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In my view, these solidly red states provide fertile ground for populist Democratic challengers who are willing to run against the party establishment and in favor of strong working-class appeals. In 2020 in Kentucky, Charles Booker took on his own partys favored candidate, Amy McGrath, in the Senate primary and almost won. Today, due to his resilience, he is the partys nominee to take on Rand Paul in November.

Consider Alabama. A state that has witnessed two campaigns to unionize Amazon in the past couple of years and has seen a brutal union-busting effort by the Warrior Met Coal company against its own workers. These worker-led movements have popular support in the state. Alabamians are hungry for someone to speak to their pain, carry their fight in the political area, and importantly, take on a struggle that necessarily entails friction with their wealthy corporate paymasters. Due to GOP Senator Richard Shelbys retirement, there is an open seat. This should be fertile ground for redefinition of the Democratic brand. And while the contest might not be immediately successful, waging this kind of battle is necessary for repositioning the party to potentially win down-ballot seats or even claim a Senate victory in the years to come.

The alternative is to simply give up. But it wasnt that long ago when Democratsbuffeted by FDR/New Deal branding and the molding of generations of Democratic votersheld Senate seats in places like Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, North Dakota, and Louisiana, all of which have races this year. Its just like Edison said: The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

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How the Democrats Can Become the Party of the People Again - The New Republic

Can Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock do it again?

In 2020, the pair played key roles in turning Georgia blue: Abrams turnout campaign helped deliver the state to Joe Biden, the first Democrat to win there in nearly 30 years, while Warnocks runoff victoryalong with that of Jon Ossoffgave the party its narrow Senate majority.

But theyre facing new challenges in 2022: Biden is languishing in the polls amid multiple international and domestic crises; the Senate majority has failed to enact some of his biggest agenda items, thanks to uniform Republican opposition and Democratic defections in Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema; and the GOP has weaponized Donald Trumps 2020 election lies to make voting harder in this cycle and beyond.

Democrats say they can overcome all that in Novemberespecially in Georgia, where the GOP candidates carry significant baggage. But there is also concern: Democratic victories in the state came by the slimmest of margins, and a loss in the upcoming midterms could have broad implications for everything from abortion access to voting rights.

From our vantage point, says Kendra Cotton, chief operating officer of the New Georgia Project Action Fund, democracy is essentially at stake.

Abrams, who ran uncontested in Tuesdays Democratic gubernatorial primary, will face Republican Governor Brian Kemp this fall in a rematch of their close, controversial 2018 matchup. Warnock, who has become one of his partys most formidable fundraisers, will defend his Senate seat against Herschel Walker, the former football star who won the 1982 Heisman Trophy playing for University of Georgia.

Each of the Democrats would seem to have some points in their favor, beyond their strengths as candidates: Kemp handily defeated Trump-backed David Perdue on Tuesday, but the former presidents ire at the incumbent for refusing to undermine Bidens 2020 win could chip away at Republican unity in the general election for governor. Walker enjoyed Trumps complete and total support in his winning bid for the Republican Senate nomination Tuesday, but lacks experience and qualifications and has faced disturbing allegations of domestic violencefactors that may matter more to voters in a general election than in a GOP primary. (Walker has denied breaking the law, but said in response to questions from Axios about his ex-wife's accusations that he is accountable to whatever [he's] done" and is better now than 99% of the people in America.)

Combine that baggage with shifting political dynamics in the state, thanks in no small part to Abramss leadership and the dedication of Black voters, and you have cause for optimism about the chances for Georgia Democrats, even in a political climate that has put them at a disadvantage nationally. We have to start from the premise that we won the state in 2020, says Tharon Johnson, a prominent Democratic strategist in Georgia. The people who just recently won in Georgia are the Democrats.

I think we stand to maintain what we have just built, Johnson added.

But the party also faces major challenges in the midterms. Historically, the party in power is at a disadvantage in off-year elections. But that dynamic could be even worse for Democrats this time around: Dogged by an array of crises, including inflation, Biden has suffered abysmal approval ratings that could taint down-ballot Democrats this fall. Republicans have made those issues the center of withering attacks, even as they routinely undercut efforts by Biden and the Democrats to address them. They have also rallied their voters around culture war issues while enacting legislation seeking to tamp down participation by Democratic-leaning voters. Democrats may have turned Georgia blue last cycle, but its not clear those gains are sturdy enough to stand up against the harsh political headwinds blowing this election season.

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Democracy is Essentially At Stake: Georgia Democrats Are Trying to Prove that 2020 Was No Fluke - Vanity Fair

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, left, and progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, left, and progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros.

A closely watched runoff election in South Texas between incumbent Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros remained too close to call as of Wednesday morning, according to The Associated Press.

As of 10 a.m. ET Wednesday, just 175 votes separated the two candidates.

The race in Texas' 28th Congressional District pitted one of the most conservative Democrats in the House against a challenger backed by progressive stalwarts, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after neither Cuellar nor Cisneros received more than 50% of the vote in the March primary.

Cuellar, who has held the seat since 2005, had the endorsements of top House Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.

This wasn't the first time Cisneros, a 29-year-old immigration attorney, took on Cuellar, 66; she first did so in 2020, heavily outraising the longtime Laredo congressman before falling short.

Cisneros ran on a distinctly progressive platform, with support for Medicare for All and pro-labor legislation.

Cuellar, who holds more conservative views on abortion, immigration and gun control, painted Cisneros as a far-left candidate who wouldn't be effective in Congress.

Roughly two months before the March primary, the FBI raided Cuellar's campaign office and home in a probe, reportedly stemming from an investigation into U.S. businessmen and their ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar's attorney told Fox News he was not a target of the investigation, but the raids provided Cisneros with attack ad fodder.

On the Republican side, Cassy Garcia, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz, won Tuesday's runoff. The GOP has its sights set on flipping the competitive district in the South Texas region that's been trending more Republicans' way.

The issue of abortion rights played a large role in the campaign, with increased momentum after a leaked draft opinion of a Supreme Court decision indicated the high court may overturn Roe v. Wade. Cisneros pushed to keep abortion rights front and center in the campaign, as Cuellar is the only self-identified "pro-life" Democrat in the House.

"There's so many key issues where she's always siding with Republicans, and he could become the Joe Manchin of the House," she told NBC's Meet The Press. "We don't want Henry Cuellar to be the deciding vote on the future of our fundamental freedoms and rights in this country."

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Closely watched Democratic primary in Texas' 28th District remains too close to call - NPR

Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Americans have long taken for granted the constitutional right to an abortion, established by the U.S. Supreme Courts landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Throughout most of the fall in 2021, Democrats, and especially Republicans, still thought that Roe would more likely than not remain the law of the land for the foreseeable future even as the high court refused to block a Texas law from taking effect on Sept. 1 that lawmakers designed to flout Roe by banning abortions once they said cardiac activity was detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy.

Those views started to change in December, though, following oral arguments before the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of Mississippis 15-week abortion ban. More Americans began doubting Roe would survive after the courts conservative justices raised the prospect of overturning nearly five decades of legal precedent on abortion rights during the hearing.

As the chart below shows, Democrats have consistently been pessimistic about Roe being overturned since those oral arguments in December, but following the leak of an initial draft Supreme Court opinion in May showing that a majority of conservative justices were ready to overturn Roe, there was a sharp spike in the share saying it will definitely or very likely be overturned. Even Republicans, who have been less likely than Democrats to think Roe would ever be struck down, now generally think its going to happen.

The reality that Roe might be overturned has also shifted how Americans prioritize abortion as an issue. For decades, those who opposed abortion rights (generally speaking, Republicans) rated the issue as more important than those who supported abortion rights (generally speaking, Democrats), but as the chart below shows, the two parties priorities swapped after Texass abortion ban went into effect, which I first wrote about in October.

In fact, the divide between Democrats and Republicans on the importance of abortion as an issue has only gotten wider, especially after the draft Supreme Court opinion was leaked in May. In the two surveys conducted by YouGov/The Economist since then, a record share of voters who backed President Biden in 2020 have rated abortion as a very important issue, by 61 percent and 63 percent, up from an average of about 42 percent in August surveys. Compare that with 37 percent and 40 percent of 2020 Trump voters who rated abortion as a very important issue in May, down from an average of about 45 percent in August polls.

Not only are Democrats more concerned now, but they're also rating abortion as much more important to their midterm vote for Congress now than they did four years ago, according to polling from Monmouth University. In the 2018 midterms, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to prioritize abortion as their most important issue in choosing whom to vote for in Congress, but in May, 32 percent of Democrats said abortion was the most important issue in determining their vote, compared with 17 percent of Republicans. The share of Democrats who said abortion was an extremely important issue in voting for Congress in 2022 (48 percent) is also up from 2018 (31 percent), while the share of Republicans who said the issue was extremely important in 2022 (29 percent) is down from 2018 (36 percent).

The polling data from both YouGov/The Economist and Monmouth is consistent with a long line of political science research showing how threats and anger often motivate people to take political action. When most Democrats considered abortion rights a given, other issues typically overshadowed it. Yet now that the status quo is on the verge of being upended, Democrats are increasingly prioritizing abortion rights and will likely channel their anger over Roe being struck down into various forms of political participation. Meanwhile, now that Republicans look likely to win their long battle to overturn Roe, the issue is unlikely to have the same potency in GOP politics.

It remains to be seen, though, how these changes in voters priorities will affect future elections. Thus far, the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion has had no discernible impact on which party voters would support in a congressional election in FiveThirtyEights generic ballot polling average. But as FiveThirtyEight editor-and-chief Nate Silver tweeted on Thursday, the electoral effects will likely manifest themselves in more nuanced ways especially after the policy implications of the final ruling become even more apparent during the summer and fall campaign. Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times, concurred, adding that the effect [of overturning Roe] on individual races may prove to be more important than its effect on the national political environment, if abortion becomes especially salient in places due to extreme candidates or state policy stakes.

Regardless, the reality that abortion rights can no longer be taken for granted has already sharply shifted many voters priorities. Those shifts will likely grow larger, too, if Roe is ultimately overturned this summer in fact, they may become even more politically powerful moving forward.

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For The First Time In Years, Democrats Are More Concerned About Abortion Than Republicans Are - FiveThirtyEight

OPINION:

Some Jan. 6 defendants are citing research firm surveys of Washington juror pools to expose biases, they say, that would prevent them from receiving fair trials.

Not surprisingly, survey answers show how the heavily Democratic, government-centric city is in line with how elected Democrats view the Republican Trump-supporting protesters and their Capitol Building invasion. One defense attorney labeled Washington a place of extreme community prejudice with an absolute lack of political diversity and tribal political landscape.

There is at least one high-profile non-Jan. 6 criminal case unfolding in the same U.S. federal courthouse that tapped the citys same voter pools to select a jury. Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is on trial for allegedly lying to the FBI while spreading anti-Trump propaganda.

In this case, Mr. Sussmann sold the FBI on launching an investigation into what he claimed was an ongoing secret cyber communication link. The players, he said, were former President Donald Trump and Russias Alfa Bank, an oligarch-controlled commercial lender.

The FBI decided in early 2017, several months after Mr. Sussmann presented his spreadsheets, that the conspiracy did not exist. The rub is, the Republican-appointed special prosecutor John Durham argues, Mr. Sussmann portrayed himself to the FBI as a concerned private citizen and concealed the fact he was selling the Alfa conspiracy for the Clinton campaign.

What got conservative social media talking about D.C. juries last week is the fact that campaign donors to Mrs. Clinton in other words Hillary loyalists sat among the jury pool.

Mr. Trump won just 5% of the D.C. vote his lowest tally of any electoral college member compared with 92% for President Biden. At the time, Mr. Trumps job approval in D.C. stood at 12%, 18 points lower than Massachusetts, his worst polling state, according to SurveyMonkey.

I think Durhams biggest problem from beginning to end is that Washington jury, National Review legal analyst Andrew McCarthy said on the Brian Kilmeade Show.

Several Jan. 6 defendants want their cases moved to another jurisdiction. One is Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys whose members were among those who crashed the Capitol. Mr. Tarrio, a Black Cuban American, was not in D.C. that day.

Tarrio, as the face and symbol of the Proud Boys, has received the Democratic partys seething hatred, which cannot be contained, mitigated, or controlled, his attorneys argue in a court brief filed this month. Tarrio stands for the antithesis of leftist liberal ideology and must be crushed, destroyed and canceled by the left-leaning members of the jury pool of Washington D.C.

Lawyers also wrote, In this atmosphere of extreme community prejudice and D.C.s tribal political landscape, a fair trial for Tarrio is impossible. There is an absolute lack of political diversity in D.C. that is sui generis in our political system.

Attorneys Sabino Jauregui and Nayib Hassan want the case moved to Mr. Tarrios home turf of southern Florida.

Plumbing the minds of D.C. voters is a key pre-trial tactic by Jan. 6 defendants Thomas Caldwell and Connie Meggs, both members of the ultra-patriotic Oath Keepers. They want their trial moved across the Potomac River to the Alexandria, Virginia, courthouse.

The federal public defender office in D.C. commissioned the firm Select Litigation LLC to assess the jury pool. It did two comparative polls one of D.C. and the other of Atlanta.

Prospective jurors in the District of Columbia have decidedly negative impressions of individuals arrested in conjunction with the activities of January 6, 2021, Select Litigation said in a report filed in court. Their bias against the defendants is evident in numerous results and is reflected in a significant prejudgment of the case: a clear majority admit they would be inclined to vote guilty if they were serving on a jury at the defendants trial.

One of the big political selling points by the Biden White House, elected Democrats and the Biden Justice Department is that the Jan. 6 protesters are guilty of an insurrection. The survey shows that the D.C. pool of voters who make up juries overwhelmingly back that argument, with 76% agreeing.

Mr. Caldwells attorney, David W. Fischer of Glen Burnie, Md, and Juli Z. Haller, Ms. Meggs Washington attorney, retained Lux Research to back their change of venue motion to ensure the Constitutions Sixth Amendment rights to an impartial jury.

Lux selected four test areas D.C., Florida, North Carolina and Virginia to survey jury-qualified people.

Results from the Study show that the DC Communitys attitude is unique among the Test Areas and is decidedly negative toward Defendants, Lux said. The study shows that the DC Community is saturated with potential jurors who harbor actual bias against defendants.

There have been two Jan. 6 jury trials. A jury deliberated just two hours before convicting Guy W. Reffitt, a member of a hard-right Texas citizens group, on all charges.

In April a jury convicted Dustin Thompson after less than three hours of deliberations.

Defendant Matthew Martin of Santa Fe, New Mexico, also went on trial that month, but chose a judge, not a D.C. jury, for a verdict.

Judge Trevor N. McFadden found him not guilty of all charges after two days of testimony. Mr. Martin faced a similar list of charges of hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants: entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, and demonstrating and parading inside the Capitol.

Judge McFadden, a 2017 Trump appointee, said it was not unreasonable for Mr. Martin to assume he was let into the building by police.

Judge McFadden previously convicted another Jan. 6 defendant, a member of Cowboys for Trump, for entering the Capitol illegally.

In an odd way, prosecutor Durham and Jan. 6 defendants share the same fear: a D.C. jury. But for decidedly different reasons.

Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.

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'Tribal' D.C. juries align with Biden and Democrats - Washington Times