Democrats and Rural America

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Steve Bullock writes in NYT:

I was re-elected as Montana’s governor in 2016 at the same time Donald Trump took our state by more than 20 points. It’s never easy for Democrats to get elected in Montana, because Democrats here are running against not only the opponent on the ballot, but also against conservative media’s (and at times our own) typecast of the national Democratic brand: coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist — a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles. The problem isn’t the candidates we nominate. It’s the perception of the party we belong to.

To overcome these obstacles, Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month. And the most insulting thing is being told what your self-interest should be.

Get out of the cities and you will learn we have a libertarian streak, with a healthy distrust of government. We listen when folks talk about opportunity and fairness, not entitlements. We expect government to play a role in our having a fair shot at a better life, not solve all our problems.

We need to frame our policies, not in terms of grand ideological narratives, but around the material concerns of voters. Despite our differences and no matter where we live, we generally all want the same things: a decent job, a safe place to call home, good schools, clean air and water, and the promise of a better life for our kids and grandkids.

Democratic Fundraging

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

Fundraising is an important part of the story.

Julie Bykowicz at WSJ:

“ ‘Fundraging’ very neatly summarizes low-dollar donor behavior, the collision of emotion and giving,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and digital strategist.

Across the 14 most-competitive Senate races, Democrats collectively raised nearly $200 million more than their Republican counterparts in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30, according to Federal Election Commission reports filed Thursday. Leading the pack was Mr. Harrison, who collected $58 million for the quarter, beating the previous quarterly Senate fundraising record by about $20 million. Mr. Graham, who has been vocal about his challenger’s formidable cash hauls, raised $28 million, the most ever for a Republican Senate candidate. Neither campaign responded to requests for comment.

From AP:

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock raised more than twice as much money for his Senate campaign as incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines did in the latest reporting period, according to numbers released by their campaigns on Thursday.

Bullock reported raising $26.8 million in the three months between July 1 and Sept. 30, while Daines reported raising $11.5 million.

Bullock’s fundraising total now stands at nearly $38 million since he filed as a candidate in March while Daines’ total is $24.5 million since he began his first term in 2014, Lee Newspapers of Montana reports.

Bullock’s quarterly contributions exceed the nearly $26.6 million in total fundraising for Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his Republican challenger Matt Rosendale in their 2018 race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Tester raised $20.9 million.

Total spending in the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Montana was about $60 million. Spending by campaigns and outside groups in this year’s contest is expected to reach at least $146 million as the parties battle for control of the Senate.

 

 

Obamacare and the Senate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the health care issue in the 2016 campaign.  the 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

At NYT, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports on the political consequences of the GOP effort to scrap Obamacare.

“Politically, it’s pretty dumb to be talking about how we need to repeal Obamacare in the middle of a pandemic,” said Joel White, a Republican strategist who specializes in health policy and has presented legislative proposals to House and Senate Republicans and the White House. “We need quick solutions here; we need stuff that we can do tomorrow, because our countrymen are hurting.”

Health care is consistently near the top of the list of issues voters care about. While Republicans and President Trump tend to have an edge on the economy, Democrats won the House in 2018 in large part by emphasizing health care — a playbook they intend to revive in 2020. The pandemic has also put Republicans at risk of losing the Senate, said Jessica Taylor, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“There are a lot of factors that have put the Senate into play, but the pandemic and how it has affected health care and the economy is a major one that have made these races competitive,” Ms. Taylor said.

Democrats need to win three Senate seats to take the majority if they also win the White House, four if they do not. Although Cook Political deems one Democratic incumbent, Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, an underdog in his race, it also rates Senate races in five states — North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, Arizona and Montana — as tossups. All have Republican incumbents.

In Montana, Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, jumped into the race to defeat the Republican incumbent, Senator Steve Daines, in March, just as the pandemic was exploding. Three days later, a liberal group, Protect Our Care, announced a $250,000 ad campaign attacking Mr. Daines as “dead set on taking on away Montanans’ health care” after voting five times to repeal the health law. Cook Political moved the race to its tossup column last week.

COVID-19 and the Montana Senate Race

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  Lindsay Wise at The Wall Street Journal:

The pandemic’s arrival on the heels of Mr. Bullock’s Senate launch meant that traditional candidate rallies and meet-and-greets haven’t been an option for him. So far, the governor’s forays onto the campaign trail have consisted of little more than a few Zoom meetings with county Democrats and virtual fundraisers.

But with frequent news conferences on coronavirus, Mr. Bullock is commanding much more local media attention than his Republican rival, incumbent Sen. Steve Daines. David Parker, chairman of Montana State University’s political science department, found that the number of local news articles mentioning Mr. Bullock jumped from 184 in February to 809 in March, while Mr. Daines’s mentions remained almost the same.

Democratic Senate Prospects

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Sahil Kapur at NBC:

Trump's struggles in historically Republican states, like Arizona and Georgia, are creating collateral damage for his party's Senate candidates. Public skepticism of Trump's handling of the pandemic, and a Biden's expanding lead since the nationwide backlash to George Floyd's death, has put many GOP Senate candidates in a difficult position. They're forced to navigate a polarizing president whose ardent supporters they cannot afford to alienate and whose skeptics they'll likely need to attract to win.

Democrats currently have 47 seats — four short of an outright majority and three shy of a controlling number should Biden win as his vice president could cast any tie-breaking votes. They’re more likely than not to lose one seat in Alabama, held by Sen. Doug Jones, but have lots of pickup opportunities. GOP-held seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina are rated “toss up” by the Cook Political Report.

Republicans are defending another five seats — in Iowa, Kansas, Montana and two in Georgia — that are in play but lean GOP, while Democrats are defending a seat in Michigan, where they’re favored. Of the 11 most competitive seats, Republicans are defending nine and Democrats two.

Alex Thompson and James Arkin at Politico:

The left wing has been wiped out in Senate primaries or failed to recruit at all in states across the map this year, leaving a slate of centrist candidates more in the ideological mold of Joe Biden than Bernie Sanders. Liberal insurgents on the ballot over the coming weeks in states like Kentucky and Colorado aren't favored to fare any better, failing to gain significant traction thus far against more moderate favorites.
...

The failure of left-wing candidates in their primaries has prompted soul-searching among many progressive leaders who now believe that they neglected the task of organizing and building a downballot bench as they were caught up in the thrall of Sanders’ candidacy. It is also a victory for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who recruited most of the primary victors, viewing them as more likely to win general elections.

“We have seen that the left doesn’t really have the coordinated infrastructure to compete on a statewide level,” acknowledged Evan Weber, the co-founder and political director of the climate group Sunrise Movement, which is backing underdog candidates in Senate primaries this month in Kentucky and Colorado.

“Schumer works really hard to get a candidate and then effectively pushes others to coalesce behind them,” said Sean McElwee, the co-founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress.... “Everyone wants the shitposters. No one wants the legislators,” said McElwee, who believes the left has failed in its recruitment strategy.

Still, some take heart that at least many of the candidates in swing states are more liberal than their counterparts just a decade ago. Every Senate candidate in a major race, from Mark Kelly in Arizona to Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, supports a public option to compete with private health insurance plans. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock supports repealing the Senate filibuster so that legislation can pass with a simple majority.

Montana Spoiler Alert

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Major parties sometimes help third-party spoilers.  Governor Steve Bullock leads in the Montana Senate race, and Republicans are trying to use the Greens to siphon votes from him.

Mike Dennison reports at MTN News:
A recently formed political action committee that’s campaigning for a Green Party candidate in Montana’s high-profile U.S. Senate race is using a communications firm with ties to Montana Republicans, records show.

The Go Green Montana PAC paid $27,000 this month to Arena, a Salt Lake City firm, for digital ads, mailings and a website to support Green Party candidate Wendie Fredrickson.

Campaign-finance records also show that the Montana Republican Party and Republican candidates in Montana, including U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, have paid Arena $1.7 million for its services over the last decade.Sandi Luckey, the executive director of the Montana Democratic Party, said the Go Green Montana PAC is “just the latest escalation in the ongoing Republican effort to mislead Montanans and meddle in our elections.”

On March 25, Mike Dennison reported at MTN News:

The Montana Republican Party helped finance the effort to qualify the Green Party for the state’s 2020 elections, paying $100,000 to groups that hired or financed mostly out-of-state signature-gathers, MTN News has learned.

The party confirmed Tuesday that it was behind the effort, but had reported late last month, on documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, that it made an initial $50,000 payment in January to the Texas company that hired signature-gatherers.

Montana Republican Party Executive Director Spenser Merwin told MTN News in a statement that the GOP wanted to “provide more choice for Montanans this November,” and noted that state Democrats have worked to “limit ballot access” to minor political parties.

Trump Tax Cut Still Yields Benefits ... For Democrats

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax issue in the 2016 campaign.  The update  --  published last year --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. and explains why the Trump tax cut backfired on Republicans.

Thanks in part to the Reagan and Bush 43 tax laws, about 44 percent of Americans have no income-tax liability, though they do pay other taxes.  By definition, a cut in income taxes brought them no direct benefit at all.  Many others pay relatively little in income tax.  Most of the benefit of the tax cut went to the well-off.  Voters understood, which is why they disapproved of the tax cut by a significant margin.

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post:

In a sign that President Trump’s monumental failures on the novel coronavirus are helping to put the GOP’s Senate majority at risk, Republicans are planning to spend a startling $10 million on ads defending a GOP-held Senate seat in Montana, a state Trump carried by 20 points.

The Washington Examiner reports that the huge expenditure reflects how worried Republicans are about the seat held by GOP incumbent Steve Daines, who is facing a stiff challenge from Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.

What’s interesting here is how Democrats are attacking Daines, and what that says about Trump and GOP vulnerability on the economy, now that we’re sliding into a depression partly created by Trump’s disastrous mismanagement of the federal response to the pandemic.

The Dem-aligned Senate Majority PAC is up with its own ad attacking Daines that’s backed by a $700,000 buy, according to the group:

Note the centrality of the 2017 Trump/GOP corporate tax cut, which lavished enormous benefits on the wealthiest earners while producing few of its promised effects on wages or growth. That was true even before the coronavirus depression, and this ad is all about the economic terrors of ordinary Americans right now amid the current crash, depicting soaring jobless claims and evaporating retirement holdings.

The Senate Is Up for Grabs

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.  Our next book will explain 2020. As of early May, the signs are negative for the GOP

E.J. Dionne at The Washington Post:

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) says that when he first announced he would run for the U.S. Senate, he “didn’t know what Montana and the country was going to look like in the short period thereafter.” With the covid-19 crisis, all his time has been taken up by being a governor, not a candidate. So far, that has only helped him in his campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Steve Daines.

In Maine, House Speaker Sara Gideon, a Democrat seeking to end the long career of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, says the pandemic has “laid bare the inequities that already existed” and underscored the need for a “vision of what it means to work together and for each other instead of trying to sow divisiveness.” This brings home Gideon’s case against Collins’s willingness to ally with President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), two of the most divisive figures in American politics.

Colorado’s former governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat with a good chance of ousting incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, expresses a sense of gravity about this campaign that he never felt in his races for mayor of Denver or governor.

“I will never forgive myself if I lose it,” Hickenlooper told me, “and I will do everything in my power, I will work as hard as humanly possible, to make sure that I win this, just because I feel in my bones that our democracy has been so weakened by this relentless partisanship, the constant division.”

And Democrat Cal Cunningham, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who is facing incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), says that many North Carolinians today feel “an urgency that did not exist prior to March of this year” about “health coverage . . . about jobs, the economy.”

Issues that were once “percolating for many” are now “personal for everyone.”

If Bullock, Gideon, Hickenlooper and Cunningham all win, Democrats will likely take over the U.S. Senate and end McConnell’s days as majority leader.

Democrats Could Win the Senate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.  Our next book will explain 2020. As of early May, the signs are negative for the GOP.

Neal Rothschild, Alexi McCammond at Axios:

Driving the news: Polls released Tuesday show Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) leading incumbent Sen. Steve Daines (R) by 7 points (sample size: 738) and North Carolina Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham beating Republican Sen. Thom Tillis by 9 points (sample size: 1,362).

Other recent numbers show an upward trend for Democrats:

• Arizona: Democratic frontrunner Mark Kelly leads Republican Sen. Martha McSally by 8 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average.
• Kansas: Democratic frontrunner Barbara Bollier led possible Republican nominee Kris Kobach by 2 points in a recent Public Policy Polling survey.
• Maine: Sara Gideon (D) has a 2.5-point lead over Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the Real Clear Politics average.
• Iowa: Sen. Joni Ernst (R) leads possible challenger Theresa Greenfield (D) by a point in a new Public Policy Polling survey.

Carville's Wisdom

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, has begun.

James Carville appeared on MSNBC and made sense:

"There is only one moral imperative in this nation right now and that is to beat Donald Trump. That's the only moral imperative. It's the only thing I want to hear. Until we understand that -- we win every argument. We win the argument on anything. We don't win elections because we talk about stuff that is not relevant. We had a great experience in 2018 and the day after we started all this goofy stuff. So, hopefully, we have time to jerk this thing back and be about healthcare, prescription drug prices, education, infrastructure, climate, diplomacy, rejuvenating whatever it is. But this is not happening so far. We can't act like this is going well. We can't come out and put three wonderful talking points. These campaigns have got to be more relevant."

Carville advice to Warren: "For God's sake, Senator Warren, get real out here. Let's move this thing along."

Carville on Warren's path to the nomination: "The best bio I've seen in a presidential campaign and she had a very good critique which is that corruption is holding the country back. For some reason, I don't know why, she decided to chase Bernie's left tail all over the country and became known for exotic positions, to put it mildly. And if she can get back to what she's about. I don't know her well. Obviously she is very smart. I think she understands what is happening in the country."

Carville on Biden coming in fourth place in Iowa: "He has had an honorable life in politics. This is just not the time. What's happened is he blocked out access for my guy Michael Bennet, for Gov. Bullock, blocked out access to Senator Booker, probably some people that were going to run didn't run because he was in the race. Maybe he'll come back, but he's going to have a difficult time. This is not a very good night for him to say the least."

Carville on how the Democratic platform is unappealing: "Look at the British Labour Party. We're like talking about people voting from jail cells. We're talking about not having a border. I mean, come on, people. Every day there are people out there struggling. We're trying to get votes."

At Vox:

We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party.

For f---’s sake, we’ve got Trump at Davos talking about cutting Medicare and no one in the party has the sense to plaster a picture of him up there sucking up to the global elites, talking about cutting taxes for them while he’s talking about cutting Medicare back home. Jesus, this is so obvious and so easy and I don’t see any of the candidates taking advantage of it.

The Republicans have destroyed their party and turned it into a personality cult, but if anyone thinks they can’t win, they’re out of their damn minds.

How do Democrats win?

By framing, repeating, and delivering a coherent, meaningful message that is relevant to people’s lives and having the political skill not to be sucked into every rabbit hole that somebody puts in front of you.

The Democratic Party is the party of African Americans. It’s becoming a party of educated suburbanites, particularly women. It’s the party of Latinos. We’re a party of immigrants. Most of the people aren’t into all this distracting shit about open borders and letting prisoners vote. They don’t care. They have lives to lead. They have kids. They have parents that are sick. That’s what we have to talk about. That’s all we should talk about...

They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. And look, I don’t consider myself a moderate or a centrist. I’m a liberal. But not everything has to be on the left-right continuum. I love Warren’s day care plan just like I love Booker’s baby bonds. That’s the kind of stuff our candidates should explain and define clearly and repeatedly for voters and not get diverted by whatever the hell is in the air that day.

Here’s another stupid thing: Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this shit. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message.

The real argument here is that some people think there’s a real yearning for a left-wing revolution in this country, and if we just appeal to the people who feel that, we’ll grow and excite them and we’ll win. But there’s a word a lot of people hate that I love: politics. It means building coalitions to win elections. It means sometimes having to sit back and listen to what people think and framing your message accordingly.

That’s all I care about. Right now the most important thing is getting this career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House. We can’t do anything for anyone if we don’t start there and then acquire more power.

Winnowing

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are concluding the early stages of the 2020 race.

Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight:

To you, “leftovers” might mean the two-thirds of a honey-baked ham still sitting in your fridge — but to political junkies, it means the rapidly dwindling number of presidential candidates. In the past 24 hours, two Democrats have dropped their long-shot bids for the White House: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and former Rep. Joe Sestak.

After the number of major presidential candidates (by FiveThirtyEight’s definition) peaked at 24 in early July, there are now “only” 16 candidates remaining. (Finally, Democrats have fewer presidential candidates than Republicans did at the height of the 2016 primary!)
...

Both candidates argued that a grassroots approach of convincing one voter at a time could build them a loyal following, and both focused on Iowa in particular, where they spent much of their time. But as they discovered, the reality is that retail politicking may not actually help candidates win votes.

 In fact, these days, media coverage may be the most important factor in presidential campaigns, and Bullock and Sestak got very little of it. My colleague Dhrumil Mehta has been tracking the number of cable and online news stories featuring the 2020 candidates, and he consistently found that Bullock was among the least-covered, while Sestak was regularly dead last in TV and online news mentions. Indeed, it was not without justification that Sestak lamented in his dropout announcement that his campaign lacked “the privilege of national press” — although given that he hadn’t won an election in nine years and entered the presidential race relatively late, we were skeptical about his chances anyway.

Swalwell Out, Bullock Up

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

Ryan Brooks at Buzzfeed reports on Swalwell's withdrawal.

Swalwell’s announcement comes just three months after he declared he was running during an April appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
“The polls have had their way, so here we are in July,” Swalwell told reporters of his decision to drop out.

That decision isn’t exactly a shock. Despite qualifying and participating in the June Democratic debates, Swalwell’s campaign has failed to gain traction in the crowded field of candidates and has dwindled on the lower end of polling. Swalwell’s campaign abruptly canceled a swing through New Hampshire over the long Independence Day weekend.

Swalwell is best known for his position on the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee and his work on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Swalwell, 38, was one of the youngest Democrats running for president and spent his time during the June debate telling former vice president Joe Biden that it was time for him to “pass the torch” to a younger generation of Democrats so they could solve issues like gun control, automation, student loan debt, and climate change.

The first candidate to drop out of the race was Richard Ojeda, a former West Virginia legislator and congressional candidate who briefly ran a populist campaign for the Democratic nomination after losing his House race. He quit the 2020 primary at the end of January.

The winner:  Steve Bullock, who now has a much greater chance of making the next Democratic debate. 

First D Debate -- and the One Who Was Not There

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

At The Guardian, Lloyd Green assesses the first presidential debate of the cycle:

Cory Booker won Wednesday’s debate, and – for one night, anyway – stole Elizabeth Warren’s thunder. Booker scored the most TV time, close to 11 minutes, and New Jersey’s junior senator sounded progressive but not extreme.

Substantively, Booker made a difference in the discourse. He refused to buy into Medicare for All, and acknowledged the “need to check corporate consolidation” without sounding as if his candidacy was an anti-business crusade.

In the end, Booker was simultaneously assertive and reassuring. His closing had both heft and lift, the latter being something badly needed but in short supply this election cycle.

From WHO-TV in Des Moines:

 Bullock entered the race for president late and didn’t meet requirements set by the DNC to make the cut for the first debate.  Instead Bullock joined political director Dave Price for a special hour-long town hall preview of the Miami debates.

 On Tuesday evening Americans were shocked by the release of images of a father and daughter who drowned while trying to cross into America illegally.  Bullock laid out his plans for securing the US border, addressing the migrant crisis and what to do about Dreamers and the millions of others who live in America illegally.

Reid J. Epstein at NYT:

As one of 10 white men fighting for relevance from the lower echelon of a Democratic field dominated by a diverse list of well-known names and social media sensations, Mr. Bullock is aiming to translate the retail campaigning skills that powered his three statewide victories — each in years when a Republican presidential nominee carried Montana.

Mr. Bullock sells himself as a member of the I-won-and-got-things-done caucus, a group that includes Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. They are betting on personal appeal and a political record over far-reaching policy proposals.

Also crucial to their success: the collapse of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign.

“With the front-runners, if they put their foot in their mouth in the next two months, it gives the people in the second tier an opportunity,” said Fred Keach, a Concord, N.H., city councilor who ran into Mr. Bullock at a street festival in the shadow of the state Capitol.

Bullock and the Debates

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

Gabriel Debenedetti at New York:

Steve Bullock would love for everyone to know that he’s been elected statewide three times as a Democrat in Montana, a state Donald Trump won by 20 points. But getting that message out is going to be a bit more difficult than Bullock planned, since he won’t be on the first Democratic presidential primary debate stage in Miami later this month, barely falling short of the Democratic National Committee’s polling threshold. Bullock, who only got into the race in May after his legislative session ended and he reauthorized Montana’s Medicaid expansion, didn’t make the cut after the party decidednot to count an early Washington Post/ABC poll in its qualifying criteria. Then, on the last day he might have snuck in, he came one respondent shortin a Nevada poll. He’s not happy about it.

Cheyenne Haslett at ABC:

If there's a silver lining for 2020 Democratic candidates who didn't make the cut for the first Democratic debates later this month, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is certainly looking for it.

As the only candidate elected in a state that also voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Bullock has argued that the DNC is blocking the one Democrat who can truly connect with Trump voters. He's taking advantage of not making the debate stage to emphasize what's he accomplished working with a Republican legislature in Montana -- and giving his campaign a chance at what his many rivals in the 2020 field wish for: a moment to stand apart from the pack.

Capitalizing on that moment, it took just a day after the DNC's announcement, Bullock's campaign to issue a fundraising call. In a new campaign ad obtained exclusively by ABC News, a man born and raised in Montana sits in the bed of his truck and rails against the DNC's decision not to include the governor on the debate stage.

Bullock in Iowa

n Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

Jeff Zeleny at CNN:

Steve Bullock knows he's late to the 2020 dance, but nothing he's seen so far has scared him away from joining the party.

"Voters in Iowa and everywhere else don't want to make a fast decision, they want to make the right decision," Bullock said as he set off across the state to introduce himself as one of the newest Democratic presidential hopefuls.

With Bullock, the governor of Montana, in the race, along with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the party's field of candidates is now large enough to suit up a football team of offense, defense and one player to spare.

For Bullock and many contenders, even though they may be reluctant to say so out loud, it's Iowa or bust. Their candidacies will either break out or be broken by the Iowa caucuses less than nine months away.

"Iowa is important to everyone's campaign," Bullock said in an interview Friday as he bounced from stop to stop on his first visit to the state since declaring his candidacy earlier this week. "Iowa has always played that traditional starting out role, but it's certainly significant to mine."

Bullock Nears an Announcement

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

pic.twitter.com/6JOe2tmDoz

— Steve Bullock (@GovernorBullock) May 11, 2019

Edward-Isaac Dovere at The Atlantic:

That’s Steve Bullock, the Democratic governor of Montana, who was elected to his second term in 2016 by four points on the same day Donald Trump won the state by 21 points. Bullock is not so subtly inching toward a presidential announcement expected for this week. On Friday afternoon, a Bullock aide and I rode in a slow-moving car while the likely 2020 candidate was literally running down the side of the highway as part of a charity race, a clip of which was then tweeted from his account with the caption “Feels like a good season to run.”

My kids are three of my biggest supporters, and there's no one whose judgement I trust more. pic.twitter.com/W9YyKYfqLH

— Steve Bullock (@GovernorBullock) May 12, 2019

Speaking of Bullock

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

Ronald L. Feinman at HNN:

Steve Bullock has been the governor of Montana since 2013, after having served four years as Montana Attorney General. He has been the chairman of the National Governor’s Association this year. He has been rated the most effective governor in the nation. He is known for environmental initiatives, measures to promote economic growth, friendly relations with labor, and cutting property taxes. He was reelected to a second term on the heels of his high poll numbers, but has had to face a Republican controlled legislature.

Bullock has supported abortion rights, campaign finance reform, marriage equality, net neutrality, and organized labor. Despite his liberal views, he was able to win reelection at the same time that Donald Trump was elected president. He has argued for the need of the Democratic Party to move beyond urban centers, and work to gain the support of suburban and rural voters, as he has been able to do in his state. He traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire in 2018, evidencing interest in a possible presidential run. Most political observers expect him to enter the race in the next few months.

Thomas Beaumont at AP:

Brown could pose a challenge to Klobuchar for that mantle. More devoutly liberal than Klobuchar on issues such as health care, Brown carries the torch of an ardently pro-labor populist, which could resonate in those pro-Trump pockets.

So could Montana’s Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, who, as he weighs a 2020 campaign, is touting not just being re-elected in a state Trump carried by 20 percentage points, but testing a message of unity as he works with a Republican legislature.

“Judging whether a candidate can win the general election will be part of the calculus voters consider,” said former Obama and Clinton adviser Jennifer Palmieri. “But it’s a mistake to think that a candidate can’t be both inspiring and electable.”

 Juana Summers and Thomas Beaumont at AP:

Bloomberg contributed $250,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party this year, giving him some claim to gains such as capturing two Republican-held House seats last month. He also has plans to meet with key Democratic operatives. But other potential candidates, including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, have been more aggressive in their efforts.

Mike Allen & Jim VandeHei at Axios:

Others, including former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Hickenlooper and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock are cooperating with magazine profiles and building a leave-behind folder for donor discussions.

BUT NOTE:

“Yeah, he’s running.” https://t.co/l8wcecVv7Q

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) December 5, 2018

FULL DISCLOSURE:  GOV. BULLOCK WAS MY STUDENT.  -- JJP

2020 Begins

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

From Axios:

Natasha Korecki at Politico:

Anticipating a sprawling Democratic presidential field and a shortage of experienced, high-quality campaign professionals, a left-leaning group is launching a $4.5 million effort to train 1,000 staffers to be ready in time for 2020 combat.

The group, called Arena, will begin holding training academies across the country in 2019, with a goal of deploying at least 450 of those trainees onto Democratic presidential primary campaigns or in state legislative races.

Amie Parnes at The Hill:

Prospective 2020 Democratic candidates aren’t asking donors to write checks just yet, instead participating in “friend-raisers.”

A friend-raiser is a small, informal gathering donors host for would-be candidates.

It’s part of an effort to cultivate relationships between potential candidates and donors without money changing hands.

Attendees don’t typically write checks at a friend-raiser, as they would for traditional fundraisers.

But they trade ideas, business cards and promises to stay in touch, if and when a presidential campaign is launched.

“I think that as we start looking at people who are or may be raising their hand in 2020, it’s a chance for many people to get educated about the various candidates, and it’s good for the candidate to expand their network,” said Jon Vein, the prominent Democratic donor who plans to host some gatherings for would-be candidates and prospective donors.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper are among the Democratic politicians who have met with donors at the gatherings, according to multiple sources.

 Amanda Terkel and Kevin Robillard at HuffPo:

The nation’s biggest liberal donors are gathering in Washington for a postelection briefing where they’ll focus on turning out more voters of color, flipping red states to blue, and combating GOP attacks on voting rights, according to a schedule obtained by HuffPost.

Democracy Alliance, a group of more than 100 liberal donors who pledge to give at least $200,000 a year to a list of recommended progressive organizations, is holding a postelection briefing Thursday and Friday. Members of the alliance include bold-faced liberal names like Tom Steyer, George Soros and Susan Sandler. Reporters are not allowed into the event.

Bullock Rising

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

At Buzzfeed, Anne Helen Petersen writes on the presidential prospects of Montana Governor Steve Bullock (full disclosure:  he was my student).

Most people in the US don’t know much about Montana, and know even less about its governor. But from one perspective, Bullock’s anonymity is an advantage. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who battled four decades of accumulated narrative about who she was and what she stood for, the ignorance around Bullock allows him to write his own, unexpected, and — at least for the Democrats who saw him in Iowa — impressive story of how effective he’s been as a leader.

So how can a straight white man move forward amid an atmosphere, at least among Democrats, that’s resistant to, or even repelled by, the idea of more straight white men in power? By trying to reach voters, at least in pivotal primary states, the old-fashioned way: one-on-one, on the ground in Iowa, while other candidates are keeping their message national. Bullock is going for that Jimmy Carter, decent dad appeal. He’s the opposite of Trump, who is definitionally not nice, intentionally abrasive, purposefully uneducated. His strategy isn’t to eclipse Trump, but to offer an entirely different narrative — not to make America great again, but to make politics nontoxic, or at least less toxic, again.

If Bullock makes a serious run for president, it’ll be because what his candidacy represents — common civility, decency, and the fight against corruption — outweighs what “white male politician” has come to represent, especially for the women and people of color so crucial to the Democratic voting coalition. In our current cultural moment, that’s a big ask. The only way to do it: by speaking passionately and convincingly to the issues that Democratic voters care about. Bullock’s betting that if he can do that, it doesn’t matter if most people don’t know his name right now. There’s time. They will.

Courts and Dark Money

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  Campaign finance is a big part of the story.

A release from CREW:

In a major defeat for secret money in politics, a judge ruled that dark money groups that spend at least $250 in independent expenditures—a key type of political ad—must report every contributor who gave at least $200 in the past year as well as those who give to finance independent expenditures generally, throwing out an illegal three decades old regulation that was used to avoid disclosure and changing the legal landscape for political spending.

The decision in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, handed down late on Friday, declares that the law unambiguously commands more disclosure than the FEC has required in 30 years, restoring Congress’s intended full disclosure of those making contributions to groups that fund independent expenditures—ads that explicitly endorse or oppose a candidate for office.

...

The case stems from an FEC complaint filed by CREW in 2012 against Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS over its failure to disclose the donors behind $6 million in independent expenditures in the Ohio Senate race. Even though Rove told a gathering of contributors that a donor had said he really liked Republican candidate Josh Mandel and had made a $3 million “matching challenge” contribution, the FEC said the contributor’s name could stay secret because he did not earmark it to pay for a specific ad. The court yesterday invalidated the regulation that decision was based on, saying it interpreted the Federal Election Campaign Act much too narrowly.

“This ruling could dramatically change the American political landscape and result in significantly more transparency,” Bookbinder said. “Major donors are now on notice that if they contribute to politically active 501(c)(4) organizations, their contributions will have to be disclosed, and if they are not, CREW will pursue enforcement cases with the FEC and, if necessary, in court.”

Read the decision here.

A July 24 release from Montana Governor Steve Bullock:

Governor Steve Bullock today filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury over their decision last week to abandon disclosure requirements for major donors to dark money groups.

...
The suit seeks to block the Trump Administration from upending the rules that have been in place for almost 50 years that require 501(c) dark money groups to disclose their major donors to the IRS. Absent that disclosure, so-called social welfare groups could be taking unlimited corporate, or even foreign, contributions to influence elections, contrary to the requirements that grant them tax exempt status.

A copy of the lawsuit is attached.

Governor Bullock has been called “the biggest threat to Citizens United,” and remains committed to ensuring Montana’s elections are the most transparent in the nation. As Attorney General, Bullock led the effortto preserve Montana’s 100-year-old Corrupt Practices Act, taking the case for the state’s citizen democracy all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an exceedingly rare bipartisan effort, Governor Bullock worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass the DISCLOSE Act to require the disclosure of donors to independent group spending money on state-level elections. The Act requires any group, regardless of their tax status, that spends money or resources to influence an election within 60 days of when voting begins, must disclose how they are spending money and the source of the money.

Most recently, Governor Bullock signed a first-of-its kind executive order requiring the recipients of major government contracts to disclose dark money spending in elections. The order represents a significant new step for transparency in government. Under the executive order, government contractors who have spent over $2,500 in the past two years in elections will be required to disclose their donations. The order covers contributions to so-called “dark money” groups that are otherwise not required to disclose their donors.