South Koreans' Support for Liberal Lee Rises Ahead of Election
Support for South Korea's presidential race frontrunner Lee Jae-myung has risen to a three-month high as he extends his lead over conservative candidates, in a sign the opposition Democratic Party could grab power in nationwide polls on June 3.
The latest Gallup Poll released Friday showed that the left-leaning Lee's support has risen to 37%, up 3 percentage points from last week's survey. It was the first poll conducted since former President Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office over his martial law gamble and showed that support for Lee's party rose to 41% while that of the ruling People Power Party slipped to 30%.
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New Jersey primary could set the stage for women in 2025's biggest governor's races
Rep. Mikie Sherrill is vying to be the Democrats' nominee for governor of New Jersey in the race to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in Tuesday's primary. If she wins, women candidates will lead 2025's two biggest statewide elections. Sherrill is running in a crowded field of Democratic primary candidates that includes Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, former state Senate President Steve Sweeney and Sean Spiller, the head of the New Jersey Education Association teachers union. Polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern time. The contest will provide an indication of what direction the Democratic Party is headed after the bruising losses in November and a too-close-for-comfort win for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in New Jersey, a reliably blue state that saw a stark swing to the right in the 2024 election. The front-runner in the Republican primary is Jack Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker and 2021 Republican gubernatorial nominee who has the backing of President Donald Trump. Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, was elected to Congress in 2018 as part of a group of center-left Democrats, many of them women, coming from national security and military backgrounds elected to the U.S. House. She consistently led the Democratic primary field in fundraising and in polling, emphasizing her military and legal background in her messaging and pledging to take on Trump. She also won key endorsements and support from New Jersey's powerful political apparatus. Another member of that group of Democrats elected in 2018, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, is running for governor of Virginia and has locked up her party's nomination. Spanberger is aiming to flip the state's governorship, currently held by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is limited to one term, and will face Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the general election. Two others — Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Andy Kim of New Jersey — were elected to the U.S. Senate in 2024. New Jersey's rightward shift in 2024 raised alarm bells for Democrats in the state and nationwide. Trump lost New Jersey by just six points in 2024 after losing it by a margin of 16 in 2020. In the 2021 governor's race, Ciattarelli came within four points of defeating Murphy. That means New Jersey's election for governor in November will be closely watched for whether Democrats can make up ground in the state and clinch a decisive victory. The post New Jersey primary could set the stage for women in 2025's biggest governor's races appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
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Trump's aggressive moves on immigration protests put Democrats in a political bind
President Donald Trump's deployment of military troops to California is forcing Democrats back onto politically perilous turf, as they look for ways to condemn his actions without being drawn into a broad debate over immigration or tying themselves to the chaotic scenes emerging from Los Angeles. Republicans are relishing a fight that directs attention away from their monthslong, intraparty debate over tax and spending legislation, and the messy political breakup of Trump and Elon Musk, and toward what they view as Democrats' biggest vulnerabilities: immigration, law enforcement and public disorder. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman warned his fellow Democrats about the images emerging from California, where protests erupted Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and escalated into outbreaks of violence. Some protesters have thrown objects at law enforcement, looted businesses, blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars ablaze — while police in riot gear fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds. While much of the protest activity has been peaceful, images of burning cars and chaos have been widespread across social media and traditional news coverage. 'You can't defend when people start setting things on fire or they start damaging buildings or going after members of law enforcement. That's not free speech. That is not peaceful protest,' Fetterman said Tuesday. Fetterman, who was lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania during racial justice protests around the country in 2020, said Democrats 'should have learned the lesson back in 2020. Absolutely, there was righteous outrage over what happened to George Floyd, but that never means that you can support or be quiet if there's destruction or rioting and destroying and looting and those kinds of things.' He said he was 'not judging any of my other colleagues in my party,' but warned: 'You can't be quiet on those things. You have to just call it really what it is.' Some Democrats privately agree with Fetterman, saying their party's leaders must be more forceful in condemning the rioters' behavior. Lawmakers in competitive swing districts also worry about the political ramifications down the road, particularly if party activists resurrect a years-old battle cry for abolishing ICE. And in the meantime, they believe Democrats will be forced to grapple with an existential question: Do they support federal law enforcement officials actually enforcing federal immigration law? In a clear sign of the fraught political moment, lawmakers from across the Democratic Party's ideological spectrum issued warnings Tuesday against violence. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent who caucuses with Democrats, urged protesters to exhibit the same 'disciplined non-violent resistance' to Trump that civil rights leaders used to end segregation. 'Violent protests are counterproductive and play right into Trump's playbook,' he said on X. Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, a conservative Democrat who has long represented a Rio Grande Valley district, said in a statement that 'when people start throwing bricks and hammers at law enforcement, that's no longer protest — that's criminal.' 'We can debate policy without attacking the people who wear the badge and work to keep us safe,' Cuellar said. Trump, for his part, has blamed Democrats broadly and California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Karen Bass specifically for mishandling the situation, saying on Truth Social the city 'would be burning to the ground right now' had he not deployed troops there. And Republicans have delighted in pitting Trump against Newsom. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday that Newsom — who has aggressively criticized the Trump administration's moves — 'ought to be tarred and feathered.' 'He's standing in the way of the administration carrying out the federal law. He is applauding the bad guys and standing in the way of good guys,' Johnson said. Trump's actions have put Democrats in a complicated political spot. The party has struggled to navigate the issue of immigration since the president's victory in November — split between the moral outrage of the Democratic base over Trump's unprecedented deportation efforts, and polls that have largely reflected public support for the president on the issue overall. In particular, surveys have shown that most voters want tougher border security than the Biden administration put in place for much of the previous four years. But the politics get murkier when Americans are asked about the details of how Trump is carrying out his campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation effort in the nation's history. In the past — particularly when federal law enforcement cleared Lafayette Square, near the White House, amid 2020 protests — polls found that Americans opposed the use of rubber bullets and tear gas, and opposed deploying the US military in response to protests within the country. A CBS News/YouGov survey conducted before the protests in Los Angeles broke out found somewhat contradictory results: Fifty-four percent of Americans support Trump's deportation program, and 55% like its 'goals.' However, 56% said they dislike 'the way you think [Trump] is going about' the deportations. unknown content item - Democrats this week argued that Trump's actions have only worsened tensions in California. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly said the president's deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles is 'like throwing the match onto the kindling.' 'He took some actions that escalated an issue — a problem, but it was under control. And now the problem is bigger because of the actions he took,' Kelly told CNN. Democrats also accused Trump of hypocrisy, pointing out that he was slow to deploy the National Guard on January 6, 2021, when his supporters were rioting and attacking police officers at the US Capitol. 'We begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it,' California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was the House speaker at the time, said Tuesday. California Rep. Ro Khanna told CNN outside the Capitol on Monday that Democrats 'need to continue to unequivocally condemn the violence, the threats or attacks on law enforcement agents — I mean, that has no place.' But, the progressive congressman added, Trump's actions are unconstitutional. 'One can hold two thoughts — that political violence should be absolutely condemned, vandalism needs to be condemned, but that the appropriate remedy are state and local police — that you can't deploy the military against our own people, unless there's a real crisis,' Khanna said. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton similarly said that 'there's no excuse for violence.' 'If you're protesting the fact that ICE officers are sometimes too violent, doing that with violence doesn't make the point,' he said. However, Moulton also said Trump is using the US military to achieve political aims at home. 'This is not an opportunity to turn active-duty Marines against the American people. And that's what Trump is doing,' Moulton said. Trump has used Newsom as a foil as he deploys troops to the Los Angeles area — even suggesting Monday that border czar Tom Homan should arrest the governor. Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, has embraced the clash and publicly dared Homan to arrest him. Newsom himself has been in regular touch with lawmakers on the Hill, and held a briefing with his state's delegation and the leader of the California National Guard on Monday to update them on Trump's actions, according to two people familiar with the call. Newsom's office has also been distributing copies of some of attacks on him, including Trump's calls to arrest him, to House Democrats' offices, those people said. The scenes unfolding in California are also leading Democrats elsewhere to grapple with what they would do if Trump took similar actions in their states. And they fear they'd be powerless to stop it. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, one of the Democratic candidates in Tuesday's New Jersey gubernatorial primary, said Trump's move 'shows the further incompetence coming from Washington and the constant level of chaos that is almost intentionally generated there.' Sherrill also warned that military missions are much different from those of law enforcement in the United States. Another New Jersey gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, highlighted Trump's actions in a speech. He said the scenes in California make clear 'just what's on the line in this election and why it's so important that we have a governor who's willing to stand up and fight.' The Democratic Governors Association, in a statement signed by 22 governors, called Trump's deployment of troops to California 'an alarming abuse of power.' But the statement did not address the president's handling of his deportation program. 'It's important we respect the executive authority of our country's governors to manage their National Guards — and we stand with Governor Newsom who has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation,' the Democratic governors' statement said. CNN's Arlette Saenz, Ted Barrett, David Wright and Manu Raju contributed to this report.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
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Do WelcomeFest Democrats even know what's popular?
Centrist activists at the heart of a new push to control the direction of the Democratic party insist that they want Democrats to adopt positions that track with public opinion. But, as it stands, there is sparse evidence that their preferred platform is actually popular, according to researchers, with the advocates for a more centrist party also failing to recognize the impact that leaders can have on public opinion. Last week, centrist Democrats gathered in Washington, D.C. for an event billed as the largest public gathering of centrists in the Democratic Party, 'WelcomeFest.' The event served as a celebration of Democrats (and former Democrats) like former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.V., who represented the party's center-right flank. The co-founder of the centrist billionaire funded Welcome PAC, Liam Kerr, even walked out on stage wearing a Joe Manchin West Virginia University Mountaineers football jersey, before delivering an opening statement in front of slides which surmised the group's vision for the party going forward as 'dogs,' referencing Blue Dogs; 'data'; and 'Slotkin,' referring to the freshman senator from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, who Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has taken a shine to. The closest thing to a thesis statement for the event, however, came from Lauren Harper Pope, a founder of the Welcome Party, the political organization behind the event, who described the group's mission as making sure 'Democrats are on the right side of public opinion.' G. Elliott Morris, a public opinion researcher and the proprietor of the Substack blog, 'Strength in Numbers,' said in an interview with Salon that 'it's very obvious, if you're a student of public opinion, that public opinion is very malleable and also very subject to the questions you're asking and the way you're measuring the thing you're trying to measure.' He suggested 'those two nuances are just not compatible with activism among these groups,' referring to those who attempt to position themselves on the "right side" of public opinion. In practical terms, however, being on the right side of public opinion appears to mean adopting more conservative policies on issues where a more conservative position appears to be more popular, like on immigration or the participation of transgender people in sports. In economic terms, the group has pushed towards the 'abundance agenda' which focuses on rolling back regulations that proponents say limit things like the construction of new housing. The problem, however, for the burgeoning centrist movement is that there's not a lot of evidence that the key tentpole of their centrist platform — rolling back regulations and saying no to advocacy groups in the pursuit of the abundance agenda — is popular. Josh Barro, a journalist and the proprietor of the 'Very Serious' Substack blog, touched on this in an interview he did with Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., at last week's centrist event, where he asked Torres, 'Is abundance actually popular ... in a place like New York?' Torres answered, saying, 'I feel like we need strong leadership, and look, we've seen the YIMBY movement gain momentum even in California and New York.' The YIMBY ('Yes in my backyard') movement refers to pro-development advocacy that stands in opposition to NIMBY ('Not in my backyard') positions that often limit development through restrictive zoning laws. This wasn't, however, the last time the issue came up at the event. When asked a follow-up question by Salon, Torres responded in an email saying 'A government that builds more affordable housing, more clean energy, and more infrastructure is not only good government. It's good politics.' Later, in a panel featuring Derek Thompson, a co-author of 'Abundance,' and Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., Marshall Kosloff, co-host of 'The Realignment' podcast, Kosloff confronted the panelists with polling from Demand Progress, a progressive polling firm, that tested whether the abundance message or an economic populist message resonated with respondents better. When presented with descriptions of both the abundance agenda, which focused on peeling back regulations, and an economic populist agenda, which focused on dismantling corporate power, the poll found that Democrats and independents preferred the economic populist message while Republicans preferred the abundance message. Auchincloss responded, saying that it was 'a bad-faith poll' and that the results are 'what happens when you test an economics textbook against a romance novel and tell people, 'What do you like to read better?'' In the survey, the abundance agenda was described as: 'The big problem is 'bottlenecks' that make it harder to produce housing, expand energy production, or build new roads and bridges.' The populist agenda was described as: 'The big problem is that big corporations have way too much power over our economy and our government.' The survey found that 32.6% of Democrats, 68.8% of Republicans and 40.6% of independents said that the abundance message would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. The populist message, on the other hand, led 71.5% of Democrats, 39.6% of Republicans and 55.4% of independents to say they were more likely to vote for a candidate delivering that message. The survey did not test for the partisan affiliation of the candidate delivering the message. Economic messaging wasn't, however, the only place where centrists appeared to be adopting a minority opinion. When Torres was interrupted during his speech by anti-war protesters, organizers at the event started playing Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain,' and the Welcome Party's associated Substack called the protesters 'vain clowns.' While the 'popularists' mocked pro-Palestinian sentiment, Democrats have increasingly sympathized with Palestinians, with a recent Gallup poll finding that 59% of Democrats now sympathize with Palestinians more, while just 21% sympathize with Israelis more. In the general population, more Americans, 46% sympathize more with Israelis, compared to 33% who sympathize more with Palestinians, though sympathies have been shifting away from Israelis and towards Palestinians in recent years. However, in terms of concrete policy like legal actions taken against Israel, this shift has been more dramatic. Another survey from April, conducted by John Zogby Strategies, found that in terms of practical policy, 44% of respondents agreed with the International Criminal Court's findings that Israel's war on Gaza is tantamount to genocide, compared to 28% who disagreed with that statement. They've also begun to carve out a minority position in regards to the labor movement, advocating for pushing against unions at a point when Americans' approval of labor unions is near an all-time high. A 2024 Gallup survey found that 70% of Americans approve of unions while just 23% one point during the event, Barro asked, 'Is there a way to have a pro-abundance Democratic Party agenda in New York without breaking the strong link that exists between the New York Democratic Party and the labor movement?' The thinking goes that giving out contracts to unionzied companies, or requiring developers to do so, can increase labor costs for projects and potentially discourage development. Torres responded indirectly, saying: 'Everyone's voice should be heard, but no one's going to have veto power.' Barro has since gone on to advocate for 'fighting labor unions' in the name of abundance. Beyond staking out minority positions, the mission of staying on the 'right side of public opinion' also misses that the way that leaders can shape the way the public views on an issue. Research conducted by Morris alongside Verasight, a survey research firm, found that priming respondents with information about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongfully deported Maryland resident, resulted in a reduction in support for the deportation of all undocumented immigrants. The survey found that, without priming, 44% of respondents supported blanket deportations of undocumented immigrants while 38% did not. Among respondents given information about Abrego Garcia's case, however, just 39% supported blanket deportations, while 43% reported opposing the deportations. Morris also tracked Trump's approval rating on the issue of immigration alongside how much attention the Abrego Garcia case was getting in the press. He found that Trump's approval rating on immigration decreased in correlation with an increase in the attention that was being paid to the case. 'It seems more sales tactics to me than a commitment to actually tracking and representing the average person,' Morris said of the centrist movement. 'They have their own set of beliefs that, for the past 15 months, have been supported by majorities in the particular ways that these polls have asked majorities those questions. But that's not necessarily going to be true in the future, given events, so they are now put in the situation where they have to assert that these things are popular,' Morris said. 'They just have a commitment to these values first and a commitment to the public second.' Kerr, the co-founder of the Welcome Party's PAC, when asked by Salon what happens when public opinion shifts on an issue, and whether Democrats should adopt a new position to reflect that shift, called the conundrum a 'classic political theory question.' 'The Burkean response — a representative 'owes you not his industry only but his judgement, and he betrays you if he sacrifices it to your opinion' — has some merit. But also you have to get elected in the first place,' Kerr said in an email. 'Most prominent issues are not ones where the public opinion has been rapidly shifting beyond where candidates were standing firm. The story of the last decade is more about candidates zooming past where voter opinion was. And the answer to that problem is candidates with deep values and the confidence to authentically represent those values both to voters and in how they vote in Congress.'
