Here is a recording of my speech at WelcomeFest a couple of weeks ago, about how left-wing activists and nonprofits are misleading the public about what young and nonwhite voters think.
New
@Blueprint_2024
polling on defining and defending Tim Walz just dropped.
Despite weeks of Republican attacks, he's the most popular candidate in the race, with a net favorability of +10 (compare to Vance at -21).
It sucks when candidates run scared and abandon popular progressive policies but I think people need to remember what things used to be like. So take a quick tour with me through the dark ages of the 00’s and 10’s
THREAD 🧵
1. The classic Joe Manchin “Dead Aim” ad
1. The majority of young people do not call themselves "liberals."
2. Young people's top issue this election: inflation.
3. Twice as many young people say the media isn't talking about prices enough as say it isn't talking about Palestine enough.
If Harris does not get Gaza and protests right, especially as colleges start the fall semester — the campaign will be in *SERIOUS* trouble with young + PoC voters.
Sunrise is taking a similar approach as in 2020: mobilize young people to fight fascism at the ballot box and then fight like hell for the Green New Deal.
Not exactly a scoop? Here's a thread 🧵
Polling from
@Blueprint_2024
found that Trump's racist statements (there are many) are among the most alienating to young people.
Donald J. Trump: he's not like us, he's not with us, and he's not for us.
'It's a disgrace" -- here's the entirety of the first question Trump took at the NABJ and how he angrily tried to turn the tables on the journalist who asked it
By a 42-point margin, voters believe that using antitrust to enforce existing laws against price gouging and price fixing will lower inflation, according to
@Blueprint_2024
polling.
News: Kamala Harris will on Friday propose the first ever “federal ban on corporate price gouging” in the food and grocery industries on Friday, the campaign says in a statement
Will also announce measures on housing & prescription drugs
One important reason that Trump is ahead in polls is that voters support a lot of his policy ideas.
Building the wall, deputizing the national guard to round up illegal immigrants, even the 10% tariff—all double-digit net support.
Kamala Harris is making a big mistake by embracing left-populist calls for price controls. She should stick with the Biden platform -- abundance, reindustrialization, higher wages, and antitrust. That program is more consistent with sunny vibes.
NEW
@Blueprint_2024
polling on the best rebuttals to attacks on VP Harris.
1. DEI: they want to distract from their extreme Project 2025 agenda.
2. Immigration: Harris knows people should come legally, like her parents.
3. Family: let's compare them!
📲
Here are the results of a fun Mad Libs style experiment we did
@Blueprint_2024
.
"Kamala Harris is [fact]. She did [accomplishment]. She supports [position]."
These are the facts, accomplishments, and positions that are most/least preferred by voters.
Please STFU with this BS. I am a brown guy. I was for Biden in 2020 because I thought he was the most electable. In 2024 he is not that. Polls show that Democratic voters—including nonwhite ones—want a new nominee.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”
@ezraklein
No, you break it if we allow white male elites like you to throw out black and brown votes.
We held the primary already, you wannabe Jan 6 motherfucker.
The share of Democrats calling themselves "liberal" has been rising for decades, but only cumulated to a majority of the party in the last few years. I argue that this was driven by rising educational attainment/polarization and the end of Jim Crow.
Since 2012, Democrats have moved left — on social issues, yes, but also on economics, climate change, and a bunch of other things. From me and
@mattyglesias
:
Most young people aren’t liberals.
That was the key takeaway from our recent
@Blueprint_2024
poll of voters aged 18-30.
I interviewed five of the guys I grew up with about the 2024 election for Slow Boring. What they said may surprise you.
When my daddy was murdered, my mama became our family’s rock. I’m running for Governor to help working people like her by eliminating the tax on groceries, cutting car tag fees in half, expanding Medicaid and cleaning up corruption.
“Abortion access is thus unlikely to be substantially affected by the outcome of the election either way”
Who will Trump appoint to head the FDA? What will that person do about mifepristone? Who would he appoint to the Supreme Court? How would they interpret the 14th Amendment?
In advance of Kamala Harris' economic policy speech in North Carolina today:
@Blueprint_2024
did that.
Our data has consistently found that economic populism is a winning message for Democrats. Quick thread 🧵
This is fucking idiotic. You want me to pay more taxes to take care of other people's kids? We sure this dude is a Republican? Sounds like a moron. If you can't afford a big family don't have a ton of kids.
Democrats are to the left of every European social dem party because they not only believe in creating a comprehensive welfare state but also that it should be paid for exclusively by taxing millionaires.
In all seriousness, if you want to be the VP of the United States, you should make your pitch directly to the American people.
A debate is an opportunity to take your case to voters without a teleprompter or a script. Can't imagine why anyone would say no.
I’m just saying, it is Harvard; AI would never be able to ace an actually rigorous school like Yale. Mandatory ribbing aside, great piece by
@MayaBodnick
The upside for Biden is that his ideas on healthcare, taxes, and abortion are even more popular. He should talk more about that, while moderating on immigration.
Synthesis: “I will build the wall and make billionaires like Donald Trump pay for it.”
Whether Vance seeks to make his $5,000 CTC fully refundable or not makes a large difference. If so,
@PolicyEngineUS
predicts it would benefit 47% of Americans and reduce child poverty 42%. If not, it would benefit 33% of Americans and cut child poverty 1%.
“Kevin McCarthy was no moderate” feat.
@Thorongil16
(When I wrote this a couple of weeks ago I was worried that it would be moot by the time it published but one should never underestimate the incompetence of House Republicans.)
As the share of liberals in the party has increased, Democrats have begun talking less about bread-and-butter issues like taxes and jobs and more about climate and identity.
But it's not just a shift in emphasis—the party has moved left on policy, too.
Great idea from the Gallego campaign and something Democrats need to do more of: meeting voters (of all races) where they are—both metaphorically and literally.
Scoop: With Dems faced w/ clawing back support from drifting Latino men, this is how
@RubenGallego
looks to reach them
A
@Canelo
fight watch party Cinco de Mayo weekend for more than 100 Latino residents & families at a boxing gym w/ a taco truck outside
I supported Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, because he was the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. President, for doing the right thing.
We raised our kid with zero spanking. I’m happy with that choice. But I’m leery about the righteousness so many progressives feel about this. The absolute confidence that it is the best, the only moral choice. After all, more than half of Americans disagree. 🤷♂️
No one wants to hear this, but white voters are the Democrats' smallest demographic. They do not vote majority Democratic and have not done so in decades. Why are they doing the deciding for a party that is 60% BIPOC? Sounds like and looks like disenfranchisement.
@mattyglesias
This is a shift that has been happening since 1955. Naturally, people set the election cycle when they started paying attention to politics as their baseline; analytically, I don't think it's correct to try and identify one candidate that set it off.
I was one of the people who helped write this poll.
Some young voters are Republicans—shocker! Excluding them would skew the results because we're trying to look at youth opinion overall.
The results aren't surprising when you realize the median young voter is a moderate.
I don't know who ran this poll, but there is no way young voters prioritize the federal deficit 63% of the time omg lol.
Unless of course the results here are skewed by including young Republican voters who will never vote for a Democratic president anyway.
1/2
The free state of Florida: where the government decides what products you are or are not allowed to buy.
I don't really care for fake meat but people who like it should be allowed to buy and sell it—that's how free markets work.
Global elites want to control our behavior and push a diet of petri dish meat and bugs on Americans.
Florida is saying no. I was proud to sign SB 1084 to keep lab grown meat out of Florida and prioritize our farmers and ranchers over the agenda of elites and the World Economic
The Tim Walz "mind your own business" line is so fake. The dude encouraged neighbors to spy on and report one another for COVID violations. He and Kamala Harris want to take children away from their parents if the parents don't like sex changes.
Give me a break.
I still have a copy of this letter I wrote to my future self at the end of fifth grade. I think of this as my response to that little 11-year-old boy. Oh, and I'm retiring.
9-0 for abortion drugs, 8-1 for gun control, 6-3 for Biden social media censorship pressure. Is this court as big a threat to progressive governance as Democrats have made it out to be? Or just a modest check on worst abuses? The latter.
Figure now is a good time to re-up this piece
@mattyglesias
and I did two years ago.
Since 2012, the Democratic Party has moved left on basically all issues — guns, climate, race, economics.
You can debate whether that's good, but it did happen.
@mattyglesias
The pro-growth regulatory reform polls worse than the greedflation stuff. Biden should do the regulatory reforms quietly and talk a lot about corporate greed—popularism!
Vance quietly nods along like someone listening to their elderly grandfather ramble. Thank you Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles for making this election a referendum on age!
Peltz dropped his support for Trump after January 6th but is back in the fold now because he wants his taxes cut.
Rich guys like Trump will sell out our democracy every time if that means even a cent more for their bottom lines.
I know a lot of climate hawks are asking to swallow the carbon bombs & trust the free market to do the right thing (!).
but here is a thing, why can’t the same people advocate for a filibuster carve out & urge
@KamalaHarris
to pass a clean permitting & transmission bill instead?
The median voter in Pennsylvania is fairly sympathetic to Republicans and you absolutely do need to win them over as a Democrat if you want to win the White House.
One more thing about this "top priority" metric,
@mattyglesias
.
This 37% is a number that reflects partisanship, in that only 13% of Repubs say fighting climate change should be a top priority.
But taking Repub's views into account doesn't help Dems win elections!!
I don't think it's fatal, but the sheer volume of potentially damaging stuff on Tim Walz suggests the risks of high-speed vetting, and the possibility of further, more serious problems yet to come.
Curious about the details of Moore v. Harper? Here’s a piece I wrote last summer explaining the legal theory in question, with some added commentary on the implications of SCOTUS’ ruling:
In which I urge my classmates to join me in voting to re-elect the president this November.
My case for Biden: he will make our economy more equal, protect a woman’s right to choose, and defend our democracy. Trump wants to be a dictator “on day one”.
New
@Blueprint_2024
polling finds that a majority of voters have heard of just four (4) Biden Cabinet officials: Pete Buttigieg, Merrick Garland, Antony Blinken, and Janet Yellen.
There was a campaign to persuade Democrats that Obama failed. The campaign succeeded. But it was wrong. It is now up to Harris to recover. I think she can do it.
Point me to a single election where Sunrise beat a Republican. I will wait.
(Spoiler: their own 2020 post-mortem goes on and on about how they made lots of calls and got press coverage and conveniently omits the fact that not a single one of their endorsed candidates won.)
Here is
@POTUS
taking a picture with the architects of the Green New Deal, folks elected by & allies of the
@sunrisemvmt
to promote his climate agenda.
& here is a sour tweeter complaining about politically active young folks, organizing to elect climate champions ⤵️
you pick!