Ron Brownstein: "For decades, Democrats have built their electoral strategies on a common assumption: the higher the turnout, the better their chances of winning. But that familiar equation may no longer apply for President Joe Biden in 2024."
"A wide array of polls this year shows Biden running best among Americans with the most consistent history of voting, while former President Donald Trump often displays the most strength among people who have been the least likely to vote."
"These new patterns are creating challenges for each party. Trump's potential appeal to more irregular voters, particularly younger Black and Latino men, is compelling Democrats to rethink longstanding strategies that focused on mobilizing as many younger and non-White voters as possible without worrying about their partisan allegiance. For Republicans, the challenge will be to build an organization capable of connecting with irregular voters they have not traditionally focused on reaching, particularly in minority communities."
A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds Joe Biden just ahead of Donald Trump nationally, 50% to 48%.
But when independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, as well as Green Party candidate Jill Stein are introduced, Biden trails Trump by 4 points.
A new Roanoke College Poll in Virginia finds Joe Biden and Donald Trump are tied in a head-to-head matchup, 42% to 42%, while Biden holds a two-point lead — 40% to 38% — when other candidates are included.
- AZ-Sen: Ruben Gallego (D): 46, Kari Lake (R): 41 (45-44 Trump in two-way, 41-37 Trump with third-party candidates)
- PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc): 49, Dave McCormick (R): 41 (48-45 Trump in two-way, 43-40 Trump with third-party candidates)
- WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 37 (45-45 presidential tie in two-way, 41-41 presidential tie with third-party candidates)
The percentage of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track is at a record high. This metric has grown fairly consistently under three of the last four presidents — George W. Bush, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And it wasn't that great under Barack Obama either. See this chart from Bruce Mehlman's latest slide deck:
As Mehlman notes: "Perceived disorder is driving discontent. American voters sense things are out of control."
It's not a coincidence this feeling of chaos has coincided with the massive growth of the internet.
As I wrote in Politics Extra, information technology has completely disrupted our news media, our politics, our political parties and our institutions.
That's what makes an election between two presidents who governed during this time of historic discontent so fascinating.
If it's a referendum on Biden, he'll probably lose.
If it's a referendum on Trump, he'll probably lose.
That's why both campaigns will desperately try to make it all about the other guy.
"And then Trump tells you he's the greatest president. I love this one. He says he's the greatest president for Black people in the history of America, including more than Abraham Lincoln. I mean, can you fathom that? Where in Hell? Like I said, I think he injected too much of that bleach, think it affected his brain."— Joe Biden, campaigning in Philadelphia.
"President Joe Biden's rally with Vice President Kamala Harris at Girard College marked his fifth trip to the Philadelphia area this year and his seventh to Pennsylvania in 2024 alone," Politico reports.
"The campaign has opened two dozen field offices, and the president and his allies have poured tens of millions into the state, outspending former President Donald Trump and his backers there more than 4 to 1. And on Wednesday, speaking at a majority Black school in the state's largest city, Biden and Harris used a rare dual campaign appearance to launch an organizing effort to win over Black voters, a critical constituency."
"If it's registering, there's little sign of it yet."
"Few House Republicans went against Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential primaries and endorsed one of his challengers. But among those who did and sought reelection, almost all have evaded competitive primaries of their own — or, in some cases, any opposition whatsoever," the Washington Post reports.
"The results belie the narrative that crossing the famously vindictive Trump can be a political death wish for members of Congress. But the races also played out during a presidential election year in which Trump needs a unified GOP in his rematch against President Biden and may be more preoccupied with his own race and four criminal cases."
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) "has not visited the courthouse in Manhattan to flaunt his support for Donald Trump like other potential running mates. He is not a fixture at the former president's campaign rallies and has not become part of the furniture at Mar-a-Lago, like other Republicans craving relevancy," the New York Times reports.
"Instead, Mr. Rubio has taken a low-key approach in aiming to become the next Republican vice-presidential nominee, a strategy with a clear logic: Mr. Trump is known to bristle when anyone gets too close to his limelight."
"But for Mr. Rubio, it's also a strategy with a history. When the two men competed for the Republican nomination in 2016, Mr. Trump relentlessly mocked his rival's height, his ears and his mannerisms. Mr. Rubio hurled his own schoolyard taunts, which landed awkwardly and then backfired painfully until his defeat. Since then, the senator has been careful and discreet about how close he gets to Mr. Trump."
"When Pat Sajak retires from hosting Wheel of Fortune next month after 41 seasons at the helm, it could upend one of the surest bets of every election cycle going back more than a decade," the Bulwark reports.
"That's because in the world of political advertising, Wheel of Fortune is widely considered to be the best bang for your ad-spend buck. While Wheel doesn't have the massive viewership of Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, or even Regular Old Sunday Daytime Football, its audience is quite large, averaging more than 8 million viewers per night. That audience is also highly demographically concentrated: The median viewer is in Nielsen's oldest tracked category, 65+, which is to say that the show's viewers belong to the most dedicated bloc of active voters in the country. Wheel also airs in every market in every corner of America and often leads into the nightly news, which adds to its political value."
LOUISIANA 5TH DISTRICT. The Republican pollster Victory Insights, which tells Daily Kos Elections it has no client, shows Rep. Garret Graves leading fellow Republican incumbent Julia Letlow 38-35 in a hypothetical Nov. 5 all-party primary matchup for the safely red 5th District, with Green Party candidate Rivule Sykes at 6%. This is the first survey we've seen of a possible battle between Graves, whose 6th District became dark blue under the new map, and Letlow.
This potential contest is difficult to poll, though, and that's not only because Graves is keeping everyone guessing if he'll challenge Letlow, defend the 6th District, or do something else. No Democratic candidates appear to have announced bids yet for the 5th, but that may well change ahead of the July 19 filing deadline.
The presence of a Democratic rival could be a problem for Graves' hopes of making a December runoff, as this survey shows him outpacing Letlow 31-21 among Democrats even as she carries Republicans 55-35. (Unaffiliated voters go for Graves 40-22.) However, it's also possible that multiple Democrats will file and split the vote too much for any of them to deny either GOP representative a spot in a second round of voting.
MICHIGAN 13TH DISTRICT. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on Thursday backed Detroit City Councilwoman Mary Waters' uphill campaign to deny renomination to freshman Rep. Shri Thanedar in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary. The Motor City is home to just over half of the residents of the safety blue 13th District, which also contains several nearby communities.
Duggan's move came about a week after Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett determined that former state Sen. Adam Hollier, who was Thanedar's leading intra-party rival, had failed to collect enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot. (Hollier's appeal of that decision was rejected by state officials on Thursday.)
Waters used her Thursday event with Duggan to argue that majority-Black Detroit needs an African American member of Congress. (Hollier is also Black, while Thanedar is Indian American.) The last Black person to represent Detroit in the House was Brenda Lawrence, who left office at the start of last year.
Duggan, who is white, also echoed Waters' argument that Thanedar has done a poor job serving the city. "We need somebody in Congress who fights for us, and right now, I don't feel like we got any help from our congressperson," declared the mayor.
Waters ended March with just $5,000 in the bank, but she predicted Thursday that Duggan's endorsement will "supercharge" her bid. There's little question, however, that Thanedar, who had more than $5 million at his disposal thanks largely to self-funding, will continue to hold a huge financial edge.
Waters, who previously served in the state House from 2001 to 2006, also argued that her long history in Detroit politics will help her overcome Thanedar, who only moved to the city from Ann Arbor ahead of his successful 2020 bid for a local state House district.
That history, though, contains some incidents she won't be eager to see revisited. Waters pled guilty in 2010 to conspiring to bribe an elected official in nearby Southfield and to falsifying a tax return. However, she eventually returned to elected office when she won a citywide seat on the council in 2021.
NEW YORK 1ST DISTRICT. "New York's Democratic House members are taking a rare stand in a competitive primary, endorsing centrist John Avlon — who worked as a speechwriter for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani before becoming a CNN anchor — over liberal rival Nancy Goroff in a Long Island race," the New York Post reports.
"Reps. Tom Suozzi, Gregory Meeks and Dan Goldman are getting behind Avlon in the 1st congressional district, which covers the East End and other parts of Suffolk County."
VIRGINIA 10TH DISTRICT. Former state Education Secretary Atif Qarni has publicized a poll from SurveyMonkey showing him in a close third ahead of the June 18 primary to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton.
Del. Dan Helmer edges out state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam 17-16, with Qarni and former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn at 12% and 9%, respectively. A 26% plurality is undecided, while the balance is split between eight other candidates.
This is the first poll we've seen of this contest in over two months.
COLORADO 3RD DISTRICT. A Democratic group is now meddling in next month's GOP primary in the hopes of helping underfunded election denier Ron Hanks secure the nomination for Colorado's 3rd District―a maneuver that comes two years after Democrats spent more than $4 million on an unsuccessful attempt to get the very same Republican candidate through a primary for the U.S. Senate.
The Colorado Sun, which first reported the news, says that a super PAC called Rocky Mountain Values has spent at least $84,000 "and counting" to ostensibly attack Hanks, a former state representative.
"Ron Hanks and Donald Trump say they're going to secure the border," the ad's narrator begins before switching to clips of the candidate speaking. "We need to start rounding up people," says Hanks. "We have to stop the immigration." The narrator jumps back in to label Hanks "too conservative for Colorado," which is the very line that Democrats used in their ads in 2022. (The commercials even appear to share the same voice-over artist.)
This new spot doesn't mention any of Hanks' five intra-party rivals, who are all running in the June 25 primary to replace far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert, who is running for the more conservative 4th District rather than defending her western Colorado constituency.
However, the PAC has dipped into other mediums to undermine the best-financed contender, attorney Jeff Hurd, who had been waging a challenge against Boebert before she switched districts. One newspaper advertisement highlighted by the Sun questions whether Hurd voted for Trump in the last two presidential elections and featured a quote from the candidate, who told the Denver Post just last month, "I don't talk about who I vote for."
While both parties often form new super PACs to make it tougher to tell who's behind attempts to influence the other side's primary, Rocky Mountain Values has been active in state Democratic politics for years. Hanks, though, pleaded ignorance when the Sun asked him about the new Democratic effort to select him as their opponent.
"I don't know who they are," he said. "I don't know what their motives are."
The winner will take on 2022 Democratic nominee Adam Frisch, who lost to Boebert by a shockingly small 546-vote margin two years after Trump carried the 3rd District 53-45. While Boebert's singular flaws were a major contributor to that close outcome, Hanks might be an even weaker opponent.
Hanks, who badly lost a 2010 congressional bid—in California—to Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson, quickly established himself as a vocal Big Lie proponent and fierce opponent of reproductive rights after he was elected to the Colorado legislature a decade later. He also attended the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., and marched on the Capitol following Trump's speech, though he claims he did not enter the building. He's further made it clear he opposes abortion under any circumstances.
But what Hanks has not established himself as, though, is an adequate fundraiser: The former lawmaker ended March with a paltry $6,000 in the bank, a far cry from Hurd's $528,000 total and Frisch's eye-popping $5.8 million war chest.
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