.. Never mind that in 2014 a federal judge ruled that the no-fly list was “arbitrary and capricious” because the government refused to even confirm someone has been placed on it, much less provide any way to challenge a no-fly designation, which violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
.. On domestic policy, Trump has a followed a consistent strategy of neutralizing traditional Democratic attacks by adopting the Democrats’ positions.
.. In other words, by adopting the Democrats’ positions, Trump has closed off virtually all the major lines of attack (much as he has done on foreign policy, campaigning from the isolationist left). Clinton can’t hit Trump on guns . . . the minimum wage . . . cutting Social Security . . . or tax cuts for the rich . . . or trade.
.. So how will Clinton go after Trump? She will say that Trump is “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency.
.. Trump will respond in kind — going over all the old Clinton scandals, the Clinton Foundation, the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. It will be the ugliest, least substantive campaign in memory.
But no matter how it turns out, we’ll get a president committed to the Democratic Party’s positions on most of the major issues at home and abroad.
Does Democratic Weakness Create Republican Opportunity
Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a presidential candidate in 2012, released a set of recommendations for Republicans running for election this year. Gingrich put together the 22-page manifesto, “2016 Election Principles,”
The document — in essence a master plan that comes with the strong endorsement of Reince Priebus, the chairman of the R.N.C. — stresses the need for “widespread inclusion of ethnic groups.” It sounds remarkably like an across-the-board renunciation of Donald Trump’s campaign strategy.
This presents something of a paradox, though, because Gingrich claims to be one of Trump’s strongest supporters.
.. But Trump won the Republican presidential nomination by appealing specifically to just those voters most opposed to “widespread inclusion of ethnic groups.” His core support in primary after primary has been white voters who rank highest on scales of ethnocentrism and racial resentment.
.. Gingrich argues that
the goal has to be inclusion, not outreach. Outreach is when the old order makes a decision and then calls the community leaders to inform them. Inclusion is when the community is in on the discussion before the decision.
.. Gingrich is convinced that there has been a weakening of the Democratic Party over the last eight years at the state and local level — including in key battleground states — which has left a door open for a broad Republican victory this November.
.. when Barack Obama took office, 51.8 percent of voters identified with the Democratic Party and 38.4 percent with the Republican Party, a solid 13.4 point Democratic advantage.
In 2016, however, the average of the first five polls shows that the Democratic advantage has shrunk to a far more modest 5.2 point edge ..
.. In Pennsylvania, the 16 point Democratic advantage fell to 3 points.
.. In effect, Stewart supports Gingrich’s claim that the Obama years have “done more to grow the Republican Party than any Democratic president in our history.”
.. To get a sense of the depth of the Democratic Party’s decay at the state legislative level in the Obama era, consider that since President Obama took office, 85 of 98 legislative bodies have become more Republican than they were when he was inaugurated.
.. Gingrich claims that Republicans are on the cusp of a game-changing “revolution” in microtargeting through the use of a new technology called “Voter Score.” Voter Score is a database that ranks every voter in the nation on a series of 100 point scales for their likelihood of casting Republican or Democratic ballots, their stands on issues and their turnout history.
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‘The Left’s Priority Is Identity Politics, Not Labor,’ Cont’d
Even though I’m gay, I have come to feel identity politics have become camouflage for the Democratic party’s sellout of the poor, organized labor, and the middle class.
.. My great fear, as a Democrat, is that we will wind up with a party where the elites can invoke social issues relating to identity politics come election time to produce a victorious presidential mandate that allows them to push pro-corporate policies that undermine their own electorate. And that they will be able to get away with this again and again because there’s only two choices in our democracy, which means they will always be able to point a finger at the Trumps of the world to justify themselves as the lesser evil.
How the Other Fifth Lives
Segregation of affluence not only concentrates income and wealth in a small number of communities, but also concentrates social capital and political power. As a result, any self-interested investment the rich make in their own communities has little chance of “spilling over” to benefit middle‐ and low-income families. In addition, it is increasingly unlikely that high‐income families interact with middle‐ and low‐income families, eroding some of the social empathy that might lead to support for broader public investment in social programs to help the poor and middle class.
.. Smeeding finds that the gap between the average income of households with children in the top quintile and households with children in the middle quintile has grown, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $68,600 to $169,300 — that’s 147 percent.
.. Using 2013 census data, Reeves finds that 83 percent of affluent heads of household between the ages of 35 and 40 are married, compared with 65 percent in the third and fourth income quintiles and 33 percent in the bottom two.
.. Democrats are now competitive among the top 20 percent. This has changed the economic makeup of the Democratic Party and is certain to intensify tensions between the traditional downscale wing and the emergent upscale wing.
.. These upscale Democrats have helped fill the gap left by the departure of white working class voters to the Republican Party.
.. voters with annual incomes in the top quintile, who now make up an estimated 26 percent of the Democratic general election vote — are focused on social and environmental issues: the protection and advancement of women’s rights, reproductive rights, gay and transgender rights and climate change, and less on redistributive economic issues.