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It’s been a dreary political winter for President Joe Biden. He’s buried under an avalanche of adverse polls showing perilously low public approval ratings as well as scant enthusiasm even among loyal Democratic voters.   

The blizzard of bad news, however, doesn’t mean Biden will lose his job next November. That’s especially true if his opponent is the rabidly divisive Donald Trump, who is kryptonite to American democracy.  

But the president’s consistently poor job performance numbers and the fact that he’s trailing Trump in many polls reflects a general Democratic failure to consolidate and expand the anti-Trump majority Biden assembled in 2020. 

Over the past three years, Democrats have made little headway on their top strategic imperative: winning back working Americans. On the contrary, Trump has expanded his already enormous margins among white working-class voters even as Democratic support among Black and Hispanic non-college voters continues to erode.  

It turns out that Biden’s policies and major legislative accomplishments are far more popular with progressive activists and college-educated cosmopolitans than with working-class voters. Democrats have been pitching their political message to the wrong audience — in effect, preaching mainly to the choir — and need to adjust their aim.   

That starts by understanding what non-college voters actually want from their political leaders, rather than what those leaders think they should want. To that end, the Progressive Policy Institute, where I am the founder and president, recently commissioned a major YouGov survey of working-class attitudes nationally and in seven key 2024 battleground states. 

Working Americans are acutely aware that the last 40 years have not been kind to people like them. Two-thirds say they are worse off and economic pessimism is even higher in the critical swing states of Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

The high cost of living is overwhelmingly (69 percent) their top economic worry. And little wonder: The economist Robert Shapiro reports that the average annual wage income of working Americans, corrected for inflation, has declined by more than three percent compared to real wage gains of 4.1 percent under Trump. 

Asked why prices have risen so much, 55 percent of these picked “government went overboard with stimulus spending, overheating the economy” over the impact of the COVID recession and supply chain bottlenecks as the economy recovered. 

The Biden administration has laid heavy emphasis on reviving U.S. manufacturing. These voters no doubt would like to see that happen, but they are looking elsewhere when it comes to opportunities for their children.  

Their top choice (44 percent for all voters and 57 percent for Hispanics) was the communications and digital sector; only 13 percent saw their kids working in manufacturing. These findings are consistent with other PPI research that suggests many Washington policymakers have a skewed mental picture of America’s working class. 

The iconic blue-collar workers in manufacturing and construction constitute only a third of today’s non-college workforce, notes PPI’s Ed Gresser. There are many more workers — and women — in health care, retail, hospitality and personal services. 

That likely helps to explain why these working-class voters don’t see a strong connection between union membership and their upward mobility. Just 6 percent say joining a union would be the best way to acquire a good job and career, and only 15 percent saw a “federal push for stronger unions” as important. 

Another progressive priority that Biden unfortunately has championed — college loan forgiveness — misfires badly with these voters, even though many of them report some college. A mere 11 percent favor the plan, while a whopping 56 percent (including 59 percent of independents and 51 percent of Hispanics) say paying off this debt isn’t fair “to the majority of Americans who don’t get college degrees.” 

Only 9 percent believe a college degree would help them most to get ahead. What they want, instead, is more public investment in apprenticeships and career pathways (74 percent) plus “affordable short-term training programs that combine work and learning.” 

Our survey confirms that Democrats have forfeited their title as the party of prosperity for average working families. 

Working-class voters trust Republicans more to manage a growing economy, promote entrepreneurship, keep the debt and deficits under control and handle crime, immigration and national security. The GOP also has the edge on some important cultural or values dimensions: protecting personal freedom, strengthening private enterprise and respecting hard work and individual initiative.  

Democrats are trusted more to combat climate change, manage the clean energy transition and protect reproductive freedom. They have a disconcertedly narrow lead (five points) on respecting democratic institutions and elections. 

The survey also suggests that Democrats would be wise to temper progressive enthusiasm for a more powerful federal government committed to wealth distribution and economic equality.   

Just 19 percent of non-college voters favor that position. Thirty-four percent embrace the conservative goal of a small government that spends and taxes less. Most (47 percent) choose a pragmatic middle option: a federal government that actively steers the economy but mostly by promoting and protecting free markets.  

More hopefully for Democrats, the survey finds that on three staples of cultural war politics — immigration, crime and gender — more working-class voters gravitate to center-ground solutions than extreme ones.  

For example, on immigration — a top concern for these voters — the progressive left’s open border position gets support from only 15 percent, while 32 percent back the populist right’s demands to shut down the border. A majority (53 percent) embrace the pragmatic position that reform should reduce illegal entry and increase legal immigration to help our economy grow.  

Our poll also has bad news for red-state Republicans pushing universal voucher bills that give parents public subsidies to send their kids to private and religious schools. Only 34 percent of working-class voters supported this approach; 60 percent want tax dollars to flow only to public schools. 

Since 2016, Democrats have been assiduously wooing young activists and college-educated professionals. The result is a smaller, more left-leaning coalition. To prevail against Trump and right-wing populism, they’re going to need a bigger party.  

Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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To win back the working class, Democrats must adjust their aim - The Hill

For as long as Donald J. Trump has dominated Republican politics, many Democrats have pined for a magical cure-all to rid them of his presence.

There was the Mueller investigation into Mr. Trumps 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia, which began four months into his presidency. Then came the first impeachment. Then, after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and his supporters stormed the Capitol, the second impeachment.

Each time, Democrats entertained visions of Mr. Trump meeting his political downfall. Each time, they were disappointed.

This year, liberal hopes have sprung anew, with federal and state prosecutors bringing 91 felony charges against Mr. Trump in four criminal cases.

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Democrats Keep Hoping It's Curtains for Trump. He's Still Center Stage. - The New York Times

Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat whose upstate New York district includes several college campuses, argued that the dissatisfaction among young voters was not necessarily personal to Biden, but in part due to lack of faith in the functioning of government. For example, Gen Z saw the U.S embroiled in two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraqspanning most, if not all, of their liveswith little to show for it. The trust in institutions to get it right is so low, Ryan said.

Some young voters frustrations may stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates; in a recent interview with NBC News, one young voter faulted Biden for failing to codify Roe v. Wade after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to obtain an abortion. Democrats have introduced legislation to codify Roe in Congress, but they dont have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster, and it wouldnt pass in the GOP-controlled House anyway.

Part of what we have to do over the next few months until the election is connect the policies of President Biden that are very popular with young peoplefrom fighting for abortion rights, to delivering the largest amount of money in in climate action in historyto the actual administration, and to this ticket, said Lobel, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested hundreds of millions of dollars in policies to combat climate change.

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What Democrats in Congress Think About Biden's Alarming Young Voter Problem - The New Republic

Several House Democrats have signed onto a letter amping up calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a case reviewing whether former President Trump is immune from prosecution over charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“[W]e strongly implore you to exercise your discretion and recuse yourself from this and any other decisions in the case of United States v. Trump,” the group of Democrats, which included Reps. Hank Johnson (Ga.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill on Monday.

Johnson serves as ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on courts. The letter, first reported by The Washington Post, was also signed by Democratic Reps. Madeleine Dean (Pa.), Gerry Connolly (Va.), Dan Goldman (N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (Texas).

Senate Democrats sent a similar letter to Thomas last week, urging him to remove himself from considering the case.

The Hill has reached out to Thomas for comment.

Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the court to decide “Whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”

The request puts the justices at the center of a pivotal election-year battle.

The House Democrats, in their letter dated Dec. 15, noted Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was an active supporter of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and pushed Trump allies on the issue. The panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol interviewed Ginni Thomas last year and said she reiterated the false claims.

In their letter calling for Justice Thomas to recuse himself, the House Democrats also pointed to the court’s new code of conduct, which was adopted amid scrutiny surrounding reports on luxury travel and other previously unreported perks that he and other justices had received.

The Supreme Court last month approved the new ethics code, with justices pledging to recuse themselves when “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The ethics code has been met with mixed reviews from Democrats, who have highlighted it lacks an enforcement mechanism.

“If you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court’s recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on, you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump,” the House members wrote in their letter to Thomas.

Continued here:
House Democrats call on Thomas to recuse himself from Trump immunity case - The Hill

Minnesota Democrats, newly in control of the state government, began 2023 by enacting a clean electricity standard. Michigan lawmakers followed suit months later as one of their final acts before gaveling out for the year.

The two laws were bookends to a year of climate action, experts say, as Democratic state officials advanced major policies that climate hawks could once only dream of.

State officials committed serious money and political capital to cleaning up the electricity sector the backbone of the energy transition while also boosting electric vehicles, restricting gas in new buildings, and building factories to manufacture batteries and other clean technology. Climate activists hope such actions ripple out nationwide, as the U.S. lags in its goal of halving emissions by 2030.

While some states took steps to boost oil and gas, or turned down federal funds for clean energy, such setbacks were the exception, not the rule, said Sonia Aggarwal, CEO of the climate policy firm Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.

Were not talking about broad, sweeping programs that take us backwards, said Aggarwal, who was formerly a White House climate aide to President Joe Biden. On the whole, its really been kind of a banner year for clean energy policy in the states.

The turnaround was seeded last year, when Congress passed $369 billion for clean energy programs in the Inflation Reduction Act. Then, in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning federal abortion rights, Democrats overperformed in the midterm elections to hold or flip key state capitols.

Those officials took power just as unprecedented federal climate money began flowing to states. That dovetailed with an equally important, but less tangible, change: Democrats got more aggressive.

Controlling each statehouse by a single vote, Minnesota and Michigan Democrats defied Republican warnings that major climate legislation would spark a backlash after a year of high energy prices. Instead, swing-state Democrats treated climate action as an electoral asset.

Polling has long pointed to strong public support for more renewable energy, but Democrats have often hesitated to risk higher prices or disruptive mandates. The falling cost of renewable energy (especially relative to fossil fuels) has eased that reluctance.

And with the fresh example of voters rewarding Democrats for embracing progressive fights on abortion, some state lawmakers said they felt emboldened to push further on popular climate policies, too.

Abortion changed the political landscape for Democrats, said Michigan House Speaker Pro Tempore Laurie Pohutsky. I think that was the first instance of us just taking the public at their word about what they wanted and not worrying about pushing things too far.

When Michigan lawmakers faced Republican and industry pushback over their climate package, Pohutsky said, Democrats looked to abortion as a road map: They defended their policies using some traditionally conservative messages, like property rights and energy independence, and trusted polling that showed voters generally supported their agenda.

It was just kind of a matter of getting out of our own way, Pohutsky said.

Over the past year, states stretching from California to New York have advanced major climate policies for electricity, transportation, buildings and industry.

New Jersey and a half-dozen other states adopted Californias stringent tailpipe-emissions standards, extending the Golden States pollution rules to about one-third of the U.S. car market. (Others, like Massachusetts, already adopted them last year.) The standards require automakers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles, effectively banning new gas car sales by 2035 though Colorado and New Mexico stopped short of adopting that total ban.

In Minnesota, lawmakers set new standards for their transportation planning that seek to cut down on vehicle miles traveled an innovative approach, experts said, that could inspire similar efforts in other states.

Several states also tackled the hot-button issue of transitioning away from gas appliances. In New York, for example, lawmakers passed a ban on fossil fuel infrastructure in most new buildings that will phase in between 2026 and 2029.

Washington state was also poised to ban gas hookups in new buildings, but the state pulled back after a federal court in April overturned a gas ban in Berkeley, California. Instead, Washington state will allow builders to install gas systems only if they can match the energy efficiency of a heat pump meaning they will have to offset gas appliances by installing more insulation or cutting energy use elsewhere.

Washington state also began its new cap-and-trade system, with its carbon auctions fetching the state more than $1.5 billion in revenue so far this year. Washington state law directs that money toward emissions-cutting projects, with a mandate that at least 35 percent of the funding directly benefit overburdened communities.

Other states, enticed by federal climate programs that require matching funds, passed hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies or grants. Some, like Michigans $350 million Make it in Michigan Competitiveness Fund, gave state officials broad leeway to pursue federal funding for clean manufacturing and vehicle electrification as well as investments further afield from climate, like semiconductor production.

Other states passed more narrowly targeted subsidies. Oregons$90 million climate package included an energy performance standard for commercial buildings, offering subsidies to building owners who meet their benchmarks ahead of schedule. The state intends to align those incentives with federal programs, allowing building owners to stack their subsidies.

Will all those new climate policies translate into deep emissions cuts? The real test will come as states begin to implement the programs they pushed through this year, experts say.

The gears are turning, but were still very much in the planning phase, said Miguel Moravec, a senior associate at the nonprofit RMI who focuses on transportation policy.

Even as state climate policies multiply, U.S. oil and natural gas production has reached record highs. Some analysts expect that growth to continue into next year.

There has been little appetite among some Democratic governors like Govs. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Jared Polis of Colorado and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania to curb drilling, even as they back some limits on the industrys environmental impact.

Indeed, climate-oriented governors across the country are behind their own decarbonization targets, according to a report this month from the Environmental Defense Fund.

Twenty-three states, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, are on track to miss their emission reduction targets by about 29 percent, according to the EDF report, an overshoot of almost 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Many of these governors have been in a position of climate leadership for years, said Pam Kiely, EDFs associate vice president for U.S. climate. Its time for them to move beyond pledges and plans.

Some Democratic governors have also worked against climate policy. Grisham vetoed several climate programs, including EV subsidies of up to $4,000 and geothermal research funding, citing their costs.

And in Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear rejected federal funding to develop a climate plan a decision that forgoes millions of dollars from EPAs climate pollution reduction grants. Some Kentucky cities hope to step into the states role, create a plan and claim the funds.

Republican governors in Florida, Iowa, South Dakota and Wyoming rejected those same grants, one of the Inflation Reduction Acts biggest pots of money for states.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon pulled out of the program last month after initially applying, citing my ever-growing concern that EPA will turn Wyoming and other states planning efforts upside down into a mandate to prematurely shut down Wyomings all-of-the-above energy development approach.

Other Republican-governed states took direct action to boost fossil fuels. Texas passed legislation to encourage construction of new gas-fueled power plants, including $5 billion in loans and grants.

And North Carolinas GOP-dominated Legislature blocked Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers clean car standards, as well as new energy efficiency codes for homes, defanging the states building code-writers in the process.

That split-screen more renewables on one hand; more oil on the other has some climate advocates questioning whether 2023 will mark a true turning point.

There is an open question of whether or not were actually investing in a transition away from fossil fuels, said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center.

Simply adding more renewables on top of fossil fuels means missing the decarbonization timeline that science demands, he said. But thats been the approach from New Mexico and other oil-producing states, and its been reinforced by federal policies.

The Inflation Reduction Act ties auctions of federal offshore wind leases to offshore oil leases, and it subsidizes carbon capture and hydrogen all priorities of the oil and gas sector. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law also provided billions for EV chargers, capping oil and gas wells, and traditional roads and bridges.

Those laws are focused on carrots, not focused on sticks, Schlenker-Goodrich said.

Efforts to directly limit emissions have seen mixed results. An example came in September, when Colorado finalized its regulations on major industrial polluters.

The Polis administration hailed the rules as a pioneering effort to curb emissions from a hardto-regulate sector. But climate advocates assailed it as worse than doing nothing, because its carve-outs and high emissions cap could enable manufacturers to pollute more than the status quo.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative an 11-state mandatory cap-and-trade market has also had a bumpy road.

A Pennsylvania court decision blocked the states participation in the market and though the Shapiro administration is challenging that decision, the governor has remained officially noncommittal to joining the carbon-trading program. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkins effort to pull Virginia out of RGGI suffered a setback after Democrats recaptured full control of the Legislature.

While states are opening new doors to climate action thanks in part to the climate and infrastructure laws the future is still uncertain, said Schlenker-Goodrich.

[The Inflation Reduction Act] turned the entire advocacy, political and economic landscape into hotly contested space. But it remains contested, he said. That is a positive step in the right direction. But in many respects, for the folks who are leaning into what comes next, it is also illuminating how politically and economically difficult that transition is going to be.

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How 2023 changed the way states do climate policy - E&E News by POLITICO