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In this analysis of the Cleveland Indians, Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight shows how theyre a better team than theirwinloss record so far. A key team stat of theirs that figures into his calculations is their Pythagorean expectation, which is high. The Pythagorean expectation is what you would expect a teams winning percentage to be when you consider the ratio of itsruns scored to runs allowed. When a teams Pythagorean expectation is higher than its winning percentage, its future performance is likely to be better than its record to date. When its lower, worse.

The concept can be applied to politics. For example, in the last national election for president, the Senate, and the House the aggregate vote won by each party is like runs scored. The vote it lost to the other party is like runs allowed. Did the percentage of contests that each party won match the percentage of the vote thatit won? No.

In the House, Senate, and presidential races combined, Democrats won about 12 million more votes than the Republicans, despite coming up empty on Election Night, winning neither the White House nor either house of Congress. This is not an argument about the Electoral College or gerrymandering. Its a statistical observation. It doesnt jibe with the assumption, which you can hear all day long on the Left as well as on the Right, that the Democratic party is on life support. Its true that at the state and local level in many parts of the country its getting crushed. At the national level, though, no. There its the majority party, at least in terms of popular support as measured by votes cast.

Currently on the generic ballot for the House, Democrats lead Republicans by 6.5 percentage points, according to an average of polls compiled, again, by FiveThirtyEight. That would be a gain of 7.6 points since November (when Republicans won the aggregate vote for the House by 1.1 points). Those polls are in line with the four relevant special House elections so far this year. (There was a fifth, in California, but it was a runoff between two Democrats, as in 2016.) In red districts in Kansas, Montana, Georgia, and South Carolina, Democrats improved by 8.6 points over their performance last November. If they improve by that much across the board next November, they may take the House. They would need to flip 24 seats.

As of now, the table looks set for a typical midterm election: The party out of power gains ground. If Republicans want to defend against that outcome, they should figure out how to appeal to Democrats. So far the instinct of the president has been to shore up his base in ways that come across as hostile to Democrats; he doesnt call them deplorable, but thats approximately what they hear. Obviously, congressional Republicans in purple districts need to walk a tight line between independence and party loyalty.

Meanwhile, of course, it would be in the self-interest of Democrats to stretch and figure out how to reach Americans who are drawn to the GOP. It would be in the self-interest of both parties, for that matter, to forswear smugness and attitude and start disarming each others voters with civility and tact. It would be in the interest of the country too.

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Misunderestimating the Democrats - National Review

In reorganizing the local party organization that was decertified as dysfunctional a year ago by state party chair Mary Mancini, Shelby County Democrats are thinking big.

Thats big in several senses of the word, as four key members of the soon-to-be reorganized Shelby County Democratic Party explained in a press conference this past week at the IBEW meeting hall on Madison, a frequent party meeting spot.

The four were David Cambron, a state party committeeman, former party vice chair, and president of the Germantown Democrats; David Cocke and Carlissa Shaw, co-chairs of the ad hoc group that held four county-wide reorganizational forums over the last several months; and Danielle Inez, newly elected president of the countys Young Democrats.

As the four explained to attending media, the newly reorganized SCDP will be numerically bigger, consisting of two separate bodies, an executive committee composed of two members (one male, one female) from each of the countys 13 County commission districts and a few additional ex officio members; as well as a Grass Roots Council, consisting of 130 members.

Both the Council, which will meet quarterly, and the executive committee, will be elected at a convention to be held on Saturday, July 22, from 10 to 11 a.m. at Mississippi Boulevard Baptist Church. A second convention will be held at the same site two weeks later on August 5 to elect a local party chair.

We think weve done it right, said Cocke. We intend to be an active party, not just a party that meets once a month to get in trouble.We need a big tent. He defined the Grass Roots Council as an activist, issue-oriented body, whereas the exective committee wold conduct the routine business of party affairs.

Saying that a lot of Democrats want to hit the pavement, Shaw elaborated on the Council as a body able to speak to the executive committee.

As Cambron noted, The world changed on November 8. We designed a new party to include new people, new activists, and new groups, citing the recently founded grop Indivisible as an example of the latter.

On the thorny issue of defining who Democrats are, Cocke said certain requirements would be imposed but not so many as to inhibit party growth.

Inez said that the local party would be guided in large measure by the parameters for membership established by the state Democratic Party. And one thing wont change: Both she and Shaw said that Roberts Rules of Order would remain the basis for conduct of meetings and that members of the executive committee would receive training sessions on the parliamentary formula.

(Shaw had noted, in one of the forums conducted by the reorganization group, that confusion had resulted in meetings of the former SCDP because of the differing degrees of familiarity with Roberts Rules by executive committee members.)

For those who want to know more about the new party and its new rules, Cocke credited Inez with the preparation of a cheat sheet on all the details, which can be found on the partys website shelbydem.org.

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Local Democrats Herald Bigger, Better Party to Come - Memphis Flyer

President Trump may have pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on interference in the U.S. presidential campaign during their Friday meeting, but to Democrats it was too little, too late.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said it was a "dereliction of duty" for the Trump administration to give "equal credence" to U.S. intelligence agencies blaming Moscow for the election year hacking and Russian denials of the same.

"President Trump had an obligation to bring up Russia's interference in our election with Putin, but he has an equal obligation to take the word of our intelligence community rather than that of the Russian president," Schumer said in a statement. "For Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson to say that this issue will remain unresolved is disgraceful."

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued in a statement Friday that Trump had already undermined anything he might have said to Putin by appearing uncertain of Russian meddling the previous day.

"Whatever the president actually told Putin, it would have had much more force if just the day before President Trump had not equivocated about who was behind the unprecedented attack targeting America last fall," Warner said. "It would also have had more force if he had not again criticized the integrity of our intelligence agencies, among whom there is unwavering agreement about Russia's active interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama appointee, made a similar argument on Twitter, saying Trump's "inexplicable refusal to confirm Russian election interference insults career intel pros" and will make it more difficult to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Tillerson came out of the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents saying Trump opened by bringing up the election interference and "repeatedly" questioned Putin on the subject.

There are other pressing international issues in need of a resolution, such as Syria and North Korea, which Tillerson implied was why they eventually moved on from talking about the 2016 presidential election. A southwestern Syrian ceasefire was announced after the meeting.

But Trump and Putin met in a political context where rank-and-file Democrats believe the Republican benefited from this hacking and may have even won because of it. An NPR/PBS/Marist poll found 80 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents believe Trump did something unethical or illegal with Russia.

Late last year, an Economist/YouGov poll determined that more than half of Democrats believed the Russians changed votes from Hillary Clinton to Trump, a proposition for which there is no evidence. That result came before a number of other incidents heightened Russia scrutiny, such as the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

It is unclear how much political hay Democrats can raise on Russia outside their base. The party lost a series of competitive special congressional elections, which led some Democratic lawmakers to call for the party to focus more on the economy and less on Russia.

Nevertheless, multiple investigations into Russia's actions and whether there was any collusion with the Trump campaign continue. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, published an op-ed arguing that putting America first meant confronting Putin, using Trump's campaign slogan against him.

There was little likelihood that Democrats would be pleased with the outcome of the Trump-Putin meeting. But they and some Republican Russia hawks were incensed by talk of a joint U.S.-Russian cybersecurity task force and called on Trump to sign tougher Russian sanctions into law.

"The establishment of a working group as reported by Foreign Minister Lavrov to study how to curb cyber interference in elections in which the Russians would play any role, would be akin to inviting the North Koreans to participate in a commission on nonproliferation it tacitly adopts the fiction that the Russians are a constructive partner on the subject instead of the worst actor on the world stage," Schiff said in a statement.

Trump is the third straight U.S. president to try to find a negotiating partner in Putin.

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Democrats find Trump's Russia rebuke too little, too late - Washington Examiner

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton debate during the Univision News and Washington Post Democratic Presidential Primary Debate at the Miami Dade College's Kendall Campus on March 9, 2016 in Miami, Florida.Joe RaedleGetty Images

Grijalva is a U.S. Representative for Arizona.

Since the Donald Trump Administration took office, an ocean of ink has been spilled scrutinizing Democrats minority status in Washington, rehashing the presidential race from every angle, second-guessing recent House special election losses especially the recent race in Georgia and generally wondering how the party can get back on track.

Its largely thanks to this outpouring that Americans are now familiar with the supposedly tidy division between Bernie Sanders style progressives and Hillary Clintonstyle pragmatists, vying for what is sometimes called the soul of the party. This ongoing conversation has drawn in Democrats in elected office at every level, myself included.

Its often struck me that one big thing is missing from this conversation. All the think pieces, agonized columns and point-counterpoint skirmishes, which weve seen more of in the last six months than we did during President Obama s eight years in office, have largely addressed a question whose answer is already known.

As Democrats, the secret to reviving our fortunes turns out not to be a secret at all: The American people want us, and anyone else who hopes to earn their vote, to talk about economic fairness, which they still feel is in short supply. They want us to lay out a plan for making sure they share in the profits they help create. They want to hear that from top to bottom, Democrats will close corporate tax loopholes and make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.

Its well known that I was the first member of Congress to endorse Senator Sanders for president. That shouldnt affect anyones objective reading of the data, and the data pointing us on this course is overwhelming. There is simply no substantive debate about whether this is the strongest winning message for the Democratic Party.

How do we know? A comprehensive post-election analysis by the polling and consulting firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, funded by multiple groups with nothing to gain by paying for bad information, found that fully 60% of voters believe Jobs still dont pay enough to live on and it is a struggle to save anything and that belief motivated their votes. The same analysis found that when Clinton changed the focus of her campaign message from the economy (on which she soundly beat Trump for months, especially after the presidential debates) to a vague call for unity and opportunity, she lost the most important ground of the campaign: who voters trusted more to help their pocketbooks.

According to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, by the end of the campaign, voters ultimately trusted Trump more on the economy by a 48-42 margin. That simple fact transcended a good number of the other factors in play last November. Unless the President ushers in the era of blanket prosperity he keeps promising, being trusted on the economy will be similarly decisive in 2018, 2020 and beyond.

Perhaps just as importantly, the firm found that a generic congressional candidate running on a message of economic contrast roughly, Democrats support investing in Social Security , education and jobs with rising incomes, while Republicans support tax cuts for the richest significantly outperformed a more general contrast with Trump and his personality across multiple demographic groups. Like it or not, what youll do is more important to voters than who you are or what private values you stand for. Democrats need to understand that.

Unfortunately, many on the left are busy fortifying themselves into mutually exclusive camps that cant agree on what the right message was in the last election, let alone the next one. We are rapidly losing our ability to cohere around a formula that everyone whatever his or her feelings about Clinton, Sanders, James Comey or any other public figure can reproduce to regain a governing majority.

The largely rhetorical fights weve indulged in lately are producing drastically diminished returns and wasting time we should be spending building a forward-looking economic agenda. This will take some hard looks in the mirror. We cannot treat the Obama era as the best we can hope for; the American people certainly dont.

To the skeptics, I would only say this: Shouldnt we focus on the same thing the American people are focusing on, rather than arguing with what theyre trying to tell us?

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Rep. Ral Grijalva: The Bernie-Hillary Debate Is Destroying the Democratic Party - TIME

Liberals target the Rust Belt: 'Democrats should be able to win in all these places' Charlotte Observer As the Democratic Party struggles to find its moorings after losing a handful of special House elections this spring, liberal activists say the party's future in Washington, D.C., isn't in moving centrist, but rather in moving left. A trio of new ... and more »

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Liberals target the Rust Belt: 'Democrats should be able to win in all these places' - Charlotte Observer