Democratic pollster Mark Mellman shared his perspective with the Washington Post:

Said Mellman: “Internally, I think it’s very healthy. We have more people running for office as Democrats than we’ve had in a long time. Tremendous surge in interest. Tremendous surge in participation. … There are just vast numbers of people putting themselves out for the Democratic Party in ways… that they had not done before. That’s a sign, I think, of extraordinary health.”

He continued: “If you look at it from the outside, it’s not so healthy. The Democratic Party is not very popular today with a lot of people, and that is truly a problem. If you look at it in absolute terms and just look at where the Democrats stand today: not very good. You look at where our leadership stands, you look at where our party stands in terms of the public, it’s just not good. There’s no way to call it good. On the other hand, if you look at it in relative terms and say where are we compared to the Republicans? Well, not so bad. They’re there to save us.”

Associated Press: “With just a few primaries remaining before the decisive midterm elections in November, voters have dramatically reshaped the Democratic Party to become younger, more diverse and unquestionably liberal.”

“For now, Democratic leaders are embracing the enthusiasm of their base — even as it’s unclear where it will lead.”

“Democratic Party officials voted Saturday to strip superdelegates of much of their power in the presidential nominating process, infuriating many traditionalists while handing a victory to the party’s left flank,” Politico reports.

“Under the new rule, superdelegates – the members of Congress, DNC members and other top officials who made up about 15 percent of delegates that year – will not be allowed to vote on the first ballot at a contested national convention. The change could dramatically re-shape the calculous of future presidential campaigns, rendering candidates’ connections to superdelegates less significant.”

Washington Post: “The new party rules undo decades-old reforms that empowered hundreds of party activists and elected officials, often referred to as ‘superdelegates,’ whose presidential convention votes were not bound to the results of primaries or caucuses. They also affirm the decision of six states to move from caucuses, which have favored insurgent candidates, to primaries, which tend to have higher turnout.”

Politico: “As the Democratic National Committee gathers in Chicago for its annual summer meeting, the three cities competing to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention are putting on the hard sell.”

“None had as robust a presence as Houston, which appears to have nudged ahead in the early running, mostly because of the city’s large number of hotel rooms, according to several DNC members and officials close to the selection process. But Milwaukee has made a compelling political case for the Midwest, and no site holds a lock on the convention.”

“What the DNC this week thought was an attempted hack of its valuable voter file turned out to be a security test organized by a state party, unbeknownst to the national organization,” the Washington Post reports.

“The committee on Tuesday alerted the FBI to a fake online portal it thought had been set up as an elaborate attempt to trick DNC staff into giving up their log-in credentials — through a hacker technique known as ‘phishing’ — as a way to gain access to the party’s VoteBuilder database.”

The DNC contacted the FBI “after it detected what it believes was the beginning of a sophisticated attempt to hack into its voter database,” CNN reports.

“The DNC was alerted in the early hours of Tuesday morning by a cloud service provider and a security research firm that a fake login page had been created in an attempt to gather usernames and passwords that would allow access to the party’s database.”

“The page was designed to look like the access page Democratic Party officials and campaigns across the country use to log into a service called Votebuilder, which hosts the database… adding the DNC believed it was designed to trick people into handing over their login details.”

“We must be a party that fights fire with fire. When they go low, I say hit back harder.”

— Michael Avenatti, quoted by the New York Times, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Iowa.

Walter Shapiro: “It’s hard to identify a Senate or House seat that is being lost because of excessive Democratic activism. Even if a Democratic incumbent like North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is troubled by calls to ax ICE, there is scant evidence that this makes her more vulnerable than before in a state that Donald Trump carried by better than a two-to-one margin.”

“For a party supposedly riven by unbridgeable chasms, the Democrats survived the primaries without major stumbles. This year, there are no Democratic challengers in winnable seats who have been forced to go on television to explain, ‘I am not a witch.’ And in California’s top-two ‘jungle primary,’ the Democrats avoided squandering any potential House pickups by making sure they got a candidate onto the ballot in all contested districts…”

“Nor are this year’s congressional races some overwrought struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party… No party is ever completely unified, not even the Republicans who are fearfully pledging their fealty to Trump. But the Democrats — for all their differences over economics and temperament — recognize the anti-Trump stakes in 2018. And so, for once in their turbulent history, they are more arrayed rather than disarrayed.”

“Energized to take on President Trump, these voters are also seeking to remake their own party as a ferocious — and ferociously liberal — opposition force. And many appear as focused on forcing progressive policies into the midterm debate as they are on defeating Republicans,” the New York Times reports.

“The impact of these activists in the 2018 election has been limited but revealing: Only about a sixth of Democratic congressional nominees so far have a formal affiliation with one of several important insurgent groups. Fifty-three of the 305 candidates have been endorsed by the Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, the Progressive Change Campaign and Our Revolution, organizations that have helped propel challenges to Democratic incumbents.”