salience” of the issue as something that might push a significant number of voters this way or that is dubious at best.

There’s no question that U.S. public opinion has slowly evolved from strongly pro-Israel immediately after the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas to a mixed assessment leaning toward hostility to Israel’s conduct of the war ever since. Already by November, Gallup found significant deterioration in Americans’ support for Israel’s war in Gaza, with 50 percent approving and 45 percent disapproving of Israeli military operations. By March of this year, the approval-disapproval ratio had dropped to 36 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval. Meanwhile, the reflexive sympathy Americans have traditionally felt for Israel when it’s embattled has eroded as well; as of February, Pew had found that a solid 57 percent of Americans sympathize “at least somewhat with both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people or equally with both of them.”

Nearly every survey on the subject has identified a significant generational divide on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, with those under the age of 30 sympathizing more with Palestinians and less with Israelis; opposing Israel’s military operations in Gaza by strong margins; and also opposing unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel. A Pew survey earlier this month showed that “six-in-ten adults under age 30 have a positive view of the Palestinian people, compared with 46% who see the Israeli people positively.” Meanwhile, “only 16% of adults under 30 favor the U.S. providing military aid to Israel to help in its war against Hamas, compared with 56% of those 65 and older.”

Young voters’ unhappiness with Israel and Biden’s policies on the Gaza conflict, compounded by less-well-documented but apparent pro-Palestinian tendencies among nonwhite voters, have created more and more of a partisan gap on Middle Eastern policy. The aforementioned March Gallup survey found that 64 percent of Republicans still approved of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, while 75 percent of Democrats disapproved. So long as Biden was identified as America’s most prominent supporter of Israel in the conflict, this disconnect with his own party’s base was potentially a source of intra-Democratic friction and a negative influence on Democratic enthusiasm for Biden’s reelection. The problem looked likely to go well beyond the relatively small number of “uncommitted” voters in Democratic presidential primaries this year who were explicitly seeking to condemn or reverse the president’s position on what was happening in Gaza.

Most recently, however, Republican politicians may have given Biden a hand — or at least reduced the possibility that pro-Palestinian voters would give them a second look out of anger at the president — with increasingly more vocal support for Israel, particularly after recent exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran. Republicans have been even more vocal about adopting what might be called an “anti-anti-Israel” stance: calling for repressive and punitive actions toward pro-Palestinian protesters. It’s also relevant that the most visible “third option” for voters unhappy with the two major parties, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been staunchly pro-Israel throughout the course of the Gaza war.

But is the Israel-Hamas war a voting issue — or a reason not to vote at all — for enough people to greatly affect the outcome of the November election? The available data on issue saliency doesn’t provide much evidence that it’s top of mind for that many voters.

A March 29 Gallup survey asked respondents to identify “the most important issue facing the country today.” “War in the Middle East” tied for 13th with just 2 percent. More often, pollsters don’t bother to break out the Israel-Palestine conflict as a singular concern, instead lumping it together with other foreign-policy concerns or national-security threats. But foreign policy in general isn’t looking terribly salient. A mid-April Economist-YouGov poll showed just one percent of Americans considered any or all foreign-policy issues as “the most important for you.” A late April University of North Florida national survey that added all of foreign policy to national-security challenges as an issue cluster found 6 percent of voters willing to identify it as most important in determining presidential preferences. But with Republicans fanning all sorts of national-security fears, who knows what that means?

Perhaps the most startling data comes from the very credible large-sample Harvard Youth Poll released on April 19:

“Poll results showed that two issues closely associated with under-30 voters — the Israel-Hamas war and student debt relief — may not be especially consequential ones when it comes to casting votes.

“Biden gets good marks (39 percent) for his efforts to reduce student debt, and poor marks for his handling of the war in Gaza (18 percent). But young people ranked these as least important among the issues facing the country. The majority said inflation, healthcare, and housing were the top three matters, followed by gun violence, according to the poll.”

To be more specific, under-30 voters listed “Israel/Palestine” 15th among the 16 “major issues” they were asked to rank in importance. Pew’s March survey on the subject noted low interest and information levels on the Middle East in the same age cohort:

“Just 14% of those under 50 say they are following the war extremely or very closely, roughly half the share among those over 50 (30%). Consistent with their lower levels of attention, younger Americans are also less likely to know key facts about the ongoing war, based on their responses to three knowledge questions included on the survey.”

Without question, perceptions of the presidential candidates and their political parties may be influenced on the margins by their positions and conduct on this and related issues. Biden’s efforts to broker a broader regional peace agreement could reinforce his reputation as an internationalist and a competent diplomat. Republican demagoguing about campus protesters could strengthen their issue advantage on crime. But even if news coverage continues to draw attention to the carnage in Gaza and its underlying causes, it may not be an election game-changer, unless the election is extremely close. If that’s the case, of course, almost anything could be decisive.

“Americans have been sour on the economy since President Joe Biden was sworn into office,” Monica Potts writes ink “Voters don’t like Biden’s economy — but why?” at 538/Abc News. “As we head into an election season that is likely to be a 2020 rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, voters give Republicans and Trump an edge on economic issues. An April 12-14 poll from Echelon Insights found that 57 percent of all voters somewhat or strongly disapproved of the way Biden is handling the economy, and favored Trump on making the economy work better by 48 percent to 40 percent. That’s only a recent example of what surveys have routinely shown: Voters aren’t happy with Biden’s handling of the economy….But what exactly are voters disapproving of? What do they mean when they talk about the economy? Therein lies a disconnect between most economic indicators that economists consider — things like GDP, the unemployment rate, job growth and inflation — which are all looking up, and how voters feel. When voters measure economic well-being, they’re much more likely to use more personal metrics, such as how easily their family can meet their basic needs. That can be more of a feeling than an exact calculation, and right now, the Biden reelection campaign is battling the general sense that everything has gotten a little bit worse….Partnering with 538, PerryUndem, a nonpartisan research firm, spoke to 16 voters in two different focus groups to ask more about what they mean when they talk about “the economy.”* The answer was mostly that they felt they’d been better off financially four years ago than they were today, and a lot of that had to do with the cost of living, including persistent high prices at the grocery store and gas pump and for bigger costs like housing and higher education. The two groups were made up of undecided voters who were leaning toward Trump and undecided voters leaning toward Biden. In general, most Trump leaners said that Trump was better on the economy. Biden leaners, meanwhile, wanted to vote for Biden despite their feelings about the economy.” Potts shares some revealing quotes from the interviews and concludes, “The truth is, few could point to the exact economic problems they wanted to see resolved, or name the tactics they thought Biden or Trump could employ to help resolve them. This was true even when it came to issues like retirement savings that affected them personally. In general, they are feeling the burden of hardships and want something to be done, but those general vibes are difficult to address….Economic sentiment has been improving in recent months, but it’s still relatively low among most voters. It will likely remain a challenge for the Biden campaign, and a plus for Trump’s campaign, barring huge shifts in the months ahead.”

From “A Huge Gender Gap Is Emerging Among Young Voters” by Thomas B. Edsall at The New York Times: “It has become clear that one constituency — young voters, 18 to 29 years old — will play a key, if not pivotal, role in determining who will win the Biden-Trump rematch….Four years ago, according to exit polls, voters in this age group kept Trump from winning re-election. They cast ballots decisively supporting Biden, 60 to 36, helping to give him a 4.46-point victoryamong all voters, 51.31 percent to 46.85 percent….This year, Biden cannot count on winning Gen Z by such a large margin. There is substantial variance in poll data reported for the youth vote, but to take one example, the NBC News national survey from April found Trump leading 43 to 42….Young voters’ loyalty to the Democratic Party has been frayed by two distinct factors: opposition to the intensity of the Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza and frustration with an economy many see as stacked against them….Equally important, a large gender gap has emerged, with young men far less likely to support Biden than young women….Bill McInturff, a co-founder of the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies — which conducts surveys for NBC along with the Democratic firm Hart Research — provided The Times with data covering a broad range of recent political and demographic trends….Tracking the partisan identification and ideology of 18-to-34-year-olds, the McInturff analyses show that from 2012 to 2023, women became increasingly Democratic, going from 55 percent identifying as Democratic and 29 percent Republican in 2012 to 60 and 22 in 2023. The shift was even more striking in the case of ideology, going from 32 percent liberal and 29 percent conservative to 51 percent liberal and 17 percent conservative in 2023….Among young men, the Democratic advantage in partisan identification fell from nine points in 2012 to five points in 2023.”

Edsall continues, “What gives? I asked the Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who recently joined the Biden campaign’s polling team, a job she also held in 2020. She sent a detailed reply by email:

Three reasons. First and foremost is the abortion issue and all the aspects of reproductive health, including medication abortion, I.V.F., birth control and criminalizing abortion. Young men are very pro-abortion and birth control, but young women really vote the issue.

Second is style and respect. Young men are not as troubled by the chaotic and divisive style of Trump, while young women want people to be respected, including themselves, want stability and are very concerned about division and the potential for violence. Young women think Trump’s style is an embarrassment abroad, a poor role model for their children and dangerous for the country. Younger men, especially blue-collar, have a grudging respect for his strength and “tell it like it is” attitude.

Third is the economy. Young men, especially blue-collar and people of color, feel left behind in this economy. They do not feel things have been delivered to them. They do not know anything about what this administration has done. Younger women are much more committed to a role for government to help people like themselves as a foundational view. They don’t know much more about the economic programs than young men, but they tend to respond more favorably to Democrats in general on the economy. Younger men also feel more left behind on the economy and more sense of grievance than young women do who are also increasingly dominating college and higher education.”

Edsall adds: “The Times/Siena poll conducted April 7 to 11 asked voters “How much do you think Donald Trump respects women?” A majority of men, 54 percent, replied that Trump does respect women (23 percent “a lot” and 31 percent “some”), while 42 percent said he does not (14 percent “not much” and 28 percent “not at all”)….Women replied quite differently, with 68 percent saying Trump does not respect women (24 percent “not much,” 44 percent “not at all”) and 31 percent saying Trump does respect women (15 percent “a lot” and 16 percent “some”).” Also, notes Edssall, “Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents and What They Mean for America’s Future,” wrote by email that the question of why there is such a gender divide “is tough to answer,” but she made some suggestions: “It could be that the changes on the left have driven young men away from the Democratic Party. For example, the idea that identities can be divided into ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ may have alienated some young men.”….Another likely factor, according to Twenge, is:

Fewer young men get college degrees than young women, and in the last 10 to 15 years the parties have split by education, with more of those without a college degree conservative and Republican. This appears even among high school seniors, where young men who do not plan to attend a four-year college are 30 percent more likely to identify as conservative than young men who are planning to get a college degree.

In an article published in January on the Business Insider website, “The War Within Gen Z,” Daniel A. Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote:

Something strange is happening between Gen Z men and women. Over the past decade, poll after poll has found that young people are growing more and more divided by gender on a host of political issues. Since 2014, women between the ages of 18 and 29 have steadily become more liberal each year, while young men have not. Today, female Gen Zers are more likely than their male counterparts to vote, care more about political issues and participate in social movements and protests.”

If you see this gender rift between young voters as a a potential way for the Biden-Harris campaign to survive the polarization generated by the Mideast violence, you are probably not alone. You can bet that there will be video ads showing young women saying something like “I’m not happy with all of the Administration’s policies,. But Trump and the Republicans want to cancel women’s reproductive freedom, and I’m sure as hell going to vote against that.”

Some excerpts from “Biden’s New Plan for the Middle East Is More of the Same,” by Matthew Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, published February 14 of this year In Foreign Policy:

Last month [January 2024], the administration offered a preview of its new plan for the Middle East via New York Timescolumnist Tom Friedman, a longtime favorite of the president’s. “We are about to see a new Biden administration strategy unfold to address this multifront war involving Gaza, Iran, Israel, and the region,” Friedman wrote, “what I hope will be a ‘Biden Doctrine’ that meets the seriousness and complexity of this dangerous moment.”….The Biden plan he lays out offers little that’s new or promising—and threatens to keep U.S. policy stuck in the same failed rut it’s been in for decades.”

As relayed by Friedman, the plan has three parts: a revitalized push for a Palestinian state; a U.S.-backed Israel-Saudi normalization deal that would include a U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia but would be contingent on Israeli support for the first part; and a more aggressive response to Iran and its regional network.

First, let’s focus on the positive. One of the main problems with the U.S.-managed peace process is that it has generally imposed consequences on the weaker side, the Palestinians. For Israel, only carrots. For Palestinians, mainly sticks. There are a few signs now that the administration is prepared to change this. A recent executive order enabling sanctions to be imposed on extremist settlers in the West Bank, as well as organizations that support them, is a small but important sign that the U.S. is finally willing to impose consequences on both sides. (Anyone claiming that the order is simply window dressing should take a look at this FinCEN notice, and then find someone who can explain it to them.)

So, too, with the recent White House memorandum conditioning military aid on adherence to international law, an idea Biden previously referred to as “bizarre.” While the necessity of the memorandum is questionable, as the administration already has the tools and authorities required to condition aid (and is, in fact, legally required to do so), it’s still a step in the right direction. Provided, of course, the administration keeps stepping that way and doesn’t treat the new process as simply a method to bury credible allegations of Israeli abuses in more layers of paper.

if Duss is right, Biden should consider reformulating his plan to take a tougher stance against U. S. funding violence against Gaza and its people. He should emphasize easy-to-understand points and his campaign should sell it widely, so that, by November most voters and media commentators get it that this is the most serious and practical plan for peace in the Mideast. Many won’t like it, regardless of the content. But if it seems fair to Palestinians and Israelis and strives to stop the bloodshed, Biden and the Democrats  can experience some political benefit.

For their part, the leaders of the student demonstrations should carefully consider the political dangers to America if the protests become violent. That would provoke a backlash, turn public opinion in favor of Trump and the Republicans and give Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a blank check to do his worst. The protest strategy of blocking traffic is already generating negative buzz, even in normally liberal media. It could backfire further and hurt the Palestinians and their student supporters.

It’s a presidential election year. Biden, Democratic candidates and pro-Palestinian protesters should all park the high horses and get politically strategic.