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Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer speaks at an event unveiling the Democrats new Better Deal agenda in Berryville, Virginia, on July 24, 2017. (AP Photo / Cliff Owen)

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Congressional Democrats rolled out an economic agenda for the 2018 elections this week, and despite its bland title, A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future, the agenda reflects the growing strength and influence of the populist movement inside the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Our Revolution, the group that grew out of Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign, along with the National Nurses Union, Fight for 15, Peoples Action, and others launched the Summer for Progress, an activist push to get at least half of the Democratic House caucus to endorse the Peoples Platform, another stab at an economic agenda for Democrats. The contrast between the two documents reveals the both the scope and the limits of the new Democratic consensus.

Both documents assume that resistance is not enough. Democrats have failed to articulate a strong, bold economic program. We also failed to communicate our values to show that we were on the side of working people, not the special interests. We will not repeat the same mistake, said the Better Deal agenda from Democratic Congressional leadership. The groups pushing the Summer for Progress agreed: Democrats must lay out a bold vision for how we create a country that works for everyonenot just the very wealthy.

Both the Peoples Platform and the Better Deal agenda are designed to offer a small number of bold, clear reforms to put before voters. The Better Deal agenda is focused on the economy; the Peoples Platform includes broader issues. Neither is intended to be a comprehensive platform. Foreign-policy and national-security issues are excluded, as are most social issues.

Both documents are framed in the populist language and analysis championed by Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Too many families, the leadership document argued, believe the rules of the economy are rigged against them by special interests lobbyists and large corporations.

A background polling memo by Hart Research for the Better Deal illustrates how popular this analysis is. It found that fully 79 percent of voters in Senate battleground states agree that the rules of the economy today are rigged against average Americans, and Americas working families need a better deal.

The leadership documents milquetoast framing could use some work before the midterms. Compared to the destructive, madcap chaos of the Trump White House and a Republican Congress intent on stripping health insurance from millions of people to pay for tax breaks for millionaires, promising simply a better deal is clearing a very low bar.

But the substance of the Better Deal is better than its framing. Its centerpiece jobs program features public investment of $1 trillion in rebuilding the countrys infrastructure. It also pledges to lift the floor under workers by embracing the movement for a $15 hourly minimum wage and phasing out the special minimum wage for workers who collect tips, which has shamefully been mired at $2.13 since 1991. Bernie Sanders made both of these issues central to his 2016 platform.

The Better Deal agenda also calls for requiring large employers to provide paid family and sick leave. It reaffirms the standard commitment to defend Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Securitywhich is no small matter in these days of Republican rule, and on the heels of a Democratic president who repeatedly proposed cutting Social Security benefits. The Better Deal also promises to make college more affordable, though is vague on the details.

The documents most striking and laudable item is a new initiative to revive antitrust enforcement and break up monopolies: a 21st century trust buster that would challenge market concentration in areas that hit consumers the most, including food, cable fees, beer, airline tickets, and eyeglasses.

Another key proposal would curb the outrageous price gouging of prescription-drug companies, in part by finally empowering Medicare to negotiate bulk discounts on drug prices.

But not everything in the Better Deal is wonderful. It spends a lot of time talking about providing workers with the tools they need to succeed by giving employerswho are already swimming in record profitsa new tax break to train workers and hiring them at a good wage. The embrace of this charade is clearly a nod to the still potent New Democrat forces in the party, and contradicts the general thrust of the Better Deal platform. It reflects the New Democrats unfortunate tendency to assume that globalization is an act of nature rather than a matter of policy and power. This leads too often to blaming workers for not getting the education or skills they need rather than focusing on changing the rules that rig the game against them.

Many popular progressive policies that are not in the Better Deal can be found in the Peoples Platformlike Medicare for all, tuition-free public college for those with family incomes under $125,000 a year, and a financial speculation tax to help pay for it.

One helpful feature of the Peoples Platform is that the proposals are attached to a real piece of legislation that has already been introduced, or will be soon. The College for All Act would implement the documents tuition idea, and the Tax on Wall Street Act outlines the financial-speculation tax.

The Peoples Platform includes other reforms that are outside the boundaries of the leaderships document, including automatic voter registration, elimination of private prisons (Justice is Not for Sale Act), and protection of equal access to abortion in public and private health insurance (the Each Woman Act).

The Peoples Platform lacks the Better Deals initiative on monopoly and antitrust, however. Many of its authors would have surely supported it, but it didnt make it into the document.

Neither agenda is intended to be comprehensive, but what is omitted is still worth noting. Despite Trumps ostensible focus on our failed trade policy, neither document includes a clear initiative on fair and balanced trade. The Better Deal authors pledge to address trade and to initiate a crackdown on corporate outsourcing sometime in the future, but thats about it.

Neither document makes a commitment to full employment with government as the employer of last resort. Democrats increasingly support extension of paid overtime, a crackdown on wage theft and dehumanizing scheduling, but neither document discusses them.

What should be the centerpiece of any progressive economic or political agendaunions and empowering workers to bargain collectivelyis nowhere to be seen in either document. Also omitted is the need to take on plunder by wealthy CEOs by curbing the executive-compensation schemes that are a primary contributor to our massive inequality. The private-debt overhang that impedes growth gets no discussion. Progressive tax reform beyond the financial transaction tax is also absent from both documents.

Pelosi and Schumer hope they have produced a clear agenda that Democratic candidates will champion in the 2018 elections, emulating the infamous Contract with America that Newt Gingrich peddled when Republicans took the House in 1994. The movement behind the Peoples Platform has launched a mass petition and mobilization seeking to gain the endorsement of a majority of House Democrats.

The contrast between the two documents provides some insight into the fault lines within the Democratic Party. Lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024 is increasingly a consensus position, as is a massive public infrastructure program. Medicare for all, tuition-free public college, and the financial-transaction tax are still contested. The leaderships focus on antitrust and breaking up concentrated economic power is new but has a good chance of becoming a shared position. Sadly, the importance of empowering workers and rebuilding unions and collective bargaining remain on the cutting room floors.

Were Democrats to gain majorities that could fulfill the pledges in either of these documentsand have the temerity to overcome the entrenched interests lined up against themmost Americans would in fact get a far better deal than what they will get from Trump and the Republican Congress.

Democrats are moving to address the populist temper of this time. The popular mobilization behind the Peoples Platform may yet push Democrats to add Medicare for all and tuition-free public college to the broad partys agenda. The activist base will surely happily embrace the Better Deals focus on concentrated economic power and antitrust. The chattering classes fret about Democrats and their circular firing squads, but this is a debate that is helping to make Democrats bolder and clearer about where they stand.

Read this article:
Democrats Are Finally Waking Up - The Nation.

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Lawmakers in both parties slammed President Trumps decision on Wednesday to bar transgender Americans from serving in the military, while many of his allies on Capitol Hill remained largely perplexed or silent.

The presidents decision, announced in a series of tweets, isyet another move that confused and divided elements of his party at a time when it is already roiled by disagreements over the future of a proposed health-care overhaul and of embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has faced a barrage of criticism from Trump in recent days.

Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.), a former Army officer, said it throws us off when Trump issues surprise tweets that distract from other GOP priorities. Based on what were doing in here this week, I dont know what the connection is, he said.

Capitol Hills most prominent Republican voice on national security matters, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), also criticized Trumps announcement, calling it unclear and yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via Twitter.

McCain added, There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military regardless of their gender identity. He said there should be no change in policy until the Pentagon completes an ongoing review of the issue.

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

[Analysis: Trumps argument against transgender soldiers echoes one used against gays, women and blacks]

Other conservative senators offered criticism of the move. A spokeswoman for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), an Army veteran and member of the Armed Services Committee, said that the senator believes Americans who are qualified and can meet the standards to serve in the military should be afforded that opportunity, though the military should not fund gender-reassignment surgery.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a Trump ally on most issues, said he wanted more information and clarity on Trumps policy. I dont think we should be discriminating against anyone, he said, adding that transgender people deserve the best we can do for them.

And Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), a senior member of an Appropriations subcommittee that sets Pentagon spending levels, said he expected Congress to call hearings exploring Trumps policy change.

You ought to treat everybody fairly and give everybody a chance to serve, he told CNN.

Most Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, remained mum in the hours immediately after the announcement Wednesday.

A House Republican aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about internal matters, said that while GOP leaders were aware of a White House review of the issue of transgender service members, they were not given heads-up about the announcement and that it was way beyond what we expected.

(Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

One Republican lawmaker who offered early support for the policy change on social media was Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), whorecently offered an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would have blocked the Pentagon from offering gender transition therapies to active-duty service members.

Pleased to hear that @realDonaldTrump shares my readiness and cost concerns, & will be changing this costly and damaging policy, shesaid on Twitter.

But a GOP colleague, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), who has a transgender son,weighed in against the policy: No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honor + privilege of serving our nation.

Trumps announcement comes two weeks after the House rejected Hartzlers amendment in a closely watched vote. Twenty-four Republicans joined all 190 Democrats voting to reject the measure.

But the issue has remained a pet cause for House conservatives who believe the federal government should not be funding gender reassignments. Conservatives have offered several amendments to a pending appropriations bill funding the military that would target transgender service members. But those amendments, which could come up for a vote Thursday, would not exclude them from serving entirely.

During the debate on the initial amendment, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who also served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, argued for the therapy restriction but explicitly stopped short of calling for an overall ban.

Were not stopping transgender people from joining, he said. Were saying taxpayers in this country right now are not going to foot the bill for it.

The defense policy bill has yet to move through the Senate, though Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has indicated that could happen in the coming weeks. McCain, who is still determining how to treat an aggressive form of brain cancer, is poised to lead floor debate on the legislation.

Opponents of Trumps policy could use the legislation to amend the bill to overturn it. A handful of Democrats, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Cory Booker (N.J.), said they were preparing legislation to do so.

Gillibrand, who has used her perchon the Senate Armed Services Committee to push for greater protections for women in uniform, said Wednesday that she would pursue legislation to overturn this discriminatory decision.

The defense bill, always seen as one of the few must-pass bills of the year, is often used as a way to launch proxy battles in the decades-long culture wars that pit social conservatives against progressives. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle often introduce legislation to restrict or expand abortion protections at military medical installations, to enact stricter rules against sexual harassment or rape in the ranks, or in more recent years, to restrict or roll back protections for transgender troops.

The last time the annual defense bill was used to make a significant change in social policy was 2010, when lawmakers voted to roll back the Clinton-era dont ask, dont tell rule that banned gay men and lesbians from openly serving in uniform. But transgender service was left in flux, in part because its fate has been dictated by internal Pentagon medical policy, not law.

If Trumps tweets signal a change in policy, then this is a president hell-bent determined to wreak havoc in the ranks the very thing he said he didnt want to do hes proposed doing, said Aubrey Sarvis, a private attorney and gay rights advocate who used to lead Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, the group that pushed to end the gay troop ban. If he seeks to do this as commander in chief by ordering his subordinates to act on this, the Defense Department is going to be faced with a barrage of lawsuits.

This is a wake up call and defining moment for the LGBT community. We have to rise up and oppose this president, Sarvis added.

The seven openly gay members of Congress quickly denounced the change. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who is also running for Colorado governor, said, Trump makes our military weaker by arbitrarily kicking out high-performing soldiers based solely on gender identity.

Other Democrats flooded social media and email inboxes with statements objecting to the change.

Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called the policy change an unwarranted and disgraceful attack on men and women who have been bravely serving their country.

These service members are defending the United States around the world as we speak, and they have long done so with distinction, he said. To prevent transgender people from joining the military and to push out those who have devoted their lives to this country would be ugly and discriminatory in the extreme.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) noted that Trump made his announcement on the 69th anniversary of President Harry Trumans executive order desegregating the military, adding that the president has chosen this day to unleash a vile and hateful agenda that will blindside thousands of patriotic Americans.

Transgender Americans are serving honorably in our military, said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.). We stand with these patriots.

Several Democratic military veterans also lambasted Trumps decision. Rep. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, accused Trump of using fear of Trans community to score political points.

Banning any qualified person from serving their country, because of who they are is both discriminatory and bad national security policy, hetweeted.

And Rep. Anthony G. Brown (Md.), a retired Army Reserve colonel, called it a dark day for our Armed Forces and our nation.

President Trumps rationale harkens back to a more ignorant and intolerant time, where words like disruption and not a social experiment were used to keep women, African Americans and gays and lesbians from fully participating in our military services, he said.

Read more at PowerPost

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Hill Democrats slam Trump's military transgender ban, while GOP is caught by surprise - Washington Post

A woman holds a sign at a protest in Washington DCs Freedom Plaza on October 6, 2011. (AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin)

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As populist campaign slogans go, Ive always been partial to the one former Democratic National Committee chairman and Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris came up with back in the 1970s: Take the Rich Off Welfare.

Around the same time, the great Virginia populist Henry Howell ran a number of statewide raceswinning for lieutenant governor, losing for governorwith the slogan: Keep the Big Boys Honest. That was a delightfully pointed message, as well.

Back in the 1970s, populists were on the side of the little people who got pushed around by the big boys. Both Harris and Howell sought to forge a multiracial, multiethnic movement politics that anticipated the Rev. Jesse Jacksons Rainbow Coalition campaigns with the argument that there are more of us than there are of them. Now, we have the ugly phenomenon of billionaire charlatan Donald Trumps reverse populism, which has nationalized the noxious southern strategy of organizing one part of the working class against other parts of the working class.

The Democratic Party, circa 2017, is trying to counter Trumps Republicans with a refined populism of their own, employing the slogan A Better Deal. Its focused on feel-good economic themes: better jobs, better wages, and better training to get better jobs and better wages. The focus on economics is valid; there is some evidence that Democratic leaders are finally starting to think about the structural changes that must take place in order to break the grip of crony capitalism and make real the promise of more money in your pocket. For instance, the party brass has signaled a willingness to embrace antitrust and anti-monopoly policies that are essential to restoring the sort of genuine competition that lowers prices for everything from airline tickets to cable service.

More power to those who are following the lead of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and academic and activist Zephyr Teachout. Whenever Democrats distance themselves from the Third Way compromises that have prevented the party from getting serious about economic issues, thats encouraging.

But too many top Democrats remain too tentative in their language, and too cautious in spelling out progressive-populist policies that might challengefor examplethe tech monopolists who are colonizing the future. Even now, the partys program errs on the side of Bill Clintons old a-little-something-for-everyone platforms that were successful enough at the presidential level (Clinton won 43 percent of the vote in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996), but never really translated to the congressional and state races where Democrats lost so much ground in the 1990s.

The Democrats are going to have to get more specific, and a good deal bolder, if they want to trump Trumps faux populism with something that is muscular enough to fully reverse the partys dismal fortunes in recent mid-term elections. Theres nothing wrong with ripping into Trump, and there is a good case to be made that simply promising a better deal than the presidents Goldman-Sachs-plated programs for redistributing wealth upward will win back some congressional seats.

But promises wont be sufficient to mobilize the mass turnout that is needed.

A shift in voting patterns of the sort that would be needed to reverse the Democratic losses of recent years will be achieved only by making a clear connection between the energetic and engaged anti-Trump resistance and a legislative agenda that is starkly distinct from the cruel and unusual politics not just of this president but of the Wall Street traders and corporate CEOs whose self-interest (and willingness to support crudely divisive policies) made the Republican Party receptive to Trumpism.

People need something real to sink their votes into. The greatest progressive populist campaign of the past century, Franklin Roosevelts 1936 reelection run on a anti-oligarchy platform that held out the promise of American social democracy, secured the greatest landslide win for Democrats (and their left-wing third-party allies such as Wisconsins Progressives and Minnesotas Farmer Laborites) in the past century. Why? Because FDR merged naming names anger at economic elites with a program that was designed to tip the balance of power to the great mass of Americans.

Roosevelt pulled absolutely no punches, declaring in one of the last speeches of the campaign that he was running not against hapless Republican Alf Landon but against the employers and politicians and publishers who defend business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob, the 32nd president said of the plutocrats he had chosen to challenge. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for meand I welcome their hatred.

Democrats must combine criticism of Trump with a "People's Platform."

Roosevelts denunciations of the crony capitalist elites were coupled with a program that recognized: the people want more than promises.

FDR proceeded to state our objectivesto reduce hours over-long, to increase wages that spell starvation, to end the labor of children, to wipe out sweatshopsto end monopoly in business, to support collective bargaining, to stop unfair competition, to abolish dishonorable trade practices. For all these we have only just begun to fightbut he did not stop there. He made a moral argument on behalf of the poorest of the poor.

Here and now I want to make myself clear about those who disparage their fellow citizens on the relief rolls. They say that those on relief are not merely joblessthat they are worthless. Their solution for the relief problem is to end reliefto purge the rolls by starvation. To use the language of the stock broker, our needy unemployed would be cared for when, as, and if some fairy godmother should happen on the scene, FDR declared during a preelection rally at New Yorks Madison Square Garden. You and I will continue to refuse to accept that estimate of our unemployed fellow Americans. Your Government is still on the same side of the street with the Good Samaritan and not with those who pass by on the other side.

Todays Democrats must echo FDRs old renunciations of economic royalists and align them with an 21st-century moral agendaone that recognizes the pressures placed on all working Americans by thirty years of globalization, 20 years of the digital revolution and 10 years of an automation revolution that is only just getting started. It isnt enough to promise a better deal. There has to be an edgy boldness to the program. It has to frighten Wall Street and the corporate elites as much as FDRs assaults on economic royalists did. And it has to do so not just by objecting to economic inequality but by proposing the absolute and unrelenting pursuit of economic and social justice.

To that end, the Our Revolution movement that grew out of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic Socialists of America, Democracy for America, the Working Families Party, National Nurses United, Good Jobs Nation, and a dozen other groups have launched a Peoples Platform that gets down to details.

On Tuesday, the groups launched a Summer of Progress campaign that seeks to move the Democratic Party to the left. The measures of progress are not rhetorical. They are legislative. Bills have been introducedmost of them authored and introduced, sponsored and co-sponsored by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. As part of the #PeoplesPlatform campaign, all Democratic members of Congress will be urged to sign on for a set of bills that would guarantee:

Medicare for All: HR 676 Medicare for All Act, introduced by Congressman John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan. Womens Health Care Rights: HR 771Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH Woman) Act of 2017, introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-CA. Tax on Wall Street: HR 1144Inclusive Prosperity Act, introduced by Congressman Keith Ellison, D-MN. College for All: H.R. 1880 College for All Act of 2017, introduced by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, D-WA. Worker Rights: H.R.15Raise the Wage Act, introduced by Congressmen Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, and Keith Ellison, D-MN. Voting Rights: H.R.2840Automatic Voter Registration Act, introduced by Congressman David Cicilline, D-RI. Criminal Justice and Immigrant Rights: Justice Is Not For Sale Act of 2017, introduced by Congressman Ral M. Grijalva, D-AZ.

With environmental-justice and climate-change legislation that is now being drafted, the Peoples Platform promises not just necessary resistance to Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell but a bold alternative agenda that is not just a better deal. It is a new New Deal that tells the economic royalists they must stand down, pay their taxes, and accept a United States where austerity and inequality is replaced with the moral economic vision, the moral social vision, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt spelled out on October 31, 1936: Peace on earth, good will toward mendemocracy must cling to that message. For it is my deep conviction that democracy cannot live without that true religion which gives a nation a sense of justice and of moral purpose.

Read more:
'A Better Deal' Sounds Nice, but Democrats Must Get Specific - The Nation.

Sen. John McCain gave a passionate speech about the need for Senators to reach across the aisle and cooperate in his first speech on the floor since being diagnosed with brain cancer. (July 25) AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., walks to the Senate floor to vote in favor of a motion to proceed on the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare on July 25, 2017, less than a week after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.(Photo: Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency)

WASHINGTON Democrats are seizing on GOP Sen. John McCains call for a back-to-the-drawing-board approach to health care reform, with committee hearings and input from both parties if the GOP bill fails.

The Arizona Republicans message delivered Tuesday during his dramatic return to the Senate after revealing he has brain cancer bolstered Democrats long-running complaints about being cut out of the process.

During a Senate floor speech Wednesday, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., read portions of McCains speech and urged colleagues to read it, too.

On Tuesday, Durbin said McCain really begged us, pleaded, and urged us to get back to that time when we worked together on a bipartisan basis to solve problems ... John McCain was right.

Minority Leader ChuckSchumer of New Yorksaid Wednesday the Senate could move on to other important business in a bipartisan way If we stop playing this game with TrumpCare and sent it back to committee and did regular order as John McCain preached so well yesterday.

McCain returned to the Senate to cast a critical vote in favor of advancing legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. But he predicted GOP efforts would likely fail and said the Senate should hold hearings, markups and consultation with Democrats, which have all been lacking.

Read more:

Takeaways from Tuesday's Senate vote: Obamacare repeal roller coaster lurches out of the station

McCain, battling cancer, returns to Senate and casts critical health care vote

Senate health care bill: Where we are now

Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., offered a Democratic motion to send the GOP bill to the Finance Committee with instructions to strike provisions that would reduce Medicaid benefits. Donnellys motion is the first of several Democrats are preparing to offer that would ask committees to strike aspects of the bill they oppose. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., announced on Wednesday that he filed more than 100 amendments,all of them motions to refer the bill to a committee.

Thats what John McCains been calling for, said Senate Finance Committee member Tom Carper, D-Del., in an interview. Regular order.

McCain, however, opposed Donnelly's motion, which failed 52-48.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said such motions are dilatory tactics and fodderfor Democrats campaign ads. The motions send the bill back to committee for three days, but no committee action is required.

These are ads, he said. And Donnelly happens to be up for re-election.

Democratic aides say the motions arent dilatory but areone of the only ways the minority can force Republicans to send the bill back to committees to consider specific topics. They also invokeda rule on Wednesdaytoforce the postponement of several Senate committee hearings as they continued to blast the GOP legislationfrom the Senate floor.

Democrats have been calling on McConnell to work with them to fix the Affordable Care Act through a bipartisan committee process, but Republicans say Democrats arent offering positive solutions. Senate Republicans, who have only a 52-seat majority, are attempting to pass health care legislation under an expedited procedural route requiring only 51 votes for passage.

Carper said the message coming from McCain, a Republican who is widely respected by just about everybody except (President) Donald Trump, was hugely important.

In all the years Ive been here ... Ive never seen anything like this, Carper said. To be flying by the seat of our pants like this with so much at stake is insanity.

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2w1km0p

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Democrats seize on John McCain's message in health care fight - USA TODAY

The Democrats have sensed weakness, and chosen this moment to pounce. To capitalize on Donald Trumps low approval ratings they are rolling out Elizabeth Warren (38 percent approval), Nancy Pelosi (29 percent), and Chuck Schumer (26 percent). Delivering the message that the party has fresh ideas are three emissaries who are a combined 211 years of age, deploying a phrase a better deal that harks back to the hottest policy proposals of 1933. To prove theyre in tune with the concerns of middle America the Democrats are dispatching emissaries from Harvard, San Francisco, and Brooklyn. Oh, and the Democrats chief problem, according to the Democrats? Americans just arent mentally supple enough to understand how great our program is for them.

Too many Americans dont know what we stand for, Schumer declared in a Trump-voting county of Virginia on Monday. Not after today. Mark it down, kids: July 24, 2017, was the day the Democrats finally clarified their message. Democrats will no longer have to moan Whats the Matter with Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin? Because Monday is the day the right-learning parts of the country learned that Schumer, et al., have better ideas than the Republicans do.

The latest Democratic anthropological field trip to establish contact with the alien life forms known as Trump voters is focused on economic issues. That sounds wise. But far from being too subtle for Meathead America to understand, the progressive economic agenda is, as always, simple: You get the goodies you want now, someone else will pay, and never mind the future consequences. Who wouldnt find such a platform enticing? You might as well tell a junior-high school, Free PlayStation and Mountain Dew. If the Democrats could stick to buying votes with other peoples money, theyd be dangerous.

As a matter of fact they are dangerous, now and always, for precisely this reason. Raising the minimum wage, one of the Democrats cornerstone ideas in their latest re-re-re-rebranding, is popular because its a simple fix that provides tangible benefits with invisible costs. Lower-rung workers get a bigger paycheck and the pain is hidden from view in the accounting divisions of faceless corporations. Never mind that a $15 national minimum wage would backfire and render many working Americans unemployed in the future. Government-dictated lowering of drug prices is popular too, never mind the invisible follow-up cost of hampering innovation that will extend lives in the future. The Democrats economic policy is sufficiently tempting that if elections were held tomorrow, with generic Democrats on the ballot, they might well manage to retake the House and the White House.

Except Warren, Pelosi, and Schumer are non-generic Democrats. Theyre ardent progressives, and theyre far too old and well-known to pass themselves off as something theyre not. Just as leopards dont change their spots, a donkey can never stop acting like an ass.

Moreover, the flip side of saying, Were the party focused on economic goodies for working people, is Dont mention the culture! The effort is as doomed as Basil Fawltys effort to forestall mentioning the war, in an English hotel full of Germans, by repeatedly crying out, Dont mention the war! The stuffed moose that prompts Basils strange behavior by falling on his head in Fawlty Towers is like the Democratic donor base of special-interest groups and social-justice plutocrats. Youd say crazy things too if your brains had been scrambled by Act Blue.

Do Americans really have a hard time figuring out what the Democratic party stands for? These are their foundational beliefs: Abortion must be available on demand, with the leading abortion provider to be heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars. The NRA is a bigger threat than radical Islam. The federal government must make restroom policy. Religion is for suckers to cling to. Bakers who decline to participate in gay weddings must be destroyed. White people outside the sophisticated neighborhoods of the better cities are largely racist. Illegal immigration isnt much of a problem, or is maybe even desirable. Fracking is at best a necessary evil, at worst an actual menace, rather than a boon and a blessing. Oil and coal must be punished for their wicked ways.

Notice how seamlessly I slipped from issues of culture and taste into economic matters? The two are intertwined. To Democrats, the frackers are the Christians are the gun owners are the racists are the immigrant-haters are the gay bashers. Its not possible for the Democrats to say, I dont care about your fondness for AR-15s and love for fossil fuels if youll work with us on the minimum wage. The Democrats cant even leave you alone if you like soda or carrying your groceries home in fresh plastic bags. Its the economy, stupid, was the motto at Bill Clintons campaign offices in his successful 1992 bid for the presidency. It still is. But the Bill Clintons have been steadily driven out of the party in favor of the Hillary Clintons, and the motto of the leaders of the Democratic party today is, Let nothing go untouched by progressivism.

READ MORE: A Better Deal or Just More of the Same from Democrats? Whats the Matter with Democrats? Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Sinking Democratic Brand

Kyle Smith is National Review Onlines critic-at-large.

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Democrats 'Better Deal' Rebranding Tries to Connect with Working ... - National Review