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The white working-class helped fuel Trumps 2016 rise, but those voters have actually been gravitating to Republicans since 1992, according to research by Noam Lupu, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University. Working-class African Americans have remained steadfastly loyal to Democrats, but Trump saw his support among Latinos improve in 2020. That could indicate that a broader shift away from Democrats may be resonating with some Hispanics.

I think, for the Democratic Party, its a tough coalition to maintain: working-class voters who are really focused on their economic interests, but, at the same time, very progressive social positions for the urban, educated voters, Lupu said. I think Biden has an opportunity to rebrand the party a little bit.

Working-class generally denotes people without college degrees who have lower wage jobs. It also can mean better educated, better paid middle-class earners who dont like defining themselves as rich or poor. Trump won 62% of white voters without a college degree in November, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the electorate.

During the campaign, Biden tried to contrast what he called the working family sensitivities of his birth city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, with Trumps Fifth Avenue, big city values. Biden also has pledged to be the most pro-union president youve ever seen.

A number of working-class people have seen politics not deliver for their families, and sometimes thats when Democrats are in charge and sometimes thats when Republicans are in charge, said Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO. It creates an opening for demagogues who say, I can fix it.'

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Democrats bank on relief aid to win back wary working class - The Columbian

President Biden, along with leading Democrats on Capitol Hill, started the year with the choice between two paths to govern. The first route, which I have strongly urged my party to take, is characterized with bipartisanship. Democrats carry this incredible opportunity to consolidate their power by reaching out to moderate Republicans to achieve legislative compromises at a time when Republicans are deeply fractured. This route would lead to further friction, however, with the growing progressive wing.

It is clear that Biden and Democrats have chosen the second route, which involves embracing liberal policies and using their power to push through a progressive agenda without any support from Republicans. While it may lead to legislative wins, it will do away with the promise of Biden to reach across the aisle and adds the risk of potential losses in 2022.

The decision to govern this way has now elevated Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to one of the most notable positions on Capitol Hill. Manchin played a pivotal part with the passage of the almost $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill and he, along with Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have been critical to balance out the progressive agenda with the party.

Indeed, Manchin and Sinema are the only two Senate Democrats who are blocking the wholesale move to the left and toward the unchecked liberal policies in the party. Though Manchin played a central role in scaling back the initial stimulus bill from Biden to make it somewhat more moderate by lowering the income threshold for additional stimulus payments as well as nixing the minimum wage increase, the final package is now still the most progressive domestic legislation enacted in modern history.

One would hardly believe the bill was proposed by a moderate president who clinched his party nomination and the White House with his promise to unite the country. But this final package is more akin to something we would have seen if Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont had been elected to office. As Sam Stein had outlined in Politico last week, the influence of Sanders and progressive politics with the stimulus bill is evident, and his objective has been to move the window of discourse of what Democrats believe is tolerated, and Sanders appears to have done that.

Despite the fact that Democrats have slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, the stimulus bill embodies unconstrained progressive policies, including the direct payments to working people and ensured income for children. Further, Biden and Democrats are now planning for a significant tax hike on the rich to help pay for a new economic program.

Biden had the chance to reach out to moderate Senate Republicans, who were drafting a scaled back coronavirus relief bill earlier this year. Instead, Biden took the more feasible but more costly route of passing the massive $2 trillion bill with the reconciliation process. The final legislation includes several provisions that are both inflationary and untargeted.

Now there are talks that Senate Democrats could weaken or eliminate the filibuster, a mistake I strongly hope my party will not make. It is important to maintain the filibuster so there is a level of bipartisanship built into the system. Even if Senate Democrats can somehow get their entire coalition on board with deploying the nuclear option, doing so would continue the dangerous precedent for the Senate, where the party in control uses that measure in the narrowly divided chamber to dismiss the opposition party, effectively shutting the door to key legislative compromises.

It is clear that the left has taken over the Democrats. If the administration continues working to appease the progressive wing, while bipartisanship falls, then it could set Democrats up for some losses in 2022.

Douglas Schoen is a political consultant who has served as adviser to Bill Clinton and to the campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.

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The progressive takeover of Democratic Party continues | TheHill - The Hill

NORTH ANDOVER It was a first on Sunday morning for the North Andover Democratic Town Committee, hosting avirtual breakfastwhile continuing a long-standing tradition of honoring the partys representatives and supporters.

The breakfast, led byMark DiSalvo,brought local Democrats together, including state legislators and candidates running for local office. The virtual event also featured special tributes to supporters.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey returned to the breakfast this year asthe keynote speaker, thankingeveryone for their support during his reelection campaign and giving updates on the progress he feels is being made in Washington, D.C.

Markey was also the guest speaker a year ago.

I loved being with you last year, the senator said, adding that a lot has happened in the past year to make him very hopeful for whats to come.

There is a light at the end of this dark, year-end tunnel, Markey said. We want to get things done.

Markey said Democrats should be proud they won the trifecta, keeping control of the House of Representatives, winning the Senate and taking back the White House.

Markey also said President Joe Bidens $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan will bring relief and support to those needing it most as the pandemic continues.

It feels like our country is emerging from a very long and dark winter, Markey said. Its been a hard year but we have a lot of work to do. Its time to rise up, to put our justice agenda into action.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts sent a video message, thanking all for their support and hard work.

The committee honoredAndrea Holmbergas Democrat of the Year. Shereceived her official award at home Saturday.

Committee Chairman Michael Lis toldthe audience that Holmberg was deserving ofthe honor calling her a tireless campaign worker, party supporter and someonewho has held signs in rain and snow, helpedcomplete many tasks to support candidates, and has immeasurable generosity and commitment.

For Holmberg, it was a honor to be recognized.

She credited the many women in her lifewho helped drive her commitment to help others. That included her mother, friends, and even her young daughter.

Holmberg said she would continue to work for the candidates in whom she believes.

Former Eagle-Tribune reporter Paul Tennant was also honored by the committee, with DiSalvo saying Tennants work over the years covering local news has been valuableto the community.

And I always enjoyed attending and covering the North Andover Democratic Town Committee breakfast,Tennant said, adding that after the results of last falls election, he has a renewed sense of hope.

The last four years have been less than pleasant, Tennant said. Im seeing leadership that doesnt seek to divide.

In addition to state legislators giving their own views, local candidates running for several North Andover elected positions were invited to speak.

Those running for Select Board include incumbent Richard M. Vaillancourt, Joseph Finn and Janice Phillips. For School Committee, the candidates are Andrew McDevitt, David Brown, Joseph Hicks, Rebecca Stronck and Pamela Wall-Pietrowski.Max Butterbrodt hopes to win a five-year term on the Housing Authority.

DiSalvo is also running for another term as town moderator.

DiSalvo stressed that this part of the breakfast was nonpartisan, and all candidates were invited to participate.North Andovers election is March 30.

Those who attended the virtual breakfasttook part in an electronic straw poll asking for nonbinding opinions on several questions, including how participants feel about Bidens response to the coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Bakers response, and on the local front, North Andovers response.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

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North Andover Democrats host their first virtual breakfast - Eagle-Tribune

Democrats are pushing a sweeping package of voting rights, campaign finance and ethics reforms as their top legislative priority in 2021. One of the pieces of the bill is a section requiring independent political groups that currently dont have to disclose their donors whose donations are known as dark money to finally do so.

This provision, previously known as the DISCLOSE Act, has been a major part of Democrats campaign finance reform agenda for years. But one major thing has changed since 2010, when Republicans dominated dark money spending: Today, its Democrats.

Democratic Party-aligned dark money groups nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors spent more than $514 million on the 2020 elections, according to a review of FEC records by the Center for Responsive Politics. That compared to around $200 million by Republican Party-allied groups.

The totals reported by the Center for Responsive Politics include both independent expenditures made by dark money groups and contributions from dark money groups to super PACs, which do have to report their donors.

The Supreme Courts 2010 Citizens United decision legalized unlimited corporate, labor and individual political spending on third-party electoral efforts. This created an unintended disclosure gap by allowing nonprofit groups that accept corporate donations and do not disclose their donors to spend money on election campaigns.

The disclosure of political donations plays a central role in the U.S. campaign finance regulation system. That system favors disclosure, as citizens should be able to know who could be influencing their elected representatives and because donations carry the possibility of corruption and the appearance of corruption. The Citizens United decision, penned by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, even included an endorsement of disclosure as it opened the door to dark money.

But Congress failed to pass the DISCLOSE Act to close that door. The bill fell one vote short of clearing a Republican filibuster in 2010.

Pool via Getty Images"Perhaps this slime machine can be a bipartisan concern," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told his colleagues in reference to dark money spending on elections.

The shift in dark money dominance from Republicans to Democrats began in the 2018 election cycle. This marked a major change after Republican dark money groups outspent Democratic groups 4-1 in the 2016 election.

Democrats created an entire ecosystem of dark money groups in order to take the lead away from Republicans in this field of campaign spending. The major Democratic Party super PACs associated with different offices each launched their own dark money arms.

For example, Priorities USA Action, which focuses on presidential races, launched Priorities USA; the House Majority PAC opened House Majority Forward; and the Senate Majority PAC launched Majority Forward PAC. These three dark money groups each spent tens of millions on the 2020 election.

They were joined by new dark money hubs that distributed undisclosed funds to super PACs to spend on election campaigns. The largest of these, Sixteen Thirty Fund and Future Forward USA Action, contributed $61 million apiece to super PACs that spent that money on the 2020 election.

And despite this newfound dominance, Democrats are still looking to pass the DISCLOSE Act now part of the voting, finance and ethics-focused For The People Act and end dark money spending on elections.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund unequivocally supports the For The People Act and its historic provisions to strengthen our democracy by expanding voting rights, enhancing ethics rules, and reforming campaign finance regulations, Amy Katz, executive director of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, said in a statement to HuffPost.

The bill has already passed the House on a nearly party-line vote (one Democrat voted no). Senate Democrats formally introduced the Senate version of the bill on Wednesday with all but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) signed on as co-sponsors.

The topic of Democratic dark money spending came up in a March 10 Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on dark money in judicial appointment campaigns. Subcommittee chairman Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), previously the lead sponsor of the Senate DISCLOSE Act, sponsored the hearing.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) noted the increasing dominance of Democratic dark money spending. He remarked that he faced tens of millions of dollars in dark money spending that aimed to beat me into the ground.

All the people thundering about dark money are getting elected with it, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said.

But Whitehouse noted that the DISCLOSE Act, embedded in the For The People Act, would require both Democratic and Republican groups to disclose their donors.

Now, Republican colleagues have faced massive attacks leveled through Democratic front groups, Whitehouse said. So perhaps this slime machine can be a bipartisan concern.

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Democrats Now Dominate Dark Money Spending. They Still Want To End It. - HuffPost

WASHINGTON Dozens of U.S. House Democrats, including two Virginians, backed a resolution filed Friday to expel controversial U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress, an extraordinary measure thats only been successfully employed twice since the Civil War.

U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez filed the expulsion resolution, after introducing it in January. The text of the legislation is simple, noting that Greene, a Georgia Republican, is hereby expelled from the House of Representatives.

In a floor speech, the California Democrat cited Greenes role ininciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionand press reports that revealed that before being elected, Greene had expressedsupport online for violence against top Democrats,including former President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I take no joy in introducing this resolution, but any member who incites political violence and threatens our lives must be expelled, Gomez said.

The measure is unlikely to go any further, however.

An expulsion resolution requires a two-thirds majority in the House to pass, meaning it would need dozens of Republicans to sign on to be successful even if every Democrat supported it. And although Greenes GOP colleagues have been griping about her use of procedural tactics to grind debate on the House floor to a halt, they are exceedingly unlikely to back a push to remove her from Congress.

Pelosi had driven efforts tostrip Greene from her committee positions, a rare move the Houseapproved last month. Yet even Pelosi, at her weekly press conference on Friday, said shes lukewarm on expelling Greene.

Im not going to get into that, Pelosi told reporters. Members are very unhappy about what happened here and they can express themselves the way they do. What Mr. Gomez did is his own view. That is not a leadership position.

For her part, Greene swatted away the effort, claiming Gomez and the 72 Democrats who cosponsored the bill are radical socialists and have declared me Public Enemy Number One.

When asked for further comment, her spokesman sent along another tweet in which Greene claimed Democrats are threatened by strong Republican Women. Greene has also tweeted that Democrats are trying overturn the will of the People who voted for both her and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, whose November election in the states 2nd Congressional District isbeing challenged by Democrat Rita Hart.

Greene also insinuated that the effort was a conspiracy with social media giant Twitter after the platform suspended her account for 12 hours, a move Greene said she was told was an error.

Greene has also been fundraising off the expulsion effort, asking supporters to text a number and join her communications list. Her campaign sent out an email Thursday asking her supporters to donate $25 so she can have the resources to defend myself in the public sphere.

I must be able to defend myself against these nasty smear tactics and show that you and I and the America First agenda are not going anywhere!, the email read. Make no mistake, the Radical Left, led by AOC and the Squad, are trying to remove me from office for defending President Trump. And as President Trumps biggest supporter, Ive become Enemy #1. But in reality, theyre not after me. Theyre after you. Im just in their way.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and fellow Squad members Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are indeed cosponsors of the legislation. However, the measure also has support from members across the ideological spectrum in the Democratic caucus.

For instance, the measure had the support of moderate lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee; Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado; and Pennsylvanias U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle, Matt Cartwright and Susan Wild.

Several Florida lawmakers sponsored the measure: Reps.Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch, Alcee Hastings, Darren Soto, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Frederica Wilson.

Other members to sponsor the resolution include Arizonas U.S. Reps. Ruben Gallego and Ral Grijalva, Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, Virginia Reps. Gerry Connolly and Donald McEachin, Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, Rep. David Trone of Maryland, Rep. Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania and Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee.

The sole fellow member of Greenes Georgia delegation to co-sign her expulsion was Rep. Nikema Williams, a Democrat who joined Congress this year after the death of Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.

Congresswoman Greenes comments and actions are dangerous, unpatriotic, and a clear threat to every Member of Congress, Williams said in January, after backing an effort to censure Greene. It would be irresponsible for us to allow her to use the Peoples House as a platform to peddle discredited conspiracy theories that only fan the flames of hatred and violence.

Several members were expelled from Congress in 1861 and 1862 at the outbreak of the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy and secession. However, since then, only two members of Congress have been successfully expelled, and both were given the boot for financial corruption.

The most recent was Rep. Jim Traficant of Ohio, who was expelled in 2002 after being indicted on several counts, including tax evasion, racketeering and bribery. He served seven years in prison, and passed away in 2014, years after his release.

Before that, Rep. Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was the sole post-Civil War expulsion, after being caught on videotape accepting a $50,000 bribe as part of the Abscam FBI sting operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He served three years in prison.

The only expulsion before the Civil War happened in 1797, when Sen. William Blount of Tennessee was expelled for treason for helping the British in a ploy to conquer parts of Florida and Louisiana to keep them from French conquest.

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Resolution to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene signed by dozens of House Democrats, including two Virginians - Virginia Mercury