Presidential debates are usually overhyped and under-impactful. And Thursday night’s second debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was no exception.

The President certainly behaved better in the second debate than he did in the first debate – and that probably calmed some jittery Republican nerves.  And, Joe Biden performed competently, allaying fears among some of his supporters of a race-changing gaff.

But the major takeaway from the debate was that few, if any, minds were changed.  Clearly, the debate showed how the race has hardened.  If you have already voted for Biden or intend to vote for him, you thought he won the debate.  Same for Trump, if you have already voted for him or intend to vote for him, you likely thought he won the debate.  

In other words, what you thought about the candidates and the race before the debate is what you thought after watching it. 

CNN did a snap poll after last night’s debate.  Its sample included 32 percent Democrats and 31 percent Republicans, which is slightly more Republican than most surveys which show a 4- or 5-point Democratic advantage in party identification.  But as the chart below shows the debate hardly changed favorability ratings of the candidates at all.  

As to whom viewers thought won the debate, the CNN poll tracked where the race now stands in the head-to-head polling.  Fifty three percent thought Biden won the debate.  That’s almost identical to the 52.1 percent who said they support him in today’s FiveThirtyEight average of national polls.  Thirty nine percent thought CNN that Trump one the debate, within margin of error distance of his 42.3 percent support in the FiveThirtyEight polling average.  (See chart below)

The bottom line is this:  Thursday night’s debate didn’t change many minds.  Rather it showed that the race has hardened.  Both Biden and Trump supporters appear dug in.  That’s obviously good news for Biden who is comfortably ahead. 

With 11 days left and tens of millions having already voted, it will take a cataclysmic event to change the trajectory of the race.  Expect President Trump to do everything he can to create that cataclysmic event.  So, hold on for a wild ride.  

Al From is an adjunct professor at the Krieger School at Johns Hopkins University.  He is founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of The New Democrats and the Return to Power, featured in the documentary film, Crashing the Party.  

 

On the first day of the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, I was quoted in the lead story of the Wall Street Journal as saying that Walter Mondale’s nomination represented the last hurrah of his wing of my party.

“The Last Hurrah” is Edwin O’Connor’s classic political novel, in which Frank Skeffington, his fictional mayor, lost his re-election bid because he could not keep up with changing times.

Needless to say, my quote was not well received at a convention about to anoint Mondale as its candidate for president. But that November, I was proved right. Mondale’s landslide loss — he lost 49 states to President Ronald Reagan — triggered the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council that spawned the New Democrat political movement.

Eight years later, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, the first New Democrat candidate, became the first Democrat elected to the White House in 16 years. With one exception, Democrats have won the popular vote in every presidential election since.

Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are the embodiments of Frank Skeffington in American politics today. They represent the last hurrah of a political coalition forged more than half a century ago that no longer speaks to or for a majority of voters in an America that has dramatically changed racially, ethnically and culturally in the last three decades.

That’s why so much of President Trump’s re-election campaign is focused on suppressing the vote of growing minority constituencies. And, it’s why McConnell and Graham are fighting so hard to rush the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a Justice on the Supreme Court through the Senate.

It’s all about clinging to power. They are desperately trying to hold on to the last vestiges of power of a dying electoral coalition – a coalition that is less and less able to produce popular vote victories at the ballot box with each political cycle.

The Republican coalition was forged in the late 1960s as the New Deal coalition ran out of steam. Starting with Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, Republicans won five of six presidential elections. Twice they won 49 states. Only Jimmy Carter’s narrow victory in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal kept them from a clean sweep.

So powerful was the GOP’s national coalition that in the three landslide elections in the 1980s, Republican candidates won a higher percentage of electoral votes than any party’s candidates had won in three consecutive elections since the advent of modern parties in 1828.

The Congressional vote, in large part because of the power of incumbency, lagged behind presidential voting. But during the 1980s, Republicans began building strength in the House and Senate, and in 1994, they won control of both Houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Notably, Mitch McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984 and Lindsey Graham to the House in 1994.

That Republican coalition was nearly entirely all white – white Southerners who were former Democrats, white urban ethnics (the so-called Reagan Democrats), and whites in suburban and rural areas. It included large majorities of white Christians, regular church goers and evangelicals.

Educationally, the Republicans ran strongest among non-college white voters. Regionally, they dominated the Southern and border states and sparsely populated small rural states of the heartland and Mountain West where voters were nearly all white, many without college educations, and predominately Christian.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the national electorate was about 90 percent white. So as long as they won a significant majority of white voters, Republicans could dominate presidential elections. As late as 1992, 88 percent of voters were white and most of the rest African Americans. Too few Hispanics voted in 1992 to register in the exit polls.

But, beginning in the early 1990s, our country began to change demographically, becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, less white, less religious, and more educated. In the next quarter century, the electorate changed dramatically. By 2016, according to CNN exit polling, just 71 percent of the electorate was white, 12 percent African American, 11 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian. This year the white vote will likely be below 70 percent for the first time.

Citing the work of demographer William Frey, political writer and analyst Ron Brownstein chronicled the impact of that change in a recent piece on the CNN website. In today’s America, he writes:

1. Young people of color make up about 45 percent of millennials, nearly 49 percent of Generation Z and represent a 51 percent majority of the younger generation behind them.
2. Among adults younger than 30, only 29 percent identify as White Christians, well below the nation overall (around 43 percent) and only half the number among the nation’s seniors 65 or older.
3. Adults under 30 are also the best-educated generation in American history.

But because of the small state bias of the Electoral College and the Senate, those institutions have not kept up with the pace of change.

As a result, Trump and the Republican-led Senate were, Brownstein writes, “put in power almost entirely by the parts of the country most insulated from these changes – states with few immigrants, more White Christians and relatively fewer college graduates. Fully, 26 of the 30 states Trump won rank among the 30 states with the smallest share of immigrants, according to census data; those same states elected 45 of 53 Republican senators.

“Likewise, 43 of the 53 Republican senators were elected by the 29 states in which White Christians, according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, compose at least 47 percent of the population,” he continues. “Those same states accounted for 25 of the 30 states that Trump carried last time. The patterns are similar when ranking states by their share of college graduates. After this election, Republicans may hold none of the 24 Senate seats in the 12 states with the most college graduates.”

In part, because of those demographic changes, the Democrats reversed their fortunes in presidential elections. Starting with Bill Clinton’s victory, their candidates have won the popular vote six times in the last seven elections – and once the votes are counted in 2020, it will be a record setting seven of eight. Never before in American history has a party won the popular vote seven times in less than nine elections.

President Trump is the second president in the last three to be elected while losing the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won it by 2.1 percent, a greater margin than John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Think about this. In the 25 presidential elections in the 20th century, no president won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. But in the five elections in this century, that has already happened twice. Although the Democrats have won the popular vote in four of those five (80 percent), they have only held the White House for eight of those 20 years (40 percent).

Judge Barrett, if confirmed, will be the third justice in three years nominated by a president who lost the popular vote, confirmed by Senators representing a minority of voters.

If polls are correct, after November 3, there is a good chance that will change, and both the president and the Senate majority will once again be elected by a majority of American voters. But with Justice Barrett seated, the Supreme Court, the third branch of our government, will continue for a decade or more to reflect the views of voters in the country we used to be, not the diverse country we have become.

President Trump is campaigning blatantly to undermine our democratic electoral process and to intimidate minority voters to discourage them from voting. And, in state after state, Republicans through executive and legislative actions and through the courts have tried to follow his lead, to make it harder for all Americans, particularly minority Americans, to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. They are hoping against hope that if they can suppress the vote enough, their declining coalition can survive for just one more election cycle.

The President will almost certainly lose his fight for re-election — I believe he will lose in a popular vote landslide. Senators McConnell and Graham may survive their own re-election campaigns next month, and they will likely succeed in confirming Judge Barrett. But for all three, 2020 will be their last hurrah. The power that came from a dying Republican coalition is slipping from their grasps. And, once it’s gone, it’s not likely to return anytime soon.

Al From is an adjunct professor at the Krieger School at Johns Hopkins University. He is founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of The New Democrats and the Return to Power, featured in the documentary film, Crashing the Party.

On Monday, in the Spy, I wrote an op-ed urging Governor Hogan to mail ballots directly to all Maryland voters for the presidential election in November.

I thought that would be a no-brainer. After all, Hogan had mailed ballots to all voters in last month’s primary election.

Instead, for the general, the governor said he would open all polling places on election day and during and the early voting period. Rather than mailing voting actual ballots to voters, he said he would mail voters them applications for absentee ballots.

During a television appearance this week, Governor Hogan doubled down on his decision: “Tens of thousands of people showed up at polls that weren’t open (during the primary),” he said. “The handful of polls that were open were overcrowded, and it was suppressing people’s vote because they had to wait in line for four hours.

It is true that fewer polling places were open for the primary because, in the midst of the pandemic, heavy on-sight voting was unsafe for voters and poll workers.

But Hogan’s defense seems to me to miss the point. I’m all for the governor trying to open as many polling places as he can safely in November, though, realistically, there are likely to be many fewer open polling places than in a normal pre-pandemic election.

That’s because of a shortage of both polling places and poll workers. Fearing another coronavirus increase, many privately-owned polling places have already pulled out of the election, and, as of right now, one-third of poll worker slots are unfilled.

To me the real issue is that the governor making voting by mail harder than it was in the primary. Why add an extra step to the vote by mail process? Why make voters fill out extra forms and make election officials process them, as an additional step, before mail-in ballots can be cast?

The issue can’t be the integrity of the state’s voting lists. If the lists are good enough to mail all voters absentee ballot applications, they should be good enough to mail them ballots. Besides, I’d hope state election officials have worked diligently during the past six weeks to clean up errors in the voting lists they found during the primary.

With coronavirus cases rising again throughout the state, Hogan’s decision just doesn’t make sense – unless he wants to suppress the vote by forcing more Marylanders to risk their lives going to the polls by making it harder to vote by mail.

Al From is an adjunct professor at the Krieger School at Johns Hopkins University.  He is founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of The New Democrats and the Return to Power, featured in the documentary film, Crashing the Party.

Governor Larry Hogan has received well deserved accolades for his bold and visionary leadership in combating the coronavirus pandemic.

Now he needs to demonstrate that same foresight to assure all Marylanders can vote safely and easily by mail in November’s critical national election.

In early February, after President Trump cavalierly dismissed the virus as “one person coming in from China,” Governor Hogan, as chairman of the National Governors Association, galvanized the nation’s governors to act aggressively to combat the virus in their states.

Here in Maryland, he did exactly that.

When St. Patrick’s Day revelers ignored warnings to socially distance, he acted swiftly to close the bars and issue a stay at home order for the state’s residents. By June, with the virus curve heading downward, Maryland was on course to a prudent re-opening.

When it became apparent that the federal government had botched virus testing, Hogan, using his wife’s connections in her native land, ingeniously purchased 500,000 test kits from South Korea. (If my personal experience is any indication, the Maryland testing system is quick and efficient.)

And, when he determined that Marylanders could not safely vote in the April primary, the governor boldly postponed the election and mailed ballots to all voters. Rearranged on short notice, the primary did not come off without glitches, but overall turnout was high, and most voters cast their ballots safely by mail.

Moreover, Governor Hogan has consistently demonstrated the courage to criticize President Trump for his gross mishandling of the pandemic, something too few of his Republican colleagues in Congress and State Houses have been willing to do.

Last week, he called the White House efforts to smear Dr. Anthony Fauci, the world’s pre-eminent expert on infectious diseases, “absolutely outrageous.” And, Thursday, he penned an oped in the Washington Post sharply critical of the president.

“I’d watched as the president downplayed the outbreak’s severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators to American hospitals,” he wrote. “Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation’s response was hopeless.”

Because he showed such courage in tackling the coronavirus, I expected that he’d ignore the president’s ridiculous daily rants against mail-in voting and make voting by mail as easy as possible for Marylanders for the general election, just as he had for the primary – especially since the Center for Disease Control had recommended that “voters should seek alternatives to casting ballots in person this November.”

So, I found it surprising and a bit disturbing when earlier this month the governor announced that he would not mail ballots directly to voters for the presidential election. Instead, the state will mail voters applications for absentee ballots. Before they can receive a mail-in ballot, voters will have to fill out and return that application, creating an additional burden for both voters and state election officials.

That extra step will undoubtedly result in fewer votes being cast by mail and more voters lining up at the polls, hardly what we need during a pandemic. To spread out the in person voting, the governor pledged that polling places would be open in every precinct on election day and during the early voting period.

Hogan said he was acting to correct problems in the primary where the mailed-out ballots did not get to all voters on time and some voters got multiple ballots and where, with limited polling places open, lines were long. Those problems need to be corrected and hopefully they can be before the November balloting. There’s plenty of time. When the governor postponed the primary state election, after all, officials had just 52 days to convert to an entirely new vote by mail system. Now they still have double that amount of time – 104 days – to work out the bugs. And, with the trial run in the primary, they should know what they need to fix.

But it’s hard to see how adding the intermediate step of mailing out applications for absentee ballots will do anything but further gum up the system and result in fewer ballots being cast by mail. Most likely, it will result in suppressing turnout – exactly what the president wants to achieve – but not a formula for a vibrant democracy.

In theory, returning to a normal in person early and election day voting may seem a like a good idea – we’re all eager to return to normal – but, in practice, during a pandemic, it’s likely to turn into a disaster. For one thing, it will be hard to find enough poll workers – who are likely to be elderly and more vulnerable to coronavirus – to cover all precincts. Then there are the problems of insuring proper social distancing among voters and keeping polling places sanitized for 12 hours a day during early voting and 13 hours on election day.

Finally, who’s to say that by election day the virus will be under control in Maryland or any other state, for that matter — that we won’t be undergoing a second wave of the pandemic that will make it even more dangerous for voters to vote in person.

Ironically, since the day Hogan issued his election order, the number of cases in the state, Anne Arundel County, and zip code 21401, which covers most of Annapolis, has risen sharply. That’s not encouraging.

According to the Maryland Department of Health, in the eight days before the July 8 order, there was a daily average of 413 new cases in the state. In the 11 days since, that daily average has jumped to 661, a 60 percent increase. (And, yesterday there 925 new cases in Maryland) In Anne Arundel County, during those same time periods, the daily average of new cases increased from 29 to more than 56, a 90 percent jump. And, in zip code 21401, where the governor resides, the daily average of new cases went from less than two to more than six, a whopping 363 percent increase.

Hopefully, those numbers are an aberration, but given the recent trends across the country, they are, at the very least, worrisome. And, they’re more than enough reason for the governor to reverse his decision and mail out ballots to every Maryland voter while he still has time to correct the mistakes of the primary and do it right.

Al From is an adjunct professor at the Krieger School at Johns Hopkins University.  He is founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of The New Democrats and the Return to Power, featured in the documentary film, Crashing the Party.