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Were already months into the Trump presidency and Democrats still have no clue how theyre gong to mount a comeback. Admittedly, Im not all that upset about that, but we should always have in the back of our minds that a robust and competent resistance to Donald Trump will emerge on the Left, though it might not occur in time for the midtermsand that can be related across the board. First, The Associated Presss story that shows how Democrats are still chickens running around with their heads lopped off. To complicate matters, there appears to be differing views on how to push back against this White House. We have the laser focused on health care route, health care is important, but dont forget about the Russia section, and the impeach/invoke 25th Amendment because Trump is crazy cohort:

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley hesitated when asked about his partys core message to voters.

That message is being worked on, the New York congressman said in an interview this past week. Were doing everything we can to simplify it, but at the same time provide the meat behind it as well. So thats coming together now.

The admission from the No. 4 House Democrat that his party lacks a clear, core message even amid Republican disarray highlights the Democrats dilemma eight months after President Donald Trump and the GOP dominated last falls elections, in part, because Democrats lacked a consistent message.

The soul-searching comes as Democrats look to flip at least 24 GOP-held seats necessary for a House majority and cut into Republican advantages in U.S. statehouses in the 2018 midterm elections. Yet with a Russia scandal engulfing the White House, a historically unpopular health-care plan wrenching Capitol Hill and no major GOP legislative achievement, Democrats are still struggling to tell voters what their party stands for.

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Several liberal groups that had been laser-focused on health care have intensified calls for impeachment in recent weeks, including MoveOn.org, Indivisible and Ultraviolet.

We need to be talking about impeachment constantly, said Scott Dworkin, co-founder of the recently formed Democratic Coalition Against Trump. He warned on Twitter, If youre an elected Dem & youre not talking impeachment or 25th amendment then find a new party.

Yet one of the lefts favorites, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is focusing almost exclusively on health care.

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Democrats would make a mistake if we thought pounding Trump and not having an authentic message of our own is a winning strategy, said Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper. The message of Democrats has to be about issues that matter to people at their kitchen table.

In South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Democrats dont have to retreat from their opposition to Trump, including talking about Russia, but they must tie it all together with a consistent theme that goes beyond day-to-day news cycles.

The AP quoted Democrat Jason Crow, who says hes getting questions regularly about Russia. Crow is challenging Republican Rep. Mike Coffman in Colorados sixth congressional district, one of the 24 districts that Democrats will try and flip next year, though the notion that Russia is resonating outside of the beltway should be taken with some skepticism. In June, Ed OKeefe at The Washington Post wrote that Democrats running in next years races are saying that the party needs to move on from Russia, which he reiterated on CBS Face The Nation:

Spent most of the week outside of Washington talking to these Democrats who are starting to run, and they made very clear, stop talking about Russia, they said to party leaders. Nobody out here cares. Talk to us about the economy, about how you defend or preserve Obamacare. Let's see whether party leaders actually pay attention to that.

Well, were back on Russia due to the latest and ill-advised meeting Donald Trump Jr. took with a Russian lawyer under the pretense of having dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian governments efforts to help his father win the election.

The House will be hard to win back. While Democrats are eyeing these 23-24 House Districts that broke for Clinton, but voted for a Republican member of CongressTrump won 12 Democratic House districts. It remains to be seen if Democrats can find solid candidates after the collapse of their recruitment machine. Moreover, based on some reports, if Democrats were able to turnout every 2016 Clinton voter who backed a GOP House member and had them flip, it wouldnt be enough to win the House. The road to the majority for Democrats rests with winning in red districts, which took a punch to the gut when Democrat Jon Ossoff lost to Republican Karen Handel in Georgias sixth congressional district. Even with Democratic turnout the highest in ten years in GA-06, it wasnt enough, meaning that the 2018 electorate could mirror that of the 2016 election, which favored Republicans.

It doesnt get much better for the Senate, where there are fewer pick-ups for Democrats. James Carville, the top strategist for Bill Clintons 1992 campaign, threw a lot of cold water on this one speaking with John Catsimatidis on our own AM970 WNYM station (via Salon):

I think right now most Democrats are trying to focus on the 2018 elections and trying to recruit people and keep incumbents, and you know I would say we have a pretty good chance of taking the House back. The Senate is very, very difficult The problem in the Senate is we have a large number of seats we have to hold in states that Donald Trump carried. Indiana, Missouri, you know, places like that we have to hold seats, Carville added. The only places where we have an opportunity for pick up are, you know, Nevada is pretty good. After that Arizona is less good, then youre down to Texas and Alabama, and for Democrats to win the Senate back, they have to pick up three seats.

Carville seemed resigned that Democrats wont do well next year, saying that the party should focus on candidate recruitment and keeping incumbents in power. He also admitted that the Democratic Party has no leader.

Please read Guys take on this as well. As of now, a majority of Americans think that Democrats are only against Trump and dont stand for anything else by a 52/37 margin. As John Kerry and Mitt Romney found out the hard way, you have to be more than just the anti candidate. You need to offer something else and while Democrats have multiple doors to flesh out a new narrative, along with plenty of avenues of attack against the GOPthey have nothing. Could it be because deep down they know they need to reach out to white working class (i.e. Trump) voters?

Read more:
The Wilderness: Democrats Ponder Revival, While Top Strategist Throws Wet Blanket On Their Senate Hopes - Townhall

Saying the special legislative session is built on make-believe crises, House and Senate Democrats vowed Monday to resist wherever possible, starting by denying Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick the ability to speed the approval of bills in the early part of the special session.

Patrick, who presides over the Senate, cannot suspend Senate rules without the support of 25 senators, including five of the bodys 11 Democrats.

He doesnt have five Democrats, said Sen. Jose Rodriguez of El Paso, head of the Senate Democratic Caucus. This is not a time for us as Democrats to just roll over and say yes we want to get out of here, pass all your bad legislation.

Im here to resist, said Sen. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston and head of the Senate Hispanic Caucus. We will try to do everything we can to stop what we can.

As the minority party in both houses, Democrats are limited in their responses to Gov. Greg Abbotts call for a 20-item special session that is filled with issues important to social and religious conservatives, including abortion regulations and limits on which bathrooms transgender people may use.

During a Capitol news conference Monday, Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, said Democrats also plan to act as a counterpoint by focusing on issues pertaining to children, the economy, health and communities.

A major focus will be on providing meaningful property tax relief by requiring the state to pay at least half of public school costs, instead of a projected 37.7 percent by 2019, Democrats said.

When the state refuses to keep up its end of the funding bargain, those costs are shifted to homeowners, said Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, who added that the state must stop shirking its responsibility and pay its fair share of the school finance system.

Other Democratic bills would increase the states minimum wage, ensure women get equal pay for equal work, seek to lower the states high maternal mortality rate and allow transgender Texans to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The idea, Turner said, is to propose real solutions to problems in contrast to the dangerous and divisive policies being pushed by Abbott and Patrick.

See more here:
Democrats vow to resist special session's 'make-believe crises' - Austin American-Statesman

MOREAU After nearly two years of dysfunction at Town Board meetings, Democrats are sensing opportunity.

This might be the moment they regain the supervisor position, which they lost to Republican Gardner Congdon two years ago.

Two candidates are vying to run for the seat on the Democratic line. The Democrats will select one of them at their caucus, Aug. 3 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

They also have two candidates who want to run for Town Board, giving the Democrats a full slate.

The Democrats won't identify the candidates until the caucus.

The caucus promises to be an interesting one because there are more than enough candidates for the positions already. The Democrats will also take nominations from the floor, as always, said Chairman Kevin Elms.

The assembled Democrats will choose among the candidates rather than running a primary election.

Its a big year for the Democrats in several ways. Two longtime Republicans Todd Kusnierz and Bob Prendergast are not running for re-election to their Town Board seats. Kusnierz is running for supervisor, while Prendergast is retiring.

That leaves both seats open to newcomers, which Elms said could give his candidates a better chance than when they must run against popular incumbents.

Our town has proven before they dont vote by party. They vote for the person, he said.

Also, Congdon is not running for re-election to the supervisors position. (Condgon said that from the start, when he ran for the office two years ago.)

And Elms thinks some voters may have been disillusioned by the way the current Town Board and supervisor have conducted business. He suspects they might long for the days of Democratic Supervisor Preston Jenkins Jr., who was voted out by a slight margin in 2015.

That left just one Democrat on the board. But shortly after Congdon took over, even the Republicans on the board began to complain that they could not get anything done amid the rancor and bickering at board meetings.

Elms said the Town Board meetings became so painful to watch that he stopped attending.

Its so discouraging. Nothing has been accomplished, he said. I want to get things done. Its like, guys, stop. Get the work done.

Hes hoping voters will choose Democrats in response to the current boards troubles.

Were going to try hard, Elms said.

Visit link:
Moreau Democrats eager to run for office - Glens Falls Post-Star

During what would normally be a time of summer doldrums in Washington, President Trump following a pomp-filled visit to Paris and a weekend getaway to his New Jersey golf property returns to a capital roiled by the burgeoning Russia investigation, a faltering GOP healthcare plan and sinking opinion polls.

Trump goes back to work after a four-day absence and another news cycle dominated by disclosures stemming from last summers meeting of his eldest son, a Kremlin-linked lawyer and at least one other controversial Russian figure.

Included in that maelstrom were more tweets Sunday by the president renewing his defense of Donald Trump Jr. in connection to that June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower. In a series of tweets, Trump returned to familiar twin themes of attacking former opponent Hillary Clinton and castigating the news media over its coverage of Russia-related matters.

While Trump continued his protestations, senior Democrats said Sunday they believe ongoing disclosures about the meeting could prove to be a turning point in the tangled, months-long investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Only smoke and no fire? Thats clearly been put to rest, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBCs Meet the Press. This clearly brings the investigation to a new level.

The White House dispatched a senior member of the presidents personal legal defense team to the major Sunday news shows to play down last weeks steady drip of revelations about the meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which was also attended by Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, now a senior White House aide.

The turmoil coincides with two new public opinion polls showing Trumps approval ratings are plumbing depths greater than at this point in any modern presidency. Trump, who this week will mark six months in office, characterized the numbers as not bad at this time, even while dismissing their accuracy.

And Republican leadership delayed a vote on the Obamacare overhaul plan until Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) recovers from surgery to remove a blood clot. With two Republican senators already opposed to the bill, GOP leaders need every remaining vote in their caucus to advance the measure.

In the latest chapter of the Russia investigation, defenders and critics of the president offered starkly differing narratives about campaign contacts with still-unknown numbers of potentially Kremlin-associated figures and what that indicated about alleged collusion.

Those clashing interpretations continued a pattern of recent months, but this time the two sides were both referring to publicly available source material: emails disclosed by the presidents son, not characterizations provided by anonymous sources.

Warner, speaking on CBS Face the Nation, promised to widen the inquiry, bringing in some of the folks from the Trump digital campaign to look into the barrage of falsified news stories that appeared on social media users news feeds.

Trump for months has described investigations of alleged collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin as a Dem hoax and a witch hunt.

After an initial White House-sanctioned statement suggesting the meeting was mainly about Russian orphans, the younger Trump acknowledged in emails released last week that the intermediary who set up the meeting described Veselnitskaya as having access to Russian government information that could be used against Clinton. He replied: I love it.

In addition to Trump Jr. and Kushner, the meeting was attended by Paul Manafort, who at the time was the Trump campaign chairman, and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian American self-described lobbyist with a reported background in Russian counterintelligence.

Warners House counterpart, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), said the meeting and the circumstances leading up to it directly established for the first time the willingness by Trumps campaign to cooperate with what the U.S. intelligence community has concluded was a broad Russian effort to tip the election in his favor.

They can call it a fishing expedition. They can call it a witch hunt. It's all an aligned message with the White House, Schiff said on ABCs This Week. Even so, he said, real evidence is coming forward that just can't be ignored. This is about as clear of evidence you could find of intent by the campaign to collude with the Russians.

The fact that the most striking revelations came in the words of the presidents son made it more difficult for the White House to push back against anonymous sources. Even so, Trump again blamed negative coverage for keeping what he has termed a baseless controversy alive.

Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country! he said in an early-morning tweet from his club in Bedminster, N.J. In another Twitter statement, he said Clinton could illegally get the questions to the Debate and delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?

The tweet referred to a primary debate question that had been provided to the Clinton campaign and not to her then-rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and to emails Clinton deleted from the private server she used while serving as secretary of State. The disclosure about the debate question was drawn from Russian-hacked electronic communications.

A senior member of the presidents legal team, Jay Sekulow, tried to distance the president from the affair and insisted that the 2016 meeting did not violate any criminal laws.

I know this: He, the president, was not aware about this meeting, did not participate in this meeting, he said on CBS Face the Nation. On CNNs State of the Union, he suggested that the encounter had seemed harmless at the time.

Youre trying to put a moral, ethical aspect to it, he complained to interviewer Jake Tapper. And it's easy to do that in 20/20 hindsight, but not when you're in the middle of a campaign.

And on Fox News Sunday, Sekulow said he saw no reason to doubt the presidents statement that he had learned of the meeting only days ago. Democrats have questioned how the meeting could have been kept from the president for so long, particularly as he repeatedly denied anyone from his campaign had strategized with Russians.

I do not think the denial by the president of the United States is suspect at all, Sekulow said.

The new polling released Sunday confirmed how deep the hole is that Trump finds himself in six months into his presidency, but also offered some warnings to his Democratic opponents.

A Washington Post-ABC News survey found that 58% of Americans disapproved of Trumps performance in office and that 36% approved of his performance.

That's a significantly worse grade than the public has given any president at this point in his tenure since modern polling began in the 1940s.

There's no evidence that the 2016 Trump Jr. meeting has affected the president's standing so far, although the poll did find that 63% of Americans thought it was "inappropriate" and that 26% said it was appropriate.

The poll showed a slide in Trump's standing since the survey was last taken in April. Many other polls in the intervening weeks have documented that drop.

Most of the decline appears to have taken place in early May around the time that Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey and the House passed the Republican healthcare bill, which is extremely unpopular.

But the poll offers some potential good news for the president: He has largely kept support within his own party.

While Democrats and independents disapproved of Trump's performance by large margins, those who identified themselves as Republicans continued to approve, 82% to 15%.

That could give Trump a base on which to rebuild.

The president also could benefit from the Democrats' failure so far to convince the public that they stand for something other than opposition to Trump. In the Post-ABC poll, 37% said the Democrats stood for something, and 52% said they just opposed Trump.

Separately, a new NBC/Wall St. Journal survey that looked at counties Trump carried in 2016 found that 50% of adults in those areas now approved of Trump. That level is significantly below Trump's showing in those counties in the election, which averaged about 60%. The two numbers are not entirely comparable, but the figure suggests some weakening of Trump's backing in the places crucial to his victory.

The Washington Post-ABC poll was conducted July 10 to 13 among 1,001 adults nationwide. The margin of sampling error is 3.5 percentage points in either direction. The NBC/Wall St. Journal survey was conducted July 8 to 12 among 600 adults in the targeted counties. The margin of error for the full sample is 4 points in either direction.

Staff writer David Lauter contributed to this report.

laura.king@latimes.com

@laurakingLAT

Updates from Washington

Read more from the original source:
Democrats say Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting takes Russia inquiry to a 'new level' - Los Angeles Times

To the Editor:

I dont believe that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were elected and re-elected because of their positioning on the ideological spectrum. I would suggest that their political success and general popularity were more a matter of personality, a certain quality that my generation regarded as cool.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First, the Democrats need to stop putting forth candidates who seem like that kid in fifth grade who sat in the front row and always knew all the answers: Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton. Voters across the political spectrum prefer the ones who seem like that kid who sat in the back row and threw spitballs: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump.

Second, the notion that progressives should alter their core beliefs to gain traction with voters is a symptom of what is wrong with our politics. Should we ease off on demands for gun control? Should we turn our backs on the L.G.B.T. community? What about accepting desperate refugees into our country? We must stand by our principles while nominating candidates who can win.

LAWRENCE KAPLAN ARDSLEY, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Kudos to Mark Penn and Andrew Stein. Unfortunately, the party hasnt learned from its past. The first presidential election in which I could vote was in 1972. The Democratic Convention that year was very contentious, with great factional differences between left-leaning and centrist groups. Mayor John Lindsay of New York summed it up at the time when he said, This party seems to have an instinct for suicide.

Hopefully, the party will come to its senses in time for the 2018 and 2020 elections and move solidly to the center, where the bulk of the Democratic and independent voters are. If not, the country is ripe for the formation of a centrist third party.

RICHARD FEINSTEIN PRINCETON, N.J.

To the Editor:

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, harking back to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, are invoking the wrong practical role models for todays Democrats. The deepest potential sources of raw Democratic power are rooted in Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal, which brought his party sustained success at the polls over many election cycles.

F.D.R. managed this strategic feat by concentrating on the broad rights of workers while, often callously, ignoring the moral imperatives of identity politics, though the latter reached existential proportions during his presidency. Roosevelt established Social Security, created government-funded jobs, empowered labor unions and pushed marginal upper-income tax rates for the rich beyond anything remotely imaginable in 2017. At the same time, he placated Dixiecrats by turning a blind eye to Jim Crow, and he mollified nativists by allowing immigration quotas to keep doomed European Jews, among them my own relatives, away from our shores.

Economic justice is a unifying theme for the long haul, pulling together the majoritarian power of numbers against plutocrats, even though for pragmatic reasons some legitimately aggrieved minority interests may be obscenely sacrificed.

DONALD MENDER RHINEBECK, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein offer a breathtaking example of Orwellian doublespeak and historical rewriting for their own ends. Clintonian centrism offers nothing to working-class voters other than what got them into the crises in which they have found themselves in the past quarter century.

The Democratic Party establishment, which anointed Hillary Clinton before the campaign began, seems unable to comprehend much of anything about American culture beyond the urban centers of the West Coast, the northern half of the East Coast, and about four other states. This is a big, diverse country, with a long history of politics and politicians who were forced to adapt their policies to a broad-based electorate.

Much of the news media, which consistently diminished or denigrated Bernie Sanders with adjectives such as grumpy, old and crabby, enabled and supported that myopia because of their own insularity and disrespect for rural dwellers and the working class.

Mrs. Clinton was one of the most unpopular Democrats in modern history, and one of the few Democrats who could have lost to Donald Trump. The Clintonian wing of the Democratic Party ultimately brought us Mr. Trump. If left in command, it will pave the way for Ted Cruz and others of his and Mr. Trumps ilk. So go ahead, loyal Democrats, keep thinking that the Russians did it or that you can ignore most of the country. Forget about the partys roots in the policies of F.D.R., J.F.K. and L.B.J. Thats just what got us in this mess.

HARVEY GREEN, SANTA FE, N.M.

The writer is emeritus professor of history at Northeastern University.

To the Editor:

While I dont disagree that Mark Penn and Andrew Stein are right in advising that Democrats shift back toward the center, what wins elections is passion and authenticity, above all. That is what Donald Trump portrayed, though it was a false authenticity where are the jobs he promised, and what does he know of health care?

Democrats should demonstrate the real concern for the middle class that they actually feel, and stop allowing the Republicans to falsely define them. They should work with Republicans to finance infrastructure projects on a grand scale, jointly sponsor legislation to limit prison sentences for minor drug offenses, and come up with a plan to fix Obamacare, adding enrollee incentives to limit overuse.

For now, stop worrying about who gets the credit. The public is not stupid. Address the issues that matter most to the greatest number. The Republican dance in Washington will fade when the tune changes.

MARY MCLEOD, ST. PAUL

To the Editor:

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein want the Democratic Party to double down on the strategy that has brought it to its lowest point of power in a century. I hope every Democrat rejects their advice; otherwise, the party will go the way of the Whigs, and deservedly so. Only by embracing the Bernie Sanders wing of the party can the Democrats find their way back to relevance.

CHRISTOPHER UHL WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein trivialize the fight for civil rights and equality under the law for black people, women and gay people with the term identity politics. No one cares about identity. We care about rights. And the Democratic Party can be very proud of its part in securing and maintaining equality of rights for all Americans.

JAN OXENBERG, VENICE, CALIF.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this letter appears in print on July 16, 2017, on Page SR10 of the New York edition with the headline: How Democrats Can Win Again.

Read the original:
How Democrats Can Win Again - New York Times