A funny thing happened on the way to President Biden signing a historic, bipartisan, popular infrastructure bill­—he lost popularity. His approval ratings sank.

So what happened?

The country’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan at the end of August definitely had an effect, as did the return of inflation. But during this time, Americans were also being bombarded with minute-by-minute commentary on the progress of the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill containing Biden’s social and family agenda. People in the know and people out of the know pontificated on the negotiations. While no one disputes the fact that the contents of both bills are very popular, it seems that the very process of passing the infrastructure legislation turned people off not only to the Congress (Congress as a whole is never very popular), but to the president himself.

The 19^th-century Prussian politician, Otto Von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” It has been repeated millions of times since then as a good description of the legislative process. But this year, legislative sausage-making fully emerged from back rooms into the Twitterverse. Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it best when she told reporters: “‘This is the Democratic Party.’ In the old days, she suggested, a deal between warring factions—like the ones led by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and moderate leader Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.)—all got worked out behind the scenes. [In 2021], she lamented, it played out ‘on 24/7 platforms where there are opinions going out, characterizations going out before anybody even knew what was going on.'”

The legislative process turned out to be more unpopular than the legislation.

This was not always the case. Take the 1986 tax bill passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. It was and still is considered a model piece of tax legislation since it closed many corporate loopholes and lowered tax rates for many Americans. But passing it was no walk in the park. The legislation was introduced by Democrats in the summer of 1982, a Republican version was introduced in the spring of 1984, and the Reagan White House released its own version that fall following the president’s landslide victory in the 1984 elections. It wasn’t signed into law until October 1986. Along the way it had many near-death experiences according to journalists Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose classic book, “Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform,” pulled back the curtain on the legislative sausage making that went into the passage of the bill. It nearly died from lobbyists adding new tax breaks for business, it nearly died when House Republicans defeated the “rule” (a way of voting against the bill without really voting against it), and it nearly died again from the sheer weight of special interest amendments.

The media environment of the 1980s stands in sharp contrast to today’s around the clock news coverage. In this different era of reporting, the American people­ were left largely in the dark about the day-to-day political drama that characterized more than four years of tax negotiations. In 1986, most Americans got their news from the daily newspaper or from an anchor on one of the “Big Three” broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Pew Research Center estimates that the total circulation of U.S. daily newspapers exceeded 62 million in 1986 (compared to 24 million in 2020). The country’s first cable news channel, CNN, was founded in 1980, but it was still gaining its footing as negotiations around the Tax Reform Act began. Legislators in 1986 had to dodge lobbyists in Gucci loafers as they emerged from their negotiations, but they didn’t have to dodge ubiquitous cameras and cell phones. Nor were they subject to Twitter discourse.

A contentious legislative environment was not unique to the 1980s. Fast forward nearly 20 years when President George W. Bush and a significant number of congressional Republicans wanted to pass legislation to expand prescription drug coverage via Medicare. As President Bush campaigned for re-election in 2004, many believed such a policy expansion would be a way to strengthen the president’s chances of securing the vote among older, middle-class Americans.

Enhanced conversations around expanding coverage began after Republicans added to their congressional majorities in the 2002 midterms, and outlines of plans and more detailed negotiations began in the early months of 2003. However, President Bush and the plan’s supporters in Congress faced a difficult test in cobbling together necessary majorities. Democrats felt the plans being discussed did not protect seniors sufficiently, and conservative Republicans believed it was an unnecessary expansion of big government. Ultimately, House Speaker Dennis Hastert introduced H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 on June 25.

The expedited nature of its passage—the bill would be signed into law just over five months later—masked the reality of the process: The legislation was on life support at many times during negotiations. That process included the longest House vote in recorded history on June 27, when Republican leadership held the vote open for more than three hours while arm twisting reluctant members. Before the bill’s passage, the secretary of Health and Human Services would make the unusual and widely criticized decision to go to the House floor to pressure members. Later, congressional Republicans would make loud allegations of political kickbacks. Ultimately, one member from Oklahoma, who eventually voted nay, switched his vote to present so the House could pass the initial version, 216-215-1.

Negotiations in the Senate were also tense and faced serious challenges from both Democrats and Republicans over the course of months. For final House passage, Republicans needed 16 Democrats to pass the bill, as 25 Republicans voted nay. On final passage in the Senate, Republicans needed a sufficient number of Democrats to hold their nose and vote for cloture, and then still required 11 Democrats and an Independent to help overcome the nine Republican senators who opposed. Ultimately, this was a bruising, costly battle for congressional Republicans, President Bush, and the legislation itself, as polling showed a majority of Americans opposed the bill.

By the time Medicare prescription drug coverage was debated, cable news had become a dominant force in the American media environment. About 19% of American adults said CNN was their primary source of news and an additional 18% said they got most of their news from Fox. Americans were also beginning to turn to the internet as a source of news. In March 2003, Pew reported that 44% of online Americans had used the internet to search for reports about the Iraq War. The internet revolutionized the American media environment by providing a way for people to get free access to breaking political news and commentary. The same sources that allowed Americans to follow international affairs with increased intensity also provided coverage of the effort to pass Medicare Part D. Still, the scrutiny health-care reform received in 2003 has nothing on the contemporary media environment.

Today, cable news provides nonstop coverage of just about everything, and this is amplified by Facebook­, used by 69% of U.S. adults, and Twitter, used by 23% of adults. “[U.S. Rep.] Jayapal told me Biden called her mom in India after the vote tonight,” tweeted one CNN correspondent. But posts about ongoing legislative efforts weren’t limited to politicians and the journalists that cover them. In today’s media universe, everyone is an insider, everyone has an opinion, and everyone was quick to jump on the bandwagon as they breathlessly tracked each twist and turn in the infrastructure negotiations on social media.

The challenges of finding majorities in a collective body like the U.S. Congress around controversial policy issues have always existed, regardless of whether the news cycle is continuous or more piecemeal. In the same way that President Biden’s infrastructure bill limped across the finish line, other presidents of both parties have faced the same issues with signature pieces of legislation. But for President Biden, an already difficult job was made even harder because of social media’s omnipresence in informing and misinforming Americans about legislation, legislators, and the legislative process. Compared to past negotiations over major pieces of legislation, the fight over the infrastructure bill was not very long and not unusually contentious. But we didn’t used to see that play out in real time before the public. And the public, not accustomed to the sausage-making of legislation, got to the point where the process became more important than the policy—and President Biden suffered.

      

One troubling sign of our deteriorating civic mood is the shocking breadth of support for secession in the United States. At a time of widespread polarization—where people are arguing over a supposedly stolen election, vaccine mandates, mask-wearing, and the reality of climate change—a September 2020 Hofstra University poll found that “nearly 40 percent of likely voters would support state secession if their candidate loses.” This was followed by a YouGov and Bright Line Watch survey last June that revealed that 37% of Americans supported a “willingness to secede” when asked: “Would you support or oppose [your state] seceding from the United States to join a new union with [list of states in new union]?” Support for doing this was highest in the South and among Republicans.

But liberals are interested, too. In a July 2021 University of Virginia poll, 41% of Biden supporters (as well as 52% of Trump voters) were at least somewhat in agreement with the idea “that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.”

In that survey, two very different groups were open to such an action: those living in conservative Southern states, who wanted to avoid liberal dictates from the national government, and people on the West Coast and Northeast, who favored enacting legislation favored by liberal voters.

If the inconceivable scenario of secession somehow came to fruition, it is an open question whether the United States would end up with two or many countries. Since political polarization plays out unevenly across the nation, one could imagine a situation similar to Europe where a number of separate entities would emerge, including a contingent of Southern states, the Northeast, the heartland, the West Coast, and rural parts of Oregon and Washington joining nearby states.

The result could be a patchwork of differing nations pursuing very different policies on a variety of issues. Whoever formed the majority in the particular areas would specify COVID-19 vaccine and mask rules, adopt or oppose gun control, allow or forbid abortion, raise or lower taxes, and expand or reduce the role of government in health policy. And if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade next year—as many legal experts expect—and abortion law is returned to the states, we will see a vivid illustration of how different states handle that contentious policy area.

In such a situation, it is hard to imagine what foreign or trade policy would look like. Would there be border controls between California and Nevada? Who would control the nuclear weapons stored on different bases around the country? Would there be import levies on Maine blueberries or Florida oranges sent outside their regions? Would each entity have its own treaties and international agreements? Would a cancer patient have to get a visa to be treated in one of the top hospitals in Massachusetts? How would water rights between California and neighboring states be handled?

And what about the enormous American military establishment? There are many bases around the country across the 8.8 million acres that the military administers, but a large number of installations are concentrated in the South, the Plains states, and Rocky Mountain areas. If America splits apart and each state controls the bases within their jurisdiction, the South would end up with the most troops and the largest number of military bases. That would have enormous consequences for foreign policy within North America and around the globe. The Northeast has relatively few military bases and therefore would be at a significant competitive disadvantage vis a vis the South.

In that situation, with whom would foreign allies and adversaries negotiate? Would they want to focus on the South, knowing of its strong military capabilities, or the Northeast and East Coast, where major financial institutions are headquartered? There could be conflicting incentives depending on whether military or financial interests were more consequential.

Recognizing the benefits of military force in a fragmented geopolitical environment, some leaders are moving to develop their own units. As an illustration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed the creation of a “Florida State Guard” that he—not the Pentagon or the Florida National Guard—would control. His stated goal is to have “the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.” He requested $3.5 million to establish this unit, which would have 200 civilian members.

Of course, the many unresolved questions and complex challenges mentioned above indicate that secession remains an unlikely scenario. (We also argue in a previous FixGov piece that—while worrying factors exist—there are existing geopolitical forces keeping the country unified and limiting the chance for widespread conflict.) Yet secession’s mere mention in public discourse reveals the dangers facing American democracy right now. The deeply rooted polarization that is fueling public mistrust of the “other side” is opening people to far-reaching possibilities that otherwise might not be considered; ideas once considered impossible may now fall within the realm of possibility.

Talk of radical solutions signals a deep discontent with the status quo and a willingness to consider “outside the box” actions. Extreme actions are moving into the mainstream in ways that are quite risky. During a time of megachange, we should not ignore these kinds of radical ideas. Rather than being outside the mainstream, such discussion may signal a future that varies widely from the recent past.

      

President Joe Biden celebrated the first anniversary of his 2020 victory facing good news and bad about public demand for government reform and his bigger-government/more-services agenda. As my new GovLab analysis suggests, Biden should either take action to embrace government reform or risk a one-term presidency.

First, consider the public’s demand for government reform. As Figure 1 shows, demand for very major reform jumped from 52% late in Obama’s second term to 62% during the 2018 midterm elections, then retreated to 50% last June. Demand was up slightly by October in a belated confirmation of New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall’s Aug. 4 declaration that Biden’s honeymoon was over.

Figure 1

Figure 1 also suggests that economic growth drove the decline. However, even as he now pushes for increased spending, Biden would be wise to explore the demand trends in recent presidencies, most notably the increased demand for reform during the Great Recession and Trump’s first-year spike as the 2016 Russian meddling scandal took hold.

Second, consider the mixed support for Biden’s bigger-government/more-services agenda. Having promised to “spend whatever it takes, without delay” to revive the economy, Biden honored the pledge with trillions in federal spending and persistent outreach to his base. “I haven’t been able to unite the Congress,” he said last March, only days before releasing his $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, “but I’ve been able to unite the country, based on the polling data.”

Biden was right about the deeply divided Congress, but much too hopeful about uniting the country around his agenda. Although support for a smaller government that delivers fewer services outpolled bigger government by 15% during the 2016 campaign, the two positions returned to parity by 2018 before drifting back toward the smaller-government position after Biden’s inauguration.

Figure 2

Third, consider the relative stability across the four philosophies of reform that emerge at the intersection of demand for reform and support for bigger and smaller government. As Figure 3 suggests, there has been little movement across the philosophical bounders in recent months. The number of expanders, who favor a bigger government and only some government reforms, remains fixed at about 25%; rebuilders, who favor a bigger government and very major reform, are nudging toward 30%; the percentage of streamliners, who favor a smaller government and only some reforms, also remains largely unchanged at 16%; and the dismantlers, who favor a smaller government and very major reform, are in recovery mode at 30% as Trump considers another run for the presidency.

Figure 3

Fourth, consider Biden’s approval ratings for running the federal government’s programs, which dropped following the Afghanistan withdrawal. Between June and October of 2021, Biden’s excellent/good rating fell seven points from 51% to 44%, while his fair/poor rating jumped nine points from 48% to 56%. If not a collapse, the trend matches the FiveThirtyEight tracking polls that showed Biden with a 52%/43% approval rating on Thanksgiving Day.

Even as Biden’s approval rating fell, the federal government’s rating moved in the opposite direction, rising from a 36% excellent/good mark in early summer to 41% in October as its fair/poor rating dropped from 64% to 59%. Without suggesting that Biden’s loss was the federal government’s gain, the federal government benefited by grinding away as Biden took the hit on Afghanistan.

These trends are particularly important to Biden’s standing given the recent surge in federal government breakdowns.[1] These highly visible government failures focus public attention not just on the federal government’s need for reform, but also on the president’s role in making government work. Biden has faced just six breakdowns thus far, including the border surge, confusing pandemic policies and booster schedules, the Colonial Pipeline hack, last summer’s eviction crisis, and the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal—all of which generated high levels of public news interest as Americans watched and worried about the outcomes.

Biden is well within the first-year averages dating back to Reagan’s second term in 1984, but may yet be tested by the bureaucratic turbulence that the Trump administration left behind. Having done little to address the federal government’s bloated hierarchies, obsolete technologies, a growing list of high-risk programs on the edge of failure, and a “federal brain-drain” as the baby boomers retire, Trump made sure that Biden would face a wave of potential breakdowns on his watch. Figure 4 shows the threat to Biden’s presidency if the breakdowns continue to rise.

Figure 4

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was right last February when he called Biden “the big spender America wants.” Given the continued threat of government breakdowns and their potential impact on public approval, Biden must also become the bureaucratic repairman the federal government desperately needs. A build back bureaucratic reform agenda is not just essential for faithful execution of Biden’s expansionist policy agenda, it provides full-throated response to the emerging Republican narrative of White House “incompetence and calamities,” a growing list of “failed presidency” op-eds, and the return of “fraud, waste, and abuse” to the GOP attack agenda.

Footnote

1. I define a government breakdown as (1) a demonstrable failure in a federal government policy or program that (2) receives heavy news coverage and (3) provokes high levels of public interest. We could also refer to the following footnote from my new report: “I introduced the basic concept of government breakdowns in my 2015 Volcker Alliance report: ‘Vision + Action = Faithful Execution: Why Government Daydreams and How to Stop the Cascade of Breakdowns that Now Haunts It.’ The breakdowns fall into five categories according to my past research: (1) flawed policy designs, (2) budget and staffing shortfalls that undermine implementation, (3) bureaucratic confusion and ‘regulatory capture,’ (4) leadership failures such as turnover, confirmation delays, and inexperience, and (5) misconduct and corruption.”

      

One sign of a healthy democracy is a judiciary that applies the law independently, even in cases involving powerful partisan interests. When President Donald Trump tried to enlist the courts in his campaign to overturn the results of the election, state and federal judges applied the law as they understood it. They did so despite Trump’s history of lashing out at judges who crossed him during his 2016 campaign and later.

Trump’s election litigation efforts failed decisively, even though more judges than is generally assumed found his lawyers’ arguments persuasive.

Despite his judicial failures—and unlike autocratic executives who have tried to silence independent judges, such as Hungary, India, and Poland—Trump apparently did not try to intimidate judges as he did state election officials. That does not mean he will be silent during litigation over future elections, especially if, as is likely, that litigation is less slap dash than the challenges in 2020.

Introduction

USA Today provided the conventional assessment of those challenges: “Out of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential election, 61 have failed,” and “decisions have came [sic] from both Democratic-appointed and Republican-appointed judges.” (In fact, most of the judges were elected state judges.)

One victory out of 62 cases is about a 1.5% win rate. Looked at differently, as I do in this post, Trump performed slightly better. This post examines all judicial decisions in the cases, not just the cases’ ultimate outcomes. A case might produce an initial decision in a trial court, another set of votes on appeal to a multi-judge intermediate appellate court, and a final set of votes on appeal to the jurisdiction’s multi-judge supreme court—one case, but perhaps over 10 separate judicial votes. By that measure, 14% of judges’ individual decisions or votes—18% in state cases only—were favorable to Trump.

Table 1: Individual judicial decisions (votes) in 2020 presidential election cases

Methodology

Counts of 2020 election lawsuits vary. Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias’s election litigation website listed 69 cases in early November 2021, up from 62 in January. Other sources include fewer cases. A February Business Insider article reported “at least 42 legal challenges since election day,” while Ballotpedia and Wikipedia summarized 36 and 55 cases, respectively.

For this post, I drew the cases and their underlying orders and opinions from the Elias website, Ballotpedia, and Wikipedia. I excluded cases commenced before the election; cases that only contested legislative races; and cases that plaintiffs dropped before any judicial action. I counted only votes on the final decisions at each level, not every judicial decision—such as those on non-dispositive procedural motions and the like. (Obviously, different selection criteria would probably produce different percentages than those reported here.)

This resulted in the examination of 194 judicial votes in 42 post-election cases:

• 29 state cases with 150 votes by 75 judges, and
• 13 federal cases with 44 votes by 41 judges.

I coded these votes by a simple binary measure—Trump won, or Trump lost. For sure, a judge’s decision—many involved jurisdictional or procedural questions—is not necessarily an indication of the judge’s view of Trump’s basic claim of election fraud. Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D-Md.) was at best imprecise when he told the House in October that the election “was validated by more than 60 Federal or State courts … all of them rejecting every claim of electoral fraud and corruption that was advanced.”

Federal judges

Of the 44 votes (in 13 cases), only one vote favored Trump—and did so just barely. (Note: The 13 cases include the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of Texas’s original jurisdiction filing challenging other states’ election results, but not the several nine-vote certiorari denials. Also excluded is a District of Colorado case included in none of the three sources above. It alleged a “vast [four state election] conspiracy;” the magistrate judge dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction O’Rourke et al v. Dominion et al (April 2021) and later assessed significant attorneys’ fees.)

Table 2: Federal judicial decisions (votes) in 2020 presidential election cases

In a Georgia case, the district judge (a 60-year-old George W. Bush appointee) granted plaintiffs’ request for an emergency temporary restraining order to preserve ballots in a subset of 10 contested counties. But the plaintiffs, in the words of a Trump-appointed circuit judge, refused to “take the district court’s ‘yes’ for an answer.” It appealed the district judge’s action to ask the court of appeals to extend the order to all 10 counties. The appellate panel dismissed the appeal.

The 13 federal cases saw votes by 12 Trump appointees, none of them favorable to Trump.

State judges

The state-court litigation in my database occurred in seven of the battleground states in which Trump and allies filed litigation; pro-Trump votes occurred in three of those states.

Table 3: Judicial votes in 2020 presidential election cases, by state

State-court level

The 29 state cases did not all begin in the first instance (trial courts). Several times, for example, plaintiffs sought to invoke an appellate court’s original jurisdiction.

Table 4: Judicial votes in 2020 presidential election cases, by court level

Most pro-Trump votes came in dissents in the multi-judge appellate courts. These judicial disagreements might reflect the fact that appellate judges often dealt with less frequently litigated questions, such as those involving appellate courts’ original jurisdiction, and appellate judges, in any event, may regard themselves as less bound by precedent than first-instance judges.

State-court partisan variations

Thirty-five percent of decisions by Republican-affiliated state judges were for Trump, versus 2% of decisions by Democratic-affiliated judges. Put differently, almost two-thirds of the 75 votes by Republican-affiliated state judges votes did not support Trump’s claims, although 26 of the 27 pro-Trump votes in my cases came from judges with Republican party affiliations. (Judges whose affiliation I could not establish provided no support for Trump.)

Table 5: Judicial votes in 2020 presidential election cases, by judges’ perceived party affiliation

I determined current or pre-judge party affiliation using Ballotpedia’s state-court assessments and standard internet searches. I assigned a “not known” label when I could not be reasonably sure of a current or former party affiliation.

Age

Younger judges, with an eye to advancement up the judicial ranks, might tailor votes to appeal to appointers or voters—more so than judges not looking for promotion. The data do not indicate younger judges’ doing so in these litigations. Twenty-two percent of state judges 55 or younger cast a pro-Trump vote, as did 25% of those over 55.

A closer look at state judges’ votes favoring Trump’s claims

Intermediate appellate courts

All six votes that state intermediate appellate court judges cast for Trump came from Republican-affiliated judges, five of them on Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, one of that state’s two intermediate appellate courts. Most were dissenting votes, but in one dispositive ruling—Trump v. Boockvar, Nov. 12, 2020—the then-president of that court, sitting alone, set aside a small number of votes based on flawed guidance regarding a deadline for verifying voter identification. This is apparently the one frequently cited Trump litigation victory.

State supreme courts

Twenty-one of the 27 Trump-favorable votes came from dissents on the seven-member supreme courts of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—10 cases in all. Trump lost all 10. All but one were split decisions—five of the 10 were four-to-three—largely but not exclusively along party-affiliation lines. Democratic-identified justices cast 35 of the 49 votes against Trump, Republican-identified justices cast 20 of the 21 pro-Trump votes.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court—despite a four-three conservative justice majority—decided four cases against Trump, all by four-to-three margins. A justice chosen in the state’s 2019 nonpartisan elections and seen as a stalwart of the court’s conservative bloc voted each time against the Trump campaign’s filings. The four-justice majorities in three cases declined the Trump campaign’s request to invoke the court’s original jurisdiction to allow the campaign to contest certain ballots (Trump v. Evers, Dec. 3, 2020, and Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, Dec. 4, 2020) and a request to block the certification of the state vote (Mueller v. Jacobs, Dec. 3, 2020). The same four-justice majority on appeal rejected as untimely plaintiffs’ claims of voting irregularities (Trump v. Biden, Dec. 14, 2020).

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, elected on a partisan ballot, had (and still has) a five-member Democratic majority. The five Democrats reversed a Commonwealth Court decision invalidating an executive official’s directive on poll-watchers’ distance from voting operations (In Re Canvassing Observation, Nov. 17, 2020). A four-justice majority (one Democrat dissented) affirmed a trial-court decision allowing officials to count otherwise qualified mail-in or absentee ballots lacking certain information on outside envelopes (In Re Canvas of Absentee Ballots and here, Nov. 23, 2020). The court, unanimously as to its main holding, reversed an emergency injunction suspending elector certification (Kelly v. Commonwealth and here, Nov. 28, 2020).

Michigan Supreme Court justices are party-nominated to run in nonpartisan elections. During the 2020 election litigation, it had four Republican-affiliated and three Democratic-affiliated members. A majority of three Democrats and one Republican dismissed, without briefing and oral argument, plaintiffs’ efforts to invoke the court’s original jurisdiction to order an audit of votes (Johnson v. Benson, Dec. 9, 2020). A six-justice majority, with one Republican dissenting, denied as moot an appeal’s request for an immediate, limited audit of votes (Costantino v. Detroit, Nov. 23, 2020). And the court unanimously rejected as moot an appeal contesting the certification of electors (Trump v. Benson, Dec. 11, 2020).

Most of the decisions were over points of procedure and jurisdiction, although, decided differently, some might have led to electoral reversals. There is nothing to suggest that the dissents were pretextual, although some justices voiced concern about the legitimacy of the election. A Republican-affiliated Michigan justice, for example, while concurring (in Costantino) that the plaintiffs’ immediate claim was moot, nevertheless referred to “the troubling and serious allegations of fraud and irregularities asserted by the affiants offered by plaintiffs.”

THE AFTERMATH

Although Trump had more judicial support than “one victory out of over 60 cases,” he lost all but one case—and the great majority of judicial votes in all cases disfavored his claims.

Nevertheless, Trump and his allies have not—to the best of my knowledge—sought to punish the judges who rejected his election-manipulation litigation, even though Trump was not reluctant to attack federal judges who crossed him during his initial presidential run or as president. Trump and allies haven’t advocated impeaching federal judges or eliminating their good-behavior tenure. Nor have I seen reports of hostile phone calls to judges—similar to those made to state election officials cajoling them to support his claims of fraud.

Nevertheless, the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania Legislature introduced a since-shelved post-litigation proposal to have members of the state’s Supreme Court selected from geographic districts. Although six states—ranging from Maryland to Louisiana—select high court members from districts, opponents of the Pennsylvania plan argued that it was a backdoor way to weaken Democratic dominance on the court and allow more legislative manipulation than other states’ methods.

WHAT MAY BE AHEAD

Clashes over the judicial response to Trump’s claims may be part of upcoming judicial elections, including efforts to seat more judges who would be receptive to fraud claims. An October 2021 Wall Street Journal editorial supporting a Republican candidate for an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat argued, “After Pennsylvania’s 2020 election mess, the state Supreme Court needs an injection of judicial restraint.” (The Journal’s chosen candidate, who said flatly that he saw no evidence of significant fraud in 2020, won the election.)

By a rough count, about half of the 43 state supreme court justices who considered Trump’s post-election claims (in all seven states) are slated to appear before voters by 2026—years likely covering the next presidential election and post-election litigation. Candidates will be free, under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision, to tell voters how they view judges’ roles in election disputes and their views of the 2020 litigation.

Election volitivity could be enhanced if Trump, unlike during the recent litigation cycle, injects himself into campaigns to unseat judges who rejected, or express skepticism about, election fraud claims.

Furthermore—regardless of judicial selection outcomes—judges may be more receptive to electoral challenges in 2024 if state legislatures embrace the “independent state legislature doctrine.” Republican state legislatures are pointing to the Constitution’s Articles I and II provisions that authorize state legislatures to prescribe methods for selecting presidential electors. Also, legislatures may try to use a federal statutory provision to substitute their preferred slate of electors for those chosen by voters. Election expert Richard Hasen opines that, to the degree that the 2024 election turns on use of these provisions, post-election litigation advocates will “have an aura of respectability and expertise. Lawyers in fine suits making legalistic arguments are much more appealing than desperate lawyers making unsubstantiated claims of ballot box stuffing and other chicanery.”

In short, although Trump clearly lost the 2020 election litigation battle, he received more judicial support than generally realized. That and other factors may suggest rosier prospects for him in court battles over the 2024 election.

      

Ever since the Trump tax bill capped the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) at $10,000, Democrats from high-tax states have been looking for ways of protecting their constituents from the consequences. With the reconciliation bill, they have found their chance.

But their proposal—raising the cap to $80,000—is both bad policy and bad politics. Nearly all the benefits go to upper-income Americans, giving Republicans as well as left-leaning representatives an opportunity to attack these Democrats, the self-styled defenders of working and middle-class families, as hypocrites.

According to a Tax Policy Center analysis described by the Center’s Howard Gleckman and Leonard Burman, 94% of the benefits from the House proposal would go to the top 20% of taxpayers, and 70% would go to the top 5%, with annual incomes of $365,000 and more.

Using state and local data, with Bergen County, NJ as my case study, I looked at the consequences of these findings for individual households. Bergen County is located in the northeastern corner of New Jersey and is part of the greater New York City Metropolitan area. This county’s median household income is about $110,000 per year, and the median home value is about $550,000. Married homeowners in this category filing jointly would pay about $12,000 in annual property taxes and about $3,000 in state income taxes, leaving about $5,000 over the $10,000 cap and therefore subject to income taxation.

Now consider married homeowners at the 80th percentile, the beginning of the top one-fifth. Their annual income is $175,000, and I estimate that on average their homes are worth roughly $1 million. In Bergen County, their property taxes would be about $22,000, and their state income taxes, an additional $7,000, for a total of roughly $29,000, leaving $19,000 over the cap.

In Bergen County, raising the cap to $30,000 (instead of $80,000 as stated in the bill) would be enough to negate the tax increase from the $10,000 cap for the bottom 80% of married homeowners. Most Bergen County homeowners would benefit from an increase in the $10,000 cap, but all the additional benefits of a cap higher than $30,000 would go to the top 20%, much of it to the top 5%.

The bottom line? The House Democrats pushing for the $80,000 cap must explain why they want to confer most of the tax benefits of their proposal to the households who need them the least.

The standard answer is that policymakers in high-tax states fear that the Trump SALT cap will drive high-income taxpayers to lower-tax jurisdictions, making it harder to maintain the level of public services that mainly benefit low- and medium-income households. The evidence for this flight of the wealthy is limited, however. Besides, if the reconciliation bill (also known as the Build Back Better, human infrastructure, or social spending bill) is enacted, the additional benefits flowing to low- and medium-income households will dwarf whatever cuts in services that revenue-squeezed governments in high-tax states might impose on them.

An $80,000 cap on the deductibility of state and local taxes would be enough to fully protect married homeowners with taxable incomes of $500 thousand and houses worth $2.5 million. By any measure, this seems excessive. Is it too cynical to wonder whether the kinds of taxpayers who are most likely to make large donations to political campaigns are once again having their voices heard on Capitol Hill?

      

The Biden administration’s effort to staff the federal government is proceeding at a snail’s pace compared to previous administrations. Such a leadership vacuum inhibits the administration’s ability to implement their agenda, and while the Senate plays a key role in the process and pace, it is the president who suffers most from this incredibly slow pace.

At day 300, the Biden administration has much to be proud of—passage of the infrastructure bill, the declining unemployment rate, and the record number of federal judges that have been confirmed, among earlier legislative achievements like the American Rescue Plan. According to my Brookings colleague, Russell Wheeler, as of November 17, (Biden’s 300th day in office), the Senate has confirmed 28 federal judges (nine on the court of appeals and 19 on the district courts), surpassing his most recent Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, who had six judges confirmed by this point and President Trump, who had 13. But while the administration can hail its record-setting appointments to the bench, it is worth noting that confirmed appointees to the executive branch are trickling in at an alarmingly slow pace.

This report marks this project’s third and final opportunity to track the pace of executive branch confirmations and the gender and ethnic diversity of these appointees during President Biden’s first year in office. When I reported on the progress at the 100– and 200-day marks, the Biden confirmation pace lagged behind his three predecessors, while the commitment to nominating large numbers of women and nonwhites represented a historic breakthrough. This study’s data on executive branch confirmations, drawn from Congress.gov, includes comparisons to Biden’s three predecessors and focuses on the fifteen major departments (excluding U.S. Attorneys at the Department of Justice). In addition, there is data on gender and race/ethnicity for each confirmed individual; the categories for the latter are the same as the U.S. Census.

pace of confirmations

After 300 days, the Senate has confirmed 140 of President Biden’s nominees to the 15 major executive departments. The chart below demonstrates that while the Biden administration outpaced President Trump at the start and surpassed the Obama administration in days 200-300, overall President Biden lags behind his predecessors—a troubling, but perhaps not unexpected trendline. Terry Sullivan, a political scientist with the White House Transition Project, shows that the pace of confirmations has been declining for every president since Ronald Reagan, suggesting that even Biden’s successor will have fewer confirmations after 300 days.

Since we began tracking President Biden’s Cabinet and appointees, we have broken them down by department. This enables one to move beyond the aggregate figures and examine confirmations within each of the 15 departments. Such an examination reveals that the Biden administration has the fewest number of confirmed appointees in seven of the 15 departments including Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, State, Transportation, and Treasury. Of these, the performance in the State Department is weakest; an unsurprising predicament given the emergence of a Republican blockade by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and more recently, Marco Rubio (R-Fla). Working together, they have stalled the confirmations of many senior State Department officials. To provide a clearer sense of just how many appointees are being held up, the Partnership for Public Service indicated that as of November 22, there were 85 pending State Department nominees, 47 of which were awaiting a full vote. This GOP blockade has clearly succeeded as demonstrated by the confirmation records of President Biden compared to his three predecessors on day 300: Biden 27, Trump 55, Obama 92, and Bush 133.

Why does this slow pace matter? Apart from a leadership vacuum that hampers long-term planning and adversely affects morale, the slow pace of confirmation affects government performance. More than 17 years ago, the bipartisan 9-11 Commission released a report that addressed the dangers of delayed confirmations. One of their key recommendations was expeditious confirmation of those appointees working in the national security realm. According to a study by the Partnership for Public Service: The commission found that George W. Bush lacked key deputy Cabinet and subcabinet officials until the spring and summer of 2001, noting that “the new administration—like others before it—did not have its team on the job until at least six months after it took office,” or less than two months before 9/11. We are now 10 months into a new administration and are well behind the confirmation rate of the Bush administration.  In short, the situation is far more dire than when the 9-11 Commission issued its report. I suspect the commission would be most disappointed by the Biden administration’s lag in filling top positions at Defense, Homeland Security, and State given the national security implications.

Diversity of confirmations

Aside from the slow pace of confirmations, it is important to point out the historic levels of gender and racial/ethnic diversity among the Biden confirmed appointees. From the start, the administration has demonstrated a high level of commitment to the appointment of women and nonwhites. At the 300-day mark, women represent half of the 140 confirmed appointees, exceeding his three predecessors by a sizeable amount (President Obama was closest with 29% of his appointments going to women).

Similarly, the Biden administration demonstrated a major commitment to appointing nonwhites.  After 300 days, 39% of the Biden administration confirmed nominees are nonwhite; representing a stark change from the Trump administration that reached 14% in the first 300 days.

As of November 22, the Partnership for Public Service indicated that there are 175 nominees (to the 15 major departments) languishing somewhere in the Senate confirmation process. This large number suggests that the Biden administration has fulfilled its obligation. Given no choice but to work within the limitations of a slow-moving and sometimes recalcitrant Senate, the Biden administration has made its mark where it can—by appointing the most diverse set of presidential nominees.

Twenty years ago, political scientist Burdett Loomis wrote an article for the Brookings Institution noting “…the lengthening Senate confirmation process indicates that a problem does exist…” If only the Senate operated at the same pace as it did back in 2001, President Biden might have about 326 confirmed nominees instead of well less than half of that number (140).  While the slow confirmation pace is not a new phenomenon, it has reached a new low. In prior publications, I tried to account for the slow pace: the 50-50 split in the Senate, the heavy legislative agenda, the frequency and length of Senate recesses, the apparent prioritization of judicial appointments, and the frequency of Republican holds. In the end, the source of the delay is irrelevant. The Senate has a responsibility to vote on the president’s nominees in a timely fashion and I contend that this role is most important at the start of a new administration.

The Biden administration has made history on two fronts and in two starkly different ways—the most diverse set of confirmed appointees and the fewest nominees in place at the 300-day mark.  Frustrated by this pace, Majority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently threatened to keep the chamber in session longer than anticipated so that they could confirm more nominees. If cutting recess or working on weekends motivates Senators to vote on the nominees languishing in the Senate, I am all for it. Leadership matters, particularly at the start of an administration, and giving a president the tools (in this case personnel) he or she needs to govern is good for everyone—Republicans and Democrats alike.

      

In the wake of the chaotic U. S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, many observers believed that the memory would quickly fade as Americans shifted their attention back to domestic issues. It now appears that this judgment was premature. Our hasty retreat from a 20-year war contributed to the decline of confidence in President Biden’s over competence and his ability to handle the duties of commander-in-chief. And on Veterans’ Day, More in Common, an organization that seeks to identify the cause of and cures for our polarized politics and society, made public its survey of the impact of the withdrawal on our veterans and on our society.

The findings of this survey are disturbing. Afghanistan veterans number about 775 thousand, many with multiple tours of duty. They are angry about the withdrawal, 73% feel betrayed, and 67% feel humiliated.

Two-thirds of all Americans, and more than 7 in 10 veterans, believe that “Veterans of the war in Afghanistan are going to have a hard time processing the end of the war,” and 56% of veterans do not believe that “American society will move on quickly from the end of the war.”

I fear that the veterans are right. Seventy-six percent of Afghanistan veterans say that they sometimes feel “like a stranger in my own country.” Overcoming this sense of estrangement will not be easy, especially because only one-third of Americans report belonging to social circles that include any of these veterans. Ever since the abolition of the draft and the establishment of all-volunteer armed forces, political observers have worried about the consequences of a tiny fraction of society doing the fighting for the rest of us. So far, anyway, the social impact of ending the Afghan war reinforces these fears.

This said, the non-veteran portion of American society has hardly been left untouched. Seven in ten veterans believe that “American did not leave Afghanistan with honor,” and 57% of all Americans agree. As we saw in the late 1970s, similar sentiments about the end of the war in Vietnam had a powerful impact on our politics, beginning with a pervasive sense of American decline and ending with the election of a president in 1980 who was determined to reverse this decline and who campaigned on the slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again.”

Left unaddressed, these sentiments can undermine veterans’ lives and inject a slow-acting poison into the body politic.

There are steps government can take—with the support of the American people—to mitigate the pervasive feeling of national dishonor. Fifty-five percent of all Americans, and 63% of veterans, believe that the United States has a moral obligation to resettle our Afghan allies to resettle within our borders. Although we did succeed in airlifting many of them to freedom as we withdrew, we left far too many behind. An energetic effort to rescue them from the clutches of the Taliban would contribute to healing the nation and the veterans of Afghanistan, 78% of whom report this step would improve their mental health and sense of wellbeing.

Other steps to recognize these veterans’ needs and reintegrate them into American life enjoy supermajority support, including opportunities for veterans to work with their civilian neighbors on projects that benefit their local communities as well as monuments and public ceremonies that honor their service. Support for steps such as meeting veterans’ physical and mental health needs and easing their movement into the civilian workforce enjoy near-universal support.

The war in Afghanistan ended in defeat for the United States—and in bitterness for far too many veterans. There is nothing we can do to reverse the defeat, but there is much we can do to mitigate the bitterness. Doing nothing risks repeating what happened to Vietnam veterans, many of whom became estranged from society. Nearly half a century later, we are still paying the price, and we must not let it happen again.

      

In the first months of the gubernatorial race in Virginia, the eventual winner, Glenn Youngkin, trailed the Democrat, former Governor Terry McAuliffe, so decisively that Republican pundits started claiming voter fraud long before a vote was cast. In an act of political desperation, like clockwork, Youngkin leaned on what many candidates have done before him—a made-up Black boogie man to rile up voters. Instead of the Black Menace trope, the super-predator device, or the potential horrors of school busing, critical race theory (CRT) was the boogie man of choice used to stoke the Republican base and peel off white Democrats.

“[T]here’s no place for critical race theory in our school system,” said Glenn Youngkin on Fox News. “[A]nd why, on day one, I’m going to ban it.”

Let me explain what CRT is since most people don’t have a clue. Critical race theory is a theoretical framework that helps scholars identify and respond to institutionalized racism, particularly as it is codified in law and public policy. It originated in the 1970s with scholars like Derrick Bell, the first tenured Black law professor at Harvard Law, and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. For the most part, CRT was stuck in the proverbial ivory tower within a few departments here and there, away from mainstream conversations. It certainly isn’t taught in public schools.

However, the hysteria around CRT was manufactured to be replicated by political hopefuls like Youngkin.

“We have successfully frozen their brand—’critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions,” wrote conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who is credited with creating the misinformation campaign, according to The Washington Post. “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’”

Legislators are subsequently using the manufactured panic to drive a policy agenda. For instance, a Texas state lawmaker asked schools statewide to disclose whether approximately 850 books are part of their collections, for the texts “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex,” according to NPR reporting.

Conservatives are consequently using bans on CRT to eliminate subjects students should be learning including slavery, Jim Crow Racism, voter suppression, and housing and school segregation because they are significant parts of American history. In addition, they are attempting to assuage feelings of guilt and accountability. We can’t dare have children know how their ancestors and government created these policies.

To advance a policy agenda, Youngkin and Rufo stole a page from the racist election playbook, to say “look out for the boogie man,” or in this case, CRT. It’s the same playbook that television reality star Donald Trump used to place himself in the political spotlight. Trump instead used birtherism as his boogie man.

Youngkin’s keys to victory also make my second point. You certainly don’t need Donald Trump to use racist devices to win elections. You can do that on your own. Many conservatives will be relieved of this fact.

We should also learn from the fall elections that Trump is certainly not a political savant, nor does he have to be on the ticket in 2024. Trump didn’t invent racism, rather racism invented Trump and other political characters.

Another predictable outcome of the election is our seemingly never-ending focus on how to rally or regain the votes of white people. Some of the post-election headlines read, “Virginia: What was behind the shift of White women toward the GOP?,” “White women voters and the dismantling of democracy.,” and “How white women helped propel Republicans to victory in Virginia.” While analysts regularly compare significant changes from one election to the next, there is also a tendency to center the analysis on white people.

Perhaps, rather than focusing on how to win white votes, pundits should investigate the playbooks of the many African Americans who won last week. For instance, Ed Gainey became Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor. In Cleveland, Justin Bibb, another Black male, won big. In Boston, Michelle Wu, a progressive candidate of Asian descent, bested her more moderate challenger, Annissa Essaibi George, another person of color. In New York City, Eric Adams, another Black male, won his general election by a large margin. What was their playbook? Shouldn’t we analyze what policies propelled their candidacies?

Amidst all the angst about the “nation’s mood” it is important to note that it almost always ends up being about white wants, which spurs numerous recruitment strategies for white people. In the aftermath of the 2016 elections, pundits and elected officials repetitively said how Democrats were out of touch with “working class” (read white) voters. This was followed by the shallow, woefully imprecise claim of how Democrats are using identity politics to the detriment of the party. Extending flimsy arguments that Democrats and people of color are the only ones playing identity politics gets to my last point that Black people—not racism—are cast as an inconvenient problem for Democrats. Black Lives Matter, defund the police, and CRT are ideas created by Black people and are blamed for why Democrats lost. Black people are charged with being divisive for demanding basic rights and dignity.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.

Segregation, housing and school discrimination, and biased policing and criminal justice systems literally divided the country, not CRT. Yet Youngkin can ban CRT in schools where it doesn’t exist. What is clear and present are attempts at voter suppression, removing actual history from school curricula, as well as the racist boogie men that ostensibly can win elections.

      

On May 25, 2020, a veteran Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in full public view. A bystander’s video of the event triggered nationwide protests and demands to “defund the police.”  Beneath the slogan, which proved politically unfortunate for Democrats, reformers worked to develop policies that would minimize the use of force by police and make everyday policing more respectful of minority communities.

In Minneapolis, reform efforts yielded a proposed amendment to the city charter that would transform the police department into a Department of Public Safety. Although details were sparse, everyone understood that this would mean a shift of emphasis from armed policing to interventions by unarmed professionals—psychologists, social workers, and others—in fraught situations involving drugs and mental health issues.

The proposed amendment divided the state’s Democrats. Attorney General Keith Ellison and Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad,” came out in favor. Minnesota’s two senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, opposed it, as did Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who was also on the ballot seeking reelection.

Early public opinion surveys indicated that the amendment would pass, but a September survey of 500 African Americans in Minneapolis suggested otherwise.  Seventy-five percent of African American respondents opposed reducing the size of the police force, and only 42% favored the amendment, compared to 51% of white Minneapolis residents. Ea Porter, a resident of the mostly Black north side of Minneapolis spoke for many. “Don’t experiment on us,” she said, “because we’re the ones that are going to be hit hardest first.”

The backdrop to these sentiments was a surge in violent crime. In 2020, homicides in Minneapolis rose by 58%. This year, Minneapolis is on track to record the highest murder rate in a generation. African American residents tell grim stories of children killed while playing and terrified residents installing bullet-proof barriers in their bedrooms.

These events help explain the results of last night’s election in Minneapolis. The incumbent mayor won an easy victory against a progressive challenger, and the charter amendment lost by 12 percentage points. A report from Minnesota Public Radio found that at the precinct level, support for Mayor Frey and opposition to the charter amendment were tightly linked. In a statement, Frey said that it was time to “stop with the hashtags and slogans and the simplicity” and to “unite around things that we all agree on.”

Results from state and local elections around the country indicate that most Americans agree with the mayor of Minneapolis. But with Congress hopelessly deadlocked on criminal justice reform, commonsense policing policies must begin at the grassroots.

      

On the day after the 2021 off-year elections, Democrats woke up with a bad headache. The victories of 2018 and 2020 seemed like distant memories, and the future looked bleak indeed. But predicting the future from off-year elections is a little like reading the tea leaves—a murky and uncertain endeavor. Nonetheless, here’s what we can glean from what happened.

All politics is no longer local.

Democrats appear to have lost one of the two marquee races for governor, Virginia, and, at this writing, Democrat Phil Murphy holds a very narrow lead in a New Jersey governor race that was supposed to be a shoo-in. Neither outcome was expected and both races became nationalized. In Virginia, which has been trending blue for some time now, Democrat Terry McAuliffe started out with a healthy lead. The race quickly became nationalized as “Virginia is for vaccines” McAuliffe tried to tie Republican Glenn Youngkin to the far-right, anti-vaccine-mandate crowd of the Republican Party and to Donald Trump—who lost Virginia by 10 points in 2020. Much of the race turned into a proxy fight between Biden and Trump, with McAuliffe trying to convince voters that Youngkin was just like the former president.

McAuliffe’s slide in the polls coincided with President Biden’s very bad summer and his own slide in the polls. It occurred as Democrats were tearing each other apart over two bills that they could not seem to pass, and that Biden could not seem to broker. The race became so nationalized that, on Election Day, Democrats in Congress were trying to avoid blame for not getting a deal done and thus sinking McAuliffe.

The lesson here? The famous Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil once said, “All politics is local.” Not anymore.

The culture wars are alive and well.

Youngkin ran a clever campaign, sounding Trump-like but keeping Trump (who endorsed him) out of the state. In the end, Youngkin managed to take a comment McAuliffe made in a debate and turn the race into a referendum on whether or not parents should have a say over what educators teach in schools. In the course of this, he vowed to forbid the teaching of “critical race theory” in Virginia schools—even though it is not taught in Virginia and there were no plans to do so. However, by Election Day, 24% of voters said education was the most important issue facing Virginia, and critical race theory became a new racist “dog whistle” in American politics—roiling school boards all over the country where it isn’t taught and has no plans to be taught. Critical race theory is this year’s transgender bathrooms controversy. It isn’t very real, but it captures a deep divide in culture and values.

The lesson here? Politicians beware: When one culture war dies, another is right behind it.

Donald Trump is still a player, but how much of a player depends on where.

The elections showed somewhat mixed results for those trying to assess how much of a player Trump is likely to be in the future. In Virginia, Youngkin skillfully kept Trump at arm’s length. Trump never came to the state, and on the eve of the election, he conducted a private tele-rally that was closed to the press and did not get much attention. The result? Youngkin outperformed Trump in the northern Virginia suburbs that count for such a large portion of the Virginia vote.

But in one of the three congressional special elections, the open seat in Ohio’s 15^th Congressional District, Republican candidate Mike Carey was endorsed by Trump in the primary and in the general. Unlike Youngkin, Carey was not shy about his affiliation with Trump. The 15^th is a very Republican district that went for Trump by 14 points in 2020. The Republican margins of victory in that seat have run from 12.9% in 2010 to 26.8% in 2020—with some in between years as high as 32%.

So, while no one expected her to win, a well-financed Democrat, Allison Russo, won the Democratic nomination and ran a respectable race. One measure of the Trump candidate’s strength would be how he performed against a well-financed and respectable Democrat. To that end, Carey won the district yesterday by a healthy margin—17%. It seems as though Trump did not hurt him at all.

The lesson here? In Trump country, Trump is still king. In non-Trump country, going “Trump light” doesn’t hurt.

Crime is a big issue, and “defund the police” a loser.

George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman in the summer of 2020 started a national debate over policing reform. The debate was legitimate and long overdue but, along the way, it garnered the unfortunate name “defund the police.” In this year’s election, a ballot initiative in Minneapolis that encompassed some important elements of police reform lost by a substantial margin—44% voted yes and 56% voted no. The mayoral candidate who promoted the ballot initiative most aggressively also lost.

Crime emerged as an issue in many of the other mayoral races around the country. And while most Democratic candidates stopped using the toxic phrase, they didn’t have to—the Republicans used it for them. In New York City, former police chief Eric Adams, a Democrat, won his race for mayor; during his campaign, he leaned on a particular phrase that ended up resonating: “The prerequisite for prosperity is public safety.”

The Lesson here? Drop “defund the police.”

Socialism is not appealing to the American voter.

Ever since Bernie Sanders burst upon the national scene, the word socialism, long forbidden by Democratic politicians, crept back into political dialogue. In Buffalo, New York, the incumbent Mayor Byron Brown found himself in a primary fight for the Democratic nomination with a self-avowed socialist, India Walton; among her policy positions, Walton planned to cut $7.5 million out of the police department by removing police from mental health calls and from minor traffic enforcement duties. Brown refused to engage with Walton during the primary and lost the Democratic nomination. But he then went on to wage an aggressive write-in campaign. Although write-in campaigns are notoriously difficult to pull off, Brown seems to have prevailed, declaring victory with about 59% of the vote going toward write-ins and 41% for Walton (as of this writing).

With the sole exception of Vermont and a few university towns across the United States, socialism is a losing political message. For example, it cost Joe Biden Cuban and Venezuelan votes in Florida in 2020, since Americans from those socialist countries regard the term as synonymous with massive economic failure.

The lesson here? Drop socialism from the Democratic Party for once and for all.

It used to be said that what Democrats did best was to form a “circular firing squad.” It seems that those days are back. Fresh off a presidential victory, the party fell into endless wrangling over two bills that should have passed months ago. From Capitol Hill to the local levels, the party seems to have forgotten that the country elected Joe Biden, the centrist who could get things done, not Bernie Sanders. In their first year in power, Democrats have paid dearly for that mistake.