Sanders Wing v. Democratic Party

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

At Politico, Gabriel Debenedetti reports that the Sanders wing is demanding purity from the rest of the party.

Many Democrats are concerned that Sanders no longer has any control over the vast political network surrounding him after his 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver left the helm of Our Revolution in June. That national political organization, Sanders' post-campaign creation, is now led by former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, who was a strident supporter of the Vermonter and a Clinton critic in 2016.

Last month, Democrats across Capitol Hill were quick to circulate a BuzzFeed report in which Turner called the DNC “dictatorial” and “insulting.” They were concerned that a group with the reach of Our Revolution’s could be doing significant damage to the party’s efforts to re-engage with Sanders voters.

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Just as Turner was complaining about the DNC, a range of Democratic senators and their top political staffers were closely following a string of stories that quoted Sanders supporters criticizing [Kamala] Harris.[!]

In one interview, the co-founder of a group called People for Bernie said Harris was being anointed as the candidate "of extremely wealthy and out-of-touch Democratic Party donors."

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At no point was this worry more apparent than after the leaders of the National Nurses Union refused last month to rule out supporting primary challenges for Senate Democrats who don’t support his Medicare-for-all health care bill. The group, one of Sanders' closest allies, vowed to “[hold] the Democrats accountable.”

Sanders’ own campaign pollster called the measure a litmus test in the same POLITICO report. And Turner — whose group houses the huge email list Sanders’ team built during his campaign and subsequently refused to hand over to the DNC — said “there’s something wrong” with Democrats who don’t support Sanders’ measure.

Yet it took three weeks for Sanders himself to weigh in. He told the Washington Post that his health care legislation wouldn’t serve as a litmus test for whether or not to back fellow senators. It was hardly a disavowal of his allies’ rhetoric, though, and the delay left other lawmakers sweating about primary challenges for nearly a month.

Crooked Donny: An Update

Brad Heath,Fredreka Schouten,Steve Reilly,Nick Penzenstadler and Aamer Madhani report at USA Today:

Dozens of lobbyists, contractors and others who make their living influencing the government pay President Trump’s companies for membership in his private golf clubs, a status that can put them in close contact with the president, a USA TODAY investigation found.

Members of the clubs Trump has visited most often as president — in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia — include at least 50 executives whose companies hold federal contracts and 21 lobbyists and trade group officials. Two-thirds played on one of the 58 days the president was there, according to scores they posted online.

Because membership lists at Trump’s clubs are secret, the public has until now been unable to assess the conflicts they could create. USA TODAY found the names of 4,500 members by reviewing social media and a public website golfers use to track their handicaps, then researched and contacted hundreds to determine whether they had business with the government.

The review shows that, for the first time in U.S. history, wealthy people with interests before the government have a chance for close and confidential access to the president as a result of payments that enrich him personally. It is a view of the president available to few other Americans.

Among Trump club members are top executives of defense contractors, a lobbyist for the South Korean government, a lawyer helping Saudi Arabia fight claims over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the leader of a pesticide trade group that sought successfully to persuade the Trump administration not to ban an insecticide government scientists linked to health risks.

Public Citizen reports: 

Before assuming the presidency, Trump himself held ownership stakes in hundreds of business entities. His most recent financial disclosure shows he transferred those ownership stakes to six core entities.

 But in the end, the transfer of ownership turned out to be a meaningless shell game. Under the new arrangement, each of the entities to which Trump transferred his assets ended up under the control of a revocable trust that operates for the benefit of Trump. [See Figure Below]

Trump’s Shell Game: All Roads Lead To Trump’s Revocable Trust*

Cultural Gaps and Polarization

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the cultural gap in the 2016 election.

At WSJ, Janet Hook reports on a new poll:

The poll found deep splits along geographic and educational lines. Rural Americans and people without a four-year college degree are notably more pessimistic about the economy and more conservative on social issues. Those groups make up an increasingly large share of the GOP.

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 Views of immigration have also become more partisan. In an April 2005 poll that asked whether immigration strengthened or weakened the U.S., a plurality of 48% said it weakened the nation, with 41% saying immigration strengthened the country.

Now, a substantial majority of 64% view immigration as strengthening the country, while 28% say it weakens the U.S. The change is due almost entirely to a sharp shift in Democrats' views. In 2005, just 45% of Democrats said the country was strengthened by immigration; now the share is 81%.

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 Among people without a four-year college degree, a plurality of 44% identified as Democrats in 2010. Now, only 36% do. Among those who are college graduates, just 36% now identify as Republican, versus 41% in 2010.

The Political Madness of "Tax Reform"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax issue in the 2016 campaign. Trump railed against special interests and claimed to be the champion of ordinary Americans.

Republicans are reportedly considering a tax "reform" that would cap the mortgage interest deduction, and the ability to deduct state and local taxes; and tax 401(k) contributions up front. And, of course, the bill would cut taxes for corporations.

Political madness.

Tax reform is tough enough. Even the 1986 law-- which was far more reasonable -- was not especially popular with the public. In an October 1986 poll from Cambridge Reports, 36 percent said that it would raise their taxes, compared with just 16 percent who thought that it would reduce them. Over the next three years, the former group would grow to 50 percent.

And in the first election after the bill passed, Republicans lost their majority in the Senate. There were other reasons for that outcome, of course, but there is no evidence that the legislation helped any Republican senator.

Why Did Trump Carry the Rustbelt? One Reason: Union Membership Had Dropped

In Defying the Odds, we suggest an under-examined reason why Democrats were unexpectedly weak in key industrial states;  union membership was way down.

At the high point of their influence many years ago, they [labor unions] supplied the people who worked the phones, stuffed the envelopes and walked the precincts on behalf of the Democrats.  In some states, they still were a significant force, but overall, they were on the wane. Between 1983 and 2015, union membership as a share of employed workers plunged by almost half, from 20.1 percent to 11.1 percent.   Not coincidentally, the drop-off was steepest in five industrial states that voted Republican in the 2016 presidential race 

 Percentage Change in Union Density, Selected States, 1983-2015

                                    1983                2015                Change

Wisconsin                    24.2                 08.4                -15.8

Michigan                     30.8                 15.3                 -15.5

Indiana                        25.2                 10.1                 -15.1

Pennsylvania               27.7                 13.4                 -14.3

Ohio                             25.3                 12.4                 -12.9

Source: Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson, “State Union Membership Density 1964-2015,” http://unionstats.gsu.edu/State_Union_Membership_Density_1964-2015.xlsx; Barry T. Hirsch, David A. Macpherson, and Wayne G. Vroman, “Estimates of Union Density by State,” Monthly Labor Review 124, No. 7, July 2001, http://unionstats.gsu.edu/MLR_7-01_StateUnionDensity.pdf

Trump, General Kelly, and Media

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's approach to the media.

Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng report at The Daily Beast:

Newly minted White House chief of staff John Kelly has sought to put a dent in the influence of one of President Donald Trump’s most famous advisers: Omarosa Manigault.

The former Apprentice co-star—who currently serves as the communications director for the Office of Public Liaison—has seen her direct access to the president limited since Kelly took the top White House job in late July, sources tell The Daily Beast. In particular, Kelly has taken steps to prevent her and other senior staffers from getting unvetted news articles on the president’s Resolute desk—a key method for influencing the president’s thinking, and one that Manigualt used to rile up Trump about internal White House drama.

Glenn Thrush & Maggie Haberman report at The New York Times:

Mr. Kelly cannot stop Mr. Trump from binge-watching Fox News, which aides describe as the president’s primary source of information gathering. But Mr. Trump does not have a web browser on his phone, and does not use a laptop, so he was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets.

Now Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were.

"Tax Reform" is Really Unpopular

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax issue in the 2016 campaign.

As previous posts have noted, "tax reform" will be hard.  Most of the benefits would flow to the top twenty percent, in part because 44 percent of households pay no income tax at all.  Most lawmakers have no direct experience with comprehensive tax reform.  The current process is at least nine months behind the pace of the 1985-86 bill, which was a close-run thing even then.  Trump is unpopular, and so are major "reform" proposals.

Eric Levitz at New York:

Virtually no one in the United States believes that taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals should be cut. In one recent Gallup survey, just 9 percent of respondents said corporations paid too much in taxes, while 67 percent said they paid too little; for “upper income people,” those figures were 10 and 63, respectively. 

But even these numbers fail to convey the dearth of public demand for the Republican Party’s tax “reform” effort. Voters don’t merely lack enthusiasm for cutting taxes on the rich and powerful — most don’t even see a need for their taxes to be cut. In April, Gallup found 61 percent of Americans saying that their current income-tax burden is “fair” — the highest that figure has been at any point since 2009. Meanwhile, even those who believe that they deserve a tax cut don’t (generally) see such a measure as worth prioritizing: Last month, a Bloomberg poll found that less than 5 percent of Americans believe tax policy is the “most important issue facing the country” — less than half the percentage that picked climate change.