Dan Balz: “It was Mondale’s political misfortune to run against Reagan. After weathering a deep recession, Reagan sought reelection during a time of rising economic growth and personal popularity. As his most famous campaign ad claimed, it was ‘morning in America.’ Mondale suffered the biggest electoral college loss of any candidate in history, losing 49 states and carrying only his home state of Minnesota — and that by only 4,000 votes. It was, as he would later recall, ‘a helluva shellacking.'”

“But that was hardly the summation of a rich life in politics and public service. Mondale’s legacy goes much deeper than that crushing defeat, most notably his contributions to the office of the vice presidency. Every vice president who has served since owes him a debt of gratitude for turning the role into something of value.”

Associated Press: In death, long after loss, Mondale’s liberal legacy stands.

Walter Mondale, who transformed the role of U.S. vice president while serving under Jimmy Carter and was the Democratic nominee for president in 1984, died Monday at 93, Axios reports.

Rest in peace, Fritz.

Jamelle Bouie: “Put another way, you can think of the New Deal as a third founding moment in the history of American democracy. And in the same way that we still struggle to live up to the ideals of political equality expressed in our first founding and those of racial equality expressed in our second, we have not yet realized the ideal of economic equality and opportunity put forth in the New Deal.”

“Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West falsely suggested that Texas could secede from the United States and become an independent country,” CNN reports.

Said West: “This is something that was written into the Texas Constitution. Or it was promised to Texas when we became part of the United States of America — that if we voted and decided, we could go back to being our own republic.”

“Experts, however, say that Texas cannot legally secede and leave the United States to become its own republic. The annexation resolution West is referring to stipulates that Texas could, in the future, choose to divide itself into five new states, not divide itself from the US and declare independence.”

Robert McCartney: “Opponents of D.C. statehood have at most three arguments that deserve any respect. They involve the Founders’ intent, retrocession to Maryland and the 23rd Amendment.”

“But none stands up to scrutiny,.. It’s hard to accept that Republicans and other critics believe that these arcane constitutional claims count for more than respecting the nation’s founding rallying cry of ‘no taxation without representation.'”

“Instead, as GOP leaders are increasingly willing to admit publicly, they care primarily about preventing the deep-blue District from sending two additional Democrats to the Senate and one to the House.”

Not even two weeks after the Tennessee historical commission voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol, state senators are trying to vote to remove all members from the commission, WTVF reports.

Dylan Matthews: “Fifty-seven years ago, a Democratic president who had a reputation as a moderate — and who had been a senator and vice president before reaching the highest office in the land — announced his administration would be waging ‘unconditional war on poverty in America.’”

“With Congress’s passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, another Democratic president with a reputation as a moderate (and who came through the Senate and the vice presidency) is putting his stamp on American policy. The Covid-19 relief bill, which passed the US House on Wednesday afternoon and is set to be signed into law by President Joe Biden on Friday, is the most far-reaching anti-poverty legislation in more than 50 years.”

FiveThirtyEight: “Our current extended period of closely contested national elections atop stable and persistently uncontested state and local elections is truly unprecedented.”

“The last time we encountered anything similar, American party politics were substantively different and the precursors of impending realignment far clearer. But today, the factors locking in continued closely-balanced hyper-partisan politics are much stronger. And absent a major change to the rules of our elections, no realignment lies in sight. Instead, deepening partisan trench warfare will only worsen fights over the basic rules of voting, undermining the shared legitimacy of elections on which democracy depends.”