Thursday Notes - DeSantis Struggling, More On The Good Econ News, New Youth Vote Analysis
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A few things today:
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DeSantis’ National Numbers Are Remarkably Bad - Will admit I’ve been a bit surprised by this data, but it’s pretty clear now that DeSantis’ rightward lurch and bumbling early candidacy has done a lot of damage to his brand. First up are new DeSantis tracking numbers from Civiqs. The third chart is from a new Navigator report. Note that the hoped-for breakthrough with Hispanic voters is just not happening for the Florida governor. It’s another reminder that voters have a deep understanding of what has happened to the GOP, and they don’t like it.
Rob Shapiro’s New Inflation Analysis - Our colleague Rob Shapiro put together his thoughts on the encouraging, new inflation numbers in a Washington Monthly essay. Be sure to see our recent work on all the encouraging economic news of the last few weeks:
John Della Volpe On The Youth Vote - Harvard’s John Della Volpe has a new Substack post up, “Ring the alarm - Young voters are more progressive than ever, but record 2020 turnout and support for Democrats in 2024 is far from guaranteed.”
I haven’t had time to go through it in detail, but at first glance, it reinforces the basic argument we’ve been making here for months - that if we want to have the kind of performance with young people next year that we all want we need to get to work, now. John and I messaged this am and he’s agreed to do a Hopium event with us in the next few weeks. Will let folks know when it gets scheduled.
House GOP Have Already Reneged On The Deal They Struck With Biden - Yes, it only took a few days:
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said McCarthy, by encouraging GOP appropriators to set 2024 spending levels below the caps agreed upon with Biden, has both defied the terms of the deal and increased the likelihood of a government shutdown later in the year.
“It’s shocking that it took less than two weeks for Republicans to walk away from an agreement that they made,” Aguilar said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
“This is an agreement that the Speaker made directly. And he took pains — remember? — to get everybody else out of the room and to get to a deal with just him and the president. And now he’s walking away from that deal,” Aguilar continued. “If it wasn’t so dangerous, it would be laughable.”
Will be tracking this not-all-shocking development closely here.
Welcome new subscribers - we’ve had a lot of new folks sign up in recent weeks - welcome all! The water is warm here, and we are glad to have you aboard.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria On The Strength Of The US Economy (echoes our big arguments):
Keep working hard all - Simon
I can’t say I’m surprised by the double cross on the budget agreement… But, my understanding is that Biden put a few shrewd things into that agreement that will once again make it difficult for the normal, albeit spineless Republicans in the house to vote against when push comes to shove. My guess is this is a performative bit of nonsense that will fall apart when it’s clear that they can’t get it passed through the Senate. There may be a shut down, but my guess is Biden has already laid the groundwork to outflank and outmaneuver these bumbling fools and get exactly what he and McCarthy agreed upon in the end. And by far the most important thing, is that we avoided a default, and took that bullshit off the table for two years. #GameOn
Thank you for all this great information and insight as always.
My very intellectual, aware, progressive nephew said something that terrified me yesterday: That he’s very happy to see Cornell West launch his presidential campaign. I explained to him what happens in these situations (he’ll lose but it’s just enough votes to make the democratic candidate also lose), why Biden has been a great, progressive president, and that change doesn’t happen overnight, but he wasn’t swayed. I got annoyed, which I’m sure made him dig in more. I need some more good arguments why voting for the more progressive underdog is potentially disastrous for young progressives and what to say. Please help!