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Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Rep. Paul Ryan, R.-Wisconsin, was elected the 54th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, October 29, after receiving the votes of 236 members. The vote was largely a formality after House Republicans nominated him for the position on Wednesday, October 28.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan announced Monday, January 12, that he would not run for president in 2016, preferring instead to focus on policy work as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, has long been seen as a top contender for the presidency.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan, center, speaks with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, before a House Ways and Means Committee meeting on March 12, 2014.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan and his wife, Janna, arrive at a state dinner at the White House in honor of French President Francois Hollande on February 11, 2014 .

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Willie Robertson of the reality TV series "Duck Dynasty" poses for a picture with Ryan and his wife, Janna, before President Obama delivers his State of the Union address on January 28, 2014.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan greets supporters during a presidential campaign rally with Mitt Romney at The Square at Union Centre in West Chester, Ohio, on November 2, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin speaks during a campagin stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on August 13, 2012. It was the newly minted GOP vice presidential candidate's first solo stop since becoming Romney's running mate.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks after Romney announced him as his running mate in Norfolk, Virginia, on August 11, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Romney introduced Ryan as his running mate in front of the USS Wisconsin. The seven-term congressman provides a strong contrast to the Obama administration on fiscal policy.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Romney jokes with Ryan in April 2012 during a pancake brunch at Bluemound Gardens in Milwaukee.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan looks on as Romney greets people June 18, 2012, during a campaign event in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks while campaigning for Romney at a textile factory in Janesville, Wisconsin, on June 18, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan, left, and Romney greet each other on stage April 3, 2012, during the primary night gathering at The Grain Exchange in Milwaukee.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan introduces Romney at a town hall meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 2, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan is introduced before speaking about the federal budget at Georgetown University on April 26, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan holds a news conference in December 2011 in Washington to introduce a package of 10 legislative reforms designed to revamp the budget process.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan listens as Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, speaks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget annual conference in Washington on June 14, 2011.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan looks over papers as he waits for other House Republicans to arrive for a news conference in the Capitol Visitors Center in 2010.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks to the media in 2009 about President Barack Obama's 2010 budget proposal.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan, left, and Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire speak to reporters about the 2010 federal budget.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Then-Budget Committee Chairman John M. Spratt Jr., left, and ranking member Ryan listen to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testify during the House Budget hearing on the economy on January 17, 2008.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan follows President George W. Bush off of Air Force One at General Mitchell International Airport - Air Reserve Station in Milwaukee on July 11, 2006.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks at a Cato Institute briefing on Medicare reform in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on July 22, 2003.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Speaker of the House Denis Hastert, left, administers the oath of office to Ryan at the beginning of his first term as representative of Wisconsin on January 6, 1999.

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Paul Ryan's seat isn't within reach for Democrats (yet) - CNNPolitics ... - CNN

Trice-EdneyFor years, Black people have delivered our vote to Democrats. Many Democrats wouldnt have won without our vote. Now some Black people, and other people of color, have become discouraged because no matter the votes we deliver, we are taken for granted. Once elected, many forget our efforts on their behalf.

When I ran for the U.S. Congress in my home state of Louisiana, I lost by less than one-percent in a 2/3rds Democratic District. Much of my organized support came from Congressional Black Caucus members and a few Progressive Whites. I received lukewarm-to-no support from the state Democratic Party. On the strength of Black voters and a few White people, I won 97,000 votes at a time when many Democrats were winning their Congressional seats with 35,000 to 40,000 votes. As a first time candidate, we brought out a record number of Democratic voters in my district.

Congressman John Breaux also ran for the U.S. Senate. His campaign events werent attracting as many potential voters as mine. His crowds were often so thin that he left and came to my events. We welcomed him, and on the strength of the Black vote, he won. I lost narrowly because he was unable to deliver any votes to my campaign.

My campaign ended with a debt. Customarily, losing candidates get help from those who win to assist in debt-erasing fundraising efforts. Since I had helped him so much, I thought it was logical that Mr. Breaux would lend his name to a fundraiser for me. Instead, his response was, Well, Im a U.S. Senator now, and I dont lend my name lightly. Im sure therere other candidates who can relate. Apparently, Mr. Breauxs Whiteness overshadowed his party loyalty and loyalty to his fellow Democrats. Thats just one example of the treatment African American Democrats often receive from the Party we consistently help to gain so many victories.

Until President Barack Obama ran for office, I voted for Democrats, but Id lost my enthusiasm for my Party. My enthusiasm returned full force in 2008 and 2012. By 2016, I still enthusiastically supported Secretary Hillary Clinton. I did so because she was a Democrat, but also because she was a womanand, just as we had waited for the election of an African American, we women had waited too long to see a woman elected President. African American women worked so hard and had such high hopes, but so many of our White friendsespecially White womenbetrayed us and voted for Donald Trump! My enthusiasm was once again damaged.

Now, I see a Party leadership enslaved to misplaced loyalties. Rather than growing and rewarding that portion of the base that has given unwavering allegiance to party objectives, leaders debate the how-tos of making white males happy and bringing white women, who rejected the Party en masse, back into the fold.

A pragmatic post-mortem of Election 2016 indicates a party failure to focus on registration efforts in the Black community. There was a reluctance to spend money with organizations and efforts by the Black press to help Get-Out-the-Vote. The party lost opportunities to place our issues up front and center, to hire more of us on their staffs, and to do more to show their appreciation for our loyalty.

Despite the current discord in national politics, we need to be able to identify who we can confidently call leader. Whatever the party agenda, it must specifically address a realistic plan to improve our communities, put our people to work, fix our schools and streets, and put an end to the insane racist behavior trending throughout the nation. Democrats, your most loyal supporters are waiting for you to recognize what The Party would look like without us!

Dr. E. Faye Williams can be reached at: http://www.nationalcongressbw.org ;or at, 202/678-6788

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DEMOCRATS, WE ARE YOUR BASE! - Afro American

Part of the problem? Drew Magary argues they care way too much about what Republicans think.

Yesterday the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put out a bunch of limp potential slogans for their would-be takeover of Congress in 2018, and Twitter summarily took them to the woodshed for it. One glance at the options presented and you can tell that tell that the committee spent hundreds of man-hours and enormous sums of money just to throw RESIST & PERSIST into an online poll. You would think that after losing to Donald Trump, and then getting subsequently beaten in five special elections after the fact, that the Democratic party would re-evaluate both its ideals and its leadership. Instead, they decided to put their mental energy into bumper stickers.

Democrats have been relatively clueless since the day I was born. Lewis Black once said that America is ruled by a party of bad ideas and a party of no ideas, and that more or less holds true in 2017. Given the demonstrable evils of the Republican party, Democrats SHOULD win back Congress in 2018. A literal cadaver ought to be able to siphon votes away from those shitbags. But then again, Democrats should have beaten Trump as well, which means that the political hopes of a majority of Americans currently resides in the hands of a party that has all the strategic acumen of Elmer Fudd and, even worse, still doesnt realize its shortcomings.

I dont like grousing about this. For all of the Democrats obliviousness, theyre still a far superior option to the party that wants to burn poor people for fossil fuels, and I dont wanna be one of those Weird Twitter assholes who spends all day calling Hillary a bitch. But every day that Trump remains in power does lasting, perhaps irreversible damage to both the country and the greater solar system, and his only opposition remains the only group of people ON EARTH who could have possibly blown an election against him. If the past year wasnt an obvious sign that the DNC needs to change how it does business, then what would be? Do we all have to die first?

Just today, the New York Times gave column space to former Clinton operative Mark Penn, who stupidly argued that the Democrats need to be the party of the mythical American center, the exact same strategy that backfired on Clinton last fall. One of my GQ colleagues said that Democrats care wayyyyy too much about Republicans, and this op-ed goes a long way toward proving it. This dribble of think-tank strategery comes after Georgia Congressional candidate and eight-year-old boy Jon Ossoff lost a special election afteryou guessed itpositioning himself as a centrist. In fact, Ossoff decided against loudly denouncing Trump on the campaign trail, and instead released this actual ad:

It really is stunning how Democrats continually try to hit Trump in his least vulnerable spots. Hey, you folks who love the way Trump talks shit on Twitter: I promise you that I wont do that! Meanwhile, Trump rose to power by ginning up the fervor of a supposedly small voting bloc that believed (wrongly) that its needs were being ignored. God forbid Democrats take any lessons away from that. No, instead we get more whinging about working class white voters (God, enough of these motherfuckers!) and all their bullshit angst over crime and immigration. You think Democrats will be able to address that angst better than the golf blob currently occupying the White House? Who in hell is this party really serving if theyre so horny for the redneck vote?

"[The Democrats are] too meek to get what voters REALLY want, and thats because they are all strategy and no heart. They chase voters rather than lead them."

Yet, its hardly surprising that big-name Democrats would still see value in this kind of empty heartland pandering. Say what you will about Republicans, but at least their leadership genuinely represents their constituency. Thats the party of rich guys, and its RUN by rich guys. Those two entities are simpatico. Meanwhile, the Democratic party is still run by cocktail party vets like Pelosi while trying to serve people with whom Pelosi has little to nothing in common: poor people, minorities, etc. I genuinely liked Hillary Clinton as a candidate, but on the campaign trail she basically acted like a robot that was trying to learn empathy by observing humans. Oh, I see you humans call these tears. These tears mean that you are sad! They are, as constituted, the party of lip service.

Thats not good enough. Democrats fail again and again because (A) They want to reach the broadest possible audience, which means they reach no one at all, and (B) Leadership runs the party but is not OF it. Even firebrands like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still relatively genteel white people from New England. They LOOK like Republicans, as do the Silicon Valley buttheads currently ruminating on ways to DISRUPT liberal politics. Why do you think people loved Barack Obama so much? Because Democratic voters actually felt like he was one of them (even if Obama was still too centrist and too damn deferential to monsters like Mitch McConnell). Theres no reason for Obama to be an anomaly among Democratic leadership. They have willed this disconnect into perpetuity.

My friend Jeb Lund once said that the reason Republicans succeed is because, in general, theyre better at giving their voters tangible things. You want a meaningless tax cut? They can get you that. You want immigrants rounded up? Theyre on it. Love guns? Heres seventeen! Big fan of war? Oh! Oh, Republicans will give you all the war you can eat. By contrast, Democrats will give you a VERSION of what their voters wanted that just happens to have been watered down roughly 98 percent by concessions to Republicans. Your health care will still be an expensive pain in the ass, but at least Democrats heart was in the right place. Theyre too meek to get what voters REALLY want, and thats because they are all strategy and no heart. They chase voters rather than lead them. You only need to look where that strategy has gotten them so far to know where its going to take them.

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Democrats Will Never Get Their Shit Together - GQ Magazine

The opposition party should embrace a sweeping reform agenda that embraces the promise of voting rights, competitive elections, and genuinely representative democracy.

Voters wait in line to cast Super Tuesday ballots in Austin, Texas, on March 1, 2016. (AP Photo / Tamir Kalifa)

American democracy is not working. We have a president who lost the popular vote by almost 3 million ballots, a Congress that reflects gerrymandered district lines rather than the will of the people, and a voting system that discourages rather than encourages the high turnouts that are needed to establish a genuinely representative democracy.

The Republican Party, which has benefited from this dysfunction, is in no rush to change things. Indeed, it has at its highest levels embraced the voter-suppression lies and scheming of charlatans such as Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and President Trumps Orwellian Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. So it falls to progressive Democrats, nonaligned independents, and third-party activists to take the lead in the struggle for democratic renewal.

For the Democrats, there are two ways to address the crisis. First, they can carry on as they always have and hope that they get better at being an opposition party within a fundamentally flawed system. Second, they could propose to reform the system in ways that would begin to realize the promise of competitive elections and popular democracy.

Congressman Don Beyer has chosen the bolder route. Last week, the Virginia Democrat proposed the Fair Representation Act, a plan to democratize congressional elections with a bold reform that could also be used to bring real competition to state legislative contests.

Agenda? Sure: End gerrymandering. Eliminate the Electoral College. Guarantee voting rights. Overturn Citizens United.

Explaining that polarization and partisanship, both among voters and in Congress, have reached dangerous and scary heights, Beyer says: The Fair Representation Act is the bold reform America needs to be sure every vote matters, to defeat gerrymandering, and ensure the House of Representatives remains the peoples House.

Rob Richie, the executive director of FairVote, which has worked with Beyer to promote the measure, says, The Fair Representation Act is the most comprehensive approach to improving congressional elections in American history.

FairVote argues that, Under the Fair Representation Act, all U.S. House members will be elected by ranked-choice voting in new, larger multi-winner districts. This system would replace todays map of safe red and blue seats that lock voters into uncompetitive districts, and elect members of Congress with little incentive to work together and solve problems

Heres FairVotes assessment of how the Beyer plan would work:

Smaller states with five or fewer members will elect all representatives from one statewide, at-large district. States with more than six members will draw multi-winner districts of three to five representatives each. Congress will remain the same size, but districts will be larger.

They will be elected through ranked-choice voting, an increasingly common electoral method used in many American cities, whereby voters rank candidates in order of choice, ensuring that as many voters as possible help elect a candidate they support. Under ranked-choice voting, if no candidate reaches the threshold needed to win, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. When a voters top choice loses, their vote instantly goes to their second choice. The process repeats until all seats are elected.

Using this approach, four in five voters would elect someone they support. The number of voters in a position to swing a seat would immediately triplefrom less than 15 percent in 2016 to just under half.

The districts themselves will be drawn by state-created, independent commissions made up of ordinary citizens. These larger districts would be nearly impossible to gerrymander for political advantageand would force politicians to seek out voters with different perspectives and remain accountable to them.

Thats a lot of democracymore than most partisan Republicans, and a good many partisan Democrats, are prepared to embrace.

But here is why Democrats should take the Beyer plan seriously: It focuses attention on the necessity of breaking the curse of gerrymandering while at the same time presenting the Democrats as a party that embraces competition rather than political gamesmanship.

The Republicans, with tremendous support from billionaire campaign donors such as the Koch brothers, have mastered the art of making elections noncompetitive. Americans hate the current system. They tell pollsters it is too owned by special interests, too mangled by money, too deferential towards political careerists, and too disrespectful toward voters.

The people are angry about gerrymandering. They want competitive elections and true representative democracy. (A 2013 Harris poll found that 74 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of Democrats, and 71 percent of independents object to the pro-politician, anti-voter methods of redistricting that now prevail in most states for congressional and legislative elections.)

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Combining support for the assault on gerrymandering that Beyer has proposed with support for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling (as proposed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and others in the Senate and House) and with support for a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote and to have that vote counted (as Wisconsin Congressmen Mark Pocan and Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison have proposed) would go a long way toward branding the Democrats as the party of reform that America needs.

By becoming the party of democratic renewalpromoting bold and meaningful changes that empower voters to end the malaise in Washington and state capitals nationwideDemocrats can make themselves the party of the future.

Americans are looking for just such a party. Lots of folks believe that neither old party can fill the political vacuumand they could be right. But Congressman Beyer has offered his party an opportunity to rise above partisanship and stand on principle. Democrats, who have struggled to chart their course following the disastrous 2016 election, have a chance to identify themselves as the party that is ready to give voters what they are crying out for: a more honest and competitive politics.

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Democrats Must Become America's Anti-Gerrymandering Party - The Nation.

When President Trump holds his first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday, he will not only be dealing with high-stakes international issues but also will be under intense political scrutiny at home.

Any sign of weakness from Trump in his meeting with Putin will open him up to criticism from Democrats, many of whom steadfastly believe the president at least partially owes his election to Russian hacking last year, and Russia hawks in his own party, many of whom have been concerned about his desire for an opening with Moscow.

Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has been described as a "cloud" over the White House by Trump himself. The matter is being investigated by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.

Democrats have been searching for evidence of collusion between the Russians who hacked into their party leaders' emails and the Trump campaign. Top congressional Democrats pressed Trump on Thursday to raise the issue in his meeting with Putin and forthrightly condemn any election inference by Moscow.

"The integrity of our democracy and the security of the free world depend on the United States stopping Russia's unchecked assault on our election systems," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "President Trump needs to confront Putin for hacking our democratic systems and make it clear the United States will not tolerate further meddling."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined four other Democratic senators in writing a letter making similar request of Trump, demanding the president "make absolutely clear that Russian interference in our democracy will in no way be tolerated."

"We believe it is crucial for you as president of the United States to raise this matter with President Putin and to ensure that he hears you loud and clear interfering in our elections was wrong in 2016 and it will not be permitted to happen again," the senators wrote. "We urge you to raise this matter with President Putin later this week. President Putin must understand this can never happen again."

Trump was noncommittal Thursday, again expressing less than wholehearted support for the intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia was behind the election-year hacking of the Democratic National Committee and others.

"Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it could have been other people and other countries," the president said at a news conference in Poland. "It could have been a lot of people interfered."

Trump didn't directly disagree with the assessment that it was Russia, but he also pointed out that the intelligence community once appeared certain there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

"Guess what? That led to one big mess," Trump said. "They were wrong, and it led to a mess."

This drew the kind of harsh criticism Trump can expect if Putin is seen as gaining the upper hand in their meeting.

"The president's comments today, again casting doubt on whether Russia was behind the blatant interference in our election and suggesting his own intelligence agencies to the contrary that nobody really knows, continue to directly undermine U.S. interests," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a statement. "This is not putting America first, but continuing to propagate his own personal fiction at the country's expense."

Schiff is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and has doggedly pursued the Russia probe, often making unfavorable comments about Trump in the process.

The media reacted similarly. "A trashing of the American press corps and Intel community in Eastern Europe of all places," tweeted NBC's Chuck Todd. "Could Putin have asked for anything more?"

"If you are a Republican elected official waking up to Trump's unwillingness to say Russia hacked the election, better to go back to bed," tweeted CNN's Chris Cillizza.

"For Russia, Trump-Putin meeting is a sure winner," the New York Times declared in a headline.

A former Republican national security official saw the matter differently, pointing to Trump's military action in Syria and stands the president took as recently as his Thursday speech in Poland that were unlikely to please Putin.

"Trump doesn't like the Russian election interference being used to delegitimize his win," the official said. "He also sees the constant questions about whether he thinks Russia is behind the hacking as the media getting him to try to play along with it."

"We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes including Syria and Iran and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself," Trump declared Thursday.

Officials who were seen as relatively favorable to Russia, like former national security adviser Mike Flynn, are out. Officials who are more critical of Moscow, like new national security adviser H.R. McMaster and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, are ascendant inside the administration. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has overcome a reputation for friendship with Russia to speak unfavorably about Putin's government's actions abroad.

Even some Democrats have conceded that Russia may not be as potent a political issue as they thought after a series of special-election losses.

"The fact that we had spent so much time talking about Russia has you know, has been a distraction from what should be the clear contrast between Democrats and the Trump agenda, which is on economics," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" last month, the day after Democrats lost in Georgia's 6th Congressional District.

"I seriously doubt Trump is too worried about what the Democrats are emphasizing politically right now," said Christian Ferry, a Republican strategist. "If they were able to win a special election, maybe it would be worth some consideration, but we've seen multiple times that the Democrats' concerns are not the same as the American people's."

Still, Trump is in unusual political territory as he approaches his meeting with Putin. An Economist/YouGov poll taken in December found that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia probably or definitely tampered with the vote results to get Trump elected, with slightly more believing this was definitely true (17 percent) than definitely not true (16 percent).

That was before Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recusal from the Russia probe and Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel and before Hillary Clinton laid out her theory of how her opponents at home could have colluded with the Russians to deny her the presidency.

An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted this month found that 54 percent believed Trump's dealings with Russia were "illegal" or "unethical." Only 36 percent said he had done nothing wrong, a tick below his national job approval ratings.

While there is a huge partisan divide in those numbers, with 80 percent of Democrats convinced the president acted unethically or illegally, 58 percent of independents agree. Numbers like those, along with Republican elected officials' misgivings about improving relations with Putin, have Democrats seeing an opening. Whether particular aides, like Kremlin critic Fiona Hill, will attend the Putin meeting has received unusual attention (she won't).

Trump is the third consecutive president who has met with Putin with the hope of tamping down tensions with Russia and cooperating on thorny international issues. Neither former President George W. Bush nor former President Barack Obama was successful and neither faced the same political pressures at home while trying.

The rest is here:
Democrats ready to pounce on Trump missteps with Putin - Washington Examiner