Democrats are desperately trying to understand what’s roiling the electorate heading into a brutal midterm environment.

HIT Strategies has been conducting weekly focus groups to find out in real time how Americans are processing events in 2022. On Monday night we watched discussions with two different subgroups of partisan Democrats assembled by the firm: “Black Base, Always vote for Dems, Ages 25+” and “Youth Base; Always vote for Dems, Ages 25 – 39.”

There were significant differences within and between the two groups of nine voters. But there were also some broad takeaways.

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