Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight:
The 5 Big Takeaways From Our House Forecast
Democrats are favored to gain control of the House of Representatives in this year’s midterm elections, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model. But — a very FiveThirtyEight-ish sentence follows — the range of possible outcomes is wide and Democrats’ prospects are far from certain. Relatively small shifts could allow Republicans to keep control of the House, or could turn a blue wave into a tsunami.
Pew Research:
As Midterms Near, Democrats Are More Politically Active Than Republicans
No partisan gap in views of election’s importance
Across a range of political activities – from attending political rallies to donating to campaigns – voters who back Democratic candidates for Congress are reporting higher levels of political activity than GOP voters. But both sets of voters share a view that the upcoming election is important: About three-quarters in both parties say it “really matters” which party wins control of Congress in this fall’s election.
Brutal:
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
Our republic will never be the same
Trump is sometimes called a populist. But all this is a far cry from the prairie populism of William Jennings Bryan, who sought to elevate the influence of common people. Instead, we are seeing a drama with one hero, pitted against an array of villains. And those villains are defined as anyone who opposes or obstructs the president, including the press, the courts and federal law enforcement. Trump’s stump speeches are not a call to arms against want; they are a call to oppose his enemies. This is not the agenda of a movement; it is the agenda of a cult.
Will the republic survive all this? Of course it will. But it won’t be the same.
Ed Kilgore/NY Magazine:
GOP’s Fate in the Midterms Is in the Hands of Women
One of the most important principles in political analysis is to remember that “a vote’s a vote.” Yes, trends in this or that demographic are important to note, and can be crucial under certain circumstances, and in certain places. But excessive focus on one kind of voter while ignoring the big picture is often a mistake, one usually made by those obsessed with identifying the flavor-of-the-year swing voter (most famously “soccer moms” and “office park dads”) and then ignoring everyone else. “Winning” one particular group, moreover, is overrated: It’s the margin of winning and losing that usually matters most.
Having said all that, sometimes the breakdowns on this or that very large demographic group are so large and dramatic that paying attention to anything else may be a waste of time. And as Ron Brownstein explains in his latest number-crunching exercise, it’s not just the Year of the Democratic Woman in terms of candidates running for office: Women are the key to a Democratic win this year, and to its magnitude.
Ron Brownstein/Atlantic:
The Women Who Gave Trump the White House Could Tip the Midterms to Democrats
The fate of the House majority may depend on whether working-class white women turn on the GOP this fall—or simply sit out the election.
Yet this common trend, often simplified into the idea that Republicans are threatened by a gender gap, can obscure as much as it reveals. “You can’t just look at women as a homogeneous group,” says the Pennsylvania-based GOP strategist John Brabender.
He’s right. Trump is exposing the GOP this fall to the danger of unusually high mobilization and margins among African American women. Trump also risks consolidating a historic realignment toward the Democrats among college-educated white women, many of whom have viscerally recoiled from his behavior and language—such as his tweet Monday about Manigault-Newman.
Yet polling continues to send mixed signals on whether Democrats can expect substantial inroads among the third large group of female voters: white women without a college degree. Gains among those women could be the critical final piece to creating a secure path to a Democratic House majority—opening opportunities in districts beyond the urban and suburban areas where Republicans are most vulnerable.
Quinta Jurecic/NY Times:
What to Care About When Everything Is Terrible
In the Trump presidency, everything is a distraction from everything else, because it all matters.
I would argue that the erosion of American democracy at the hands of a would-be authoritarian — and the possibility that the president’s campaign collaborated knowingly with a hostile government in order to swing an election — should be of concern to everyone. But feverishly speculating on the special counsel’s next move when young children are separated from their parents has a ring of absurdity. And when someone is hungry or fearing deportation, demanding a focus on the Russia investigation shows a numbness to the urgency of human pain.