Monthly Archives: July 2020

* President Trump's ratings on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic continue to collapse. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, just 38% approved of how Trump has dealt with the virus while 60% disapproved. Back in March, 51% approved of how Trump was handling the pandemic while 45% disapproved in that same poll. As the public has soured on Trump's ability to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, it has also moved heavily in Joe Biden's favor in general election polling. The former vice president leads Trump by 15 and 11 points in two new national polls released this week.

* Democrats have a double-digit lead in party identification. In a new Gallup number, 50% of Americans identify as Democrats or Democratic leaners while 39% describe themselves as Republicans or Republican leaners. That's a major shift from January when Republicans had a 47% to 45% edge on party ID in Gallup polling and a rapid acceleration of Democrats' advantage since even May when Democrats had a 3-point edge on the party ID question.

"That fundraising difference is even larger in swing districts currently held by well-funded Democratic incumbents.

"Recent filings show that Democrats are widening the gap. In 13 races holding primaries in June and July that are considered competitive by the Cook Political Report, incumbent Democrats have 9 times more money in the bank -- $40 million to $4.5 million -- than the best-funded Republican challengers."

Political handicappers are taking notice.

"President Trump's abysmal polling since the pandemic began is seriously jeopardizing down-ballot GOP fortunes. We may be approaching the point at which dozens of House Republicans will need to decide whether to cut the president loose and run on a "check and balance" message, offering voters insurance against congressional Democrats moving too far left under a potential Biden administration....

"...Republicans began the cycle hoping to pick up 18 seats to win the majority back. Now they're just trying to avoid a repeat of 2008, when they not only lost the presidency but got swamped by Democrats' money and lost even more House seats after losing 30 seats and control two years earlier. For the first time this cycle, Democrats have at least as good a chance at gaining House seats as Republicans on a net basis."

"The Senate has been in play for at least nine months, but Democratic chances of winning control of the chamber have improved significantly in the last few weeks....

"...Democrats need a net gain of four seats for a majority, but can control the Senate by gaining three seats and winning the White House. With less than four months to go before Election Day, the most likely outcome is a Democratic net gain of 3-5 Senate seats. Since Biden has a clear advantage in the presidential race, that means Democrats are more likely than not to win control of the Senate."

"Trump is extremely unlikely to win if the polls continue to look the way they do now. And if these numbers represent a new normal, we need to account for the possibility that this election won't be particularly close, and that new states may come into play. In other words, if the national picture remains bleak for Trump, then the slippage he's seen from earlier this year wouldn't just be limited to a handful of swing states."

In short: All the signs are there that this could be a landslide up and down the ballot for Democrats. Yes, things could change between now and November 3. But, given Trump's obstinacy in refusing to admit his errors in dealing with the coronavirus and the current spikes in some of the most populous states in the country, such a turnaround seems very, very unlikely at the moment.

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The signs of a Democratic landslide are everywhere - CNN

Democratic officials have instructed senators, members of Congress and party delegates not to physically attend their national convention this summer, a sign of the ever-shrinking aspirations for their big campaign event in the face of a surge in coronavirus cases in the United States.

The directive, issued Thursday, ensures that little will happen at the convention site in Milwaukee beyond speeches from former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his vice-presidential nominee and a handful of other top party leaders. The remainder of the events state delegation meetings, parties, voting on the party platform and on Mr. Bidens nomination will happen virtually or not at all.

We have been working closely with state and local public health officials, as well epidemiologists, and have come to the hard decision that members of Congress should not plan to travel to Milwaukee, Chasseny Lewis, a senior adviser to the convention committee, wrote in an email to congressional aides. No delegates will travel to Milwaukee, and Caucus and Council meetings will take place virtually.

The announcement came on the evening when Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would have been delivering his acceptance speech for the nomination, underscoring how profoundly the coronavirus has upended the campaign. Earlier this year, shortly after the spread of the virus shut down many states across the country, the Democratic National Committee postponed its event by a month.

Ensuring the safety and well-being of everyone involved with the 2020 Democratic National Convention drives every decision we make, said Katie Peters, communications director for the convention committee. This communication reiterates our guidance from several weeks ago that all members of state delegations including elected leaders should plan to conduct their official business remotely.

Traditionally, conventions have marked the start of the heated fall campaign season, giving parties a chance to energize their supporters and sway undecided voters with days of pageantry and largely uninterrupted media coverage. Party leaders typically spend months if not years fund-raising and planning every aspect of the stage-managed events, from the program to the swag to the balloon drop that traditionally ends the celebrations.

Over the past several months, Democrats have scaled back their plans, moving the convention across downtown Milwaukee from Fiserv Forum, the citys professional basketball arena, to the Wisconsin Center, a modest convention space that typically hosts events like the citys car show. The last national political event to take place there was the 2004 Green Party convention.

Party officials have been consulting regularly with doctors and epidemiologists and say they are following the recommendations of the medical establishment.

Their decision comes as Mr. Trump has made clear he wants the Republican convention to go on,. Party officials moved it to Jacksonville, Fla., from Charlotte because North Carolina state officials said they would have to abide by social distancing rules.

On Thursday, the Republican National Committee announced new details about the convention, confirming a Times report this week that the party was planning to shift some events to take place outdoors.

Ronna McDaniel, the committees chairwoman, said that a number of indoor and outdoor venues in Jacksonville would be used, including the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, where the indoor program had been scheduled to take place, as well as several other locations. For the first three days of the convention, attendance will be limited to regular delegates, while a broader group will be allowed on the final day when Mr. Trump accepts the partys nomination.

Many top Republicans are skipping the event, flouting Mr. Trumps desire for an elaborate event attended by large crowds.

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Democratic Officials Tell Members of Congress to Skip the Convention - The New York Times

Republican Sen. Martha McSally, seen here in 2019, is losing the money race to her challenger in Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly. Mark Wilson/Getty Images hide caption

Republican Sen. Martha McSally, seen here in 2019, is losing the money race to her challenger in Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly.

Updated 11:52 a.m. ET

To take control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats need to net three seats in November if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, and four if President Trump is reelected.

That once looked like a near impossibility, but it's becoming a real possibility.

Republicans hold a 53-to-47 majority in the Senate, with the Democrats' side including two independents who caucus with them.

Five Republican incumbents are looking increasingly vulnerable, with their races labeled as "toss ups" by the Cook Political Report. Meanwhile one Democrat, Doug Jones of Alabama, is seen as being in real jeopardy.

Those five Republicans are Arizona's Martha McSally, Colorado's Cory Gardner, Maine's Susan Collins, Montana's Steve Daines and North Carolina's Thom Tillis.

Fundraising reports from the Federal Election Commission provide glimpses of Democratic strength. In Arizona, for instance, challenger Mark Kelly has so far outraised the Republican incumbent McSally by some $12 million.

In all, there are 11 states that Cook labels as toss-ups or that "lean" toward one party or another. Republicans hold fundraising advantages in six of those states, but in several of those races, the Democrat's latest FEC report is a bit outdated, likely underselling the candidate's money raised. For example, challenger Cal Cunningham in North Carolina announced last week that he raised about $7 million in the second quarter.

So keep that in mind as you look at the how the money race stands in each of those 11 contests:

Arizona (McSally incumbent, toss-up)- Kelly, D: $31.3 million raised, $19.7 million cash on hand- McSally, R : $19 million raised, $10.3 million cash on hand

Colorado (Gardner incumbent, toss-up)- Gardner, R: $15.7 million raised, $9.3 million cash on hand- John Hickenlooper, D: $12.6 million raised, $5.9 million cash on hand

Maine (Collins incumbent, toss-up)- Sara Gideon, D: $23 million raised, $5.5 million cash on hand- Collins, R: $16.3 million raised, $5 million cash on hand

Note: Gideon is the favorite to win Maine's Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Montana (Daines incumbent, toss-up)- Daines, R: $9.4 million raised, $5.8 million cash on hand- Steve Bullock, D: $5.9 million raised, $4.1 million cash on hand

Note: Bullock's fundraising report only goes through May 13, while Daines' goes through June 17.

North Carolina (Tillis incumbent, toss-up)- Tillis, R: $11.7 million raised, $6.5 million cash on hand- Cunningham, D: $7.7 million raised, $3 million cash on hand

Note: Cunningham's fundraising report only goes through March 31, while Tillis' goes through June 9.

Georgia (Perdue incumbent, lean R)- David Perdue, R: $13.2 million raised, $9.4 million cash on hand- Jon Ossoff, D: $4.1 million raised, $1 million cash on hand

Note: Ossoff's fundraising report only goes through May 20, while Perdue's goes through June 20.

Georgia (Loeffler incumbent, lean R)- Kelly Loeffler, R: $11.7 million raised, $6.1 million cash on hand- Doug Collins, R: $2.5 million raised, $2.2 million cash on hand- Raphael Warnock, D: $1.5 million raised, $1.2 million cash on hand

Note: The election in November is a special election and would go to a runoff if no one gets more than 50%. These three candidates led a recent poll of the race.

Iowa (Ernst incumbent, lean R)- Joni Ernst, R: $12.3 million raised, $7 million cash on hand- Theresa Greenfield, D: $7.1 million raised, $4.7 million cash on hand

Note: Greenfield's fundraising report only goes through May 13, while Ernst's goes through June 30.

Kansas (open seat with Sen. Pat Roberts retiring, lean R)- Barbara Bollier*, D: $7 million raised, $4 million cash on hand- Bob Hamilton, R: $2.2 million raised, $2.2 million cash on hand- Roger Marshall, R: $2.1 million raised, $1.9 million cash on hand- Kris Kobach, R: $595,000 raised, $317,000 cash on hand

Note: The state primaries are Aug. 4; *Bollier's numbers were released by the campaign, but not yet officially posted to the FEC.

Alabama (Jones incumbent, lean R)- Doug Jones, D: $11.8 million raised, $8.3 million cash on hand- Tommy Tuberville, R: $4 million raised, $448,000 cash on hand- Jeff Sessions, R: $2.2 million raised, $500,000 cash on hand

Note: The Republican runoff election is Tuesday. Jones' fundraising report only goes through March 31.

Michigan (Peters incumbent, lean D)- Gary Peters, D: $15.8 million raised, $8.8 million cash on hand- John James, R: $13.1 million raised, $8.6 million cash on hand

The marquee race is the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, which pits former Sen. Jeff Sessions (seen here) against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Vasha Hunt/AP hide caption

The marquee race is the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, which pits former Sen. Jeff Sessions (seen here) against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.

1. Alabama Senate matchup to be decided: There are elections in Alabama, Maine and Texas on Tuesday. The marquee race is the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, which pits former Sen. Jeff Sessions against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Back in March, Tuberville took the top spot in the GOP primary with 33% of the vote to Sessions' 32%. To win the nomination, a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote. Now, with it a two-man race, Tuberville is seen as the favorite.

Sessions has asked for debates, which Tuberville hasn't agreed to. And despite Sessions being the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump, Trump backed Tuberville and tweeted against Sessions. "Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions. He let our Country down," Trump tweeted. All because Sessions recused himself from the Mueller investigation as Trump's attorney general.

2. Coronavirus cases continue to jump...: More than 135,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, and more than 3 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus. And Sunday brought more bad news for Florida, which reported 15,299 new coronavirus cases the largest single-day increase of any state since the start of the pandemic. And nearly half of Florida's intensive care units are reportedly at least 90% full. Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed last week that Florida's curve was "flatter" than other places, making the virus hang around longer.

3. ...And Trump is passing the buck: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, says he hasn't briefed Trump on the coronavirus in two months and the last time he saw him in the White House was June 2. And yet Trump now is trying to lay blame on him. "Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes," Trump said on Fox News. No matter who the president tries to pass the buck to, Americans are not approving of how he has handled the pandemic. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found just 33% approved of his handling of it, while 67% disapprove. That's a record low, something reflected in an average of the polls as well.

4. Trump tries to push other areas: Trump is pushing for schools to reopen this fall, and there could be new guidelines issued to align with that from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But there could also be a series of executive orders coming from Trump, focusing on other areas like immigration, China, manufacturing and even prescription drug pricing. On Wednesday, Trump travels to Atlanta to discuss transportation and infrastructure.

And we'll see if the president announces another rally after canceling his scheduled outdoor one in New Hampshire that was supposed to take place this past weekend. It was canceled due to the threat of a tropical storm. Trump is searching around for anything to stick to get him out of this political hole he's dug for himself.

"I've never been against masks, but I do believe they have a time and a place."

After months of refusing to wear one, Trump was photographed wearing a mask during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday. Staffers reportedly had been "pleading" with him to wear one.

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Democrats Could Retake The Senate. Just Follow The Money - NPR

But theres a problem with this narrative: Watson would later go on to help refound the Ku Klux Klan, though you wont learn about that here. Frank mentions the South Carolina demagogue Ben Tillman without noting that only a few years earlier, Pitchfork Ben had stood high in the populist pantheon. He writes glowingly of William Jennings Bryan, the Democrat whom the Populist Party endorsed for president in 1896, but does not remind the reader that Bryan ended his career ranting about the evils of modern science in the Scopes monkey trial. Demagogy may not have been the populists true nature; their heroism, and tragedy, were real. But how, given this history, can one wholly dismiss the kinship between the populists and the followers of Orban and Trump? Is it really a sign of elitism and hostility to democracy to regard invocations of the people, whether by right-wing nationalists or left-wing activists, as dangerous invitations to exclude the not-people?

Franks purpose here is explicitly polemical: He wants to realign history in order to force us to reimagine the present. The great cleavage of the past century, he insists, is not between progress and reaction, or liberal and conservative, but between ordinary people and the elite of both parties. Thus Franklin Roosevelt was a populist while progressive Teddy Roosevelt was an agent of reaction even though Franklin traced his own ideological descent to Teddy as well as to Jefferson.

In Franks view, Bernies with the people, and the Democratic establishment the Biden faction is in the pocket of the fat cats. The bottom line is class. But this poses another problem for Frank, because even before our Black Lives Matter moment much of the activist left cared less about class than about issues of identity. Frank treats identity politics as yet another species of elitism. Who, then, are the people? Are they the older working-class African-Americans who put Biden over the top in the Democratic primaries? Apparently not. But it was the white working class that provided Donald Trump with his margin of victory in 2016. How could that be? These Trump voters were, Frank explains as he did in his earlier book on Kansas beguiled by the phony populism of the right. By bad populism, not good populism.

Yet many of the Democratic leaders and policy experts whom Frank accuses of antipopulism now agree that liberal centrism has reached a dead end. The combination of the calls for racial justice that have filled our streets and the need for enormous government intervention in the face of the coronavirus pandemic will only hasten that leftward movement. Exhibit A would be Gene Sperling, a former senior economic official in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In Economic Dignity, this consummate insider lays out an agenda closer to Sanders than to Biden. Sperling writes of forces of domination and humiliation that define the lives of many low-wage earners. Unorganized workers, he argues, need labor rights and the full panoply of social protections; unionized workers need a voice in corporate affairs, as they enjoy in places like Sweden. Though Sperling prefers direct payments to people suffering dislocation to a wholly universal basic income, in most respects he has gone full Nordic.

Sperling does not thoroughly explain, or even acknowledge, his own conversion; he appears to be one of the many centrists who were shaken out of their neoliberal faith in the marketplace by the 2016 election. In seeking some orienting principle beyond economic growth and incremental redistribution, Sperling has landed on the idea, unavoidably amorphous, of dignity. Liberals tend to look on talk of values as a cynical distraction from matters of economic justice; that is, in fact, the central theme of Whats the Matter With Kansas? Yet Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in peoples deepest aspirations in their sense of purpose and self-worth.

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The Fight Over the Future of the Democratic Party - The New York Times

It's the latest indication that Democrats' hopes to win a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time since 1932 rest largely on Kobach winning the primary, hoping he would amount to the weakest candidate in a difficult general election against their candidate, state Sen. Barbara Bollier. And if Democrats take the Kansas seat, they will be in a strong position to win back the Senate majority, which currently stands at a 53-47 GOP advantage.

The new group, called the Sunflower State PAC, has quietly reserved $850,000 for ads just this week alone, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group. The ad, reviewed by CNN, bashes Republican US Rep. Roger Marshall as a "phony" and "soft on Trump" and notes that Kobach is called "too conservative" who "won't compromise on building a wall" or "getting tough on China."

Sunflower State formed just this week, filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on July 13. By forming shortly after the end of the second quarter, on June 30, the group could avoid disclosing any information about its donors until the end of the third quarter, all the way in September, even if it spends millions between now and then. Even if the group chooses to file more regular monthly reports with the FEC, it won't have to disclose donors until late August, weeks after the Kansas primary on August 4.

And the group quickly hit the airwaves after forming. One day after it filed initial paperwork with the FEC, the group placed the $850,000 TV ad reservation set to run this week on broadcast and cable in Kansas.

The group placed its reservations through Old Town Media LLC, a media firm that has also placed nearly $4 million of ad reservations for Unite The Country, the super PAC supporting former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

On its FEC forms, the group lists Amalgamated Bank as its financial institution, a company that supports progressive causes and lists as its clients, the Democratic National Committee, environmental groups, labor unions, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Biden Foundation.

An individual listed as the treasurer for Sunflower State, Jim Jesse, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. Asked about its ties to Democrats, the group responded via email to CNN simply saying: "Sunflower State is focused on educating voters about the US Senate race in Kansas and is operating in accordance with all federal election laws."

It's unclear if the group has ties to other major Democratic players, including the main Senate Democratic super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. A spokesman for Senate Majority PAC did not respond to inquiries seeking comment about the new Kansas outfit.

Eric Pahls, campaign manager for Marshall, argued the reason why the group is attacking the candidate is because Democrats are "terrified of him."

"This is not a new phenomenon," Pahls said in a statement, arguing the strategy at hallmarks of a past Senate race that led to the reelection of then-Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. "In 2012, national Democrats poured money into the Missouri Senate Race to nominate flawed candidate Todd Akin, who was handily defeated by Claire McCaskill. Their ad from 2012 closely mirrors this message, and they view Kobach as even more easily beatable."

A spokesperson for Kobach didn't respond to a request for comment.

It is not the only outside group with Kobach on its mind -- nor is it the only time that an outside group has gotten involved in the opposing party's primary.

A Republican-aligned group, Plains PAC, formed last week and announced a $3 million ad campaign against Kobach in an effort to derail his candidacy. And earlier this year in North Carolina, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to prop up a Democratic candidate that the party believed would be weaker in the general election, though that candidate ultimately lost in the Democratic primary.

In Kansas, Kobach is facing 10 Republican candidates including his top rival, Marshall, an obstetrician-gynecologist who represents the same solidly Republican, farm-focused district from which former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, Sen. Jerry Moran and the retiring Sen. Pat Roberts built the base of their power.

Other GOP candidates include Bob Hamilton, who owns a plumbing company, and Dave Lindstrom, a former Kansas City Chiefs player and businessman.

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Democratic-allied group gives a boost to conservative Kobach in Kansas Senate primary - CNN

As a Navy combat pilot, Mark Kelly landed fighter jets on aircraft carriers hundreds of times. He flew twenty-two million miles in space as a NASA astronaut, orbiting Earth eight hundred and fifty-four times. His toughest trip may have been his last. In May of 2011, he rocketed to the International Space Station, a few months after his wife, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, was gravely wounded by a would-be assassins bullet while she was meeting with constituents in Tucson. During that mission, which delivered a fifteen-thousand-pound cosmic-particle detector designed to study the formation of the universe, Kelly greeted Giffords by spelling out Its a Beautiful Day in letters that drifted through the zero-gravity air.

Kelly left NASA after that flight, to devote himself to Giffordss recovery and, soon after, to building a nonprofit advocacy organization for gun safety, now called Giffords. He emerged in countless interviews, often with his wife by his side, as a genial and respectful partner in a cause that mattered to both of them, partly because they themselves own guns. In the 2018 election cycle, Giffords and other national gun-safety groups outspent the National Rifle Association, and more than eighty per cent of the candidates whom Giffords endorsed went on to victory. As Arizona sputtered through fractious policy debates and coped with the death of one Republican senator (John McCain) and the departure of another (Jeff Flake), Democrats often asked Kelly to run for office. Kelly demurred. He said he felt good about his career and his choices, although he once told an interviewer, I wish I couldve gone to Mars.

This campaign cycle, with control of the U.S. Senate at stake, he changed his mind and now finds himself well ahead of the Republican incumbent, Martha McSally, herself a former fighter pilot, who has aligned herself closely with the increasingly unpopular President Trump. Polls show Joe Biden ahead of Trump in a state that has been carried by only one Democratic Presidential candidateBill Clinton, in 1996in the past seventy-two years. As Flake put it to me, Arizona is as much the state to watch as Wisconsin. Suburban women, minorities, millennialssome of whom, particularly in the millennial camp, have been walking away from the Party for a whileare now in a dead sprint.

Among many factors is the halting response to the COVID-19 crisis by Trump and Arizonas Republican governor, Doug Ducey. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released last week found that sixty-seven per cent of Americans disapprove of Trumps handling of the pandemic. In a separate survey, an academic consortium reported that Ducey has a thirty-two-per-cent approval rate for his handling of COVID-19, the lowest of any governor in the country. Ducey took the pandemic threat lightly and raced to reopen the state, only to see confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb. On July 1st, he asked the Trump Administration to send hundreds of reinforcements for the states health workers. Aides have warned Trump that he is in trouble in Arizona, which he won by less than four points in 2016, just four years after Mitt Romney won by nine. But when I asked the Trump campaign to discuss its Arizona efforts, the spokesperson Samantha Zager sounded unconcerned. She replied, by e-mail, that Republicans have held over two thousand events during the 2020 election cycle and are seeing remarkable enthusiasm from Arizona voters, while Joe Bidens campaign seems to have just located Arizona on a map.

Much can happen in four months, but to look at this moment in freeze-frame is to see Trump, McSally, and any number of Republicans across the country struggling to find a message. Amid a pandemic that has killed more than a hundred and thirty thousand people in the United States and pushed more than forty million workers to file for unemployment, Trump seems to have abandoned his original 2020 slogan, Keep America Great, while offering neither explanation nor apology for his handling of the coronavirus and the economic fallout. His principal answer to the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread from cities into the largely white towns that helped produce his Electoral College majority has been to tweet, in all caps, LAW & ORDER! Flake, for one, does not think that Trumps tough talk, including his vilification of undocumented immigrants and his trade wars, will work. Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy, Flake said. You can, in an election here or there, drill down on the base and pull out a win. But it runs its course, and you end up in a demographic cul de sac.

If Republicans are headed toward a reckoning in November, Arizona offers warning signals for a beleaguered party that is defending seats up and down the ballot for the second election cycle in a row. Energized Democrats have spent years building a grassroots operation, especially in the big cities that often determine statewide success. Its one of those states thats moving our direction little by little, Josh Schwerin, the communications director of Priorities USA, a pro-Biden super-PAC that is running an ad accusing Trump of failing America, said. Schwerin reported that the organization plans to spend eleven million dollars on advertising in Arizona before Election Day. The Lincoln Project, an increasingly high-profile effort led by Republicans who aim to defeat Trump and many of his supporters in the Senate, is running withering ads in Arizona, targeting Trump and McSally.

One sign of change is visible in voter registration, which has grown by twenty-five per cent since 2012. During that time, Democrats have cut the Republican registration lead in half, with about one-third of Arizonans registering as independents. Significantly, Latino voter registration and turnout have increased, favoring Democrats. An Arizona State University poll, conducted in March, before Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, showed a wide preference among Latino voters for Kelly and any Democrat running against Trump. An intensification of old-fashioned canvassing helped. We know that we can improve voter turnout and that, over time, once you get people voting, theyll continue to vote, Eric Meyer, the former Democratic leader in the state House, told me.

On a Sunday afternoon in June, two Democratic candidates for state representative on Meyers old legislative turf, District 28, held a Zoom call to mobilize volunteers. For more than ninety minutes, forty people discussed issues ranging from health care to the challenge of attracting fence-sitting Republicans. One of the candidates was Kelli Butler, who won office on November 8, 2016, the night that Trump stunned Hillary Clinton. I thought it was going to be this wonderful election party, and I felt like Id boarded the Titanic, Butler told me. Yet Trumps election had a silver lining for Democrats in her district, which includes the prosperous Paradise Valley and parts of North Central Phoenix: it inspired anti-Republican activism. Just a huge jump of people, she said. Christine Marsh, a high-school English teacher who was once Arizonas teacher of the year, was the other candidate on the Zoom call. She is in a rematch of the 2018 state-senate race, when she came within two hundred and sixty-seven votes of defeating the incumbent, a moderate Republican named Kate Brophy McGee. To win this time, Marsh said, her team has helped register four thousand more Democrats and is making about two thousand phone calls a week.

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Democrats Are Optimistic in Arizona - The New Yorker

Illustration by Steve Brodner.

Its looking pretty good for Joe Biden. Polls have been putting the presumptive Democratic nominee well ahead of President Trump in the 2020 campaign, and a New York Times survey in late June saw Biden opening up a comfortable lead in each of the half-dozen battleground states that will decide things in November. But before Democrats start making too many plans for undoing the damage done by four years of Donald Trump, let alone for the big structural change that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and other progressives propose, they need to consider an unfortunate truth.1Ad Policy

If Biden is elected but Republicans maintain control of the Senate, he will enter office as a lame-duck president. After the inaugural celebrations are done, Biden will settle into a dysfunctional relationship in which Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will determine precisely how ambitious his agenda can be. If we remove Trump but we dont remove McConnell, people need to understand how frustrating that will be, says People for the American Way president Ben Jealous. What good will a new president be if we cant get new laws passed?2

This prospect is so depressing that Democrats do not rush to discuss it. They focus on the feel-good politics of a presidential race that seems to be going well rather than the stark reality that ending mass unemployment, expanding health care, addressing the climate crisis, and implementing genuine criminal justice reform will be all but impossible with a Republican-led Senate.3

Democrats need to confront this reality. In a moment of tremendous instability and potential for progress, old expectations about what is possible have to be discarded in favor of a sense of mission that seeks to mobilize new voters and increase turnout everywhere. A winning strategy for November has to be grounded in a deep recognition of the fact that the combination of a Democratic president and a Republican Senate is fraught with peril. A capable Senate minority leader who is opposed to the president can cause a lot of problems for that president, says Rebecca Katz, who served as a top aide to former Senate majority leader Harry Reid. A capable Senate majority leader can stop almost anything.4 MORE FROM John Nichols

Like it or not, McConnell is capable. The most honest political history of the 2010s would be a biography of the Kentucky Republican, whose mastery of the Senates rules and politics has enabled him to disempower an honorable Democratic president and to empower a dishonorable Republican one. McConnell is the reason Judge Merrick Garland is not on the Supreme Court, while Brett Kavanaugh is busy tipping the balance to the right on 5-4 decisions. And the high court is just the tip of the iceberg. When McConnell appeared on Sean Hannitys Fox News show last year, the two men talked about the federal courts. I was shocked that former President Obama left so many vacancies and didnt try to fill those positions, Hannity said. McConnell chortled in response. Ill tell you why, he said. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration. The Senate majority leader maintained his grip on power after Trumps inauguration, steering the new presidents rogues gallery of judicial picks through the confirmation process and then ensuring that Trump had nothing to fear even after Democrats took control of the House and made a credible case for impeachment. Lets be very clear, says Robert Reich, a labor secretary under Bill Clinton, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are sacrificing the worlds greatest deliberative body to serve their Dear Leader.5

If Trump is defeated while McConnell retains his seat and remains majority leader, the Kentuckian will no longer have to provide cover for an erratic president, but that doesnt mean proper orderas least as it is understood in civics bookswill be restored. Even before Trump began remaking the Republican Party in his image, McConnell had remade the Senate GOP as a fully owned subsidiary of the corporate interests and billionaire donors that fund campaigns. Thats not going to change if Biden is elected, despite the dim-witted fantasy the former vice president entertains about sitting down with a former Senate colleague to work things out.6Current Issue

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McConnell and the Senate Republicans will put the brakes on every meaningful policy initiative that Biden advances. Hundreds of measures that have been approved by the House since the Democrats took over in January 2019including the Heroes Act package of Covid-19 relief measures that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues passed in Mayhave been laid to rest in what Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer describes as Leader McConnells legislative graveyard. The Republican lawmaker and his cadre of obedient partisans have made it perfectly clear time and again that they will not be moved by the fact that a legislative initiative is essential.7

The challenges that a President Biden will face on Day Onepandemic surges, mass unemployment, a climate crisis, and demands for racial justiceare daunting enough. The prospect of seeking to address them in a process defined by McConnell ought to send chills down the spines of Democrats. As the majority leader has proved beyond a reasonable doubt, his caucus will do whatever it takes to maintain conservative control of the Supreme Courtwhich is no small matter, since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will turn 88 in the early months of the next presidential term and Justice Stephen Breyer will turn 83 that summer. To fill those positions with jurists who respect civil rights and civil liberties, Jealous says, requires not just the election of a president who will make sound appointments but also the firing of Mitch McConnell.8

To disempower McConnell, Democrats need a clear-eyed political calculus that recognizes that the fight for control of the Senate matters just as much as the battle between Biden and Trumpperhaps more. They must fully embrace an understanding expressed by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a leading Democratic contender in the special election for one of two Georgia Senate seats up this year. In order to restore moral leadership to our government, says the pastor, it is necessary to flip the Senate. Democratic candidates, strategists, donors, volunteers, and voters all talk about the need to fundamentally alter the direction of our governance and our country. If fundamental change is the point, winning the Senate has to be understood as the defining struggle of a definitional election year. To that end, even as he mounts his own reelection bid this year, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is fundraising and campaigning for Democratic challengers nationwide with a message that pulls all the pieces together: Dump Trump. Ditch Mitch. Save America.9

Impeachment vote: The majority of the Senate voted to acquit President Trump on February 5, 2020, after the countrys third impeachment trial. (Rod Lamkey Jr. / SIPA USA via AP Images)

Thats my six-word mantra. It ends with Save America for a reason, says Merkley. I am absolutely trying to send the message that all the things were campaigning on wont happen if we dont win the Senate. To do that, the chambers Democratic caucus must grow.10

It currently has 47 members (45 Democrats plus two independents, Sanders and Angus King of Maine). If Biden wins, the party will need at least three more seats to take charge of the chamber in a 50-50 scenario, with a Democratic vice president casting the deciding vote. Ideally, the party would gain a clear majority. But even a 51-49 split would remain problematic, as it could hand outsize influence over the partys agenda to more socially or economically conservative Democrats, such as West Virginias Joe Manchin and Virginias Mark Warner. So what progressives are looking for is a substantial shift of five or more seats. Thats a tall order in any election cycle, and on paper at least, its even more challenging this year.11

Thirty-five Senate seats are up for grabs in 2020. Twenty-three of them are held by Republicans, while just 12 are held by Democrats. That sounds good because, in a moment of tremendous turbulence, when unemployment numbers could rival those of the Great Depression, the Republicans have to defend a lot more seats than the Democrats. The trouble is that most of the Republican seats are in deep-red states where Trump won in 2016, where be will probably win again in 2020, and where incumbents like Arkansas Senator Tom Cottonwhose Democratic challenger quit the race, leaving the partys ballot line emptywont be defeated. At the same time, there is at least one Democratic seat, Alabama Senator Doug Joness, that could well fall to the Republicans. Another Democrat, Michigans Gary Peters, was once considered vulnerable, but a late June New York Times poll had him up by 10 percentage points.12

Inauguration Day: The Capitol is prepared for the swearing-in of Donald Trump in2017. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)

So where will the Democrats find the seats they need? And whats the best strategy for winning them?13

In what are frequently identified as red states. Unless Biden scores a victory along the lines of Lyndon Johnsons thumping of Barry Goldwater in 1964 or at least Barack Obamas defeat of John McCain in 2008, some of the Democratic victories needed to flip the Senate are going to have to come in states where Trump prevailed in 2016 and might do so again this year.14Mitch McConnell

Of the five Republican-held seats that The Cook Political Report labels as toss-ups in 2020, two are in states that Biden is likely to win: Colorado and Maine. Two more are in battleground states where he also could prevail: Arizona and North Carolina. The last is in Montana, a state that went for Trump by 20 points in 2016 and where the presidents ahead this time. But theres a twist: Montana voters have shown a penchant for supporting Democratic candidateslike three-term Senator Jon Tester and this years Senate nominee, popular incumbent Governor Steve Bullockeven when they back Republicans for president.15

The Democrats need to win the toss-up seats before they can entertain the prospect of governing in a meaningful way. Right now, theres a chance: Polls have Democratic contenders like former astronaut Mark Kelly in Arizona and state House Speaker Sara Gideon in Maine ahead, respectively, of Republicans Martha McSally and Susan Collins. The two incumbents have long been seen as vulnerable, as has another senator who joined Collins in the ill-fated 2018 vote to confirm Kavanaugh, Colorados Cory Gardner, who trails Democrat John Hickenlooper. Whats notable is that, as of now, Democrats can point to polling advantages in all five toss-up states. In Montana, for instance, Bullock, who made his name as an attorney general who took on corporate interests and crusaded for campaign finance and ethics reforms, leads Republican incumbent Steve Daines by seven percentage points in the latest Montana State University survey. With the presidents personal approval rating tanking amid widespread frustration with his dangerous response to the coronavirus pandemic and the protests over police violence, CNN reported in late May that Republican strategists are increasingly worried that Trump is headed for defeat in November and that he may drag other Republicans down with him.16

Even if things are going very well for Biden, its unlikely Trump will lose a state like Montana, which last backed a Democrat for president in 1992. But if Biden can gain more than 40 percent of the states vote, as Obama did in 2008 and 2012, then it is realistic to suggest that Bullock can take things the rest of the way. However, if Biden gets stuck in the mid-30s, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, the climb gets steeper. To get a Democratic-controlled Senate, Biden has to do what Clinton did not in 2016: run an aggressively progressive national campaign that expands its focus beyond a small group of traditional battleground states. By mobilizing voters and expanding Democratic turnout in red states and red regions of swing states, Biden can increase his national popular votewhich is important for claiming a mandateand grab back battlegrounds such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania for the Electoral College win. But the benefit of a 50-state strategy, of the sort thenDemocratic National Committee chair Howard Dean implemented when the party was at the top of its game during the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, is that the Democrats can still win Senate seats even in toss-up states where they fall short in the presidential race.17

The same goes for states that The Cook Political Report labels as leaning Republican or in some cases likely Republicansuch as Georgia (with its two 2020 contests), Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, and Kentucky (where former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath won a close primary with progressive legislator Charles Booker and will now take on McConnell). All of these states went for Trump in 2016. If the current polling numbers hold, theyll be more competitive in 2020, and states such as Iowa and Georgia could back Biden. Even more important, all of them could back Democrats for the Senate, thus empowering a Biden presidency.18

Blocked: Senator Harry Reid calls on his GOP colleagues to act on Merrick Garlands Supreme Court nomination in 2016. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

Lets start with South Carolina, where no Democrat has won a presidential race since Jimmy Carter in 1976 or a Senate race since Fritz Hollings in 1998. Trump won there by 15 points in 2016, but he was up by only 10 points in a May Civiqs poll. The big news from that survey had to do with the states Senate race. Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, was tied 42-42 with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Yes, tied.19

Harrison is one of a number of Black candidates who are out to change assumptions about what is possible in Southern states. Others include former secretary of agriculture Mike Espy in Mississippi and Georgias Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, who is challenging the appointed and scandal-plagued Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler.20Montana Senate Race

Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, argues that Democratic strategists and commentators need to recognize the potential of these African American candidates to expand turnout and forge new coalitions. Pundits who dismiss the ability of Black candidates to win US Senate seats south of the Mason-Dixon Line should consider whether the bigger issue is not the bias they see in voters but the bias in their own hearts, he says.21

In South Carolina, Harrison has benefited from a turn against Graham, who once dismissed Trump as a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot but now serves as the presidents most ardent defender in the Senate. Harrison isnt making the mistake of trying to run to the right of Graham. Rather, he is running against Grahams blatant hypocrisy and hoping to attract at least some swing voters. But the key to states like South Carolina, Kentucky, and Georgia is not so much swing voters as new ones. Harrisons campaign knows where it has to boost turnout across the board, citing 400,000 unregistered people of color in South Carolina who need to get on the books to vote for Harrison along with white, college-educated voters who are starting to shift to the left politically and constitute the fastest-growing demographic in the state, reads a recent analysis of the race by The State, South Carolinas second-largest newspaper.22

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Boosting turnout is part of the strategy for a number of candidates who are challenging suddenly vulnerable Republican senators. In 2018, Democratic congressional candidates made some of their most important gains in states where Trump won in 2016 but where a surge in participation by women, people of color, and young voters tipped the balance. Thats something Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Theresa Greenfield is talking about in her bid to unseat Republican Senator Joni Ernst. Noting that Democratic voter registration numbers are now higher than those for Republicansand that Democratic turnout in the states June primary significantly exceeded that of RepublicansGreenfield says, Theres a lot of momentum here. She argues voters understand the need for a politics that recognizes health care is a right, not a privilege and that is resolute in taking on corporate special interests. A June Des Moines Register poll put Greenfield ahead of Ernst, drawing attention to a race that remained off the radar until recently. Greenfield is stressing her family farm roots and making a big deal about the need to defend the United States Postal Service, declaring, Continued attacks on USPS are an attack on the people who depend on its services, especially those living in rural areas where other delivery services dont reach.23

Ditch Mitch: Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is running against Democratic candidate Amy McGrath in November. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

An emphasis on issues that are important to the states where the candidates are running is vital, says Katz, the former Reid aide, who argues that voters in these states dont want a cookie-cutter approach. Instead of sending talking points from D.C., party leaders must recognize that you need candidates who are grounded in the experience of their states, who actually understand what is happening on the ground and are ready to talk about it.24

Merkley gets it. Twelve years ago, he was a state legislator bidding to dislodge Republican Senator Gordon Smith from a seat no Democrat had held since 1967. Merkley trailed Smith until the fall race heated up and thenwith a progressive campaign that challenged the incumbents stances on the Iraq War, tax policy, and climate changebegan to close the gap. In November, with a boost from Obamas landslide win in Oregon, Merkley narrowly upset Smith.25

This year, Merkley looks to candidates like Warnock, Greenfield, and Kansass Barbara Bollier to be among the winners who build a meaningful Democratic majority. Of course, says Merkley, those are tough races. But in years that go well for the top of the Democratic ticket, prospects for Senate wins open up in unlikely places. The key is to provide the resources and the support necessary for those candidates to seize those openingsas he did in the 2008 elections, which saw eight Senate seats flip from Republicans to Democrats. Everything I care about depends on winning the Senate. Unless we win it in November and then reform it so the minority cannot block action on the issues that matter, the Senate will continue to be rigged for the powerful, says Merkley. Weve seen that movie way too many times before. Weve got to change the script.26

Original post:

Democrats Will Be Lost Without the Senate - The Nation

Two Ohio House Democrats, Reps. Allison Russo, of Upper Arlington, and Jeffrey Crossman, of Parma, want to let the General Assemblys staff bargain collectively.

In 1983, the General Assembly, along party lines all Democrats for, all Republicans against passed Ohios landmark collective bargaining law for public employees. That law excludes roughly 20 categories of public employees from collective bargaining. Some are supervisors. Others include the governors staff; court employees; and General Assembly employees. People in those jobs are employed at-will. They can be hired or fired pretty much whenever a boss wants.

Democrats ran Ohios House for 14 of the 37 years after they passed the 1983 law; Democrats ran the Ohio Senate for two years. Democrats and unions are allies. And unions protect their members. But if memory is any guide, Statehouse Democrats never lifted a finger to let the legislatures staff unionize when Democrats ran the joint.

Now, Republicans are the ringmasters of the Statehouse circus. And House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry Countys Glenford, has ticked off Democrats. Householder doesnt make many mistakes. But he made a big one in refusing to keep the House consistently locked down until the coronavirus attacks fewer Ohioans.

That decision was political, not medical. Some Republicans, ranging from grandstanders in Householders Republican caucus to giant, economy-size grandstanders in Washington, decided that lockdowns, isolation and face masks comfort President Donald Trumps political enemies. In Columbus even worse such anti-coronavirus moves could imply that the Houses GOP menfolk (staff included) are wussies. That fecklessness gave Democrats a justified opening to assail what they say (and events suggest) is House Republicans indifference to the health of House members and staff.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jessica Miranda, a suburban Cincinnati Democrat, has complained to Householder that mixed-up House Republican supervisors mistakenly believed a Miranda aide had had contact with a Republican employee whod tested positive for the coronavirus. The supervisors sent Mirandas aide home without her knowledge, adding to what she termed a picture of [House] chaos. (In 2018, by just 56 votes, Miranda captured what had been a Republican-held Ohio House seat in that years closest Ohio House race. Winning back Mirandas seat is likely a GOP priority this November.)

Still, its good to keep context in mind when House Democrats gripe about Householder. He won the speakership last year with the votes of 26 House Republicans and of 26 House Democrats, including the votes of Crossman and House Democratic Leader Emilia Sykes, of Akron. (Miranda and Russo were among the Ohio House Democrats who voted for 2018s speaker, Republican Ryan Smith, of Gallia Countys Bidwell.) As an American founder, John Adams, once said, Facts are stubborn things.

Lockdown Library: If youre locked down at home, and have the time, here are some new books worth a look-see:

* Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, by Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Eric Eyre, on the horrific opioid plague that has destroyed communities in West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia, including swathes of Ohio.

Federal data pried loose by a lawsuit newspapers filed revealed drug companies saturated the [United States] with 76 billion not a typo oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills from 2006 through 2012, The Washington Post reported.

* The Room Where It Happened, by former White House national security adviser John Bolton. If you fear for our country, you may weep for it after reading this. In 2005, the late George Voinovich, then a GOP senator, fought Boltons appointment by President George W. Bush as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying, The United States can do better than John Bolton. The book suggests that Bolton thinks the United States can do better than President Trump.

* Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, by Larry Tye. McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, made his name a synonym for guilt by association in the 1950s. Looming large in McCarthys anti-communist crusade, hence in Tyes book, is the completely unscrupulous Roy M. Cohn (1927-1986), a lawyer who became a close friend of someone originally best-known as a New York real estate developer someone named Donald Trump.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-408-9474

Have something to say about this topic?

* Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication.

* Email comments or corrections on this opinion column to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.

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Democratic push to let Ohio Statehouse staff unionize is both more and less than it seems - cleveland.com

Even before a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, leading to a renewed national conversation about racial inequality, white Democrats were already pretty woke on some issues. An overwhelming majority of white Democrats said that racial discrimination was a major barrier to Black people getting ahead in America, that the police and the broader criminal justice system in America treated Black people unfairly and that the legacy of slavery still affected Black Americans today. And on issues of criminal justice and policing in particular, white and Black Democrats held fairly similar views. Surveys since Floyds death have shown even greater wokeness among white Democrats (and Americans more broadly). White Democrats now view the police even less favorably and the Black Lives Matter movement more favorably, and they are also more likely to agree that Black people face a great deal or a lot of discrimination in America today.

What we dont know yet is whether white Democrats have moved significantly on racial issues beyond policing and discrimination in general issues that deal with more material concerns, such as school integration and wealth redistribution. Most polling since Floyds death has focused on policing, Confederate monuments and other topics that have been in the news.

[Related: Theres A Huge Gap In How Republicans And Democrats See Discrimination]

But heres what we do know right now. In polling both before and even since Floyds death, white Democrats have been fairly opposed to giving reparations to the descendants of enslaved people, an idea supported by a clear majority of Black Democrats. And on a wide range of other policy ideas intended to address racial inequality, white Democrats are fairly tentative. (Republicans are much more opposed to all these policies across the board, which is why were focusing on white Democrats here.)

To look at these differences more closely, we focused on areas of American life where there is documented racial inequality. We then searched for polling on those issues. Our aim was to find the most recent polling available, in part to see whether views on major issues had changed in the wake of Floyds death, but for many issues, we had to rely on older polling, conducted before Floyd was killed. We found results in four major areas: income inequality, education, housing and the workplace.

The wage gap between Black and white Americans has been rising for decades, and this gap persists, even accounting for educational levels, with white college graduates earning much more than Black college graduates. Moreover, wealth in the United States is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of white Americans. Experts argue that mere changes in individual behavior is not enough to reduce these gaps, and that the government must have a specific agenda to address racial income and wealth disparities.

White Democrats support increasing taxes on the incomes of very high-earning Americans as well as taxing the wealth of people with a high net worth, according to polls. Recent surveys suggest that white Democrats may be even more supportive of these ideas than Black Democrats.

That said, white Democrats are much less supportive than Black Democrats of providing reparations to Black Americans as restitution for slavery or to make up for past and current discrimination that African Americans have faced. That divide, which is consistent across a number of surveys, is telling, because reparations are clearly intended to benefit Black people specifically and in a way that, for example, expanding health care through a wealth tax is not.

Percentage of respondents who support each policy or issue

Each poll used slightly different question wording; respondents were counted in favor if they said they somewhat or strongly supported the idea, or if they said the policy should be enacted. The Nationscape question on taxing the wealthy specified raising taxes on households making more than $600,000 a year.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

Floyds death and the heightened discussion around racism that followed have not led to substantial support for reparations among white Democrats. In late April and early May this year, a quarter of white Democrats supported reparations, according to polling from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape. In more recent polls, that support has grown to 33 percent of white Democrats. Thats a substantial increase but still nowhere near the support this policy has among Black Democrats. About two-thirds of Black Americans supported reparations both before and after Floyds death.

Education experts generally favor greater school integration and argue that it is an important tool in ensuring black Americans get a high-quality education.

White Democrats are fairly supportive of ideas like creating magnet schools that may draw in kids from across a community and redrawing school district lines to increase racial diversity. In fact, theyre about as supportive of these policies as Black Democrats are. White Democrats are also mostly in favor of having the federal government take actions to increase school integration, a step that was strongly opposed by many white Americans in the era after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. (There are reasons to be skeptical of this polling and think that some white Democrats may be lying about their true preferences, but well come back to that later.)

There is division about more aggressive ideas, however. White Democrats are much less supportive than Black Democrats of forcing students to attend a school farther away from their home or in a school district outside their neighborhood to ensure schools are integrated. Those policies have some echoes of the controversial busing policies implemented after Brown v. Board and subsequent rulings that resulted in greater racial integration of schools but that also angered many white Americans.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy

Respondents were counted in favor if they said the policy should be enacted, they favored the proposal, or race and ethnicity should be a major or minor factor in college admissions.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

Notably, both Black and white Democrats are wary of race and ethnicity being factors in college admissions decisions, at least according to a 2019 Pew survey. Schools normally take this step, in part, to increase the number of Black students attending, so its somewhat surprising that this policy is not more popular among Black Democrats.

In all, though, we see the same trend in education as in income: Support among white Democrats dips for more aggressive policies, particularly ones with explicit trade-offs or downsides for white people. On these education questions, the only polling we have available was conducted before Floyds death, so its possible that opinions have shifted. But if views on wealth and income policies are any guide, we might still see gaps between white and Black Democrats regardless.

Many U.S. cities have distinct areas with predominantly Black populations, often because of policies created in the past to keep Black people in certain neighborhoods and out of others. Many heavily Black areas have high numbers of people living in poverty and relatively few amenities like supermarkets. Some of these communities face an intense and at times unwelcome police presence. Therefore, racial inequality experts generally want to increase housing integration.

According to polls, white Democrats say they support efforts to build more housing in their neighborhoods, even low-income housing in suburban and upper-income areas. (Again, we will come back to why you should be somewhat skeptical of these responses.) But white Democrats dont really prioritize residential integration, according to a 2019 Pew poll. Only about one-third of white Democrats said they wished their community were more racially mixed, with the vast majority (60 percent) saying they were fine with the current racial mix of their community.

Black Democrats answered fairly similarly to white Democrats on these questions favoring more housing in their neighborhoods and low-income housing in the suburbs, but most (62 percent) said they were happy with the current racial composition of their community. But, unlike with measures aimed at reducing racial inequalities in income and education, where Black and white Democrats disagreed, white Democrats, like their Black counterparts, support aggressive interventions to reduce racial inequality in housing.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or hold each view

Cato respondents were counted in favor if they said they somewhat or strongly favored the policy. Pew Research respondents were asked whether they wished their community were more racially mixed, less racially mixed or about as racially mixed as it is.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

The finding that Black Democrats are happy with the current racial composition of their communities is not surprising. Black Democrats living in heavily Black areas may want some of the positive attributes of heavily white neighborhoods (like grocery stores and other amenities) but may not necessarily want to move to whiter neighborhoods themselves or have more white people move to their neighborhoods and change the character of the area. Again, this data was collected before Floyds death, so well need new polling to see whether views among white or Black Democrats have changed.

According to polls, both white and Black Democrats overwhelmingly want racially diverse workplaces and, when generally defined, support affirmative action. Though a minority of white men believe that affirmative action has made it harder for them to find work, the vast majority of white and Black Democrats agree that Black people are treated less fairly than white people in employment situations.

But while both white and Black Democrats value workplace diversity and recognize unfairness in employment situations, neither group thinks race and ethnicity should be taken into account when making decisions about promotions or hiring, even though the objective is to increase workplace diversity. That view in some ways contradicts Black and white Democrats support of affirmative action and a racially diverse workplace, but nevertheless, Black Democrats share white Democrats reluctance to embrace a more aggressive position that might increase racial equality in the workplace.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or agree with each view

Respondents were counted in favor if they said the policy was very important or somewhat important to enact, they generally favored the idea, or the policy should be enacted.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

Whats going on here? Considering the long history of racial discrimination in employment, its likely that Black Democrats are worried that factoring race into the job application or promotion process would hurt them, even if that racial factor is supposed to benefit them. Alternatively, Black Democrats and their white counterparts might be hoping that diversity can be achieved without the direct consideration of race at the individual level, therefore explaining their wariness about considering race in hiring and promotions, as well as in college admissions.

That may or may not change in the wake of Floyds death and the national conversation about systemic racism; again, well need new polls to know.

The broader finding here is clear: White Democrats definitely before Floyd was killed but most likely afterward too are more circumspect about ideas promoting racial equality that might be disruptive to the status quo for white people. But its worth considering two other readings of these numbers.

Its possible that this data is overstating the support of white Democrats, even for more mild policy proposals to reduce racial inequality. Indeed, before the protests precipitated by Floyds death, the Democratic Party was increasingly connected with racial justice movements. So, if you identify as a Democrat or liberal, there may be pressure to say in a survey that you support ideas to address racial inequality whether you really do or not. Experts refer to this as social desirability bias and say it plagues polling around racial issues, in particular.

[Related: When Proof Is Not Enough]

[F]or scholars studying White liberals in this period, you must take into account [the] possibility that White liberals are responding expressively. That is, they are aware of the right answer, understand the answer that bad White people give, and dont wanna be bad White ppl, Stanford University political science professor Hakeem Jefferson wrote in a Twitter thread last year, raising doubts about polling results that show white liberals expressing as high or higher concerns about racial inequality than some Black Americans.

Im not saying we ought not believe White liberals when they tell us on surveys they are racially progressive. I am, however, suggesting that we treat these data with more skepticism than we have to date, he added.

I stand by these points and have made them again recently the key point is that we need to think about tradeoffs and consider what happens when white folks are forced to give up their privilege, Jefferson told us recently.

[Related: How Biden Is Winning An Identity Politics Election So Far]

Another reason to be skeptical of white Democrats commitment to addressing racial inequality is to look at their actions. In cities such as New York and San Francisco, where white voters tend to be Democratic-leaning, schools and neighborhoods are very segregated. And its not clear that a lot of elected officials in these cities are trying that hard to change those dynamics, which suggests that voters may have elected people they knew would maintain the racial status quo.

Finally, a sizable gap remains between Black Democrats and white Democrats even on issues that would seem less fraught than, say, reparations or school integration. White Democrats, for example, are significantly less likely than Black Democrats to support taking down Confederate monuments, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos survey.

Indeed, on a range of policies and views that dont fall neatly into one of the buckets we covered above, there is still a significant gap between white and Black Democrats.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or agree with each view

Respondents were counted in favor if they said they somewhat or strongly supported the idea.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

But its also worth considering whether this data is understating the potential support of white Democrats for fairly drastic proposals to address racial inequality. After all, we have seen huge increases in the past decade in the share of white Democrats who say America must take additional steps to ensure equal rights for Black people and who say they support reparations, even though its still less than half. These recent shifts are likely due in part to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in addition, views on race and identity are now one of the major dividing lines between the two parties, and party rhetoric on these issues is crystallizing. (Increasingly, when people who identify as Democrats see their party leaders suggest that the police are treating Black people unfairly, theyll adopt that stance as well, new research indicates.)

And Black and white Democrats agree on many, more general, policies and views.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or agree with each view

Respondents were counted in favor if they said they agreed with the statement a great deal or fair amount, they somewhat or strongly supported the idea, they said the policy should be enacted or they said spending on policing in their area should be decreased a lot or a little.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

The recent protests against systemic racism and police brutality against Black people could cause a racial awakening a second one just in this decade for white Democrats. People who are trying to learn more about systemic racism and what they can do to reverse it (books about racial equality are in high demand, for example) may end up shifting their views in ways that may not be apparent in polls right now or even three months from now. The general public may also be influenced by signaling from elites for instance, the push by leaders of the University of California system to allow race to once again be considered in the admissions process and a New York Times Magazine cover story calling for reparations.

Also, we may be entering a period of peak white collective guilt, which scholars define as remorse that a white person experiences due to her groups actions toward black people, not necessarily due to her individual actions. White Democrats are more likely than white Republicans to feel white collective guilt, and these feelings predict support for affirmative action and general aid for Black Americans.

[Related: Is Police Reform A Fundamentally Flawed Idea?]

It is one thing to say one believes in the existence of systemic racism and another to do something about it, said Robert Griffin, a polling and public opinion expert who is the research director of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. However, these somewhat superficial changes are still important. For the public, they create opportunities to recognize the gap between stated belief and lived action. Such recognition can result in people feeling pressured to bring the two into closer alignment.

Finally, many of these polls are asking fairly imprecise questions about racial policy ideas that arent totally fleshed out. Specific plans for reparations, particularly proposals that would be funded largely by new taxes on the very wealthy or some other mechanism that does not target the incomes of most white Americans, might be fairly popular with white Democrats, or at least less unpopular than reparations defined generically and without details.

To conclude, you should be skeptical of stories that suggest white Democrats are very woke on policy matters of substance, or even more concerned about racial inequality than Black Americans are. That doesnt seem true at least not yet, whether you are reading polls or visiting a public school and notice that, though its in a liberal-leaning area of the country, its still not very racially mixed. That said, however, it seems that white Democrats have dramatically shifted their views on racial issues over the past 10 years, and are recognizing racial inequalities that they hadnt picked up on (or had even ignored) before. And so their views and priorities may keep shifting which could translate to more substantive actions, like looking for integrated schools for their children or even supporting some kind of modest approach to reparations.

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White Democrats Are Wary Of Big Ideas To Address Racial Inequality - FiveThirtyEight