New Polls: Texas is a Swing State in 2020

With luck historians will write that Donald Trump was one of the worse things to happen to an already moribund Republican Party, a party that placed all of its future on shrinking elements of the US population  - e.g., aging white voters - while going out of its way to alienate growing segments of the national population - e.g., younger voters and the growing numbers of mixed or non-white voters.  Between peddling openly racist dog whistle sound bites and the utter incompetence of the Trump/Pence response to the Covid-19 pandemic, polls increasingly suggest the even red states like Texas and Georgia may end up in Joe Biden's column.  Of course if these polls prove prophetic, the most delicious aspect of it all will be that Trump loses by a landslide and his fragile, self-centered ego is devastated.  May he forever be branded as an incredible loser and the worse president in America's history. A piece at CNN looks at some of the latest polling.  Here are excerpts:

New CBS News/YouGov polls show President Donald Trump is in trouble in three states he won in 2016. He's tied with former Vice President Joe Biden in Arizona (46% to 46%), a state he won by four points in 2016. Trump's down 48% to 42% in Florida, a state he took by a point in 2016.

But it's the third state, Texas, where the eye popping result comes from. It's Trump 46% to Biden's 45%, a result well within any margin of error.

It's pretty clear looking at the data that Texas is a swing state in the 2020 election. The 2020 campaign could be the first time Democrats captured the Lone Star State in a presidential election since 1976. The CBS News/YouGov poll is not an outlier over the last month. There have been eight polls released publicly since the beginning of June. The result is that Biden and Trump are basically tied, with Biden up by a mere 0.3 points in Texas.

Importantly, and unlike in other states, the polls in Texas have not overestimated Democrats over the last few cycles. If anything Democrats actually slightly outperformed their final polls in the 2016 presidential race and 2018 Senate races.

Things may change the closer we get to the election, but Texas really is competitive at this point.

Texas has gotten progressively more competitive during Trump's time as a candidate and officeholder. A big statewide victory has eluded Democrats, though many races have come within single digits for the first time in a generation. In fact, the state seemed, if anything, to move to the left in 2018, as Democrats were able to achieve wins in some key congressional races. A Biden win would be a manifestation of that trend on the statewide level.
 As I noted last year, the reason the Democrats are doing so well in Texas is a shift among college educated white voters. You see this best in the suburbs of Austin, Dallas and Houston, where O'Rourke did disproportionately better than the Democratic Senate did six years prior.

Indeed, Texas' white voter population is very well educated. One calculation by the New York Times' Nate Cohn reveals that a little more than 42% of the 2020 likely white voters in Texas have a college degree. That's 13th highest in the nation and the most of any state Trump carried in 2016.
 I would expect the trend in the college educated areas of Texas to carry over to 2020. Much of Biden's gains over Clinton nationally have occurred among whites with a college degree. In national June polls, Biden was up 22 points among this group compared to Clinton's 12 point lead with them in the final 2016 polls of registered voters.  One problem for Biden is he does seem to be struggling among Hispanic voters nationally, and there are a lot of Hispanic voters in Texas. Although Biden is winning them by around 30 points nationally, he's not putting up the same margins as Clinton did in 2016.

Further, I wouldn't expect Texas to be the tipping state in the electoral college (i.e. state containing the median electoral vote plus one). Biden is certainly in a stronger position in the core six battleground states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) where the averages have him up anywhere from three to 10 points.

Still, the state has 38 electoral votes and a load of down ballot races that could prove to be alluring for Biden.
 Up to six Republican held House seats could realistically fall to the Democrats in 2020. Many of them are in the aforementioned suburbs.
 Finally, Democrats have a real chance to flip the Texas state House. They need a pickup of less than 10 seats, and race raters give them a decent shot of doing so. If Democrats did flip the chamber, then they'd have a hand in redistricting for the first time since the beginning of the 2000s.
 That's big for state and national politics given that Texas has more House members than any state except California.
 The bottom line is Texas is fertile ground for Democrats in 2020. Biden has to decide whether he truly wants to compete. Either way, he has a real shot of winning, and a chance to rewrite the political map for this year and for the generation to come.

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Trump Lashes Out as His Re-Election Prospects Darken

Donald Trump's lashing out in a desperate efforts to "change the discussion" may be working with some of his Kool-Aid drinking supporters - I just had a Facebook set to with one - but the polls, both nationally and in key swing states, show that more and more Americans are growing fed up with Trump gross malfeasance in handling the Covid-19 pandemic and the cratering economy.  Down ballot Republicans are worrying that Trump may drag them down with him.  Though Trump fails to see, it, many are belatedly tiring of his incessant lies. Nonetheless, expect more and more lashing out and more and more lies as Trump seeks distract and deflect from his horrific failures and continues his efforts to gaslight voters in general.  Trump seemingly cannot recognize that his crime boss-like ways in his shady real estate business do not translate to holding high elected office.  A piece in Time looks at the behavior of the psychotic occupant of the White House. Here are highlight:

President Trump wanted to see a rocket launch. On the day the U.S. topped 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, Trump was at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch two astronauts blast off inside a capsule built by billionaire Elon Musk. The President may have been hoping for an escape—maybe not from the Earth, but from the drumbeat of devastating headlines. The stormy skies above Cape Canaveral seemed to echo Trump’s temper.

A tragic time for the country has become a dire moment for the President’s re-election prospects. The toll of the coronavirus pandemic is mounting, nearly 40 million Americans are out of work, and Trump is trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden among key sectors of the population and in crucial swing states. His ability to communicate directly to his voters has been undercut by Twitter’s decision to begin fact-checking misinformation in his feed, and he still cannot hold the large rallies that are crucial to his campaign strategy.

The circumstances have left Trump fuming behind the scenes. . . . . Trump has lashed out repeatedly at his critics, to a degree that is rare even for him. He has been stoking unfounded conspiracies about a decades-old accidental death in the former congressional office of Joe Scarborough, now his cable news nemesis, prompting the family of the deceased woman to ask Trump to stop.

He has continued to undermine public-health efforts by refusing to wear a mask in public. He’s further frayed the country’s democratic institutions by conducting a purge of the inspectors general tasked with ferreting out government waste. And he’s sought to undermine faith in November’s election, attacking states’ use of mail-in ballots, which are legal, have a track record of expanding voter access and have not been linked to wide-spread fraud.

It’s the instinct to punch back which sometimes plays out in ways like this,” the White House official says, warning against trying to ascribe “too much grand strategy” to the outbursts. Aides close to Trump have come to see his Twitter feed as a release valve for the President, and have given up on trying to rein in his impulses on the platform.

Some observers see in Trump’s outbursts an attempt to change the subject. . . . . This isn’t the first time Trump has lobbed incendiary tweets to try to deflect. But a “look over there” strategy has rarely been tested during a public health crisis in a time of national grief, with American lives on the line and a presidential election just months away. As the pandemic continues, Trump’s electoral prospects are worsening. The Real Clear Politics polling average finds Trump trailing Biden by an average of more than 5 points nationally, and losing to the former Vice President in most key swing states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—the troika that delivered him the White House in 2016.

Some prominent Republicans say the President has crossed the line with the attacks he’s lobbed in recent days. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, he’s the Commander-in-Chief of this nation, and it’s causing great pain to the family of the young woman who died, so I would urge him to stop it,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chair of the House Republican Conference, said May 27, referencing Trump’s repeated implication that Scarborough had been involved in the death of staff member Lori Klausutis in 2001.

For its part, Trump’s 2020 campaign is attempting to reframe his tantrums as part of his blunt personality that gets results. . . . . But as Trump continues grasping for distractions, even the rocket launch couldn’t provide the outlet he craved. Just 16 minutes before liftoff, the launch was scrubbed because of bad weather.

The issue is tht Trump is Trump and ignores advice and counsel.  He is a self-centered narcissist incapable of telling the truth and who ignores anything and anyone who doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. Nothing would be more sweet than to see him suffer a landslide defeat which might be more than his fragile mental state can handle. That said, the worse the polling, the more dangerous Trump will become.  Nothing and no one matters to the man except his ego and sense of self-importance. .  

Trump's Incompetence is Alienating Older Voters

I have long been baffled by the support older voters tend to give to the GOP - a party that consistently wants to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  The only explanation is that GOP appeals to racism and religion have for years duped many seniors into voting against their own best interests.  Now, Donald Trump's incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic may be changing this blind loyalty to the GOP and could cause Republicans a difficult time in November.  If this happens, it will be long overdue in my view.  A column in the Washington Post looks at what may be a critical defection from the GOP base that, with luck, will impact not only Trump but also his enablers and sycophants within the Republican Party.  Here are column highlights: 

One of the most durable political assets that Republicans have enjoyed throughout the 21st century is their edge among Americans 65 and older, who tend to turn out at the polls more reliably any other group.

But with President Trump’s inept and erratic handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, he is rapidly losing support among the age group most vulnerable to its ravages — which is a big warning sign to Republicans as they look to the fall. Trump has also been showing slippage in support among the next-oldest cohort, those 55 and older.

The shift has been showing up in a string of recent polls, reportedly including those that have been conducted by Trump’s own campaign. One of the most striking is a survey of 44 battleground House districts done by Democratic pollster Geoff Garin during the second week of May.

In those districts, voters over 65 said they had supported Trump in 2016 by a 22-point margin — 58 percent to 36 percent.

But this year, those same respondents are practically evenly divided, with 47 percent saying they are planning to vote for the president and 43 percent expressing an intention to cast their ballots for former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. That is an enormous net swing of 18 percentage points.

“They’re in real trouble if they can’t count on a strong showing with seniors,” said Garin, who did the survey for a client he declined to name. “Trump is blowing what had become an important Republican advantage.”

Not since Al Gore in 2000 has a Democratic presidential candidate won the 65-and-over vote.

Practically from the outset of the pandemic, Republicans have been sending a message to older Americans, with varying degrees of subtlety, that their health is not as important as that of the economy. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick actually said it out loud: “Those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country.”

Insensitive comments aside, a bigger problem for Trump and the Republicans may be that older Americans have been paying close attention to the president’s handling of the crisis.

They are the group most attuned to television news, which means they are more likely than younger voters to have seen with their own eyes some of the more bizarre things Trump has done, such as entertaining the possibility that ingesting bleach could cure covid-19. They know, though Trump denies it now, that he was initially dismissive of the dangers posed by the coronavirus. On a daily basis, they have seen his petulance and his blame-shifting, and heard his flat-out lies.

Older voters also have outsize political clout in some of the states that will be most critical this fall. Florida, where Biden is leading Trump in recent polls, is the most obvious example. But Arizona, where Trump suddenly finds himself struggling, is also home to a lot of retirees. Nearly 20 percent of the population of Pennsylvania, a key swing state, is 65 or older, which is the eighth-highest percentage in the country.

It would still be a stretch for Biden to carry a majority of older voters overall. But if he could make a significant dent in Trump’s margin with them, it might give the former vice president a cushion against the very real possibility that younger voters will not show up in the numbers that Democrats hope.

Much is riding, of course, on what happens as Trump and the Republicans push to reopen the country. If they move too quickly and trigger a second wave of infections, it could arrive just in time for the election. But at least one thing is certain: The age group most likely to suffer is also the one most likely to vote.

Republicans Warn Trump's Re-Election is on Shaky Ground

It is still over five months to the November, 2020, elections, but two news stories point to good news for decent, moral Americans - a group that excludes the majority of evangelicals - who are sickened by the Trump/Pence regime.  One in Politico reports on the danger signs in swing states that suggest that Trump is losing to Joe Biden.  The other is at FiveThirtyEight which suggests that older Americans, especially those over 65 are beginning to abandon Trump.  It goes without saying that Trump will shriek and whine about "fake news" even though internal Republican polling confirms the news reports.  One can only hope that the trend continues and that, as Republicans fear, Trump is irrevocably attached to his bungling of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  First these highlights from Politico:

Donald Trump has made clear he will attack Joe Biden unmercifully in order to ensure the election is a choice between him and Joe Biden — rather than an up-or-down vote on [Trump's] the president’s handling of the coronavirus.

Scott Walker has a different view, at least when it comes to Trump's chances in the all-important battleground of Wisconsin.

“I think it still boils down to a referendum on [Trump] the president. They’ll beat up on Biden and they’ll raise some concerns,” said the former two-term Republican governor of Wisconsin, who lost his seat in 2018. But in the end, if people felt good about their health and the state of the economy, Trump will probably carry Wisconsin. If not, Walker said, “it’s much more difficult” for [Trump] the president.

Walker is not alone among swing-state Republicans in his assessment of [Trump's] the president’s political prospects. Interviews with nearly a dozen former governors, members of Congress, and other current and former party leaders revealed widespread apprehension about Trump’s standing six months out from the election.

Many fret that Trump’s hopes are now hitched to the pandemic; others point to demographic changes in once-reliably red states and to the challenge of running against a hard-to-define Democratic opponent who appeals to a wide swath of voters. The concerns give voice to an assortment of recent battleground state polling showing Trump struggling against Biden.

[T]hroughout 2016, many Republicans thought he wouldn't win.  But that hasn’t quelled GOP fears, even in some traditionally friendly states.

Georgia hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1992. But last week, Republicans released two internal surveys showing a neck-and-neck race, one of which had Biden narrowly ahead. “Georgia is absolutely at risk for Republicans in 2020 — up and down the ballot, everything is in play. . . . said Republican State Leadership Committee President Austin Chambers, who has deep experience in Georgia politics and recently released a memo warning the party to take the state seriously.

It's a similar story in Arizona. Public polling over the course of the spring has consistently shown Biden ahead, and a recent private GOP survey had the former vice president with a small lead. Though Democrats haven’t won Arizona in a presidential election since Bill Clinton in 1996, the party flipped four statewide offices in 2018.

Most of the GOP’s attention is focused on a trifecta of Rust Belt states that catapulted Trump to the presidency, but where he now trails.

Republicans, including Trump’s own advisers, are most concerned about Michigan. A Fox News survey taken last month showed Biden leading by 8 percentage points; two recent internal Republican surveys similarly had Trump trailing, but by smaller margins.Democrats are unlikely to repeat their mistake of 2016, when they failed to turn out voters in liberal Wayne County, an area that encompasses the heavily black Detroit metro area.

Recent surveys have also shown Trump behind in Pennsylvania, where Republicans suffered across-the-board losses in 2018. . . . . Former Pennsylvania Rep. Phil English said the state’s Democratic governor would face backlash for his management of the coronavirus but that voters would likely focus any frustrations toward national Republicans in power.

“I think there is too much blame-mongering going on, but that is predictable and I think that is going to complicate the political landscape for Republicans in Pennsylvania because they’re the party with the White House, so all negatives are going to first be set at their direction,” said English.

Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said he was confident Trump would win the state, which he carried by less than 4 percentage points in 2016. But with multiple competitive statewide races on the ballot, the former governor was less certain that Trump's popularity would carry over to other Republicans.

Though Florida has drifted toward Republicans in recent statewide elections — Trump carried it in 2016, and the party won races for governor and Senate in 2018 — recent surveys have shown [Trump] the president trailing in his newly adopted home state.

Five ThirtyEight has equally encouraging news about the possible mass defection of older voters from Trump whose policies - as well as the GOP controlled Senate - ought to be setting off alarm bells among the over 65 voters.  Here are story excerpts:

There are different “gaps” in American politics, but one that has consistently shown up in recent presidential elections is the age gap. That is, younger voters tend to vote more Democratic and older voters tend to vote more Republican.

In 2016, for instance, President Trump performed best among voters 65 years and older. . . . . However, recent public polls — and [Trump's] the president’s own private polling — suggest that Trump may be doing worse among older voters against former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

In national head-to-head polls conducted since April 1, Trump is barely breaking even with most older Americans — and in some age groups, he’s even trailing Biden by as much as 1.4 points (see 45- to 64-year-olds).

The most startling shift, though, is among voters age 65 and older. Four years ago, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, . . . . But now Biden narrowly leads Trump 48 percent to 47 percent, based on an average of 48 national polls that included that age group.¹ If those figures hold until November, they would represent a seismic shift in the voting behavior of America’s oldest voters.

But it’s not just among voters 65 and older where Trump is slipping. He’s also fallen almost as far among voters 55 and older. Trump is essentially tied with Biden among that age group, even after winning these voters by 10 points in 2016, 53 percent to 43 percent, according to the CCES. Trump’s numbers have also fallen with 45- to 64-year-olds, as well as 50- to 64-year-olds . . . .

We don’t have as much state-level polling to work with, but there’s evidence that Biden is also doing better with older voters in some key swing states. Take two recent surveys from Florida, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country. A Fox News poll from mid-April found Biden with a slim 3-point lead over Trump and running even among voters 45 and older, while a Quinnipiac University survey from the same period found Biden up 4 points overall in Florida and leading Trump 52 percent to 42 percent among voters 65 and older.

Yes, things can change over five months, but the message to decent, moral Americans is that they need to do all they can to convince friends and family members to jettison Trump and ideally vote a straight Democrat ticket - especially if they live in Kentucky or South Carolina.  Moscow Mitch McConnell needs to be sent into retirement as does Lindsey Graham, the Palmetto Queen.

Are Trump Supporters Over Confident About 2020?

In what I hope my turn out to be a prophecy, a piece in New York Magazine posits the question of whether Donald Trump supporters are too over confident about Trump's re-election prospects in 2020 and, as a result might not turn out in force to vote.  The piece considers the non-stop pro-Trump propaganda by the right wing media which could result in his cult like followers finding themselves in a bubble detached from mainstream America where - much as the far left of the Democrat base - and posed to receive a severe shock if the con-man of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is not re-elected. The piece also notes the over confidence of the Clinton campaign in 2016 that allowed Trump to eke by in three states by the slimmest of margins and win the Electoral College.   Democrats are nowhere as confident and, hopefully, this will cause them to strive harder and to go to the polls to stop the human cancer that currently inhabits the White House.  Here are highlights:

If you forced yourself to watch significant portions of the House Judiciary Committee’s markup of articles of impeachment, you undoubtedly heard the Republican hypothesis that the entire exercise is an effort to head off a certain Trump reelection next year. This assumption was often hurled at Democrats as a taunt . . . .
 Impeachment aside, any casual perusal of pro-Trump conservative news and opinion outlets shows an impressive consensus that the president is cruising to a 2020 victory, with impeachment viewed as a base-mobilizer rather than a development that will repel swing voters, . . .
 This take on impeachment rather notably collides with the claim that it is intended to head off Trump’s reelection, since Democrats infallibly know the Republican-controlled Senate will acquit him. But the fact remains that Trump fans are feeling more, not less, confident about 2020, and they were pretty confident earlier, as National Review observed over a month ago: . . . . The survey shows that 56 percent of voters believe the president will be reelected. Eighty-five percent of Republicans and 51 percent of independents were confident in Trump’s reelection effort, compared to 35 percent of Democrats.

Eighty-five percent is a lot of confidence in a president who lost the popular vote the first time around and has never been anything other than underwater in his job-approval ratings.

You don’t need a poll to grasp that Democrats aren’t remotely as confident about 2020. The simple fact that Democratic voters are obsessed with the electability of prospective nominees tells you all you need to know about that. And this anxiety — if not pessimism — is constantly reinforced by analysis suggesting Trump can again win while losing the popular vote by an even greater margin than before.

This contrast in moods is, to put it mildly, a reversal of the situation going into the 2016 general election. Of all the reasons Trump won, you have to figure overconfidence in the HRC camp — leading to strategic missteps by the campaign, and indifferent turnout and protest voting among the rank-and-file — was a significant factor.

There is no polling lead by the Democratic nominee or mistake by Trump this time around that will convince Democratic voters this election is in the bag. But it’s possible that a solid year of triumphalist braying from Trump, his campaign, his party, and his media allies, will persuade some of his own voters that he’s already won, so it’s safe to spend Election Day in other pursuits, or at the grocery and liquor stores stocking up for the big victory celebration. It could be a fatal mistake.

Biden Campaign is Struggling in Iowa

While national polls continue to show Joe Biden leading among 2020 Democrat nominee contenders, I and many others continue to worry about his ability to take on Trump in the general election.  His history of gaffes and past failed presidential campaigns does not instill confidence and now, in Iowa, his floundering campaign gives a frightening prelude to what could happen in the general election. His campaign is described as lacking in excitement, there are worries about too few visits to the state, and some question his ground game operation all as Biden has been steadily losing ground in polls in Iowa. The situation suggests a nightmare scenario were Biden to win the nomination and have to go toe to toe with Trump in the half dozen states that may determine who scores an Electoral College victory.  Indeed, Biden reminds me of Bob Dole's failed presidential campaign.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Biden's struggle in Iowa.  Here are highlights:

WINTERSET, Iowa — Nancy Courtney displays a Joe Biden sign in her yard, makes phone calls for his campaign and supports the former vice president “100 percent,” she said. But the sluggish state of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s organization in her city of Burlington, Iowa, had her fuming one recent evening.

“In Burlington, they are duds,” said Ms. Courtney, an activist who is married to the Democratic chairman in Des Moines County. “I will help, but there’s no excitement there. There’s nothing. I will do whatever it takes to get him elected, but I can’t go down there when there’s nothing going on.”

Bob Kling, a city councilman in Indianola, just south of Des Moines, was promoted by the Biden campaign as a prominent local endorser. But asked about Mr. Biden’s standing in his state, Mr. Kling was blunt: “Not as great as he was. Buttigieg is kind of taking the lead in the polls,”

Since late summer, Mr. Biden, the early front-runner in the Democratic primary, has faced an increasingly difficult path in Iowa — dropping in the polls and struggling with an enthusiasm gap and an inclination among undecided caucusgoers to consider all options. Now, 10 weeks before the Iowa caucuses, even his own supporters in the state are growing more worried about his prospects.

[V]oters at Mr. Biden’s events, along with county chairs and party strategists, characterize his on-the-ground organization as scattershot, visibly present in some counties but barely detectable in others. His events are often relatively small and sometimes subdued affairs, and in a state where enthusiasm can make or break a candidate on caucus night — a big part of caucusing centers on persuading friends and neighbors — Mr. Biden’s operation has found it difficult to build contagious excitement, these Democrats say.

There is also the sense among many Iowa Democrats that Mr. Biden, who entered the race later than many of his rivals, has been less engaged in the state than his top rivals.

Mr. Biden’s team argues that the former vice president, who is stronger in later-voting and more diverse states, has been trying hard to prevail in Iowa but also sees multiple paths to the nomination. Still, some advisers and allies are aware that a poor showing in Iowa could be crushing to a campaign that is premised on the notion that Mr. Biden is the most electable candidate against President Trump. Because New Hampshire, which follows Iowa in the primary calendar, historically favors candidates from neighboring states, the pressure is on here.

Mr. Buttigieg presents an immediate threat to Mr. Biden. While polls show him struggling with voters of color in later-voting states, in Iowa he draws supporters among moderates who like Mr. Biden but worry about his age, his tendency to misspeak and his uneven debate performances. And because of a cash crunch this fall, Mr. Biden was off the Iowa airwaves for weeks while Mr. Buttigieg, flush with cash, blanketed them with ads.

Mr. Biden’s diminished standing here was highlighted in a recent Des Moines Register/CNN poll, which showed Mr. Biden with 15 percent support — far behind Mr. Buttigieg and effectively tied with Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Dan Callahan, the Democratic chair in Buchanan County, said he expected Mr. Biden to finish in the top three in the state but suggested that his support had stagnated, in part because he can appear “unfocused and less energetic” when he goes off script at events.

“Part of Biden’s problem is that we have so many options to choose from,” Mr. Callahan said. “His followers are dedicated but he isn’t attracting new voters like some of the other candidates.”  

Elizabeth Warren Could Jeopardize Democrats in the House and the Senate

Selecting candidates for general elections is about picking a candidate that can both win and not wreak havoc on down ticket candidates. A long and well reasoned and researched column in the New York Times makes the case that Elizabeth Warren as the Democrat standard bearer could (i) result in Trump's re-election, and (ii) significant loses by Democrats in the House and Senate.  The same reasoning applies to Bernie Sanders and, to me, makes it clear that neither Warren or Sanders should be the nominee.   Their respective supporters, who the article points out tend to be the whitest and most affluent, simply are out of touch with what sells in Middle America, including among many more traditional and moderate Democrats. This is especially true in the half dozen swing states in the Mid-West that will likely decide who wins the Electoral College contest.  Running up huge vote leads in say California or New York means nothing in the Electoral College math calculation.  Here are lengthy column highlights which thinking Democrats need to read in full:

Under pressure, Elizabeth Warren has retreated from the idea of immediate implementation of Medicare for All, but she remains committed to the progressive core of her candidacy.

As she put it in a speech to Iowa Democrats on Nov. 1:

If we’re going to meet the challenges of our time, we need big ideas. Big ideas to inspire people and get them out to caucus and get them out to vote. Big ideas to be the lifeblood of our party and show the world who and what Democrats will fight for.

In rhetoric that drew enthusiastic applause from her supporters at the Liberty and Justice Dinner in Des Moines, Warren declared that the nation is at “a time of crisis, and media pundits, Washington insiders, even some people in our own party don’t want to admit it. They think that running some vague campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe.”

Democrats will win, she continued, “when we offer solutions big enough to touch the problems that are in people’s lives. Fear and complacency does not win elections; hope and courage wins elections.”

There is evidence, however, that Warren’s strategy could generate a backlash leading to the re-election of Donald Trump.

Andrew Hall and Daniel Thompson, political scientists at Stanford, examined “the link between the ideology of congressional candidates and the turnout of their parties’ bases in US House races, 2006—2014” in their 2018 paper “Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections.”

In contrast to moderate candidates, Hall and Thompson found: Extremist candidates do worse, because, contrary to rhetoric, they fail to galvanize their own base and instead encourage the opposing party’s base to turn out more, on average.

In other words, polarizing candidates diminish turnout in their own party while boosting turnout among opposing partisans.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, analyzed the pattern of Democratic victories in 2018 House races and found that “those who supported Medicare for All performed worse than those who did not, even when controlling for other factors.”

The analyses by Hall, Thompson and Abramowitz do not preclude the possibility that Warren could beat Trump in 2020. Whoever the Democratic nominee is will be able to capitalize on widespread hostility to Trump, a motivated Democratic electorate and the party’s continuing gains in formerly Republican suburbs across the nation.

An underlying premise of the campaigns of both Warren and Bernie Sanders is that taking radically progressive stands will motivate, enlarge and turn out the Democratic base, including minorities, the young and the poor; and that such positions are necessary to restore Democratic support among those who voted for third party candidates in 2016.

As much as the Warren program has mobilized many Democratic primary voters, polls show that significant numbers of swing voters — wavering Republicans repelled by President Trump and moderate to conservative Democrats — do not share Warren’s appetite for major structural change, preferring incremental change and the repair of existing programs, like Obamacare.

Strategically, if Warren wins the Democratic nomination, the election would become not only a referendum on Trump — favorable terrain for Democrats — but also a referendum on Warren’s program, a far less certain proposition.

“Many of Senator Warren’s proposals are indeed radical and could have unintended consequences,” Jeffrey Frankel, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, wrote by email. He added: “I fear that by far the worst of the unintended consequences of making these proposals during the campaign is to get Donald Trump re-elected.”

Larry Summers is a former secretary of the Treasury, director of the national economic council and president of Harvard. The Warren program, Summers wrote by email, “dwarfs the errors, economic and political, of George McGovern.”

Last week, in an effort to mute criticism that her agenda would be not only difficult to enact in toto but also highly disruptive if it became law, Warren announced a significant modification of her version of Medicare for All. Instead of trying to immediately pass a complete government takeover of health care that would eliminate private insurance plans, she proposed “a true Medicare for All option,” or what has generally been described as a public option — and that has strong support among voters of all stripes.

Warren’s new stance appears to be an acknowledgment of the fact that her proposal to replace all health private coverage with Medicare for All does not carry majority support even among Democratic primary voters, a liberal constituency, much less the general electorate.

While liberal economists have mixed views of Warren’s agenda, a number of political observers warn that candidates for the House and Senate would face a steeper climb to victory with Warren at the top of the ticket.

“It would be tough to run under Elizabeth Warren,” David Wasserman, who studies House races for the Cook Report, said in an interview. “As of now, she runs the weakest against Trump in battleground areas and her proposals are not broadly popular.”

The worst case scenario, Wasserman argued, “would be to have Elizabeth Warren at the top of ticket with a plausible chance to win.” He argued that swing voters worried about a Warren presidency would vote in support of a Republican Congress to act as a check on her.

“Anyone at the top of the ticket who repels these Republicans will make it more difficult to win the key House and Senate seats Democrats have targeted,” Trippi said.

Whit Ayres, president of North Star Opinion Research, was outspoken: “Elizabeth Warren is God’s gift to Donald Trump and Republican candidates.”

“Well-educated suburban voters, especially women,” Ayres continued, “are uncomfortable with President Trump,” but, he added, they are not going to vote for a candidate who wants to take away their private health insurance, decriminalize the border, increase government spending by 50 percent, and ban fracking, especially in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado.

Wariness toward the kind of disruptive structural change Warren is calling for can be seen among Democratic voters in six battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Florida — as a New York Times/Siena College survey conducted Oct. 13-26 demonstrated.

By 62 to 33, these Democrats said they would prefer a candidates who promises “to find common ground with Republicans” to one who promises “to fight for a bold progressive agenda;” by 55 to 36 a candidate who is more “moderate than most Democrats” to one who is “more liberal than most Democrats;” and by 49 to 45 a candidate who promises “to bring politics in Washington back to normal” to a candidate who promises “to bring fundamental, systematic change to American society.”

The same Times/Siena College survey identified 596 undecided or “persuadable” voters in these six states . . . They are fairly clear about what they would like from a Democrat. They prefer, by 82 percent to 11 percent, one who promises to find common ground over one who promises to fight for a progressive agenda; and they prefer a moderate over a liberal, 75 percent to 19 percent.

Patterson’s analysis points to the larger question that looms constantly over the nomination fight: Is the progressive wing of the Democratic primary electorate, and its demand that the nominee take stands on health care, energy and immigration well to the left of the electorate at large, the main obstacle to Democratic victory in 2020?

The Case for Staged Health Care Reform

A prior post made the case that in the 2018 mid-term elections, Democrats who ran on a Medicare for All platform did significantly worse than those who supported a more modest, staged approach to reforming the nation's health care coverage problem.  This has not deterred Bernie Sanders - who in my view should not even be allowed to run as a Democrat after he quickly jettisoned the Democrat Party after 2016 - and his followers who want an immediate single payer system regardless of the fact that a majority of Americans are not supportive of blowing up the current system overnight.  Lately, Elizabeth Warren seems to be moderating her proposals to more of a staged approach that would not end employer based coverage in one fell swoop.  Perhaps Warren is beginning to see political reality or perhaps its an attempt to address the criticisms and counter proposals of Buttigieg and others. A column in the New York Times looks at how health care reform continues to be a positive for Democrats and how a staged approach to reform may be the only one that is realistically feasible.  Here are column highlights:

Recent state elections — the Democratic landslide in Virginia, followed by Democratic gubernatorial victories in Kentucky and Louisiana — have been bad news for Donald Trump.

Among other things, the election results vindicate polls indicating that Trump is historically unpopular. All of these races were in part referendums on Trump, who put a lot of effort into backing his preferred candidates. And in each case voters gave him a clear thumbs down.

Beyond offering a verdict on Trump, however, I’d argue that the state elections offered some guidance on an issue that has divided Democrats, namely health care. What the results suggested to me was the virtue of medium-size reform: incremental enough to have a good chance of being enacted, big enough to provide tangible benefits that voters don’t want taken away.

Remember, there was a third governor’s race, in Mississippi, in which the G.O.P. held on. . . . So what made the difference?

Personalities surely mattered. Louisiana’s re-elected John Bel Edwards was widely liked, Kentucky’s defeated Matt Bevin widely disliked. Demography probably also mattered. Urban and especially suburban voters have turned hard against Trump, but rural voters haven’t, at least so far — and Mississippi is one of the few states left with a majority-rural population.

But there’s another difference among the three states. Kentucky and Louisiana took advantage of the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, leading to steep drops in the number of uninsured residents; Mississippi hasn’t. This meant that voting Democratic in Kentucky and Louisiana meant voting to preserve past policy success, while the same vote in Mississippi was at best about hope for future reform — a much less powerful motivator.

It took years to get there, but in the end Pelosi [in 2010] was proved right, as health care became a winning issue for Democrats. In the 2018 midterms and in subsequent state elections, voters punished politicians whom they suspected of wanting to undermine key achievements like protection for pre-existing conditions and, yes, Medicaid expansion.

And this political reality has arguably set the stage for further action. At this point, as far as I can tell, all of the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are calling for a significant expansion of the government’s role in health care, although they differ about how far and how fast to go.

Which brings me to the latest development in intra-Democratic policy disputes: Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for a two-step approach to health reform. Her idea is to start with actions — some requiring no legislation at all, others requiring only a simple Senate majority — that would greatly expand health insurance coverage. These actions would, if successful, deliver tangible benefits to millions.

They would not, however, amount to the full Bernie, eliminating private insurance and going full single-payer. Warren still says that this is her eventual intention, and has laid out a plan to pay for such a system. But any legislative push would wait three years, giving time for voters to see the benefits of the initial changes.

Sanders supporters are, predictably, crying betrayal. For them it’s all or nothing: a commitment to single-payer has to be in the legislation from Day 1.

The trouble with such demands, aside from the strong probability that proposing elimination of private insurance would be a liability in the general election, is that such legislation would almost certainly fail to pass even a Democratic Senate. So all or nothing would, in practice, mean nothing.

The lesson I take from the politics of Obamacare, however, is that successful health reform, even if incomplete, creates the preconditions for further reform. What looks impossible now might look very different once tens of millions of additional people have actual experience with expanded Medicare, and can compare it with private insurance.

Although I’ve long argued against making Medicare for All a purity test, there is a good case for eventually going single-payer. But the only way that’s going to happen is via something like Warren’s approach: initial reforms that deliver concrete benefits, and maybe provide a steppingstone to something even bigger.

I continue to view both Sanders and Warren as un-electable especially given the demographics and mind sets in the hand full of swing states that will decide who wins the Electoral College even if that individual loses the popular vote by many millions of votes.

Pete Buttigieg Jumps to Lead in Iowa Poll

A new Des Moines Register/CNN poll suggests that Iowa voters may not want the "revolution" and complete remaking of America's health care system being pushed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - both of whom I see as un-electable in a general election against Trump who merely needs to carry a few swing states to score another Electoral College win even if me loses the popular vote by up to 5 million votes (further proof why the Electoral College needs to be abandoned).  In the poll, moderate Pete Buttigieg has taken a commanding lead with 25% of the would be caucus goers.  Rather than a forced Medicare for All plan - something a post from yesterday suggests is a vote loser - Buttigieg prefers a Medicare for those who want it that would leave employer based plans in place yet which over time could transition towards a larger government plan option. Sanders and Warren cultist are no doubt in an uproar, but elections are not about forced ideological purity, but rather winning the general election. Like Warren and Joe Biden has likewise fallen in the polls indicating to me that more Democrat voters are coming to believe that he is not up to defeating Donald Trump.  The true focus needs to be on who can win in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa.  Winning by huge majorities in New York or California or even Virginia will not make for an Electoral College win.  The New York Times looks at the new poll results:

DES MOINES — Pete Buttigieg continues to surge in Iowa, leapfrogging Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to hold a commanding lead among likely Democratic caucus goers, according to a new poll from The Des Moines Register and CNN.

The poll showed that Mr. Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., was the first choice for 25 percent of would-be Democratic caucusgoers, a significant increase from the 9 percent he held in September, when The Register last polled the state. The support placed him far ahead of the rest of the field — with the other three top candidates in a virtual tie for second: Ms. Warren at 16 percent and Mr. Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders at 15 percent.

The results are the latest evidence of Mr. Buttigieg’s strength in Iowa, where his moderate political views, plain-spoken style and military history have resonated in the early voting state. Since September, when he placed fourth in the Register poll, he has more than doubled his on-the-ground staff to over 100 and has opened more than 20 field offices. He recently completed another bus tour in the state.

Speaking to reporters in Long Beach, Calif., on Saturday night during the state’s Democratic convention, Mr. Buttigieg said the just-released poll numbers were “extremely encouraging.”

His rise also suggests that voters, in Iowa at least, are increasingly favoring a centrist agenda — a view that has drawn two new entrants, Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, into the race this month.

The poll results reflect the deep split within the Democratic Party over whether it is veering too far to the left to defeat President Trump. Speaking on Friday to a room of wealthy liberal donors, former President Barack Obama expressed concern about some of the policy ideas being promoted by some of the candidates, citing health care and immigration as issues where the proposals may not align with public opinion.

[H]is remarks were seen as an implicit criticism of Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, two of the leading candidates who are pushing policy plans once considered too liberal, like “Medicare for all,” with the broader goal of “political revolution” and “big, structural change.”

“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality,” Mr. Obama said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”

Ms. Warren, who led the Register’s September poll, with 22 percent, fell 6 percentage points.

Mr. Biden, who has seen his standing in Iowa slowly slip, dropped 5 percentage points.

In addition to identifying a new Iowa front-runner, the poll has once again delineated a clear divide between the top tier of Democratic candidates — Mr. Buttigieg, Ms. Warren, Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders — and the rest of the field. The next-closest candidate in the poll was Senator Amy Klobuchar, with 6 percent, followed by a cluster of White House hopefuls with 3 percent, including Senator Cory Booker, Senator Kamala Harris and Andrew Yang.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has suggested he would skip the first four early nominating states, including Iowa, if he were to officially enter the race, was at 2 percent.

The other thing that Buttigieg continues to do is field an amazing digital campaign out reach.  Every single day I receive messages from his campaign - the husband and I are on seemingly  on every Democrat donor list there is - while I receive nothing from any of the other candidates.  Buttigieg's outreach covers everything from policy positions to, of course, fundraising. 

The Trade War’s Risks for Trump

For years now the Republican Party has used appeals to racism, homophobia and evangelical Christian extremism to convince voters in their base to vote against their own economic interest.  Donald Trump has embraced this playbook with gusto and ramped it up to new levels, with outright appeals to white supremacists and Christian dominionists. Now, the question is whether his ill-conceived trade wars and the damage being wrought on agriculture and manufacturing in swing states be enough to finally convince some in the GOP base to rethink their blind support for Trump.  Given that Trump's Electoral College win - a demonstration why that antiquated system needs to be repealed - was roughly 70,000 votes spread across three states, even a slight erosion in farming and manufacturing worker support could prove fatal.  A piece in Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the situation and the evidence that at least so far, policies embracing racism, homophobia and religious extremism are still working for Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Trump has taken a hard line on trade. He’s imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, and on a wide variety of Chinese products. In response, China has slapped tariffs on American products.

If Trump’s trade strategy poses risks for the economy, it also poses risks for his reelection strategy. That’s because farmers and manufacturers in battleground states are facing retaliatory tariffs on their products.

To measure Trump’s degree of risk, we analyzed 14 battleground states — 10 of them won by Trump in 2016 and four won by Hillary Clinton.

Eight of the battleground states we studied are reliant on manufacturing and agriculture to a greater degree than the nation as a whole. In descending order, these eight states are Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

Notice anything about these states? Trump won seven of them in 2016, making the core of his Electoral College majority at special risk from fallout from tariffs. Especially notable is the inclusion on this list of the three narrowly divided states that made his victory possible: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

[O]nly one state saw agricultural production grow between 2017 and 2018 — Georgia. The other 13 states saw declines in the agricultural sector during that period.

And the worst-performing agricultural states? Six of the seven worst-faring farm states were won by Trump in 2016 — those same three cornerstone states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) plus Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina . . . Two other Trump states, Iowa and Ohio, also fared worse than the national average.

[T]he most recent data available — the annualized change between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 — shows a broad manufacturing slowdown.

Ten battleground states saw lower annualized manufacturing growth in the first quarter of the year than they saw during the previous full year. These included seven Trump-won states, three of which were the pivotal ones — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.A key question, though, is whether any of this will matter electorally. When we checked with political observers in these states, they said that losses among farm and factory families pose a risk to Trump’s electoral prospects, but they added that there’s little hard evidence of that happening yet.

University of Northern Iowa political scientist Christopher Larimer — who calls this “the fundamental question heading into the 2020 election” — said he has “yet to see anything” that would suggest these voters are going to abandon the GOP in significant numbers. That could change as more polls are fielded as the election approaches.

One unknown is whether Democrats make a play for these demographic groups, said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College poll in Pennsylvania.

“The Democrats still have not been regularly courting the working class, except for an occasional foray into places they predominate,” he said. In Pennsylvania, he said, Democratic gains seem more likely to come from Republicans in suburban areas turning against the president.

Depressed turnout among disaffected farm and factory voters might be more likely than actually switching rural and blue-collar Republicans to support whoever the Democratic nominee is.

Especially in the three pivotal states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, it wouldn’t take much to shift the balance.

Craig Gilbert, a political journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has reported extensively from the swing rural areas of western and southwestern Wisconsin. He said he hasn’t encountered any sign of mass defections from the historically strong levels of Trump support in 2016, but he added that it remains an open question whether more modest shifts could occur.

Bottom line: Trump’s trade policy could weaken his support in key states, but for now at least, there’s little evidence of widespread damage to Trump’s standing among the farm and factory demographics. Until further notice, cultural issues appear to be taking prominence over economic ones.

Economic Storms Gather in Swing States

Abandoned factory.

As approval of the impeachment inquiry continues to rise, Donald Trump has continued his standard approach to everything: lie and and try to distract, even lying about knowing Rudi Giulian's newly arrested Russian cohorts. Meanwhile, his self-created trade wars are wreaking havoc on the economies of the swing states critical to Trump's re-election hopes: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Particularly hard hit are manufacturing - which Trump promised to restore - and, of course, farming which is being further damaged by climate change in the Mid-West, a phenomenon that Trump claims is a Chinese hoax. A piece in Politico looks at the growing economic storm clouds hanging over states that, if they reject Trump, could end in his defeat in 2020, assuming his isn't removed from office before then.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump shocked the world and won the White House in 2016 on bold promises to bring greatness back to the industrial Midwest.

But his promise now faces a brutal reality: The U.S. manufacturing sector is spiraling into recession, victimized by Trump’s trade wars and sagging confidence among corporate executives who have little idea how to plan for an uncertain economic future.

Unless Trump can ram his revised North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress and cut a deal with the Chinese to erase historically high tariffs, he may find it difficult to repeat wins in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that drove him into office in 2016 by the narrowest of margins.

“Manufacturing is in recession right now. This is what all the data show,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. “And everywhere I go in the world, the fear I hear is that we are going to be driven deeper into recession because this is all about uncertainty caused by the trade war.”

Broad national gauges of manufacturing are already troubling, countering some of the president’s claims of success. The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing survey . . . . has shown a declining sector two months in a row, recently hitting a level not seen since the end of the Great Recession due to a sharp drop in new export orders. Respondents to the survey blamed a trade war that has reduced export demand and increased costs for parts used in manufacturing.

At the county and state level, the environment looks even darker for Trump.

The negative news on manufacturing comes as senior Chinese officials arrive in Washington for another round of talks aimed at reaching a deal with Trump that would reduce heavy tariffs that have imposed significant economic costs on both sides.

It’s unclear whether Trump would accept such a deal that could eliminate tariffs and relieve some of the pressure on the manufacturing sector, and he told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he didn’t think China was lowering expectations for a trade deal.

It’s not certain that even such a deal will reverse negative trends in the manufacturing sector, which overall is a small slice of the American economy but an important part of overall corporate profits. Manufacturing also supports all kinds of ancillary service-industry jobs that suffer whenever factory work declines.

Overall, the growth in manufacturing jobs — one of Trump’s biggest promises — has essentially vanished. After adding as many as 25,000 new manufacturing jobs per month last spring, the numbers began to decline as the trade war with China intensified. In September, the sector lost 2,000 jobs. That number could grow for October when striking GM workers are included.

“To the extent that the manufacturing slowdown continues unabated, which is likely unless there is a de-escalation in trade tensions, the electoral map could be more difficult for President Trump and Republicans in 2020,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report this week.

The still-strong national employment numbers, with a jobless rate at a half-century low of 3.5 percent, can also tell a misleading political story. . . . But dig deeper and large numbers of the jobs are coming from uncontested states like California. States that make up Trump’s coalition are not doing quite as well.

“It’s an existential political risk,” said Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. “He won the election based on carrying Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and appealing to those voters who work in manufacturing or related industries. He promised he would bring manufacturing jobs back and his policies are doing the precise opposite. Jobs losses are mounting, particularly in those states.”

Trump’s trade battle with China has also slammed rural states where farmers have been unable to sell soybeans and other products into one of their biggest markets. Trump has responded by moving to dole out $30 billion in bailout money and praising “patriot farmers.” Many of the states hit by the drop in agriculture exports like Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas are solid Trump country. Others like Iowa could be a problem for the campaign.

Trump is also trying to make inroads in Minnesota, where he narrowly lost in 2016, and plans to hold a rally there Thursday night. But Minnesota is feeling pressure both in manufacturing and agriculture, as are states like Iowa and Pennsylvania.

And it’s not clear that even a quick and limited deal with the Chinese could reverse some of the major negative trends in manufacturing.

Ultimately, Trump’s reelection could come down to three states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where manufacturing trends are working against him and where he will need a sharp turnaround. “In those three key states, the economies are weakening. Unemployment is low but rising,” said Zandi. “If it continues to rise between now and Election Day it will be very difficult for him to recover. The trend lines don’t look good.”

The trend lines may not look good for Trump, but are a net positive if they end up removing the orange cancer from the White House.