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      Message to Democrats: embrace economic bread-and-butter issues to win | Matthew Karp and Dustin Guastella

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      OpinionDemocratsMessage to Democrats: embrace economic bread-and-butter issues to winMatthew Karp and Dustin GuastellaOur study finds that working-class voters respond better to economic policies than identity-based, activist-driven campaigns Tue 9 Nov 2021 06.20 ESTAs he set about disembowelling Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill last month, Joe Manchin paused to offer some cheerful advice for outraged progressives. “[A]ll they need to do,” said the West Virginia senator, “is elect more liberals.”There was something slightly perverse about Manchin counseling the leftwingers whose policy agenda he was helping tear apart: he sounded like a burglar recommending a home security system as he made off with his loot. And yet his point is undeniable: if progressives hope to gain more leverage in American politics, they must win more elections.If Democrats return to centrism, they are doomed to lose against Trump | Samuel MoynRead moreOf course, this is just what they have been trying to do. In the wake of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, an energetic cohort of progressives crashed into city halls, state legislatures, and Congress itself. In the House, “the Squad” may be the most visible avatar of this new leftwing politics, but the larger Progressive Caucus has grown from under 28% of all House Democrats in 2008 to over 43% today.Still, as the fate of Biden’s bill shows, leftwing influence on national politics remains limited. That’s because progressive gains have not been not responsible for changing the larger balance of power. By and large, progressives have replaced sitting Democrats in deep-blue districts. They’ve failed to prove themselves in contested seats, and have yet to win a major statewide election. Without expanding the Democratic base, progressive advances reflect a larger trend away from the party’s working-class constituency and toward educated urban professionals.American progressives aren’t alone facing this problem. Over the last half-century, center-left parties all around the world have suffered massive defections from their once-sturdy working-class electoral base. As labor unions have declined in size and power, and economies have shifted away from high-wage blue-collar jobs, millions of working-class voters have moved toward parties of the right. And though pundits obsess over the “white working class”, the phenomenon now clearly extends across racial lines, with non-white, non-college-educated voters breaking significantly toward Republicans since 2012.But in order to win more elections, especially in swing districts, both Democrats and progressives must win more working-class votes. The numbers here are just overwhelming: in 2020, well over 60% of American voters did not have college degrees. In Congress, over four-fifths of House seats – and 96 of 100 Senate seats – are chosen by electorates where 60% of the voters lack college degrees. For progressives to accept an inevitable decline in working-class support is to accept their position as a permanent and punchless minority.So how can progressives win back the working class? Here opinions divide sharply. Some liberal analysts argue that an increasingly professional-class Democratic party must restrain its own instincts to suit the preferences of less educated voters. These “popularists” urge liberal candidates to build their campaigns around the party’s safest, best-liked ideas, like lowering prescription drug prices, while tactically sidestepping less popular positions on immigration or police reform. In response, a range of progressive critics contend that such compromises with working-class opinion are either politically ineffectual – since candidate messaging doesn’t matter very much – or morally untenable, since, they say, it would mean replaying Bill Clinton’s rightwing racial pivot in the 1990s.In conjunction with Jacobin magazine and the public opinion firm YouGov, our team at the Center for Working Class Politics decided to dig deeper into this question than an ordinary survey would allow. Rather than polling voters on isolated policies or beliefs, we designed an experiment to test how potentially Democratic working-class voters respond to electoral matchups. By asking voters to choose between hypothetical candidates, who presented a range of personal characteristics and campaign messages, we were able to develop a richer portrait of voter attitudes at the ballot box. And by presenting this survey to a representative group of 2,000 working-class voters in five swing states – a much larger sample of this demographic than appears in most polls – we were able to focus on these voters in much greater depth.What we learned in the “Commonsense Solidarity” report may confound both sides of the ongoing debate. The strongest candidates in our sample made bread-and-butter issues their top priorities – jobs and the economy, rather than immigration and racial justice – and spoke about those priorities in universalist, rather than “woke”, identity-centered rhetoric. These differences were even more pronounced among the working-class voters that Democrats and progressives have struggled most to reach, including rural and small-town voters and voters in blue-collar jobs.In this sense, our findings support the view that working-class voters are sensitive to candidate messaging, and that progressives who want to win their support should put economic issues at the center of their campaigns. But does that mean that Democrats must either tack hard to the center, or abandon their effort to win back a fundamentally “conservative” working class, as some analysts have argued? Not at all.The voters in our sample preferred candidates who endorsed Medicare for All to those who supported an anodyne centrist alternative, “increase access to affordable healthcare”. And given a choice of political messages, they chose a populist, Bernie Sanders-style soundbite – pitting working-class Americans against wealthy elites – somewhat more often than a moderate, Biden-style message.Nor does our study suggest that Democrats must “play it safe” by avoiding discussions of racism. Working-class respondents strongly backed candidates who promised to “end systematic racism” over those who offered a bland pronouncement of “equal rights for all”. They did not punish female or non-white candidates – in fact, black candidates performed significantly better than any other group in our sample, even among white voters.Working-class voters will not punish candidates for advocating for civil rights. But when Democrats frame this struggle in a way that overshadows their commitment to delivering bread-and-butter goods, and when they adopt an activist-inspired, identity-based rhetoric, they are likely to lose working-class votes. Our survey turned up some very large gaps on this front. A populist candidate with a central focus on the economy earned 63% support, for example, while moderates and “woke” progressives with a focus on immigration or racial justice won under 50%.Combining a populist message with a candidate from a working-class background, meanwhile, stretched these gaps even further. While a moderate military veteran – the kind of Democratic candidate often celebrated by party leaders and the press – received just 51% support, a progressive populist teacher earned over 65%. Strikingly, these preferences were shared not only by Democratic voters, but the critical swing demographic of working-class independents.To be sure, a choice between hypothetical candidates is different from an actual campaign but unlike most other studies of this kind (using surveys or election data), our experimental approach allowed us to isolate the characteristics that either attract or repel working-class voters to a particular candidate.Last week’s elections offered one demonstration of what happens when workers’ issues are ignored. In Virginia, Democratic ex-governor Terry McAuliffe was lured into a culture war with Republican Glenn Youngkin, with Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved claiming headlines in the campaign’s final weeks. As economic issues disappeared from view, McAuliffe – a paradigmatic “woke” moderate with no ability to reframe the debate – found himself swamped by working-class defections. Where Biden had won Virginia voters without college degrees by seven points, McAuliffe lost them by 20.Joe Manchin’s arithmetic is unyielding. If progressives want to exert real power in American politics, they cannot be content to replace establishment liberals in deep-blue seats: they must also prove themselves as an alternative to the cautious centrism that swing-district Democrats prefer. The good news is that this doesn’t have to mean sacrificing bold economic policies or evocative populist rhetoric. But if progressives continue to insist that political messaging is inconsequential, or that it is impossible to adjust their program to the priorities of the working-class electorate, they risk condemning themselves to permanent irrelevance.
      Matthew Karp is an associate professor of history at Princeton University and a contributing editor at Jacobin. Dustin Guastella is director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia
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      ‘Catastrophic implications’: UN health expert condemns US over threat to abortion rights

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      Abortion‘Catastrophic implications’: UN health expert condemns US over threat to abortion rightsSpecial rapporteur Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng argues in brief filed in a US court that overturning abortion rights would violate international human rights treaties ratified by the US Jessica Glenza@JessicaGlenzaMon 8 Nov 2021 05.00 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 12.50 ESTThe United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health has called on the US supreme court to uphold the right to abortion in America or risk undermining international human rights law and threatening that right elsewhere in the world.The special rapporteur, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, is one of just a handful of global observers whose mandate is to travel the world defending human rights.Mofokeng has argued in a brief filed in a US court that overturning abortion rights would violate international human rights treaties ratified by the US, including the convention against torture, should women be forced to carry pregnancies to term.In an interview, Mofokeng told the Guardian she could have filed a brief on abortion rights, “in any other court, in any other abortion case,” globally. However, she chose the US courts because of the direct threat posed to abortion rights in the supreme court’s upcoming session.“We have this joke among us that when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a [cold],” said Mofokeng. “So we know that politically that what happens in the United States… does have an impact in precedents elsewhere in the world.”Mofokeng’s brief was filed ahead of oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case advocates fear will undermine abortion rights nationally. Dobbs poses a direct threat to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 case that established a Constitutional right to abortion based in privacy.Roe invalidated dozens of state abortion bans and restrictions, and allowed people to terminate a pregnancy up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, generally understood to be about 24 weeks gestation. A full term pregnancy is 39 weeks.“If that gets overturned, it has catastrophic implications, not just for the US,” said Mofokeng, who said she feared overturning Roe would embolden global attacks on reproductive rights.Mofokeng is also a practicing doctor and well-known sex-positive author in South Africa. Most often, she goes by “Dr T”, an informal title which underscores the empathy in her academic analysis. Her most recent UN report outlined the challenges Covid-19 posed to reproductive rights, and how colonialism continues to affect global policies on reproduction, from sterilization to abortion bans.“It means that even those people who are conservative, who are anti-rights, in any country in the world, will actually now start referencing the US court as an example of jurisprudence that should be followed,” said Mofokeng. “And this is why this is so dangerous”.In Dobbs, the court will consider whether Mississippi can ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation. For the court to uphold Mississippi’s law, it would require the court to rewrite standards that determine whether abortion restrictions are constitutional. Advocates fear that could once again allow states to severely restrict or ban abortion.A majority of the court’s nine justices would need to agree to rewrite such standards. Conservative justices hold a 6-3 supermajority on the court. Many observers view the court’s decision to take the Mississippi case as an ominous sign. About six in 10 Americans believe abortion should be legal in “all or most cases”.“If Roe … [were] overturned, many US states will implement bans or near-bans on abortion access that will make individual state laws irreconcilable with international human rights law,” the brief argued. “This would cause irreparable harm to women and girls in violation of the United States’ obligations under the human rights treaties it has signed and ratified.”While the US has not ratified several United Nations treaties, it has ratified the convention against torture, which Mofokeng’s brief argued would be violated if states were allowed to ban abortion.“The denial of safe abortions and subjecting women and girls to humiliating and judgmental attitudes in such contexts of extreme vulnerability and where timely health care is essential amount to torture or ill treatment,” Mofokeng’s brief said, citing a 2016 report by the rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.Conversely, Mofokeng’s brief argued, contrary to Mississippi’s assertions, that “the right to life emanating from human rights treaties does not apply prenatally,” and that the “overwhelming trend for the past half-century has been toward the liberalization of abortion laws worldwide”.Further, since the court has accepted the Dobbs case, it also allowed a six-week abortion ban to go into effect in Texas in September, effectively allowing the nation’s second largest state to nullify Roe within its borders. Experts estimate that if Roe were overturned, roughly two dozen US states mostly in the south and midwest would immediately ban abortion.Such bans would have immediate and direct consequences for women and people seeking abortions.In one recent analysis, the Guttmacher Institute found 26 states are certain or likely to outlaw abortion should Roe be overturned. In just one example, that would require a woman seeking a legal abortion in Louisiana to travel to Kansas to access care.“The rise in global anti-gender and anti-women’s rights is such that people will grasp at anything that seems to make their case solid,” said Mofokeng. And, she said, the case before the supreme court now relies on “non-medical, non-scientific” misinformation.“It means we have a risk of now having global jurisprudence – or at least influences in the global world – using jurisprudence that’s ill-informed. And that’s very dangerous,” said Mofokeng. “To undo the court’s decisions takes decades, sometimes a lifetime – and that’s why it’s dangerous.”TopicsAbortionUnited NationsHealthUS politicsUS supreme courtfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Senator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stunt

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      US taxationSenator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stuntTesla owner offers to sell 10% of shares – as poll demandsRon Wyden has proposed tax to help fund Biden plans Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 14.19 ESTFirst published on Sun 7 Nov 2021 07.45 ESTAfter Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the architect of the proposed billionaires tax that prompted the move dismissed the tweet as a stunt.It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert ReichRead more“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” said Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and chair of the Senate finance committee. “It’s time for the billionaires income tax.”When the poll closed on Sunday, nearly 3.5 million people had voted: 58% said Musk should sell the Tesla stock and 42% said he should not.Asked for comment, he tweeted: “I was prepared to accept either outcome.”Musk, who also owns SpaceX, was named by Forbes magazine as the first person worth more than $300bn. Reuters calculated that selling 10% of his Tesla shareholding would raise close to $21bn.Wyden has led Democrats pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when stock prices go up even if they do not sell shares, a concept called “unrealised gains”.Proponents of the tax say it would affect about 700 super-rich Americans, who would thus help pay for Joe Biden’s $1.75tn 10-year public spending proposal, which seeks to boost health and social care and to fund initiatives to tackle the climate crisis.Unveiling his proposal last month, Wyden said: “There are two tax codes in America. The first is mandatory for workers who pay taxes out of every paycheck. The second is voluntary for billionaires who defer paying taxes for years, if not indefinitely.“The billionaires income tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans. No working person in America thinks it’s right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don’t.”Musk has a history of controversial behaviour on Twitter. Responding to Wyden’s original proposal, he tweeted: “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”On Saturday, he said: “Much is made lately of unrealised gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?“I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes. Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”In one response, the Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman tweeted: “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll.”When Wyden introduced his proposed billionaires tax, Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, used the example of Jeff Bezos, with Musk a competitor for the title of world’s richest person, to explain how the proposal would work.The Amazon founder, Marr said, would contribute to the federal government on the basis of unrealised gains from his stock holdings, worth around $10bn, rather than a declared salary of around $80,000.Citing a bombshell ProPublica report from June this year which showed how little Bezos, Musk and other super-rich Americans pay into federal coffers, Marr titled his analysis: “Why a billionaires tax makes sense – or why the richest people in the country should pay income taxes as if they were the richest people in the country.”Democrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warningsRead moreThe Biden spending plan Wyden wants to help fund, known as Build Back Better, remains held up in Congress. House centrists are demanding nonpartisan analysis of its costs while centrist senators remain opposed to many of its goals.Democrats are also split over the proposed billionaires tax. Among those opposed is Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia who with Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona stands in the way of Build Back Better, wielding tremendous power in a chamber split 50-50 and therefore controlled by the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Speaking to reporters in October, Manchin said: “Everybody in this country that has been blessed and prospered should pay a patriotic tax.“If you’re to the point where you can use all of the tax forms to your advantage, and you end up with a zero tax-liability but have had a very, very good life and have had a lot of opportunities, there should be a 15% patriotic tax.”TopicsUS taxationElon MuskUS domestic policyBiden administrationUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney condemns ‘false flag’ Capitol attack claim seen in Tucker Carlson film

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      US Capitol attackLiz Cheney condemns ‘false flag’ Capitol attack claim seen in Tucker Carlson film
      6 January panel member: ‘It’s un-American to spread those lies’
      In Trumpland, election was stolen and racism was long ago
      Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 13.43 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 13.46 ESTIn an apparent swipe at the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney said on Sunday it was “dangerous” and “un-American” to suggest the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January was a “false flag” attack.Virginia victory gives some Republicans glimpse of future without TrumpRead moreConspiracy theorists say “false flag” attacks are staged by the government to achieve its own ends. A documentary produced by Carlson for the Fox Nation streaming service, Patriot Purge, contains such a suggestion about the Capitol attack.Five people died around the events of 6 January, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but escaped conviction when sufficient Republican senators stayed loyal.Cheney, who has condemned Carlson’s series before, spoke to Fox News Sunday. The host, Chris Wallace, asked if there was “any truth” to claims 6 January was “a false flag operation, a case of liberals in the deep state setting up conservatives and Trump supporters”.Cheney replied: “None at all. It’s the same thing that you hear people saying 9/11 is an inside job. It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies, and they are lies.”Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump, is one of two Republican members of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack. The other, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, will retire from the House next year.But the Wyoming congresswoman, a stringent conservative whose father is the former vice-president Dick Cheney, has shown no sign of yielding despite losing her leadership position in Washington and attracting a primary challenger back home.Cheney appeared on Sunday with the South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, the Democratic chief whip, with whom (and Wallace) she was this weekend honoured for being willing to work across the aisle.“We have an obligation that goes beyond partisanship,” Cheney said, “Democrats and Republicans together, to make sure that we understand every single piece of the facts about what happened [on 6 January] and to make sure that people who did it are held accountable.“And to call it a false flag operation to spread those kinds of lies is really dangerous.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansFox NewsUS televisionDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Virginia victory gives some Republicans glimpse of future without Trump

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      RepublicansVirginia victory gives some Republicans glimpse of future without Trump
      Liz Cheney and Chris Christie lead calls to move on from 2020
      In Trumpland, election was stolen and racism was long ago
      Ed Pilkington in New York@edpilkingtonSun 7 Nov 2021 12.56 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 16.45 ESTProminent Republicans are seizing on the victory of Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race last week to call for a realignment of the party that would move beyond Donald Trump and his “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.House 6 January panel to issue new round of subpoenas for Trump alliesRead moreWhile most Republicans remain either in lockstep with, or silent about, the former president’s campaign of misinformation surrounding his defeat by Joe Biden, a number of voices have begun tentatively to argue for a reboot.Liz Cheney, the Wyoming representative ousted from the No 3 leadership position in May over her resistance to Trump’s lies, told Fox News Sunday her party needed to change tack. She said that it was imperative for the wellbeing of the US that it had two strong parties.“The only way the Republican party can go forward in strength is if we reject what happened on 6 January,” she said. “If we reject the efforts that President Trump made frankly to steal the election, and if we tell voters the truth.“In order to win elections we have to remember that the most conservative of ideals is embracing the constitution and the rule of law.”Cheney was also asked about attempts, notably by Tucker Carlson of Fox News, to divert blame for the deadly attack on the US Capitol away from the Trump supporters who sought to overturn his election defeat.“It’s the same thing that you hear people saying 9/11 is an inside job,” she said. “It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies, and they are lies.”Cheney’s comments came a day after Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, made an impassioned plea to the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas.Christie, a longtime confidant of Trump, nonetheless called for the party to move beyond the former president’s obsession with the last election.“We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections – no matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over,” he said.He added: “Every minute that we spend talking about 2020 – while we’re wasting time doing that, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are laying ruin to this country. We better focus on that and take our eyes off the rearview mirror and start looking through the windshield again.”Youngkin defeated a former Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, in a bitter contest in which the issue of race in education was pivotal. The Republican assiduously avoided anything to do with Trump in his pitch to Virginian voters.But he did run a campaign that borrowed heavily from Trump’s tactics, not least his use of dog-whistles to drive a wedge between white suburbanites and Democrats and his willingness to exploit falsehoods and misinformation. Youngkin ran heavily on his opposition to critical race theory, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society, saying he would ban its use in Virginia schools. It is not taught in a single Virginia school.Trumpism without Trump appears to be gaining ground among Republicans in the wake of Youngkin’s success in a state that has been trending Democratic. But with Trump hinting at another bid for the White House, and with his threat still hanging over the party that he will endorse primary challengers to anyone who defies him, many Republicans continue to act with extreme timidity, for fear that they too will be ousted.Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chose his words carefully on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.He began by saying that Trump’s endorsement was welcome.“We would love Donald Trump’s endorsement. If you’re a Republican, you want his endorsement.”But he then emphasised that candidates should campaign on issues.“I think you’d be foolish not to want and accept Donald Trump’s endorsement. But you’re going to win not because somebody endorses you, you’re going to win because you focus on making sure inflation gets stopped, making sure people get a job, making sure your kids aren’t indoctrinated on critical race theory. That’s going to be the issues that people care about.”Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland and a frequent critic of Trump, was unsurprisingly more outspoken.Glenn Youngkin condemns report his son twice tried to vote in VirginiaRead moreSpeaking to CNN’s State of the Union, he said the lesson of Youngkin’s win was that “voters want to hear more about what you are going to do for them, rather than what you want to say for or against the former president”.Hogan said he was concerned about the damage Trump could do in the presidential race in 2024, should he continue to use his power of endorsement to promote extremist Republican candidates.“If the former president interferes with primaries and tries to nominate people who are unelectable in the swing and purple states,” he said, “that’s going to hurt”.Hogan added: “Trump is likely not going away. But if the Republican party wants to be successful at winning elections I agree with Governor Christie, we can’t look back and constantly re-litigate what happened in 2020, we have to look to ’22 and ’24.“We have to have a message that appeals to more people that’s not about the former president.”TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022VirginianewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bed | Michael Cohen

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      OpinionJoe BidenJoe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bedMichael CohenDespite Friday’s win in Congress, little is going right. But with the ex-president around, anything is possible Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.30 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 04.06 ESTIf there is one truism of modern American politics, it’s that good fortune is a fleeting thing. Almost a year to the day after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, his Democratic party was dealt a body blow on election day 2021.In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, as the Republicans won every statewide race and took control of the state’s house of delegates. In New Jersey, incumbent governor, Phil Murphy, barely held on in a state that went for Biden by 16 points. Meanwhile, the powerful Democratic president of New Jersey’s state senate was defeated by a Republican truck driver who spent a mere several thousand dollars on his campaign.Does this mean that the bloom is off the rose for Biden and America is on its way to another Trump presidency? It’s too soon to tell, but it does not look great for Democrats, even though the House passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Friday. While social media sizzled with red-hot takes on why the party underperformed in Virginia and New Jersey, the reality is more boring. For 40 years, the candidate of the president’s party has gone down to defeat in Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election. From that perspective, McAuliffe losing in Virginia was the expected outcome.Moreover, the approval ratings of the president have a trickle-down effect on party candidates and, right now, Biden is deeply unpopular. His approval ratings, at this point in his presidency, are the lowest in modern polling history, save one past president – Donald Trump. That’s not good company to keep.Since the end of August, Biden has been buffeted by one bad news story after another. The image of ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan cast a pall over his presidency and punctured his aura of competence. As Covid vaccinations levelled off, cases again began to rise, forcing many Americans, who believed just a few months ago that the pandemic would be soon over, to go back to masking and social distancing. Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats bickered among themselves about the size of Biden’s “build back better” agenda, and the president who ran on his ability to get things done in Washington looked like a helpless bystander.In short, this White House has not had a good story to tell for months and in Virginia and New Jersey they paid the price. But if there is one silver lining for Democrats, it’s that midterm elections are a year away and there is time to right the ship.For all the sturm und drang in Congress over the president’s massive, multitrillion spending packages, a second major bill is also likely to pass, joining the infrastructure bill.The second would devote an estimated $1.75tn to much-needed social safety net programmes, including universal pre-kindergarten subsidies for childcare, an expansion of Medicare benefits for senior citizens and Medicare coverage for the poorest citizens and, potentially, billions for the country’s first paid family and medical leave programme. Half-a-trillion dollars are also budgeted for fighting climate change. Passage of both bills will not only thrill Democratic voters but could spur further economic growth.While September was the worst month for Covid cases and deaths since vaccines became readily available, there was a significant decline in new cases in October. More than 70% of eligible adults are now fully vaccinated and vaccines for children aged five to 11 were rolled out last week.However, the combination of strong economic growth, a return to pre-pandemic normality and legislative success will not guarantee political success. Indeed, the same traditional political forces that contributed to Democratic underperformance on Tuesday will weigh on the party next year.Historically, the party in power gets shellacked in midterm elections, losing an average of 26 House seats. With Democrats holding a razor-thin majority in the House, it’s hard to imagine the party outrunning that history. And as much as Biden’s legislative agenda might seem like a winner for Democrats, voters don’t always reward the party in power for getting stuff done, particularly if they don’t feel it. The 63 House Democrats who lost their seats in 2010, months after the passage of Obamacare, can attest to that.Democrats also face a larger set of structural problems: a constitutional system that favours small rural states (usually won by Republicans); a rival political party that is restricting voting rights and aggressively gerrymandering congressional maps to maintain power; and an energised Republican electorate.Ultimately, what should perhaps be most disturbing for Democrats about Tuesday’s elections is that their voters came out in droves, but they couldn’t overcome huge Republican enthusiasm.All this may change in 2022, when Trump will probably play a more prominent role and Democratic candidates can use him as a foil to attack Republicans. In fact, one of the likely reasons Youngkin prevailed in Virginia is that he successfully distanced himself from Trump and made it difficult for McAuliffe to link him to the ex-president. That may be harder to do for Republican congressional candidates, many of whom regularly boast about their support for Trump.Trump is likely to remain the gift that keeps on giving for Democrats – the living, breathing bogeyman under the bed who keeps their voters up at night. As much as Democrats may want to run on their legislative agenda, the spectre of Trump could be their most effective strategy for maintaining power and is probably Biden’s best hope for re-election. The structural impediments to electoral success will remain, however, particularly as Senate Democrats, led by West Virginia’s JJoe Manchin, seem unwilling to enact the kind of far-reaching political reforms that would undo them. Moreover, the Republicans’ unabashed assault on democratic norms and voting rights is likely to continue. The short-term road ahead for Democrats is rocky.Still, as John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, in the long run we are all dead and if Trump is the path to Democratic success, so be it. After all, there is one other important truism of all politics – winning is better than losing.
      Michael Cohen’s most recent book, co-authored with Micah Zenko, is Clear and Present Safety
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      Both/And review: Huma Abedin on Clinton, Weiner and a political life

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      BooksBoth/And review: Huma Abedin on Clinton, Weiner and a political lifeThe close aide to Hillary Clinton has written a tale spliced with pain but blind to her boss’s weak spots

      Abedin: Kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assault
      Lloyd GreenSun 7 Nov 2021 02.00 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.02 ESTIn 2015, Hillary Clinton’s brains trust deliberately elevated the stature of the “extreme” Republican contenders, the “pied pipers”, Donald Trump included. On election night in 2016, Clintonworld stared into the abyss.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read more“It was sheer disbelief,” Huma Abedin writes in her new memoir. “More like shock.”Clinton, Abedin as campaign vice-chair and other aides failed to grasp that Trump was spearheading a movement, his mien his message. Clinton branded half of his supporters “deplorables”.Not surprisingly, in her memoir Abedin shows a blind spot to Clinton family shortcomings. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, for example, “it seemed very likely” to her that it “was untrue”. Somehow, an intern who rose to become one of Hillary’s closest confidantes forgot that even before Lewinsky, Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct had almost throttled his White House ambitions. Bill and Hillary even appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes to salvage his viability.“I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Hillary said.Not surprisingly, as Hillary’s so-called “second daughter”, Abedin has a problem coming to grips with an immovable likability deficit that cost her boss both times she ran for president.“Why was HRC not likeable?” Abedin asks. “This was particularly difficult to understand for those who knew her, since as far as we were concerned that was a quality she had in abundance.”Others have plumbed such waters – and found Clinton wanting. Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, for example, a Pulitzer Prize winner, portrayed Hillary sporting a “foul mouth” and being loathed by the agents who protected her. After members of her Secret Service detail overheard Chelsea Clinton calling them “pigs”, Leonnig wrote, the first daughter was reminded that their job was to “stand between you, your family and a bullet”.Chelsea reportedly responded: “Well, that’s what my mother and father call you.”Abedin does not discuss how, out of office, Hillary scooped up windfalls in the commodities market and easy millions in Wall Street speaking fees, all while doing her best impersonation of Mother Teresa.Clinton’s second run for president tarnished her image. In December 2017, a Gallup poll pegged her favorability at 37%. But unlike Mandy Grunwald, an adviser to both Clintons, Abedin refuses to admit that Hillary has foibles.According to Grunwald, Clinton could sound like she “DOESN’T think the game is rigged” against normal Americans, mustering only recognition that the “public thinks so”. Said differently, Clinton conveyed obliviousness to the Great Recession of 2008-09, its casualties and anxieties.In April 2015, nearly half of the US self-identified as working- or lower-class. Between November 2007 and late 2016, white Americans in that bracket lost more than 700,000 jobs.Abedin describes sitting with Clinton in Iowa, watching Trump “ramble incoherently about himself”. She captures Clinton saying: “I just don’t get it.” Similarly, Abedin mocks Bernie Sanders’ call for a “revolution” and glosses over the fact that Clinton only beat the Vermont senator to clinch the nomination in early June 2016, more than a week after Trump wrapped up the Republican nod.“With each contest, she methodically racked up the number of delegates she needed to secure the nomination,” Abedin writes. That’s pure spin. It was supposed to be a coronation. They didn’t plan on winning the Iowa caucuses by a razor-thin margin or getting walloped in New Hampshire, where Clinton won on her first go-round.A youth-driven movement helped propel Sanders’ rise. Aspiration and grievance counted. The bankers had gotten their bailouts. Sanders supporters were staring at a future bleaker than their parents had known. Clinton had gone from the “beer track” candidate of 2008 to the pick of the wine drinkers, the coastal establishment. And yet, according to Abedin, defeat by Trump still came as a bolt from the blue.Both/And lets the reader play voyeur and counselor too. Abedin delivers the skinny on her courtship by, marriage to and traumatic estrangement from the former congressman Anthony Weiner. She shares that they attended couples’ therapy, and that he possessed darker secrets than she first thought.She also describes how an unnamed senator shoved his tongue down her throat and pinned her against a couch while the pair were in his apartment for late-night coffee. Abedin writes that she repressed memories of the event until they came rushing back amid Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, when the supreme court nominee was accused of, and denied, sexual assault.Asked by CBS if the senator had committed a sexual assault, Abedin paused.“Did I feel like he was assaulting me in that moment?” she told Nora O’Donnell. “I didn’t, it didn’t feel that way. I was in an uncomfortable situation with a senator and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreThis does not appear to be the final word. Members of the Senate worry about who else the unnamed senator may have abused. Philippe Reines, a former Clinton aide, says it is up to Abedin “alone to decide what to share, with whom, how and when”.Abedin’s eye for style asserts itself throughout her memoir – even as she deals with how her husband made damaging headlines. In May 2011, she woke up in Buckingham Palace and surveyed the room. Her “long, fitted gown for the evening’s white-tie dinner hung on the bathroom door”. An “elegant chestnut-brown writing desk” stood at the “foot of the bed”. The same weekend, Weiner alerted his pregnant wife to his sexting habits. Weiner went to prison but he and Abedin are not completely estranged.Both/And is also a story of Abedin’s life before and outside politics. She tells of being born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of spending most of her youth in Saudi Arabia, a father and mother who held doctorates, of family ties in the Middle East, the subcontinent and the US. It is the strongest part of the book, a tale of an immigrant, of an upward arc.
      Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds is published in the US by Scribner
      TopicsBooksHuma AbedinHillary ClintonUS politicsAnthony WeinerPolitics booksDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More