Daily Archives: November 15, 2021

Last Monday, a Democratic firm hosted focus groups with women in Virginia who voted in 2017 for Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, in 2020 for Democratic President Joe Biden, and then this month for Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin. It was centered on suburban women: a group that pivotedsignificantlyto the right in the governors election.

ConsultantDanny Barefoot said that Anvil Strategies called roughly 30,000 people in Virginia. Most didnt answer, but several hundred of them fit the criteria he was looking for: people whovoted Democrat, Democrat, Republican in the last three elections. Those people were called back and offered a $100 gift card if theyd do a lunch-hour Zoom and talk about why they voted the way they did. Ninety-six women, a fifth of whom were not white, were broken into three different sessions. Barefoot sat in on one of them and got permission from the funders to share quotes and results.

Focus groups are put together differently than surveys, which weigh the responses to reflect the population at large. While 96 respondents isnt enough for a robust polling sample, its a chance to dig deeper into the views of a slice of the electorate. Virginia is about two-thirds white, and this sample was 79 percent white so slightly whiter than the state at large but not by a ton. Eleven percent of them were Black women, 6 percent Latina, and 4 percent Asian American. They came from around the state. Barefoot said he didnt ask about college education, because what he was interested in was people who lived in the suburbs regardless of race or educational background.

What Barefoot found is that while the women agreed with Democrats on policy, they just didnt connect with them. When asked which party had better policy proposals, the group members overwhelmingly said Democrats. But when asked which party had cultural values closer to theirs, they cited Republicans.

The biggest disconnect came on education. Barefoot found that school closures were likely a big part of their votes for Youngkin and that frustration at school leadership over those closures bled into the controversy, pushed by Republicans, around the injection of critical race theory into the public school setting, along with the question of what say parents should have in schools. One Latina woman talked about how remote school foisted so much work on parents, yet later Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee and former governor, would insist that parents should have no input in their childrens education. (Thats not exactly what he said, but thats how it played.) As she put it: They asked us to do all this work for months and then he says its none of our business now.

When asked which party had better policy proposals, the group members overwhelmingly said Democrats.When asked which party had cultural values closer to theirs, they cited Republicans.

The anger they felt at Democrats for the commonwealths Covid-19 school closure policy became further evidence of a cultural gap between these working people and Democratic elites, who broadly supported prolonged school closures while enjoying the opportunity to work remotely. Those with means decamped: Enrollment in Fairfax County schools dropped 5 percent, and fell by 3.9 percent and 3.4 percent in Arlington and Loudoun counties, respectively. Those who were left behind organized parent groups to pressure the schools to reopen. Though the groups tended to be nonpartisan or bipartisan at the start, Republican donors and conservative groups poured money and manpower into them, converting them into potent political weapons that blended anger at the closures with complaints about Democratic board members prioritizing trendy social justice issues all of it aimed at the November elections.

They keep saying a strong return to school, but theres no details, said Saundra Davis on Fox News over the summer, co-founder of one large group, called the Open Fairfax Public Schools Coalition. Their attention is on other things, like their pet projects and social justice issues, and the kids have been left to flounder and theres still no plan for fall.

Youll be surprised to know Im a Democrat, she said. Ive tried to warn them that theres a bipartisan tidal wave coming their way. They dont look us in the eye, they dont write us back. If we cant recall them one by one, theres an election in November. That fall, Davis cut an ad for Youngkin, citing his commitment to keep schools open as decisive.

And while the group made a Democrat angry at Democrats the face of its opposition, behind herwas a coterie of Republican operatives. The bulk of the groups financing came from N2 America, a conservative nonprofit, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Snyder. Its co-founder was a Republican who lost a 2019 race for school board, and the rest of its officers were Republican operatives too. A slick nonprofit named Parents Defending Education was launched in 2020 to help guide the local groups. Little effort was made to conceal who was behind it: A longtime Koch network operative, Nicole Neily, was placed at the helm of the grassroots organization. Aside from Davis, nearly every mom and dad brought onto Fox News to complain about critical race theory held a day job as a senior Republican operative.

It was the purest expression of the way Republicans have driven the fight over schools and then capitalized on it. The fear of public schools indoctrinating our children has been a GOP theme for its base voters for decades, but in the wake of Trumps rise, the party watched in horror as suburban voters recoiled from Republicans into the arms of Democrats. Casting about for an issue that could win some of them back recall that this is a game of margins, not absolutes the party landed on schools. Around the country, the conservative media apparatus, unrivaled by Democrats, gave air cover to the schooling issue handing local activists language to use, a story to tell, and the resources and platform to tell it.

The tactic was even more potent in northern Virginia, where many professional Republican operatives and lobbyists live.In Loudoun County this November, McAuliffe outpaced Youngkin 55 percent to 44. But Biden had beaten Trump there by 62 percent to 37. Youngkins showing was only 11,000 votes fewer than Trump won a year earlier, while McAuliffe notched 50,000 fewer votes than Biden had. While Biden carried Fairfax by 42 points, McAuliffe only took it by 31.

That the GOP didnt make even bigger inroads, given their heavy investment in the issue, may be the one silver lining for Democrats who, witnessing a dishonest astroturf campaign take shape and get twisted beyond all recognition on Fox News, decided, perhaps understandably but to their later regret, to ignore the question.After McAuliffes debate gaffe, in which he delivered up the perfect sound bite to Youngkin I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach he took weeks to respond, initially not recognizing the danger. Everybody clapped when I said it, McAuliffe insisted later.

Even where Republicans spent heavily against outmatched Democrats, they made only marginal gains in school board races. But if the issue continues to go uncontested, their luck may run out. National Democrats have no coordinated response yet, leaving school board members unstaffed, underfunded, borderline volunteers hung out to dry, with nothing to rely on but mainstream media assertions that theres actually nothing to see here.

A voter walks past election signs as she walks to the Fairfax County Government Center polling location on Election Day in Fairfax, Va., on Nov. 2, 2021.

Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

In the Virginia election, two arguments that have been running parallel in Democratic circles for the past several years finally collided. One is the question of how Democrats should position themselves in the ongoing culture war, with jockeying over fraught and contested concepts like wokeness and cancel culture. Critical race theory is one example of this;Democrats cant seem to agree on whetherits a good thing that should be taught and defended or a Republican fabrication thats not being taught in elementary schools at all. The other is the round-and-round debate over race and class: Are voters who flee Democrats motivated more by economic anxiety or by racial resentment and eroding white privilege?

While these debates have unfolded, Democrats have seen a steady erosion in support among working-class voters of all races, while gaining support among the most highly educated voters. That movement would point toward class divisions driving voter behavior, but the rearing up of critical race theory as a central plank of the Republican Party appeared to throw the question open again. Maybe its racism, after all?

Properly understanding how different voting blocs understand the terms of the debate, however, unlocks the contradiction: The culture war is not a proxy for race, its a proxy for class. The Democratic problem with working-class voters goes far beyond white people.

Now, for the portion of the Republican base heavily predisposed to racial prejudice, the culture war and issues like critical race theory easily work as dog whistles calling them to the polls. But for many voters, and not just white ones, critical race theory is in a basket with other cultural microaggressions directed at working people by the elites they see as running the Democratic Party. Take, for instance, one of the women in Barefoots focus groups. When asked if Democrats share their cultural values, she said, They fight for the right things and I usually vote for them but they believe some crazy things. Sometimes I feel like if I dont know the right words for things they think I am a bigot.

For many voters, and not just white ones, critical race theory is in a basket with other cultural microaggressions directed at working people by the elites they see as running the Democratic Party.

Barefoots results rhymed with the conclusions of a memo put out by strategist Andrew Levison, who has long made the argument that Democratic efforts at connecting with working-class voters are fundamentally flawed. The memo, published after the Virginia election but not directly responding to it, looks at how Democrats can win support among a growing number of anti-Trump Republicans. Rather than convince the entire white working class which is typically approximated in polls by looking for white voters without a college degree Levison argues that Democrats should identify a distinct, persuadable sector of the white working class and then figure out how to get members of that specific group to vote Democratic.

Levison, citing data from multiple election cycles, notes that Democrats roughly win about a third of white working-class votes. The party loses about a third right out of the gate: hardcore right-wing people who would never consider voting for Democrats and think even a Democrat like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer known for much of his career as Wall Street Chuck is a flaming socialist and a traitor. Levison calls that third extremists, and argues they are not gettable under any circumstances; he distinguishes them from the final third, which is made up of what he calls cultural traditionalists.

Strategist Andrew Levisonscharacterizations of extremist and cultural traditionalist voters.

Screenshot: The Intercept

His category of cultural traditionalists, he acknowledges, is not meant to capture every voter who is gettable by Democrats; likewise, many cultural traditionalists have competing and conflicting views on various issues. But just as corporations work to create consumer profiles before going to market with an ad campaign, Democrats need to define who that persuadable person among the white working class is. To do so, Levison relies on years of survey data, much of it collected by Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, that does tens of thousands of in-person interviews with working-class people around the country each year looking to identify those who are persuadable.

As Levison defines them, cultural traditionalists are people who dont follow the news closely but have an easy-going personality and an open mind contrasted with cranky, short-tempered people who are more likely to fall into the extremist category. They believe in patriotism and the American way of life but also believe that diversity, pluralism, and tolerance are essential characteristics of that American way of life. When it comes to race, these traditionalists have something of a Michael Scott view, rooted in the cliche that they dont see race or dont see color. They also have religious and moral values theyd happily describe as old fashioned but say they have no problem with people who have different views. When these voters shifted their views on marriage equality, accepting it as something that ought to be legal even if they were skeptical of it, the dam had broken.

Cultural traditionalists, according to Levison, also think of government as often wasteful and inefficient and of politicians as corrupt and bought off but they dont think government is inherently evil and can be convinced that it can do good things. Meanwhile, they think Democrats are a party that primarily represents social groups like educated liberals and racial or ethnic minorities while having little interest, understanding, or concern for ordinary white working people like themselves.

Levisons distinction between these cultural traditionalists and what he calls the extremists, except for that last part, can plausibly apply to many, many Black andLatino working-class people as well. And even that last part that Democrats dont have much interest or concern for ordinary white working people, specifically is not really a value judgment, its a widespread interpretation of Democratic messaging that is not uniquely held by white voters.

Theyre the sort of voter that would be gettable for Democrats without compromising on a racial justice agenda if it is sold as the United States continuously striving to close the gap between reality and its values. But, Levison adds, there are a number of cultural issues on which cultural traditionalists and extremists align, and Republicans have become adept at exploiting them. He defines them as: pride in their culture, background, and community; respect for tradition; love of freedom; belief in personal responsibility, character, and hard work; and respect for law, strict law enforcement, and the right of individual self-defense.

There are a number of cultural issues on which cultural traditionalists and extremists align, and Republicans have become adept at exploiting them.

In other words, they express the same sensibility as the women in Barefoots group who wanted to teach their children a positive history of the United States. One suburban Black woman in his group put it this way: Our kids should be taught about slavery and all of that awfulness but America is also a good country and thats what I want my kids to learn.

Few people read the full 1619 Projectput out by the New York Times in 2019, which is a rich tapestry of thoughtful essays and reporting about the role of slavery in the development of the United States. Instead, to the extent it has seeped into the public consciousness, it has done so around the notion of rejecting 1776 as the date of our birth and supplanting it with 1619 as our true founding, in a phrase that became so controversial it was deleted.

Times editor Jake Silverstein wrote in the introductory essay:

1619. It is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our countrys history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nations birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unanimously celebrated every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the countrys true birth date, the moment that its defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619?

That section too has since been edited, blunting some of its edge, and creating another situation where supporters of the project at once say that there was nothing off-base about it, while changing it in response to the criticism. As schools around the country began teaching the project, Republicans made a national issue out of it, one that cant be disentangled from the fight over critical race theory.

Liberals often suggest that parents who are skeptical of the New York Timess 1619 Project reject the idea of teaching the truth about American history. More often, as with the woman in the focus group, its a question of framing rather than truth. Believing or conceding that we as a people are defined by the worst of the past might actually be true, but the concession is seen as cutting off any hope of a better future. As an adult, if thats the view youve come to and I flirt with it often myself its a more than understandable conclusion. But we want our children to remain hopeful about the possibility of a better world, since its the world theyll inherit and build after were all gone. The argument that slavery was essential to the development of capitalism in the United States is well-established scholarship by this point. But absent a call to overthrow capitalism, that notion, particularly when compressed into something an elementary school student could absorb, loses any meaning beyond nihilism. And so of course parents of all races reject the framing and look askance at a party of elites who seem to be blithely suggesting though not really meaning it the overthrow of a capitalist system that benefits them before all others. And if theyre not suggesting that, then what?

Levison, meanwhile, argues that Democrats need to lean into the kind of patriotic rhetoric that makes many progressives recoil. Democrats have the potential to split extremists off from traditionalists by couching Democratic values as truly American, and extremists as un-American. As an example of such possible rhetoric, he offers, is, I love the American flag as much as any American but I would never use a flagpole flying our flag as a club to assault other Americans that I call my enemies. That is not the American way. Or: The values I grew up with are good values and I want them to endure. But the values of the people who want to turn Americans against each other and divide our country are not my values.

An attendee signs the campaign bus of Glenn Youngkin, Republican gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, during a campaign stop at the Alexandria Farmers Market in Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 30, 2021.

Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

At the end of Barefoots focus group, the women were asked if theyd have considered changing their vote if Democrats had passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The bill, which was passed by the House the following week, is something that Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, has claimed would have helped win the election for McAuliffe.

Ninety-one percent of the suburban women said no, 9 percent said yes, and one woman laughed and said, What does that have to do with anything?

Shes right to laugh. But that 9 percent actually points to something hopeful. In a close race, a 9-point swing like that can matter. If Democrats had passed the reconciliation bill as well and could talk about universal pre-K, the child tax credit, clean energy investments, and subsidies for child care, they might have won even more back. And if Democrats were out of touch culturally, though, that swing could be even higher

A major new survey from Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for Working-Class Politics points to another way that cultural chasm can be bridged: with candidates who focus on these economic issues but dont talk like juniors at Oberlin.

The survey design was unusual:Instead of asking about issue preferences or messaging alone, it concocted prototypes of candidates and asked which of them was more appealing. When it came to a candidates background, the survey found somewhat awkwardly for a socialist magazine that voters of all races and classes had the most positive reaction to small-business owners. The most disliked candidates were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Working-class candidates teachers, construction workers, and veterans also fared well, though not as well as mom and pop.

Broadly, Jacobin did not find evidence to support the Great Left Hope that if the masses would turn out in full at the ballot box, theyd eagerly support democratic socialists candidates and policies. Many working-class voters in advanced economies have actually moved to the left on questions of economic policy (favoring more redistribution, more government spending on public goods, and more taxation of the very wealthy), while remaining culturally or socially moderate, they write. They contrast this from where mainstream Democrats have gone: left on culture while tempering their economic progressivism.

But the survey also pointed to how they could be won over, and the results mapped with Levisons and Barefoots findings. Language Jacobin described as woke created a cultural barrier between voters and candidates that diminished support for both woke progressive and woke moderate candidates, while universal, populist language did best for Democrats. Notably, woke messaging decreased the appeal of other candidate characteristics, they write. For example, candidates employing woke messaging who championed either centrist or progressive economic, health care, or civil rights policy priorities were viewed less favorably than their counterparts who championed the same priorities but opted for universalist messaging.Startlingly, the survey found a 30-plus point gap between support for a teacher running on a populist, universalist message versusa CEO running with a moderate economic platform, couched in woke rhetoric reminiscent of Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign.

A South Carolina National Guardsman meets a school bus as it arrives withBlack students at the Lamar School on March 23, 1970, in Lamar, S.C.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

In todays debate over critical race theory, its impossible not to hear echoes of the busing wars in the 1970s and 80s. Like with busing, Democratic elites are creating conflict within the working class while protecting their own class and cultural interests. By the early 1970s, white school districts had spent nearly two decades resisting Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in schools, and national attention had turned to redlining and the dug-in segregation of housing.

The 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act had banned residential discrimination and empowered the federal government to forcibly integrate neighborhoods. In 1973, Donald Trump and his father were suedby the Department of Justice for racial segregation in their housing and settled two years later. That same year, a Gallup survey asked Black residents to choose from a list of preferred solutions to school desegregation, and the top choice was the most intuitive: neighborhood integration and an end to redlining. Only 9 percent of Black residents named busing as their preferred approach to school desegregation which, again, is intuitive: Attending the neighborhood school is always preferable, all things being equal, than being bused somewhere else. The same was true for white voters: Just 4 percent supported busing.

But neighborhood integration would require white residents to give something up. Even today, according to law professor Dorothy Brown, the author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans and How We Can Fix It, when neighborhoods integrate, with the Black population reaching at least 10 percent, property values either decline or grow more slowly. Facing that systematic decline in wealth, many white residents fought neighborhood housing integration. Busing, meanwhile, could be avoided by the well-off by sending their kids to private school. And so Democrats went with busing over housing. Republicans began to use busing in campaigns as a dog whistle to bigoted parents resistant to desegregating education, banking on the fact that there was additional political gain to be had among a majority of voters who opposed it for a variety of reasons. In 1981, Gallup found 60 percent of Black voters supported busing as a means to integration, though opposition was strong as well.

Antibusing is a code word for racism and rejection, wrote Jesse Jackson in 1982. True, some blacks oppose busing, but not for racial reasons. Blacks sometimes are against busing because all decisions about desegregation are being made for them, not with and by them.

Battles over language are by definition divorced from the material reality that structures inequality.

White parents who couldnt afford private school fled to the suburbs, creating new school districts along racial lines; since busing only happened within a school district, that meant it was largely going on inside big cities, with the suburbs immune. White working-class voters who remained in the cities noted rightly that the professional class in the suburbs, which proudly supported busing in the city, was merely signaling its own virtue, while engaging in the same bigoted resistance to or avoidance of integration.

Todays white Democratic elites are also confronted with school systems that have substantially resegregated, persistent racial income and wealth gaps, and test scores that reflect those patent inequalities. Their answer has been to thoughtfully interrogate the concepts of white privilege and systemic racism by examining interpersonal relationships and developing a new vocabulary that gives its speaker license to feel as righteous about things today as white folks did in the Boston suburbs in 1975. But, as Jamelle Bouie writes, battles over language are by definition divorced from the material reality that structures inequality.

We must remember that the problem of racism of the denial of personhood and of the differential exposure to exploitation and death will not be resolved by saying the right words or thinking the right thoughts.

Thats because racism does not survive, in the main, because of personal belief and prejudice. It survives because it is inscribed and reinscribed by the relationships and dynamics that structure our society, from segregation and exclusion to inequality and the degradation of labor.

Bouie answers with Martin Luther King Jr.s admonition to look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

Telling the truth about King and his politics has always been too much for American liberals. The vulgar version of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives popular in boardrooms and school workshops is meant to fill the void created by a refusal to assault the roots of racism; they provide a way to talk about racism that strips it of its material reality and slots it instead into the world of individual self-improvement. Without the systemic context, it merely trains people in how to enact roles, identify people failing to play their proper role, and properly call them out.

One woman in the focus group, asked how she understood critical race theory, said, It teaches our kids America is defined by the worst parts of its past. Instead of hiring corporate consultants to pretend to tear down white supremacy in the classroom, Democrats could dedicate themselves to the pursuit of living up to the values on which the nation claims it was founded. Frederick Douglasss famous speech delivered in 1852 What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? pounds at the conscience of the nation by describing the gap between its founding principles and its everyday reality.

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost,Douglass said.

Teaching the truth about American history, including all of its awfulness, doesnt require teaching kids that they or their country are defined by the worst of its past. Quite the opposite: Americas greatest heroes have always defined their project within the outlines of the promise and spirit of the nations founding, daring and challenging it to live up to its promises.

Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country, Douglass concluded on that Fourth of July. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope while drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions.

Thats something cultural traditionalists can all get behind. It would still, of course, trigger the far right. But the resulting fight would isolate the extremists, exposing their hostility to Douglasss message as the raw racism it is. Democrats win the argument when its about Charlottesville, but lose if its Loudoun County. But Loudoun County isnt Charlottesville, just as Glenn Youngkin isnt Donald Trump. Let the right lose its mind attacking Frederick Douglass. Make him and his allies like Robert Smalls those who fought oppression against the worst odds the true heroes of American history. And not one more word, for the love of God, from Robin DiAngelo.

Read more from the original source:

It's Not Just White People: Democrats Are Losing Normal Voters of All Races - The Intercept

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) A veteran South Texas state representative, who recently sponsored a controversial redistricting amendment that dramatically changed the congressional border districts, has switched to the Republican party.

State Rep. Ryan Guillen, of Rio Grande City, appeared at a news conference with Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday in Floresville, Texas, and announced he will not be running as a Democrat during his next election campaign for Texas House District 31, which includes a large section of the border in Starr County.

His switch comes as South Texas is increasingly being targeted as an area that Republicans feel they can take back in 2022.

Guillen tweeted Monday that his fiscally conservative, pro-business, and pro-life values are no longer in-step with the Democratic Party.

After much consideration and prayer with my family, I feel that my fiscally conservative, pro-business, and pro-life values are no longer in-step with the Democrat Party of today, and I am proudly running as a Republican to represent House District 31. pic.twitter.com/CRKOhVnSG4

During the last Special Session called by Abbott, Guillen sponsored a controversial redistricting amendment that carved out a section of South Texas 15th Congressional District and placed it in the 34th Congressional District. That particular area is where three-term U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat, lives. And the move enabled Gonzalez to switch congressional districts and to now run for the 34th.

Gonzalez barely won his last reelection against Republican candidate Monica de la Cruz, who is running again and has high-profile backing from the Republican party by members like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, of California.

With Gonzalez in another district, de la Cruz is largely considered the favorite and she is gaining momentum in a region that used to be a Democratic stronghold.

Friends, something is happening in South Texas, and many of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C., are not our values, not the values of most Texans, Guillen said Monday. The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live here in South Texas.

Welcome to the party of freedom, opportunity & prosperity @RyanGuillen.

As Dems move further left, they're abandoning the people of South Texas & their values.

Rep. Guillen's decision to switch parties is indicative of a shifting landscape in South Texas. pic.twitter.com/6gwEV0DNqB

Abbott said Guillens party switch is reflective of a larger trend throughout the Lone Star state, and the nation.

I am proud to welcome Representative Guillen to the Republican Party the party of economic opportunity and individual liberty. Rep. Guillens decision to switch parties underscores a changing landscape in South Texas, Abbott said in a statement.

The differences between Republicans and Democrats could not be more clear, becauseas the DemocratParty moves further to the left, they are abandoning the people of South Texas and their values.Republicans, however,will not abandon the people of South Texas like Democrats have. Instead, we will continue to fight for freedom, opportunity, and prosperity in District 31 and throughout South Texas. And our efforts are made stronger today with Representative Guillen joining the Republican Party, Abbott said.

The Texas Tribune reported that Guillen was the least liberal Democrat in the House during the 2021 Legislature.

Sandra Sanchezcan be reached at Ssanchez@borderreport.com.

Continue reading here:

Longtime South Texas Democrat switches to the Republican Party - ConchoValleyHomepage.com

Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

When Republicans lost big in the 2012 election, the party commissioned a post-mortem analysis that arrived at a blunt conclusion about the way it communicated: The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself, said the report, informally known as the autopsy.

After the elections last week, in which Democrats across the country lost races they expected to win or narrowly escaped defeat, some are asking whether the Democratic Party is suffering from a similar problem of insularity in its messaging.

Critics and some prominent liberals like Ruy Teixeira, a left-of-center political scientist, have argued that Democrats are trying to explain major issues such as inflation, crime and school curriculum with answers that satisfy the partys progressive base but are unpersuasive and off-putting to most other voters.

The clearest example is in Virginia, where the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, lost his election after spending weeks trying to minimize and discredit his opponents criticisms of public school education, particularly the way that racism is talked about. Mr. McAuliffe accused the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, of campaigning on a made-up issue and of blowing a racist dog whistle.

But about a quarter of Virginia voters said that the debate over teaching critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework that has become a stand-in for a debate over what to teach about race and racism in schools, was the most important factor in their decision, and 72 percent of those voters cast ballots for Mr. Youngkin, according to a survey of more than 2,500 voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization.

The nuances of critical race theory, which focuses on the ways that institutions perpetuate racism, and the hyperbolic tone of the coverage of the issue in conservative news media point to why Democrats have struggled to come up with an effective response.

Mr. Teixeira calls the Democrats problem with critical race theory and other galvanizing issues the Fox News Fallacy.

These issues are ripe for distortions and exaggeration by Republican politicians and their allies in the news media. But Mr. Teixeira says Democrats should not dismiss voters concerns as simply right-wing misinformation.

An issue is not necessarily completely invalid just because Fox News mentions it, he said.

In an interview, Mr. Teixeira said his logic applied to questions far beyond critical race theory. I cant tell you how many times I analyze a particular issue, saying this is a real concern, he said. And the first thing I hear is, Hey, this is a right-wing talking point. Youre playing into the hands of the enemy.

Fox News is not the only institution capable of producing this kind of reaction from some on the left it was just the one Mr. Teixeira chose to make his point as vividly as possible.

What to Know About the 2021 Virginia Election

The conservative news media is full of stories that can make it sound as if the country is living through a nightmare. Rising prices and supply chain difficulties are cast as economic threats on par with the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a comparison that is oversimplified because neither inflation nor unemployment is as high now. Stories of violent crime in large cities are given prominent placement and frequent airing; the same is true of coverage about the record number of migrants being apprehended at the southern border.

The Biden administration has struggled to address concerns about all of these issues. Critics pounced when the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, posted a tweet that cast inflation and supply chain disruptions as high class problems, seeming to dismiss the anxiety that Americans say they have about their own finances.

And despite border crossings hitting the highest number on record since at least 1960, when the government began tracking them, the Biden administration has resisted referring to the issue as a crisis. President Biden has faced persistent questions about why he has not visited the border.

C.R.T. is not new. Derrick Bell, a pioneering legal scholar who died in 2011, spent decades exploring what it would mean to understand racism as a permanent feature of American life. He is often called the godfather of critical race theory, but the term was coined by Kimberl Crenshaw in the 1980s.

The theory has gained new prominence. After theprotestsborn from the police killing of George Floyd, critical race theory resurfaced as part of a backlash among conservatives includingformer President Trump who began to use the term as apolitical weapon.

The current debate. Critics of C.R.T. argue that it accuses all white Americans of being racist and is being used to divide the country. But critical race theorists say they are mainly concerned with understandingthe racial disparities that have persisted ininstitutionsandsystems.

A hot-button issue in schools. The debate has turned school boards into battlegroundsas some Republicans say the theory is invading classrooms. Education leaders, including the National School Boards Association, say that C.R.T. is not being taught in K-12 schools.

Then theres crime. After a year and a half of calls from the progressive left for drastic policing reform, voters across the country last week rejected candidates and policies aligned with the defund the police movement. In two of the most striking examples, Minneapolis voters said no to a referendum to dismantle their citys troubled police department. And New Yorkers elected as mayor a former police captain, Eric Adams, who strongly opposes defund efforts.

One liberal who apparently recognized the broader problems that Democrats have had explaining their platforms to voters was Maya Wiley, who ran against Mr. Adams in the mayoral primary as a proponent of sweeping police reforms. In an opinion essay for The New Republic this week, Ms. Wiley, a civil rights lawyer, wrote that while Republicans distorted the debate over critical race theory in Virginia, they also offered a more compelling message on education.

If you only heard evening news sound bites, you would think all he talked about on the campaign trail was critical race theory, Ms. Wiley said of Mr. Youngkin. Not so. In fact, he sounded like a moderate Democrat, with the notable exception of C.R.T.

Despite the dog whistling, Wiley said, the message was effective because it was empathetic. He was saying he understood their pain, she said.

Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

The rest is here:

Do Democrats Have a Messaging Problem? - The New York Times

On the surface, Democratic candidates fared quite well in the 2020 elections, winning control of the White House and the U.S. Senate, while holding onto their majority in the U.S. House. But just below the surface, these gains did not translate into down-ballot successes leaving Republicans in powerful positions in state offices nationwide.

The policy impact is obvious, but less obvious are the electoral effects: Voters left GOP officials in a position to exploit gerrymandering tactics when drawing district lines. The New York Times reports today that Republicans "are already poised" to erase their deficit in the House "thanks to redrawn district maps that are more distorted, more disjointed and more gerrymandered than any since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965."

In other words, a year out from the 2022 election cycle, the GOP is positioned to retake the House majority, even if the American electorate votes exactly the same way as it did it 2020, when it elected a Democratic majority. The Times' report characterized this as a dynamic in which the GOP could have "a nearly insurmountable advantage in the 2022 midterm elections."

But that's only part of the Democratic Party's challenge.

To be sure, it's a problem that Democrats are positioned to lose power even if voters cast ballots the same way they did a year ago. To overcome this structural hurdle, Democrats would likely need a substantial national advantage, since winning slightly more votes might still lead to less power.

The bigger problem is that the party's national advantage, at least for now, has disappeared. ABC News reported over the weekend on an important new poll:

Republican congressional candidates currently hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 40 years, underscoring profound challenges for Democrats hoping to retain their slim majorities in Congress next year.

At this point four years ago, when Republicans had control of Congress and the White House, the Democratic advantage on the Post/ABC generic ballot was 11 points: 51 percent to 40 percent. Now, those numbers have flipped, and it's the GOP with a similar advantage: 51 percent to 41 percent among registered voters.

This is roughly in line with the latest national USA Today/Suffolk poll, which found Republicans with an 8-point lead.

In case this isn't obvious, if Democrats were ahead on the generic ballot by two or three percentage points, that would also be a problem for the party, because the lead would be too small to overcome the GOP's structural advantage, given the unlevel playing field.

But Democrats aren't up by a few points; they're down by double digits.

So, does this mean Republican leaders can start measuring the drapes in the Speaker's office and Democratic incumbents should start retiring in droves to save themselves the embarrassment of inevitable defeats? Not just yet.

First, let's not forget what the generic ballot is: These surveys ask voters for their general partisan preferences in congressional elections, without referencing any specific names of candidates. It's why it's called a "generic" ballot respondents are saying whether they're inclined to support a Democratic or Republican candidate without knowing anything about those candidates themselves.

But when voters actually cast their ballots, they'll be choosing from actual candidates, not generic party labels, and the more extremists and scandal-plagued candidates win GOP primaries, the more likely it will affect the results.

Second, Republicans aren't ahead because they're popular there's nothing in the ABC/Post poll to suggest Americans are buying what the GOP is selling they're ahead because much of the country is unsatisfied with the status quo at a time when Democrats control the reins of power.

The good news for Democrats is that there's nothing normal about the status quo, which is likely to look quite different a year from now. As we recently discussed, the Covid-19 crisis will likely look a lot different 12 months from now. So will the effects of the pandemic on the economy. So will the supply chain. So will inflation rates. With any luck, Democrats might even have an improved legislative record to run on ahead of the next Election Day and the Post/ABC poll showed fairly strong support for Biden's agenda.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes made a point on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that continues to resonate: "My unified theory of American social and political life is that we've lived through and are living through a once-in-a-century trauma/disruption and the results of that are going to reverberate throughout almost every facet of politics for a while."

I think that's right. I also think this once-in-a-century trauma/disruption is temporary, and as the United States enters a different phase a year from now, the political landscape will change.

That's not to say Democrats should be complacent or optimistic. But their polling deficit doesn't necessarily mean the party is facing inevitable doom.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

Read more from the original source:

The one poll that Democrats need to care about most - MSNBC

If Democrats don't bend to their funding conditions, Republican leaders say they arent afraid of the ultimate fallback, a so-called "continuing resolution" or CR that drags out the same spending levels for the 10 months left in the budget year.

Well walk away from the bill, and we'll just go with a CR. We're not going to do it," Rep. Ken Calvert of California, the ranking Republican on the Houses defense funding panel, said about Democrats digging in on their liberal funding goals.

Democrats dont need the other partys help to advance the $1.75 trillion climate action and safety net spending package they are working to pass. Government funding bills, however, need 60 votes in the Senate. And Republicans could benefit from a monthslong standoff on the topic, which would hamstring Democrats attempts to increase non-defense spending.

As inflation poses a fresh threat to President Joe Biden's sagging approval ratings, Republicans are seeking to brand themselves as cutting spending to tame ballooning prices for consumer goods even though the national debt surged by more than $7 trillion during Trumps presidency.

"It's a shameless approach that they've taken," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said about GOP leaders' refusal to negotiate on a longer-term spending bill unless Democrats acquiesce on every controversial policy before negotiations can begin.

"There are a number of Republicans who believe that it's important to fund the priorities of the federal government, including the defense priorities. But I know there's an ongoing discussion in their caucus," added Van Hollen, who chairs the Senate spending panel that funds the Treasury Department and the IRS.

The GOP has adopted a heads I win, tails you lose attitude with another shutdown deadline in less than three weeks. If Democrats don't buckle to a slew of conservative demands before spending negotiations even begin, Republicans wont engage in dealmaking at all, GOP leaders say. The minority party has demanded that Democrats agree up-front to status-quo spending constraints, like the longtime ban on using federal funding for abortion.

Falling back on a CR that extends current funding levels would mean flat government spending and the preservation of funding constraints Trump signed into law almost a year ago, blocking Democrats who've been eager to revamp government budgets since they took back the majority.

Under a long-term CR, "what you end up with is Donald Trumps last negotiated budget, when he was president and we had the Senate. I would consider that a pretty egregious Democratic failure, said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), his partys top appropriator on the spending panel that handles the largest pot of non-defense funding.

Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is taking the GOP threat of a year-long funding patch seriously, according to a committee aide, who said Republicans seem adamant about leaving more cash for the military on the table in order to stick Democrats with Trump-era funding levels for domestic programs. Leahy blasted Republicans on the Senate floor this month, saying GOP leaders seemed determined to thwart President Joe Bidens agenda.

The White House turned up pressure on Friday for a government funding deal, warning that a year-long stopgap would seriously hurt the country by hampering Covid vaccine research, delaying military construction projects and jeopardizing food safety.

A full year of static funding would sting for all the GOP lawmakers seeking a boost in defense spending, while undercutting the military and all the other federal agencies that have been lurching through the budget year without funding certainty.

The truth is, if you take a look at the challenges that are out there with China right now and Russia, this budget needs to go, warned Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds the Pentagon.

Democrats have already debuted all 12 of their annual spending bills in both chambers and passed most of those bills in the House over the summer. House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said now "we need our Republican counterparts to respond with their own proposal."

Top appropriators in both chambers have no meetings on the books to continue bipartisan negotiations, according to aides. Their first confab broke up last week, with both sides issuing warring statements.

The deadlock could complicate Democrats efforts to retain their House and Senate majorities in next years midterm elections. Even if the two parties eventually strike a deal to boost federal spending before time runs out next September, a string of short-term funding punts would feed into Republican criticism that Democrats cant get anything done on time.

I dont get the sense when it comes to keeping the trains running on time they are particularly adept at that, said Senate Minority Whip John Thune. Its just sort of management by chaos. Theres no real rhyme or reason to it. They keep putting out deadlines which end up not being met."

Government funding negotiations have taken a backseat to the jam-packed legislative to-do list, including passage of Demcorats' $1.75 trillion social spending bill and a continued standoff over lifting the debt ceiling. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the Transportation-HUD spending panel, said real negotiations on a funding deal "have yet to start."

A bipartisan Senate framework for striking a funding accord isnt in play this year, exposing the gaping distance between both parties. The Senates top Republican appropriator, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, insists Democrats need to resurrect the so-called Shelby-Leahy agreement the Republican devised in 2018 with his counterpart across the aisle. Under that deal, both parties agreed to forgo controversial policies lawmakers like to call poison-pill riders.

But sticking points abound. Republican appropriators list more than 30 items they say Democrats must add or nix from their spending bills before GOP leaders will enter into funding negotiations. That includes dropping wage requirements for projects funded with federal cash and ensuring the Guantanamo Bay terrorist-holding site remains open. The party also wants to continue federal funding for abstinence education programs that encourage people to refrain from non-marital sexual activity.

Republicans want the Biden administration to spend nearly $2 billion to keep building the border wall, rather than sending that cash back to the Treasury Department, and they want to kill environmental efforts, such as allowing new emissions regulations and funding a Civilian Climate Corps.

The question is, will we kick the can to January, February or March?" Shelby said. "And then come March, when we havent done anything, will we kick it to July and then September?

Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:

GOP weighs trapping Democrats in Trumps budget - POLITICO

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (left), and former President Donald Trump (right).Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump says in a new book that he "might have" endorsed a Democrat in 2020.

Trump was referring to Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell's reelection bid in Kentucky.

Despite Kentucky being a reliably Republican state, Trump said McConnell only won because of him.

Former President Donald Trump grew so frustrated with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for not backing up his election lies that he suggested he might have supported the GOP senate leader's Democratic opponent, according to Jonathan Karl's forthcoming book.

Karl, the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, sat down with Trump in March 2021 to interview him for the book.

"Trump absurdly claimed that the only reason McConnell had won reelection in solidly Republican Kentucky in 2020 was because he had endorsed him," Karl writes. "'In retrospect,' Trump told me about McConnell's reelection race, 'I might have endorsed the Democrat.'"

That Democrat, former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, was mentioned by Trump several times in speeches he gave while in office, according to the factba.se database, which contains all of the former president's tweets and an extensive record of his public statements.

Trump called her an "extreme liberal" and part of the "radical Democrat mob" in speeches ahead of the 2018 midterms, back when McGrath was running for a Republican-held House seat.

Karl describes how Trump was "consumed with bitterness and resentment aimed almost entirely at fellow Republicans" during their interview, particularly with Senate Leader McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Follow this link:

Trump suggested he should've endorsed a Democrat over McConnell in Kentucky in 2020: book - Yahoo News

The House may soon vote on Democrats $1.75 trillion budget reconciliation bill, with provisions to shield undocumented immigrants living in the US from deportation and relieve long visa backlogs.

But like many of the immigration proposals from the last few decades, these new, critical immigration fixes appear unlikely to actually become law. So why is this latest round of immigration reform proposals probably doomed? Two reasons: because of the structure of the Senate and because, on immigration, identity issues have replaced policy.

The American public has never been more supportive of immigration, with a third saying that it should be increased. In 1986, the last time Congress passed a major immigration reform bill, only 7 percent of Americans supported increasing immigration levels. And narrower reforms, such as expanded protections for undocumented people already in the US, have been found to have majority support.

But despite that growth in public support, the House and Senate havent been able to reach bipartisan agreement on immigration in decades. Though comprehensive immigration reform bills passed one chamber in 2007 and 2013, they ultimately failed in the other. And while the House has passed bipartisan legislation addressing narrower immigration issues over the last couple of years, those bills have yet to gain traction in the Senate.

This has led to a Democratic insistence on trying to use the budget reconciliation process to address immigration, which would bypass the need for Republican support. So far, those efforts have failed. But Democrats havent given up on it yet.

As part of their social and climate spending package, known as the Build Back Better Act (BBB), Democrats initially sought to create a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US. That plan was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who is tasked with determining what can and cannot be passed via budget reconciliation.

Reconciliation allows bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority which Democrats have by one vote but for a provision to be included in a reconciliation package, it must have a more than incidental impact on the budget. A pathway to citizenship, MacDonough said, would be a tremendous and enduring policy change that dwarfs its budgetary impact. Democrats then proposed giving people who entered the US illegally prior to 2010 a pathway to green cards. MacDonough also nixed this plan.

This has led to Democrats plan C. Under the latest draft of the bill, undocumented immigrants would be given temporary protection from deportation through what is called parole for a period of five years. Those who arrived in the US prior to 2011 numbering an estimated 7 million could apply for five-year, renewable employment authorization.

The bill would also recover millions of green cards that went unused in the years since 1992. Under current law, any allotted green cards not issued by the end of the year become unavailable for the following year. In 2021, the US failed to issue some 80,000 green cards due to processing delays, and those cards have now gone to waste.

The bill also allows some people who have been waiting to be issued a green card for at least two years to pay additional fees to bypass certain annual and per-country limitations and become permanent residents years, if not decades, sooner than they would have otherwise. And the bill preserves green cards for Diversity Visa winners from countries with low levels of immigration to the US who were prevented from entering the country on account of Trump-era travel bans and the pandemic.

Those provisions, though short of desperately needed structural reform to the immigration system, would provide long-awaited assurance for many undocumented immigrants who have put down roots in the US and more opportunities for legal immigration at a time when the country could use more foreign workers. The provisions are also broadly popular: A recent poll from Data for Progress found that 75 percent of voters, including a majority of Republicans, back them.

Nevertheless, they may be on the chopping block.

In the House, Reps. Jesus Chuy Garcia, Adriano Espaillat, and Lou Correa have pushed for immigration reforms to be included in the reconciliation package. But even if they are ultimately successful, the provisions face two significant obstacles in the Senate: key moderates and the parliamentarian.

Moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced last week that she supported the current provisions, but there is no word yet from Sen. Joe Manchin, who has expressed skepticism about addressing immigration in the bill. As Senate Democrats need every vote in their caucus, should Manchin refuse to back the provisions, theyd be effectively dead.

MacDonough has also yet to weigh in on the latest plan. But given that she twice rejected Democrats previous immigration proposals, she may do so again. Explaining why she rejected Democrats path to citizenship proposal in September, MacDonough wrote that the impact of the legislation far outweighed its budgetary consequences, making it inappropriate to include in a reconciliation bill.

It is by any standard a broad, new immigration policy, she said. The reasons that people risk their lives to come to this country to escape religious and political persecution, famine, war, unspeakable violence, and lack of opportunity in their home countries cannot be measured in federal dollars.

She also asserted that, if she were to allow Democrats to pass the measure through reconciliation, that might be used as a precedent to justify revoking any immigrants legal status in future reconciliation bills.

Proponents of including immigration in reconciliation have asserted that MacDonough might take a different tack when it comes to plan C, in part because it doesnt create any new, permanent legal protections that werent previously authorized by Congress. But her September opinion suggests that she opposes any use of reconciliation that has far-reaching consequences for immigrants.

No one can be categorically sure about what shes going to do. But theres enough in her opinion to suggest that she will think this was too big a reach in reconciliation, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Despite calls to overrule or even fire the parliamentarian, Democrats have made it clear they plan to abide by her ruling. As Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez said in a September press call, The parliamentarian is the final word of what is and not permitted under the rules.

These barriers mean immigration reform seems to be proving elusive once again. Experts say thats because immigration has shifted from a matter of policy to a matter of identity, and that as this shift was happening, the way Congress functions changed drastically.

Chishti said that the immigration debate previously used to be principally focused on ideas: Is immigration good for the country or not? What kind of immigration is good for the country high-skilled, low-skilled? Do we need more finance people or more nurses?

And there used to be immigration proponents and skeptics in both parties. For instance, labor unions used to advocate for restrictionist immigration policies, though that shifted in the 2000s. Business-minded Republicans recognized the economic benefits of immigration. Now, the debate is more tied up in identity. It has also grown in electoral importance, with voters ranking it the third most important issue facing the country after the coronavirus and the economy in a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll earlier this year.

Immigration is all about culture and race. It is about peoples perception of how immigration is changing our country, Chishti said. Its much more emotional.

What has also changed is Congresss reliance on the filibuster. During the era in which the 1986 bill was passed, you could count on one hand the number of times the filibuster was invoked, Chishti said. Now, if a majority in the Senate doesnt support legislation, it doesnt even get considered.

That makes it hard, but perhaps not impossible, to build consensus around immigration.

Should their efforts to include immigration in the reconciliation bill fail, Democrats might not have another chance to pursue their policy priorities until after next years midterms and thats assuming they maintain control of both chambers of Congress, a scenario thats very much in doubt. A Republican Congress may not be interested in immigration reform at all, especially if they intend to use immigration as an electoral weapon against the Biden administration and the Democratic party.

Regardless of who controls Congress in 2023, there might be room for compromise on narrower reforms to the legal immigration system that relate to the economy, according to Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

A Bipartisan Policy Center-Morning Consult poll conducted in May found that, across the political spectrum, people were more likely to be willing to compromise on the issues of providing visas for immigrants supporting the US economy where companies cannot find US workers and providing visas for immigrants investing in research and innovation for future growth of the US economy.

While those issues dont represent the top priorities of either party on immigration, addressing them might have important corollary impacts. Creating new legal pathways for foreign workers might mitigate unauthorized immigration at the southern border and also open opportunities for undocumented immigrants already living in the US to get legal status.

If we legalize everybody in the country tomorrow, we still have the same system in place that made them become undocumented, Cardinal Brown said. What do we do with the next person? Unless we fix our legal immigration system, well continue to be in that position.

Go here to see the original:

Immigration fixes may not survive in Democrats budget reconciliation bill - Vox.com