Biden wishes to win back white working-class voters

The Rise of the Democratic Party: Where Do We Stand, Where Are We Going? How Do We Want to Resurrect the March on Washington?

It may seem strange that Mr. Obama sounded like he was in the middle of a meeting with the Democrats. Even though his days of being a Marxist were behind him, his appreciation of class politics was still there, and he went on to have a successful career in politics.

All the pieces of Mr. Obama’s plan fit together: an electoral strategy designed to make Democrats the party of working people; a policy agenda oriented around comprehensive economic reform; and a faith that American democracy could deliver real change. By mixing political calculation with moral vision, Democrats could resurrect the March on Washington coalition and — finally — transform politics.

A critical factor is that many of the voter groups that Democrats depend upon are less focused on the issues where public concerns about Biden’s performance are greatest and more focused on the issues where Republicans are most nervous about. The blue team cares about abortion and democracy while the red team focuses on crime and immigration, says a long-time GOP pollster. “And there’s obviously a little overlap, particularly on the inflation front. The two different teams are not interested in the same things and are motivated by different things.

The Donald Trump-era Republicans are viewed by many voters as a threat to their rights, values and democracy, making the Democrats highly competitive this year. The critical question for November may be whether those considerations can allow Democratic candidates to continue levitating above the negative assessments of the economy and Biden’s performance.

In a strategy memo to be released this week and shared with CNN, the Way to Win group argues that Democrats should rebut the Republican attacks by depicting the GOP agenda as an assault on individual freedom and the drive to restrict abortion. Democrats need to make the case that Republicans have no plan to lower prices, but do have a plan to end Social Security and raise taxes on millions of lower income people, in order to win over voters.

During Senate debates in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina the pull and push between these priorities was vividly seen. During last week’s televised Arizona encounter, for instance, Republican challenger Blake Masters came out of the gate very strong and kept Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on the defensive by relentlessly linking him to Biden while the conversation initially focused on inflation and border security. As the discussion shifted towards abortion and election integrity, Kelly again regained the traction he had lost, as Masters was struggling to explain his support for a near total ban on abortion and his embrace of Trumps baseless claims of widespread fraud in 2020.

There are not many precedents for senate candidates from the president’s party to win in states with low approval ratings. According to exit polls, the Republicans lost all their Senate races in states with Trump’s approval rating less than 50%. In the 2010 Republican sweep, Democrats lost 13 of the 15 Senate races in states where exit polls placed Barack Obama’s approval rating at 47% of less; only Harry Reid in Nevada (where Obama stood at 46%) and Joe Manchin in West Virginia (who, rather incredibly, carried a state where just 30% of voters approved of Obama’s performance) surmounted that tide. In 2006, Republicans lost 19 of the 20 Senate races in states where exit polls put George W. Bush’s approval at 45% or less (then-Senator Olympia Snowe in Maine was the sole exception.)

The sheer intractibility of our modern political divisions means fewer voters would be open to shifting loyalties even if they were unhappy with current conditions. The Senate races inArizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are just some of the places where Republicans have been hurt by nominating Trump-aligned candidates.

The economy: A slim plurality of voters, about 31%, called inflation their top issue, and roughly 8 in 10 said inflation had been a hardship for them personally. Voters said they trusted the GOP over Democrats to deal with inflation.

Given these disparities, Democrats everywhere are stressing issues relating to rights and values, particularly abortion, but also warning about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his movement. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.

What Are We Really Saying about Biden, His Legislators, and the “Cosmology and Values of the Economy”? A Conversation with Geoff Garin

The most important of these is the point that the incentives for domestic production embedded in the Biden legislative accomplishments will result in a boom in US employment.

There are some plant openings this year that have a few Democrats emphasizing them.

More commonly, Democrats are stressing legislation the party has passed that offers families some relief on specific costs, especially the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says that highlighting such specific initiatives can allow individual candidates to overcome the negative overall judgment on Biden’s economic management. His main worry is that too many Democrats are focusing on abortion rather than the economic message.

One of the benefits of being a Latino for Democratic candidates is that Republicans haven’t convinced voters they have specific answers to the economy, says founder of Somos Votantes. “The concrete is not set yet,” she said recently after a day of door-to-door canvassing in Phoenix. “There is still a way to move people, connect with people.” Like Way to Win, her group stresses a message that tries to bridge the kitchen tables/values divide: Democrats are committed to providing people opportunities to help them meet their obligation to their families, while Republicans are focused on taking away rights.

When the elections break, they usually break in one direction. And right now, all the indicators on my political dashboard are blinking red — as in, toward Republicans.

The End of the Inflationary Scenario: Predictions from the Ex-President Barack Obama, Kevin McCarthy, and the State of the Union

John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress wrote recently that inflation was a political problem for incumbent governments around the world. Why should the United States be different?

The latest New York Times/Siena poll, my colleague Nate Cohn wrote this week, suggests that “the conditions that helped Democrats gain over the summer no longer seem to be in place,” with voters’ sour view of the economy driving the downturn in the party’s prospects.

The GOP is in good shape to win back the House of Representatives while the Senate is in danger of being taken over by the Democrats. A Republican triumph in either chamber would severely curtail Biden’s domestic presidency and set up an acrimonious two years of political standoffs ahead of the 2024 White House race.

Kevin McCarthy, potential next Republican House speaker, laid out his plans for power in an interview with CNN, as well as vows to tackle border security and rising crime. He promised broad investigations against the Biden administration on the Afghanistan withdrawal, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and how the administration has dealt with parents and school board meetings. He didn’t rule out the possibility of impeaching Biden.

The four presidents took to the campaign trail over the weekend, which was a sign of the critical stakes and growing angst among Democrats.

Ex-President Trump, edging ever closer to announcing a 2024 White House bid, will wrap up a campaign he used to show his enduring magnetism among grassroots Republicans, in Ohio, with a rally for Senate nominee J.D. Vance on Monday. During his speech on Sunday night, Trump predicted that voters would “elect an incredible slate of true MAGA warriors to Congress.”

Biden, who spent Saturday getting out the vote in the critical Pennsylvania Senate race with Obama, warned that the nation’s core values are in peril from Republicans who denied the truth about the US Capitol insurrection and following the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul.

“Democracy is literally on the ballot. This is a defining moment for the nation. We all need to speak with one voice, even though we are in a political party. Biden said there was no place in America for political violence.

The president will end his effort to stave off a rebuke from voters at a Democratic event in Maryland. It’s no wonder that he has a low approval ratings and the fact that he won’t be campaigning to win an important race in the final night shows his weakened standing in the election.

Democrats are trying to hold onto the House of Representatives in strongholds such as New York, Washington and Oregon. A net gain of five seats is needed for the Republicans to regain control. The fate of the Senate will be decided by a number of swing states, including Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Republicans are also showing renewed interest in the race in New Hampshire between Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan and retired Army Brig. The Democrats brand the pro-Trump candidate as an election-denying extremists.

Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, predicted in an interview that her party would win both the House and the Senate and accused Biden of being ignorant of the economic anxiety of Americans with his warnings about democracy.

But the president warned in a speech in Pittsburgh on Saturday night alongside Obama that Republican concern over the economy was a ruse and claimed that the GOP would cut Social Security and Medicare if they won majorities.

They are all about the wealthier getting wealthy. The wealthier are staying rich. The middle class gets stiffed. Vice President Biden said the poor get poorer under their policy.

The First Major Reionizations of the GOP: How Ron DeSantis and Bill Clinton Tuned the New York Center for the 21st Century

The midterms are the first national vote since the chaos and violence triggered by Trump’s refusal to accept the result of the last presidential election and there are already fears that some Republican candidates may follow his example and try to defy the will of voters if they don’t win. Some, like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, have already raised concerns about the integrity of the vote.

On Sunday a staffer opened a letter that had suspicious white powder at the headquarters of the pro-Trump candidate for Arizona governor. Lake’s opponent, current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, condemned the incident as “incredibly concerning.”

Biden and Obama tried to help Fetterman win the Pennsylvania Senate race, which is the party’s best chance of taking the seat from the Republicans. Arizona and Nevada have Democrats under intense pressure that could flip the chamber to the GOP. Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to win the majority.

The first major clashes of the 2024 GOP nominating contest, meanwhile, broke out in Florida with Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holding dueling rallies Sunday night. The ex-president, who is expected to launch a third White House bid within days, coined a new nickname Saturday for the man who could prove to be his toughest primary opponent: “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

But the Florida governor chose not to engage, turning his ire instead on Biden and calling his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, “a donkey” while taking credit for defying Washington officials and experts during the pandemic.

As he went to rally for Rubio on Sunday, he kept teasing the possibility of a presidential run. In another sign the next presidential race is stirring, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who has long eyed higher office, announced he would not join the Republican primary.

Bill Clinton was campaigning for Kathy Hochul, a Democratic governor of New York. The Empire state should be safe territory for his party but Hochul’s closer-than-expected reelection race against Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin underscores the toughness of the national environment for Democrats.

“I know the average election rally is just ‘whoop dee doo do vote for me,’ but your life is on the line. Clinton said that the life of young people in the audience was on the line.

CNN Exit Polls: An Analysis of Election Day Voters’ Views of the “Red Wave” that Democrats Were Not Afraid of

If Republicans win back the House, they can impose a vise on Biden’s legislative program and set up a series of perilous political showdowns on spending and raising the debt-ceiling. They are promising a lot of hearings and investigations into everything from the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to the surge in migrants across the southern border.

A GOP majority would contain scores of candidates in Trump’s extreme image and would be weaponized to damage the president as much as possible ahead of a potential rematch with Trump in 2024. And a Republican Senate would frustrate Biden’s hopes of balancing out the judiciary after four years of Trump nominating conservative judges.

It is too early to say which party will control the House of Representatives or the Senate in next year’s elections. The Republicans had “red wave” wished for, but they did not come to fruition.

Abortion rights: The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade brought abortion to center stage, with about 27% of voters calling it their top issue. About 6 in 10 voters felt negatively about it, with nearly 4 in 10 saying they were angry. Democrats had a roughly 11-point edge over the GOP when it came to which party voters trusted to handle issues related to abortion.

Donald Trump was on the minds of voters as much as the incumbent. Roughly 32% of voters intend to vote against him, a few points lower than the one-third who intend to vote against Biden.

In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, the projected Democratic winner, Josh Shapiro, picked up roughly one-quarter of commonwealth voters who disapproved of Biden. Democratic candidates won all of the races in which they competed if voters somewhat didn’t like Biden.

CNN Exit Polls are a combination of in-person interviews with Election Day voters and in-person interviews, telephone and online polls measuring the views of early and absentee by-mail voters. They were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. Read more here.

Distinguishing between Michigan and Pennsylvania Democratic Governatorial Candidates: The Case for Black Lives in the Classroom and in the Senate

Two Democrats who won gubernatorial races in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania delivered similar messages to their national party on Sunday, saying their keen focus on kitchen table issues helped them secure their wins.

“I can tell you we stayed focused on the fundamentals, right, whether it’s fixing the damn roads or making sure our kids are back on track after an incredible disruption in their learning, or just simply solving problems and being honest with the people,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro told Bash in a separate interview that his campaign success came from connecting with voters in areas that are often forgotten in the state. He said that his campaign taught them practical things that would improve their lives.

In the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, CNN is projecting that Pennsylvania Attorney General Daniel Shaprio will beat Republican Doug Mastriano.

Mastriano is among a number of fervent deniers of the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election who have lost their 2022 races. The 2020 election has also been a target for false claims.

When Democrats in key swing states stressed the importance of the economy and not on global issues in the last part of the election, it sheds light on the different approaches taken by the party.

“A governor can’t fix global inflation. We can protect our right to make our own decisions about our bodies by taking actions to keep more money in people’s pockets. “And all of this was squarely front-and-center for a lot of Michigan voters and I suspect that’s probably true for voters across the country.”

“We ignored the noise coming out of Washington, DC, and instead focused on the good people of Washington County, Pennsylvania,” he said, adding that “helping (voters) understand how you can actually build a bridge between the parties to kind of take down the temperature and get real things done” is key to Democrats making gains with voters in rural areas.

Editor’s Note: Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City and a former New York state senator. His own views are expressed in this commentary. Read more opinion at CNN.

Black voters are some of the most sensible, practical and moderate voters in the democrats. Because of this, President Biden decided to push the South Carolina primary ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire.

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee recently voted to approve the plan to overhaul the party’s 2024 presidential nominating calendar. The proposal needs to be approved at a full DNC meeting, set for early next year.

The Failures of the Democrat Party on the Basis of a Black Community: The U.S. House of Representatives to the Senate and the November 2022 Election

It feels like faith has been rewarded in a party that many people from lower-income classes feel has taken our communities for granted. And as the leader of the largest city in the United States, with a Black population of about 2 million people, I am thrilled that we are making this statement.

Much of the anger from working-class and lower-income Americans over the last decade is a product of these failures. Many of them left the Democratic Party because they felt betrayed and the support from White working-class voters waned.

By 2020, the white working class — defined by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis as “whites without four-year college degrees” — voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden 67-32, according to network exit polls. In the 2022 election, white working-class voters backed Republican House candidates by almost the identical margin, 66-32.

The foundation of our base was undermined by low turnout by black and Latino voters in key states like New York, California and Florida, along with Republican resurgence with moderate Latino and Asian voters.

We Do Not Live in the Shadow of Left-Right Symmetry. Why We Need Our Own People, Not What We Don’t

First, in my experience, they don’t want “help.” They want what they have earned. They work hard, and, at a minimum, they should not have to worry about crime, schools, child care, health care or housing. This isn’t a socialist dream. Those are the basics that they paid for by doing the jobs that keep our country running.

Our platform will have to include approaches to difficult challenges. Federal government should get back in the affordable housing business.

Federal investment in housing could help millions of people from poverty as the costs to build and subsidize new homes increase. Similarly, a further expansion of funding for child care would reduce a major household expense while giving children a stronger start in life and freeing up mothers to work and advance in their careers.

The earned income tax credit and child care credit are two measures that help to keep working people out of debt by putting money into their pockets.

These aren’t handouts. These are prudent investments. The policies in our platform are not our main message because they are not our brand.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/opinions/democrats-2024-primary-calendar-black-voters-adams/index.html

A Second Myth Buster: Working People are Not Suffered by Culture Wars and Outrage is Not a Plan for the Future

That brings me to my second myth buster: Working people don’t have time for a culture war. They are working, they are not on the social network. Let’s not waste time attacking this or that group. We should show working people how to correct the injustice they are suffering and then acknowledge it. Outrage is not a plan for the future.

I have never been to a community meeting in a lower-income or working-class neighborhood where the residents asked for fewer police. The most entrepreneurial, pro-business people I know are immigrants and first-generation Americans. People in my party vote against public safety and economic growth.

To make historically Black South Carolina our first primary state, there is no better way to achieve that than to make the practical agenda of working people our primary platform.

The Democratic War on Wall Street: How the Left Wants to Prevent Wall Street Deceleration and the Birth of Socialism in the United States

That was the plan. And it succeeded. The democrats won the war inside their party. They were given many chances to rule. They triangulated and sought grand bargains. Today we live in a world where college degrees and deregulatory Wall Street are seen as the answer to all problems. The Democrats turned their back on populism and refused to use the financial crisis as a chance to remake the financial system. They came to identify with that system.

The combination of high net worth and high moral virtue that the Democrats offer is a richly satisfying blend for some voters, a perfect summary of how they see themselves. For party leaders, it means second careers at Silicon Valley giants and presidential libraries that surpass those of the Republicans in soaring monumentalism. Perhaps it is a bargain if the country has to pay for such things.

Sizable majorities of Americans desperately want traditional liberal measures like universal health care and economic fairness. But actually, existing liberalism, with its air of upper-crust contempt and its top-down moralism, rubs this deeply democratic nation exactly the wrong way.

These things are obvious when viewed from a certain distance, but liberals, intoxicated by their own righteousness, can never figure it out. They keep expecting the right to die off as if they are dying out, and yet the Republicans keep dreaming of new culture wars against the liberals.

What does the liberals do? We dig in. We cheer for our side, we cheer some more, we demand that everyone else also cheer. We react hysterically to bad news, we refuse any analysis that doesn’t begin by ascribing Satanism to the G.O.P., and we go on Twitter to scold those who don’t measure up to our standards in some way. This is not strategy. It is fandom.

Why the Democrat Party Is Not Stable: Race Identities, Attitudes, and Economic Opportunity for Low-Income Whites

A coalition of racial minorities and whites who are sympathetic to the issues faced by minority groups in America. The common thread that links wealthier whites with less educated minorities is racial identities and attitudes.

was driven by racial group animus. The white workingclass was particularly attracted to Trump by the disliking minority groups in the community who were attracted to him solely because he was of a certain race.

There are those who argue, however, that the contemporary Democratic coalition is more fragile than Wronski suggests. Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, emailed to say, “If you’re a Democrat, you might worry that the coalition is not stable.”

My sense is that much of the college educated liberal political rhetoric is all about social signaling to satisfy their own psychological needs and improve their social standing with other college educated liberals, rather than policies that would actually reduce racial gaps in economic well-being, civil rights protections, and other quality of life

Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist, is an explicit critic of the left wing of the party. Begala wrote that the Progressives are the greatest challenge for the Democrats.

The progressive left makes up 12 percent of the party, which includes Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. The most politically engaged of the coalition is this group, which has an extremely liberal stance in all policy areas. In contrast, the three other Democratic-oriented groups are no more than about half White non-Hispanic.

This disproportionally white wing of the party, as I have previously discussed, provided crucial support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley when they ran for Congress in 2018, putting them over the top in their first primary victories over powerful Democratic incumbents.

Many white liberals living in wealthy areas are not exposed to the economic and personal stresses of the low income communities. They are more strongly motivated by identity issues around gender and race, but are less concerned with poverty or economic insecurity issues than liberals in the sixties.

Parts of the Democratic coalition are talking past each other and sometimes clashing. In the case of climate change, white liberals want to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles that most low-income nonwhites cannot afford. During Covid, affluent white liberals could work at home and have food delivered to them by nonwhite workers who left the food packages at their doorstep or who had to go to work and suffer higher rates of illness.

White liberals are still better for nonwhites than Republicans, but it is revealing that the African-Americans in South Carolina preferred Biden to Warren.

“Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back, because choices we made in the last two years,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. This is a blue-collar plan to make a difference in your life.

The Times Counts Politics: An Ambassador to the Dialogue of Political Campaigns and Consumer Finance Issues: The Case of Josh Biden and Other New Pennsylvania Governors

He highlighted his efforts to lower insulin costs and cited pocketbook issues recognizable to almost any consumer — what he called “junk fees.” He identified bank charges that were excessive and included credit card late fees, hotel fees, and change-of-service fees.

“Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most folks in homes like the one I grew up in,” Mr. Biden said. “They add up to hundreds of dollars a month.”

How Times reporters cover politics. Our journalists are used to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

Other Democrats are taking a similar approach. On his first full day in office, Pennsylvania’s new Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, signed an executive order declaring that thousands of state jobs would no longer require a four-year college degree.