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While Democrats and Republicans have closely watched special elections in Kansas, Montana, and Georgia for signs of a liberal backlash in the Trump era, a governors race in New Jersey on track to give Democrats a decisive victory has flown largely under the radar.

New Jersey voters head to the polls on Tuesday in the primary election for the race to determine a successor to the states Republican Governor Chris Christie, who recently earned the unfortunate distinction of Americas most unpopular governor, according to a Morning Consult poll in April. Dissatisfaction with Christies time in office, which has been marred by scandal in a state where Democrats dominate the legislature and the governors mansion routinely switches back-and-forth from Republican to Democratic control, is expected to deliver Democrats a win in Novembers general election.

The Trouble With How Liberals Talk About Terrorism

A Democratic victory in the New Jersey governors race would pave the way for the party to enact a progressive agenda statewide with few obstacles apart from a state financial shortfall so dire that one former governor once called it beyond comprehension, and the potential for party in-fighting since Democrats are expected to retain control of the legislature.

Democrats fully expect to win in November, and I think are looking forward to being able to resolve certain state issues that have reached a stalemate because of Christies opposition, said Ben Dworkin, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.

Tax increases, marijuana legalization, and investment in health care, education, and environmental protection are all potential agenda items a Democratic legislature might take upand a Democratic governor might approve.

Polling suggests that the Democratic front-runner, Phil Murphy, is on track to win in November: A Quinnipiac poll from May found Murphy leading Republican front-runner Kim Guadagno by a wide margin of 50 to 25 percent in a general election match-up. Polls have showed Murphy with a double-digit lead over Democratic rivals Jim Johnson and John Wisniewski.

The prospect of Democratic success in New Jersey governors race hasnt completely escaped national notice. In late May, former Vice President Joe Biden called the election the single most important race in the country in the next three years, before the presidential race, while campaigning with Murphy. Earlier in the month, The New Republics Graham Vyse similarly labeled the election this years most important race for Democrats, writing: If Murphy wins, he would be able to enact his agenda immediately, as Democrats control the state legislature

Despite that, the race has so far received less media coverage nationally than recent special elections, whose outcome would not significantly change the balance of power in Congress. Even in New Jersey, voters seem to be paying little attention to the race. A reporter with NJ.com spoke to voters in Newark, New Jersey on Monday and found many didnt know the primary election was the next day. I had no idea, one woman said.

There are a number of likely explanations for that. Tuesdays election is only a primary race so theres less at stake than there will be in the general election. Expensive media markets may have made it difficult for some candidates to boost their name recognition. Its also possible that voters may be distracted by the steady stream of national news coming out of Washington.

It seems like people are pre-occupied and somewhat exhausted by everything thats happening in national politics, said John Weingart, the associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Normally in New Jersey the governors race is the subject of intense discussion among people who pay attention to politics for months leading up to it, but I think one of the reasons thats not happening is because first, the 2016 campaign and then the first months of the Trump administration have sucked up all the oxygen.

Low turnout isnt unusual for New Jersey governor primary races. And thats expected to be the case again in Tuesdays primary. Voters may also have waited until late in the race to make up their mind. A poll released at the end of May found that roughly a third of all voters remained undecided as to which candidate will get their vote.

Democrats at the national level are hoping that the Trump administrations low approval ratings will prove motivating to liberal voters in races across the United States. That may still prove to be the case in New Jerseys general election, but projections for low turnout in the primary, and talk of political exhaustion in the state, raise the possibility that Democratic voter dissatisfaction with Republican control of government, whether in Washington or at the state level, may lead to apathy as much as enthusiasm.

In the New Jersey primary, what you see is that just because people are fed up with politics or an administration in power that doesnt necessarily mean people will show up in droves to vote, said Brandon Finnigan, the director of the non-partisan election site Decision Desk HQ. You cant count on anger and hatred alone to deliver voters.

No matter how low the turnout for the primary, however, the candidate who wins the Democratic nomination is heavily favored to win the general election.

Murphy, the Democrat expected to win both Tuesdays primary and the November general election, is a former Goldman Sachs executive and served as the ambassador to Germany under the Obama administration. He has never never held elective office, spent millions of dollars of his own money to help finance his campaign, and won endorsements from Democratic officials in every county in New Jersey.

Jim Johnson, a Democratic candidate who has trailed Murphy in polling, has invoked Bernie Sanders in his messaging, releasing one ad that starts with a clip showing Sanders himself saying Goldman Sachs was one of those companies whose illegal activity helped destroy our economy. A narrators voice then intones: As a Goldman Sachs president, Phil Murphy made his fortune in a rigged system. Now the Jersey machine has lined up with Murphy and his millions.

It would be reductive to frame the Democratic primary race as a proxy war that breaks down entirely along a Hillary Clinton-Sanders axis, however. Murphy has embraced some progressive agenda items, including a $15 an hour minimum wage, and he has won the endorsement of the progressive group New Jersey Working Families and Communications Workers of America, a union that backed Sanders during his primary run.

Ill admit that its unusual that a former Goldman Sachs executive has some of the most progressive ideas in the race, said Analilia Mejia, the director of New Jersey Working Families, pointing to Murphys proposal for a New Jersey public bank as one of the key reasons he won her groups endorsement. But he really earned our support by having a progressive platform, she said.

Some progressives in New Jersey remain skeptical, however, and believe that Murphys front-runner status may be partly responsible for voter apathy in the primary election.

Its hard to get excited about someone who seems like the same old, same old, someone who is a multi-millionaire and says he wants to be the leader of the working class, said Elizabeth Meyer, the lead organizer of the Womens March on New Jersey and a Jim Johnson supporter. I get the feeling that the Democratic Party is no longer the party of the people. It just feels like we have establishment candidates who are selected by party bosses who sort of walk right into the office.

Whatever the differences between the Democratic candidates, however, the outcome of the New Jersey governors race could prove to be a substantial victory for the party if a Democratic governor wins and goes on to enact liberal policy that might not have been possible under the prior leadership of a Republican governor.

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The Governor's Race on Track to Give Democrats a Decisive Victory - The Atlantic

Hillary Clinton's defeat was stunning enough. But the fact that she lost to Donald Trump led Democrats to question whether they had fundamentally misread the American public, and whether their party and its message needed a total overhaul.

"Presidential buzz seems to be building around an unusually large and varied group of Democrats and famous names from outside of politics -- a parlor game that includes pretty much every current Democratic senator and governor, mayors and House members, barons of the business world and, of course, the occasional wild-card celebrity. The Hill newspaper recently tallied 43 people who might run against Donald Trump."

Now, simply because lots and lots of candidates are considering the race doesn't mean Democrats have solved all of the problems the 2016 campaign exposed. Democrats still have to litigate out whether it's Joe Biden's party or Elizabeth Warren's party going forward. And there are lots and lots voices who want to have a say in that debate.

Don't see your favorite candidate? Never fear! There's still (lots of) time!

1st Tier (If they run, they have a real chance to win the nomination)

"He hasn't made up his mind," former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told Tumulty of the Vermont independent. "He's open to it." Got it.

Warren, more so -- to my mind -- than Sanders, is the face of liberals nationally. I don't think that means Sanders would stand down for Warren, but it's hard to see how the top tier could fit both of them.

2nd Tier (Have potential to be a major contender but not there ... yet)

It remains to be seen whether Democrats in 2020 want to totally and completely move on from what happened in 2016. If they do, Kaine, who shared the ticket with Clinton, will have a hard time. If not, however, lots of the things that made him attractive as a VP -- governor and senator of a swing state, bilingual, etc. -- would also make him an appealing presidential candidate.

The Connecticut Senator won't have room to run if Sanders and/or Warren do. But, if they don't -- and neither is a sure thing -- he could well slot into the leading liberal role, given his outspokenness on gun control in the wake of Newtown and, more recently, his vocal opposition to the Trump presidency.

3rd Tier (It's not IM-possible)

Moulton is one of the young up-and-coming Democrats in the House. But, that's probably where he'll stay for now.

Tier-less (Rich businesspeople who've never run for anything before)

Continued here:
Donald Trump is the best 2020 recruiter Democrats could hope for - CNN

President Trump this week began rolling out what he bills as a massive plan to rebuild Americas highways, bridges, railways and airports but Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.) is nowhere to be seen so far.

Back in January, as one of the Democratic point men on infrastructure, Carper politely asked the new transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, if they could discuss what had been one of Trumps top priorities from the 2016 presidential campaign.

It took several months for that to happen, Carper recalled Monday.

He praised Chao as someone I like a lot, blaming her chronically understaffed agency for being incapable of promptly scheduling the meeting. When she told him to speak to Gary Cohn, the presidents chief economic adviser, Carper got one phone call and then participated in an hour-long bipartisan meeting with Cohn a few weeks ago to discuss financing the plan.

Thats pretty much the extent of it. Its not the kind of fulsome outreach that one might have hoped for and expected, said Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

In a different political orbit, Trump may have marked what the White House is calling infrastructure week with a signing ceremony for his first major bipartisan victory: making good on his pledge to drive $1 trillion into rebuilding the nations roads, bridges, airports and waterways. Trump regularly won begrudging plaudits from Democrats who saw the plan as something that would energize the economy.

And regardless of the hesitancy of party leaders on Capitol Hill toward big spending, the idea resonated with Republican voters who backed Trump all across the industrial Midwest and handed him the presidency. Those voters heard bridge-building and highway construction, and they saw new jobs for their once-thriving manufacturing regions.

Trumps plan to tap private investors for infrastructure funds worries senators from rural states

Moreover, in 2015, before they took over leading their respective caucuses, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) were already working on a plan now shelved to encourage U.S. corporations to bring home cash stockpiled overseas that could be taxed, with the funds going toward a new infrastructure plan.

In the first days of his presidency, even as anti-Trump activists demanded total resistance, liberal Democrats still craved an infrastructure plan and were willing to cut a deal. Let me put it this way, if they had been willing to do a real infrastructure package, then I would have been willing to participate, said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), one of the more liberal members of Minority Leader Schumers caucus.

Instead, in coordination with Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Trump put the infrastructure plan at the back of the line behind the repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and a complete overhaul of the tax code.

There was an intricate timeline under fast-track procedures for those first two major items, which were expected to pass quickly this year solely with Republican votes, and maybe later this year or early next year Congress would dive into a bipartisan infrastructure plan.

There was a sense of urgency surrounding Obamacare, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Monday, arguing that the health law was in a death spiral that had to be addressed. There was a lot of pressure to fix that right away.

But its not fixed. Its stuck inside various working groups that McConnell has marched into his office trying to find the right mix. As long as that health-care logjam remains, the move to the tax code rewrite cannot move forward.

That legislative pileup has left the infrastructure plan arguably the one issue that Trump, who made billions of dollars building things, personally cares deeply about in political limbo.

So, on Monday, the president began his infrastructure rollout with a proposal to privatize the nations air traffic controllers and upgrade the industrys technology, to be followed by other events in which he will propose a series of tax credits to set up more public-private partnerships to encourage more construction projects.

Trump promised $1 trillion for infrastructure, but the estimated need is $4.5 trillion

The push is for $200 billion in federal funding over 10 years, hoping that would spur another $800 billion in private funding for the projects.

Democrats have largely panned this approach as insufficient in federal support and naive in its hopes for private funding. At best, it might lengthen the timeline for projects that were already underway during the Obama administration, such as another tunnel across the Hudson River. At worst, Democrats contend, it will give away tax cuts to private corporations for projects that would have happened anyway.

This is literally the opposite of an infrastructure package, said Schatz, a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Some proposals lack key Republican support. On Monday, Thune, who chairs the commerce panel, and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), a senior member of Thunes committee, reiterated their opposition to the air traffic controller proposal.

Thune acknowledged that Trumps free-market infrastructure package will probably need to be rewritten because opposition from deficit-hawk conservatives will force Republicans to land solid Democratic support.

Youd probably have to tweak a bill and the approach a little bit from what the administration is proposing, he said, calling this week a first installment of the plan. A more traditional, conventional approach to infrastructure, for part of it, I think you could probably get some Democrats.

But that assumes Democrats even want to help Trump by the time they get to a real infrastructure proposal. His tenure so far has been marked by a stalled legislative agenda, a special counsel investigating his 2016 campaign and constant fights on Twitter that have little to do with day-to-day life in the Capitol.

For now, some Democrats are still talking about their desire to rebuild highways and bridges. If Republicans want to go down that path, someone better call Tom Carper.

They just dont have the people, particularly the people who have the ability to reach out to Congress, to develop relationships, Carper said.

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Infrastructure was Trump's shot at a bipartisan deal, but he left Democrats waiting by the phone - Washington Post

Democrats would need to flip 24 seatsto retake the U.S. House in 2018. But at leasttwo-thirds of that tallymay be permanently out of reach,thanks to a dirty geographical trick played by Republican lawmakers in 2010.

That's according to a new Brennan Center analysis of gerrymandering the process lawmakers use to draw legislative districts for their own partisan advantage.

A bit of background before we delve into the nitty-gritty. Every 10 years, congressional districts are redrawn following the Census. On paper, this is done to ensure the people's House is representative of the country's people states gain or lose districts based on population changes, and district boundaries shift to reflect our ever-changing demographics.

The process of re-drawing district lines to give an advantage to one party over another is called "gerrymandering". Here's how it works. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

In most states, this redistricting process is handled by the state legislature. This is where the trouble begins: legislatures are composed of partisan lawmakers who have partisan interests like keeping themselves in power.Over the past several decades, lawmakers have become adept at drawing district boundaries to benefit their parties.

There are any number of ways to do this. If you want to create a 100 percent safe seat for a friend, for instance, you draw a district with a safe partisan majority. You can also decide to concentrate all of your political opponents in one or two districts, diluting their power everywhere else. Or, you could spread them out thinly everywhere,making it hard for them to achieve a majority anywhere.

Gerrymandering is notoriously hard to measure, because it's partly a question ofintent a state's districts may be lopsided in favor of one party or another, but how do you prove that's not just an accident?

Enter the Brennan Center. For their report, Brennan's researchers used a number of different statistical tests to measure the outcomes of congressional elections in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

They looked at whether "wasted" votes votes for losing candidates, or votes for winners in excess of 50.1 percent were skewed toward one party or another.

They looked at historic trends to determine whether recent congressional election results deviated from historic results in expected ways.

And they looked at differences between the parties'average vote share in a state's districts and theirmedian share gerrymandering tends to skew a party's median vote share away from its average.

Brennan restricted the analysis to states with six or more districts because in smaller states, gerrymandering isn't as much of a problem. To give an extreme example, states with just one representative, like Wyoming, can't be gerrymandered at all, because the single district covers the entire state.The more districts you have, the more districtboundaries youtweak to your desire.

Each of Brennan's three analyses returned more or less the same result: "In the 26 states that account for 85 percent of congressional districts, Republicans derive a net benefit of at least 16-17 congressional seats in the current Congress from partisan bias," the researchers found.

Most of that bias is concentrated in just seven Republican-controlled states: Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania exhibit the most extreme partisan skew, while bias toward Republicans is also strongly evident in Florida, Ohio, Texas and Virginia.

Take a look at the chart from Brennan below, which estimates the net seat benefit to Republicans or Democrats in the 26 states they analyzed via the "wasted" votes method.

The dark red bars represent states where Republicans drew district maps. And in a number of those states, they effectively gave themselves an advantage of two or more seats simply by putting Democrats in places where their votes counted less.

Republicans were particularly successful in Pennsylvania, where they owe 3+ seats to creative redistricting.

Democrats aren't innocent in this whole affair either, but two factors severely limited their ability to redistrict themselves to a majority: for starters, more statehouses are now controlled by Republicans. Post-2010, there are simply fewer opportunities for Democrats to gerrymander.

Second, Brennan's analysis suggests that Democrats did attempt some gerrymanders in places such as Maryland and Massachusetts. But there are fewer people in those states than in places such as Pennsylvania orTexas, meaning that even the most aggressive gerrymander (looking at you, Maryland) might net at besta seat or so.

Republicans maintain some representational advantage from other neutral factors, too, like Democrats' propensity to cluster in densely populated areas, and from a Voting Rights Act requirement that mandates majority-minority districts in some Southern states.

But even after accounting for these factors, the Brennan analysis suggests that a minimum of 16 to 17 seats are in Republican hands because of partisan gerrymandering alone. There's one huge piece of damning evidence in support of this notion: "All of the states we found to have extreme partisan bias had maps drawn solely by one party," they found. Specifically, the Republican party.

There are any number of ways out of the quandary. For starters, a number of redistricting cases are currently before the courts. A number of the more egregious gerrymanders of the 2010 era have already been thrown out.

But litigation is just a Band-Aid. True reform would mean taking the redistricting process out of the hands of partisan lawmakers and putting it under the purview of something like an independent commission. That's already the case in certain states.

More radical reforms would involve handing the redistricting process over to algorithms that draw maps without any human input at all. But the political will for that level of change is currently nonexistent.

At the moment, Democrats' best hope would appear to be former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr.'s National Democratic Redistricting Commission, which aims to help Democrats be just as effective at gerrymandering as their Republican counterparts.

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Republicans are so much better than Democrats at gerrymandering - Washington Post

In 1988, Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis committed campaign suicide when, in a photo op, he oddly popped out of the top of a U.S. military tank while wearing a helmet. Reporters on-site reportedly broke into laughter. Voters were largely turned off. It was an ill-conceived, goofy image that became political lore for future campaign operatives, who would warn colleagues: Lets not pull a Dukakis here.

But the doomed appearance was really just a visual exclamation point for a much deeper problem facing Dukakis and his fellow Democrats. Throughout the 1980s, and really going back to the failed presidential bid of George McGovern in 1972, voters found the Democrats soft on national defense. Fear of an attack by the Soviet Union (or even the rampant, unimpeded spread of Communism) had Americans worried.

The prevailing feeling at the time was that Republicans, particularly the likes of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush, provided the courageous thinking and global bravado that kept America and the world safe; whereas Democrats wanted to slash defense spending and thus weaken the U.S. Democrats generally boasted that more spending on nuclear or similar weapons was a waste of money proclamations that did not make the average citizen feel safer in a period that was smothered with tension. Polling at the time found Bush leading Dukakis by margins of 21 on who would best secure our national defense.

Fast forward to the present, and it appears a new security-related concern has emerged to occupy the minds of Americans and this time the worry is terrorism. And once again it looks like Democratic leaders may be failing to take actions that would assuage voter angst.

The American electorate is genuinely fearful of terrorism, and growing more so by the day. In fact, not only has Americans fear of becoming a victim of terrorism been growing the last few years, but it is now at its highest point since the 9/11 attacks:

And just like the concern Americans had back in the 80s, the increasing uneasiness created by the shadow of terrorism looks to be largely void of partisanship. Republican voters (and often independents) have always been vocal and consistent in their worry about terrorism and its effects, but now Democratic voters have joined them. In the middle of primary season last year, Democrats cited Defending the country from terrorism as the third-most-important priority facing the nation, just behind improving education and strengthening the economy. Defending against terrorism outscored dealing with climate change (a party staple) by a weighty 16 percentage points.

But as voters continued to amplify their anxiety around the threats they felt terrorism posed, Democratic politicians seemed to be tone deaf. Voters last summer even those supporting nominee Hillary Clinton suggested they wanted to hear more during the upcoming presidential debates about what the candidates would do to keep America safe from terrorism. More, in fact, than about any other single topic, including economic growth, gun policy, health care, or climate change.

It wasnt that voters didnt care about those other issues clearly they did but they really cared about terrorism. And perhaps rightly so, as jihadist-related terror activities have grown meaningfully over the last several years:

But in 2016, Clinton and the Democrats seemed either ignorant of the situation or unable to properly address it. Consequently, the awareness deficit seemed to play out in the November presidential election, where terrorism angst ran high with voters in most key states, yet Clintons support among terrorism-focused voters generally ran quite low.

Nationally, exit polls the day of the election showed the economy to be the most important issue on voters minds (as it always is), with 52 percent citing it as the top issue. But coming in a strong second was terrorism, with 18 percent of voters naming it as the most important issue. (By comparison, in the 2012 election, terrorism didnt even make the list.) And among those 18 percent of voters, 57 percent voted for President Trump, whereas only 40 percent voted for Clinton.

If you multiply those figures together, you see that 10.3 percent of all voters felt terrorism was the most pressing issue and voted for Trump, while 7.2 percent of all voters felt terrorism was the most important issue but voted for Clinton. That 3.1-percentage-point difference was a significant deficit for Democrats to overcome, and it is even more telling when you look at it on the state level.

Heres how some key states compared, and the news is not good for Democrats.

The first thing you notice is that Trump won terrorism-focused voters in almost all of these states. Only in California did these voters favor Clinton and even there they just barely favored her. Even reliably blue states such as Washington, New Mexico, and New Jersey, which went to Clinton overall as expected, still saw their voters who prioritized terrorism actually favor Trump. And for predictably red states, the margin favoring Trump was overwhelming.

Perhaps even more troubling for Democrats were the six key Swing states and three Surprise states. Of those nine states, seven scored at or above the previously mentioned 3.1-point national margin for Trump among voters who prioritize terrorism. This suggests the Democrats message on fighting terrorism was even less effective in Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania than it was nationally and in Florida it was just as bad.

Why does this matter? For many of these key states, the margins of victory were exceedingly slim for the winning candidate. Take Florida, for instance. Trump won the overall vote by 1.2 points, and among the 26 percent of voters who cited terrorism as the key issue, Trump won 55 percent to 43 percent a margin that translates to 3.1 points in the overall vote. If Clinton had just cut that gap by half, it would have tipped the scales.

But therein lies the rub. Americans of all party affiliations have sent strong signals they are acutely worried about terrorism, and they are generally not trusting of Democrats to do something about it. Even in traditional Democratic strongholds, Democrats are losing the argument.

And while many may find the rhetoric of then-candidate Trump (such as bomb the sh** out of them) crude or nave, it clearly got the attention of the electorate. Particularly as Clinton often responded to Trump by accusing him of aiding the cause of ISIS, rather than coming across as forceful against terrorists herself.

Americans really, really care about the threat of terrorism right now, and Democrats have failed to read the tea leaves on this. Defeating terrorism shouldnt be a partisan issue. If Democrats want to take an approach they believe to be more thoughtful or safer for the global community and our foreign interests, thats one thing. But they must also learn to show strength and make Americans feel secure if they wish to start winning more elections.

Ken Miller is a venture investor in the Silicon Valley. He is also a writer covering both politics and technology, and is a frequent contributor to TechCrunch. Previously he was an executive at PayPal and Intuit, and an early adviser to Square.

Read more from the original source:
The Democrats' Blind Spot on Terrorism - National Review