Watching the evolution of the slowly approaching government shutdown crisis in Congress, it’s reasonably clear congressional Democrats are traumatized by what happened in March, and I wrote about how they’re dealing with that at New York:

Congressional Democrats are understandably unhappy with what happened last time they faced a government-shutdown crisis. In March, Republicans forced them into a trap where they either had to vote for another GOP-sponsored stopgap-spending measure, which offered Democrats zero concessions, or obstruct it and trigger a shutdown, punishing the government employees who were already being besieged by Elon Musk’s DOGE and other Trump administration attacks. In the House, where Democrats had no power at all, it was an easy choice: They all voted against the GOP measure. But in the Senate, where a filibuster could have very definitely stopped the bill, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer did a lot of saber-rattling but then caved, rounding up enough votes to end the filibuster and ensure the government stayed open.

Democratic activists were infuriated, and House Democrats suggested Senate Democrats were gutless. The whole episode accomplished nothing other than underlining Democratic Party fecklessness, the lack of unified party leadership, and the whip hand held by the bully Donald Trump and his subalterns in Congress.

Now they’re back to a near-identical point as the spending authority approved in March runs out on September 30. Republicans are again offering an extension of current spending levels — this one a short-term measure until November 20 — with zero concessions to the Democrats whose votes are necessary to keep the government open. To their credit, Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries are moving in lockstep this time around, agreeing to a common strategy and message. But even those gestures reflect an atmosphere of mistrust and an underlying fear of once again angering the Democratic “base.”

In recognition of their leverage, Democrats began talking weeks ago about conditions that needed to be met to earn their votes to head off a shutdown. Some wanted the Trump administration to rein in budget director Russell Vought’s highly provocative and probably unconstitutional spending clawbacks; why agree to spending levels if the people running the country felt free to ignore them? Others were interested in getting a grip on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ravaging of U.S. science, medicine, and public-health infrastructure. But the main focus among Democrats was the issue they’ve long considered their strongest heading toward the 2026 midterms: the damage being done to Americans’ access to health insurance. That meant demanding at a minimum the continuation of Obamacare premium subsidies due to expire at the end of the year, which were omitted from Trump’s megabill because of their cost and the hatred of many Republicans of the president’s signature policy accomplishment. This seemed potentially achievable because at least some Republicans feared blowback from a spike in premiums affecting many millions of middle-class Americans as early as November if the subsidies are allowed to die. And other Democrats wanted to demand the cancellation of some of the Medicaid cuts already enacted in the bill — a sure poison pill for the GOP.

The “counterproposal” unveiled by Schumer and Jeffries late Wednesday includes all the above and more, as the New York Times reports:

“Congressional Democrats on Wednesday proposed adding well over $1 trillion for Medicaid and other health programs to a stopgap spending plan needed to fund the government past Sept. 30, laying out steep demands in a showdown with Republicans that is threatening a shutdown within weeks.

“Democrats put forward a bill that would fund the government through Oct. 31 and permanently extend Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. It would reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programs enacted this year as part of Republicans’ marquee tax and spending cut legislation.

“The measure would also restrict the Trump administration’s ability to unilaterally claw back funding Congress previously approved, a power that President Trump has repeatedly invoked.”

In addition, the proposal would restore public broadcasting funds and vastly increase the amount of money Republicans have endorsed for boosting security for government officials in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. Overall, the idea appears to be to maximize and publicize the distance between the two parties on ground Democrats think they can defend.

To put it mildly, Republicans are certain to give this “plan” a frosty reception, and that seems to be fine with Democrats. As Punchbowl News reports, the GOP has formed an iron consensus in support of a “clean” stopgap bill (or to use the technical jargon, “continuing resolution” or CR) until November, delaying any concessions at all, and at the same time keeping their own fractious members from issuing their own demands for keeping the government open (mostly involving deeper spending cuts):

“[N]early every provision in this package is a non-starter for Republicans. …

“To be clear, Republicans simply have no interest in negotiating. They feel like Democrats felt in the past: Negotiating under these circumstances is validating the Democrats’ position. Republicans are comfortable saying that they’ve proposed a clean CR, which is what Democrats usually ask for, to buy time for bipartisan full-year FY2026 funding talks.”

So Democrats are complaining that Republicans won’t negotiate with them over their demands, while Republicans are complaining that Democrats won’t keep the government open and negotiate over policies later. They are talking past each other in a way that seems to make at least some sort of shutdown very likely.

But from the Democratic perspective, the big fear is another display of weakness and disunity. Right on the brink of the confrontation in Congress, there were clear signs of what “the base” wants to happen, as Semafor reports:

“A new survey from the progressive firm Data for Progress and research firm Grow Progress, shared first with Semafor, shows seven in 10 Democrats support their party withholding votes unless Republicans make changes even if it risks a shutdown, while a similar share backs their party taking a ‘firmer stand’ than they did in March.

“What’s more, Democrats are arguing voters will blame the Republicans who control government for a shutdown, and the poll shows their voters share that view, 82-14. Large majorities of Democrats also think the party should fight President Donald Trump harder — even if they don’t win.”

So after emphatically rejecting the “clean CR,” Jeffries and Schumer appear to be steeling themselves for an inevitable shutdown and taking the opportunity to do some partisan “messaging” on health care and other Democratic priorities. Its primary purpose is to ensure nobody breaks rank and repeats what happened in March. In effect, Democrats are tying their own hands so that none of them can wave a white flag. This will be a fine tonic for the troops around the country, but it’s unclear where that leaves the federal government. We’re now at the point in every game of “chicken” where someone will have to blink.

Stephen Neukam has a ‘scoop’ in his report that “Democrats lean into shutdown fight with alternative funding plan” at Axios: “Senate Democrats are expected to roll out their own government funding plan on Tuesday, Axios has learned, countering a just-unveiled House GOP proposal.

Why it matters: Democrats want to lay out a clear alternative to the short-term Republican plan as the two sides hunker down for yet another partisan showdown ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline to prevent a government shutdown.

• The Democratic proposal will include language to prevent President Trump from using rescissions to claw back funding — as he did earlier this year — as well as an extension of Affordable Care subsidies, sources familiar with the matter told Axios.
• Democratic leaders on both sides of the Capitol on Tuesday poured cold water on a GOP plan, which would fund the government through Nov. 20 and includes increased resources for lawmaker security.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in a joint statement said the GOP plan “fails to meet the needs of the American people.”

The big picture: Democrats are preparing to make a shutdown fight all about health care, which they bet will win over voters.” More here.

From “Think Big for a Change, Democrats: Call This the “No Kings” Shutdown. The consultants will tell you that taking this stand against Trump is a political loser. But this time is different” by Michael Tomasky at The New Republic: “The Democrats have announced their table stakes with respect to a possible government shutdown. Work with us to extend Obamacare tax credits, they’ve told Republicans, or you won’t get our votes, and the government will be shuttered by the October 1 deadline…There are two good things to say about this. The first is that it sounds now like they’re more willing to roll the dice on a shutdown than they were in March, when Chuck Schumer decided against the move and gave Donald Trump and the Republicans a few Senate votes to avoid a shutdown. It was, under the circumstances, a defensible decision—but it came at a time when Trump and Elon Musk were shredding the federal government. The Democratic base, which desperately wanted their leadership to take a stand, was furious at the result. Famous last words, I know, but Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries seem to understand this today…The second good thing is that there’s substantive merit to the position. The tax credits were extended on a temporary basis by Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2021. They’re due to expire. Their expiration would mean that more than 20 million who receive these subsidies would have to pay more for the health care coverage, in some cases a lot more. So, all that is good…But … why am I yawning? I’m yawning because this plan just sounds so safe and poll-tested. I’m yawning because it is essentially playing defense (again)—and defending something they had already won. And mostly I’m yawning because Donald Trump is not merely a threat to the health care subsidies of a comparatively small minority of Americans—he’s a threat to our way of life, on countless levels.” More here.

In “Trump tramples Reagan’s tough-on-the-Kremlin legacy ahead of UK state visit,” Stephen Collinson writes at CNN Politics: ” Here’s how radically Donald Trump has changed the world, and America’s place in it…The first US president to sleep over at Windsor Castle, Ronald Reagan, was lambasted in Britain in 1982 by protesters who thought he was too tough on the hard men in the Kremlin…Trump, who will this week also stay at the home of England’s monarchs for 900 years, is accused of the opposite: constantly caving to Russia, especially with his latest Ukraine war climbdown…Before leaving for Britain on Tuesday, Trump wriggled out of his most recent deadline to slap punishing sanctions on Moscow. This came despite Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly embarrassing him by raining death on Ukrainian civilians following their Alaska summit last month. Trump left their chat convinced that peace was imminent and his Nobel Peace Prize was closer. Events have exposed his misjudgment…The US president has also been downplaying alarming incursions by Russian drones into NATO nations. His docility in the face of Moscow’s aggression (he suggested the violations might have been a mistake) would have astounded Reagan, whose policies helped the US win the Cold War nearly two-and-a-half decades before Trump trashed the GOP’s hawkish internationalism.”

Trump “posted a letter to NATO members on Truth Social saying he was ready to “do major sanctions on Russia,” Collinson adds. “But there was a caveat — alliance members must stop buying oil exports that bankroll Moscow’s war effort…“I am ready to ‘go’ when you are. Just say when?” Trump wrote…It’s a clever ruse. At first sight, the president’s statement seems inherently reasonable. Why are NATO states still purchasing Russian hydrocarbonsdespite seeing Russia as a mortal threat to their security?…But Trump’s offer was a feint. He established conditions that are unlikely ever to be met, thereby getting him off the hook yet again with Putin, whom he almost never exposes to significant US coercive power…Among the other concessions Trump demanded of NATO members was to join his trade war with China by imposing 50% to 100% tariffs on its goods in order to “break that grip” he says that Beijing has over Moscow. The post ignores the fact that NATO is a defensive alliance and not a trade bloc. And alliance members who themselves have been targeted by Trump’s tariffs, including those on the European Union and Canada, seem unlikely to respond to more bullying. In any case, such moves would likely be disastrous for their economies…Trump’s unwillingness to stand up to Putin — who is constantly seeking to divide the US from its European allies — could create dangerous scenarios…Facing no pushback from the US, Russia is becoming bolder, both on its targeting of missile and drone attacks in Ukraine and with its posture in Eastern Europe. As Trump insists Putin wants peace, Russian missiles have slammed into civilian targets all over Ukraine — hundreds of miles from the frontlines. A US-owned factory was hit, and EU offices in Kyiv were damaged.” Read more here.

Some news from the strange world of Donald Trump took me way down memory lane to the 1970s, as I explained at New York:

There had been vague talk for a while in both major-party circles about holding a pre-midterms national convention (or as it was once known, a “mini-convention”). For Democrats to do something like this would be like turning around a battleship. For Republicans, all it took was one Truth Social post:

“The Republicans are going to do a Midterm Convention in order to show the great things we have done since the Presidential Election of 2024. Time and place to be determined. Stay tuned, it will be quite the Event, and very exciting! President DJT.”

President Trump could change his mind, of course, but it makes some sense from his point of view. He knows preserving Republicans’ governing trifecta is going to be an uphill climb in 2026, given the historical pattern of the White House party almost always losing House seats in the midterms. His iron control of the GOP means it won’t be hard to impose discipline on hand-picked delegates to an event like this, essentially making it a big paid ad for the party and its messages. And let’s face it, this could be the last Trump event, perhaps in conjunction with the Semiquincentennial (250th) celebration of the nation’s founding in July, at which he won’t have to share the spotlight with anyone (presumably the 2028 RNC will have to give a fair amount of stage time to his successor).

On the other hand, the historical precedent for this sort of spectacle isn’t great. Democrats held mini-conventions in 1974 and 1978, and as far as I can remember, nobody much regretted the subsequent decision to stop having them.

The 1974 confab in Kansas City actually took place in December, after the midterm elections; it was basically held to adopt a party “charter” and overcome divisions that threatened to divide the party before the midterms. After more factional skirmishing, the delegates came together over a document consolidating party reforms, and the event was mainly known for introducing the so-called “Watergate class” of newly elected Democrats.

In 1978, Democrats held another post-midterms mini-convention, this one in Memphis. Its main purpose was to unify the party behind a beleaguered President Jimmy Carter. But it was widely shunned by Democratic elected officials, and its overall lack of success was reflected in 1980 when Carter had to overcome a tough renomination challenge from Ted Kennedy, before losing a landslide general election to Ronald Reagan.

We’ll see if Democrats feel compelled to follow suit with their own midterm gathering, presumably before the elections this time, despite their own unhappy precedents. They’d be well advised to think this through carefully before moving ahead. Unlike Republicans, they have no dictatorial leader to make them sing together harmoniously, and a midterm convention could easily become the venue for factional and generational bloodletting, along with a very crowded stage for a potentially vast number of 2028 proto-presidential candidates jostling for attention. Unless Democrats think voters will excitedly greet any sign of free speech and party vitality before they vote in 2026, they might want to spend their limited time on the campaign trail rather than staging an event. But there’s no guarantee the Republican clambake will be a success, either. Given how stale and artificial national political conventions have become, one every four years is probably enough.

To get up to speed on the possibility of a government shutdown and what Democrats can do about it, read “Shutdown talk heats up as Democrats insist on stopping health care cuts” by Kevin Frecking and Lisa Mascaro at apnews.com. An excerpt:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A deadline looming, Congress charged Monday toward a federal government shutdown as Republicans brush back Democratic demands to save health care funding from cutbacks, while Democrats are flexing a newfound willingness to play hardball, even if it means closing offices and services.

Republican leaders are ready to call the Democrats’ bluff, possibly as soon as this week, with a test vote before the end-of-the-month deadline to keep government running.

GOP leaders said they could tee up a vote on a short-term spending bill that would keep the federal government fully operational when the new budget year begins Oct. 1. It would likely be a temporary patch, into mid-November.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the measure would include funds to boost security for lawmakers in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Additionally, the Trump administration said it’s asking Congress for $58 million in increased funding for the U.S. Marshals Service and security for the Supreme Court. And the Senate is considering its own proposals.

“I want everyone within the sound of my voice to understand: Members of Congress are safe,” Johnson, R-La., said Monday at the Capitol. “They will be kept safe. They have security measures now at their residence and personally. We can always enhance and do more and do better.”

In the past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

This time, however, Democrats, facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump and refuse to fund the administration’s policies, are taking a tougher position — even if it means halting funds needed to run federal offices.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries are united in opposing any legislation that doesn’t include key health care provisions.

They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiumsfor millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.

More here.

From “The Path to Victory in 2026 — a Popular, Populist Agenda That Delivers for Working People” by Rep. Greg Cesar at Data for Progress: “In the wake of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats are once again searching for a message that can win back working-class voters, mobilize our base, and unify our party. Many Americans — especially non-college-educated voters and those outside major cities — still don’t feel like either party has their back. The question is: How do we earn their trust again?…New polling from Data for Progress points to a clear answer. A bold economic message — focused on holding billionaires accountable, cracking down on corporate greed, fighting political corruption, and delivering real, economic wins for working people — significantly outperforms a more traditional Democratic message centered on “defending the rule of law” and “promoting opportunity.” In the polling, a Democratic candidate running on this bold, populist message beats a Republican by 15 points — compared to just 6 points for a candidate running on the kind of generic messaging traditional Democratic consultants default to. That’s a 9-point boost — not from ideological purity, but from clarity and conviction…And this approach has support beyond Democratic voters. Across party lines, income levels, and education levels, bold economic populism inspires Americans — especially among the working-class voters we need most….Over the last few election cycles, Democrats have continued to lose credibility with American workers. And in 2026, we have an opportunity to rebuild trust — if we lead with a populist economic vision that’s as clear as it is popular. We see a progressive, populist Democrat leading a Republican candidate with non-college voters by 9 points, while a generic Democrat loses by 2. This strategy does not hinge on chasing specific voter demographics or compromising our core values as a party.’

“We must reclaim our identity as the party of working people,” Rep. Cesar adds “the Americans left behind while billionaires and special interests rig the rules of our politics and our economy…The agenda tested in this new polling is a commonsense roadmap for action. It includes cracking down on corporate price fixing, eliminating hidden junk fees, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, expanding Medicare benefits, and ending political corruption…Each of these ideas polls well with voters across the political spectrum, among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike. Majorities of voters with household incomes under $50,000 and voters without a college degree are strongly supportive of this agenda. But more importantly, this agenda shows that voters will support Democrats if we fight clearly for our voters and against special interests. This approach directly names the villains that Americans understand are rigging the system: corrupt politicians, price-gouging corporations, and billionaires hoarding wealth while working families fall further behind…The lesson is simple: When we name our opponents clearly — corruption, soaring costs, and concentrated wealth — and show how we’ll deliver for everyday Americans, we win…That’s why this polling should be a wake-up call — not just for progressives, but for the whole Democratic party.  We don’t need to copy Republican efforts to divide working Americans. We need to be the party that lowers costs, fights corruption, and takes on the billionaires of all political stripes…This is a chance to realign our party with working people across race and across geography — to turn a crisis of trust into a coalition for change. We should take it.”

In “The Eternal Social Justice Summer: A much-maligned new book asks a fair question: Why do the excesses of the left offend voters more than those of the right?,” Richard D. Kahlenberg writes at The Washington Monthly: “It is precisely because Donald Trump is wreaking havoc daily that it’s crucial to comprehend why so many of our fellow Americans came to dislike the Democrats even more than the unlikable and chaotic man they elected president. How is it that a November 2024 survey of working-class Americans found that 58 percent believed Democrats have moved “too far left,”  a share that is 11 points higher than the share that believed Republicans have moved “too far right” (47 percent)?…A healthy concern about racial equality, particularly among white elites, morphed into an unbalanced focus that many Americans, including many Americans of color, found alienating on a host of issues…When the issue of racial preferences came before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 in a case involving Harvard University, the Biden administration arguably prioritized the interests of upper-middle-class Black and Hispanic families over working Americans of all races.  Harvard’s system of large racial preferences and legacy preferences worked well for economically advantaged students of all races. More than 70 percent of Black and Hispanic students came from the richest 20 percent of the Black and Hispanic families nationally, and the white and Asian students were even richer. Rather than backing a system of affirmative action for economically disadvantaged students of all races, however, Biden backed Harvard.”…After the 2024 election, liberals, who were fixated on race, puzzled over how on earth Trump could appeal to an increasing share of nonwhite voters, yielding what Williams calls “the least racially polarized election since 1972.” But to Williams, the result is not surprising. For nonwhite working-class voters, issues of racial reckoning didn’t touch their most pressing concerns, which centered around economic well-being. The “racial reckoning” of 2020, he writes, became “a professional-class affair, existing on another plane entirely from working-class reality.”…It is also possible that the extremism on the right is less difficult for working-class voters to stomach because it doesn’t come with the same strong sense of moral condescension that progressive activists (many of them economically well off) exude.”…Going forward, if Democrats want to win back America’s working class, they need to frame the necessary work of addressing race as a subset of the larger set of challenges facing working people across racial lines. They should emphasize race-neutral policies that serve all Americans who struggle, including working-class whites and underprivileged minorities alike. Such policies could include, for example, boosting funding for regional public and community colleges, as the Monthly’s Paul Glastris has argued…Pundits have pointed to many factors that contributed to Trump’s 2024 election—with inflation and immigration looming large—but cultural disconnect also played an important role.”

Re Trump’s latest big economic proposal – companies ending quarterly reports and just have semi-annual reports because it would “save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies” – Does anyone out there suspect that he is proposing such a reform because he is anticipating a lot of disastrous quarterly reports coming in, as a result of his tariffs? If so, know that you are not alone. The way it is now, the SEC requires quarterly earnings reports. But that could soon be changed. It’s not a new idea. Long before Trump proposed such a change, his 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton, along with Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon proposed such a change, as Matt Egan reports at CNN Business. Nor is it a such bad idea. Egan explains, “The concern is that Corporate America is often far too focused on pleasing the notoriously fickle stock market and not paying enough attention to longer-term challenges and opportunities. Moreover, some argue that the regulatory burdens of quarterly reporting have contributed significantly to the sharp decline in the number of public companies in the United States.” Further, “In the 2010s, regulators in both the European Union and the United Kingdom stopped requiring companies to report quarterly results, moving to six-month reporting periods instead.” All off a sudden, Trump likes ideas originating with liberal Democrats and business leaders. The merits of the idea notwithstanding, it may be another indication that Trump expects some really bad economic news sooner, than later.”

The following article, “Three Big Problems with the Politics of Abundance” by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

I was at the Abundance 2025 conference last week and overall I think it was a big success. There was a wide range of interesting speakers and panels and a pleasing sense of intellectual ferment. It seems likely that the discourse around abundance will continue to evolve in the future and play an important role in policy discussions. That’s a good thing.

But the politics? Ah, there’s the rub. For abundance to succeed as policy it also has to succeed as politics. And here there are some very big problems that will not go away easily and put limits on how far abundance policy can get.

1. Abundance is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Democrats. A key reason abundance has caught on in sectors of the Democratic Party is that they are desperate for something—anything—they can “stand for” besides opposing Trump. They are aware the party is at a low point in voter esteem and widely viewed, especially by working-class voters, as out of touch and ineffective. Abundance is something they can glom on to and say “see—we are turning over a new leaf and will be different in the future.”

A Washington Post article described what Democrats are embracing as “cutting back on the environmental reviews, strict zoning, labor rules and other obstacles that prevent government from efficiently building, fixing and fostering the things people want, from housing to energy.” An Axios article summarized the new approach as “respond[ing to governing failures in blue cities and states] by cutting excess regulations to build more housing, energy projects and more.”

This is fine as far as it goes and is undoubtedly needed. But notice what’s missing. There is no hint here of moving to the center on the wide variety of culturally-inflected issues—crime, immigration, affirmative action, DEI, trans, etc., etc.—that have come to define the image of the contemporary Democratic Party and are tanking the Democrats’ performance among working-class voters. Some Democratic abundance boosters recognize this problem but they are very much a minority voice.

Indeed, it is clear that for most, this is a way of eliding those uncomfortable issues. If we talk about this, we don’t have to talk about that. In this, they are not so different from their great rivals, the “fighting the oligarchy”/populist economics crowd, who also believe their economic approach will dispense with the need to confront and resolve Democrats’ profound cultural distance from normie working-class voters.

That hasn’t worked and won’t work. To believe otherwise is to disregard the clear message of the 2024 election, not to mention the Democrats’ Senate problem and population shifts that will make it ever more necessary to compete in culturally conservative red states. Abundance, in short, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for today’s Democrats. Not even close.

2. Abundance for whom? So this abundance thing—who is it actually for? There is a distinct whiff of professional class coastal liberal preferences in the animating goals of, especially, Democratic adherents to abundance. They are heavy on infill urban housing, urban infrastructure, and building out renewable energy to stave off climate catastrophe. Indeed, in the seminal text of these advocates, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the book’s introduction waxes rhapsodic on their vision of a 2050 socially liberal ecotopia, where, to paraphrase President Trump (“everything’s computer!”), everything’s electric! Fossil fuels are but a distant memory; it’s all clean energy that is dirt cheap with towering skyscraper farms for food and drones that seamlessly deliver everything your heart desires.

This is catnip for the book’s (apparent) target audience of liberal Democratic-leaning professionals but for the rest of the population—not so much. Liberal abundance advocates are obsessed with the need for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy (chiefly wind and solar with a few nukes thrown in). They center “net zero” by 2050 as an urgent priority despite its profound impracticality. And they simply refuse to take seriously the major, undeniable trade-offs between overall energy abundance and a forced march to decarbonization.

That’s a big problem. Cheap, reliable, plentiful energy must necessarily underpin any abundance worthy of the name. Cheap energy enabled the rise of industrial society and remains essential for today’s standard of living. Without it, these advocates’ vision of overall abundance is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Such abundance cannot be achieved by wind and solar solely or even mostly. It means way more nuclear and, yes, more drilling for America’s massive endowment of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel.

Liberal abundance advocates struggle to accept this fact, instead choosing to market their agenda as the way that Democrats’ dream of a rapid renewables–based transition can actually be attained. But working-class voters have little interest in this rapid clean energy transition. These voters—exactly the voters the party needs to win back—do not share the zeal of Democrats’ educated voter base for restructuring the economy around “green” industries and the clean energy agenda that underpinned much of Biden administration economic policy. The last election should have made that, well, abundantly clear.

Too few liberal abundance advocates are willing to grapple with the ways in which their preferred agenda is incompatible with the views and priorities of normie voters, as opposed to people like them. Geoff Shullenberger has noted correctly that the abundance envisioned by advocates “already exists, at least in some form, for those who can afford it,” which just happens to include a huge chunk of the Democrats’ educated professional base. Josh Barro has chided Democratic abundance advocatesfor their support of “decarbonization policies that would make energy, and the aspirational suburban lifestyle, more expensive.” And that lifestyle, he points out, is what “abundance” means for most ordinary Americans. They want that nice house in the ‘burbs with all the gadgets and vehicles! Especially vehicles—as Arizona Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has memorably remarked: “Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck.” The contrast between what most liberal Democrats, including abundance advocates, want such voters to want and what they actually do want is a fundamental problem.

Abundance for whom is an obvious, glaring question that cannot be elided. And right now, way too many abundance advocates have answers that cannot generate the public support they need.

3. Abundance is under-powered as a political project. We live in a populist erawhere a politician like Trump has succeeded by pushing a bold, uncompromising vision to sweep away a broken, elite-dominated system. His crusade is emotional and visceral in a way that liberals loathe but engages tens of millions of working-class voters.

Against this, the technocratic-flavored abundance argument seems weak by comparison. Tweaking the current system to get better outputs assumes more faith in the current system than plausibly exists among most voters. They are more likely to see it as a well-intentioned but likely ineffective reform attempt than a crusade they want to sign up to. An emotional, morally-charged, and nationalistic drive to radically transform our failing system, promote a new era of national development and grand accomplishments and leave the Chinese in the dust is more like a crusade. But at this point such a crusade seems very far from the center of gravity of the abundance discourse.

Frankly, I don’t see how abundance gets very far until and unless advocates recognize its weakness as a political project and embed it in a broader project that can move tens of millions. Only then are their ambitions likely to be realized.

In the wake of the assassination of conservative superstar activist Charlie Kirk, Democrats have largely been bystanders as the president decides how to exploit the tragedy for his own advantage. But there is one prominent Republican voice that should be heard, as I explained at New York:

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination in Utah earlier this week, before there was any real information on the identity or motives of the assassin, President Donald Trump addressed the nation with an angry screed blaming the “radical left” (his term for Democrats) for the crime and vowing official vengeance against those who had allegedly inspired the killing by uttering high-volume insults at Kirk and other MAGA folk.

From that point, we all held our breaths in anticipation of the terrible moment when the assassin would be connected tangibly to one of America’s political or culture-war “tribes” and efforts like Trump’s to assign collective responsibility gained real steam.

This morning, after a rather clumsy leak by the president on Fox & Friends, a press conference featuring federal, state, and local law-enforcement figures and presided over by Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, officially unveiled the name of the suspect, 22-year-old Utah student Tyler Robinson, along with some preliminary data from discovered evidence suggesting “anti-fascism” might be his motive. You could hear the engines of partisan and ideological vengeance getting ready to rev up across the internet.

But then Cox seized the spotlight with an extended and heartfelt call for a de-escalation of efforts to assign collective responsibility for the assassination. He even quoted Charlie Kirk himself on the essential nature of “forgiveness” and implicitly repudiated Trump’s claim that the “radical left” had incited the killer with anti-MAGA rhetoric:

“We need moral clarity right now. I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence. There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody.”

He went on to cite the pacific reaction from his own state to a crime many of them deplored for ideological, moral, and religious reasons,

As it happens, Cox, who is getting more national exposure than ever before, has made this sort of call for civility a hallmark of his political career. He apologized to a Utah LGBTQ+ group for his own past homophobia after the Pulse-nightclub murders in Florida in 2016. As National Governors Association chairman in 2023–24, he spearheaded a “Disagree Better” initiative to foster less-polarized bipartisan conversation. And when he broke from his own history of disdain for Donald Trump (not unusual among Utah Republicans) to endorse him in 2024, it was because he naïvely imagined that Trump’s own near brush with death might make him more amenable to a “national unity” message.

Now that there is at least a shred of evidence linking the prime suspect to “the left” (though a lot more suggesting he’s a mentally ill young man living in an essentially apolitical gamer fantasy universe), we get to find out if Cox’s pleas that Kirk’s assassination not be politicized strike a chord among his fellow partisans, beginning with Trump himself.

The next move is Trump’s. But he must implicitly or explicitly respond to Cox and his call for peace — the kind of peace we used to expect presidents to supply whenever the country was in turmoil.

The following article stub for “Are Senate Democrats Growing a Spine?” by Robert Kuttner is cross-posted from The American Prospect:

Last March, Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer embarrassed himself and his party by colluding with Senate Republicans to round up votes to block a filibuster over Trump’s budget cuts, and then getting absolutely nothing in return. The impoundments, rescissions, and deeper cuts continued, as did Trump’s general lawlessness.

As the government faces an October 1 shutdown unless Congress can make a deal for a continuing resolution to keep spending at current levels, there had been signs that Schumer was planning to rinse and repeat, fearing that Democrats would be blamed for any shutdown. A variant was the idea that Democrats would go along with Republicans in exchange for one high-profile Republican concession—keeping subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies at current levels.

But now, the signs are that Senate Democrats will hold out for a much stronger deal—or let Republicans take the fall for refusing to bargain and letting the government shut down for a time. Schumer seems to be cornered into doing the right thing.

Why? The context has drastically changed since March. Trump’s policies have become more extreme and more unpopular. The 2026 midterms are six months closer. Schumer has lost a lot of credibility with his caucus.

The emerging Democratic caucus position is that Republicans would have to agree to enforceable terms that would block further impoundments or rescissions; there would need to be drastic changes in health policy generally, and not just on ACA subsidies, which affect less than 10 percent of the population. Democrats will hold out for restoration of Medicaid and other health funds as well, as well as changes in vaccine policy.

If Trump’s multiple health cuts persist, they will affect not only those on Medicaid or with ACA-backed policies. Government health care spending and regulation indirectly subsidizes all private health insurance by covering or constraining some costs so that insurance doesn’t have to. Projections are that all policyholders face major premium increases after October 1. In demanding Republican concessions on a broad front of health policy issues as the price of a budget agreement, Democrats will make a huge deal of this risk.

Either way, Democrats win politically. If Republicans refuse to go along, they take the fall for allowing the government to shut down rather than agreeing to a compromise on issues that most Americans support. And if Republicans do agree to a deal, Democrats will have demonstrated muscle and principle on issues that resonate with most Americans. Even better, Republicans will have been backed into constraining Trump.

More here.

I know there’s a lot going on this week that’s more important than still more look-backs at 2024, but one development does require a look within the Democratic camp, and I wrote it up at New York:

The period of finger-pointing and blame-shifting among Democrats for their 2024 election defeat should be near its end, but not before hearing from Kamala Harris. Her book on the 2024 campaign, 107 Days, will be released by Simon & Schuster on September 23, but The Atlantic has published an excerpt about her life as vice-president prior to Joe Biden’s announcement that he was dropping out. The only way to put it is that Harris is seething with anger over her treatment by Team Biden before she was suddenly thrust into the global limelight as the putative replacement candidate.

The excerpt begins on the very day of Biden’s withdrawal, when in her eyes the president subtly disrespected her one more time in his speech to the nation:

“I watched it at the hotel that night. It was a good speech, drawing on the history of the presidency to locate his own place within it. But as my staff later pointed out, it was almost nine minutes into the 11-minute address before he mentioned me.

“’I want to thank our great vice president, Kamala Harris. She is experienced, she’s tough, she’s capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and leader for our country.’

“And that was it.”

The rest of the excerpt is an indictment of the preparation she was given for the herculean task she inherited when Biden stepped away. The White House staff undermined her from day one, says the former veep:

“When Fox News attacked me on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a ‘DEI hire,’ the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé: two terms elected D.A., top cop in the second-largest department of justice in the United States, senator representing one in eight Americans …

“They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible.”

Indeed, says Harris, Team Biden was encouraging nasty stories about her:

“I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me. One narrative that took a stubborn hold was that I had a ‘chaotic’ office and unusually high staff turnover during my first year.

Instead of defending her from “unfair or inaccurate” stories, Biden’s “inner circle” came up with an infernal first major policy assignment so that she could be “knocked down a little bit more”: immigration.

Harris dutifully went on a whirlwind trip to the Latin American countries from which migrants were heading to our southern border, a chore that led to the ludicrous but very damaging conservative label of “border czar” that Republicans hit her with right down to Election Day.

“[N]o one in the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved….

“Instead, I shouldered the blame for the porous border, an issue that had proved intractable for Democratic and Republican administrations alike.”

She finally got the task at which she would subsequently shine when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. But according to Harris, she was not assigned the role of chief defender of reproductive rights. She seized the opportunity created by Biden’s inhibitions about discussing abortion publicly:

“Here was a huge issue on which the president was not seeking to lead. Joe struggled to talk about reproductive rights in a way that met the gravity of the moment. He ceded that leadership to me.”

So when Democrats made a stronger-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections, she should have gotten some real credit, certainly within the White House:

“Joe was already polling badly on the age issue, with roughly 75 percent of voters saying he was too old to be an effective president. Then he started taking on water for his perceived blank check to Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza.

“When polls indicated that I was getting more popular, the people around him didn’t like the contrast that was emerging …

“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital….

“His team didn’t get it.”

That’s where the excerpt ends, with a blunt accusation of Biden White House cluelessness, compounding the “recklessness” that Biden himself showed in delaying his withdrawal from the campaign so late in the day:

“’It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

To be very clear, we don’t know yet whether the bulk of the book devoted to her campaign continues this narrative of Team Biden sabotage, or simply treats it as a handicap as she began the uphill climb toward November. In a recent interview with Stephen Colbert, she disclaimed any intention of “piling on” to criticism of the 46th president. But even if you take her word as gospel about her treatment by the president’s “inner circle,” it doesn’t offer much of a rationale for why she lost to Donald Trump.

Yes, some of the attack lines his campaign pursued against her with Elon Musk’s money reflected narratives begun or strengthened during her vice-presidential tenure. But others very clearly went back to positions she took and things she said during her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, which for the most part she never bothered to contradict or contextualize. Biden and his staff had nothing to do with the disastrous 2019 interview she did in which she appeared to enthusiastically endorse free gender-transition surgery for imprisoned criminals who were also illegal immigrants, a huge combo platter of MAGA bait that led to an incredible number of attack ads in 2024 and helped obliterate her own message.

More generally, it was the overall Biden administration record on inflation and immigration that sank the Harris-Walz ticket, according to most informed analysis, not insufficient veep prestige within that administration. If she was treated as poorly as she now claims, perhaps she should have talked about it publicly as a way to distance herself from an unpopular president.

Now it all sounds like sour grapes. But she has every right to tell her side of the sad story.

Good Americans of all political views should deplore the assassination of GOP activist Charlie Kirk in unequivocal terms. The New York Times editorial on the assassination put it well: “Such violence is antithetical to America. The First Amendment — the first for a reason — enshrines our rights to freedom of speech and expression. Our country is based on the principle that we must disagree peacefully. Our political disagreements may be intense and emotional, but they should never be violent. This balance requires restraint. Americans have to accept that their side will lose sometimes and that they may feel angry about their defeats. We cannot act on that anger with violence…Since last year alone, a gunman killed a member of the Minnesota State Legislature and her husband and shot another Minnesota politician and his wife; a man set fire to the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania; and a would-be assassin shot Donald Trump on the campaign trail. In 2022, an attacker broke into Representative Nancy Pelosi’s home and fractured her husband’s skull. In 2021, a violent mob attacked Congress, smashing windows and brutalizing police officers. In 2017, a gunman shot four people at a Republican practice for the congressional baseball game, badly wounding Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana.” Free speech remains the essential cornerstone of American democracy. Those who resort to violence to try and silence the views of others are committing the most unAmerican of atrocities.

A choice quote from Democratic strategist James Carville, from “Bringing back working-class Democrats” by Scott Reeder at The Illinois Times: “Carville agreed that the trans rights debate has become an albatross for Democrats, particularly those in rural areas…“It got ginned up,” he said. “When we were using phrases like ‘defund the police,’ or ‘reparations’ or that kind of stuff, people were willing to believe other things about Democrats like we wanted to have males running in girls’ track meets or we wanted to have gender-neutral bathrooms. … as we recede from this identity stupidity, it’s going to become less and less potent. … This was a giant mistake. There’s no other way to say it.”…In an interview with IT, the chief political strategist for President Bill Clinton said the Democratic Party’s brand has been damaged in rural areas…“I don’t think you can overestimate the damage that the language of the identity left has (done to) hurt rural Democrats. … Language really took a toll on the brand of the party, and you know, thank God people are pushing back on it. I’ll give you an example: ‘Defund the police.’ They are the stupidest three words in the history of the English language. Only 15% of the party (liked) this language, but its damage to the general party brand was much greater. This was an idiotic idea, and everybody knows it now. And it’s going to take probably this (election) cycle to wash most of the stench off of us.”

In “Trump’s ICE Just Wrecked Massive Business Investment Deal for the U.S.,” Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling writes at The New Republic: “South Korean businesses have suspended at least 22 U.S. projects after an ICE raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia detained hundreds of South Korean workers…Some 475 employees, including 300 South Koreans, were taken into custody Thursday at the Savannah-area battery plant. Videos released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials showed the detained workers in shackles and chains. The raid shocked Seoul, a key U.S. ally, where people expressed a sense of betrayal by Washington…The facility was part of a $4.3 billion joint venture that was slated for completion later this year. It was expected to create 8,500 jobs that would support the car company’s nearby electric vehicle plan, but construction on the factory was put on pause after the raid…Work on at least 22 other factory sites with ties to South Korea has also been halted, reported The Korean Economic Daily. Those facilities are involved in industries related to automobiles, shipbuilding, steel, and electrical equipment…South Korean companies with U.S. business interests have canceled travel plans and recalled their U.S.-based staff, fearing that their employees could be affected by more raids…“Korean workers are being treated like criminals for building factories that Washington itself lobbied for,” a company executive in Seoul told the business newspaper. “If this continues, investment in the U.S. could be reconsidered.” More here.

Josh Marshall writes in “What’s Unmentioned in the Intra-Dem Shutdown Debate” at Talking Points Memo: “As we’ve been discussing for a week there’s a big argument among Democrats about the looming shutdown fight. Senate Democrats seem set on making it a negotiation about Obamacare subsidies, the biggest part of the BBB cuts that kick in before 2026. Meanwhile, you have a growing chorus of people who aren’t Senate Democrats saying this is wrong. It’s not time for small-bore policy revisions. You’ve got to do something dramatic to rein in Trump’s increasingly dictatorial rule. I also see Lakshya Jain and Matt Yglesias saying that yes, maybe it’s time for a confrontation. But if you’re going to have a confrontation, you need to make that stand on the issue where your issue advantage is the greatest. And that’s on the health care subsidies. And at least on the first part of that I absolutely agree. Tariffs are actually pretty salient too. But let’s set that aside for a moment. Because there’s an unspoken part of this equation that makes all the difference…So let’s get that clear and on the table…Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats are making it very clear they don’t want a shutdown. They may be willing to risk one, but they really want to avoid it. Their thinking is that Trump’s getting unpopular on his own and a shutdown gives him an opportunity to spread the blame. Suddenly the Democrats own part of everything going haywire. That is a big part of the reason for focusing so tightly on the Obamacare subsidies. Because there’s already a slice of Republicans who very much want to do the same thing. That’s mostly the endangered members in the House and to a degree in the Senate. The leadership and White House won’t say so of course but they’d probably like to kick those cuts past the 2026 midterms as well because they are almost as invested in those endangered members not losing their races as the members themselves are. Donald Trump personally is probably even more invested than some of them are.” More here.