Learn to Read More Critically – Two Simple Lessons in Political Analysis
“Why Republicans Win at Chess but Democrats can’t even Connect the Dots"
The first piece in today’s newsletter: “Fascism: It Doesn’t Have to be a Conspiracy to Work,” links the seemingly unconnected war in Ukraine to the extended protests in Portland and the Canadian Trucker Blockade, and serves as an extended introduction to the second piece: “How Can They (Still) Be So Dumb,” which exposes the shallowness and counter-productive nature of American progressive and Democratic Party analysis and strategy. Enjoy!
“Fascism: It Doesn’t Have to be a Conspiracy to Work”
Fascism is on the march across the globe. Here in the United States, the gunning down of activists in Portland barely made the national news, part of a wave of violence against protestors, school board officials, against elected officials, hundreds of vehicular assaults, armed mobs storming state capitals, and an armed insurrection in Washington D.C. to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States, all emanating from an increasingly emboldened right wing.
The embrace of extremism by the GOP is complete. The Republican Party is wholly fascist, wholly white nationalist, wholly beyond persuasion, compromise, or redemption. Sitting members of Congress spoke at AFPAC, an event organized by holocaust deniers. They’re still sitting members of Congress. The Republican Party is led by one Donald Trump, head of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States and overthrow its government.
No discussion of global fascism’s day in the sun would be complete without analysis and comment on the invasion of Ukraine by the authoritarian government of Putin’s Russia, and the resultant widespread civilian casualties and credible accusations of war crimes. Putin desires control over the country, and there appears to be little if any limit to the violent lengths the leader of the Russian Federation is willing to go to achieve it.
At first glance, these events defy lumping together. What exactly do the deaths of people in Portland have to do with those in Kyiv? What’s Putin got to do with Republican perfidy?
If you will recall, some of the ties between the assault on democracy in the United States and the assault on democracy in Ukraine are pretty direct. Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine was the person on the other end of that ‘perfect call’ where then-President Donald Trump tried to extort the government of Ukraine to smear his domestic rival, Joe Biden. And a bunch of Republicans went to Moscow for the Fourth of July a ways back. And a bunch of Republicans tried to cheerlead for Putin when the invasion began.
More broadly, however, the failures of global capitalism’s neoliberal variant all but made this outcome inevitable. The vast income inequality, environmental devastation, and concomitant erasure of true democracy in societies dominated by transnational corporate interests create the conditions that give rise to Trumps and Putins. (This is discussed at length in this newsletter’s other piece, so we’ll leave it here).
The response to the right-wing convoy in Canada shows that the police aren’t going to help. In Toronto, the truckers were stopped by people power, which strips away the right’s argument that they hold a populist mantle. In the United States, so-called Freedom Convoys have sputtered and fallen apart, riven by OSINT attacks exposing donor lists and infiltrating their organizing chats.
Here’s the thing about bullies: the only way to win is to fight back. Task 1 in fighting back successfully is crafting the right strategy. Towards that end we offer the following.
“How can they (still) be so dumb?”
We’ve written at length about the Democrats’ and progressives’ lack of an effective strategy for dealing with right’s authoritarian onslaught. We take the opportunity provided by the recent publishing of a plausible sounding progressive strategic analysis: “The New Politics of Evasion: How Ignoring Swing Voters Could Reopen the Door for Donald Trump and Threaten American Democracy,” William A. Galston and Elaine Kamarck, contributing authors for Progressive Policy Institute, February 2022 -- to detail precisely what’s wrong with the left when it comes to analysis, sense making, strategy development, and seizing opportunities. (PPI Article Referenced).
We quote the original document at length to provide you with requisite context, and to assure you that we are not simply setting up a straw man to knock down with our commentary. In terms of structure, first you’ll see the text from the original article, italicized, followed by our comments in standard text.
“The resurgence of inflation caught Democrats flat-footed and was initially dismissed, making many Americans wonder whether Democrats were in touch with everyday economic reality.” This is the same sort of soft thinking and flawed analysis that plagues the left, as well as being needlessly pessimistic and self-flagellating. First, the resurgence caught everyone flat-footed -- Democrats were no less prepared than Republicans after 30 plus years of negligible inflation. Second, no one downplayed, much less “dismissed” the importance of the issue. It is, however, just one of many issues the nation is dealing with, from Ukraine, to Covid, to authoritarian attacks on Democracy. Third, economic issues like inflation are systemic and therefore require deep, fact-based analysis and well-thought-out solutions -- which require time -- otherwise the cure is certain to be worse than the disease. Finally, the data we do have indicate that the primary cause of this specific inflationary cycle is profit-taking by large corporations that are exploiting the momentary leverage they have been provided by a distracted public and government -- for which there is little to no near-term recourse.
“The way the United States left Afghanistan weakened confidence in Democrats’ management of foreign and defense policy, raising the political stakes in Ukraine.”
Our intelligence analysis indicates that Putin likely had his Ukraine invasion planned for years and was waiting for the most opportune time to execute. He quite deliberately chose this moment because: his only strategic equal -- Angela Merkel, recently stepped down, likely reducing the cohesion and power of the west’s response; and the U.S. Congressional elections are upcoming, so that the invasion could be coordinated with the U.S. right to weaken Biden and reduce the chances that Democrats retain one or both Houses. Initial Republican and Fox News responses to the invasion back up our assertions. Nobody of Putin’s strategic experience mistakes a one-off event like the Afghanistan withdrawal as a major indication that it is worth rolling the dice on an invasion.
“And worst of all, too many of the most vocal Democrats have adopted stances on fraught social issues — policing, immigration, public schools, and others — that repel most Americans. The title of veteran political analyst Ronald Brownstein’s recent article told a hard truth: “Democrats are losing the culture war.”2 And when they lose this war, they lose elections — as they did in Virginia last November.” Wow, Fox News couldn’t have said it better! Where’s the analysis, where are the numbers that back this up, where is the justification for the use of freighted words such as “most vocal Democrats” (let’s be honest, they mean The Squad, Congressional Black Caucus, etc., who are the hidden targets of their analysis), “fraught social issues (aren’t all issues fraught – making this a rhetorical redundancy?), and exactly which Americans are “repelled” by which aspects of our public schools? If anything, polls indicate that most Americans are “repelled by” the actions the right is taking such as book burning, disrupting school board meetings, and muzzling teachers. And give me a break, Democrats aren’t losing the culture war. They are making steady progress in the establishment of a diverse, multi-cultural society despite the opposition of big money and a reactionary right. What the authors are suggesting -- but deliberately leaving unspoken -- is that the left simply capitulate to the right so that its feelings are not hurt. Sorry, but that is not how you win tough battles. And why in the hell would we turn our backs on the long line of Americans whose sacrifices got us here? What kind of soft-headed, self-hating thinking is that?
“In recent years, a substantial portion of the Democratic Party has convinced itself (note the authors’ use of the passive voice – to subtly indicate that Democrats must have been duped by somebody and then everyone just goes along with everybody else, instead of the authors acknowledging that perhaps some of the things Democrats “have convinced themselves of” have real merit and were arrived at after great thought) that Americans are ready for a political revolution that transforms every aspect of their lives.” Who on the left is saying anything about a “revolution,” or that they seek a transformation of all Americans’ lives? This is needlessly inflammatory rhetoric written to purposely undercut the policy positions progressives posit -- which are much more modest than indicated by the authors.
“This assumption has crashed into a stubborn reality: Most Americans want evolutionary,
not revolutionary, change. They want more government in some areas but not all, and within limits. And they want government that respects their commonsense beliefs — for example, that defunding the police is not the path to public safety, abolishing immigration enforcement is not the cure for our southern border, and that it is wrong to exclude parents from decisions about the education of their children.” This entire paragraph is an unabashed, and not even cleverly disguised, point of view of the authors in which, just like Republicans, they psychologically project onto the left. No one is saying that defunding police by itself improves public safety, no one (not least of all the authors) has even defined the southern border “problem” that so urgently requires redress, and parents already have major say in their children’s education through school boards and PTAs. Or they can put their children in private schools, or they can home school them.
“Swing voters are critical and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Too many Democrats have evaded this truth — and its implications for the party’s agenda and strategy. They have been led astray by three persistent myths: that “people of color” think and act in the same way; that economics always trumps culture; and that a progressive majority is emerging.
Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt created the modern social welfare state and a plethora
of laws designed to protect workers, the Democratic party has viewed itself as the party of working-class and middle-class voters who would be bound to the party by economic and material benefits.
Much has changed since FDR took office nearly nine decades ago, but for some Democrats it will always be 1933. Too many Democrats believe that economic issues are the “real” issues, and that cultural issues are mostly diversions invented by their adversaries for political purposes. This gives rise to the “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” syndrome in which Americans are allegedly manipulated into voting against their economic self-interest.
For Americans across the political spectrum, social, cultural, and religious issues are real and — in many cases — more important to them than economic considerations. These issues reflect their deepest convictions and shape their identity. Economic circumstances do not determine views on guns, abortion, or religion, and attitudes toward immigration reflect deep-seated beliefs about ethnic and national identity.
The myth of economic determinism has another political downside: It leads too many Democrats to believe that showering Americans with public resources is the surest path to victory. This is true in some circumstances but not others. First, the structure of public programs must be consistent with the people’s moral sentiments. FDR understood that programs, such as Social Security, to which individuals contribute in return for future benefits are most likely to enjoy enduring political support, which is why Lyndon Johnson went down the same road with Medicare.
Non-contributory programs must pass two tests in the court of public opinion: beneficiaries must need these benefits and they must deserve them. Victims of natural disasters almost always pass these tests, and big economic downturns are the moral equivalent of natural disasters.
But most people don’t understand why upper- income Americans deserve big tax breaks like deducting the full amount of property taxes on their mansions, and most people believe that it’s reasonable to ask needy beneficiaries to reciprocate by doing what they can to improve their own lot.
The myth of economic determinism goes a long way towards explaining why Democrats have had such a hard time winning back the votes of the white working class — and why they seem to be losing support among Hispanic working- class voters as well. Announcing his presidential campaign in 2015, Donald Trump pledged not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Society.
In rejecting calls for “entitlement reform” in the name of fiscal responsibility, policies advocated by Speaker Paul Ryan’s wing of the Republican Party, Trump took away one of the Democrats’ best and most time-tested attacks. And by reorienting the Republican Party away from cuts in programs on which working- and middle- class voters depended for their security, Donald Trump removed the key obstacle to a cultural appeal based on anti-immigrant sentiments and nationalism.
This improved his party’s prospects in states with above-average shares of white working-class voters. This cultural appeal helped move two states (Ohio and Iowa), which Barack Obama won as recently as 2012, beyond Democrats’ reach. Democrats are now unlikely to win these two states until there is a Democratic landslide — which hasn’t happened since 1964. And it has made the upper Midwest fiercely competitive, a face-off that is likely to persist until the battle lines between the parties are redrawn.”
We agree with the authors’ assertions that the Republicans have deployed brilliant strategy and tactics to great result. But this section of the article really captures the problem with the entire article, and for that matter all that is wrong with standard Democratic strategy documents: it constitutes an apologia for neoliberalism as the only legitimate and unquestioned American socio-political ideology, when it is precisely this ideology that constrains Democratic and progressive policies and goals, and in so doing the authors tacitly accept the very box in which the right seeks to contain us; discusses at great length but does not define who is a swing voter and what distinguishes them from non-swing voters, thus rendering its own argument unassailable; expects the reader to make distinctions between economic and cultural issues that they themselves have not articulated, and that in fact cannot be reliably teased apart because they are complex, dynamic, systemically connected challenges that impact each other in incalculable ways.
Finally, and most insultingly, the “myth of economic determinism” paragraph delegitimizes compassion and humanity as the bases for policy, posits American society as primarily one giant quid pro quo deal, and defines any citizen who possesses non-reciprocal compassion as a chump. This is the Republican point of view -- are the authors suggesting that the answer to winning more votes is to become a Republican in all but name? Isn’t that what’s been happening for the last fifty years? How well has that worked for us? Second, Republicans will not be protecting either social security and Medicare much longer -- they are already hinting at plans to modify and likely eventually eliminate both programs (Scott's "Plan").
“Democrats who think that the mobilization of their base will be sufficient to win elections overlook the sheer number of white non-college voters in key states. This does not mean that Democrats should ignore their base, but it does mean that they need to walk a fine line between mobilizing their base and attracting enough white non-college voters to win. In 2020, COVID had created an economic and social crisis that brought just enough of these voters back to the Democrats in key swing states. But these successes must not blind Democrats to the fact that these voters often have found Republicans’ cultural claims more persuasive than the Democrats’ economic arguments.”
And the authors must not be blind to the fact that these same voters found both Obama’s cultural arguments (equality and hope, among others) and Sanders’ economic justice arguments, more persuasive than the tired old crap emanating from Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, or even Trump’s cynical promises to restore a golden age. If anything, the authors have it exactly backwards -- it is the right for whom it is all about economics -- the cultural issues the authors refer to -- such as immigration -- are simply code and cover for the right’s fears of loss of economic status on the part of its rural, white male-dominated base.
“The Democratic Party is a broad coalition of left-wing progressives, center-left liberals,
and moderates. In the country, both conservative and moderate voters are more numerous than are those who consider themselves liberal or progressive. But despite these well-known statistical truths, many Democrats have convinced themselves that a new “very liberal” or “progressive” majority was emerging, in the party and in the country.” First, it has been well established that there is no definition of the categories provided to the survey respondents, so most Democratic voters self-categorize as moderates because that is a non-controversial category. Second, their actual positions on proposed legislation would make them progressives under the authors’ own (but unarticulated) definition -- and the authors well know this. Third, the authors’ assertion is not a “well-known statistical truth,” if there is such a thing – it is a thoroughly discredited hypothesis being given extra life by lazy and self-interested pundits.
“It is true that Americans turn to government when problems arise that the market cannot solve (or even exacerbate).” What is the market? Who says it’s supposed to solve all problems? What Alice in Wonderland world do we live in that even supposedly progressive analysts have so thoroughly bought into neoliberal claptrap!
“Measures to expand investments in infrastructure, education, research, and technology enjoy broad public support, as do efforts to rein in the cost of prescription drugs. When economic inequality becomes blatant, Americans will support efforts to reduce it — for example, by increasing taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals.” Just exactly how much more blatant does economic inequality have to become to legitimize American support for remedies? We have not been so unequal since the 1920s. Even in the event, where comes the wherewithal in terms of money and Congressional support to make such dreams reality? The authors leave this hanging, suggesting that the inequality issue is both less impactful and much simpler to resolve than reality would indicate.
“At the same time, decades of declining trust in the competence and integrity of the public sector have left Americans wary of government as the solution to social problems. Capitalism has its excesses and deficiencies, they believe, but socialism is not the answer. And when government responses to real issues — such as the hardships created by the pandemic — contribute to new problems such as inflation, support for an activist public sector quickly wanes. There is scant evidence that Americans will accept the costly government-led economic agenda of which progressives dream.” These authors should be sued for incompetence! First, declining trust in government and public sector has been a deliberate objective of Republican strategy for 50 years, not some anomalous, random feature of modern America, or the result of cumulative Democratic Party governance mistakes. Second, capitalism is an economic system, not a political philosophy or ideology. Socialism, however, is a political philosophy that can accommodate and integrate seamlessly with capitalism as economic system. Thus, they are not directly comparable, and the comparison is apples and oranges and thus useless. Third, we cannot accept addressing the Covid pandemic as an “activist” activity. In the event we did the least we could do and have still experienced a million needless deaths! And finally, every action in a complex system such as a nation state will have some mix of intended and unintended consequences. Is there some reason the authors believe that recent public sector efforts to make the world a better place are somehow qualitatively different and less morally responsible than either doing nothing, or going with Republican prescriptions?
“Nowhere is the myth of the progressive ascendency more powerful than in the sphere of culture. Many Democrats believe that the most progressive cultural attitudes enjoy the support of a popular majority. These (Who are these, again?) Democrats are living in a bubble (But Republicans are somehow not?) defined by education (Doesn’t education expand the bubble and strive to make people aware of alternate point of view? Mine did.), income, and geography. Time after time, Republicans use progressives’ overreach (another freighted, undefined term) in areas such as crime, immigration, and education to drive wedges between swing voters and the Democratic Party. This pattern will not end until Democrats break out of the mindset that dominates deep blue areas, familiarize themselves with the rest of the country and then carefully craft stances on these issues that move the country forward — and that most Americans can embrace.” Really? Do progressives not get to posit their own points of view and endeavor to advance them? Must they always defer to and follow Republican issues and bow down to the fears of their base? And what overreach are they speaking to -- you mean like reducing the absurd number of brown people in jail, or getting the police to stop killing brown people with impunity? This is the same lazy thinking and language that got us where we are, that cedes momentum to the right, and smells like defeat.
“The cultural bubble is also the result of the increasingly intense geographic polarization that has shaped the outlook of a new generation of political activists. In deep blue states like Massachusetts and California, the political spectrum runs from the far left — where a concept like democratic socialism, for example, is very popular — to the center. (Who gets to say that Democratic Socialism is “far left”? It is actually a centric position in all European democracies.) In sum: for reasons of education, income, and geography, many Democratic voters and leaders are far removed from the daily experiences and cultural outlooks of non-college voters. For example, in the wake of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis, whites joined Blacks all over the country to protest police brutality. Out of this was born a reinvigorated interest in police reform as many whites learned more about the experiences of African Americans at the hands of the police.
Much of the work on police reform was broadly popular since it focused on commonsense measures to make policing more accountable and getting others to do the work that diverts police from their mission of fighting crime. But then advocates settled on a disastrous slogan — defund the police — to describe their aims. For prosperous whites living in safe urban neighborhoods or the suburbs, this label and policies were unfortunate, but not a deal breaker. But for whites and others living in or near neighborhoods with high crime rates, it was.” A deal breaker in what way? The swing voters we’re chasing voted for Trump just because some radicals use the phrase “Defund the Police?” If so, how would you expect to win them over -- have language police? Why is it critical for the educated left to understand dumbasses but not the other way around? Why the special burden?
For that matter, why can’t the “educated” left’s values and prescriptions be pursued, and the uneducated right brought to their senses? Because doing so might lose votes? But what’s the sense – or definition -- of winning if you have the same agenda as your adversary? There is more evidence indicating that the right disdains the state and law enforcement, indeed the entire rule of law that underpins our democracy, but we let that pass by unchallenged. Do the authors even have a glimpse of how hypocritical this point of view is, as well as ignorant and counter-productive?
“When we first wrote about the politics of evasion over three decades ago, Democrats had allowed the public to form an impression of them as the party that sympathized with criminals more than with their victims — that is, a party outside the moral mainstream. Although many of today’s cultural issues are different, the problem remains the same, and Democrats will remain on the cultural defensive until they pursue social change with policies and language — and at a pace — that can command a sustainable majority.” Again, this is total capitulation to the right’s agenda and momentum. That segment of the electorate that the authors suggest we wait for to come around is moving away from Democratic values like light at the edge of the universe – it is senseless to try to catch up to it. The history of liberal societal advances indicate that social activism is the only consistent change agent. Time itself -- the author’s prescription -- absent well-intended noise that jolts systems out of equilibria such as social activist movements -- works against systemic change because of the concept of path dependence – which is the $50 social science term for the adage that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“A new survey commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee may finally get the party’s attention. The poll found that when Democratic candidates leave Republicans’ cultural attacks unanswered, the GOP lead on the generic ballot increases from 4 to 14 points. These attacks are especially potent among swing voters, including centrists, Independents, and Hispanics. A strong Democratic response — supporting the police and border security, for example — undoes much but not all the damage. If this survey doesn’t wake up the Democratic Party and its candidates, Democrats face a face a brutal reckoning in November, and the problem will persist until the party, led by the president, clearly signals that it is rejoining America’s cultural mainstream.” Leaving the Republican Party’s attacks unanswered by what we wonder? More of the same counterpropaganda, weak counterpunching, and dissembling? Look, if you are always responding to attacks instead of leading and seizing the offensive yourself -- you are losing.
The answer, then, is a powerful, proactive strategy chock full of winning policy prescriptions ably supported by an integrated communications strategy.
The right’s cultural attacks are always amoral, un-American, and telegraphed. Polling and modeling have already indicated which policies are winners for the left. The real problem is that the Democratic Party hierarchy is opposed to those very policies because they benefit more from the status quo than they would from the policy changes. This is the dirty little secret the Democratic Party elite doesn’t want you to know. Pelosi’s initial opposition to the “Ban Congressional Stick Trading Act” is just the tip of this iceberg.
“Although the number of swing states has decreased by more than one-half over the past six decades, they continue to determine the outcome of presidential contests. If Biden had received 11,780 fewer votes in Georgia (0.2% of the total), 10,458 in Arizona (0.3%), and 20,683 fewer in Wisconsin (0.6%), his 306-232 Electoral College victory would have turned into a 269-269 tie, and the election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives, handing Donald Trump another four years in the Oval Office. If Biden’s national popular vote had been 3% rather than 4.4%, Trump probably would have prevailed outright in the Electoral College.
The explanation is familiar but bears repeating: because Democrats are highly concentrated in a handful of states, Democratic candidates win these states by huge margins that do not improve their prospects in the Electoral College. Biden won the five states with the largest Democratic edge in the popular vote by a total of 11.3 million votes. By contrast, Trump won the five states with the largest Republican popular vote edge by only 3.0 million votes. Biden won California’s 55 electoral votes by 5.1 million popular votes, while Trump won Texas’s 38 EVs by only 600,000.
Whatever the moral arguments in favor of electing presidents by national popular vote, a constitutional change of this magnitude will not occur anytime soon, if ever.” What counterproductive pessimism. It’s evidently easier for the authors to conceive of the U.S. becoming a totalitarian state than fix the Electoral College. “In the meantime, Democrats must play the hand they have been dealt (but Republicans get to change the deck at will, why the dichotomy?). Presidential elections will be won or lost in the Electoral College, and — fair or not — some states have more impact than others in determining who wins. This reality does not please progressives, many of whom come from solidly blue states, and it often eludes Democratic activists who hail from deep blue states. But unless they want to spend their careers in a minority party, they must acknowledge the need to win swing states — and the political implications of this necessity.
We cannot rule out the possibility that one of the two political parties will run an unappealing candidate with an unpopular message, creating a surge of support for the other major party candidate. Nor can we rule out a national crisis of some sort that results in a one-time rejection of the incumbent party. Such crises occurred in 2008 at the onset of the Great Recession, and in 2020 with the onset of the COVID pandemic.
But until one political party breaks the stalemate and forges an enduring national majority (which the authors elsewhere in the article say will not happen for a long time, if ever), close elections will remain the rule, swing voters in swing states will remain the key to victory, and grandiose interpretations of victory will prove to be hollow if not downright dangerous.” Again, what is a swing voter, and how exactly can Democrats “win them over?” Isn’t this whole piece nothing more than a “grandiose interpretation?” We think we’ve made that case.
And why are we ruling out dems running an appealing candidate that surges support for him or her, such as with Roosevelt, Kennedy, Obama, or Sanders? What defeatism is represented by the authors -- that is why we’re losing, not because of some mythical swing voter the authors can’t even bother with defining!
“It is beyond our power to offer a comprehensive plan to win the 2024 election and defeat the threat Donald Trump poses to constitutional democracy.” Finally, the truth comes out! Yet the authors pretend to do just that throughout the article, but in the cowardly manner of setting up straw men to then take pot shots at. Their entire argument totally ignores what the right is doing, and will do, and yet the first key to strategy is understanding your adversary. Their major prescription -- chasing swing voters -- is exactly what the Party has been doing and, according to the authors’ own analysis, not working. This is ridiculous!
Conclusion:
I’ve been supporting demanding operational decision makers for years, with life and death outcomes stemming from those decisions. I’ve had my ass handed to me so many times for providing nonactionable information that I can smell it from a mile away. That said, our final indictment of the article is that there is no evidence of critical thinking, structured methodology or rigorous analysis in this paper. A good analysis and strategy clearly articulate the assumptions on which it is based. There is not one explicitly noted assumption in this entire article. Democrats, progressives, Americans, and our allies need and deserve much better. Unfortunately, this is the food the left has been feeding from for years -- it’s time to change the recipe.
Before you accuse us of doing that which we accuse the authors here of doing – avoiding real depth and prescription, we’ve promulgated a complete left strategy and its strategic implementation plan in previous articles. We’ve also done in-depth pieces detailing how and why a complex systems strategy is best developed, as well as other pieces on how to conduct rigorous, structured analyses and models. You can find them all on Substack.
In our next newsletter, we’ll detail what we believe are current and likely future overreaches Republicans will make that provide Democrats a rare and fleeting opportunity to regain some momentum. See you then.