Democrats begin to see Pelosi as a 2018 problem McClatchy Washington Bureau In a survey of 20 Democratic House candidates, only one a former Senate staffer from Orange County, California would state support for the congresswoman staying on as leader of the House Democratic Caucus. Of the rest, 18 declined to say if Pelosi ... |
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Democrats begin to see Pelosi as a 2018 problem - McClatchy Washington Bureau
Senior Democrats on Wednesdayendorsed an irrational, socially destructive line of policy that would not be out of place in the Trump White House. No, they did not join Attorney General Jeff Sessions in his intensifying campaign against reverse racism. And they did not announce support for Presidents Trumps absurd border wall. They released a get-tough-on-trade program designed to out-demagogue Trump on one of his signature messages.
This is classic Democrats. Self-conscious that they lost the middle of the country, they recast themselves as the ones who really care about their opponents trademark issue. But Republicans are better at emotional appeals and have already exploited the nations fear and anger. This is John Kerry in 2004, who ran an ineffective national security campaign against George W. Bush. The Democrats latest move on trade is pathetic, and it is bad for the country.
Bill Clinton dragged Democrats toward an optimistic, pro-globalization stance in the 1990s. Since then, the economic case for this position has become more nuanced but has not fundamentally changed. Society at large benefits from increased international trade, in the form of cheaper goods, higher exports and increased specialization. Though there are some losers, most everyone benefits. The rational response is not to forgo trade-related wealth creation but to use some of the gains from trade to compensate the losers.
Many Americans, spurred by irresponsible or ignorant leaders, nevertheless blame trade for creating far more losers than it has. The mainstream of both parties resisted this sentiment until 2016, when Trump executed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) came surprisingly close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
Now Democrats have fully evacuated the intellectual high ground. Senate Democratic leaders announced Wednesday that, just like Trump, they favor renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has bound North America together with little net impact on U.S. employment. Democrats would also create a new agency that would scrutinize foreign investment in the United States, offer new tax incentives for reshoring jobs and hire a new trade prosecutor to crack down on unfair trade practices.
Democrats unveiled an economic platform on July 24 that included plans to address unfair market competition, rising pharmaceuticals costs and stagnant wages. (Reuters)
These are mostly gimmicks. Two existing agencies already have powers to combat unfair trade practices. Politicians have promised to renegotiate NAFTA before without meaning it. Even so, the policy rollout signaled a more intemperate tone from Democrats. Theyre rapacious, the Chinese, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) exclaimed Wednesday.
Experts are not impressed. Im both saddened and furious that the Senate Dems have jumped on the protectionist bandwagon so fully, with all the rhetorical flourish, New York University Professor Robert Howse told the New York Times. As a matter of policy, none of these measures, on any plausible economic theory, would result in improving the circumstances of U.S. workers, addressing inequality, or the socioeconomic challenges specific to the U.S. heartland.
A common retort is that the nation should seek fair trade, not the harmful trade pacts of past decades, with deals that promote worker and environmental protections. Yet President Barack Obama negotiated just such an agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Turned out that a real-world trade deal did not satisfy anti-trade zealots and the politicians who attack the poverty-destroying, wealth-creating project of global integration. Instead, they became only more resistant. Rather than making the case that the TPP is what trade critics had demanded, that freer trade helps nearly everyone and hurts a relative few, or that automation is responsible for many of the lost manufacturing jobs that offshoring is blamed for, Hillary Clinton unconvincingly flipped against the TPP during her 2016 primary race against Sanders.
Now the Democratic Party the one to which the country must look for responsible governance in the age of Trump has formally surrendered to anti-trade nonsense. With ever-fewer leaders making the case for globalization, it will be easier for Americans to assume that freer trade has devastated the nation. The country should focus on building trade relationships while investing in education, infrastructure and other things that will make the country less stratified and more internationally competitive. Instead, it will continue to shrink from global leadership and waste resources trying to save a manufacturing economy that was never going to last.
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Democrats on Trump: If you can't beat him, join him - Washington Post
Tom Tarantino has a certain quality Democrats these days are craving in a candidate, particularly in the suburban Contra Costa-Alameda County district where Tarantino will file paperwork Thursday to run for the Assembly.
Hes a military veteran.
Im looking for my next mission, Tarantino, 39, told me this week in San Francisco, where he works as a policy manager for Twitter.
Democrats find the vet part of his bio particularly alluring in the Donald Trump era because veterans connote images like stability and service to country desirable characteristics in a hyper-partisan time when 6 in 10 voters find the administration to be running chaotically, according to this weeks Morning Consult/Politico poll.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is actively recruiting veterans to run for Congress next year, and their national security backgrounds can be attractive to independent voters. Among the first-time vet candidates running in California is retired Navy SEAL Josh Butner, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Duncan Hunter in a very Republican Southern California district.
The leading example for Democrats is retired Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, who just launched her campaign in a deeply red Kentucky congressional district that Trump carried by 15 points. In her race against incumbent GOP Rep. Andy Barr, who won last year with 61 percent of the vote, she cites the 89 combat missions she flew.
But dont write McGrath off as political cannon fodder until you check out the campaign video she dropped this week featuring her in a flight jacket standing on the tarmac. Some Democrats a party still in search of a unified message consider the videos closing line a template for 2018.
This is my new mission: to take on a Congress full of career politicians who treat the people of Kentucky like theyre disposable, McGrath says in the ad. Some are telling me a Democrat cant win that battle in Kentucky, that we cant take back our country for my kids and yours. Well see about that.
Key phrase there: my new mission.
Tarantino used the mission message several times in describing why hes running. He grew up in San Anselmo, a working-class kid in a wealthy town his mom cleaned houses and his dad worked blue-collar jobs before signing up for the Army Reserves during his first year at the College of Marin.
He served 10 years, including time in Bosnia and Iraq. But when he left the Army, he had the same experience as many other vets: I couldnt find a job.
Tarantino eventually connected with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, one of the more powerful veterans advocates in Washington, rising to become a top aide to the organizations co-founder, Paul Rieckhoff. Tarantino testified before Congress more than a dozen times and was influential in getting benefits for veterans.
Rieckoff described Tarantino as a star, and said he is part of a wave of about 100 post-9/11 veterans running for office and split roughly equally between Democrats and Republicans.
Part of it is Trump, and people are upset at some of the things hes said and done, Rieckoff said of why the veterans are putting themselves forward. And part of it is that they see all the dysfunction in politics and they want to help. Theyre problem-solvers. Theyre trained to get (stuff) done.
Tarantino will have challenges taking on incumbent Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-Dublin, who won with 56 percent of the vote last fall and enjoys a reputation as one of the more bipartisan members of the Legislature. (She has held joint town hall meetings with Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, for example.) Plus, Tarantino just moved to the district in November. He will marry a Walnut Creek physician this month.
But with Democrats holding a 12-point advantage in voter registration in Bakers district, its a huge target, Bill Wong, political director for Assembly Democrats told me. Its the only Bay Area district held by a Republican.
We were way off message in previous attempts to win the seat, he said. Perhaps a veteran on a mission can help.
Every time theres a new development related to the investigations of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia during last years campaign, people ask: When is Trump going to be impeached?
So I asked a few people who have seen the evidence that we havent: Californians who serve on the Senate and House intelligence committees investigating the matter. Heres what they said:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee: Not close. Recent press reports concerning the president are very worrisome, including stories that he may fire the attorney general and even pardon himself. Those are the kinds of actions that could lead Congress to take a serious look at impeachment. But remember, the House and Senate are controlled by Republicans, and both chambers require the majoritys willingness to advance impeachment proceedings. Right now, very few Republicans are willing to stand up to the president.
Sen. Kamala Harris, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee: I will not at this point ask for or call on the impeachment of the president of the United States without having more facts and evidence that would be the grounds for that.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, member of the House Intelligence Committee: Until at least 24 Republican House members become disgusted by the presidents incompetence and bullying, or at least feel that he is threatening their re-election, impeachment will not occur. The House needs a simple majority vote to impeach the president, and then the Senate needs a two-thirds vote to remove the president from office. I think it is more likely that President Trump will resign. Its clear that the job is too much for him.
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
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Democrats searching for vets to lead them out of the wilderness - San Francisco Chronicle
Democrats and Republicans on Thursday said they were worried about the leak of dozens of pages to the Washington Post detailing a phone call President Trump had with two foreign leaders.
"I am alarmed at leaks of conversations between two heads of state. It doesn't matter what I think of this president, this is terrible," said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
The Washington Post published full conversations that Trump had over the phone with Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto on Jan. 27 and with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Jan. 28.
"I would've lost my mind if transcripts of Obama's calls to foreign leaders leaked. He wouldn't have sounded so dumb, but it's still absurd," said Tommy Vietor, former U.S. National Security Council spokesman for President Barack Obama.
"Transcripts seem carefully selected to do maximum harm to Trump, minimum to his foreign interlocutors. Somebody thought about this," said David Frum, former speechwriter to President George W. Bush and a senior editor at The Atlantic.
"Fully associate myself with @davidfrum. Regardless of one's politics or of reasons behind the leak, it is dangerous to our foreign policy," said John Kirby, former spokesman for the United States Department of State for Obama.
"Leaking transcripts of presidential calls to foreign leaders is bad," New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat said.
"Most recent leak of Trump's foreign leader calls sets a dangerous precedent, as does an ever-lying president destroying our sense of truth," said Mindy Finn, 2016 Vice-presidential running mate of independent candidate Evan McMullin.
"Yes, I know, Trump is awful etc etc. But how does that make it acceptable to leak something like this to public? Never happened under Obama," Attorney Jeffrey Blehar said.
"Foreign leaders need to know they can talk confidentially and not have their opinions on the democracy dies in darkness' front page," New York Post Columnist John Podhoretz said. "Someone should leak Jeff Bezos's confidential conversations with, say, Apple and see how that goes."
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Democrats, Republicans worry about 'alarming' leaks of Trump phone calls - Washington Examiner
If House Democrats are going to ride an anti-Trump wave to power, California could be where it starts. Across the nation, there are 23 House Republicans sitting in districts that Hillary Clinton won. Seven are in California.
Clinton won some of those California districts by a lot. The Orange County-area seat represented by Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.) is a typical, affluent suburban Republican district that went for Clinton over President Trump by nearly nine points. That made it one of the most pro-Clinton Republican-held districts in the nation.
No surprise then, that districts like this one are a top Democratic focus in the 2018 midterms. If Democrats net 24 seats, they'll take back the majority.
No surprise then, that Royce, who has been in office for more than two decades, has at least five potential Democratic challengers most, if not all of them first-time candidates.
The latest to enter the race: Andy Thorburn, a wealthy businessman and former public school teacher who officially announced his candidacy Tuesday. Thorburn doesn't have the Washington backing as some other candidates, but does have a backstory of being jailed for 30 days while on strike in New Jersey for better teacher wages.
Thorburnis automatically competitive because of the $2 million he's loaned himself to try to win the primary. His campaign says that's more resources than any Democratic challenger currently has in a congressional contest.
Thorburn talks like a Bernie Sanders Democrat with the trade policy of a Republican, a reflection of Orange County's rapidly blurring socio-economic and demographic lines. (The district is roughly a third Hispanic, a third Asian and a third white.)
Thorburn supportsraising the minimum wage and getting student loan debt under control. He's for free trade. He likes Obama and Obamacare, he hates Trump. And, above all, he thinks the system is corrupt.
The system is definitely rigged, he said, explaining how one needs money or connections to launch a credible run for federal office. It's been a corrupt system not corrupt in a bribery sense but it's a very corrupted system.
Andy Thorburn, a first-time Democratic candidate, is running for California's 39th congressional district against Rep. Ed Royce (R). (Andy Thorburn for Congress)
Also challenging Royce is former Obama official Sam Jammal and Mai Khanh Tran, a pediatrician and Vietnamese immigrant who has the backing of the pro-abortion rights political group Emily's List, which says it will spend whatever it takes in this primary.
In 2018, Democrats are going to flip the House because of candidates like Mai Khanh getting into the fight, Emily's List president Stephanie Schriock said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.
Navy veteran and lottery winner Gil Cisneros is also in the race. Only one candidate, former professor Phil Janowicz, voted in the district last year.
All the Democrats challenging Royce make up a healthy number of thetwo dozen-ish first-time congressional candidates who see an opening in some of California's longest-held Republican seats. Lots of eyes were drawn to the region in November after Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), one of the richest and most well-known members of Congress, narrowly won his race.
But there's no recipe for Democrats to unseat these suburban California Republicans. It's not even clear they can.
Republican operatives point out thatmany of these California Clinton Republicans are veterans who have represented their districts for decades and have a reputation beyond sharing the same party as President Trump. Many are also powerful figures in the Republican Party who can raise money in a flash. Royce is the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and raised more than $4 million for his 2016 reelection. Six months into the 2018 cycle, he has $3 million cash on hand.
Well known and well funded, maybe. Battle tested? Hardly, say Democrats.
Royce stomped his Democratic opponent in November by 14 points, a little-known candidate who raised just $78,000. Democrats say the Orange County area, in the era of Trump, is ripe for a real challenger.
Combine all the California Republicans' votes for an unpopular Obamacare repeal bill, with the area's changing demographics, with a historically unpopular Republican president, and Democrats think they smell blood in the water.
House Democrats' campaign arm has set up a team in Irvine, its first headquarters in the state since 2000, to try to knock out at least nine California Republicans in their efforts to take back the House.
Orange County and Royce's district are Ground Zero.
There are Republicans who represent the Orange County that existed 20 years ago, said Drew Godinich, the Western press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Godinich spoke to The Fix fresh off the plane from Washington to move to California. The area has diversified, gotten younger and has gotten more socially progressive, and these Republicans don't represent Orange County.
Despite going 0-3 in high-profile special elections earlier this year, Democrats think control of the House is in play next year. But to get there, they'll have to knock off veteran Republicans in California, most likely with an untested Democratic candidate. If Royce's district is any indication, there are lots of Democrats who think they can be the ones to do it.
This post has been updated to include the names of two other candidates running in the Democratic primary for California's 39th district.
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Want to know if Democrats can take back the House? Keep an eye ... - Washington Post