At FiveThirtyEight, Geoffrey Skelley writes:

In the 2020 election, the rightward shift among Latino voters raised eyebrows. Post-election surveys have disagreed about the exact split in the Latino vote, but it appears around 3 in 5 (or slightly more) voted for President Biden over then-President Donald Trump. Yet many of those same surveys as well as precinct-level analysis of the 2020 vote suggest that, compared with his performance in 2016, Trump made gains among Latinos — and in some places, quite sizable ones. Going forward, such swings among Latinos — the largest ethnic or racial minority group in the country— could affect each party’s chance of carrying important states like Arizona, Florida and Texas while also putting Democratic-leaning turf in play for the GOP.

Yet for all the talk about Republicans making serious inroads with Latino voters, new data from Gallup suggests that Latinos’ lurch toward the GOP could be overstated, at least when it comes to how they identify with the two major parties. In Gallup’s survey data for 2021, the pollster found that 56 percent of Hispanic Americans identified as Democrats or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 26 percent identified as Republican or as leaning toward the GOP. Those figures represent very little change from what Gallup found in 2020 and, as the chart below shows, largely fall in line with Hispanic party-identification data over the past decade.

Skelley explains further,

And among Latinos, ties to the two parties may be particularly weak because they aren’t as likely as other Americans to form a strong partisan identity at a young age. For starters, about one-third of Latinos weren’t born in the U.S., which means many haven’t developed a strong allegiance to either party. As a result, many first-generation Latinos haven’t instilled loyalty to either party in their children, which is often how younger voters in the U.S. form their partisan identities.¹ It’s no surprise then that younger Latinos, in particular, hold only weak affinities for the two major parties or identify as independent, as they often have to find their own way politically….These looser partisan attachments mean that a sizable bloc of the Latino electorate is persuadable.

Skelley notes that there is evidence that some of the Latino drift toward Trump can be attributed to younger Latino voters, but “Biden’s approval rating has fallen especially hard among Latinos, and like other Americans, Latinos are particularly worried about issues like the economy, COVID-19 and crime, which could benefit Republicans, especially if immigration, an issue that has benefited Democrats among Latinos, remains mostly sidelined.”

Skelley concludes,

“Still, at this point it seems more likely than not that Latino voters will continue to prefer Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. However, given the 2020 election results, the prominent issues that voters are worried about and Biden’s standing with the public, there’s plenty of reason to think that Republicans can further trim Democrats’ lead among Latino voters in 2022 — even if Democrats retain a sizable party-ID advantage among all Latinos.”

In close elections, that could be decisive.

Thinking ahead to what may happen at the U.S. Supreme Court in June or July, I began thinking of a possible outcome no one is talking about. So I talked about it at New York:

All signs point to the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court when the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization comes down, likely at the end of the current Supreme Court term. President Donald Trump had explicitly promised to deliver the reversal of Roe; when he managed to appoint three justices very carefully vetted by the conservative legal movement, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before the deed was done. Then in May, the Court accepted a case explicitly designed by the State of Mississippi as a frontal challenge to Roe. Oral arguments in December showed no wobbling at all among the five conservative justices presumed to be strongly inclined against legalized abortion, and at best pro forma equivocation by Chief Justice John Roberts. At the state level, there’s been frenetic legislative activity anticipating the end of a federal right to an abortion. It certainly seems that conservatism’s long-awaited judicial counterrevolution has arrived.

It’s not the first time Roe looked cooked, however. Thirty years ago, the Court was widely expected to gives states the green light to restrict abortions in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. There had even been a preliminary vote in favor of an opinion from Chief Justice William Rehnquist (one of the original dissenters in Roe) that would have done so. But Justice Anthony Kennedy changed his mind and joined “centrist” Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, resulting in a decision that allowed certain state-imposed abortion limitations while actually reaffirming the constitutional protection of pre-viability abortions.

To be clear, it’s unlikely that this “betrayal” of the anti-abortion cause will happen again. For one thing, with the occasional exception of Roberts, there aren’t any “centrists” left among the six current justices appointed by Republican presidents. For another, if the conservatives on the Court were inclined to move slowly and incrementally in eroding reproductive rights, they could have surely arranged to accept a case involving state restrictions that fell short of an outright ban like Mississippi’s, and that didn’t raise expectations among anti-abortion activists that would soon be dashed.

But what would happen if all the Court watchers and legal experts are wrong?

Since the idea of the Court flatly striking down the Mississippi law is hard even to imagine, let’s hypothesize a decision that upholds the state’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks specifically, under some revision of either Roe’s “viability” standard or Casey’s “undue burden” test, rather than a decision that generally affirms state prerogatives to regulate abortion, as in the days before Roe. If that were to happen, the new lines the decision draws would determine how many existing or potential state laws restricting abortion might survive judicial scrutiny. The federal constitutional right to choose would be weakened, but not abolished.

Some observers might treat such an outcome as a sort of deferred reckoning, which was a common reaction to Casey, particularly among pro-choice folk relieved that the viability standard had survived but worried about the approved state restrictions. Obviously, if the Court approves Mississippi’s ban on all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, that would be a rather large step back from Roe and Casey; it could also lead to additional erosions of reproductive rights in future cases. But given the expectation of a more sweeping decision, pro-choice advocates might at least privately be pleased that the vast majority of abortions occurring today would still be legal and (at least for the moment) constitutionally protected.

For exactly the same reasons, anti-abortion advocates and their Republican allies might be deeply disappointed and even angry if Roe survives again, even in an attenuated form. The justices’ majority and concurring opinions would be examined carefully to identify culprits and backsliders. If (as would be likely) Roberts were one of the temporizers, his past betrayals of conservatism (particularly the Obamacare decisions) would be hashed over again with bad intent. If Kavanaugh joined him, we’d be treated to psychobabble about his need to prove his feminist critics wrong.

But if Amy Coney Barrett failed to answer the call to gut Roe on her first opportunity to do so, the effect on those who so avidly supported her nomination and confirmation could be truly traumatic. In a recent examination of Barrett’s “originalist” judicial philosophy, Margaret Talbot suggested that those who view the courts simply as instruments for their right-wing religious and political views might revolt against the entire conservative legal movement if she lets them down:

“Lately, some right-wing Republicans have, like Josh Hawley, been making it known that they don’t see much use for the originalists on the Court if they don’t deliver Roe a fatal blow. Rachel Bovard, a columnist for the Web site the Federalist, recently wrote, ‘If the outcome of Dobbs is indeed a hedge that splits the Court’s conservatives — or, to put it more bluntly, if the conservative legal movement has failed to produce Supreme Court Justices who are comfortable overturning two outrageously constitutionally defective rulings on abortion — we will be left to justifiably wonder what the whole project has been for.’”

Such a disappointment would not reflect well on Donald Trump’s ability to produce what conservative Christians want, either. And that reliability is a key component of his past, present, and presumably future position as leader of the Republican Party and a MAGA movement devoted to restoring an orderly patriarchal society in which the right to choose abortion is just another “woke” nostrum to be mocked and repudiated.

The stakes are undoubtedly high in Dobbs, and not just on the central question of abortion rights. While the Court is expected to deliver a decision that deepens the divide between blue and red America, there’s a chance it could produce something more complicated, like a civil war on the right.

One of the most challenging obstacles to Democrats holding their House of Reps majority and the speakership is, well, quitters. As Chris Cillizza writes in “Here’s why Democrats’ chances of winning in November are slipping” at CNN Politics: “House Democrats are retiring in numbers not seen in decades as a dire political outlook, new district lines and a negative environment at the US Capitol haveother combined into a toxic brew for lawmakers considering their political futures….On Tuesday, New York Rep. Kathleen Rice became the 30th Democrat to announce plans to not seek re-election in 2022. By comparison, only 13 House Republicans are planning to call it quits or seek higher office….”I entered public service 30 years ago and never left,” said Rice of her decision. “I have always believed that holding political office is neither a destiny nor a right. As elected officials, we must give all we have and then know when it is time to allow others to serve.”….The 30 House Democratic retirements are the most for the party since 1992, when a whopping 41(!) Democrats walked away from their seats. If one more House Democrat retires before the election, the 2022 cycle will tie the 1976 and 1978 election cycles as the second most retirements in modern history for the party, with 31. Democrats have already seen more retirements in this cycle than the last two elections combined.”

It’s one thing when a retirement trend is fueled by normal aging or length of service, but quite a different phenomenon when it is not. Although he does not provide any stats regarding the average age or length of service of the retirees, Cillizza does share some telling observations, including: “Amy Walter, the editor of the Cook Political Report, a non-partisan campaign tip sheet, cites three main reasons for the Democratic exodus. First, she told me the national environment; “it’s bad out there for Democrats,” she said. Second, the weight of history; “they all know that it’s hard for party in White House to pick up seats. They can only afford to lose 5. They can do math.” And, finally the “environment” in the Capitol itself; “Talk to any member or staffer and they’ll tell you morale is low. It’s a combination of January 6th, a lack of civility, plus a frustration with a fact that most legislation is leadership driven instead of member driven.”….”I think it’s a direct result of the malaise on Capitol Hill,” said former New York Rep. Steve Israel, who previously ran the party’s House campaign committee. “Most Members decide to retire when they calculate that they might lose their next election. These days people are deciding to retire when they’re confident they will win.” Cillizza adds, “There is a solid — if not perfect — correlation between high retirement levels and House seat losses. In 1992, for example, Republicans netted 10 House seats in the general election, according to Brookings’ Vital Statistics on Congress. In 1978, the Republican gain was 15. In 1976, however, Democrats actually gained a seat despite the 31 retirements from within their ranks….Democrats’ issues are compounded by the fact that Republicans have kept their own retirements very low. If no other House Republican walks away this year, the 13 calling it quits will be the party’s lowest total since 1988.”

At least one of those retirements I can wholeheartedly applaud, that of 10-term House Democrat Tim Ryan, who will retire from his House seat, and is running for the U. S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Rob Portman. Ryan currently reps OH-13, which includes portions of Youngstown, Akron, Lordstown and the Mahoning Valley (aka “Steel Valley”). Democrats have won this district in the last 23 House elections, so prospects for holding it in November, even without Ryan, are good, given a credible Democratic candidate for the House seat. Ryan’s senate bid has been endorsed by Ohio’s other Democratic U.S. Senator, the highly-regarded Sherrod Brown, who also occupied OH-13 back in the day. Ryan does have some primary opposition. But he has to be one of the most appealing Democratic Senate candidates for 2022. A gifted orator with an impressive track record and solid center-left cred with Ohio’s white working-class voters, Ryan provides an important pick-up opportunity for Dems in a state that has been trending red in recent presidential elections. Ryan’s blistering denunciation of the Republicans abdication of democracy and his passionate endorsement of infrastructure investment resonates as the kind of authentic patriotism many voters are hoping to see more of in Democratic candidates. This could be the marquee U.S. Senate race, if Ryan wins the primary and if enough Democratic contributors step up and make sure he has adequate funding to take on the Republican senate nominee, who will be rolling in sticky corporate cash. Democrats urgently need a few more  Senate candidates like Ryan.

“Part of Biden’s dilemma is that reorienting a bureaucracy to promote competition takes time, and voters want to see inflation — running at a 40-year peak— start dropping now,” AP’s Josh Boak writes. “Voters feel the bite of inflation with every trip they make to the grocery store or the gas station, yet the president is traveling the country to discuss solutions such as competition and new infrastructure that predate the current predicament and would have a much more gradual impact….America’s current inflation woes stem from the pandemic. Supply chains for computer chips, clothes, furniture and other goods are under stress. At the same time, consumer demand has surged after a historical amount of government aid flowed into the economy. Despite efforts to get the kinks out of the supply chain, price increases have stayed high in recent months instead of fading as many initial forecasts suggested. That has the Federal Reserve ready to increase interest rates to lower inflation.” However, “in a January survey by the University of Chicago, two-thirds of leading economists said that the concentrated power of companies does not explain the current rash of inflation.” Yet, “Corporate profits after tax equaled 11.8% of the total U.S. economy in the second quarter of last year, the highest share on record going back to 1947. The Biden administration is arguing that government policy can ensure that more of that money goes to workers and customers.” At Axios, Hans Nichols and Joanathan Swan note that “Last week, the White House unveiled a three-pronged plan to fight inflation: fixing supply chains and the country’s infrastructure, lowering health and child care costs and promoting competition to benefit consumers.”

In his New York Times column, “There’s a Reason Trump Loves the Truckers,” Thomas B. Edsall shares some revealing research on how ‘social capital’ influces political choices, and notes Trump’s predictable response:

“We want those great Canadian truckers to know that we are with them all the way,” Trump told rally-goers in Conroe, Texas on Jan. 29….I see they have Trump signs all over the place and I’m proud that they do,” he added.

Edsall notes that in “The Rise of Populism and the Revenge of the Places,” [Andres] Rodríguez-Pose argued:

Populism is not the result of persistent poverty. Places that have been chronically poor are not the ones rebelling.” Instead, he continued, “the rise of populism is a tale of how the long-term decline of formerly prosperous places, disadvantaged by processes that have rendered them exposed and almost expendable, has triggered frustration and anger. In turn, voters in these so-called ‘places that don’t matter’ have sought their revenge at the ballot box….Social capital in the U.S. has been declining for a long time. Associationism and the feeling of community are no longer what they used to be and this has been documented many times. What my co-authors and I are saying is that in those places (counties) where social capital has declined less, long-term demographic and employment decline triggered a switch to Donald Trump. These communities have said “enough is enough” of a system that they feel bypasses them and voted for an anti-system candidate, who is willing to shake the foundations of the system.

Put another way, and regardless of Trump’s future prospects, right-wing populism’s primary constituency is the more recently dispossessed. As Edsall explains, “Translated to the present, in economic and culturally besieged communities, the remnants of social capital have been crucial to the mobilization of men and women — mostly men — who chanted “You will not replace us” and “blood and soil” in Charlottesville, who shot bear spray at police officers on Jan. 6 and who brought Ottawa to its knees for more than two weeks.”

Citing other research, Edsall writes that “cultural conflict and regional economic discrepancies also generate powerful political momentum for those seeking to build a “coalition of resentment.” Since the 2016 election of Trump, the Republican Party has focused on that just that kind of Election Day alliance.” Further,

Shannon M. Monnat and David L. Brown, sociologists at Syracuse and Cornell, have analyzed the economic and demographic characteristics of counties that sharply increased their vote for Trump in 2016 compared with their support for Mitt Romney in 2012.

In their October 2017 paper “More than a rural revolt: Landscapes of despair and the 2016 Presidential election,” Monnat and Brown found that “Trump performed better in counties with more economic distress, worse health, higher drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates, lower educational attainment, and higher marital separation/divorce rates.”

Trump’s populist message, Monnat and Brown write in their conclusion,

may have been attractive to many long-term Democratic voters in these places who felt abandoned by a Democratic Party that has failed to articulate a strong pro-working class message, whose agendas often emphasize policies and programs to help the poor at what seems like the expense of the working-class, and who evidently believed it did not have to work very hard to earn votes from behind the “big blue wall.”

Edsall notes that “Regardless of the sources of discontent and regardless of the characteristic of those leading the assault on the liberal democratic state, there is no question that the trucker’s insurgency in Canada is catching fire abroad — currently in France, Britain, Belgium, New Zealand and Australia.”

Also, as Edsall observes, “Non-college whites in the United States, like the protesting truckers in Canada, continue to face grim prospects, subordinated by meritocratic competition that rewards what they lack: advanced education and top scores on aptitude tests — accomplishments that feed the resource allocation, the status contests and the employment hierarchies that dominate contemporary life and leave those who cannot prevail out in the cold.”

No one should be surprised if the protests spring up inside the U.S. leading up to the midterm elections. As Edsall concludes, “As long as these voters remain on a downward trajectory, they will continue to be a disruptive force, not only in the political arena but in society at large.”

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

For forty years or so the left has been preaching against neoliberalism—the view that capitalism and markets should mostly be left alone to generate prosperity with only modest regulation and a frugal welfare state. For forty years the left has polemicized against this economic model, frequently despairing that they could ever get through to ordinary voters, particularly working class voters, who, the left said, were duped by political elites who either promoted this model or were afraid to challenge it.

Well a funny thing happened in the wake of the Great Recession, a worldwide pandemic and persistent, maddening economic inequality: ordinary voters, including working class voters, are sick of neoliberalism. They’ve had it and they’re ready for something different.

The answer to the left’s prayers right? The opportunity—finally!—to push the American economic model in their preferred direction by building up the mass support the left has always lacked.

A great opportunity, yes, and also an opportunity that’s being impressively blown by today’s left and, in the process, is taking the Democratic party down with them. At the very moment when neoliberalism has been comprehensively discredited, the left has become more and more associated with unpopular sociocultural issues and less and less with solving the problems of working class people. This has branded the left as a movement out of touch with the concerns and language of ordinary voters—a movement that is using its increased influence within the Democratic party to promote pet causes and interfere with effective governance. This is undermining the Democrats’ ability to garner mass support for the very economic transition the left has been promoting for forty years.

How did this sorry state of affairs arise? This is best illustrated by looking at the area of culture and language where the left’s estrangement from ordinary voters is most obvious and which has increasingly defined the left’s brand—and by extension the Democratic party’s.

The culture of the left has evolved and not in a good way. It is now thoroughly out of touch with its working class roots and completely dominated by college-educated professionals, typically in big metropolitan areas and university towns and typically younger. These are the people that fill the ranks of the media, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations and the infrastructure of the Democratic party. They speak their own language and highlight the issues that most animate their commitments to ‘social justice”.

These commitments are increasingly driven by what is now referred to as identity politics. This form of politics originated in the 1960s movements that sought to eliminate discrimination against and establish equal treatment and access for women and for racial and sexual minorities. In evolving to the present day, the focus has mutated into an attempt to impose a worldview that emphasizes multiple, intersecting levels of oppression (“intersectionality”) based on group identification. In place of promoting universal rights and principles—the traditional remit of the left–advocates now police others on the left to uncritically embrace this intersectional approach, insist on an arcane vocabulary for speaking about these purportedly oppressed groups, and prohibit discourse based on logic and evidence to evaluate the assertions of those who claim to speak on the groups’ behalf.

Is America really a “white supremacist” society? What does “structural racism” even mean and does it explain all the socioeconomic problems of nonwhites? Is anyone who raises questions about immigration levels a racist? Are personal pronouns necessary and something the left should seek to popularize? Are transwomen exactly the same as biological women and are those who question such a claim simply “haters” who should be expunged from the left coalition (as has been advocated in the UK)? This list could go on. What ties the questions together is that they are closely associated with practitioners of identity politics or adherents of the intersectional approach, who deem them not open to debate with the usual tools of logic and evidence. Politically derived answers are simply to be embraced by the left in the interest of “social justice.”

The left has paid a considerable price for its increasingly strong linkage to militant identity politics, which brands it as focused on, or at least distracted by, issues of little relevance to most voters’ lives. Worse, the focus has led many working-class voters to believe that, unless they subscribe to this emerging worldview and are willing to speak its language, they will be condemned as reactionary, intolerant, and racist by those who purport to represent their interests. To some extent these voters are right: They really are looked down upon by the dominant elements of the left—typically younger, well-educated, and metropolitan—who embrace identity politics and the intersectional approach. This has contributed to the emerging rupture in the Democratic Party’s coalition along lines of education and region.

This rupture was solidified by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. By far the dominant interpretation of white working class support for Trump on the left was that these voters were racist and xenophobic, full stop. They just didn’t like the loss of status and privilege allegedly attendant upon being white as America evolved to a more multicultural, multiracial democracy. This was odd since the left has just spent the last many decades sternly denouncing neoliberalism and how it was ruining the lives and communities of all working people. But that counted for little as the left digested the Trump victory and girded for battle as “The Resistance”.

The Trump years further deepened the identity politics commitments of the left, particularly in the wake of the nationwide movement protesting the murder of George Floyd. This left its stamp on the 2020 edition of the Democratic party, notwithstanding their old school standard-bearer, Joe Biden. Not surprisingly Biden did not do much better than recent Democrats among the white working class. But, especially shocking to those on the left, the “racial reckoning” and four years of Donald Trump, did not produce enhanced support for Democrats among nonwhites, but rather significant erosion in that support, particularly among working class nonwhites.

I do not see many signs that the processing of these electoral signals has led the left back toward a more universalist approach. In fact quite the opposite seems to have happened. The left is holding ever more tenaciously onto policies and rhetoric linked to identity politics.

Biden and leading Democrats have sought to defuse controversies around this brand of politics by characterizing the controversies as Republican attempts to distract voters from Democrats’ more popular policies. This is certainly better than directly endorsing the highly unpopular rhetoric and practices of the left in areas like crime, immigration, ideological “anti-racism,” and language policing. But, because it falls short of direct criticism and because the Biden administration itself has drenched many of its own initiatives in rhetoric of “equity,” “systemic racism,” and other buzzwords central to identity politics, the Democratic party has not escaped association with that approach’s more unpopular aspects.

As a result, the party’s—or, at least, Biden’s—attempt to rebrand Democrats as a unifying party speaking for Americans across divisions of race and class appears to have failed. Voters are not sure Democrats can look beyond identity politics to ensure public safety, secure borders, high quality, non-ideological education, and economic progress for all Americans. A universalist message is simply not getting through.

Instead, the Democrats find themselves weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curricula and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy, and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding is impossible, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately crippled by a torrent of criticism or simply never proposed.

In short, Democrats are stuck. The left will not allow the party to escape the gravitational field of identity politics and the party’s inability to do so means that their brand cannot sustain a durable majority. Indeed, there are signs that Democrats are experiencing more and more slippage among working class voters of all races. For a left of center party, that is catastrophic—not just for 2022, but far beyond.

There is a way forward and it involves embracing the core views and values of ordinary voters, particularly ordinary working class voters. Logically, the left should be promoting this approach since realistically a transition away from neoliberalism—the economic program fervently advocated by the left for forty years—will take years and a far broader coalition than the Democrats currently have.

Below I present a list of such core views and values, cast in terms that would be congenial to ordinary working class voters but nevertheless reflect the liberal commitments of the Democratic party. Democratic politicians, including those on the left, should be able to put forward these liberal-but-not-radical statements without feeling embarrassed or afraid they will get attacked by their own side.

• Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.
• America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.
• Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.
• No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.
• America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.
• Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. But crime is a real problem so more and better policing is needed for public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police”.
• There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong.
• There are basically two genders but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and not settled.
• Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.
• Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith.

Movement in this direction should start at the top with President Joe Biden. As the Financial Times noted in a recent editorial taking off from Bill Maher’s criticisms of the American left:

A president cannot and should not micromanage local policing and schooling, much less the private decisions of “woke” business. What he can do is state his own liberal-but-not-radical position in the cultural struggles of the day, as did former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at various times.

Maher is not the only American who subscribes to liberalism in its old sense while balking at group rights, equivocation over crime (many of whose victims are poor minorities) and the minefield of modern speech. It is not as though Biden need turn into J Edgar Hoover to win these voters over. And if and when they are reassured, the Republicans’ own capacity for cultural over-reach, perhaps in the form of judicial rulings on abortion and other issues this year, will stand out.

At the moment, Biden is relying on his bona fides to get him through. He has spent much of his career at the conservative end of his party. He is a Catholic who came of age before the Permissive Society of the 1960s. If anything, the worry upon his third bid for the White House was that the author of hardline criminal justice laws was too draconian and old-fashioned for modern America.

Perhaps to compensate for that past, however, he has been nervous to shout down the strident voices to his left. He is caught between strict liberals and the kind of progressives for whom liberalism is a polite cover for all kinds of structural inequities. Refusing to pick a side is a good way to maintain the uneasy peace within the Democratic party. Unfortunately, it is also a good way of arousing the mistrust of large parts of the country.

It is time for Joe Biden to pick a side. The left is dragging his party and Presidency down. And in the process the left is blowing its big opportunity to move American society away from the neoliberalism they’ve been criticizing for forty years. In that sense, Biden, by taking a side, would be doing the left a favor and saving them from themselves. That is, if they still believe in replacing neoliberalism.

At The Cook Political Report, Charlie Cook explains why “Dems’ Problems Bigger Than Redistricting,” and writes: “A question I’m getting asked a lot these days is: “What does President Biden need to do to turn this midterm election around?” To many, it seems like a political version of a Rubik’s Cube, a puzzle ready and waiting to be solved with the right approach. Don’t be so sure….Surely, some Democrats have been buoyed by a bit of good news lately. Reports over the last few days from Cook Political Report with Amy Walter redistricting guru David Wasserman and others have argued that Democrats have fared better than expected in the redistricting process….While it is true that Democrats do seem to have escaped a tsunami in reapportionment and redistricting, their fundamental political troubles heading into the midterm elections have little to do with either reapportionment or redistricting….The overall political environment, including Biden’s low job-approval ratings and a big disparity in enthusiasm levels between more-energized Republicans and more-lethargic Democrats, continue to be much greater threats. The potential for a wave election has nothing to do with ink on a map and everything to do with voters’ broader concerns….So what needs to happen to save Democrats’ skin? As Doug Sosnik, who was a senior political aide in the Clinton White House, told Politico’s “Playbook,” the administration needs to control the coronavirus and inflation, return the supply chain to normal, dodge a global crisis, and hope Biden’s job approvals return to the “high 40s by summer.” Meanwhile, the GOP needs to “nominate unelectable general-election candidates and run lousy campaigns,” and “Trump and Republicans need to keep talking about the 2020 election.”…t stands to reason that between now and Election Day, we may have emerged from the coronavirus and started feeling normal again. If the Republican National Committee’s censure of Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger this weekend for their participation on the Jan. 6 committee is any indication, Republicans may indeed give Democrats a helping hand.”

In “What Democrats And Republicans Get Wrong About Inflation” at FiveThirtyEight, Santul Nerkar writes that “there is an element of the prices we’re seeing today — and how Americans are responding to them — that could be explained by big business run amok. Philippon, whose book “The Great Reversal” focuses on how a lack of competition and corporate concentration have defined the modern American economy, told me that one reason why inflation is such a big deal in the U.S. is that prices were already so high to begin with…..“That’s not a statement about rapid inflation, it’s a statement about slowly rising profit margins that slowly choke off the middle class,” Philippon said. “One reason it’s particularly painful in the U.S. is that prices were already high, people’s purchasing power, the real value of their wages was already being eroded by market power before. Then when you add to that a burst of inflation, it’s even more painful.” ….That may explain why recent polling has found that Americans are sympathetic to arguments that attribute inflation to corporate greed, and why Biden is singing a fairly populist tune on inflation. But as with all aspects of messaging on the issue, whether Democrats or Republicans are more right on the facts of inflation has very little to do with its potential electoral impact. Prices have to stabilize for Americans to feel good about the economy — and for Democrats to feel good about their chances in 2022…..“I don’t think there’s any message that would make people feel good about 7 percent inflation,” Furman said.”

“Bills banning members of Congress from trading stocks are gaining increased bipartisan support,” reports Ellen Ioanes at Vox, “— including from a former skeptic, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — after a series of investigations involving potential insider trading by lawmakers, particularly in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic….There’s wide agreement among voters that legislators should be banned from trading stocks while in Congress, since their position can give them access to information about companies and industries that ordinary people don’t have. While there are some policies in place to at least provide transparency about how legislators are making money from the stock market, there aren’t significant punishments for violating those rules….In fact, as Business Insider’s Dave Levinthal reported earlier this month, at least 55 members of Congress violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act in 2021 alone….According to Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the government watchdog group Public Citizen, public frustration with ethical issues — and widespread public support for a stock trading ban — is likely driving the current push….Ethics experts say there are abundant reasons why lawmakers should be barred from trading individual stocks, but the problem was cast into particularly stark relief by the start of the Covid-19 pandemic….Specifically, in early 2020, when many Americans suddenly lost their jobs due to the pandemic (not to mention had to deal with unexpected medical bills and child care), US senators raked in millions after placing fortuitous trades in the stock market.” Ioanes discusses several proposed reforms, including “The Ossoff-Kelly bill, which has yet to find a Republican co-sponsor in the Senate, is modeled closely on a bipartisan bill in the House, which was first introduced by Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Chip Roy (R-TX) in 2020 and reintroduced last year. That bill — the TRUST in Congress Act — doesn’t cover other asset classes like mutual funds or government bonds, as its Senate counterpart does, but would still impose substantial divestment requirements on lawmakers.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. reviews U. S. Rep. Ro Khanna’s new book, new book, “Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us,” and observes that it is “a manifesto for a progressive capitalism that values both ambition and settled communities, both growth and fairness….Khanna’s goal is “to make the high-tech revolution work for everyone, not just for certain Silicon Valley leaders” and to “create opportunities for people where they live instead of uprooting them.”….He scolds policymakers for ignoring “the destabilization of local communities.”….A member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Khanna endorses the social supports that liberals have long insisted are essential to a just society: health-care guarantees, “a family-supporting wage,” wide access to educational opportunities, enhanced worker rights…..But he also outlines an array of place-based approaches to make venture capital more widely available; to use the federal government’s contracting power to spread tech opportunities to rural areas; and to create “digital grant colleges” allied with traditional land-grant institutions “to bring private-sector expertise to job training.”….We need to move away from “mythologizing these tech jobs,” Khanna says, with “the worst caricatures” involving talk of “turning coal miners into coders.” In his book and in conversation, he stresses that good manufacturing jobs now require a high level of technical training because so many products, from appliances to automobiles — cars, he notes, have become “computers on wheels” — are themselves high-tech goods….Our country will miss an enormous opportunity if it doesn’t take advantage of what Khanna calls “the covid-19 realignment.” The pandemic opened up “the possibility of tech decentralization to places that have been left behind.” Remote work not only relocates jobs but, harnessed wisely, could also create opportunities “for local wealth creation.”….What’s heartening about Khanna’s way of looking at things is not just the policy creativity he’s calling for or his invocation of an old American tradition — dating to Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln — of marrying public action to widely diffused economic growth. It’s also his insistence that Democrats and progressives need to go beyond saying “America is falling apart” and advance “a hopeful, aspirational vision of America.”….“Yes, we should be for a redistribution — tax the billionaires in my district,” he says with a laugh. But the broader objective is to give everyone “the opportunity to build wealth” because “people want to aspire, they want to build things, they want to create things.”….Lord knows, we can’t count on even the wisest economic policies to wipe away our political divisions, or racism, or intolerance. But it’s bracing to hear a progressive speaking with admiration and respect for Paintsville, Ky.; Beckley, W.Va.; Jefferson, Iowa; and places like them. And if we’re ever to find our way toward a degree of social peace, Khanna’s shorthand for a better society — “prosper together and respect local communities” — seems a good place to start.”

Following as I do the sometimes tedious but always essential discussions of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, I feel constrained to sound the alarm about the dangers of fighting the last (2020) war, and did so at New York:

So far the discussion around this year’s midterm elections has mostly focused on House and Senate races, which could break up the Democrats’ governing trifecta in Washington. There’s been far less focus on gubernatorial races, which only tend to matter to people in the states involved. But the big batch of competitive races for governor in 2022 could ultimately have a huge impact on the entire nation. Governors play a central but overlooked role in the certification of presidential elections, so the election of Republican governors in battleground states could increase the odds of a successful 2024 election coup by Donald Trump, if efforts to reform our election laws ignore the possibility of rogue governors.

Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, electors certified by governors are considered valid unless overturned by both chambers of Congress. In four of the states whose results were contested by Trump in 2020 (Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) Democratic governors were in place to prevent the certification of fake Trump electors. In two others (Arizona and Georgia), Republican governors refused to play Election Coup ball.

But MAGA bravos have a significant chance of winning Republican gubernatorial nominations in the Democratic-governed states mentioned above, and midterm dynamics give the GOP a better-than-average chance (at this early point) of flipping them all. In Arizona, Doug Ducey is term-limited, and the two top Republicans in the race to succeed him are supporters of the bogus 2020 election audit. And in Georgia, Trump is sponsoring a serious primary challenge to Brian Kemp by former U.S. senator David Perdue, who is campaigning on the theme that Kemp “let us down” by certifying Biden’s 2020 win in that state.

Yes, there is bipartisan interest in Congress right now in an effort to repair the hazy and dangerous provisions of the Electoral Count Act. But because the threat to democracy in 2020 came from Trump’s efforts to encourage state legislators and the vice-president to overturn the results, the potential threat of rogue governors may not get the attention it deserves.

Election expert Matthew Seligman has been warning that the tendency to fight the last war (or coup attempt) could lead to a scenario where a governor and/or some other certifying state official could send in a false certificate on behalf of the popular-vote loser and then count on a single congressional chamber to uphold it, as Business Insider’s Grace Panetta points out:

“A far more urgent and straightforward threat though, according to Seligman, is something he calls the Swing State’s Governor’s Gambit. It would only require a few partisan officials who control the state government in one swing state to submit an illegitimate slate of electors for their party’s losing presidential candidate — and their party also controlling one chamber of Congress and counting it.

“’As a result,’ Seligman wrote in a recent report, ‘a hyperpartisan House of Representatives can collaborate with a swing state’s governor to steal that state’s electoral votes, and under the Act’s existing structure there is nothing the opposing party could do to stop them.’”

Guess who is favored to control the House after the 2022 midterms? A “hyperpartisan” Republican conference led by Trump ally Kevin McCarthy. Usually control of the House doesn’t flip in presidential elections, so if McCarthy is Speaker going into 2024 he would probably emerge with the gavel still in his hand. And the 45th president is already trying to sabotage Republican support for doing anything to fix the Electoral Count Act.

So even if you are a progressive comfortably ensconced in a deep-blue state unlikely to go MAGA in 2022, the midterm gubernatorial elections in highly competitive states are well worth watching. Another January 6 nightmare with a different outcome in Congress could be in the offing.

 

From Ballotpedia’s report on “Battleground States” U.S. Senate races:

Battleground states

The following eight battleground states were rated as battlegrounds by Inside Elections as of October 2021 and as either a toss-up, lean, or likely Democratic or Republican state by Cook Political Report and/or Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Click here for more information about Senate race ratings.

• Arizona
• Florida
• Georgia
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• Wisconsin

Arizona

See also: United States Senate election in Arizona, 2022

The previous two Senate elections—held in 2018 and 2020—were both decided by 2.4 percentage points. In 2020, Mark Kelly (D) defeated incumbent Sen. Martha McSally (R) in a special election^[10], 51.2% to 48.8%. In 2018, Kyrsten Sinema defeated McSally, 50.0% to 47.6%.

The two most recent presidential elections in Arizona were similarly close. Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by 0.3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election by 3.6 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Democratic.^[11]

Florida

See also: United States Senate election in Florida, 2022

In 2018, Rick Scott (R) defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D) by 0.2 percentage points in the Senate race for Florida. In 2016, incumbent Marco Rubio won re-election by a margin of 7.7 percentage points.

The two most recent presidential elections in Florida were both decided by less than 4 percentage points. Incumbent President Donald Trump (R) defeated Joe Biden (D) by 3.3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election by 1.2 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Republican.^[11]

Georgia

See also: United States Senate election in Georgia, 2022

The two Senate elections held in Georgia in 2020—with runoffs taking place in January 2021—were both decided by 2 percentage points or fewer. Jon Ossoff (D) defeated incumbent Sen. David Perdue (R) by 1.2 percentage points, 50.6% to 49.4%. Raphael Warnock (D) defeated incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) in a special election by 2 percentage points, 51.0% to 49.0%. In 2016, incumbent Sen. Johnny Isakson (R) won re-election by a margin of 13.8 percentage points.

Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by 0.2 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election by 5.2 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Democratic.^[11]

Nevada

See also: United States Senate election in Nevada, 2022

The two preceding Senate elections were both decided by 5 percentage points or fewer. In 2018, Jacky Rosen defeated incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (R) by 5 percentage points. In 2016, incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Joe Heck (R) by 2.4 percentage points.

The two most recent presidential elections in Nevada were similarly close. Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by 2.4 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Hillary Clinton (D) defeated Trump in the 2016 presidential election by 2.4 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Democratic.^[11]

New Hampshire

See also: United States Senate election in New Hampshire, 2022

The two preceding Senate elections were split in competitiveness. In 2020, Incumbent Jeanne Shaheen (D) won re-election against Bryant Messner (R) by a margin of 15.6 percentage points. In 2016, Maggie Hassan (D) defeated incumbent Kelly Ayotte by 0.1 percentage points.

The two most recent presidential elections in Nevada were similarly split. Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by 7.3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Hillary Clinton (D) defeated Trump in the 2016 presidential election by 0.3 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Democratic.^[11]

North Carolina

See also: United States Senate election in North Carolina, 2022

Incumbent Sen. Richard Burr (R) is not seeking re-election, making this an open seat race. In 2020, incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis defeated Cal Cunningham (D) by 1.8 percentage points. In 2016, Burr won re-eelction by 5.7 percentage points.

The two most recent presidential elections in North Carolina were both decided by less than 4 percentage points. Incumbent President Donald Trump (R) defeated Joe Biden (D) by 1.3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election by 3.6 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Republican.^[11]

Pennsylvania

See also: United States Senate election in Pennsylvania, 2022

Incumbent Sen. Pat Toomey (R) is not seeking re-election, making this an open seat race. In 2018, incumbent Bob Casey Jr. (D) defeated Lou Barletta (R) by 13.1 percentage points. In 2016, Toomey won re-election against Katie McGinty (D) by 1.5 percentage points.

The two most recent presidential elections were both decided by less than 2 percentage points. Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by 1.2 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election by 0.7 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Republican.^[11]

Wisconsin

See also: United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2022

In 2016, incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R) won re-election against Russ Feingold (D) by 3.4 percentage points. In 2018, incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin defeated Leah Vukmir (R) by 10.8 percentage points.

The two most recent presidential elections were both decided by less than 1 percentage point. Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by 0.7 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton (D) in the 2016 presidential election by 0.7 percentage points.

At the start of the 2022 election cycle, Inside Elections rated this state Battleground Republican.^[11]

Click on each state link for more detailed information. Ballotpedia also has a dynamic table that compares U.S. Senate race ratings, updated every five minutes, from The Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections.

In his article, “Status Anxiety Is Blowing Wind Into Trump’s Sails,” New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall writes that “In “Local Economic and Political Effects of Trade Deals: Evidence from NAFTA,” Jiwon Choi and Ilyana Kuziemko, both of Princeton, Ebonya Washington of Yale and Gavin Wright of Stanford make the case that the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 played a crucial role in pushing working-class whites out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party:

We demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses relative to other counties. These losses begin in the mid-1990s and are only modestly offset by transfer programs. While exposed counties historically voted Democratic, in the mid-1990s they turn away from the party of the president (Bill Clinton) who ushered in the agreement and by 2000 vote majority Republican in House elections.

The trade agreement with Mexico and Canada “led to lasting, negative effects on Democratic identification among regions and demographic groups that were once loyal to the party,” Choi and her co-authors write….Before enactment, the Republican share of the vote in NAFTA-exposed counties was 38 percent, well below the national average, but “by 1998, these once solidly Democratic counties voted as or more Republican in House elections as the rest of the country,” according to Choi and her colleagues….Before NAFTA, the authors write, Democratic Party support for protectionist policies had been the glue binding millions of white working-class voters to the party, overcoming the appeal of the Republican Party on racial and cultural issues. Democratic support for the free trade agreement effectively broke that bond: “For many white Democrats in the 1980s, economic issues such as trade policy were key to their party loyalty because on social issues such as guns, affirmative action and abortion they sided with the G.O.P.””

Edsall continues, “The promise of economic well-being achieved through meritocratic means lies at the very heart of Western liberal economies,” write three authors — Elena Cristina Mitrea of the University of Sibiu in Romania, and Monika Mühlböck and Julia Warmuth of the University of Vienna — in “Extreme Pessimists? Expected Socioeconomic Downward Mobility and the Political Attitudes of Young Adults.” In reality, “the experience of upward mobility has become less common, while the fear of downward mobility is no longer confined to the lower bound of the social strata, but pervades the whole society.”….Status anxiety has become a driving force, Mitrea and her colleagues note: “It is not so much current economic standing, but rather anxiety concerning future socioeconomic decline and déclassement, that influences electoral behavior.”….“Socially disadvantaged and economically insecure citizens are more susceptible to the appeals of the radical right,” Mitrea, Mühlböck and Warmuth observe, citing data showing “that far-right parties were able to increase their vote share by 30 percent in the aftermath of financial crises.”

Economic insecurity translates into support for the far-right through feelings of relative deprivation, which arise from negative comparisons drawn between actual economic well-being and one’s expectations or a social reference group. Coping with such feelings increases the likelihood of rejecting political elites and nurturing anti-foreign sentiments.

The concentration of despair in the United States among low-income whites without college degrees compared with their Black and Hispanic counterparts is striking.”

Chris Cillizza provides an update on U.S. Senate races at CNN Politics, and notes, “At the moment, there are six Senate races that both sides agree are toss ups. Democrats are seeking reelection in three of those races: Arizona (Mark Kelly), Georgia (Raphael Warnock) and Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto). Another features a Republican running for another term: Wisconsin (Ron Johnson). And two are open seats due to Republican retirements: North Carolina and Pennsylvania….Barring some sort of unforeseen cataclysm, those races will be close from now until Election Day. It’s the races at the next level of competitiveness — where one side is favored, but the other side has a shot — that could wind up determining who holds the majority come January 2023….In that next tier of Democratic-held seats is where Republicans are struggling on candidate recruitment. While New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan is still considered vulnerable, Republicans have a harder climb than they would have if Gov. Chris Sununu had run. Ditto Colorado, where the GOP seems to be nowhere in terms of recruiting a top-tier candidate to take on Sen. Michael Bennet. Now, add Maryland to that list….Democrats, by contrast, have a few longer-shot opportunities among GOP-controlled seats. They got their preferred candidates in Florida (Rep. Val Demings) and Ohio (Rep. Tim Ryan) to run, and effectively cleared the primary field for each of them. Missouri’s open seat is another longer-shot chance if Republicans nominate controversial former Gov. Eric Greitens.”

On January 31st I posted that Judge J. Michelle Childs, who who President Biden recently nominated to the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court and has been listed on media short lists as a possible contender for Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, had “a strong record a strong track record in support of worker rights” and “may be the potential nominee most feared by anti-labor conservatives.” Alexander Sammon , who researched Judge Child’s record more thoroughly than I did, reports at The American Prospect that “Childs’s experience is worth scrutinizing closely. As a lawyer, Childs served as an associate and then partner at Nexsen Pruet Jacobs & Pollard, from 1992 to 2000. At Nexsen Pruet, Childs worked primarily in labor and employment law, principally working on behalf of employers against allegations of racial discrimination, civil rights violations, and unionization drives….Nexsen Pruet, where Childs was a partner, has for years boasted of its anti-union services, advertising to firms hoping to keep their workplace “union-free,” “offer[ing] strength in unfair labor practice and union representation issues,” and warning against the impacts of the PRO Act, Democrats’ signature unionization bill that was included in the Build Back Better Act.” I apologize to readers for inadequate research in my post.

The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court outdid itself this week, and not in a good way, as I explained at New York:

In an order that will have significant short-term and long-term effects on voting rights, redistricting and racial-gerrymandering laws, five conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices set aside a lower-court ruling that would have forced Alabama to draw a congressional map for the next decade that better reflects the state’s demographics.

The facts of the case are clear and uncontested: Last year, the Republican-controlled Alabama legislature drew the state’s new congressional map to provide six majority-white (and sure to be Republican) districts and one majority-Black (and sure to be Democratic) district even though 27 percent of Alabama’s population is Black and concentrated in a way that would easily accommodate a second majority-Black district. On January 24, a three-judge federal district court panel (including two judges appointed by Donald Trump) unanimously held that the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 based on existing Supreme Court precedents, and it ordered the legislature to substitute one of the many available maps with two majority-Black districts for its tainted plan.

But now the Supreme Court has granted Alabama’s “emergency” appeal to reimpose its original map. As is generally the case in such “shadow docket” decisions (rulings on time-sensitive petitions when the Court is not in session or when circumstances won’t permit full briefings, oral arguments, and deliberations), the rationale for the action of the majority isn’t clear. Three conservative justices (Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett) silently concurred, while two (Brett Kavanaugh joined by Samuel Alito) filed a concurring opinion heavily emphasizing the so-called Purcell doctrine, which discourages federal-court interventions in such cases too close to elections. The Court’s three liberal justices (Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) joined in a dissent written by Kagan arguing that the district-court decision gave the legislature plenty of time to comply before Alabama’s May primary date and accusing the majority of covertly reversing Voting Rights Act precedents to let Alabama (and probably other southern states) get away with racial gerrymandering:

“Today’s decision is one more in a disconcertingly long line of cases in which this Court uses its shadow docket to signal or make changes in the law, without anything approaching full briefing and argument. Here, the District Court applied established legal principles to an extensive evidentiary record. Its reasoning was careful — indeed, exhaustive — and justified in every respect. To reverse that decision requires upsetting the way Section 2 plaintiffs have for decades — and in line with our caselaw — proved vote-dilution claims.”

But the most striking opinion published by the Court was a separate dissent filed by Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of landmark decisions gutting a key enforcement provision of the Voting Right Act (Shelby County v. Holder in 2013) and restricting federal-court jurisdiction over partisan gerrymandering (Ruccho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek in 2019). You’d think he might be eager to further erode Voting Rights Act enforcement in redistricting cases, and you might be right. But he concluded that such a new departure in the law would require a full review with oral arguments since “the District Court properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction.” Thus, he said, the 2022 elections should proceed under the requirement that the Alabama legislature create a second majority-Black district, a decision that could in theory be reversed for subsequent elections.

Robert’s dissent makes the brazenness of the majority ruling pretty plain notwithstanding Kavanaugh’s rationalization about the lower court’s tardiness (caused, of course, by the Alabama legislature itself). It most obviously cost Black voters in Alabama (and, for that matter, Democrats) a majority-Black House seat in 2022 — and probably for the rest of the decade — and short-circuited what many experts anticipated would be court orders adding majority-Black House seats in Louisiana, South Carolina and possibly even Georgia.

From a longer-term perspective, Roberts’s concurrence shows he is probably ready to join the majority in this case in further restricting grounds for the application of the Voting Rights Act to redistricting decisions once this or a similar case comes back to the Court for full consideration. And as election law expert Rick Hasen notes, the Supreme Court continues to expand the shadow docket by adopting Kavanaugh’s expansive interpretation of the Purcell doctrine “on steroids” to “shut down important election law changes” by lower federal courts. It’s all pretty bad news for voting rights and for federal-court review of elections at a time when clarity and fairness are badly needed.