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Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, is gaining more buzz as a 2020 candidate for president.

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

On Tuesday, conservatives continued to assess the Democrats electoral prospects in 2018 and beyond. Several outlets ran posts on the skepticism rising from the partys left wing,highlighted in a Mic article Monday, about Sen. Kamala Harris of California as a 2020 presidential candidate. Breitbarts Joel Pollak:

The Daily Caller cited criticism of the Mic article from MSNBC host Joy Reid among others. These early scuffles are likely going to be emblematic of how Democrats choose a candidate for 2020, the Caller's Justin Caruso wrote. Many see a split in left-leaning voters between those who think lefty identity politics is key, and that liberal economics dont need to tack too much further to the left, and those who think that economic policy must be taken much further to the left, while identity politics is seen as somewhat less important.

The Daily Wire ran a post on reports that Obama advisers are encouraging former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to run. Patrick has been piling up money working as a managing director at Bain Capital, the same company Democrats vilified when they attacked Mitt Romney, the Wires Hank Berrien noted. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1982, he failed the State Bar of California twice before he passed on his third try.

The Daily Wire also puslihed an item on polling from the Democrats House Majority PAC that suggests the party may continue having trouble with white, working-class voters. The Wires John Nolte:

This echoed criticism Monday night from Fox News Jesse Watters of statements made by CNNs Fareed Zakaria partially attributing Trumps win to racism and xenophobia:

Some outlets ran posts assessing new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in the wake of the firing of Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. The Washington Free Beacons Cameron Cawthorne cited the widespread and respect for Kelly. John Kelly has received bipartisan praise from both Republicans and Democrats since President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would replace Reince Priebus as the new White House chief of staff, he wrote. Kelly, a no-nonsense, whip-cracking retired Marine general, developed a reputation during his tenure as secretary of homeland security in the Trump administration as someone not afraid to stand up to Trump when he needed to offer some tough talk, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. In National Review, Elliot Kaufman expressed concern about the penetration of military men like Kelly into Trumps inner circle:

Already, Trump has shown incredible deference to his generals, delegating control over troop levels in Afghanistan to Mattis and the Pentagon. Some may mistakenly find this abandonment of civilian political control reassuring, but they forget that War is too important to be left to the generals, as Georges Clemenceau once put it.

Original post:
Today in Conservative Media: The Democrats Are Still a Mess - Slate Magazine (blog)

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)

At the 1932 Democratic National Convention, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, Never before in modern history have the essential differences between the two major American parties stood out in such striking contrast as they do today. Arguing that Republicans had offered no path for the people below to climb back to places of security and of safety in our American life, he called for a new deal to restore America to its own people.

Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvels column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrinas column here.

Under President Trump, the differences between the parties on domestic politics are similarly stark. Yet as the GOP fights to advance an extremist agenda that would take the nation backward, Democrats have struggled to offer a clear vision for the future or a path to security for struggling Americans. To that end, the Better Deal agenda that Democratic leaders introduced last week may not live up to Roosevelts lofty standard or the bold 21st-century populism that fueled Senator Bernie Sanderss (I-VT) insurgent presidential campaign, but it is a promising step in the right direction.

At the core of the Better Deal is a crackdown on corporate monopolies that represents a genuine shift for the party establishment.

Read the full text of Katrinas columnhere.

Go here to read the rest:
There's an Even Better Deal the Democrats Could Be Considering - The Nation.

Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 2:02 pm CST

The hottest new trend in Democratic politics these days is running for Congress everybodys doing it. So far, more than 200 Democrats have filed to challenge Republican incumbents and raised at least $5,000. Thats more than the number of Democratic congressional candidates who had announced at this point in the cycle in the last four elections, combined. Trumps election freaked people out, and this is how theyre responding. Obviously, its an encouraging sign for Democrats. You want people running everywhere, even in beet-red districts where they may not stand a chance.There are a boatload of people running for Congress in Texas, too. Which, again, is good! Strangely, though, the Democratic slate for statewide offices from the governor down to the land commissioner is so far mostly empty, or lacking credible candidates. And theres no sign (yet) of people lining up to run for the Legislature, where Democrats have traditionally been most in need of worthy candidates.The filing deadline isnt until December, so all that could easily change. But the imbalance seems to speak to a broader issue. Over the last few decades, American political culture has become more and more defined by an overemphasis on federal government over local government, and an overreliance on sweeping, top-down gestural campaigns to create political change. Its a national, bipartisan problem, one which has been greatly exacerbated by the Obama and Trump presidencies, but its particularly acute for Texas Democrats.

Thats not a new thing, and its not surprising or necessarily irrational. People on both sides of the aisle are rightly terrified of the power of the people who run the federal government. They can start dumb wars that ruin entire subcontinents, and they can provide or take away health care from tens of millions of people. For people who have a limited amount of time to follow politics, its natural that national crises tend to crowd out whats happening closer to home.So, more and more, politics has become an all-or-nothing game to win the presidency, or, failing that, to win control of Congress. Thats a cancer, and its ruining America. State parties and state politics used to matter more now a lot of donor money flows through huge, shapeless organizations in Washington, D.C., and top-dollar consultants fly in for regional elections when theyre not getting drunk on U Street and watching Morning Joe.

But its also perverted our understanding of how politics works. For one thing, the quality of the schools your kids go to, the transportation systems you use, the wages that workers earn, access to higher education and the availability of health care and mental health services are all most directly affected by what happens in state capitols. And ofcoursethe partisan composition of Congress flows from the maps state legislatures draw, which means your representation in D.C. is determined partly by state House races, often hyperlocal and low-turnout affairs that can hinge on a handful of votes.

Republicans have done a much better job at organizing at the local level. The tea parties of 2010 were comprised largely of the kind of dedicated activist who gets excited about community college trustee board races. Democrats, meanwhile, have suffered extraordinary losses at the local level in the last 10 years. One of the foremost lessons of the last decade is that political change that filters from the bottom up is more durable than change that flows from the top down.

In Texas, these problems are particularly acute. In huge swathes of the state, there simply is no Democratic Party to speak of. The local infrastructure doesnt exist. Particularly in rural areas, local elections may feature no Democrats at all, and decades may have passed since the last competitive race outside of the Republican primary.

Without local representation, the face of the Democratic Party becomes, at worst, the caricature presented on talk radio, or, at best, Barack Obama or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi Chicago, New York and San Francisco which produces the sense that Democrats could never be champions of their communities.

But it also means marginalized communities go unrepresented. As this great 2016 Austin American-Statesman series relates, the Panhandle, which has some of the most ideologically conservative elected officials in the country, has huge populations of Hispanic and nonwhite voters who have very little say in their local communities, let alone in Austin. Deaf Smith County, west of Amarillo, is more than 70 percent Hispanic, but every elected member of county government is Anglo. Thats a pattern repeated throughout much of the state.

Reversing that trend is gonna require a lot of local work, in places where Democrats are not necessarily strong and where they wont reap benefits right away. In Lubbock, where Democrats have a tiny footprint, two Democrats have already declared their intention to run against each other to challenge U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington. Trump beat Clinton by almost 50 percentage points in Arringtons district.You could make a plausible case that a vigorous, two-year congressional campaign is a good way to boost local organizing. But the candidates most able to reach out to individual voters are those with the smallest constituencies. Inside Arringtons district is Lubbocks state House District 84, represented by Republican John Frullo. Frullos district was teetering on the brink of being a majority-minority district at the time of the 2010 census, but a Democrat has only run once in the last three election cycles. In 2014, Frullo crushed a retired teacher named Ed Tishler, whose sole campaign expenditure was his filing fee. So far, nobodys stepped up to run this year.

The point isnt that Democrats are likely to turn the Panhandle blue. But the broader retreat from local politics allows Republicans to depress the nonwhite vote and run up high margins in red areas that cancel out Democratic votes in blue ones during statewide elections. Recently, $60 million was flushed down the toilet as part of Jon Ossoffs losing congressional bid in Georgia. What would happen if some rich person donated a few grand to the Deaf Smith Democratic Party and paid for a few advisory trips from some veteran organizers?Maybe nothing! My role is to second-guess, and Im often wrong. But nothing is also what Ossoffs loss left behind, which is the problem with blockbuster electoral bids in general. A lot of money will be raised by losing congressional candidates this cycle, and a lot of money will be spent in the top-dollar media markets of Dallas and Houston to buy ads to beat Pete Sessions and John Culberson. That gets a lot of people paid, which is partially why it happens. But I dont know how much it actually accomplishes. Investing in people, in the places they live, seems like a better bet.

Link:
Why Aren't More Texas Democrats Running for Office at the State Level? - The Texas Observer

Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill will spend the next 15 months talking up the new Better Deal economic message they unveiled last week.

Whats not clear is if anyone else will follow.

Story Continued Below

The national party remains far from consensus on a unified message Democrats cant even agree on whether the party needs one.

Just as there isnt one kind of Democrat, there are not just one kind of message that works, said California Rep. Jim Costa, a Blue Dog Coalition co-chair. One size doesnt fit all. We have an economically diverse country.

When the party's congressional leaders gathered in suburban Virginia to roll out the new affirmative economic message they'd long been promising, it was designed to give Democrats a way to talk about what exactly they stand for other than simply standing as the party of opposition to the White House.

But not every incumbent wants to be associated with the partys message. And many of the partys influential constituent groups and moneyed organizations are busy pursuing their own messaging and branding initiatives, and remain in the early stages of their own investigations into what went wrong in November. Some including the Democratic National Committee and individual state party committees are busy preparing their own, independent lines of messaging.

There are some really useful and interesting big-picture thoughts in the plans released [last week]. But candidates have to make that their own in their state were telling them to tell their own story, Democratic Governors Association executive director Elisabeth Pearson said of her instructions to the partys gubernatorial candidates running in 2017 and 2018 when 38 governors mansions will be up for grabs. Were counseling people to put forth their own focused economic agenda about how they would move their state forward.

Its led to a schism between those who insist the party will only succeed in 2018 if its candidates run on a centralized agenda, and those who point to recent wave elections like the GOPs 2010 victory and Democrats 2006 romp as evidence that mere antipathy toward the party in power, rather than a memorable message, can be effective.

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Its a good thing that national Democrats are trying to coalesce around a generally unifying message about economic opportunity and job creation as an alternative to Trumpism. However, very few candidates are going to run on a national platform nor should they, cautioned communications strategist Zac Petkanas. While there will likely be similar themes about a corrupt, out-of-touch Trump Washington and creating economic opportunity for all, candidates are going to tailor their own messages against their individual opponents while taking advantage of a national Trump backlash. Thats how races are won and lost."

While Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2018 were briefed on the new message ahead of time, their campaign teams are unlikely to rely heavily on a line that ties them closely to their unpopular national party, said a number of strategists working on those races. A similar dynamic faces the partys gubernatorial candidates: 27 of the contested seats are held by Republicans, including some in heavily conservative states where national Democrats are especially unpopular.

If youre not in the majority, there shouldnt be a coordinated message, said another Democratic consultant who is working on a wide range of 2018 races, acknowledging that arguing against a unified message is unfashionable at the moment. The message should be: The other guy sucks, or The Iraq War sucks, depending on the decade.

Moderate House Democrats have taken a cautious approach to the new messaging strategy.

Lawmakers from left-of-center groups like the New Democrats and the Blue Dog Coalition joined other members at the podium to tout the Better Deal during a press conference last week. But while both groups have broadly endorsed the idea of a pro-economic agenda something they said was sorely lacking heading into November 2016 theyve noticeably shied away from voicing support for the specific progressive-leaning policy ideas outlined so far.

We agree on the broader goal of creating economic prosperity for the American people, said Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, another Blue Dog leader. What we want to do is create economic opportunities, not guarantee results.

That tap dance isnt by accident. Moderates want to be seen as team players, which is why some attended the Better Deal roll-out press conference. They support the overall goals of the messaging initiative, but dont intend to run on a message that they worry can be interpreted as anti-business back home in their districts.

Still, several centrist lawmakers and aides told POLITICO they are encouraged that their leaders are shifting the spotlight away from social issues that threaten to divide the party and toward economic issues where there is more agreement.

Blue Dogs, in particular, say they are encouraged by the attention they have received from Democratic leaders after years of feeling like theyre stuck on the margins. Theyve worked closely with House Democrats campaign arm on recruitment in recent months and are relieved pro-jobs policies finally seem to be the partys focus.

Yet the Schumer-driven effort isnt the last word. The Democratic National Committee has for months been working on its own rebranding project. Led by new Chairman Tom Perez, the DNC has brought both public and private sector voices into a wide-ranging discussion about Democratic identity, while a handful of state party leaders left out of the congressional conversation are plowing ahead with their own unrelated efforts to define a new agenda.

In battleground Ohio, the state party formed a messaging working group after the election that included advertising and consumer marketing professionals in addition to party activists. They meet regularly to devise a new brand and narrative for Democrats in a state that Trump won easily after two consecutive Obama victories an effort supplemented by the state partys polling, focus groups, and extensive individual interviews of voters who backed Trump after supporting Obama or who sat out 2016 altogether.

Still more influential groups havent even tried pushing a specific new campaign message theyre still studying the 2016 results. That includes organizations ranging from the centrist Third Way think tank to a forum convened by the AFL-CIO political director, to the House Majority PAC.

Even Priorities USA Action, the largest Democratic super PAC, has stopped short of concrete suggestions, instead urging allies to spend more time talking about economic issues and less about others like the Russia investigations.

Frankly, Im not focused on national Democratic slogans as much as I am on whats going on at peoples kitchen tables at home, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who already faces one GOP challenger next year, said in an interview. But I think what theyre trying to do with it is really good and that is to simplify priorities on economic issues that really matter to working people.

In crafting the Better Deal plan that includes measures to keep drug prices in check, rein in big corporations, and improve job training, Schumer and others made sure to bring many allies of Bernie Sanders into the repeated meetings and strategy sessions. It was an attempt to find a message that could span the ideological breadth of the Democratic Caucus, satisfying both the Vermont senator and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who faces a difficult reelection campaign in a state Trump won by 42 points.

But neither side has embraced it fully. The group spawned from Sanders' presidential campaign, Our Revolution, continues to pressure lawmakers to sign onto eight progressive bills from a single-payer health care measure to automatic voter registration legislation. And many Sanders supporters remain deeply suspicious of anything produced by party leadership.

Manchin, a member of Schumers leadership team, openly questioned why it would take two new agencies a reference to the creation of two new government entities to help consumers, one focused on drug prices and another on antitrust to crack down on corporate influence.

Were not going to all have the same concerns and have the same fixes, said Manchin, who was consulted in advance on the rural broadband proposal included in the national agenda and otherwise praised Schumers attempts at creating an inclusive message.

So if theres going to be a big tent, he added, party leaders should understand that we have problems too in red states.

Other red-state Senate Democrats expressed similarly cautious support for the partys new messaging.

We need new ideas, and I appreciate the opportunity to have ongoing discussions about the overall agenda, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who joins Heitkamp and Manchin near the top of the GOPs 2018 target list, said generally speaking, I support the agenda because its got a lot of stuff for broadband and infrastructure.

Leaders dont expect every politically endangered incumbent to embrace the entire agenda on the campaign trail, according to one senior Senate Democratic aide.

There is no question that quality candidates and campaigns that focus on the particular needs of different states and districts are essential, the aide said. But anyone who doesnt think we Democrats need to offer a positive economic agenda need only look in the Oval Office and the Hill to see that what weve been doing hasnt worked. People in California, Montana, Florida and Missouri want better paying jobs and to see their expenses go down the appeal is universal.

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Read the original:
Democrats snub new party message - Politico

Fresh off a stinging health care defeat and with internal chaos embroiling the Trump administration, White House aides are signaling newfound openness to working with congressional Democratsor, at least, to alleviating some of the toxic partisan differences that have marked their tenure.

Sources in the administration say an outreach campaign by newly minted chief of staff John Kelly is in the works to rebuild some bridges and, potentially, chip away at the unified Democratic opposition to President Donald Trumps agenda. Even before he formally started the job, Kelly was reaching out to top Capitol Hill Democrats in hopes of regaining political capital ahead of what is expected to be a bruising fight over tax reform and other administration priorities.

Tax reform is gonna be a heavy lift, a senior White House official told The Daily Beast. No reason to write off/alienate [Democrats] any more than we already have.

A spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told The Daily Beast that Kelly reached out her over the weekend with the two holding a phone conversation on Sunday. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) confirmed that Kelly reached out to him as well.

Though calls to opposition leaders are the sort of traditional niceties any incoming chief of staff would perform, in Kellys case they underscore a larger effort to put the White House on firmer political footing.

Trumps sharp elbows, confrontational handling of health care reform, adamance in questioning Russian involvement in the campaign, and insistence that he won the popular vote have all alienated and alarmed Democratsand a fair number of Republicans, too. And inside the White House, there is growing concern that little, if anything, will be accomplished without a structural and temporal change.

Senior White House aides view Kelly as instrumental in making those reforms. The former Marine Corps general has the backing of top Trump advisers, including Steven Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Trumps daughter Ivanka. And he is seen within the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as having perhaps the only type of temperament able to rein in the presidents worst impulses.

Capitol Hill Democrats arent as optimistic. Kelly does come to the job with more good will than his predecessor, Reince Priebus, who was never implicitly trusted by Democrats because of his strictly partisan roots. Whereas Priebus came into the job having just run the Republican National Committee, Kelly once served as the Marine Corps chief liaison to Capitol Hill.

Kelly understands that rather than addressing symptoms of problems, maybe we ought to try a shot at addressing root causes, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), who traveled with Kelly overseas and introduced Kelly at his confirmation hearing to become DHS secretary, told The Daily Beast. Im encouraged that hes been named as chief of staff. Encouraged.

But there is also widespread concern over how Kelly conducted himself at DHS. Having been confirmed to the post with the hope that hed be a moderating influence on the president, he became, for many Democrats, the gentle face behind a draconian set of policies, the travel ban and deportation ramp-up chief among them.

We now see that there has been no progress around giving a commitment to the DREAMers that were going to keep our promises as it relates to DACA. We have seen no obvious progress around training the hundreds of thousands of people who work at DHS, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Judiciary Committee who voted against confirming Kelly to be homeland security secretary, told reporters he has deep respect for Kelly but a number of my colleagues said to me they regretted their vote for him based on his record at DHS. In particular, Blumenthal said, Democrats were concerned about some of the draconian, sweeping roundups of undocumented immigrants.

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There is also a profoundalmost unshakeablebelief among Hill Democrats that it simply wont matter who occupies the chief of staff role, so long as the president is the president. Trump is too irascible and unpredictable for their trust. And though he may attempt to engage in a bit of political triangulation, the thinking goes, few Democratic lawmakers will be willing to participate and even fewer have the type of constituency that would allow them to do so.

One of those who wouldnt take on water from working with the White House, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), was hoping to talk to Kelly soon, an aide said. What they would discuss wasnt clear. But there are some Democratic aides who speculate that the party could use the Kelly era as a pivot point toward pursuing strategic legislative victoriessuch as a small-bore deal on health care reform that firmly ended any talk of larger-scale repeal and replace.

There is hope, at minimum, that Kellys hiring will bring down the temperature level in the capital. Trump wouldnt have turned to his new chief of staff, the thinking (perhaps wishful) goes, if not for his own explicit desire to change course.

He seems like an odd person to bring in if you think hes your lap dog, said one Democratic Senate aide. [Kelly] strikes me as the type of person who just doesnt give a fuck. I dont think he cares. Hell say: This is what you should do. You hired me to tell you what to do If you want to get this done, here is a powerpoint on how to get it done and I will go execute.

Read more:
Trump's New Chief of Staff, John Kelly, Is Making Overtures to Democrats - Daily Beast