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After a string of losses in the 2017 special House elections, its clear Democratic candidates are continuing to struggle reaching rural voters. Thats partly because our playbook for appealing to voters outside of urban areas remains unchanged: take a poll, repackage the DNCs national messaging and target voters with mail and advertising. The problem is many rural voters become alienated when campaigns attempt to micro-target using messaging distilled from a national or statewide poll.

Campaigning in rural Illinois, Montana or West Virginia and talking about the importance of not defunding Planned Parenthood, for instance, wont get you anywhere unless you can help voters make the connection that it's about cancer screening and women's health. Republicans continue to define Planned Parenthood as an abortion-only organization so finding the right nuance to the message is vital.

Rural voters who have seen factories shuddered over the past 15 years want to talk about jobs, not economic development. Economic development is a Beltway term that they hear on the nightly news and campaign ads. These voters want to know what the candidate can do to address farm issues, cell phonesignal, and broadband internet access. Rural voters want to know what a candidate can do to fix broken roads and keep the cost of gas and milk down.

In coal country, voters knew Trump wouldnt be able to revive the lifeblood of Appalachia. But from small town to small town, Trump recognized coal miners, their families, and their struggles on a national stage covered by fake news. He mentioned time after time how he knew these families were struggling and hed make coal great again.

These coal miners and their families were so appreciative to finally have someone recognize the struggles they had been facing for years that they voted for him. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton knew she couldn't bring coal back, but the term coal was all but absent in her campaign speeches in rural areas.

In the 2017 special election to replace former Rep. Mick Mulvaney in South Carolinas 5th district, Archie Parnell lost by a mere four points. Yes, it was a loss. But Mulvaney defeated his 2016 Democratic challenger by 21 points. Trump carried the same district by 18 points just nine months ago.

Similarly, Kansas Democrat James Thompson campaigned as a Kansas veteran for Congress with ads that showed him firing an AR-15. He turned what should have been an easy Republican win into a nail-biting contest that attracted the attention of the president, Mike Pence, and Ted Cruz.

Now, whoever was in charge of Trumps cabinet appointments chose strategically from deep-red districts. But while a win is a win and a loss is a loss, coming within single digits in a deep red district shows tremendous progress for Democrats. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff didnt lose because of lack of strategy (or money), he lost because there simply were not enough Democratic voters in that district.

To appeal to rural voters, Democrats need to be where rural voters are the grocery store, the gas station in a one-stop-light town, advertising on terrestrial radio and in local newspapers. Micro-targeted digital ads sound great to consultants, but theyre not nearly as effective as shoe-leather campaigning in rural areas.

Admittedly, this West Virginia native concedes that some of these rural voters live down gravel roads that are just too long or the campaign doesn't have access to a vehicle worthy of truck nuts tomake it up the hill on a rainy spring afternoon. These voters dogo to the grocery store, they have post office boxes where they pick up their mail, and they need to refill their gas tanks. These voters are reliable visitors to the county fairs and ramp dinners. Democratic candidates need to be at these places listening to voters concerns.These optics persuade rural voters better than a mail piece with the candidate wearing a barn jacket.

If Democrats want to have any chance of taking back state legislatures, the House, or the Senate in 2018, we must re-engage the rural vote in person and in messaging. Meet these rural voters where they go, speak with them rather than at them, and incorporate these conversations into messaging that matters.

Cartney McCracken is a partner at Control Point Group, a D.C.-based Democratic consulting firm.

View original post here:
A Rural Strategy for Democrats - Campaigns & Elections

Eversince Donald Trump shocked Hillary Clinton in November and Republicans won victoriesup and down the ballot, the Democratic party has been debatingwhatit needs to do toconnect with voters and put itself back in control of government.

Those debates may soon be coming to a head. Led by Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, Democrats in Congress are developing an economic agenda that could serve as a statement of the party's principles in next year's midterm elections.Schumer has suggested the document would be public in the coming weeks, although Democratic aides have cautioned that no date is set.

But while Democrats are unified in opposition to the president,they're split over an agenda of their own particularly when it comes to bringingback working-class, white voters who flocked to Trump in 2016.

Afterdecades of relying on free-market solutions to achieve liberal aims,Democrats have shifted to the left in recent years, and many are calling formore government intervention in the economy. Yet despite the emerging consensus around more progressive policies, it is unclear whether Democrats can form a winning electoral coalition around those ideas, and some say the party must tackto the ideological center.

"People dont like Trump," Schumer told ABC News. "But they say, What the heck do the Democrats stand for?

The left has already won many of the important debates within the party in contrast to past years, whenDemocrats tooka centrist approach to economic policymaking.

President Bill Clinton unraveled crucial elements of the social safety net forvery poorAmericans when he reformed the welfare system in 1996, replacing it with programs to encourage participation in the labor force. Additionally, Clinton deregulated financial markets and accelerated globalization with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Barack Obama also pursued free-trade agreementsin office, although without success. The Affordable Care Act, widelyknown as Obamacare, relied on free-market principles to reduce premiums for individual consumers.

Today, though, Democratic politicians broadly support greater redistribution of income, more generous social insurance and an expanded scope for government a more ambitious liberalismexemplified by proposals for paid leave and universal child-care benefits.

"Which side are you on?" That is the question for Democrats, writes Mike Konczal, an expert on the financial industry at the progressive Roosevelt Institute, on Vox.

The shift follows a gradual trend among Democratic voters toward more progressive politics. The share of Democrats calling themselves liberal has increased from 27 percent in 2000 to 42 percent today, according to the Pew Research Center. There are now more ordinary people in the party who describe themselves as liberal than who describe themselves as conservative or moderate.

Meanwhile, the distribution of economic resources has become vastly more unequal, and many on the left seem ready for a change. The figures for wealth are particularly striking: The richest 0.1 percent of U.S. households now possess as much as the poorest 90 percent combined.

"What has gone wrong with the American economy isnt just a short-term flip," said Heather Boushey, an economist and the director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. "Weve had 40 years of economic policies most importantly tax policies, but other policies as well that have allowed a small group of people at the top of the income spectrum to garner greater and greater shares of national income."

The victories for progressive Democrats are not limited to economic issues.

The tough-on-crime legislation Clinton signed two decades ago is now widely viewed as a mistake, and Democrats agree on the need for reform in criminal justice. Pro-life Democrats are so rare these days that it was newsworthy when Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared that there was still a place for them in the party. Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders arguably won the debate over Social Security when he goaded Clinton into promising not to reduce benefits.

Acknowledging that reality, middle-of-the-road Democrats Mark Penn and Andrew Stein urged the party to opt for more moderate positions in an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday. "The path back to power for the Democratic Party," they wrote, "is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party."

On the economy, the gist of the Democrats' likely platform in coming elections already seems clear, based on proposals by lawmakers and candidates in recent years.

Many Democrats agree on making college and vocational school more affordable by using federal money to help students with tuition. Another priority is bringing down the cost of parenting. Democrats have proposed guaranteeing paid parental and family leave for all workers, covering some of the cost of child care with federal money and delivering more cash to families via an expanded child tax credit.

Democrats have also supported assisting adults without children by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for that group. Meanwhile, lawmakers have called for a massive investment in rebuilding the country's physical infrastructure. Schumer, Sanders and their colleagues in the Senate have proposed dedicating $1 trillion in funds over a decade.

With some exceptions, Democrats have said they will fund these programs through increases in taxes on the rich. They've largely rejected any additions to the national debt, or any hike in taxes for ordinary households.

The worry for Democrats is that Hillary Clinton advocated all of these policies during the campaign, without attracting much interest from the media or from the general public. Trump's unpredictable style as a politician has made it difficult for Democrats to get attention for their ideas.

Compounding the problem is that the same economic issues that do arouse passionate concern among voters seem to be the ones on which the party really does disagree.

For instance, Trump has made it impossible for Democrats to ignore their differences over trade. Those on the left argue that globalization has caused unemployment and dislocation, especially for blue-collar workers. The success of Trump's campaign in which he repeatedly blamed free trade for voters' economic frustration -- has cowed Democrats who believe that trade is good, on balance, for American households and businesses.

The minimum wage is another point of contention. Democrats broadly agree the national minimum of $7.25 an hour should be hiked, but many are reluctant to say by how much. Economists warn that increasing the minimum wage by too much could make low-income workers too costly for businesses to employ, impoverishing the people the minimum wage is intended to help.

Sanders supported a national minimum wage of $15 an hour during the campaign. Clinton argued for more modest increases.

Finally, on health care, Democrats are divided over whether to modify Obamacare, or to replace the private insurance industry with a single government payer, as Sanders has advocated.

For now, these disagreements are not all that important, as Democrats are united in their opposition to Trump and his agenda. Sanders, as an example, has been traveling around the country holding rallies and making clear his support for Obamacare over the GOP alternative.

Yet as Democrats prepare for the elections in 2018 and beyond, these divisions could make it difficult for them to settle on a simple and straightforward pitch to voters.

Many in the party argue that Democrats do not need a radically different approach on economic issues.

"Americas best hope to remain an economic superpower is an inclusive economy where immigrants start businesses and create jobs, where everyone can make meaningful contributions," Ronald Klain, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton during the campaign, wrote in The Washington Post. "That message may not have appealed to some working-class voters, but it isnt condescension its honesty."

Some on the left are looking to Trump for tips. Trump's relentless emphasis on restricting trade and immigration gave him an advantage over Clinton, said Yascha Mounk, a scholar at New America, a research organization in Washington, D.C. By contrast, he argued, the Democratic nominee's appeal to voters was muddled because she had so many different ideas.

"They kept pitching a different policy proposal every week," Mounk said. Instead, he said, Democrats need to settle on one policy with the potential to capture voters' imaginations.

"Whatever the Democrats do in 2018, but even more so whatever they do in 2020, they need some policy that is like that ... one sort of crown jewel that sort of encapsulates what theyre trying to do," Mounk said.

"Message has always been a challenge for Democrats, because it tends to get too convoluted and not very simple," Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) told Politico.

Boushey, the economist, argued that Trump won over voters by convincing them that he could take control of the economy, and that Democrats can do the same.

"That was incredibly powerful -- to say to the American people, the economy isnt just something that happens," she said. "We have a choice about what kind of economy we want, and it is well within the power of policymakers to enact policies that will create good jobs. We've done it before. We can do it again, so I think whatever we do needs to signal that."

Not everyone on the left shares that optimism.

Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of California at San Diego, cautioned that while Democrats' proposals would shore up ordinary households's finances and bring down inequality, they might not improve employment and economic growth. Kenworthy suggested that Trump became popular with voters by promising not just more financial resources, but better jobs as well.

"A lot of the stuff that Hillary Clinton was proposing would be really good things that would make peoples lives more secure," Kenworthy said. "The problem is, I dont think social scientists at least the ones who study this carefully have any real good ideas about how to boost economic growth."

See more here:
Democrats' internal dispute over the white working class is about to get real - Washington Post

The only bill that might be more unpopular than the Senate Republicans proposal to overhaul the health-care system is the one passed by House Republicans earlier this year. That legislation, a recent analysis determined, is the least popular piece of legislation in at least 30 years far less popular at passage than the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which it hopes to supplant.

It is not clear how much of that unpopularity stems from the unpopularity of the president whos halfheartedly championing it. But President Trump is unpopular and he supports the bill and the bill is unpopular, so its safe to assume theres some overlap happening somewhere in that mix.

It seems pretty clear, given all of those unpopular elements, that many Republicans on Capitol Hill are not excited to be talking about the issue. And, thanks to a tool from writer and developer Alex Litel that compiles congressional tweets every day, we can see that lack of excitement in real terms.

The calculus is simple. If an issue benefits one party more than the other, that party will try to bring it up more often. And in tweets since June 27 (when Litels tool began compiling data), Democrats in the House and Senate have talked about health care (or healthcare) at a much higher percentage than Republicans have.

Whats more, Democrats also often use the term Trumpcare, meant as a pejorative that links the health-care policy to the unpopular president.

By contrast, references to Obamacare are relatively rare. Republicans once used the term the way Democrats now use Trumpcare, but it seems like the effectiveness of doing so may have waned.

Heres another way of looking at those numbers. The circles below are scaled to the percentage of tweets containing each term on the left. Democrats consistently tweeted the words health care more than Republicans did, with that lull at the Fourth of July.

If we break that data out by chamber, we learn a bit more. Democrats on both sides of the Capitol tweet about health care more than Republicans, but House Democrats have done so much more than House Republicans.

Over the June 27 to July 9 period, Democrats sent nearly 10,300 tweets while Republicans sent around 6,800. Twelve percent of the tweets from Democrats mentioned health care (including 20 percent of those from Democratic senators) while only 3.5 percent of the tweets from Republicans did the same (including 6.5 percent of Republican senators).

That suggests that one party wants to talk about the issue more than the other. Which suggests further that it sees a political advantage in doing so.

Polling suggests theres good reason for Democrats to think that.

Link:
One hint that the GOP is struggling on health care: Democrats tweet about it a lot more - Washington Post

LOS ANGELES Long-standing tensions between the Democratic Partys moderate and liberal wings have ignited in California, where progressive activists are redirecting their anger over Donald Trump and congressional Republicans toward Democratic leaders at home.

Stoked by a contested race for state Democratic Party chair and the failure of a single-payer health care bill, activists are staging protests at the capitol. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon reported receiving death threats after shelving the health care legislation late last month, and security was tightened at the statehouse after activists disrupted a floor session last week.

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The rancor, a spillover from the contentious Democratic presidential primary last year, is aggravating divisions in a state regarded nationally as a lodestar for the liberal cause. Establishment Democrats fear the rhetoric and appetite for new spending could go too far, jeopardizing the partys across-the-board dominance of state politics.

All of it has taken on new significance as California embraces its role as the focal point of the anti-Trump resistance.

Were on the same team, said Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, chairman of the Assemblys progressive caucus. We should not be fighting one another. We should argue with one another. It should not devolve into something where it could tear the party apart.

California established itself as a fortress of the opposition immediately after Trumps election, with Democrats advancing high-profile legislation to defy the new president on climate change and immigration.

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But progressives who have long agitated for more spending on social services and for stricter environmental and campaign finance rules believed that they might seize the post-Trump moment for other causes, too. Despite victories on a range of issues here in recent years, liberal activists have fallen short in other areas, unsettling progressives across the country who view California as a state in which they should be racking up wins.

Progressives this year have continued to press Gov. Jerry Browns administration, unsuccessfully, for a ban on hydraulic fracturing. Lawmakers proposed a debt-free college plan, only to settle for more modest measures to reduce the cost of higher education. And many progressives aligned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders bemoaned the narrow election of an establishment favorite, Eric Bauman, over their preferred candidate in the race for state Democratic Party chair.

Most recently, when Rendon announced that he would not allow a single-payer health care bill to advance through Californias lower house, tempers boiled over.

The California Nurses Association and other single-payer advocates descended on the Capitol, waving signs with Rendons name printed on a knife buried in the back of the California bear. Sanders himself admonished Rendon, and the nurses union said it planned to air radio ads targeting the Democratic speaker.

Corporate Dems: Don't underestimate grassroots taking action on #SinglePayer, RoseAnn DeMoro, head of the nurses union, said on Twitter.

The episode left a deflating mark on the progressive movements ranks across the country.

Its more than a disappointment, watching how it plays out there in California, said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America. For Democrats, for progressives, [health care] really encompasses everything thats going on in the country at the moment. And California is so critical, and California is this incubator of what happens in Democratic politics.

Yet as progressives look west for inspiration and to a raft of competitive House races in California in 2018 there are signs that intraparty conflict may only intensify. Though California is an overwhelmingly Democratic state, it is also home to powerful moderate influences both in the electorate and in a party whose ties with business interests have deepened as the Republican Party has fallen to near irrelevancy here.

Even as crowds assemble almost weekly in Los Angeles and San Francisco to rail against Trump, ruling Democrats recall the pummeling that California and its liberal policies took amid the recession, when the states credit rating plummeted, Sacramento became immobilized by budget impasses and state finances invited comparisons to Greece.

Campaigning in the 2018 race for governor, John Chiang, the state treasurer, told labor officials in Orange County recently that on issues ranging from health care to immigration to climate change, Were trying to show President Trump a different America.

But he also sounded a note of caution, informed by the lessons of a decade in statewide office: If we dont do this correctly, I think others are going to lose hope.

Brown, asked about challenges holding to a political center amid fervent activism on the left, told POLITICO, Look, you can always go too far. Trumps obviously gone too far in one direction. Its possible to go too far in the other direction.

Still, the surge of progressive energy coursing through the party makes that a difficult argument to make. Though Hillary Clinton won the California primary last year, Sanders campaigned throughout the state for weeks, calling the West Coast probably the most progressive part of America.

Paul Song, a California physician and former chairman of the progressive Courage Campaign, said of establishment Democrats, Whether it be single payer, whether it be [campaign finance] whether it be now moving forward on environmental issues, I think its a much more energized, aggressive base that I dont think theyve ever faced before.

The Democratic Party, he said, is basically [having] a civil war among themselves.

The division is apparent in the profile of rank-and-file Democrats, more than 40 percent of whom identify themselves as moderate or conservative, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

I think so much of the emphasis has been on, Were a blue state, were a deep blue state and so forth, said Mark Baldassare, director of the poll. The reality is that the Democratic Party doesnt speak with one voice The moderates hold a lot of sway.

California has adopted a raft of progressive policies in recent years, including a gas tax increase, stricter greenhouse gas reduction measures and a bill to eventually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Rendon said such policies are why were a beacon of hope for progressives throughout the United States and around the world. The way you do that is not through posturing, but through producing, and making sure that were focusing on policies that can actually be implemented to help people.

Rendon said he wanted a serious single payer bill to be presented to our house but that what he received from the state Senate was woefully incomplete, with no funding mechanism and lingering questions about delivery of care.

But Rendon also nodded to the concerns of Democrats leery of overextending.

Were still a big tent party, and we have folks within our Democratic caucus from throughout the state, really, who are Democrats, but who are moderate Democrats, Rendon said. And for us, its about making sure that were going to be able to create the architecture for plans that are actually going to get the support of our caucus.

Jones-Sawyer, the progressive caucus chairman, said Assembly Democrats are moving beyond their differences and focusing on crafting a more complete health care bill.

As for the broader, intraparty feud, he said that for years Democrats have been able to have our arguments within the family, on the floor and inside the party.

He added, Weve just got to get better and understanding were all on the same team, and we probably need some rules of engagement on how we disagree with each other when we disagree.

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California Democrats plunge into 'civil war' - Politico

The White House is accusing Senate Democrats of needless obstruction of President Trumps nominees to numerous government positions, complaining that former President Barack Obama had far more nominees confirmed at this point of his presidency.

White House legislative affairs director Marc Short argued during Mondays press briefing that the stalled nominations were jeopardizing national security and accused Democrats of playing to its radical left-wing base.

In an effort to prevent President Trump from following through on the policies for which the American people voted, Senate Democrats are putting his nominations through time-consuming parliamentary procedures not seen by the previous administration, the White House said in a statement.

The White House released figures Monday showing the Senate has confirmed less than a quarter of President Trump's 216 nominations while the Senate confirmed 69 percent of Obamas 454 nominations before the August recess his first year in office.

The numbers, however, make clear that both the Trump administration and Senate have been historically slow in dealing with nominations.

Matt House, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that the White House has only itself to blame for the slow pace at which theyve filled vacant administration posts.

Thus far, the nomination process has been defined by the failure of the Trump administration to submit names for hundreds of vacant jobs, incomplete and delayed ethics and nominations paperwork from the nominees themselves, and repeated withdrawals of nominees for key positions, he said.

But the Senate is sitting on dozens of nominations that have been submitted.

According the press secretarys office, the Senate has confirmed 48 of Trumps 197 agency nominations. The White House said only two of Trumps 23 judicial nominations have been confirmed.

The White House statement said this pace threatens key aspects of the government, including national security, by leaving positions vacant. Positions still awaiting confirmation votes include deputy secretary of defense, principal deputy under the secretary of defense and assistant secretary of defense, the White House said.

Other positions not yet confirmed by the Senate include solicitor general, assistant attorney general, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.

Fox News Chad Pergram and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Link:
White House rips Democrats for 'needless obstruction' on Trump nominees - Fox News