Trump’s Republican opponents are making a painfully obvious mistake

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It’s often said that military leaders “fight the last war”: They assume their current enemy is just like the previous one so they misjudge their foe and lose. The Republican establishment is making that exact mistake in the 2024 presidential primary.

According to multiple recent reports, high-ranking Republicans don’t want Donald Trump to be their 2024 nominee. But they’re afraid he’ll win by recycling his 2016 strategy — carve out a populist base, keep the anti-Trump majority divided between multiple opponents, and emerge as the winner.

These GOP leaders don’t realize that Trump has changed over the past eight years — and so have his opponents. They’re wading into a completely new race, yet they’re still preparing themselves for 2016. …

Put simply, Trump is no longer an outsider who needs to throw elbows, rely on a thin plurality or hope his opposition stays divided. He’s a former president — the ultimate party insider — with a path to an outright majority. CONTINUED

David Byler, Washington Post

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The Shocking Decline of Senate Ticket-Splitting

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Key Points
• Senate races are increasingly converging with presidential partisanship, to the point where the huge overperformances that were so common a decade or two ago have become much less common.
• Since 2000, the number of senators who have run more than 10 points ahead of their party’s presidential nominee has decreased sharply.
• This trend helps explain why we currently rate Democratic-held West Virginia as Leans Republican and started off Montana and Ohio as Toss-ups. CONTINUED

J. Miles Coleman, Sabato’s Crystal Ball

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How Much Longer Can ‘Vote Blue No Matter Who!’ Last?

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Over the past four decades, the percentage of white Democrats who identify themselves as liberal has more than doubled, growing at a much faster pace than Black or Hispanic Democrats.

In 1984, according to American National Election Studies data, 29.8 percent of white Democrats identified as liberal; by 2020, that percentage grew to 68.5 percent. Over the same period, the percentage of liberals among Black Democrats grew from 19.1 percent to 27.8 percent and among Hispanic Democrats from 18 percent to 41 percent.

This shift raises once again a question that people have been asking since the advent of Reagan Democrats in the 1980s: What does it mean for a party that was once the home of the white working class to become a coalition of relatively comfortable white liberals and less-well-off minority constituencies? CONTINUED

Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times

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Fox News Poll: State of the Union is dysfunction, dissatisfaction and disapproval

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Days before President Biden’s State of the Union speech, a Fox News poll asked voters to assess if the country is coming together. The short answer is no, as 81% see the U.S. as a dysfunctional family that’s breaking apart, up from 71% two years ago. That sentiment hits 86% among Republicans and independents, and 74% among Democrats. Overall, only 16% describe the country as a tight-knit family emerging from challenging times.

The survey also reveals sizable majorities rate economic conditions negatively (80%) and generally feel unhappy with how things are going in the country (73%). …

When the president gives his speech Tuesday before a joint session of Congress, he’ll have the highest approval rating in the room: 45% of voters approve of Biden’s performance and 54% disapprove. CONTINUED

Dana Blanton, Fox News

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Updated Evidence Of Our Increasingly Sclerotic National And State Politics

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… At the state level, voters increasingly cast their ballots in similar partisan proportions for different candidates in different circumstances.

This political sclerosis reduces the system’s responsiveness to realities.

It used to be that great candidates fared much better than bad ones; a country doing well yielded very different results than the country in dire straits; parties putting forward wise polices got more votes than parties putting forward a seemingly reckless agenda.

No longer. Those factors still matter, but far less than they once did. CONTINUED

Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill

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Even in States Where Abortion is Legal, Many are Uncertain about Legality of Medication Abortion

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More than six months since the Supreme Court issued their Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, there is widespread public confusion about the medication abortion pill and whether it is legal at the state level, according to the latest KFF Health Tracking Poll. The poll also finds many are unsure about the legality of emergency contraceptive pills, sometimes called morning after pills or “Plan B,” and whether the pills can end a pregnancy.

Across the country at least four in ten U.S. adults say they are “not sure” whether mifepristone, the medication abortion drug, is legal where they live. Half of women (49%) are “unsure” about whether medication abortion is legal in the state they live in, including 41% of women ages 18-49.

In the 13 states where there are full abortion bans, including for medication abortion, most adults either wrongly believe that medical abortion is legal in their state (13%) or are “unsure” about whether it is legal or not (47%). Four in ten adults living in states with full abortion bans are aware medication abortion is illegal in their state. CONTINUED

Kaiser Family Foundation

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