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Democratic candidates are already starting to pop up for a 2022 run for U.S. Senate, all aiming for a seat held now by Republican Ron Johnson, who has not said if hell seek a third term.

And it doesnt look like the race will be a friendly one.

Johnson was already a top target of Democrats before he said the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol wasnt an armed insurrection ( a claim we rated Pants on Fire) and before he forced a full-reading of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan advanced by Democrats and President Joe Biden (we rated his stance on full readings a Full Flop).

One of the Democratic candidates, Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, has been taking shots at Johnson, but also took aim recently toward Milwaukee Bucks executive Aex Lasry, who has also announced his Democratic campaign.

During a March 7, 2021 interview on WISN TVs UPFRONT, Nelson said he had asked Lasry to not self-fund his campaign.

"I think whats really important here is you listen to what the people want, I think the last thing people want is for someone to come in and self-fund," Nelson said. "Right now, two-thirds of the U.S. Senate is composed of millionaires. We need someone who is in touch with the people."

For this fact-check, we are focusing on the part of Nelsons claim that two-thirds those in the Senate are millionaires.

Is he right?

Most senators worth millions

When asked for backup for the claim, the Nelson campaign pointed to an August 2020 fact-check of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who claimed, in part, the Senate was "dominated by millionaires." PolitiFact National rated that claim True.

That fact-check relied on an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, which examined net-worth data for senators from 2018 -- still the most recent data available.

The data comes from financial disclosure forms, which lawmakers are required to fill out. Because the forms dont require exact values, only a range, the center calculated net worth for lawmakers by adding their assets, subtracting their liabilities and calculating the midpoint of the resulting range.

In all, 61 of the 100 senators had a net worth of at least $1 million -- with some having a net worth many times that amount.

For example, Republican Kelly Loeffler of Georgia had a net worth of more than $500 million and Republican Rick Scott of Floridas net worth was nearly $260 million. Also among the top: Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia (more than $214 million) and Republican Mitt Romney of Utah (about $174 million).

Both Wisconsin senators met the threshold: Johnson was listed at $39 million, while Democrat Tammy Baldwin was listed at $1.1 million.

Of course, since the Centers report last year, 10 seats changed. Of the 10 senators who were replaced, eight were millionaires. We could not locate recent net worth estimates for all of their replacements.

That said, many of the new members are also millionaires.

Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona is worth between $10.8 million and $28 million, according to a January 2021 Newsweek report, while Democrat John Hickenlooper of Colorado is worth between $9 million and $27 million. Several others are also listed as worth more than $1 million.

According to a December 2020 report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Democrats John Ossof and Raphael Warnock each have net worths well over $1 million as well. They replaced Republicans Loeffler and David Perdue, worth nearly $26 million.

Experts have noted in recent years that the cost of running for office -- in Wisconsin and across the nation -- has become increasingly difficult for candidates who cannot bring their own money to the table.

Robert Yablon, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said campaigns have become more expensive to run. Having money to start off a campaign can lead to better political consultants working on a campaign and likely even having wealthy friends willing to contribute large amounts, he said.

The 2020 election is a good example of the escalating price, with seven campaigns bringing in $100 million or more in contributions -- more than ever before.

Yablon also noted that the Senate tends to attract people who have seen success in their life, whether in business or celebrity, which was likely lucrative.

"There is a long history of very wealthy people in the Senate," he said. "The phenomenon is not new."

Our ruling

Nelson, a Democrat running for US. Senate, said that two-thirds of those in the Senate were millionaires.

Based on data from 2018, last year of financial disclosures available, 61 Senators had an average net worth of more than $1 million, according to one estimate. So, that is nearly two-thirds.

Many of the 10 newly elected senators also have high net worths, but an updated tally is not yet available.

Nevertheless, political experts say the Senate is likely to attract campaigns from wealthier people, contributing to the high number of millionaires who currently hold seats.

We rate this claim Mostly True.

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Democrat Tom Nelson right on claim that two thirds of US senators are millionaires - PolitiFact

A majority of Americans, about 55 percent, approve of President Bidens job performance so far, whereas about 39 percent disapprove. Those are pretty good numbers for a president in this polarized era. And for Democrats to keep control of the U.S. House and Senate next November, Biden will probably need to keep his approval ratings in this vicinity. Thats unlikely, but possible, because of some broader shifts happening in American politics.

Why should we focus on presidential approval ratings when we are thinking about next years midterms? For two reasons. First of all, we dont yet have a lot of other data to rely on. In most House and Senate races, its not even clear who the (non-incumbent) candidates will be. Most pollsters arent yet asking respondents the so-called generic ballot question If the next election were being held today, would you vote for the Democratic or the Republican candidate? And while generic ballot polling has historically provided a reliably rough preview of eventual midterm results, rough is the key word here. FiveThirtyEights average of pre-2020 generic ballot polls suggested that Democrats would have a sizable advantage in last years House races (a popular vote margin of around +7 percentage points, about 50 to 43), but the final results were more narrow (about +3 points, 51 to 48).

Second and more importantly, presidential approval ratings in recent years have been a decent indicator of what will happen in the midterms. In the last four (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018), the incumbent presidents disapproval rating was higher than his approval, and in all four cases, the presidents party lost a sizable bloc of House seats. (The Senate results arent quite as tied to presidential approval.) The last time the presidents party gained House seats in a midterm election was in 2002, when George W. Bush had sky-high ratings in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. So, when we talk about the pattern that the presidents party nearly always loses congressional seats in the midterms, part of what seems to be happening is that the American electorate becomes somewhat disillusioned with a president after electing or reelecting him (or wants to check his power) and then backs the opposite partys congressional candidates.

Relationship between presidential approval ratings and results for the presidents party in House midterm elections

Presidential approval and disapproval ratings come from FiveThirtyEights approval ratings tracker for the day before the midterm election for each year cited.

Sources: Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives; The American Presidency Project

And presidential approval ratings are becoming even more predictive as American politics are increasingly partisan and president-centered. The Obama and Trump presidencies suggest that the overwhelming majority of voters lean toward either the Democrats or the Republicans and approve of presidents from their own party and disapprove of presidents from the opposite party.

And those mostly partisan approval numbers translate to mostly partisan voting: More and more, voters cast ballots for candidates from the same party in both presidential and congressional elections. So, in November 2018, then-President Trump had a 42 percent approval rating, compared with a 53 percent disapproval rating. Democrats won about 53 percent of the national U.S. House vote, overwhelmingly from people who disapproved of Trump. Republicans slightly outpaced Trumps approval and won 45 percent of the House vote, mostly from people who approved of the president.

On Election Day in 2020, 45 percent of Americans approved of Trump, compared with 53 percent who disapproved. Biden won about 51 percent of the popular vote, as did House Democrats (so just slightly below Trumps disapproval). Trump won nearly 47 percent, similar to House Republicans (48 percent) and again just slightly above his approval rating. So, in both 2018 and 2020, presidential approval/disapproval tracked closely with the House popular vote. And because congressional and presidential voting are now both so tied to partisanship, we have a record-low number of House districts 16 where the member isnt from the same party that the district backed for president.

Of course, theres no guarantee that the close link between presidential approval ratings and House results will continue. Perhaps Trump made American politics particularly centered around him, so some voters in next years elections will approve of Bidens job performance but still back GOP congressional candidates. One big danger for Democrats in the 2022 midterms is the potential of differential turnout Republicans voting at higher levels than Democrats, with conservative voters more motivated to vote against congressional Democrats aligned with Biden than liberals are to essentially maintain the status quo. This happened in 2018, when people who had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 voted at slightly higher rates than those who had backed Trump in 2016. So its possible that Bidens approval rating is 55 percent among American adults on election day 2022 but is several percentage points lower among people who actually vote.

And even if presidential approval ratings remain closely linked to the overall House vote and Biden maintains a rating in the mid-50s, that doesnt guarantee Democrats will win the House. Weve had a few elections in a row now where polls, on balance, slightly overstated support for Democratic candidates and politicians and understated support for GOP ones. That doesnt mean the same thing will happen again in the midterms, but its easy to imagine the eventual electorate in 2022 will be a little more Republican-leaning than Bidens approval rating suggests. And Democrats have very little margin for error. Republicans have a built-in head start in House races right now not only because of GOP gerrymandering but because Democratic-leaning voters disproportionately live in urban areas while Republicans are more spread out into exurban, suburban and rural districts. So a 50-50 popular vote margin would almost certainly give the GOP control of the House.

Moreover, Republicans have much more control over the redistricting process than Democrats, so they could draw lines even more favorable to them before next years elections. Republicans in many states are also trying to limit the ability of liberal-leaning Americans to vote or have their votes counted. So its possible that even, say, a 52 percent to 47 percent Democratic advantage in the aggregate popular vote in House races would translate to a Republican-controlled House.

Put simply: If Biden could maintain an approval rating in the mid-50s, it would be a huge help to Democrats in particular, House candidates in swing districts and Democratic Senate candidates in competitive states such as Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And if Biden could push his approval rating into the high 50s, its hard to imagine Democrats losing the House or the Senate.

How likely is it for Biden to maintain or improve his current approval?

Its hard to say. History would suggest that Biden is likely to be less popular in November 2022 than he is today, but were not sure how much of that history applies.

The pre-Trump pattern in presidential approval had typically been that a new president entered office with relatively high ratings (at or above 55 percent) and then those numbers gradually declined during his first two years. But that pattern may be over. Trump never had much of a honeymoon: He began at around 46 percent approval, and his ratings remained fairly stable throughout his presidency. Biden started off at around 53 percent higher than his immediate predecessor but not as high as other recent presidents. (Another interesting point: Bidens approval rating is nearly the inverse of his predecessors: Trumps approval was mostly in the low 40s, and his disapproval was mostly in the mid-50s; Bidens approval is in the mid-50s, and his disapproval in the high 30s.)

Its plausible that no matter what Biden does, his approval ratings will dip in the run-up to the midterms, as pre-Trump presidents did, because voters tend to sour some on the incumbent. Alternatively, its plausible that we are in a new normal of American politics, with a large GOP bloc, a slightly larger Democratic bloc that includes the majority of Americans and voters who are really locked into their party, so nothing really shifts those fundamental dynamics. That would explain why Bidens approval rating is basically the same as Trumps disapproval rating was, and why Bidens disapproval is so close to Trumps approval.

And finally, its plausible that what actually happens in Bidens presidency day-to-day matters. The president and his team are trying to implement a strategy that they think will keep his popularity up: improve the economy and deal with COVID-19 effectively, sell those successes to American voters and tone down the partisan divide in Washington. Republicans have a strategy too: keep up partisan tensions in Washington; attack Biden on policy matters like immigration, where he is unlikely to have clear successes; and highlight issues that are likely to divide voters based on competing racial and cultural attitudes, such as the controversy over the discontinuation of some Dr. Seuss books because of racist imagery.

Of course real-life events will affect Bidens approval ratings, you might say. Sure, but thats been true only marginally of late. Economic conditions are less correlated to presidential approval than in the past. And, as I noted earlier, none of the incredible things that happened in Trumps presidency (the Mueller report, Trumps 2019 impeachment, the COVID-19 outbreak) shifted his approval ratings much until the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which did cause a notable dip.

So watch Bidens approval rating closely. Its likely to be an indication of how well Democrats will do in next years elections. But its also likely to be an indication of how American politics today work more broadly. Is America locked in an intractable partisan uncivil war, where Team Blue represents a slight but clear majority and every election is super-close? Or maybe neither Team Blue nor Team Red has a majority and instead both are at about 45 percent, with a fairly large and meaningful bloc of people who either swing between the parties (often against the presidents party) or dont vote at all during midterm elections (mostly from the presidents party)? Or can the president and his actions meaningfully shift the political dynamics and create a 55-45 or 57-43 electorate if he is viewed as effective, or alternatively, a 43-57 electorate if he is viewed as particularly ineffective? We shall see over the next 19-plus months.

Read more here:
Why Democrats In Congress Need Bidens Approval Rating To Stay Where It Is - FiveThirtyEight

The beefed-up child tax credit from President Joe Biden's stimulus law has been touted by Democrats as a key measure designed to slash child poverty in half. They aim to make it permanent, a step that would represent a major expansion of the American social safety net.

The one-year measure authorized in mid-March is set to provide a $3,600-per-child benefit to parents with children aged 5 and under, issued through "periodic payments." It will be $3,000 for each child between 6 and 17. Democrats want to enable the option of a monthly check and they've been touting that, too.

Biden said on Wednesday at the White House that a family with two children under the age of 6 would "get $500 a month mailed to you by the federal government. That's life-changing."

That last part could be a hurdle, as the Internal Revenue Service simply may not be able to meet a monthly schedule of payments.

Congress is giving the IRS three-and-a-half months to stand up the sweeping new initiative, set to start July 1. But this comes in the middle of one of the most daunting tax seasons in its history, as the agency grapples with a large backlog of at least 12 million tax returns. It's such a big task that the IRS recently extended the tax-filing deadline by a month from April 15 to May 17 for individuals.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig cited thissignificant strain at a recent House committee hearing when he warned of potential delays in distributing the child tax credit benefit by July. The readiness of the IRS to carry this out poses a major challenge to Democrats' goal of getting payments out the door to 66 million American kids every month.

"I would not be surprised to see payments start in July, but I would also not be surprised see this turn into a quarterly benefit where the first payments came in October and the second payment in December," Elaine Maag, a tax expert at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told Insider.

Maag said carrying it out this year is "lightning-fast" and the IRS is well known to use old computer systems and databases.

Other experts also noted the brief time-frame the IRS was given to devise a program from the ground up, another burden on a historically underfunded organization already facing several sets of problems this tax season.

"Setting up a program in three months is not something that's typically done and any agency would have had challenges," Samantha Jacoby, a senior tax analyst at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview.

The original law underpinning the benefit, known as the American Family Act, gave Treasury and the IRS a year to set up a monthly benefit system. Some Democrats worry about any comparisons to the mismanaged rollout of another signature expansion of the safety net: the Affordable Care Act, specifically the healthcare.gov website.

H&R Block CEO Jeffrey Jones, speaking to Insider earlier in March at the beginning of tax season, said the IRS hadn't made any decisions yet on how to actually execute the changes involved with the child tax credit. Calling it "one of the most underappreciated civil servants in the country," he said the agency's underfunding problems are well documented and even in a normal year, "their system gets taxed," or overwhelmed.

The IRS faces a hectic spring. Maag said on top of distributing stimulus payments, it is also implementing tax forgiveness for unemployed workers and attempting to issue refunds for people who filed early.

"The child tax credit is not first in line right now and the IRS has limited staff that they can devote to any problem," she said. "It is problematic that they have a lot of things to do and limited resources to do it with."

Rettig also told House Ways and Means lawmakers the decision to prolong tax season by a month would cut into the ability of its employees to develop a new online portal. That's supposed to be the space for Americans to share up-to-date information about their income and number of children.

"We're focused on trying to get these payments out to people in a meaningful manner, in a meaningful time frame," he said.

Democrats provided the IRS with nearly $2 billion in extra funding to bring on more personnel and upgrade aging systems, after a decade of Republican-led budget cuts.

Still, Democrats involved with the measure say they'll work with the IRS in the months ahead. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said she was confident the IRS would be successful. She cited the additional money for the organization and "the will to get these payments out monthly."

"We will work through issues as they arise and ensure the IRS has the tools they need to make these payments to everyone who has qualifying children," the senior Democratsaid in a statement to Insider.

Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, another architect of the child benefit, echoed DeLauro.

"I'll still continue to work with them as they implement this program because those resources are so important to families right now and we want to make sure that it is done well from the get-go," she said in an interview.

Experts say the success of the program hinges on the capacity of the federal government to issue payments to people who don't typically pay taxes because they don't earn enough income to be required to file.

"The IRS' outreach efforts are going to be really important trying to get new populations of people into the tax system," Jacoby said.

Lawmakers are eager to avoid problems that could overshadow the early rollout of a highly-touted Democratic program. They want to dodge comparisons to the bungled unveiling of healthcare.gov, a website created under President Barack Obama to allow people to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Many struggled to obtain coverage for weeks.

"Everyone wants to avoid any potential healthcare.gov 2.0.," a House Democratic aide familiar with ongoing discussions told Insider. "Looking at the healthcare.gov example is a great justification for making sure we get this right and making sure the IRS is thoughtful that they really kick the tires on this and they are thoughtful in implementing so it's easy to use and families aren't confused."

Regardless, people are likely to receive a substantial sum of money this year, though it may not be through monthly installments as Democrats originally envisioned.

"This was always going to be hard," Jacoby said. "Whether it's monthly or quarterly or something else, People are still going to get a lot of money they need in 2021 even if there's administrative hiccups along the way."

The White House did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

More:
Democrats are touting monthly checks for parents in the stimulus, but they may not be monthly after all - Business Insider

Now heres some lawyering that may turn out to be too clever by half.

Democratic litigator Marc Elias on Monday submitted his latest brief on behalf of defeated congressional candidate Rita Hart. He wants the House of Representatives to overturn the election in Iowas 2nd district, which Ms. Hart lost by six votes to GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks. But rather than asserting that if state election law is strictly followed his client would win, Mr. Elias tells House Democrats that they may need to bend the law to reach their desired outcome.

His brief responds to questions from the Committee on House Administration. In the first response, on procedures the committee should use in adjudicating the election challenge, Mr. Elias says the Committee is certainly not bound to follow state law. The quote is from a 1985 case when the House overturned an Indiana election to seat the Democrat.

That sentence wasnt a slip. Mr. Elias adds that when voter intent can be determined but a ballot is not, for one reason or another, in strict conformity with state law, it should be counted. He urges the Committee to exercise its discretion to depart from Iowa law, and adopt counting rules that disenfranchise the smallest possible number of voters.

Mr. Elias is right as a constitutional matter that each house of Congress has sweeping authority to judge its Members elections. But the explicit suggestion that state law be discarded gives the political game away.

Here is the original post:
Democrats Give Their Iowa Game Away - The Wall Street Journal

In the aftermath of last weeks mass shooting in Georgia that killed eight people, political leaders and the Asian American community are grieving and calling for justice.

Let me start off by saying this: The role of an activist is not the same as the role of a politician. That has been true of grassroots campaigns and activists campaigns since the beginning of time. It was true during the civil rights movement, said Guy Cecil, chair of Priorities USA, during a recent briefing with reporters. Having said that, in the aggregate, when you look at the totality of the election, defund the police in the aggregate neither helped nor hurt the cause.

One analysis by a Democratic consultant, provided exclusively to POLITICO, measured the effectiveness of GOP attack ads on defunding the police. House candidates recently shared the report to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, according to a person familiar with their communications.

Matthew Weaver, an adviser for battleground Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), said he conducted the study because he wanted to look at it in a very rigorous and statistical way, as opposed to via anecdotes, which is where a lot of the debate seems to be right now.

His findings: The GOP attack ads accusing Democrats of wanting to strip resources from cops were not any more powerful than other TV spots run by Republicans. On the other hand, Democratic ads that refuted the GOPs claims that they were looking to defund the police made a difference: Those candidates who aired such spots performed better than President Joe Biden by 1.5 percentage points for every 1,000 gross ratings points a measure of advertising impact run.

The lesson, Weaver said, is that not addressing certain false allegations explicitly and head-on is a strategic error that many cannot afford to make. But only a quarter of House Democratic candidates in the most contested races countered the GOPs blitz on broadcast television, he said.

The DCCC may be part of the reason why. During the 2020 election, some at the committee advised Cartwright not to reply on TV because candidates should never repeat a negative, said a person close to the conversations. With the help of a former local police chief who backed him up, Cartwright ultimately shot down the defund idea in ads anyway, and he won his competitive district by nearly four points; Biden lost it by more than four.

The DCCC is now under new leadership: New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney became chair after the election. Helen Kalla, a spokesperson for the DCCC, did not respond directly to questions about the discussions with Cartwright or where it stands now on the issue.

As for its preparations for attacks over defunding the police in the future, she said, We expect that Republicans will continue spreading lies and misinformation about our candidates and their positions, and Democrats will be ready to combat those Republican lies and make clear to voters where they stand.

Cartwright, an attorney by trade, said that he decided to respond to his opponents negative ads because he decided they were a kill shot an attack, which if believed by the decision-maker, either a jury or, in politics, the voter, will end your chance of success. He called Weavers analysis fascinating.

Cartwright confirmed that there were voices at the DCCC who were giving the archetypal when youre responding, youre losing advice. But once he explained, for instance, the large number of lawn signs in his district expressing support for police including in yards without any campaign signs at all others at the committee supported his efforts to push back.

Once they got the picture, Cartwright said, "they were all in."

Some of Priorities USAs findings were similar to Weavers. During a Zoom briefing with reporters last week, Cecil said the net effect of Republican attack ads over defunding the police was neither negative nor positive.

Certainly there are people that respond negatively to defund the police. There are people that respond in our surveys by the way, of all races, all income brackets, that respond negatively to defund the police, he said. What's also true is that the activism and the energy and the attention that was brought to this issue, without a doubt, led to more votes, and more voters coming into the fold for the first time.

Another item from Priorities USAs research demonstrates how potent Democrats response to this issue and racial justice could be in the midterms: Asked about their decision to go to the polls, 91 percent of new Biden voters said "they wanted someone that would address racism and stand up for racial justice, said Cecil.

Many activists say they are not arguing for the wholesale elimination of police funding but rather the reallocation of resources.

There is another effort underway that will likely play a major role in influencing the debate around the net political effects of defund: a Democratic post-mortem being done with the help of the CBC, CHC, CPC and other caucus groups.

The partnership of centrist and liberal groups examining the impact of the call to remove funding from the police, along with other hot-button issues such as socialism and the Green New Deal, includes Third Way, Collective PAC, Latino Victory Fund and End Citizens United. No conclusions from the report have been made yet, and it will be finished around the end of May, said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way.

Given the fact that the study is being aided by both moderates and progressives, as well as powerful institutional players such as the CBC, its findings could go in multiple directions and will likely have a big impact.

At the same time, Black Lives Matter activists are discussing the possibility of holding a press conference or making some other kind of formal response to moderates claims, said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party and a leader in the Movement for Black Lives coalition. They considered the option last year but deprioritized it because they were busy in the aftermath of former President Donald Trumps efforts to overturn the election as well as the insurrection at the Capitol, he said.

I do think that there is a conversation that needs to happen that puts Democrats on notice around what our movement would consider harmful to our efforts in their efforts to push back on these attacks, he said. If they buttress themselves with law enforcement validators and tried to prove that they were more law-and-order than Republicans, then what you're doing is you're ceding and youre re-ascribing these far-right myths that make it harder for Democrats and harder for people in general to be able to critique and challenge what is by most measures a failing criminal legal system.

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A conversation that needs to happen: Democrats agonize over defund the police fallout - POLITICO