Jonathan Bernstein: “People mock Democrats for having unusually old leaders in Congress, especially in the House, but no one should doubt the competence of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in particular and of House and Senate Democrats as a group. The leadership team has experience passing complex legislation that Republican Speaker Paul Ryan and his team simply didn’t have. The same goes for key committee posts.”

Meredith Conroy and Perry Bacon Jr.: “The broader finding here is clear: White Democrats — definitely before Floyd was killed but most likely afterward too — are more circumspect about ideas promoting racial equality that might be disruptive to the status quo for white people.”

“You should be skeptical of stories that suggest white Democrats are very ‘woke’ on policy matters of substance, or even more concerned about racial inequality than Black Americans are.”

“That doesn’t seem true — at least not yet, whether you are reading polls or visiting a public school.”

Ray La Raja: “Primaries are about factional battles within parties, and Eric Adams won a major fight last week. The message from Adams’s win in New York City’s Democratic primary — echoing that of President Biden’s victory last fall — is that the Democratic Party is much more than the progressive left, even in the most progressive of cities.”

“His base of support, polling suggested, was not college-educated professionals but an ethnic and racial mosaic of older New Yorkers, many of whom lack college degrees.”

“Adams reminded us that less educated voters who make up most of the party have different priorities than the progressive left — notably on crime, a major issue in the race.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “Avenatti burst into national prominence as the anti-Trump lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, and was rapidly embraced by many Democrats (not to mention many members of the news media). He was good at television and eager to be on show after show, telling critics of President Donald Trump things they wanted to hear. His demise wasn’t a case of rank-and-file liberals realizing they shouldn’t trust him, but of the law catching up to to him.”

“Democrats shouldn’t forget that short period of time when many of them (although of course not all) fell for Avenatti. At a time when Republicans seem to have been taken in by hoaxes, frauds and conspiracy theories, it’s important to remember that everyone, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative and centrist, is susceptible to the appeal of such people and ideas.”

Damon Linker: “American polarization is happening much less asymmetrically than many Democrats would like to believe — and that on certain issues wrapped up with the culture war, Democrats have moved further and faster to the left than Republicans have moved to the right. This has been obscured by a greater embrace of brinksmanship on the right, from willingness a decade ago to shut down the government and risk default on the debt to Trump’s thoroughly reckless mendacity surrounding the 2020 election.”

“Making progressive politics a little bit less about public displays of righteousness might help to encourage Democrats to choose their battles more wisely — and so also somewhat less inclined to pick fights with the right on immigration and abortion and guns and religious issues all at once. Maybe waging one or two culture-war battles while displaying intentional moderation on a few others would do much greater good — by giving Democrats a modest electoral boost in a sharply divided country — than taking bold moral stands on all of them and confirming the right’s most paranoid claims about progressives ambitions.”

“Some progressives are distancing themselves from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — leader of their revolution,” Axios reports.

“Three factors are fueling the shift. Some feel he’s not pushing President Biden far enough to the left anymore. Some believe his time as the movement leader has simply passed. Some fear tying their brand to Sanders is a gift to opponents to weaponize in crowded primaries or in general elections — and they’re instead weighing the merits of aligning more directly with Biden.”

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) “gave an extended tirade that argued Democrats are disloyal, unpatriotic, dangerous traitors to America—and twice invoked Nazis to make his point,” Vice News reports.

Said Perry: “They are not the loyal opposition. They are the opposition to everything you love and believe in. Go fight them.”

He added: “We can acknowledge that maybe not every one of them is that way, but that doesn’t matter. We’ve seen this throughout history, right? Not every not every citizen in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s was in the Nazi Party. They weren’t. But what happened across Germany? That’s what’s important. What were the policies? What was the leadership? That’s what we have to focus on.”

“Eric Adams used his strong showing in New York City’s still-undecided Democratic primary for mayor to challenge the party’s left wing Thursday, calling himself “the face of the new Democratic Party,” the New York Daily News reports.

Said Adams: “If the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections, and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential election.”

“My party is divided, but my party is also rational.”

— President Biden, quoted by CNN, on getting Democrats to back the bipartisan infrastructure package along with a separate reconciliation bill.

Walter Shapiro: “On one hand, these Democrats rightly believe that their progressive agenda on climate change, voting rights, and immigration is strongly popular with the voters. But on the other hand, many of these same Democrats fear that if far-reaching legislation is not somehow rammed through Congress this summer, it will never happen in their lifetimes.”

“What Democrats have failed to realize in their despair is that their short-term political future seems far rosier than their downcast demeanor would suggest.”

Dan Pfeiffer: “It’s now abundantly clear there was never a plan to do either. In fairness, Manchin was incredibly vague about the reasons for his opposition to the bill for a very long time. His only public comments were meaningless bromides about bipartisanship. Democratic Senators reportedly pressed him for more specifics. Until the other day, he offered nothing. But in the end, he suggested a reasonable, if unsatisfying, compromise that received the support of Stacey Abrams and Barack Obama.”

“Yet, the party was unable to coalesce around it and offer a unified front. The night before the vote, Democratic Senators were still openly debating strategy and discussing breaking the bill up into pieces — something that had been suggested weeks before. With just hours to go, there was still confusion about which version of the bill would be voted on. It is truly impossible to imagine why these problems were not anticipated and addressed long before the vote was scheduled.”