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'Get Back Up': President Rallies In North Carolina With Feisty Speech

'Get Back Up': President Rallies In North Carolina With Feisty Speech

If President Joe Biden is on his last leg as a candidate, you'd never know it by his effort to energize Democratic troops at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday.

"I know I'm not a young man. Let’s state the obvious" Biden said, in a nod to the halting performance he delivered at Thursday night's debate in Atlanta.

He paused, and chants of "Joe!" began to sweep the crowd.

"Folks, I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to," Biden admitted. "But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth, I know right from wrong, and I know how to do this job, I know how to get things done."

"And I know, like millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up!," he concluded, with an upward thrust of his fist.

Watch:

Jeez, where was this guy on Thursday? Certainly, that's what throngs of Biden supporters will wonder as they drink in the president's infectious vigor less than 24 hours after he reinforced for millions of Americans the most vexing question of his reelection: Is Joe up to the job?

And while Biden's Friday rally, however convincing, can't undo his failure to vanquish that question at the debate, what he did do was put another question to rest: Is Biden ready to step aside?

Nope—not exactly. Rather, Biden's speech was a call to arms, chock full of what one might imagine were a series of barbs he had planned to hurl at Donald Trump the night before.

Biden also poked fun at Trump for the gushers of lies that poured forth from him throughout the debate.

"Did you see Trump last night?" Biden queried. "May guess is he set—I mean this sincerely—he set a new record for the most lies told in a single debate."

Biden also reminded attendees about the stakes of the election in crisp, clean prose.

"Your freedom, your democracy, America itself is at stake," Biden warned.

He skewered Trump's string of legal transgressions.

"When I thought about his 34 felony convictions, his sexual assault on a woman in a public place, his being fined $400 million for business fraud, I thought to myself, Donald Trump isn't just a convicted felon. Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave," Biden charged.

"He's got more trials coming up," Biden added, alluding to the next chapter in the comeback story he's still working on.

This wasn't the speech of a guy who's down on his luck. This was the speech of a guy who nearly got knocked out of the ring and showed up to fight his way back in.

Welcome back, Joe. You should come around more often.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Former President Donald Trump

Suddenly Most Republicans Support Electing A Felon As President

A county sheriff in California shared a novel idea with his Instagram followers this week.

"I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, donning his uniform in a video posted to his personal account.

But it turns out Bianco, a Trump supporter, is more of a lagging indicator than a leader. A new YouGov survey published this week found that a majority of Republicans now say they are just fine with electing a criminal president—a wholesale change from their views on the matter before Trump was convicted of 34 felonies.

In April, just 17 percent of Republican voters said convicted criminals "should be allowed" to become president while 58 percent said they should not. But, hey, sometimes life comes at you fast. Now 58 percent of Republicans say felons "should be allowed" to be president, while just 23 percent say they should not.

In April, 37 percent of Republicans also said they wouldn't vote for a convicted felon "under any circumstances." Now just 14 percent say that.

Indeed, Trump's indictment and conviction have been transformative for the Republican electorate. In March 2023, whenRepublicans were asked whether it's a crime for a candidate seeking elected office "to pay someone to remain silent about an issue that may affect the outcome of an election," 73 percent of them said it was a crime. But a month later, following Trump's April 2023 indictment in the hush money case, only 40 percent of Republicans said it's a crime.

That's some major whiplash. And if it wasn't so predictable, it would be preposterous that a majority of Republicans are now putting out a presidential welcome mat for convicted felons.

But MAGA Republicans were always going to rally around Trump, regardless of his criminal status. It's the 23 percent of Republicans who still feel queasy about electing a felon president that matters.

In fact, on the margins, Biden has gained on Trump since his conviction, particularly among low information voters. The New York Times recontacted nearly 2,000 voters from its pre-conviction polls and found that Biden is picking up two points on Trump, putting the race at 46 percent Biden and 47 percent Trump.

"The shift was especially pronounced among the young, nonwhite, and disengaged Democratic-leaning voters," who had pushed Trump's lead in earlier polling, reported the Times. And among the so-called double-haters, who don't like either Biden or Trump, Trump shed more than 20 percent support, with half going to Biden and half retreating to undecided.

So it looks like MAGA Republicans aren't the only voters having a change of heart since Trump’s conviction.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Polls Show Voters May Be Ready To Dump Convicted Felon

Polls Show Voters May Be Ready To Dump Convicted Felon

Donald Trump is finally facing punishment for his crimes—34 of them, to be exact. But virtually no one foresaw his guilty verdict, including the public.

In May, the progressive pollsterNavigator Research found that, while 57 percent of voters believed Trump had committed a crime at some point during his presidency, a 47 percent plurality of voters didn't think Trump would be convicted for any of his crimes. Conviction doubters included a 46 percent plurality of independents (just 30 percent believed Trump would be found guilty) and a 61 percent majority of Republicans.

But early signs in post-conviction polling suggest that Trump’s conviction might have more impact on the electorate than originally anticipated.

A Morning Consult poll over the weekend found that 54 percent of voters approved of the verdict while just 34 percent disapproved.

But even more notably, nearly half of independents (49 percent) want Trump to drop out, as do 15 percent of Republicans, which is about the same amount of the GOP electorate that has reliably voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, including after she dropped out of the race.

An Ipsos poll for Reuters over the weekend found that one in 10 Republicans and one-quarter of independents said that they would be less likely to vote for Trump following his conviction.

A weekend focus group of two-time Trump voters conducted by Republican strategist and anti-Trumper Sarah Longwell found that five of the nine participants said that Trump’s felony conviction made them less likely to vote for him in 2024. While some of those voters had already begun to sour on Trump, conviction became the final nail in the coffin.

"I'm tired of the lies," said two-time Trump voter Michele, a 52-year-old Floridian. "I'm tired of the nonsense. And I believed the testimony. And that is why I am happy that the jury found him guilty."

Now that Trump is a convicted felon, Michele called him "completely unfit."

"He can't pass a basic security clearance at this point," she said.

In some ways, the biggest impact of Trump's 34-count conviction could be the way it jolts awake the electorate. What has become obvious over the last several months of polling is that President Joe Biden's strength lies among voters who are engaged and paying attention, whereas the foundation of Trump's slim polling advantage relies on less engaged voters.

A recent YouGov survey for CBS News found that nearly one-quarter of voters had heard little to nothing about Trump’s trial, including 40 percent of voters under 30, 33 percent of Black voters, and 37 percent of Latino voters—among all of whom, despite typically voting Democratic, Biden is currently underperforming.

Koda Furman, a Kenosha, Wisconsin, resident who doesn't plan to vote, was one of 30 battleground state residents who spoke with NBC News about Trump’s conviction.

“I was just on TikTok scrolling past and I saw some memes about what happened with Donald Trump and all that," Furman said. "Something happened with him and court and all that [and] he got caught.”

That's exactly the type of person the Biden campaign needs to engage and turn out to the polls in November.

The first debate on June 27 could be an opportunity for the Biden campaign to grab the attention of potential voters who have tuned out so far this election cycle.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

Polls: The More Voters Know, The More They Like Biden

New York Times political analyst Nate Cohn made an astute observation about a new Times/Siena poll, which showed President Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump in most battleground states.

"If there's any consolation [for Biden], it's that the poll is also littered with evidence that folks aren't super tuned in, and disengaged voters remain Biden's weakness," Cohn tweeted.

It's an insight that will likely define the presidential contest moving forward.

In the survey, for example, just 29 percent of registered voters said they are closely following the legal cases against Donald Trump. That means that less than one-third of voters are paying "a lot of attention" to the ongoing trial of a former president who will almost assuredly be the Republican nominee in the 2024 election.

The ancillary to Cohn's observation is that Biden performs better among high information, high propensity voters—or likely voters—a point veteran Democratic strategistSimon Rosenberg has been making for weeks now. A pattern has begun to emerge where Biden performs increasingly better as polling models move from "adults" to "registered voters" to "likely voters."

Rosenberg cites a recent Ipsos poll for ABC News, where Biden trails Trump among adults, 44 to 46 percent, but bests him by a point among registered voters, 46 to 45 percent. And Biden takes a four-point lead among likely voters, 49 to 45 percent. A Marist poll for NPR and PBS NewsHour made a similar finding, with Biden running just two points ahead of Trump with registered voters, 50 to 48 percent, but opening up a five-point lead among likely voters, 51 to 46 percent.

John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, made the same observation about voters ages 18 to 29 in the Siena battleground poll. Among registered youth voters, Biden trails Trump by three points, but among likely youth voters, Biden leads by seven points—a net turnaround of 10 points in the direction of Biden.

"Takeaway: the more you know; the more you vote; the better Biden does. It’s not complicated," he tweeted.

In an interview with Greg Sargent on "The Daily Blast" podcast, Biden pollster Jefrey Pollock said undecided voters make up anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the electorate depending on the state, "which is actually rather large." Those voters are disproportionately young, Black, and Latino.

The Siena poll also included about 20 percent of respondents who either didn't vote in 2020 or who did vote in 2020 but skipped the 2022 midterms.

Both sets of voters—the undecided and the lower propensity voters—are voting blocs that the Biden campaign will be targeting to make up ground in the final months of the election.

Pollock cited Nevada where, every two years, about 25 percent of the electorate consists of voters who have never before cast a ballot in an election.

"That's what makes Nevada so interesting and challenging but also as movable as it is," Pollock explained. "You've got these voters who don't really pay attention to politics, who are just getting into the political scene."

They are going to pay attention to the election much later, Pollock said. "You have to force your way into their lives," he explained, because they are more concerned with their kids’ activities, making sure they have health care, and simply paying their bills.

"We have to force them to pay attention to politics. It's why advertising and campaigns mean so much, particularly in those closing months, because we really do have to find ways to get into those houses," he said.

Biden certainly has the resources and the campaign to help address that information deficit, but whether or not his campaign manages to reach and persuade those voters remains to be seen.

As former Obama White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote in his "Message Box" substack: "My main takeaway from the [Siena] poll is that the more voters know about Biden and Trump, the better it will be for Biden."

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump's Anemic Field Organization Is Frightening Top Republicans

Trump's Anemic Field Organization Is Frightening Top Republicans

Donald Trump's presidential campaign is trying to sell donors on the idea that less is more when it comes to his flagging ground game in critical battleground states.

“We’re focused on quality over quantity. I mean, how novel a concept,” chief Trump campaign strategist Chris LaCivita told a crowd of mega donors on May 4 at Mar-a-Lago.

But here's how that leaner field organization looks on the ground to many GOP state strategists: “There is no sign of life,” said Kim Owens, a Republican operative in Arizona.

“Especially in a state that Trump lost so closely last time," Owens continued, "you’d expect to have more of a presence. I would think, ‘Let’s step it up.’ I think it’s a terrible mistake.”

These accounts come from an absolutely wild piece of reporting by four reporters at The Washington Post: Michael Sherer, Josh Dawsey, Maeve Reston, and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez. The reporting, which relates to the structural aspects of the contest, also comes at a moment when fresh New York Times/Siena polling suggests Trump is ahead of Biden in a handful of key battleground states.

Arizona's GOP operatives aren't alone in feeling mystified by the Trump campaign’s lack of presence—they are joined by those in Michigan, Georgia, and others as well.

The reason for Trump's flagging operation isn't exactly clear. To be sure, the Trump campaign is cash strapped, particularly when compared to the Biden campaign's war chest. Trump also recently took over the Republican National Committee, and the new leadership, which includes his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, reportedly scrapped the organizational plans drawn up by the old leadership under the direction of Ronna Romney McDaniel.

Under the original plan, in Georgia, the RNC was supposed to hire 12 regional field directors and 40 field organizers by the end of May, topped off by 20 field offices down the road. Instead, the RNC currently has one consultant, according to Cody Hall, a senior aide to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who has a tense relationship with Trump. Hall said he has "seen no evidence" that the Trump campaign has the field operation necessary to win the Peach State.

A similar story is playing out in Arizona, where the RNC planned to open seven field offices and hire six regional field directors overseeing 23 organizers by the end of May. That plan appears to be dead on arrival with nothing to take its place.

An RNC presence is also missing in action in other battleground states, including Michigan, where several unnamed operatives were concerned.

Additionally, the Bank Your Vote effort, an early voting operation the RNC had launched at the beginning of the year, has gone dark with its website entirely offline for an indefinite amount of time.

Yet Trump campaign staffers and allies appear to be gaslighting their way through the deficit.

Asked about the Bank Your Vote operation by the Post, James Blair, the national political director for both the Trump campaign and the RNC, said, "It is full speed ahead. Stay tuned for more on the program.”

Blair's response was par for the course in the piece, which makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what is happening with the RNC and the Trump campaign, which effectively appears to be a joint operation at this point. But among Republican operatives in these states—who are usually instrumental to implementing a statewide strategy—everyone is in the dark.

Perhaps most concerning is that Trump directed the RNC leadership to focus their efforts on election security rather than field operations and turnout. According to the reporting, Trump is plenty sure of his own ability to turn out his voters.

But here's another way to read that: Trump has no earthly idea if he can turn out enough people to win on the front end, so he's training the campaign's resources on ways to cause trouble on the back end. They’ll do this by questioning the integrity of the vote and, therefore, the election's results.

“Focus on the cheating,” the Post reported Trump told McDaniel and others when she was still leading the organization.

So as its GOTV operation flails, the RNC is planning a massive "election integrity" operation with "tens of thousands of volunteers who will monitor precincts and vote counting across the country," according to the reporting.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Fascism

Poll Shows Rising Fascism And Extremism Is Top 2024 Voter Concern

A recent Marist poll for NPR and PBS NewsHour surveyed Americans' biggest concerns for the country's future, finding that "the rise of fascism and extremism" topped the list, at 31 percent of U.S. adults.

The partisan breakdown, as usual, was illuminating, with a plurality of Democrats and independents choosing the rise of fascism and extremism, at 47 percent and 32 percent respectively, as their primary concern.

The issue dominated with Democrats—nothing else even broke 20 percent. But among independents, "a lack of values" came in second at 24 percent with "becoming weak as a nation" just behind at 23 percent.

Republicans’ top two concerns were "a lack of values," at 36 percent, and "becoming weak as a nation," at 30 percent, while the rise of fascism was a distant third at 15 percent.

Notably, 35 percent of those who cited rising fascism and extremism as their top concern said they are "definitely voting in November's election." Meanwhile, a lack of values and the nation becoming weak stayed static among “definite” voters at 24 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

Simply put, the rise of fascism and extremism is the most concerning to Americans, particularly those who are "definite" voters, and the feeling is most pronounced among potential Democratic voters (i.e. Democrats and independents). On the other hand, it is not a primary motivation for Republican voters.

Additionally, the survey's findings suggest that abortion could be a more powerful issue than some analysts suggest because of GOP abortion bans sweeping the South. These bans serve as a real-life example of the loss of freedoms and autonomy associated with fascists and autocratic regimes.

While attendees of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference are outright welcoming "the end of democracy," the GOP’s quashing of abortion care in an entire region of the country serves as a tangible reminder of what an end to democracy means.

Among analysts, the economy and immigration are often touted as the two main policy issues driving the election, with abortion lagging, polled separately, or even excluded from the issue polling.

That was also the case in the 2022 midterms, when Democrats were supposed to be swept away by a red wave but instead wildly outperformed expectations.

In October 2022, a Civiqs poll showed exactly why analysts misread the issues that would dominate the election. While 58% of voters overall chose the "economy/jobs/inflation" as their top issue, the partisan breakdown of issues showed that 52% of Democrats chose abortion as their No. 1 issue while 43 percent said "fair elections/democracy" was their No. 2 issue.

These two issues proved to be decisive and incredibly motivating among Democratic voters' and some independents who turned out to beat back the red wave.

The latest Marist polling suggests that anyone who underestimates them in this election does so at their own peril.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

RFK Jr.

Abortion Doubts May Drive Wavering Democrats Away From RFK Jr.

The extended family of third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an explicit effort Thursday to blunt his appeal among Democratic voters by endorsing President Joe Biden en masse.

Robert's sister Kerry Kennedy, daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and niece of former President John F. Kennedy, called Biden “my hero” at an endorsement event in Philadelphia featuring at least 15 members of the Kennedy clan.

“We want to make crystal clear our feelings that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” she said, a clear sign of the threat third-party candidates pose to Biden's 2024 reelection bid.

Almost simultaneously, news broke that RFK Jr. and his tech entrepreneur running mate Nicole Shanahan qualified for the ballot in the swing state of Michigan after being nominated by the Natural Law Party.

The ultimate effect of third-party candidates this cycle and exactly where they will make the ballot remains unclear. But we do know that Donald Trump, who has never won more than 47 percent of the vote, will need a spoiler or two siphoning away votes from Biden in order to prevail in November.

The supposed bipartisan group No Labels recently complicated Trump's calculus by ending its bid to find a candidate to run. That leaves anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr., Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Harvard professor Cornel West as potential spoilers to Biden's reelection, either individually or as a group. Kennedy, who polls highest and has the resources to potentially get on the ballot in all 50 states, poses the biggest threat.

It remains to be seen whether Kennedy's candidacy—which draws interest from conspiracy theorists and Kennedy-nostalgic Democrats alike—will hurt Biden or Trump more in November. But some polling suggests that Kennedy is currently skimming more voters away from Biden.

What is clear is that Trump benefits disproportionately from every third-party candidate in the race since he fell several points shy of reaching 50% in both 2016 and 2020. By contrast, Biden won in 2020 with 51% of vote—just barely enough to tilt the Electoral College in his favor. It’s telling that Kennedy's presidential bid has been bankrolled by one of Trump's biggest donors, Mellon banking heir Timothy Mellon, and championed by one of Trump's biggest allies, Steve Bannon. Not so coincidentally, a key Kennedy campaign official, Rita Palma, also said her No. 1 goal was blocking Biden's reelection bid. Palma has since been axed by the Kennedy campaign.

All that said, it is incumbent upon the Biden campaign to blunt Kennedy's allure among Democrats to make him a bigger drag on Trump in November.

“If Kennedy makes it on the ballot in these states—and that’s a big if—we’re going to make sure voters know how extreme his policies are and that MAGA megadonors are bankrolling his spoiler campaign to be a stalking horse for Donald Trump,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, who is advising the Democratic National Committee on the matter.

The Kennedy family itself, with its enduring star power among Democrats, has been searching for ways to kneecap RFK Jr., who's leveraging the family name while damaging the Kennedy legacy with his antithetical stances.

But at some point soon, the Biden campaign will have to deploy a strategy to neutralize Kennedy's Democratic appeal, and a recent Engagious focus group in Pennsylvania of 11 Trump-to-Biden swing voters may offer a window into one potential avenue.

According to Axios, roughly half of the swing voters who participated in the focus group said the candidates' stances on abortion would play a role in how they voted in the fall.

Six of those swing voters also said they would vote for Kennedy over Biden and Trump, but questions about Kennedy's abortion stance became an immediate hang-up for them.

"If he doesn't agree with what I agree with abortion, then I'm going to switch," said participant Michael W.

Rich Thau, the focus group moderator and president of Engagious, said that pro-choice swing voters who expressed support for Kennedy "seemed to second-guess their support when confronted with the argument that a vote for Kennedy is effectively a vote for Trump and his abortion policies."

After some initial jostling last year, Kennedy told NBC News’ Ali Vitali that he supported abortion during the first three months of pregnancy but would sign a federal abortion ban if elected.

“I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life," Kennedy said. "Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child." The exchange between Kennedy and Vitali was captured on video, making it fodder for attack ads.

Kennedy’s campaign has since backtracked on those remarks, issuing a statement saying he does not support a federal ban on abortion.

“Mr. Kennedy supports a woman's right to choose,” says the statement, adding that it’s “not up to the government to intervene in these difficult medical and moral choices.”

A national abortion ban is a nonstarter with Democratic voters, and perhaps most importantly, many Democrats who aren't thrilled about voting for Biden but would never consider voting for Trump.

In a follow-up exchange with Daily Kos, Thau said, "For pro-choice Trump and Biden voters, the risk posed by voting for RFK Jr. could be too much if abortion is a top-tier concern."

He added that he hasn't yet come across another issue that "would have the same effect on RFK-curious swing voters as abortion does. It’s not to say there aren’t such issues … but I haven’t pushed or probed on those yet."

Whatever the range of issues that could dissuade Democrats from voting for Kennedy, abortion appears to offer the Biden campaign a starting point.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Joe Biden

New Poll Shows Republicans (And Trump) Losing Badly On Abortion

A new Civiqs poll for Daily Kos shows why the issue of abortion is so perilous for the Republican Party, with voters viewing themselves as significantly more aligned with Democrats on the matter.

By 15 points, registered voters say their opinion on abortion is closer to that of Democrats in their states than Republicans, at 48% to 33%, according to the poll released Wednesday.

President Joe Biden also fares eight points better than Donald Trump on the question of how voters think the candidates' abortion views track with their own, with 44 percent choosing Biden compared to 36 percent picking Trump.

Democratic lawmakers likely performed slightly better than Biden on the abortion measure partly because voters generally view Trump as more socially liberal on abortion than most Republican lawmakers overall.

For instance, a December 2023 Data for Progress poll found that roughly two-thirds of voters believed congressional Republicans would take action to pass a national abortion ban if they took control of Congress in 2024, ranking only second to the belief that they would build a wall at the southern border. Meanwhile, only 48 percent of voters said Trump would pass a national abortion ban as president, putting the issue seventh on his likely to-do list.

The disparity between how voters view Republicans lawmakers versus Trump on abortion is exactly why the Biden campaign hammered Trump’s pretzel twisting on abortion last week after Arizona’s Supreme Court ordered the enforcement of a draconian Civil War-era abortion ban.

The Biden campaign’s rapid response team also made an explicit effort to link Trump to anti-abortion zealot House Speaker Mike Johnson, deploying roughly 18 tweets in a 24-hour period featuring the two men together.

Notably, the Civiqs poll also found that independents view Democrats as more closely aligned with their abortion views than Republicans by 12 points, at 41 percent to 29 percent. Biden and Trump run about even among independents, with 35 percent saying their views track more closely with Biden's, and 36 percent choosing Trump.

The bottom line: Any time candidates of either party talk about abortion or the topic dominates the headlines—as happened last week—it’s a win for Democrats and Biden.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe-Biden-South-Carolina-primary

'New York Times' Poll Reverses Itself On Trump Gaining Minority Support

A newly released New York Times/Siena poll shows a wholesale reversal from its previous February poll that suggested President Joe Biden was bleeding support among Latino voters.

The Times/Siena poll released Saturday showed Biden gaining significant ground with minority voters, including opening up a 9-point lead over Trump with Latinos, 50 percent - 41 percent. That's a 15-point turnaround since February, when theTimes/Siena survey gave Trump a six-point advantage among Latino voters, winning 46 percent of the group to Biden's 40 percent.

Biden's growth among nonwhite voters—including a net 10-point gain with Black voters—has effectively erased Trump's lead among registered voters overall in the latest Times/Siena survey, with Biden at 45 percent to Trump's 46 percent. The Times' February poll gave Trump a five-point advantage overall, at 43 percent Biden -- 48 percent Trump.

Taking the poll at face value, Trump's Latino support is still historically high at 41 percent, while Biden's is historically low at 50 percent. The high-water mark for any Republican presidential candidate is President George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004.

In 2020, Biden won Latino voters 59 percent -- 38 percent, so the incumbent still has considerable room to grow support among the group while Trump may already be close to hitting his ceiling.

Last week, we covered polling from the Pew Research Center that draws into question whether Trump—as many outlets including the Times have reported—has really made significant inroads with Latino voters and, if so, whether those gains would be enough to swing an election given Biden's relative strength thus far with white voters.

Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican...The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).

But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats.

Biden now appears to be doing exactly that: consolidating support among Latino and Black voters as he gains ground on Trump.

And as we noted in Friday's piece, the same Pew Research Center polling suggests Democrats haven't suffered a significant falloff in support among Black and Latino voters during the Trump era. In fact, Pew's data called into question the entire premise that some sort of racial realignment has taken place among voters over the past several years.

The Times/Siena poll isn't the only survey showing Biden cutting into Trump's lead since the State of the Union address in early March. In The Tilt newsletter Saturday, the Times' Nate Cohn found Biden gaining an average of +1.4 points on Trump in 16 polls taken before and after the fiery speech.

While none of these revelations feel like tectonic shifts in the presidential contest, they do appear to reflect the Biden campaign's increasing advantages over Trump when it comes to electoral fundamentals such as fundraising, time spent campaigning, and investments in advertising and organizing.

An old adage comes to mind: The only nonrenewable resource in a campaign is time. And while Biden continues to campaign across the country, Trump will be spending the lion's share of his time in a courtroom over the next half-dozen weeks.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Black And Hispanic Voters

Pew Data Disproves Reported Trump Advance Among Minority Voters

The Pew Research Center released polling this week that casts serious doubt on recent surveys showing Donald Trump making significant gains among Black and Latino voters.

The Pew survey suggested majorities of Latino, Black, and Asian voters continue to largely favor the Democratic Party. The results show very little change among Black and Latino Americans since the early 1990s, while white voters remain almost exactly as aligned with the Republican Party as they were in the early ‘90s.

"Not much 'racial realignment' in these Pew numbers," Vanderbilt political science professor John Sides tweeted, attaching a series of Pew graphs tracking party alignment over three decades.

On Latinos specifically, Pew’s 2023 data showing Democrats with a 61 percent to 35 percent edge seemed to counter recentNew York Times/Siena polling showing Trump with a 46 percent to 40 percent edge over Biden—6 points above George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004, the high-water mark for Republicans.

Pew puts considerable effort into surveying the U.S. Latino population, and some political analysts consider it the gold standard on Latino polling. The differences in outcomes between the Pew and Times polls are due to a number of variables, including the fact that Pew asked about party affiliation while the Times polled Trump-Biden support.

But another factor—and a potential cautionary tale about polling Latinos—might be differences in the way the polls were conducted. In the fine print of its graph, Pew explains why its data for Latino voters only dates back to the mid-aughts while information for its other three demographic graphs date back to the 1990s.

"Data for Hispanic voters shown only for years with interviews in English and Spanish," the text reads. In other words, the polling organization didn't view polling of Latinos conducted in English as sufficiently representative, even if the sample sizes were technically large enough.

The Times poll conducted just three percent of its interviews of self-identified Latino voters in Spanish—a fact that UCLA political science professor, Democratic pollster, and Biden campaign adviser Matt Barreto currently highlights in his pinned tweet.

"Let's look at their brilliant Latino methodology: 97 percent English," Barreto tweeted incredulously last month, when the poll was released. Barreto added emphatically that Trump's 6-point advantage in the Times survey "does not match ANY actual bilingual large-n polling of Latinos. ZERO CHANCE. Are people frustrated? Yes. Is Trump +6. ZERO CHANCE."

Even the Times piece detailing the poll's findings among Latino voters warned, "For a subgroup that size, the margin of error is 10 percentage points."

But if Barreto's tweet sounds urgent, it's because Biden's share of Latino voters matters. Latinos, who now account for roughly 15 percent of eligible voters, can be difference-makers in 2024. That is particularly true in a swing state like Arizona, where Latinos are expected to account for around one-quarter of voters this year.

There's good reason to question polling suggesting such a dramatic shift among a group of voters who present unique challenges to pollsters.

As Republican political consultant and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid tweeted, Pew's "numbers are much more in line with where Hispanics will likely end up. Lower for GOP than most current polls but high historically."

Trump's big purge of old-school and more moderate Republicans, such as supporters of his primary rival Nikki Haley, has also put more pressure on him to overperform among groups that typically haven't favored Republicans—including Latinos.

The smartest reporting out there on the topic of Trump's potential gains with minority voters this cycle comes from CNN analyst and The Atlantic senior editor Ronald Brownstein, who has been at the forefront of tracking demographic trends since coining the term "the blue wall" in 2009.

As Brownstein points out, one underreported trend in this cycle's polling is Biden's relative strength among white voters. In most state and national polls, Biden is "matching or even exceeding" his winning 2020 share of the white vote.

So with Biden and Trump running roughly even in national polling now, Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican.

As Brownstein tweeted, "Trump's gains w/Black & Hispanic voters have drawn justified attn. But w/little notice, Biden is matching or beating his 2020 # w/Whites in most ntl & state polls. That means to win,Trump may need to hold more minority votes than any GOP nominee in 60+ yrs."

That's going to be a tall order, particularly among Latinos, given the full-court press the Biden campaign rolled out last week with its new targeted outreach strategy, "Latinos con Biden-Harris."

The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).

But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats, as the Pew polling suggested.

As Democratic strategist Joe Trippi recently explained on his podcast, “That Trippi Show,” "We don't have to gain back 20 points with Blacks, we don't have to gain back 20 points with Latinos, or with young people. If we're in a dead heat when we've lost 20 points with all those folks across the board, you get 2 points, 3 points, 4 points of them back, and Trump is dead."

It's another case of: We'd much rather be us than them.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

Biden Pulls Even With Trump In Latest National Polls

In the four weeks since his fiery State of the Union address, President Joe Biden's campaign has kicked into high gear—barnstorming eight battleground states, opening up more than 100 field offices, making a $30 million ad buy, and launching a Latino outreach strategy targeting the Southwestern swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

Some polls have begun to see movement in Biden's direction, including a recent Bloomberg battleground poll, the Marquette University polling released Thursday, and the NPR/PBS/Marist poll (compared to its January/February survey).

Since last fall, the standard line in national political reporting has been that Trump leads Biden in the polling. That construct doesn't hold true any longer. Eyeballing the last two weeks of polls released by nonpartisan outfits (excluding Trafalgar Group) on 538's aggregate, Biden won six of them, Trump won five, and one found them even.

Data analysts far smarter than me also see positive movement for Biden.

The 538 generic ballot continues to be better for Democrats relative to results earlier this year. At 44.6% to 44.4%, Democrats are now up by a whisper over Republicans, who consistently led in the generic this year until roughly a month ago when Democrats pulled even.

It's impossible to intuit exactly what goes into subtle shifts among the electorate, but Trump hasn't exactly been killing it on the campaign trail. His campaigning over the past month has mainly consisted of making courtroom appearances, golfing, some fundraising, and 'Truthing' his endless grievances.

The presumptive GOP candidate did manage to cause a stir this week in the battleground state of Michigan, where he lied about speaking with Ruby Garcia’s family. The Michigan woman was murdered by a man who was in the country illegally. Trump never spoke to her loved ones.

“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Mavi Garcia, who has acted as a spokeswoman for her family, said in an interview with WOOD-TV8, the NBC affiliate for West Michigan.

Other local media outlets carried similar stories refuting Trump's false claim.

From a campaign standpoint, it wasn't exactly a home run, even though the virulently anti-immigrant aspect of the stop surely thrilled his MAGA faithful.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

In Late March, Both Fundraising And Polling Are Improving For Biden

Last week,The Economist's presidential polling average set in motion a reevaluation of the general election when President Joe Biden pulled ahead of Donald Trump for the first time since September 2023.

To be clear, Biden isn't suddenly the odds-on favorite to win in November, but the fundamentals of the Biden-Trump contest do appear to be shifting in a slightly more favorable direction for Biden.

In the 18 Biden-Trump head-to-head matchups conducted by reputable pollsters (1.8 stars or higher-plus in 538’s pollster ratings) since the March 7 State of the Union address, Trump led in nine surveys, Biden led in seven, and they were even in two. This is a modest improvement from the 18 comparable surveys leading up to Biden's speech. In those surveys, Trump led in 10, Biden in six, and two found the candidates evenly matched.

Better yet, the average of these polls shows Biden improving overall, from 1.1 percentage points underwater before the State of the Union, to 0.8 points underwater afterward—which may seem like a negligible shift but is meaningful where averages are concerned. (Note: None of the polls used here account for how third-party candidates affect the outcome.)

Included in the post-SOTU polling was this month’s Daily Kos/Civiqs survey, which found Biden leading Trump by a single percentage point, 45 percent to 44 percent—a slight uptick from January, when the two were even.

But truth be told, the horse-race polling is among the least of Biden's gains in the contest. The Biden campaign's fundraising in February combined with that of the Democratic National Committee eclipsed the totals of Trump and the RNC.

Filings posted last week showed that the Biden campaign raised $21.3 million in February, while the DNC raised another $16.6 million; the Trump campaign reported raising $10.9 million, while the Republican National Committee raised a similar $10.7 million.

But the more pronounced disparity came in cash reserves available to Biden and the Democrats. Biden and the DNC closed out February with a combined $97.6 million cash on hand—more than doubling the $44.9 million banked by Trump and the RNC.

Democrats’ associated committees boast a cash advantage over Republicans as well:

  • Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has $14 million more money banked than the National Republican Campaign Committee ($59.2 million to $45.2 million).
  • Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a $7 million cash-on-hand advantage over the National Republican Senatorial Committee ($31.9 million to $24.8 million).

Other underlying fundamentals are also moving in a positive direction for Biden and Democrats. While Republicans led Democrats in 538's generic congressional ballot aggregate throughout most of January, February, and much of March, Democrats have now pulled even with Republicans, at roughly 44.5 percent each.

In Civiqs’ tracking polls, the public opinion of Biden's efforts to create jobs are better than they have ever been, with 42 percent agreeing that he’s doing enough and 48 percent disagreeing.

And while voters' views on the condition of the economy remain well underwater, they are trending in the right direction since falling in the first half of 2022, during the throes of inflation. At net -24 points “good,” the numbers now are on par with how voters viewed the economy in late September 2021.

And voters' estimation of their family finances are the best they've been in roughly two years, since early March 2022.

Current public opinion about the economy and personal finances are double-digits better than they were during the final month of the 2022 midterms, when Democrats turned back the vaunted red wave that historical norms foretold. In fact, voters’ view of the economy is 22 points better now than it was on Election Day 2022.

The data points aren't unrelated. Now that voters are getting more clarity on the choices this cycle, Democratic donors are demonstrating greater enthusiasm for their ticket than are Republican donors. And that cash advantage is giving Democrats more room to advertise and assemble a ground game.

While voters will be settling into their choices later this year, partisans on both sides are already starting to “come home” to their party—which is particularly important to see on the Democratic side since the media had fixated on soft support for Biden as an early narrative.

Civiqs polling from January and March is a perfect example, with Biden bumping his support among Democratic voters by a couple points, from 88 percent to 90 percent. Trump likewise boosted his GOP support from 90 percent to 92 percent.

But what is most fascinating is the shift among independents, who favored Trump by 11 points in January. But this month, Biden cut Trump's lead among independent voters to just a handful of points, 37percent to 42 percent.

Biden's State of the Union remains a rallying point, giving Democratic voters something to cheer and offering a point of reassurance for some disaffected Republicans voters who defected from Trump to Biden in 2020. This week's Focus Group podcast, hosted by Sarah Longwell, featured the reactions of several Trump-to-Biden voters following the State of the Union.

I thought he was energized, chuckling, and that’s one of my biggest complaints about him. You know, not the age so much. It’s just, you know, he’s not, like, an enthusiastic, energized guy. ... You know, he made a couple of jabs at, like, Lindsey Graham, which comes off good in this, like, day and age. ... Sometimes you could tell he was going off script, which is good. He was, you know, flowing improv, which is good. He’s showing he’s competent.

It was the most that I’ve seen him be able to go off script that I can remember—but this, to me, felt like he was going off script. He was showing that he can do it, and he can do it well, which was a pretty good thing. And, I mean, to me, that answers some of the questions that people were having, or have made about him in the last couple of months.

He suffers from having a stutter. So a lot of times he stumbles over words, and it can be a little uncomfortable to listen to him. But I thought he sounded really sharp. He was very strong. He did go off script, but he was handling the hecklers really well.

If there's a takeaway here, it's that letting Joe be Joe—even amid some stumbles—is a better strategy than shielding him from the press and voters. Biden did himself and Democrats a world of good with his feisty State of the Union speech. And the Biden campaign appears to have switched into high gear in the weeks since, visiting every 2024 swing state in less than three weeks and putting the president on full display in a multitude of settings.

The other takeaway is that Republicans are continuing to disintegrate, with Trump's money woes eating away at their ability to compete by the day.

November is still many months away, but Democrats have reason to like the way things are trending as they work to build momentum heading into the August convention.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Liz Cheney Trump GOP

Cheney: Donors Beware! Trump's Legal Woes Are Draining GOP Finances

Donald Trump is in a bit of a financial bind: He can't post the $464 million bond necessary to buy him time while he appeals the ruling in the New York civil fraud case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump has reportedly floated the enticing idea of underwriting his nearly half-billion obligation to some 30 different organizations and, shockingly, found no takers.

Trump absorbed the news with his usual grace, complaining bitterly about it Tuesday morning in at least seven posts on his social media platform Truth Social (which was down at the time of this writing).

“I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense?” Trump fumed in one post.

Trump's excessively public self-victimization for being found guilty of breaking the law is a clarion call for cash—from his MAGA cultists and whoever else might find it useful to potentially have a grateful asset in the White House.

As The New Republic's Timothy Noah told Greg Sargent on his new "Daily Blast" podcast, "Trump is broke, on the verge of bankruptcy, and he's running for president. It's a situation just ripe for corruption."

The presidency, should Trump win it, is effectively up for sale to the highest bidder.

But Trump's personal financial issues are just the tip of the iceberg for the man who just last week secured enough delegates to be the 2024 Republican nominee for president.

As his legal troubles continue to mount, the small-dollar donors who have funded much of Trump's legal bills are starting to turn off the spigot. CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports that in 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5 percent less money from small-dollar donors than in 2019, the year preceding the last presidential election. When the dust settled in 2020, Trump had raised nearly half of his total cash haul—$378 million—from small-dollar donations.

But the Trump campaign's looming cash crunch doesn't end there: the Republican Party's traditional well-heeled donor class is also missing in action. Many of those donors kept Nikki Haley’s rival bid for the GOP nomination afloat. Now they’re directing more of their funds to congressional races and, in particular, the Republican effort to win back the Senate.

Trump hasn't done himself any favors by promising to "permanently" bar Haley donors from his MAGA movement. In fact, the Biden campaign clearly sees an opening there and is making a play for Haley donors.

Biden made his own fundraising pitch when Haley ended her campaign, tweeting, "You don’t have to agree with me on everything to know MAGA extremism is a threat to this country. We need everyone on board—join our campaign." The tweet included a link to the Biden-Harris campaign fundraising page.

To review, Trump may have topped out in terms of what he can raise from his MAGA loyalists, while the bougie donors who fueled Haley's campaign are still MIA on Trump's presidential bid.

Since securing the required delegates, Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee with high hopes of a cash infusion he can use to pay his legal bills. Except the RNC is broke—entering the year with just $8 million cash on hand and nearly $2 million in debt. Those are some downright dismal numbers. And despite Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump promising to pay her father-in-law's legal bills, the RNC faces the same uphill fundraising battle that Trump does.

Trump’s archenemy, former Rep. Liz Cheney, took the opportunity to send out a buyer beware missive on Monday.

"Is it just a coincidence that Donald Trump took over the RNC, fired most of its Republican staff, and installed his daughter-law as co-chair at the same time he’s become desperate for money and can’t post bond?" Cheney tweeted. "Donors better beware."

While this month's Daily Kos/Civiqs poll found that 63 percent of Republican voters are fine with the RNC paying Trump's bills, it appears many of those voters aren't personally coughing up the cash they used to.

That's a serious problem for the RNC and, perhaps, all of its associated committees, though it's possible GOP donors will shore up Senate Republicans’ finances even as they take a pass on Trump. As for House Republicans, it remains to be seen whether House Speaker Mike Johnson can keep pace with his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, who was actually a fundraising stud.

And amid these harrowing cash-strapped times for Trump, the Republican Party is convulsing its way through a nasty divorce that will require a lot of time, effort, and money to clean up before November.

That's a big messaging problem that is going to translate into a massive money problem. Even if Sephora sold enough lipstick to put on that pig, Trump wouldn’t have the cash on hand to buy it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

George Conway

Conway: When Trump Threatens America With A Bloodbath, It's No 'Hoax'

Donald Trump and his allies devoted the bulk of their energy Monday to cleaning up his promise during a weekend rally that if he doesn't win the presidency in November, "it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country."

Trump made the remark—which has attracted a gusher of scrutiny—while stumping for Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno on Saturday in Dayton, Ohio. Trump had been discussing the auto industry, but when he got to the gory “bloodbath” line, he hammered it repeatedly as the notion that the auto industry would flounder if he lost in November receded into the background.

“Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that's going to be the least of it—it's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it," Trump said, adding, "But they're not going to sell those cars."

In other words, it was a classic Trump conflation of themes, obscuring his true intent.

The media, which usually misses the big picture on all things Trump, took his comments both literally and seriously.

One New York Times headline said Trump "Predicts a 'Blood Bath' if He Loses."

Trump allies, no doubt realizing the damage done by the viral comments, began referring to mainstream coverage as the "bloodbath hoax." Trump also took to Truth Social, his social media platform, with a series of posts and reposts claiming he was merely talking about cars and that the "Fake News Media" was taking him out of context.

But the most pertinent context came via George Conway, a noted anti-Trumper and soon-to-be ex-husband of Trump ally Kellyanne Conway. He tweeted out a thread that included this observation: "I’m willing to assume for the sake of argument that he was referring to cars. And it makes no difference to his malicious intent or to the danger he and his rhetoric poses.

"What matters," Conway continued, "is that he consistently uses apocalyptic and violent language in an indiscriminate fashion as a result of his psychopathy and correlative authoritarian tendencies, and because he’s just plain evil."

Trump famously kicked off his presidency in 2017 with an inaugural address decrying "American carnage." And during his 2024 bid, he has already leaned heavily into envisioning the catastrophic aftermath for the country if he loses, promising an economic crash "like you wouldn't believe" and bedlam in the country if his criminal indictments kneecap his electoral chances.

Trump is willing chaos and violence into existence if he loses precisely because he needs that apocalyptic threat to assert that he alone can fix it.

Indeed, later in Trump's weekend rally, he forewarned, “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”

When Trump says “bloodbath,” it's because he's out for blood, plain and simple. The apocalyptic promise of violence and carnage is essential to his pitch, a self-fulfilling prophecy spoken into action.

As MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said Monday, "We are not stupid. Americans aren't stupid. [Trump] was talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath. And when he finishes by saying, 'That's just going to be the least of it.' Seriously … we're not stupid."

The Biden campaign got the contextualization right, dropping a new ad Monday afternoon reprising Trump's entire body of work.

The spot opened on Trump's weekend remarks, then took viewers through a tour of Trump's greatest end-of-times hits, including his 2017 reference to the Charlottesville neo-Nazi marchers as "very fine people," his 2020 order to the white nationalist Proud Boys to "stand by," and his unabashed glorification of the Jan. 6 rioters.

That's the context, folks. When Trump promises a bloodbath for the country, he means it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

State Of The Union Boosted Public View Of Biden

President Joe Biden's very good State of the Union showing wasn't just a hit among Democrats. Despite criticism that Biden's address was specifically aimed at rallying Democratic voters, the speech not only tested well with viewers beyond the base, it also significantly improved Biden's standing among those viewers.

As Daily Kos' Mark Sumner pointed out, a CNN quick poll found that 64 percent of respondents viewed the speech positively, with 62 percent saying his policies would move the country in the right direction—a 17-percentage-point bump from before the speech.

Navigator Research posted similar findings from its live-reaction dial group of 33 Phoenix-area soft partisans and independents: 76% had positive reactions, with 64 percent saying Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction.

Biden's favorability rating among the dial group jumped 37 points from before and after the speech, ending at 58 percent favorable to 42 percent unfavorable.

The change in Biden's job approval rating—a tougher sell—was far smaller but still improved six points, to 33 percent approve versus 67 percent disapprove. There's still plenty of work to do in that arena.

According Navigator testing among the 33 speech-watchers, Biden's biggest improvements from pre- to post-speech came in these five areas:

1. Stands up to corporations: net change of +83 points

2. Is a strong leader: net change of +63 points

3. Is up for the job of president: net change of +60 points

4. Represents the U.S. well abroad: net change of +46 points

5. Brings people together: net change of +40 points

Early numbers from Nielsen suggested Biden's State of the Union address attracted nearly 28 million viewers—a slight uptick from last year, despite appearing on fewer networks then. But the final Nielsen numbers were even better: 32.3 million viewers tuned in, a significant 18 percent increase over 2023.

Among those viewers, Biden did himself a world of good not just from a policy standpoint but also from the perspective of: Is this guy up for the job, and are his priorities in the right place?

The Biden campaign has a lot more work to do, but the overwhelmingly positive responses to the president's speech suggest his message is also one that he and his team can sell on the campaign trail.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Nikki Haley

Poll Shows GOP Is Running On Nothing But Immigration Fears

Immigration shot to the top of Gallup's February polling on what Americans say are the country's most vexing problems, finishing at 28 percent, an eight-percentage-point uptick in a single month.

Here were February's top five issues, compared with January's:

1. Immigration: 28 percent (+8 points from January)

2. Government: 20 percent (-1 point)

3. Economy in general: 12 percent (unchanged)

4. Inflation: 11percent (-2 points)

5. Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness: 6 percent (+1 point)

The main driver of immigration’s rise to the top of voter concerns was Republicans, 57 percent of whom name immigration as the country’s top problem—a 20-point surge since January.

Gallup notes that survey, taken from February 1 to February 20, encompassed a timeframe when the bipartisan border deal was announced but ultimately failed to pass the Senate after Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to kill it.

But Republicans have also recently been hammering the issue with hard ad dollars, according to Zachary Mueller, senior research director at the immigration advocacy group America's Voice. Mueller told Daily Kos that in just the first two months of 2024, Republican-aligned campaigns have already run 445 unique immigration ads totaling $62.6 million, according to AdImpact data.

"What those Gallup numbers tell me is that there is a core of the GOP base that has bought into the bigoted fiction that immigration is an existential threat to the nation," Mueller said, calling the Republican advertising a "xenophobic feedback loop."

Gallup's list of 15 items national priorities was notable for several other reasons, including the fact that concerns about inflation (No. 4) and the economy (No. 3) continue to recede in relation to other issues. In October 2022, just before midterm Election Day, 46 oercent of Americans mentioned various economic issues as the nation's most important problems. In February 2024, just 30 percent of respondents cited economic issues as their chief concern, so voters’ urgency around economic issues have receded considerably over the last year and a half.

In addition, the latest Gallup survey shows that just three percent of respondents named the federal budget deficit as a problem—so that GOP talking point is effectively dead, even among Republican voters.

At this point in the cycle, immigration is effectively all Republicans have left to run on. And due to their heavy spending, the issue of immigration and the influx of migrants crossing the border is now tops among Americans for the first time since July 2019, when it hit 27 percent

That's exactly why both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump went to Texas on Thursday to stage dueling press conferences.

During the visit, Biden sought to play offense on the issue, saying congressional Republicans had tanked the border deal for "rank partisan politics" and challenging them to "show a little spine."

While it's true that voters typically trust Republicans more on the issue of immigration, being a solutions-oriented pragmatist on the matter recently helped secure New York Democrat Tom Suozzi an 8-point win over his Republican rival in the special election for New York’s Third Congressional District. Suozzi called for a border shutdown while also emphasizing providing law-abiding immigrants with a pathway to citizenship.

And if Biden hopes to broaden his coalition by appealing to Nikki Haley supporters on the matter, South Carolina exit polls showed her winning 70 percent of Republican primary voters who say most undocumented immigrants should be given the opportunity to apply for legal status.

The split-screen Biden-Trump events at the border were just the opening salvo on an issue that Republicans will surely drive home through November. In 2022, Mueller said Republican-aligned campaigns ran 733 unique immigration ads totaling $233.4 million, according to AdImpact.

This year, Mueller expects Republicans to make another "massive investment" in stoking the issue.

"Despite nativist attacks failing to deliver at the ballot box in cycle after cycle, Republicans, with Trump still leading their party, are not going to switch tactics," he said.

And even if Republicans wanted to switch tactics, what would they switch to?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.