“So far, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds, the answer is no. Views of the Democratic Party, in fact, haven’t really budged in more than four years. The share of Americans calling the Democrats ‘too extreme,’ which stood at 41% in November 2014, now stands at an identical 41%, with only minimal fluctuation in the interim.”

Politico: ““The top echelon of staffers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee left their jobs Monday, a shakeup following a pair of Politico stories detailing deep unease with the party’s campaign apparatus over a lack of diversity.”

“A staff turnover of this magnitude seven months into the Democrats’ majority is jarring, and will present Bustos with a set of new challenges. She will be forced to rebuild the committee’s top leadership from scratch in the middle of a presidential campaign that has much of the party’s best talent tied up.”

First Read: “We can’t remember seeing this kind of shakeup at a congressional campaign arm seven months into a cycle.”

“The executive director of House Democrats’ campaign arm is stepping down amid an outcry from Democratic lawmakers over the lack of diversity in the committee’s senior ranks,” Politico reports.

Politico: “Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (D-IL) was set to make an unplanned trip to Washington from her district Monday amid an outcry from top black and Latino lawmakers over a lack of diversity in the campaign arm’s senior management ranks.”

“Bustos’ sudden return to D.C., just days after Congress left for a six-week-long August recess, comes as aides and lawmakers are calling for systematic changes to the DCCC, the party’s main election organ.”

“The Democratic National Committee is getting smoked by its GOP counterpart in fundraising — and some major Democrats are panicked it could hurt their chances at defeating President Trump next year,” Vice News reports.

“The DNC brought in just $22.9 million over the last three months including $9.5 million in June, according to a campaign finance report filed Saturday night with the Federal Election Commission. That’s less than half the Republican National Committee’s haul over the same time period: $51 million.”

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Maureen Dowd: “In the age of Trump, there is no more stupid proposition than that Nancy Pelosi is the problem. If A.O.C. and her Pygmalions and acolytes decide that burning down the House is more important than deposing Trump, they will be left with a racist backward president and the emotional satisfaction of their own purity.”

A new Daily Beast/Ipsos poll finds 20% of Democratic and independent men who responded to the survey said they agreed with the sentiment that women are “less effective in politics than men.”

And while 74% of respondents claimed they were personally comfortable with a female president, only 33% believed their neighbors would be comfortable with a woman in the Oval Office.

DNC Chair Tom Perez is defending the strict qualifications for the second round of primary debates in September: meeting the thresholds to qualify is an “opportunity” for candidates to expand their fundraising and name recognition, he told CBS News.

Said Perez: “If you can’t run an effective grassroots campaign in the year 2020, in today’s era, you’re not going to be able to win the presidency,” Perez said. “And what our dual threshold has done is to give additional opportunity to the candidates.”

Politico: “For years, a growing stripe of Democrats has argued that what their party needs is a leader willing to shatter old assumptions, a radical disrupter.”

“Well, Democrats already have found their transformational figure for the 2020 campaign. His name is Donald Trump.”

“No one could miss the obvious ways this president—despite his deviations from traditional conservative orthodoxy—has turned the Republican Party into the pro-Trump party. It could be easy to miss, however, some of the less-obvious ways Trump also has made himself the defining force of the anti-Trump party.”

Rahm Emanuel: “Normally, a scandal centered on how rich parents used bribes to win their children’s admittance into elite colleges wouldn’t play so heavily in the national news. No one much cared when Donald Trump promised large donations as his children enrolled at Penn. But the outrage over the Varsity Blues investigation perfectly illustrates what may be the most important, least understood and underappreciated political dynamic of our era: a full-on middle class revolt against the elites and the privileges they horde. For all the focus on inequality and social justice, this middle-class revolt is the most important barrier standing between Democrats and the White House. They can’t afford to ignore it.”

“Think of what’s happened over the last decade and a half. America endured a war sold on false premises, a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt, and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren’t selling. Is it any wonder so many middle-class taxpayers resent the elites? They’ve been forced to bail them out from their own mistakes time and time again—and yet the beneficiaries of that goodwill haven’t apologized, let alone taken responsibility. America’s middle class is Cinderella and the nation’s elites are her evil stepsisters—only now, it’s the stepsisters who get to marry the prince. It’s infuriating.”

“Ever since the disaster of the 2016 election, Democrats have engaged in (an often pointless) debate about whether President Trump’s supporters were drawn to him on account of economic or cultural grievances. Yes, Hillary Clinton drew more votes, but she was 1,000 times more qualified, and 10,000 times more personally appealing. She should have demolished him—but something drew many voters to Trump, instead.”