Many times in my life I have wished for a magic wand that could just fix all that was wrong in the world — or at least let me drink beer without getting heartburn.
Saving that, I sometimes wish for a crystal ball so I would know what was going to happen and save myself the stress of worry, worry, worry.
But I am afraid that I don’t have either of those.
If I did, I could tell you that we ARE going to win in November and that Trump will never be president again.
God, I wish I could tell you that!
I **can** tell you that I have every faith in us. I can tell you that we have won and won and won again since we united after 2016. I can tell you that I would rather be us than them.
But the only thing that can ensure our winning — the only magic wand we have — is us. That is it.
If you worry about Trump getting elected you need to take action. Now. This depends on us.
Us donating. Us making calls. Us running for office. Us getting out the vote. Us educating people about why we support Biden.
We. Can. Do. This.
We really can.
But we need to all pitch in. Starting now. We have six months. It is crunch time.
What can you do?
Your donations will come bundled with others from our Good News community and will show the Democrats and the Biden team that there are many of us who support him and combine hard work with optimism in our battles for a better America!
Looking for something else? GREAT! Here are some other ideas:
Need some fortification? Here is some good news to bolster your spirits!
Good Economic News
The NYT talked about the jobs report from yesterday
“This is the jobs report the Fed would have scripted,” said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.
Federal Reserve officials have been looking for further evidence that their interest rate increases over the past two years are weighing on the economy and job market, and Friday’s employment report roundly provided that signal.
That moderation came as job gains slowed, the unemployment rate ticked up slightly and average weekly hours nudged down. The overall picture was one of a labor market that remains solid but is gradually slowing — exactly what officials at the Fed have been looking for.
The decline in the Black unemployment rate that Tal flagged earlier is very encouraging. Black workers have historically been among the first to lose their jobs in an economic downturn — as the late economist William Spriggs often said, they are the “canary in the coal mine” for the broader economy
On first blush, this report shows exactly the sort of slowing Biden was talking about two years ago — a drop in the pace of job creation but not a huge one, without any corresponding jump in the unemployment rate. It looks like a good report for the president.
Investors are welcoming signs of a cooling labor market, sending S&P 500 futures rising.
And the Washington Post notes that That marks the 27th consecutive month that the unemployment rate was below 4 percent. This was previously recorded during a low-unemployment period between 1967 to 1970 and the longest period on record between 1951 to 1953.
“The labor market is still going strong even if it’s a slowdown,” said Andrew Flowers, chief economist at Appcast, a firm that helps companies recruit online. “One-hundred-and-seventy-five thousand jobs is more than enough to absorb the workers in this market and you can see that with the [low] unemployment rate.”
In welcome news for economists looking to see broader job gains across industries, warehousing and transportation appears to be on the rebound, adding 22,000 jobs, after seeing a major slowdown after the e-commerce expansion during the pandemic.
Markets jump higher after softer-than-expected jobs report fuels hopes of an earlier rate cut
US stocks soared Friday after new data showed that US job growth slowed considerably last month.
After surging by more than 500 points after the opening bell, the blue-chip Dow was higher in mid-morning trading by 423 points, or 1.1%; the S&P 500 was up 1.1% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 1.9%.
Friday’s employment data “was a big sigh of relief for markets, with a softer job market and importantly a softer average hourly earnings readout,” wrote Matt Peron, global head of solutions at Janus Henderson Investors, in a note on Friday. “Taken together, this should give markets some hope that inflation is not as sticky as feared and raises the possibility of getting back on the disinflation trend we saw last year.”
Bad News for Bad Guys
After RNC Shakeup, Trump Ground Game Could Be Compromised
The Republican National Committee was poised to open and staff 40 satellite campaign offices across key battlegrounds when former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive GOP nominee, abruptly replaced RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and her deputies with fresh leadership.
Trump’s new RNC team, led by Chairman Michael Whatley, Co-Chair (and Trump’s daughter-in-law) Lara Trump, and senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, killed McDaniel’s 2024 blueprint. Roughly six weeks later, neither the committee nor the Trump campaign has much infrastructure or personnel in the swing states that will decide the November 5 election, multiple sources in Washington and the crucial battleground states told Dispatch Politics this week.
That means few if any regional and local campaign headquarters; little to no deployed field staff; and little to no traditional voter turnout activities, such as door-knocking, phone banking, or volunteer organizing. Even after the Trump-led RNC’s reimagined field program eventually emerges, their strategy is to concentrate almost exclusively on the half-dozen states that will determine Trump’s fate. Republicans elsewhere? They’re on their own.
GOP House hard-liners won’t compromise. They’re losing key fights because of it.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) believes there is a simple answer to the question of why House Democrats are more effective at working together than members of his conference: Republicans are just too principled.
That’s one way of putting it. What Johnson didn’t articulate was how a rowdy bunch of flamethrowers on his right flank — roughly 15 lawmakers, many of them members of the vocal Freedom Caucus — has pretty much sabotaged any hope of a conservative legislative agenda this Congress. These hard-liners have refused to compromise on a variety of issues — immigration legislation, government spending, aid for Ukraine — and in the process have yielded power to a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers.
This stubborn adherence to ideological purity is causing the hard-liners to lose leverage in a House where the GOP has just a two-vote majority. Their intransigence means that Johnson — though he risks his job by doing so — has continued to turn to Democrats to pass high-priority legislation to keep the government funded and send aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Tensions grow between Trump and Lake in Arizona race for Senate
Former president Donald Trump has long had a soft spot for his acolyte Kari Lake, the expected GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, joking that Lake would pivot to his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen even if she was asked about the weather.
But since Lake jumped into the race, Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about her political prospects in a state he sees as key to his bid to return to the White House, and has shown annoyance with her frequent presence at his Florida resort, according to five people close to him, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments.
Poll shows how RFK Jr.’s appeal to anti-vaccine right could hurt Trump
The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dynamic in the 2024 election is shifting. Multiple recent high-quality national polls have shown the independent candidate suddenly pulling support about evenly from President Biden and former president Donald Trump — and even taking more from Trump’s side of the ledger — despite long-standing Democratic concerns about Kennedy playing spoiler for Biden.
Reasons for election hopefulness
Biden Appeals to North Carolina With Program to Replace Lead Pipes
President Biden traveled on Thursday to North Carolina, a possible swing state in the fall election, to promote his efforts to replace toxic lead pipes as part of his administration’s program to expand and upgrade the nation’s network of roads, airports and other critical infrastructure.
During a stop in Wilmington, the president announced $3 billion in new spending drawn from the bipartisan infrastructure law that he pushed through Congress in 2021, one of the signature legislative achievements he hopes to use to show voters that he can be effective despite political polarization.
“Until the United States of America, God love us, deals with this, how can we say we’re a leading nation in the world?” he told a crowd of supporters at the Wilmington Convention Center. “For God’s sake, we’re better than this.”
Mr. Biden has committed to replacing all lead pipes across the nation within a decade. Lead exposure can affect brain development in children, damage kidneys and interfere with the production of red blood cells that carry oxygen. The administration estimates that more than nine million homes, schools, day care centers and businesses still receive water through lead pipes, particularly in communities of marginalized people.
FBI data shows America is seeing a 'considerable' drop in crime.
Jeff Asher is a New Orleans-based crime data analyst who has worked at the CIA and Department of Defense. He leans towards caution when describing trends in his line of work.
Amid the heated crime rhetoric that is a staple of politics and is continuing this year – former President Donald Trump and his conservative allies in Congress and the media are using dire terms to describe crime trends in America – Asher has been carefully sifting through the data.
The story he tells has been slow to emerge but stands in stark contrast to Trump's narrative.
As early data showed murders declining nationwide last year, Asher was careful about overstating things. But as the big decline continued, he wrote in December that he had “seen enough” and was ready to declare that the U.S. was experiencing a major drop in killings.
Asher cited preliminary 2023 FBI data in predicting that the final numbers for the year could show a "considerable" drop. The third quarter FBI data showed murders dropping an estimated 15.6% compared with the same period in 2022 and violent crime dropping 8.2% overall.
The fourth quarter 2023 report released in March show an estimated 4% drop in property crime, 6% drop in violent crime and 13% decrease in murders from 2022. The fourth quarter report covers the entire 2023 calendar year, and can be considered a preliminary year-end report.
A new series of polls released by CBS News have very good news for Joe Biden and the Democrats:
These polls represent at least a 4 point Biden gain (and perhaps as much as 6-7 pts) from CBS’ last poll which had the Trump up 52-48 nationally. They also confirm trends I’ve been writing here for weeks now - the election is changing, it’s getting bluer, and Trump can no longer be said to lead either nationally or in the battlegrounds. It is a close, competitive election now that has moved in our direction in recent weeks and we need to put our heads down and together go win this thing. For those following Michigan note this is now the third poll in the last few weeks showing Biden with a slight lead there.
More on polling
In 538’s national Presidential polling average Biden has gained 1.7 pts against Trump in recent weeks, and the general election head to head is essentially tied. We’ve also seen a 3.5 pt gain for Democrats in recent months in 538’s Congressional Generic (which party will you support for Congress), and Dems now have a slight lead though it too is essentially tied. A majority of the national polls this week have the Biden tied or ahead, with 3 - Marist, Ipsos and FAU showing small Biden leads. It’s a close, competitive election with Dems gaining some ground in recent weeks.
In the battle for control of Congress, our Senate candidates all show modest but consistent leads, and Navigator Research has found our House candidates in better shape than Rs in the battleground. Lots of work ahead but this early data is encouraging.
and it isn’t just polling
I’m also coming to believe that these “bad candidate” problems Republicans had in 2022 are occurring again this year, and is going to become material in many of the battleground states this year, particularly in Arizona, North Carolina and possibly Wisconsin too. Kari Lake and the 1864 fiasco are going to be huge drag on the GOP in Arizona. Bat shit crazy Mark Robinson is going to be a big drag on the Rs in North Carolina based on recent polling, and a very not ready for prime time Eric Hovde is already struggling in Wisconsin. The strength of our candidates in the battleground right now - and their weakness - is an increasingly important part of how 2024 is unfolding.
and special elections continue to look good
On Tuesday night we had another meaningful Dem overperformance in an election with real voters voting, something we’ve been over and over again since Dobbs two years ago. In a special election for the US House in NY-26, our candidate Timothy Kennedy received 68% of the vote. Congressman Brian Higgins received 64% of the vote there in 2022, and Biden 62% in 2020. This is a similar level of overperformance over the 2020 result we saw in the run up to the 2022 election, one which turned out far better for us than most expected.
As you often hear me say we’ve had a repeating electoral dynamic since Dobbs - Dems overperform, Republicans struggle. My explanation for this dynamic is that Dobbs broke the GOP, and for many non-MAGA Rs the party had at that moment just become too extreme, too dangerous. Since Dobbs Republican candidates have had performance problems because a chunk of their coalition just isn’t enthusiastic about following MAGA candidates and the escalating extremism of the GOP. And where this reticence manifests is when Republicans vote and have to make an actual decision on whether to support MAGA. While they may want to vote R in a poll, when voters have to pull the trigger and actually vote Republicans repeatedly perform worse than expected.
We’ve seen this dynamic - Republicans repeatedly struggling - show up in 2024 now too. We saw it in the Tom Keen January special election in Orlando; in the Suozzi win in February; in Alabama a few weeks ago; in NY-26 Tuesday; and most importantly we’ve seen it again and again in Trump’s Presidential primary performances, where he has repeatedly underperformed public polling and Haley repeatedly performed far better than anyone expected, even after she dropped out of the race. Remember in 2024 Trump has been repeatedly *underperforming* public polling
On The Lighter Side
What can you do to save democracy
Take action. Nothing makes you feel better than action.
and/or
Your donations will come bundled with others from our Good News community and will show the Democrats and the Biden team that there are many of us who support him and combine hard work with optimism in our battles for a better America!
Looking for something else? GREAT! Here are some other ideas:
You can also educate people about how great Biden is!
We have a great candidate!
