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Senate Republicans began this year thinking that they had leverage over some Democrats, particularly the 10 up for reelection next year in states that President Trump won in the fall.

Those Democrats, some GOP strategists believed, would want to work with the president to appeal to enough Trump voters to win their states in November 2018.

That didnt happen. Instead, Trumps standing has slipped in many of these states. The president has faced legislative gridlock and a deepening investigation of his campaigns connections to Russia. His focus, in public appearances and on social media, has regularly drifted away from the policy agenda on Capitol Hill.

Thats left Senate Democrats feeling stronger than they expected to be eight months after their highly disappointing showing in 2016, which left them in the minority and heading into 2018 defending 25 seats compared with Republicans eight.

If Trump had spent his first six months increasing or even maintaining his popularity in these states, he might have struck enough political fear in these 2018 Democrats to compel them to support some of his initiatives.

Thats looking more and more like the sort of negotiation that will happen only if Democrats can command a good deal in return.

McConnell says GOP must shore up ACA insurance markets if Senate bill dies

The dynamic is sure to test Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the months ahead, particularly if Republicans fail to muster the votes solely from their side of the aisle to repeal chunks of the Affordable Care Act. McConnell has warned that such an outcome will force him to work with Democrats to shore up imploding insurance markets.

No action is not an alternative, McConnell said Thursday while in Kentucky.

Beyond the health-care fight, McConnell has also made clear that there are many other agenda items that will require the traditional 60-vote threshold to choke off filibusters, meaning he needs at least eight Democrats to move legislation such as annual government funding bills and an increase in the governments borrowing authority.

But the bargaining table is different now.

Take Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), whose state delivered a critical victory for Trump, the first by a GOP presidential nominee since 1984.

A staunch liberal, Baldwin began the year expecting her 2018 reelection bid to be a 50-50 prospect. Her state had voted Republican three straight times for governor and in two of the past three Senate races.

Trump has used the presidential bully pulpit to focus on the Badger State, making three trips there since November. But his visits have done little to boost his standing.

Just 41 percent of Wisconsin voters approved of Trumps job performance in late June, while 51 percent disapproved, according to a poll by Marquette Law School.

On basic popularity, Trump is easily the most disliked politician among Wisconsin voters, with 54 percent holding an unfavorable view of him and 40 percent a favorable one.

Baldwins image is not great, but it is far better in Wisconsins eyes than Trump: 38 percent have a favorable view and 38 percent unfavorable.

Its the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania, both states Trump narrowly won. In Michigan, just 35 percent of voters approved of his job performance in a late May poll conducted by EPIC-MRA, with 61 percent disapproving. In Pennsylvania, 37 percent supported his job performance while 49 percent did not, according to a May poll by Franklin & Marshall University.

The good news for Trump is that his image in Pennsylvania improved a little from earlier in the year. The bad news is that his image in Michigan got a bit worse. The really bad news is that Trumps image is battered enough that neither Sens. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) nor Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) are feeling much pressure to work with Trump in the run-up to their 2018 reelection bids, unless its on their terms on a critical issue for their state.

For senators who hail from states where he is completely underwater, there is no political reason to work with him unless its on an issue where they have something to gain, said Matthew Miller, a former aide to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Infrastructure was Trumps shot at a bipartisan deal, but he left Democrats waiting by the phone

Its not just Trump who is unpopular; so is his partys health-care proposal.

Late last month, two liberal super PACs, Priorities USA Action and Senate Majority PAC, released a poll of the 10 states Trump won where Democrats face reelection next year. It showed that 60 percent of voters in those key battlegrounds want the Senate to start over on a health-care plan, while only 25 percent support its passage.

The super PACs did not release Trump-specific data, but several sources familiar with the poll said that the Democratic groups also privately tested the presidents standing with voters in those 10 states. Only in the most conservative of those states, such as West Virginia and North Dakota, did Trump have a net positive approval rating, but even there his approval was only a handful of points higher than his disapproval.

Trump won West Virginia and North Dakota by 42 and 36 points, respectively. Under normal political circumstances, Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) should be trying at every turn to work with Trump much as Southern Democrats supported Ronald Reagans early agenda when the Republican icon swept that region in 1980.

After initial meetings with Trump during the transition, during which their names were floated as potential Cabinet members, Manchin and Heitkamp have kept a respectful distance from the president on most issues. Unless Trump can regain his strong popularity in these conservative states, the two are unlikely to feel the pressure to support the president, particularly when hes pushing very conservative agenda items.

You have to demonstrate that you respect the office and are willing to work with him, but hold firm to your principles on core issues, Miller said, describing Manchin and Heitkamps approach.

During the spring negotiations over 2017 government funding, Democrats held firm against most of Trumps priorities, including money for a Mexican border wall. Republicans got very few conservative wins.

If Trump isnt careful, this dynamic might start repeating itself for the foreseeable future.

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Republicans thought they could force 2018 Democrats to cut deals, but Trump keeps sliding in polls - Washington Post

Its beginning to give me a nagging sense of dj vu. Anyone in fashion has been here before.

Indeed, as most apparel brands, high and low, could tell you, the transformation of their customer base from people acting out of allegiance to an inherited group ethos to people acting as individuals motivated by personal desire began taking place almost a decade ago.

Robert Burke, the former fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman and founder of a luxury consultancy, describes it this way: We used to talk about the designer customer or the fast fashion customer or the Cline customer, and if someone fit into those categories, their choices were largely predictable and they did not cross over. Starting in about 2006, 2007 and then after the economic downturn, that completely changed. They became much more independent. Also less predictable.

Consumers of clothing began to make choices dictated not by what was expected of them or what had been prescribed for them from head to toe by a brand whose value system they inherited, but by whatever fit them best whatever felt most tailored to them individually at that moment.

One way to think of this is to compare the wardrobe of Princess Diana, with her early allegiance to Liberty scarves and hunting tweeds, with that of the current Duchess of Cambridge, whose dresses swing from the modestly priced Topshop to the high-fashion Alexander McQueen. Or think about the shift in the closets of Wall Street bankers from a menagerie of animal-print Herms ties to casual-Friday anonymity. Or the rise and fall of J. Crew.

So if it is true that political consumers are following the same broad model of behavior as clothing consumers, would it not make sense to ask whether there is something political parties could learn from the strategic adaptations of clothing brands?

They havent necessarily solved the loyalty problem. But they have definitely been experimenting with a new approach. And their success is measured not every two or four years but every quarter.

The results have altered both the geography of retail and the balance of power, shifting it from a one-way communication highway (the brand spoke; the consumer listened) to a dialogue.

When Saks opened its new store in Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan, for example, it did so with floors that had been configured so that instead of their having a designer section and a contemporary section, borders between areas had been avoided.

Why should a shopper who wanted cool sneakers to wear with a tuxedo have to go from department to department, or even to different floors, to find what he was looking for, potentially getting bored or irritated in the process and deciding to go elsewhere? Instead, choice was laid at his feet: options stretching out along a single floor as far as the eye could see.

Brands discovered that consumers were confused by the plethora of lines (literal and metaphorical) that industry wisdom had dictated, so they combined them into one that bridged price points and moods and was united by a single identifiable message.

Instead of selling separate outerwear and weekend and high-fashion collections with different names and ad campaigns that appeared on different platforms, fragmenting its audience, Burberry merged them all into one: Its big tent is defined by an overriding vision of British tradition with a mash-up edge that could encompass a rainbow of trench coats or made-to-order capes, silken Bloomsbury-set pajamas suits or sculptural white shirts, all at the same time.

Conglomerates such as LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton adopted an approach of semi-radical transparency, and instead of cloaking themselves in their former air of mystery, which turned out to be creating distance instead of intrigue, invited potential consumers into the ateliers to see their artisans in the process of making their products, humanizing themselves along the way.

They transformed their retail temples, formerly hushed chambers with products on pedestals, into lounges where customers could hang out and feel at home. And they began to place as much importance on (and investment in) peer-to-peer and influencer opinion as they have on celebrity endorsement.

Clearly a political party is not a fashion company. And the stakes, for all of us, are much higher in the voting booth than in the fitting room. But before everyone takes umbrage at the idea of ever connecting the two or conflating what is often stereotyped as superficial with what is considered substantive, its worth remembering what caused the epiphany on both the high street and the haute street: the advent of the educated consumer.

Isnt that what we want for the electorate, too?

Vanessa Friedman is the chief fashion critic for The New York Times.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on July 9, 2017, on Page SR5 of the New York edition with the headline: Guccis Guide for Democrats.

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What Gucci Can Teach the Democrats - New York Times

News & Observer

Democrats look to 2020 Census to gain ground News & Observer North Carolina Democrats will take stock of state and national party successes and failures in their annual pep rally dinner program next weekend. Their keynote speaker will be former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading a new nationwide ...

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Democrats look to 2020 Census to gain ground - News & Observer

In this analysis of the Cleveland Indians, Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight shows how theyre a better team than theirwinloss record so far. A key team stat of theirs that figures into his calculations is their Pythagorean expectation, which is high. The Pythagorean expectation is what you would expect a teams winning percentage to be when you consider the ratio of itsruns scored to runs allowed. When a teams Pythagorean expectation is higher than its winning percentage, its future performance is likely to be better than its record to date. When its lower, worse.

The concept can be applied to politics. For example, in the last national election for president, the Senate, and the House the aggregate vote won by each party is like runs scored. The vote it lost to the other party is like runs allowed. Did the percentage of contests that each party won match the percentage of the vote thatit won? No.

In the House, Senate, and presidential races combined, Democrats won about 12 million more votes than the Republicans, despite coming up empty on Election Night, winning neither the White House nor either house of Congress. This is not an argument about the Electoral College or gerrymandering. Its a statistical observation. It doesnt jibe with the assumption, which you can hear all day long on the Left as well as on the Right, that the Democratic party is on life support. Its true that at the state and local level in many parts of the country its getting crushed. At the national level, though, no. There its the majority party, at least in terms of popular support as measured by votes cast.

Currently on the generic ballot for the House, Democrats lead Republicans by 6.5 percentage points, according to an average of polls compiled, again, by FiveThirtyEight. That would be a gain of 7.6 points since November (when Republicans won the aggregate vote for the House by 1.1 points). Those polls are in line with the four relevant special House elections so far this year. (There was a fifth, in California, but it was a runoff between two Democrats, as in 2016.) In red districts in Kansas, Montana, Georgia, and South Carolina, Democrats improved by 8.6 points over their performance last November. If they improve by that much across the board next November, they may take the House. They would need to flip 24 seats.

As of now, the table looks set for a typical midterm election: The party out of power gains ground. If Republicans want to defend against that outcome, they should figure out how to appeal to Democrats. So far the instinct of the president has been to shore up his base in ways that come across as hostile to Democrats; he doesnt call them deplorable, but thats approximately what they hear. Obviously, congressional Republicans in purple districts need to walk a tight line between independence and party loyalty.

Meanwhile, of course, it would be in the self-interest of Democrats to stretch and figure out how to reach Americans who are drawn to the GOP. It would be in the self-interest of both parties, for that matter, to forswear smugness and attitude and start disarming each others voters with civility and tact. It would be in the interest of the country too.

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Misunderestimating the Democrats - National Review

In reorganizing the local party organization that was decertified as dysfunctional a year ago by state party chair Mary Mancini, Shelby County Democrats are thinking big.

Thats big in several senses of the word, as four key members of the soon-to-be reorganized Shelby County Democratic Party explained in a press conference this past week at the IBEW meeting hall on Madison, a frequent party meeting spot.

The four were David Cambron, a state party committeeman, former party vice chair, and president of the Germantown Democrats; David Cocke and Carlissa Shaw, co-chairs of the ad hoc group that held four county-wide reorganizational forums over the last several months; and Danielle Inez, newly elected president of the countys Young Democrats.

As the four explained to attending media, the newly reorganized SCDP will be numerically bigger, consisting of two separate bodies, an executive committee composed of two members (one male, one female) from each of the countys 13 County commission districts and a few additional ex officio members; as well as a Grass Roots Council, consisting of 130 members.

Both the Council, which will meet quarterly, and the executive committee, will be elected at a convention to be held on Saturday, July 22, from 10 to 11 a.m. at Mississippi Boulevard Baptist Church. A second convention will be held at the same site two weeks later on August 5 to elect a local party chair.

We think weve done it right, said Cocke. We intend to be an active party, not just a party that meets once a month to get in trouble.We need a big tent. He defined the Grass Roots Council as an activist, issue-oriented body, whereas the exective committee wold conduct the routine business of party affairs.

Saying that a lot of Democrats want to hit the pavement, Shaw elaborated on the Council as a body able to speak to the executive committee.

As Cambron noted, The world changed on November 8. We designed a new party to include new people, new activists, and new groups, citing the recently founded grop Indivisible as an example of the latter.

On the thorny issue of defining who Democrats are, Cocke said certain requirements would be imposed but not so many as to inhibit party growth.

Inez said that the local party would be guided in large measure by the parameters for membership established by the state Democratic Party. And one thing wont change: Both she and Shaw said that Roberts Rules of Order would remain the basis for conduct of meetings and that members of the executive committee would receive training sessions on the parliamentary formula.

(Shaw had noted, in one of the forums conducted by the reorganization group, that confusion had resulted in meetings of the former SCDP because of the differing degrees of familiarity with Roberts Rules by executive committee members.)

For those who want to know more about the new party and its new rules, Cocke credited Inez with the preparation of a cheat sheet on all the details, which can be found on the partys website shelbydem.org.

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Local Democrats Herald Bigger, Better Party to Come - Memphis Flyer