Mamdani

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a discussion of state and local politics.

Politico Playbook:

New York delivered a true political earthquake last night as Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assembly member and democratic socialist, stormed to victory in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. Mamdani, a rank outsider before his social media-driven campaign gained traction with voters in the final weeks of the race, swept aside former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, earning more than 43 percent of the first-place votes. He should be confirmed as the Dem nominee next week, once ranked-choice votes have been counted.

Cuomo crushed: “Tonight was not our night,” said Cuomo, a once-towering figure of New York politics who had led in almost every opinion poll, massively outraised his rivals and racked up a string of high-profile endorsements ahead of Election Day. “I want to applaud [Mamdani] for a really smart, good and impactful campaign. Tonight is his night. He deserves it. He won.”
...

Indeed: This campaign neatly mirrored the Democrats’ generational and political divide so apparent on the national stage, writes POLITICO’s Jeff Coltin. “A young, inexperienced socialist running on a hopeful message with the backing of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, versus a 67-year-old, three-term former New York governor who worked in Bill Clinton’s Cabinet and got the ex-president’s endorsement in the race’s waning days.” And in New York City, at least, there was only one winner.

Bring on the hot takes: But for plenty of observers, this wasn’t about identity. Mamdani has promised free buses, free child care, city-run grocery stores, rent freezes, wealth taxes and more. And whatever you think of those kinds of pledges, there’s a running theme that plenty of Dems believe was the real lesson from last night: Mamdani won by focusing relentlessly on the cost of living — the issue poll after poll shows voters care about most. (It’s still the economy, stupid.)

You want more hot takes? There are plenty to choose from. Mamdani won by getting out and talking to people — unlike Cuomo, who relied on ads, endorsements and the like. … Mamdani won with social media buzz, Gen Z-friendly Pop Crave videos and so on — unlike Cuomo, who ran as a traditional Democrat and received a convoluted NYT nonendorsement. … Mamdani won by running as an insurgent and being prepared to criticize Israel over Gaza — unlike Cuomo who has defended PM Benjamin Netanayahu to the hilt.

Democratic Postmortem

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses issues, organization, and voter demographics.

Alexander Burns at NYT:

Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.

In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.

A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.

The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.

The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.

From the report:

1. Voters of color are persuasion voters who need to be convinced
2.  Republican attempts to brand Democrats as " radicals worked
3. Polling was a huge problem - even after 2016 adjustments
4.  COVID-19 affected everything
5. Year-round organizing worked, as did cross- Party collaboration
6. Our hopes for 2020 were just too high

Sanders, the Left, and African Americans

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, is well underway.  

At NYT, Sydney Ember notes that there has been a surge in progressive activism,  but it is not the kind that Bernie Sanders promoted.

Mr. Sanders, whose slogan on his campaign was “Not me, us,” described the protests as a validation of his theory of social change: “What I have said for a very long time is that real change is never going to come from the top on down, it’s always from the bottom on up.”

But during his presidential bid, Mr. Sanders at times seemed uncomfortable speaking overtly about race. At a presidential forum in April 2019 for women of color, he offered few specific policy details, and drew some groans from the audience when he referred to marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in response to a question about how he would handle current challenges.

And more recently, during an event in Flint, Mich., in March that campaign aides had billed as an opportunity for him to speak directly to black voters, he decided not to deliver a planned speech and instead largely ceded the stage to panelists including the academic Cornel West.

When Mr. Sanders spoke about racial equality, it was often in the context of economic equality, championing proposals and prescriptions that he believed would improve the lives of all working Americans. He said that policies like single-payer health care would address higher maternal and infant mortality rates in black communities. And he wanted to legalize marijuana and end cash bail, policies he said were aimed in particular at helping black Americans and other people of color.

These proposals, however, also amounted to an implicit expectation that voters trust the government — an especially difficult sell for those including older black voters who feel they have been historically let down by the government.

They were shortcomings that help explain why Mr. Sanders lost to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the Democratic primary race: Unable to win over older black voters, he came in a distant second to Mr. Biden in South Carolina, then went on to lose to Mr. Biden in every Southern state on Super Tuesday. Those defeats, Mr. Sanders’s allies say, contributed to the perception that Mr. Biden was more electable and would fare better against President Trump in the general election in November — a notion that helped propel Mr. Biden to victory in the primary.

Frustration on the Left

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, is well under  way.  

Natalie Andrews and Eliza Collins at WSJ:

Progressive Democrats’ disappointment with House coronavirus legislation this week caps a frustrating start to 2020 for the left flank of the party, which has seen its favored presidential candidates exit the race, down-ballot hopefuls meet mixed results and some priorities stall in Congress.

House Democratic leaders left a plan pushed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus to guarantee Americans’ paychecks up to $100,000 out of their latest package aimed at combating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

That comes as the group has been unable to get the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on some priorities, such as expanding Medicare and the Green New Deal. And the presidential candidates backed by most progressives, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, lost to former Vice President Joe Biden, a relative moderate.

Despite polls showing popularity for much of their platform, interviews with more than 20 politicians, activists and aides showed the party’s left flank has grown frustrated that it hasn’t made more progress since Democrats took control of the House a year and a half ago.

“Congress is infamous for having to try to catch up to where people are, and they’re doing a pretty crappy job of catching up in this moment,” said Paco Fabian, the director of campaigns at Our Revolution, the progressive electoral group started by Mr. Sanders after his 2016 run for president.

Mr. Sanders, however, said those feeling demoralized need to “take a deep breath.” He said polls that show progressive ideas growing more popular are a sign of success.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in March found that 67% of Democratic primary voters supported a Medicare for All system, while a Pew Research survey in January found that 63% of U.S. adults supported making public college free, both priorities of Mr. Sanders’s during his 2020 presidential run.

Still, exit polls in many states found the share of Democratic primary voters who identified as moderate grew this cycle, while fewer Democrats called themselves liberal.

Alex Thompson at Politico:

Three highly-touted liberal House candidates — Jessica Cisneros in Texas, Robert Emmons in Illinois, and Morgan Harper in Ohio — lost their primary races against more moderate members of Congress. They are now playing defense as Rep. Rashida Tlaib, one of the four members of the “squad,” faces a stiff primary challenge in Michigan. And Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass), who’s managed a late-career makeover into a left-wing darling, with endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other progressive groups, is consistently outpolled by primary challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The movement has also had limited influence on the proposals House Democrats have put forward to address the coronavirus, with leadership rejecting its most ambitious ideas.

Democratic Factions

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, is well under  way.  

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

Once the mainstream of the Democratic Party’s electorate settled on a candidate to support in this year’s campaign, however flawed Joe Biden may be, Bernie Sanders’s call for a revolution overturning the current American variant of capitalism no longer had a chance.

The fact is that a decisive majority — 60 percent — of the Democratic electorate is made up of men and women loyal to the centrist party establishment, such as it is, and to organizations, from unions to party committees, that are aligned with it.

And there is little or no evidence that the greater part of the American people have the desire, or the stomach, for political revolution.

Earlier this month, Shom Mazumder, a political scientist at Harvard, published a study, “Why The Progressive Left Fits So Uncomfortably Within The Democratic Party,” that analyzed data from a 2019 survey of 2,900 likely Democratic primary voters. “I saw two clear poles emerge within the Democratic Party,” he writes:

The “establishment” and the “progressive left.” A third group also emerged, and while it’s not as clearly defined as the other two, it has some overlap with the establishment and tends to be more fond of Wall Street, so I’m calling that “neoliberals.”

“Establishment” voters, in this scheme, means center-left voters who make up just over 60 percent of the total. They stood out as favorably inclined to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee — in other words, to the Democratic establishment.

“Progressive left” Democrats, at just under 20 percent, were most favorable to labor unions, Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America. These Democrats viewed business interests — as exemplified by Wall Street — negatively, and they weren’t happy about Joe Manchin, the centrist senator from West Virginia, either.

The third group, “neoliberal” Democrats, at 20 percent, is as large as the progressive wing. These voters like what the progressives don’t like — Wall Street, Manchin — and dislike pretty much everything progressives favor, including Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Persuasion and Turnout

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, is well under way.

Ruy Teixeira at WP:

[In 2018] the overwhelming majority of the Democrats’ improved performance came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes in both elections — yet switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018. The data firm Catalist, whose numbers on 2018 are the best available, estimates that 89 percent of the Democrats’ improved performance came from persuasion — from vote-switchers — not turnout. In its analysis, Catalist notes, “If turnout was the only factor, then Democrats would not have seen nearly the gains that they ended up seeing … a big piece of Democratic victory was due to 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018.”

Crucially, Democrats in 2018, especially the successful ones, did not run on particularly radical programs but rather on opposition to Trump himself, and to unpopular GOP actions on economic policy and health care (tax cuts for the rich and efforts to repeal Obamacare’s protections, for example). In the end, the 2018 results do not support Sanders’s theories — not the central importance of high turnout, nor the supposed non-importance of changing mainstream voters’ minds, nor the most effective issues to run on.

What about the magic of higher turnout?

As Nate Cohn of the New York Times has noted after scrutinizing the data, it’s a mistake to assume that Democrats would benefit disproportionately from high turnout. Trump is particularly strong among white noncollege voters, who dominate the pool of nonvoters in many areas of the country, including in key Rust Belt states. If the 2020 election indeed has historically high turnout, as many analysts expect, that spike could include many of these white noncollege voters in addition to Democratic-leaning constituencies such as nonwhites and young voters. The result could be an increase in Democrats’ popular-vote total — and another loss in the electoral college.

And most voters say that they would not vote for a socialist. 

Bernie Bros Redux

In Defying the Odds, we discuss  the presidential nomination process.

The Bernie Bros are the doppelgangers of the MAGA hats.

Scott Bixby at The Daily Beast:

Sen. Bernie Sanders has called their behavior “disgusting.” Would-be supporters of the Vermont independent have cited them as the reason they can’t endorse him. His campaign has even privately apologized to rivals for online pile-ons that crossed the line into open harassment.

And still, the Bernie Bro army marches on.

Matt Flegenheimer, Rebecca R. Ruiz and Nellie Bowles at NYT:

Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats. A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter.

Other notable targets have included Ady Barkan, a prominent liberal activist with A.L.S. — whom some Sanders-cheering accounts accused of lacking decision-making faculties due to his illness as he prepared to endorse Senator Elizabeth Warren — and Fred Guttenberg, the father of a shooting victim from the 2018 Parkland massacre, who had criticized Mr. Sanders’s statements about gun violence.

“Politics is a contact sport,” said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina State legislator who supported Ms. Harris in the Democratic primary. “But you have to be very cognizant when you say anything critical of Bernie online. You might have to put your phone down. There’s going to be a blowback, and it could be sexist, racist and vile.”
In recent days, he said, one man sent a profanity-filled private message on Instagram, calling Mr. Sellers, who is black, an “Uncle Tom” and wishing him brain cancer.

When Mr. Sanders’s supporters swarm someone online, they often find multiple access points to that person’s life, compiling what can amount to investigative dossiers. They will attack all public social media accounts, posting personal insults that might flow in by the hundreds. Some of the missives are direct threats of violence, which can be reported to Twitter or Facebook and taken down.

More commonly, there is a barrage of jabs and threats sometimes framed as jokes. If the target is a woman, and it often is, these insults can veer toward her physical appearance.
For some perceived Sanders critics, there has been mail sent to home addresses — or the home addresses of relatives. The contents were unremarkable: news articles about the political perils of centrism. The message seemed clear: We know where you live.

Positions That Could Blow Up a D Campaign

In Defying the Odds, we discuss leftward drift of the Democratic Party.  The update -- recently published -- includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

At Brookings, Elaine Kamarck lists five issue positions that could blow up a D campaign in the fall:

1. Allowing prisoners to vote;
2. Ending all restrictions on abortion;
3. Abolishing private health insurance;
4. Abolishing ICE;
5. Embracing socialism.

She might also have added two more:

• Decriminalizing unauthorized border entry;
• Providing government health care to undocumented migrants.

The Democrats in California

In Defying the Odds, we discuss leftward drift of the Democratic Party.     The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

The 2020 California primary takes place on March 3.  But  the state will start mailing out ballots on February 3, the same day as the Iowa caucuses.

This weekend, most of the announced candidates attended the CA Democratic convention.

Carla Marinucci, Jeremy B. White, Alexander Nieves and Graph Massara at Politico:

— BEST HALL RECEPTION: Elizabeth Warren, who was showered with a standing ovation and cheers by hall delegates, broke the applause meter, managing to outshine favorite daughter Kamala Harris in the city where she served as district attorney (a point her massed supporters made with chants of “THIS IS HARRIS COUNTRY!”). Harris was cheered on, but Cory Booker’s impassioned address was a close second, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg another top favorite.

— BEST RETAIL MOMENT: Warren also hit a home run in the liberal bastion of Oakland, Harris’ hometown, where a crowd of 6,500 lined the streets for half a mile to pack the Massachusetts senator’s rally on the soccer field in Laney College.Her uber-energetic delivery wowed the mix of baby boomers and millennials, then she promised a selfie for anyone who wanted one — and stayed for 90 minutes in the cold June Bay Area night to deliver.

David Weigel at WP:

Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper found a way to stand out at a crowded gathering of California Democrats: He denounced “socialism,” and got booed.

“If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer,” Hickenlooper said at a Saturday afternoon session of the state party’s annual convention. As the jeering grew louder, Hickenlooper added: “You know, if we’re not careful, we’re going to end up reelecting the worst president in American history.”

Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign had previewed the remarks hours before he spoke. The Coloradan, who was a geologist and a brewer before entering politics, has repeatedly argued for Democrats to embrace and reform capitalism.

Eli Watkins at CNN:

Members of the crowd at the California Democratic Convention booed presidential hopeful John Delaney on Sunday when the former Maryland congressman criticized "Medicare for All."

"Medicare for All may sound good, but it's actually not good policy, nor is it good politics," Delaney said, inspiring a wave of boos.

As the booing continued, Delaney said, "We should have universal health care" several times before completing the thought and continuing to criticize the health care policy championed by a range of 2020 candidates, notably including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who made Medicare for All a centerpiece of his previous presidential run.

Trump at CPAC 2019

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character.   The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Amanda Sakuma sums up Trump at CPAC:

He called the investigations into him “bullshit.” He said John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, “hasn’t gotten over getting his ass kicked.” He mocked the “New Green Deal” — “whatever the hell they call it.” After a while, it was hard to count the number of times he said “damn.”
...
Jeff Sessions received the brunt of hate from Trump, who called him “weak and ineffective” as attorney general. Trump went as far as deriding his cabinet member by mocking his southern accent and his decision to bow out of overseeing the investigation. “I’m going to recuse mahhself,” Trump said.

The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.” I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018

More from Sakuma:

Trump set the tone early in his speech with the amount of red meat to throw at the crowd of conservatives, warning of a “socialist takeover” that posed an existential threat to democracy and even going so far as to say outright that some elected officials hate the United States.

“We have people in Congress right now that hate our country... When I see some of the statements being made, it’s very very sad,” he said. “And find out — how did they do in their country? Did they do well?... Some will say it’s terrible he brought that up, but I don’t mind.”

...

His speech really went off the rails (as usual) when talking about immigration. Trump once again stoked fears of a “migrant invasion” at the southern border. He suggested that parents from Central America were sending their daughters with “massive amounts of birth control” to cross the US border illegally, knowing they would be raped by human traffickers ( “True story told to me by the Border Patrol,” he said, “Think of how evil that is.”)

He also resurrected old dog whistles about foreign women who give birth in the US to game the immigration system.

“They used to call it anchor babies but they don’t use that term anymore because it’s not nice,” Trump said.

Fearful Symmetry: Mod Dems Have to Answer for Leftists

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.     The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Catie Edmondson and Emily Cochrane at NYT:

Last week, home for the first district workweek of their term, moderate Democrats got to see firsthand how the raised voices of a small but vocal number of lawmakers such as Representatives Tlaib, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are reverberating in far more marginal districts. Some, like Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey, were asked to account for the “uptick of negative rhetoric” coming from the freshman class.

“My job is to focus in on you. I don’t know how other members of Congress are making their decisions about what to say,” Mr. Kim told constituents in the coastal township of Berkeley, “but I’ll certainly stand up and disagree whenever there is something out there I disagree with.”

Just two months into the new Congress, Republicans have begun an all-out assault painting Democrats as extremists — even bigots — and trying to tar moderates with their more liberal freshman counterparts’ beliefs. Their talking points appear to be resonating with some voters the Democrats will need next year if they are to keep their majority — and the voters determined to flip the districts back.

Left Brain

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.

At Axios, Sam Baker and Ben Geman repot on new left-wing think tanks.

The universe of new or newly prominent progressive groups includes Data for Progress and New Consensus, who both worked with the Sunrise Movement, a group that's providing a lot of the advocacy muscle behind the Green New Deal.

• The Green New Deal is now well on its way into the Democratic mainstream (though it remains vague), thanks largely to the mutually reinforcing combination of outside legwork and Ocasio-Cortez’ nearly unrivaled abilityto drive the political conversation.
• Data for Progress cofounder Sean McElwee also helped popularize the hashtag #AbolishICE, which then gained steam on the left, and then became part of Ocasio-Cortez’ platform, and then won its first endorsement from a senator — Kirsten Gillbrand — two days after Ocasio-Cortez won her primary.

Individual experts are also playing a big role as Democrats’ 2020 candidates look beyond the familiar left-of-center policy framework.

• Multiple Democrats have sought the counsel of economist Stephanie Kelton, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders who has helped popularize Modern Monetary Theory.
• A pair of left-leaning economists from the University of California at Berkeley reportedly helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren craft her proposed wealth tax.
• Economists Sandy Darity and Darrick Hamilton consulted on Sen. Cory Booker's "baby bonds" proposal and Sen. Kamala Harris' middle-class tax cut.

Leftward Ho: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democrats

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.

Frank Newport at Gallup:

For the first time in Gallup's measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year -- lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010.

Fearful Symmetry

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic left took heart when a socialist beat a standard liberal in a House primary in New York. Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:

What worries some Democratic elders, though, is that activists will harbor unrealistic expectations of what sort of policies newly elected progressive lawmakers can push through in a still-divided capital.

“They say to new members, ‘You won because of us,’” said John A. Lawrence, former chief of staff to Ms. Pelosi and the author of a new book on the so-called Watergate Babies. “Actually no, typically you win because you were able to win moderate voters disgusted with incumbents.”

There is also a group of younger Democrats uneasy about the party drifting too far left.
Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana said he understood that Democratic voters were “furious and scared at the same time,” but he also said he wished his party had a moderating influence to counter Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the democratic socialist who has been at the front end of the party’s turn left.

“Bernie is fighting for his principles on what direction the party should go,” he said, “but we don’t really have anybody doing it on behalf of moderates and other Democrats. It has become a one-sided conversation.”

There is no question that Democratic leaders have been tugged toward a brand of more unadulterated progressivism. But there are fewer levers of power at their disposal to impose discipline or tilt their proposals toward the political center. They lack legislative earmarks to hand out, or withhold, and their ability to raise large sums of money matters less in an era in which liberal fund-raising is moving online.

And with the decline of unions, one of the last pillars of top-down authority in their coalition is on the wane. The public-sector unions stung by last week’s court decision had been one the movement’s remaining power centers.

Socialist Beats Crowley

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.

Gregory Krieg at CNN:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina running her first campaign, ousted 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in New York's 14th congressional district on Tuesday, CNN projects, in the most shocking upset of a rollicking political season.

An activist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Ocasio-Cortez won over voters in the minority-majority district with a ruthlessly efficient grassroots bid, even as Crowley -- the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House -- outraised her by a 10-to-1 margin.

This was the first time in 14 years a member of his own party has attempted to unseat Crowley, who chairs the Queens County Democrats. His defeat marks a potential sea change in the broader sphere of liberal politics -- a result with implications for Democrats nationwide that would recall, as optimistic progressives routinely noted during the campaign, former GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss to the insurgent, tea party-backed Dave Brat in June 2014.

To me, the big takeaway from last night’s election is the continuing Europeanization of American politics: Socialists vs Nationalists.

— Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) June 27, 2018

It seems like Ocasio-Cortez received a pretty optimal amount of media attention (from her standpoint). Enough that highly politically engaged people were aware of her (that's who votes in primaries), but not so much that the cavalry was brought in for Crowley. https://t.co/klwgygdxEa

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 27, 2018

Single Payer

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the liberal drift of the Democratic Party.

Democrats continue to gallop leftward.  As Alexander Burns and Jennifer Medina write at The New York Times, the latest example is support for single-payer health care:

At rallies and in town hall meetings, and in a collection of blue-state legislatures, liberal Democrats have pressed lawmakers, with growing impatience, to support the creation of a single-payer system, in which the state or federal government would supplant private health insurance with a program of public coverage. And in California on Thursday, the Democrat-controlled State Senate approved a preliminary plan for enacting single-payer system, the first serious attempt to do so there since then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, vetoed legislation in 2006 and 2008.

With Republicans in full control of the federal government, there is no prospect that Democrats can put in place a policy of government-guaranteed medicine on the national level in the near future. And fiscal and logistical obstacles may be insurmountable even in solidly liberal states like California and New York.

...
A study published in January by the Pew Research Center found that about 40 percent of Democrats favored a single-payer system, including a slight majority of self-described liberal Democrats. Among all Americans, support was markedly lower: Just 28 percent said government should be the sole provider of care.

Frustration on the Left

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy.

At Politico, David Siders reports that the left wing of the Democratic Party is having a hard time following up on Sanders's unexpectedly strong showing in 2016.

The losses are piling up. Earlier this month, Democrat Heath Mello, whom Sanders campaigned with, failed to unseat a Republican in Omaha’s race for mayor. Kimberly Ellis, the candidate endorsed by Our Revolution, the successor group to Sanders’ presidential campaign, lost a fiercely contested race for California Democratic Party chair. And on Thursday night, Republican Greg Gianforte bested Rob Quist, another Democrat for whom Sanders campaigned, in a nationally watched House race in Montana.

...

The limitations of the Sanders movement were nowhere more apparent than in the open congressional race in Los Angeles this spring, in a district Sanders carried last year. While Our Revolution has since endorsed Jimmy Gomez, a state assemblyman with a progressive record in Sacramento, two primary challengers with Sanders ties — Carrillo and Arturo Carmona, a deputy in Sanders’ presidential campaign — together received barely more than 10 percent of the vote.

“The test is whether you turn out for an election, right?” said former California Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, an Ellison supporter who was an early favorite in the House race before he dropped out with a health condition. “They didn’t turn out and organize for either of the Bernie candidates in the Jimmy Gomez race. So instead the guy who gets cast as the most institutional — Jimmy — and the guy with the least credibility as a Democratic candidate — (Robert) Ahn — move forward. So that tells me there’s nothing sustainable about the way in which they engaged in that race.”

Democrats to the Left

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Democratic Party's leftward movement in 2016.  Ben Smith reports at Buzzfeed:

Donald Trump has already changed the Democratic Party more than his own Republican Party.

While the president has merely reduced his own party into a panicked mess, the Democrats’ trajectory seems to have moved subtly and decisively away from the center-left Clinton liberalism toward a politics whose planks make Barack Obama look like Al Gore.

I know, it’s been a distracting month. So you’re forgiven if you missed the big development on the Democratic Party policy front: the call for “a large-scale, permanent program of public employment and infrastructure investment.” That plan, titled “A Marshall Plan for America,” came not from Bernie Sanders but from the Center for American Progress, the Clintonite Washington think tank John Podesta led. The proposal breaks in tone and substance with the Clinton–Obama focus on an economy led and dominated by the private sector.

...
 The jobs plan is the bluntest sign of this shift, but the party appears to be inching its way toward another pillar of social democracy: government-funded health care.

“What happened in the presidential campaign is that Bernie ran explicitly in support of a Medicare-for-all approach” — a simple framework for single-payer — “and what the politicians saw is that voters were fine with that,” said Vermont Rep. Peter Welch, a longtime advocate of single payer.

Democrats Head Left

William Galston writes at The Wall Street Journal:

The party that Hillary Clinton will lead into battle this fall is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party. In important respects it is not even Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. It is a party animated by the frustrations of the Obama years and reshaped by waves of economic and social activism.

Not surprisingly, the document endorses a range of Hillary Clinton’s campaign proposals ...

Neither is it surprising that the draft incorporates some of Bernie Sanders’s key proposals—most notably, a $15 per hour minimum wage—and that it doesn’t take sides on issues that divided the party, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and a broad tax on financial transactions, where neither side would give way.

In other respects, however, the draft is truly remarkable—for example, its near-silence on economic growth. The uninformed reader would not learn that the pace of recovery from the Great Recession has been anemic by postwar standards, or that productivity gains have slowed to a crawl over the past five years, or that firms have been reluctant to invest in new productive capacity. Rather, the platform draft’s core narrative is inequality, the injustice that inequality entails, and the need to rectify it through redistribution.

Sanders and the Democrats' Leftward Drift

Lloyd Green writes at Breitbart:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will likely in fact pay a price for supporting the linkage of American support for Israel to progress on the peace process, for dramatically overstating Palestinian casualties in the 2014 Gaza War, and for branding Israel’s responses to Palestinian violence as disproportionate.

According to the cross-tabs of the latest Quinnipiac Poll furnished to Breitbart, Jewish Democrats are backing the former Secretary of State by nine points, 49-40. By contrast, Clinton’s overall lead among white Democrats is a meager 50-45.

At Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg writes:

Anyone interested in the ramifications of some of Sanders' proposals – and why it would be difficult to try to turn the United States into Denmark – should read Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Steven Pearlstein’s excellent piece, “What Bernie Sanders Would do to America,” in The Washington Post. Pearlstein, who once worked for Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Michael Harrington, dissects many of Sanders’ proposals.

...
Clearly, the Democratic Party has moved left over the past few years. Whether this is out of frustration that President Barack Obama didn’t move far enough or fast enough in a progressive agenda, or because Democrats watched the tea party pull the GOP to the right, many Democrats want a much more “progressive” agenda.

The fact that Sanders, who continues to embrace the socialist label, is doing as well as he is ought to worry party strategists.

Shortly after the Democratic Party’s 2006 midterm election victory, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and then-Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel warned their colleagues that Democrats needed to prove that they could govern, that they could be pragmatic and work to improve things for the middle class.

Emanuel, of course, is now under attack from the minority community and his party’s left, as is Bill Clinton for his White House years. On the other hand, Schumer is headed to become his party’s Senate leader.