The Real Lesson for All Factions of the Democratic Party

Offer a hopeful vision where all Americans make progress.

I was totally persuaded by William Galston and Elaine Kamarck’s 1989 study, The Politics of Evasion, when they wrote, “Too many Americans have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and inattentive in defense of their national security.” At the time, I too was tired of winning only one presidential election over two decades, and averaging 42 percent of the vote.

I thank Galston and Kamarck for raising these issues. But unfortunately, you don’t get any further help from them on removing the blinders that keep you from seeing America.

The full report can be read at The American Prospect.

Democrats, Speak to Working-Class Discontent

America is at a perilous moment when a Trump-led Republican Party is steaming ahead to knock down every guardrail protecting free elections. Over 80 percent of Republicans, according to a recent national survey by the University of Virginia Center for Politics and Project Home Fire, believe “our country needs a powerful leader in order to destroy the radical and immoral currents prevailing in society today.” A third now believe violence is justified to “save our country,” according to a national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.

The Republican threat to America’s constitutional experiment has led me to ask: What is our plan to save it? Here’s mine.

I am a pollster and political strategist with long experience advising Democratic candidates. Now, more than ever, Democratic victories are necessary to prevent Republicans from locking up the system. My plan is to focus on working-class voters—white, Black, Hispanic, Asian—and figure out every legal and ethical way possible for Democratic candidates to regain even a few extra points of support from them.

The full report can be read at The American Prospect.

Polling: How Democrats Can Win Back the Working Class

Recent research conducted by Democracy Corps, Equis Labs, HIT Strategies for Democracy Corps, and American Federation of Teachers of Black, Hispanic, AAPI, and white working-class voters shows that Joe Biden and the Democrats can embrace a powerful middle class/blue collar message along with their transformative policy agenda and dramatically change their fortunes. Hearing that full agenda along with the full-throated attack from conservatives allows Democrats to shift their vote margin from three points in the battleground to eight. That is the kind of margin they need to contest the midterms successfully.

The message framework we are testing turns out to help Democrats both in their base and with white working-class targets. In the base, it solidifies the Black vote against the Trump-like attacks, though that vote is edging down from the 90 percent we used to see before 2016. The AAPI vote is very strong for Democrats and the messages and policies leave the Democrats with a 2-to-1 advantage with them. Unmarried women are very strong for Democrats, but the message makes the white unmarried women even stronger. And most importantly, the framework produces some of its biggest shifts with Gen Z and millennials, particularly the whites. Those voters disappointed in Virginia and this framework clearly gets their attention.

The full report can be read at The American Prospect.

Public says, government, not markets should lead

The backdrop for every government committed to meeting the Paris commitments is the unrelenting impact of extreme weather and growing public belief that this crisis requires bold action. That is reflected in President Joe Biden’s determination to pass his infrastructure and climate legislation in the next week, in climate policy becoming the principal consideration in the forming of a new German government, and the British government announcing new policies to speed the transition and new opening to nuclear power. But the growing worry is combined with great uncertainty about whether either business or government is doing enough or acting on scale to address this crisis. That combination is leading publics in the leading economies to turn to government rather than markets to bring change.

Climate Policy and Strategy is a new organization helping governments and businesses globally sustain the bold changes they have committed to. Accordingly, it conducted surveys in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, and only Biden has benefited ’s climate policies seem bold enough to change the trajectory. Only Biden’s climate initiatives seem up to scale and translate into his being seen as stronger on the economy and in the job — assuming Congress passes the infrastructure and climate measures in the coming weeks.

The starting point is the fully 60 percent of the public in all these countries believe “climate change is a threat and we need major action to combat it,” rejecting that the threat is exaggerated. That belief reaches 77 percent of Democrats where this is a motivating issue for the mid-term elections and reaches 51 percent of moderate Republicans. Climate change is also an important issue for independents, where Biden has support in the last couple of months.     

At the time of the survey in June when Biden was polling much stronger, 57 percent approved “how the government is handling climate change, the environment and the energy transition,” and even higher when respondents were informed of the policies and the debate around them. But in Germany, Angela Merkel’s disapproval on these was 13 points higher than her overall disapproval (49 percent versus 36 percent). That is probably because the public overwhelmingly supports proposals to take coal-fired power plants off the grid.

And fully 56 percent disapproved of how Macron was handling climate, the environment and energy transition. Great Britain was divided on how Boris Johnson was handling these challenges. And in both Britain and France, the predominant reason was the governments “not doing enough” or “the targets too low” and “no action or measurable improvement.”

So, right now governments are being pressed to do more, but there is no support for market solutions, like a “tax on burning coal, oil and natural gas” or even as a way “to fund the development of renewables and a sustainable economy.” Instead, they are looking for the “government to do much more” by “setting regulations to make everyone more energy efficient and invest in the innovative research to enable us to make the transition to a low carbon economy.”

Those in the business community or those looking to strengthen the US plans will not find any support in the public for pricing carbon. It seems morally and politically indefensible to have the ordinary consumer pay higher prices in the short-term after the oil and gas companies have operated profitably up until now and government has taken insufficient action. This looks even more problematic after the energy price increases coming out of the pandemic.

Has anybody noticed that President Biden and the Democrats opposed any gas tax increase and any rise in taxes for those earning under $400,000? The issue is settled in the United States and probably in Great Britain. Many European leaders now have committed to use their recovery funds to protect consumers from price increases. Perhaps it is settled in Europe too.    

I think one should view the public’s skepticism about markets and turn to government playing a much bigger role as a fairly reasonable and responsible response to the way energy markets and governments have operated up until now. Neither business or political leaders begin with a lot of trust, and right now, the publics want governments to change the rules of the game and trajectory on energy use.

The Rise of the Biden Republicans

The pollster who identified “Reagan Democrats” in the 1980s sees the emergence of a mirror image voting bloc. And it spells trouble for a GOP dominated by Trump.

There are unwritten rules that dictate how American politics works. Former presidents shouldn’t weigh in on quotidian partisan squabbles. An incumbent senator shouldn’t support a primary challenger running against a fellow incumbent. If you’re an elected official, avoid directly comparing yourself to Abraham Lincoln—show some humility and instruct surrogates to do that on your behalf. Never try to correct a middle-schooler spelling the word “potato.” And if you want to take the pulse of white middle America, go to its de facto national capital—Macomb County, Michigan.

Every four years, as if driven by mainspring, presidents, those aspiring to be presidents and the reporters who cover them, return to the blue-collar Detroit suburbs to try out their messages and make sense of what’s happening in middle America. 

Presidents will visit the community college campus in Warren—where President Ronald Reagan famously declared, “I’m a former Democrat, and I have to say: I didn't leave my party; my party left me” and where President Barack Obama announced his ill-fated American Graduation Initiative, a planned $12 billion investment in community colleges. And thick in the campaign season, candidates will swing by local factories to make major economic speeches, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016; take shots at NAFTA and celebrate new trade deals, as Donald Trump did in 2020; and hold campaign-debilitating photo ops, as Michael Dukakis did when he donned a helmet and drove around in an M-1 Abrams tank. Reporters will talk to voters at the ubiquitous Coney Island diners, hold televised roundtables with average Joes at bars and pry political chestnuts from locals wearing cutoffs and playing Euchre. 

It’s been this way since the mid-1980s, when a Yale-based academic and pollster named Stanley Greenberg turned his attention from studying the interplay of class and race in apartheid South Africa to try and explain what was happening in Macomb.

The full interview can be read at Politico.