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The moment that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Republicans that there could be no vote on the party's health-care bill this week, Senate Democrats were in a familiar position headed to a protest.

In the "Senate swamp," a well-kept lawn across from the Capitol, hundreds of activists from Planned Parenthood, AFSCME and smaller progressive groups were hooting and cheering their latest mini-victory. The "People's Filibuster," scheduled to last all week, had triumphed in its first few minutes.

"Senator Cornyn was just complaining to the press," crowed Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. "He said, 'the Democrats just won't cooperate with us.' I'm having crocodile tears here!"

For some Democrats, it was the fifth or six protest of the Better Care Reconciliation Act in 24 hours. Some of the protesters had done even more, with the progressive group Ultraviolet tailing Republican senators as they left their offices, the most aggressive of dozens of tactics to slow down or stop BCRA. More had been cycling in and out of Capitol office rooms for news conferences, where Democrats sat back and let Medicaid beneficiaries take over the microphone.

"You are the wind under our wings," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to cheering protesters. "You are the reason we've come this far."

The delay of BRCA, which Republicans had hoped to vote on this week, came after disagreements inside the majority party. But it was egged on by the "Resistance," the loose collection of more than 1,000 groups working to stop the Republican agenda that sprang out of Trump's surprise election.

"A bill designed by wealthy white men, for wealthy white men will only further marginalize disenfranchised communities," said the organizers of the Jan. 21 Women's March in a statement. "While a delay on the vote is a small victory, it's time to crank up the outrage and tell all Senators to vote NO."

Before Tuesday, some progressive activists were already reading takes about how they'd lost the health-care wars. A Monday story in Politico reported that "liberal activists and Democratic senators have struggled to capture the public's focus"; a story in Vox, published the same day, noted how long it had been "since we saw the kind of overwhelming nationwide outcry that accompanied either the first attempt to pass the health-care bill, or that erupted during the women's march."

The point of comparison was the tea party movement, which played a role in slowing down the passage of the Affordable Care Act and then cutting away the Democrats' congressional majorities. Like the tea party, the "resistance" had been quickly embraced by a dazed, out-of-power party.

Unlike the tea party, which exploited the gap between former president Barack Obama's unifying rhetoric and the progressive agenda, the "resistance" was trying to stop a majority party ready to burst through guardrails the filibuster, the norms of the budget process to pass its agenda.

Importantly, by Tuesday, the new activist movement had absorbed some defeats. At rallies, MoveOn's Washington director Ben Wikler said multiple times that the resistance needed to remember the American Health Care Act's journey through the House from momentum to death, then resurrection.

"It was educational," said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the Indivisible network of local protest groups. "Paul D. Ryan gave up in March and called the ACA 'the law of the land.' And then he dusted himself off and got the votes. So we're taking today as a huge victory, but not a final victory. We recognize that Mitch McConnell will try to twist arms and get this through. Grass-roots pressure works, but this is going to require even more of it."

Activists and politicians both messaged on what was in the bill, not on the simple need to beat Republicans. The Tuesday events attended by Democrats centered on constituents, not politicians; a photo op on the steps outside the Senate had every Democrat holding up a sign with the face of one of their state's residents, and a story about what the BCRA would cost them.

"It's a scary thing 60 percent of the American people don't know what's in that legislation," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at the "People's Filibuster" rally. "Your job, my job, is to make sure 100 percent of people know what's in that legislation and tell Republicans what they think about it."

Doing so, according to activists, would mean repeating what had seemed to be working. CREDO Action and Daily Action, two unrelated groups, had together helped organize around 135,000 calls to Senate offices. The Working Families Party had organized visits (and sit-ins) at offices; ADAPT, a disability advocates' group, had even run events that ended with police pulling protesters out of wheelchairs.

The message from Democrats: Keep it up.

"We've got to fight even harder over the Fourth of July and every day until we bury this atrocious bill," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democrats' 2018 Senate campaign efforts. "All of you: When your senators go back to their states, when they go to barbecues and parades, will you be there to tell them to kill this awful bill?"

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Democrats' 'resistance' calls for a July 4 recess push to kill GOP health care bill - Chicago Tribune

Last month I was at a private dinner group, where we heard from Gretchen Whitmer, now the front-running candidate for next year's Democratic nomination for governor.

Her presentation was captivating and compelling; she made a case for herself as the one candidate who could possibly work with the legislature, and talked about education.

There was, however, one word she never said, something that once would have been among the first words out of any Democratic candidate's mouth. That word was "jobs."

A few weeks later, at the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual Mackinac Island event, I asked her about that. Turns out it wasn't an accident. "I prefer to think in terms of careers," she told me. What about the 50-year-old laid-off auto worker who is now desperately trying to keep his house?

Well, the former state senate minority leader said she thought folks like that needed to think in terms of building new careers also, or words to that effect. Suddenly, I had a flash.

Democrats really might lose the next election for governor after all. That would be despite what Donald Trump is doing to this nation; despite what Republicans have done to this state over the last eight years; despite the Flint water crisis; and despite the fact that Bill Schuette is a naked opportunist who spent millions of taxpayer dollars in a silly and failed effort to prevent two saintly gay nurses from adopting some special needs kids.

Whitmer whose values I essentially share will, if nominated, win by a landslide in her native East Lansing, Ann Arbor, and in affluent Oakland County. Hillary Clinton did all that too. But she lost Michigan and lost the election. There were many reasons, but one big one stands out: Democratic voters want to vote for... a Democrat.

They want someone who cares about jobs and the economy and the plight of the lower middle class and those slipping below it. They want their lives to be better.

Donald Trump spoke to those people.

Yes, he largely told them lies and gave them bullshit, telling them that he'd get their jobs back from Mexico, or that illegal immigrants had taken them. But he spoke to them.

Hillary Clinton didn't. She spoke to Goldman Sachs.

Wall Street was perfectly comfortable with her.

The best analysis of this campaign was written by legendary journalist H.L. Mencken: "Neither candidate gave a speech worth hearing, but one of them got down in the muck and clowned around with the fools."

Nevermind that Mencken was actually talking about the election of 1948, or that he died sixty years ago. What he said was far truer of last year's race.

But there is a far bigger issue here: Democrats have swallowed a myth that Bill Clinton was largely responsible for hatching back in the mid-1980s.

That false theory was this: Democratic populism of the style made famous by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s is pass. Democrats who preach a left-wing economic message are doomed.

That was the mantra of something called the Democratic Leadership Council, whose early members included folks like Bill Clinton and Michigan's then-Governor, Jim Blanchard, in the 1980s. They had reason to think something was wrong.

Democrats took a terrific pounding nationally in the 1980s, losing three presidential elections by huge margins.

The Democratic Leadership Council thought this was because the party had moved too far to the left.

Most people, they felt, didn't care that much about blue-collar workers and the poor, and that, at any rate, they felt those voters would have to show up and vote for the Dems because the Republicans were worse.

Their solution to take back power: Democrats should be somewhat socially liberal and economically conservative. The DLC leaders, some of whom called themselves "New Democrats," felt this was proven when Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992. Indeed, he moved slightly left on things like gay issues, and right on economic issues. He agreed to a huge welfare "reform" bill with the Orwellian title of "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act."

Clinton also signed off on a Telecommunications Act that did away with most restrictions on how many broadcast outlets one company could own, and did other conglomerate-friendly things. Not surprisingly, big business offered only token opposition to his bid for reelection the next year.

But there were signs that the analysis that the Democrats lost because they were too "left-wing" may have been wrong from the start. Yes, Walter Mondale did, in an admirable burst of honesty, tell voters that he would raise taxes and he did indeed lose every state but Minnesota.

Forgotten is that he also told them Ronald Reagan would also raise them. "He won't tell you, I just did," he predicted.

Mondale was right on both counts, but the fact is that he probably could have promised to suspend taxes and buy everyone a pony, and the popular Reagan still would have won.

Michael Dukakis four years later did indeed blow a large lead and lose by eight points. But that wasn't due to his so-called liberalism, but to the fact that he was a poor candidate who ran a lousy campaign. What few remember now is that late in the game, he announced that he was indeed a liberal, found a little backbone, and started campaigning as one.

That actually narrowed the gap though it was too little, too late. Nor is there any sign that Bill Clinton's failure to sound traditional economic themes four years later is what won the election.

Ross Perot's nutty third party campaign likely took more voters from incumbent President George H.W. Bush, who Perot hated, than from the Democrats. Clinton, in fact, got a smaller percentage of the vote than the hapless Dukakis had. In years to come, New Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry lost too.

Now, Hillary Clinton's candidacy has shown the ultimate intellectual bankruptcy of the whole Democratic Leadership Council approach. Think about this:

Bernie Sanders, according to their theories, should have gotten nowhere last year. He was not only a left-wing rabble rouser, he was an admitted gasp! socialist.

What's more, he was a cranky old irreligious Jew who would have been the oldest (75) major party nominee ever.

Basically, he shouldn't have gotten past the first primary. Except, in a process clearly rigged against him, he got more than 13 million votes and won states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Young voters were overwhelmingly for him.

Could it be that in this frightening world where workers' incomes and benefits are falling, standing up for the oppressed might not only be good policy, but politically smart?

I wouldn't bother to ask Hillary Clinton about that.

Meanwhile, across the herring pond:

Twenty years ago, Tony Blair followed Bill Clinton's lead and reinvented his party as "New Labour," which largely meant turning their backs on the sort of people Labour was founded to look out for.

Blair was popular for a while, but then was discredited by his slavish support for Bush's Iraq war.

Two years ago, after a second straight humiliating defeat, the party returned to its roots and picked an authentic left-wing populist, Jeremy Corbyn, as its leader. When a new election was called this spring, commentators and pollsters forecast a landslide for Theresa May's conservative party.

Some said she'd have a majority of 200 seats. But when the votes were counted, Corbyn's Labour had made massive, stunning gains. The Tories were left a minority trying to cling to power with an unstable coalition.

Something may be happening out there, and too many politicians and commentators still haven't a clue.

Here is the original post:
What's wrong with the Democrats - Detroit Metro Times

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images.

Jon Ossoffs failure to win the special election in Georgias 6th Congressional District last week set off panic and alarm about the future of the Democratic Party. Despite Donald Trumps unpopularity, Republicans were able to emerge victorious from an expensive race that only served to underline division among Democrats, who wield very little power in Washington, and remain lagging at the state and local levels across America.

Isaac Chotiner is a Slate staff writer.

To discuss the future of the Democratic Party, Slate gathered together a group of smart people to discuss what has gone wrong and what the future of progressivism holds. Heres a transcript of that conversation, edited and condensed for space and clarity, with Rebecca Traister, a writer at-large for New York magazine; Franklin Foer, a national correspondent for the Atlantic and author of the upcoming World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech; Jamelle Bouie, Slates chief political correspondent; Michelle Goldberg, a Slate columnist and New York Times contributing opinion writer; Osita Nwanevu, a Slate editorial assistant; and Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

Isaac Chotiner: Rebecca, you were just in Georgia and wrote about the race. What did being down there make you think about where the Democrats are headed?

Rebecca Traister: Broadly speaking, it was actually a wildly positive experience. I couldnt turn around without meeting a 50-year-old suburban woman whod never been politically engaged in her life. And now was not only politically engaged, but was being really smart and sophisticated both about approaches to voters and talking in new ways about complicated issues. Also, about identity and race and the racism of the community in which theyd grown up and how theyve been sort of asleep to that for a long time. They were talking about their next meetings, what they were going to do next. Its like they didnt even pause. So, that left me feeling, optimistic about their future engagement in politics, which we obviously need. We obviously need people to be awakened.

Michelle Goldberg: The one thing that I think absolutely has to happen is that this grass-roots infrastructure that is springing up all over the place, somebody needs to go in and fund it. You know, its ridiculous. These women I honestly dont know how theyre doing it. Like, how you work full-time, have three kids, and seem to work 50 hours a week on a political campaign. No matter how energized they are, thats not sustainable. Its a waste for some of these women to keep doing jobs that theyre not passionate about when they could be increasing the level of organizing. One of the women I wrote about, Jessica Ziegler, came up with what I think is a really clever way to reach millennials who arent reachablecanvassing methods. Somebody should be paying her to do that in every precinct in Georgia, and I think she would jump at the chance to do that. My fear is that funders are either going to concentrate their money nationally in some of the kind of New York and D.C.based resistance organizations, and its not going to get to these places where they could really make a lot of use of it.

Jane Kleeb: For me, what happened in Georgia was a much kind of bigger magnifying glass on the fact that for the last decade, big donors with the Democracy Alliance etc., have been funding all the kind of outside independent groups, the advocacy organizations, and starved the state parties of resources. All of the talent has left the state parties because theres no money to fund staff positions and theres no permanent infrastructure, which is what state parties are supposed to be. So pouring a bunch of money in a six-month period is not going to win elections.

Franklin Foer: Theres an interesting sociological divide between Democrats and Republicans. A lot of Democrats have been passing along Jane Mayers book about the Kochs, which tells the story of how Republican conservatives set out to remake state legislatures and had this multidecade grand strategy for that. But Democratic donors, who dont have the same direct economic interests in transforming state government because they dont run businesses whose bottom lines are affected by decisions that get made on the state level, have simply ignored states as being kind of an unsexy place to invest money. So Democrats are simply decades behind when it comes to competing at this very essential level, which determines so much of American politics.

Jamelle Bouie: Theres probably something a little ideological there too, right? Im not sure that liberal donors and Democrats necessarily think deeply about federalism and about what one can do with the mechanisms and levers of state power. Its all very reactive in a way that isnt true of the Kochs, and isnt true of the larger kind of hard-right libertarian ideological movement, that sees a lot of value in state government as a testing ground for ideas and modeling the way they want the larger country to be. I think you also see this in the recurring conversations among rank-and-file liberals. Its always about presidential candidates. Its always about who can be a national leader and rarely about who can be an effective leader on the state level, much less legislative leaders.

Michelle Goldberg: A lot of people I talked to didnt know this was a right-wing strategy. They just suddenly had this kind of flash of light, that We need to do something. This is where we can start. This is the oatmeal. This is where we can kind of exercise power given that we have none federally.

Rebecca Traister: And that was something that I also heard echoed again and again. The people I was talking to werethey were all obsessed with small local elections, and they were explaining to me, in great detail, why that was the path forward.

Isaac Chotiner: I want to change gears a little bit. Jamelle wrote a piece looking at survey data about why Trump won. What was your takeaway from those surveys, and how much hope or lack of hope do you think it portends for the Democrats going forward?

Jamelle Bouie: Two analyses were drawn from a larger survey, which is being called the Voter Study Group. Its drawing people from across the ideological spectrum to look at this data, which is drawn from around an 8,000-strong sample of people surveyed in 2011, 2012, and 2016, which makes it really useful for trying to figure out why people who said they voted for Obama in 2012 then voted for Trump or said they intended to vote for Trump in 2016. For the two analyses I focused on, one looked at the most salient issues in the election for Obama and Trump voters in particular and those were what John Sides, who did the analysis, referred to as identity and culture issues: basically, how people felt about immigration, how they felt about Muslims and how they felt about black people. So those who voted Obama in 2012 and then Trump in 2016 felt most negatively about those three groups. Those were highly salient issues for them.

The one thing that absolutely has to happen is that this grass-roots infrastructure springing up all over the place, somebody needs to go in and fund it.

The second analysis by Lee Drutman, another political scientist, looks at Obama to Trump voters as well, but he separates the electorate into four groups based off of stated issue positions among the survey takers. You have liberals, who are on the economic left and the cultural left. You have conservatives, who are on the conservative right and the economic right and cultural right. You have libertarians, who are on the cultural left and the economic right. Then you have populists, who in Drutmans categories, are the reverse of libertarianstheyre on the economic left and the conservative right. The story I think that that is telling, and this is debatable, is that what happened in the campaign for this populist category, is that they value government programs in the economy. They want government intervention, they give high value to Medicare and Social Security and programs like that. They also dont like Muslims very much, dont like immigration very much, and arent too happy about black people. In past elections, or at least in 08 and 2012, if you were in that category of voter it was actually a little difficult to figure out who you were going to vote for. Most of these people voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but a substantial minority voted for Barack Obama. My thinking there is that when you have a more ordinary ideological contest, these voters have to make a choice about what they value more. Do they value their government assistance and a strong government hand in the economy? Or do they value their cultural identity resentments?

What Donald Trump did was match Clinton on the left on economic policy, at least rhetorically. So, if she proposed a $600 billion infrastructure program, Trump proposed a $1 trillion one. She said she would improve the health care system. Trump said he would, too. He also talked a lot about jobs and factories and vocally activated identities and showed signals of this is someone who cares about my economic standing. Here was a candidate offering both. And that I think was effective for Trump. The question is whether it would be effective in 2020, and Im not sure because by then, Trump will be defending a standard-issue Republican economic program. So that knocks out one element of his appeal.

Osita Nwanevu: The Drutman study is deeply interesting. The longitudinal study Im interested in seeing is the Obama-to-Nobody voters, of which there were millions and there are in every election. Voter turnout is not actually substantially down from 2012. But it was down enough in places like Wisconsin, particularly amongst African American minority voters, to really make a difference. This is like a long-term structural problem that the Democratic Party has and theres reason to believe that a lot of nonvoters lean more Democratic. The issue is how to actually bring those people in. I think thats a more interesting question than how we win back some of the people who are motivated by immigration or welfare, just because I dont know that the conversations that we have on those issues lead us in a positive direction on policy.

Jane Kleeb: I worked on the youth vote for a lot of years at the Young Democrats of America, and one of the biggest problems that we had, even within the Democratic Party actually investing in programs in the youth vote, is they would always come back to us and say, They dont vote. Its this whole cycle of neglect. So young people dont vote, so therefore theyre not invested in and theyre not included in targeted mailings and theyre not included in targeted TV ads and canvassing. Theyre left off walk lists, so then they dont vote and its this whole cycle. We proved, right, that when you target young people with a peer-to-peer program, targeting them where they hang out as well as at their doors, that they actually do vote because theyre just like any other voter. You have to talk to them multiple times, remind them of the election date, remind them of where their polling location is in order to get them to vote. So it becomes a habit.

Rebecca Traister: Michelle mentioned the efforts of Jessica Ziegler to reach young millennials by going to high schools. One of the interesting tensions happening in Georgia, which obviously is a very small example of this, was that a lot of the activist groups, a lot of the newly politicized volunteers and organizers, were sort of asking these basic questions that were talking about here. Which is, Wait. Were canvassing every day. Theres millions of us out here on the street. Why are we knocking on the same doors over and over again?

This speaks to exactly this conversation. If were not going to have these campaigns where were just going back trying to persuade people who are vaguely in the centerif were going to actually expand the Democratic base and thereby be able to run candidates who can be more unapologetically open about the kind of policies that they want to support, that involves remaking a base. But thats very expensive and its very difficult.

Michelle Goldberg: I agree that this is, from a policy perspective, the best way forward because otherwise you end up just kind of

Osita Nwanevu: Kicking out immigrants.

Michelle Goldberg: I think people who werent around in the 90s, forget that everything that we hate about Bill Clinton was done to appeal to the white working class, and it worked. Right? Thats the kind of direction you end up going if you are just primarily concerned with winning elections by winning back Obama-to-Trump voters. The other thing that I think is important to remember is that every single insurgent progressive candidate says theyre going to win by bringing in new voters. I mean, Ive never seen a race where that is not the claim, and Ive never seen a race where that worked.

Osita Nwanevu: I mean, part of this isnt just building out the things by bringing in new people. For instance, if you look at the numbers in metropolitan Detroit, the shift from 2012 to 2016. Clinton lost 75,000 voters. Its not just a matter of whether theyre not finding new African American voters that havent been reached before: It was literal people who they had reached before not coming out, who had before. And voter ID and voting restrictions are obviously a huge part of that in some states.

Isaac Chotiner: Frank, you wrote a big story in the Atlantic this month about what the Democratic Partys future should be. How does your thesis fit into this conversation?

Franklin Foer: I think the Democrats have a fairly comprehensive problem, which is that everything that we just described is true. Theyve underperformed in various states with African Americans and Latino voters. Especially, I think, in North Carolina and in some other places in the South. Numbers should be much, much higher than they are. What is the Democratic Partys problem? No. 1 is that its not simply their failure to win the presidency. Theyve had a terrible couple of years when it comes to every single branch of elected government.

My piece tends to focus on the question of whether the white working class, white noncollege voters that were talking about, are reachable, or whether racism and xenophobia has put them forever beyond the Democratic Party. Is there the possibility of recovering at least some of those voters with an economic message? My conclusion was essentially pretty similar to what Jamelle found. Theres at least some hope for recovering those voters with the populist message and it doesnt need to be a comprehensive win with those groups. It just needs to be enough to keep the margins to a tolerable level of defeat, which is what Obama managed to do in both of his elections. My hope is for some sort of economic populism. Populism itself is a very difficult concept for the Democratic Party because the Democrats are simply not where the Trump voters are on a lot of economic issues. Theyre much more internationalist, they generally support free trade.

Populism itself is a very difficult concept for the Democratic Party.

I thought there was some sort of potential in the populism that Elizabeth Warren has been developing because Warrens populism is really a populism that seeks to make capitalism work by going after big concentrations of economic power. She started to rail against not just Wall Street, but the problem of monopoly more generally. Theres a bit of a libertarian edge to a lot of what she talks about that I think has huge potential appeal. Because one of her big criticisms of business is that business exploits government in order to beat back competitors, in order to trample consumers. Shes tapping in to this very traditional American political rhetoric about competition, about liberty, about freedom. In that are the seeds of populism that could help stanch some of the losses that the Democrats have had with the white working class.

But I think a lot of the questions about the Democratic future are based on a somewhat false dichotomy about choices that they need to make because, of course, part of the reason why its own base didnt show up in the numbers they wouldve hoped for in various parts of the country is that they too perceived Hilary Clinton as a defender of the status quo. They were uninspired by her economic message.

Michelle Goldberg: Can I ask you, how much do you think that this is about her economic message as opposed to the more ephemeral questions of charisma and inspiration? It seems that when were in the midst of a defeat, we always try to sort of reverse engineer it and say theyve taken this policy or that policy. But it seems like theres often something much more mysterious going on in what creates a mass following and what gets people. Im inclined to think that the Democratic nominees should just be whoever seems to be the flashiest. Maybe it should be like Mark Ruffalo or something. I say that sarcastically, but it should be somebody with star power.

Isaac Chotiner: Maybe George Clooney, Michelle.

Franklin Foer: I believe that Jim Comey, Vladimir Putin, misogyny, all these things ultimately probably made the difference in the campaign. I think that its a mistake to focus too much on Hillary Clinton as our central object of study when were talking about the Democratic Party. Clinton won the popular vote, and if any number of very limited circumstances had gone the other way, would be the president of the United States, and we wouldnt be in this position. But I do think that the Democratic problem, like I said, is much more comprehensive than that. The problem is that the Democrats dont control any branch and that theyve gotten creamed so roundly. Again, the margins are not huge, so the problem isnt quite existential, but I do think its substantive and beyond any flaws Hillary had as a candidate.

Jane Kleeb: Lets just talk about Barack Obama for a minute, because he wasnt necessarily progressive or populist. Depending on whose ruler youre using, hes pretty much a moderate. And yet he provided the sense of hope and vision for the country that people wanted to be part of and wanted to get out and vote for. We saw people, obviously nonvoters, voting. And some people who voted for Trump were Obama voters.

Whatever candidate is going to be running in 2020 for Democrats, they have to have big ideas for little people. They do definitely have to have charisma, theres no question about it. That star power is critical when youre getting through the masses of people and cutting through all the other kind of daily parts of peoples lives. I think you really have to be talking about very concrete things that people can get their hands around, like expanding public education so theres universal pre-K as well as two years of community college. I think we have to go back to the kitchen table issues.

Osita Nwanevu: I think theres a difference between putting forward a policy agenda and crafting a vision or crafting a particular narrative that can appeal to people. Its very easy to say that Democrats should adopt A, B, and C kitchen table issues. But like, wrapping that into something that reads to people as big ideas rather than a set of policies, sort of wonky solutions, I think, is a difficult kind of task. I think that you need something to weave a progressive agenda together. Ive been looking into these questions of nationalism. There was a large debate right after the election about the extent to which nationalism makes sense as a means to which politicians should trim politics, particularly on the right. I think that one of the major sources of distrust between a lot of these white working-class voters, for instance, and Democratic candidates is that theres a mistrust of the extent to which Democrats like America. Or the extent to which Democrats see themselves as part of the American ideal and project.

Jamelle Bouie: Its funny because Barack Obama had that. Right? Part of where I think theres a real problem, that I dont know theres an answer for, is that at a certain pointand Obama did thisthat nationalist message, in order to find a receptive audience around a sufficient number of white voters, does have to give short shrift to everyone else. One of the things I think is underappreciated about Obama, and not in a good way, is that in 2008 he deliberately positioned himself as not like the other black leaders: I am not like Al Sharpton. I am not like Jesse Jackson. I am not like Bobby Rush. I am not like any of those guys. I do not speak like them. I do not come out of the same tradition as them. Critically, I do not hold you, White America, as particularly responsible or guilty for anything.

I dont think the partys done a great job of opposing Trump. I think the Democrats have been extremely lily-livered.

You can get away with that, rhetorically, on one level. But there does come a point where it is in direct conflict with a broader policy agenda. The way I sometimes put this is that, the kind of redistribution you might need to better alleviate racial inequality, is precisely the kind of redistribution that really angers white voters across the class spectrum. You can kind of get around that a little bit. You can kind of finagle that somewhat, but as Obama found, eventually the African American voters who supported you are going to start asking you about it. As Obama did, you might have to say, Listen, Im president for America, not for black America. That is a real tension that I dont know how one resolves. Its a hard question. Like everyone wants to say that you dont have to choose. In an analytical sense, you dont. But in terms of hard politics, there is a tension there. And Obama resolved it by basically saying, You can trust me. Im a black guy you can like.

Franklin Foer: Do you think that there was a realistic political alternative to that in the end? And second of all, what exactly was the policy cost of him doing that?

Jamelle Bouie: I dont know if theres a realistic political alternative. As I said before I started this whole riff, I have no answer for this. So much of the things I find disappointing about Obama on a policy level are kind of like, a level of timidity which, especially in the first year, probably exists regardless. Its just part of who he is. Its one of these where Im not sure theres any version of Barack Obama that wouldve been more aggressive on something. But you can kind of imagine an Obama whos aggressive about keeping homeowners from losing their homes. You can imagine this Obama being a lot more aggressive in general, willing to go the extra mile for homeowners of color who really kind of got completely crushed by the housing collapse.

Franklin Foer: I feel like the question that youre framing is kind of the core, which is that Democrats historically get hammered on the question of redistribution because it becomes racialized among a lot of voters. So the questions is: Is there a way for Democrats to escape that cycle? I do think that there is this debate right now on the left, whether theres a way to kind of go from a redistribution to a pre-distribution model, to emphasize questions about fairness over questions of redistribution, which I find to be rhetorically a pretty compelling way to go, just simply because it manages to extricate Democrats from a lot of the traps that they get stuck in. I do think fairness, if its positioned this sort of way, does have this potentially much broader sort of appeal.

Isaac Chotiner: Do you think the partys message about Trump so far has been right, and do you think the message needs to change in any way? Because I do think the next four years are largely going to be fought over this guy and who he is and what hes doing and his personality, regardless of what Democrats are talking about.

Rebecca Traister: I dont think the partys done a great job of opposing Trump. I think the Democrats have been extremely lily-livered, and here Im talking about congressional action and the level of aggression and outrage they should be expressing. But its complicated. Im also feeling right now a keen sense of not knowing the answers. My sense is: Look, opposing Trump works to some degree because Ive heard, especially in the wake of Ossoffs loss, a lot of diagnosis that is like, Look that doesnt work. Its not good enough. It doesnt win us the election. But there was also a massive swing motivated in part by the election of Donald Trump and the horror of the health care plan. That produced a movement in a district that had gone by 24 points for Tom Price to 5 points for Karen Handel.

Jane Kleeb: Sometimes people say, Hey. Obviously hitting Trump isnt working. As you just heard, it does work and we need to keep on hitting Trump and we cant stop there. We have to create a message of our own and some big ideas that people want and feel very deeply connected to.

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"They also dont like Muslims very much, dont like immigration very much, and arent too happy about black people." I would say progressive Democrats have a blind spot about immigration. More...

Franklin Foer: When Donald Trump was elected, Democrats thought that he possessed magical powers because none of them foresaw his election. There was a moment after his election when Democrats were just so dazed that there was a possibility that they would actually extend a hand to Trump and cooperate with him. I think pressure from the resistance prevented that from happening, and it shook the lapels of the Democratic Party to such extent that it actually, I think, has done a relatively magnificent job of resisting Donald Trump for the most part in terms of stymieing him, in terms of keeping him on the defensive. I dont think the attack on Donald Trump is quite adequate for the Democrats because the Democrats suffer from a Donald Trump problem but they also suffer from their ownGod, I hate the word, but lets use it and you can smack me afterwardsa brand problem, which is that people dont especially like the Democratic Party.

The necessity is to be able to find a way to leverage their war with Trump into something that helps build themselves up. That leads to a critique of the system that they can then, in turn, present themselves as the salvation for. If the attack on Trump focuses on him as being a corrupt maniac, which is all true, its probably not enough to help build a Democratic Party for the future.

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Can This Donkey Be Saved? - Slate Magazine

She's the colluder! (Above, the third presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on Oct. 19, 2016, in Las Vegas.)

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Compared with allegedly obstructing justice, allegedly profiting off the presidency in violation of the Constitutions Emoluments Clause, allegedly laundering money on behalf of Azerbaijani oligarchs and the Iran Revolutionary Guard in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, allegedly sexually assaulting women, and maybe even working with a foreign dictator to sway the U.S. presidential electionDonald Trumps crimes against the English language seem relatively minor.

On Sunday morning, however, the president tweeted the following:

I see what he did there. He took the word colludea word that journalists and voters use daily to describe alleged collaboration between Trumps campaign surrogates and the Russian governmentand slapped it onto Hillary Clinton, who for some reason Trump still considers his political rival. No colluder, no colluder! Shes the colluder!

Its worth noting some of the ways in which this tweet is interesting:

1. The tweet is nonsensical. Trump wants people to believe that hes under scrutiny for committing a crime that he did not commit and, moreover, that Hillary committed the same crime and got away with it. Trump is implying that he didnt secretly and illegally collaborate with Russia, but Hillary secretly collaborated with the Democratic National Committee, and unlike him, she was not investigated by Congress and the FBI for it! But while the conversations among DNC staffers that WikiLeaks published did show that the DNC tried to hurt Bernie Sanders candidacythe Unfair to Bernie! tag on Trumps tweet is its most reasonable clausethose emails did not show Hillary colluding with the DNC to commit a crime, which is what the allegations of collusion against Trumpworld are about. Websters defines collusion as a secret agreement for fraudulent or illegal purpose. When Trump says collude, he seems to mean merely works with.

2. The tweet is ironic. We only know about the DNCs moves to help Clinton win because hackers with ties to the Russians acquired and leaked the DNC emails showing as much. According to the U.S. intelligence community, they did this to help Trump win the election. So Trump here is pointing to HillaryDNC collusion that potentially came to light due to possible collusion between his own campaign and Russia, if such collusion occurred. Life, indeed, is a rich tome.

3. The tweet is strategic. Its fascinating to watch Trump try to turn around the words that have caused him so much trouble. Weve seen this schoolyard-bickering tacticIm not colluding, you arebefore, most saliently, in Trumpworlds wielding of fake news. The question now is: Will this strategy work?

Originally, the public conversation about fake news hurt Trump. Its existence and reach were tied to fictional stories that made him look good and made Clinton look badPope Francis Endorses Trump, Hillary Arms ISIS!!!, and what not. The popularity and spread of these stories suggested that Trump supporters were, at least in part, duped, and that if fake news was made-up garbage, real news from trustworthy outlets actually existed and was valuable. Trump didnt like that. After all, the real news was accurately covering his scandals and incoherent statements. So he transmogrified fake news, using it to discredit stories that he didnt like. And it worked. Surrogates like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway starting using the phrase, too, beating back reporters questions simply by stating fake news. Fake news became their own.

Now, two other words are harming the Trump administration every time theyre uttered: obstruction and collusion. Since Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the Russia investigation, and particularly since fired FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate on June 8, theres been a lot of heat on Trump. Theres significant evidence that Trump at least attempted to obstruct justicein his effort to lean on Comey to let go of the FBIs investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and in his firing of Comey, which by Trumps own admission, he did at least in part because of the Russia investigationand so the gang has gone back to the well. Behold some tweets that Trump has burped out since Comeys testimony:

Monday morning, as the cock crowed, our boy was back at it:

What the White House does not seem to understand or appreciate is that obstructionand collusionpose dangers to the presidency far more serious than fake newsever did. Trumps battle for the meaning of fake newswas primarily one over perception and public opinion. If enough people believed fake newsmeant what the administration wanted it to mean, the administration had won. Fake news, both in its original meaning and in Trumps usage, might corrode democracy like so much vodkabut it isnt a crime.

In contrast, obstruction of justice and collusion with a foreign power to sway an American election are very much crimes. Public perception of what those words mean wont save Trump from Robert Muellers investigation. Obstruction and collusion accusations against Hillary or other Democrats may soon be common yawps from Fox News and the internets MAGA corners, but social media wont save Trump from the law, either.

Nevertheless, public opinion about just who is obstructing and colluding could help the administration in one realm: Congress. Republican majorities control the body that ultimately will need to prosecute the president if Mueller finds there is something to prosecute. Perhaps if enough Republican constituents side with the president on what obstructionand collusionreally mean and who engages in it, senators and representatives will feel the old pressure of base revolt and primary challengesand agree with the president that the real crime here is Hillarys collusion with the DNC.

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Trump Is Now Accusing Democrats of Collusion and Obstruction - Slate Magazine (blog)

Common Dreams

Why the Democrats Won't Wake Up Common Dreams Moments after rightwing Republican Karen Handel won America's costliest congressional race ever in Georgia's sixth district, the de rigueur post-election quarrelling erupted: Why did Democrat Jon Ossoff lose, and what does it mean for the Democrats and ... If Democrats want to win, here's what they must fixCNN Froma Harrop: Democrats should shake their depressionThe Providence Journal Polling Shows Nancy Pelosi 'Toxic' in Districts Democrats Hoping to FlipWashington Free Beacon Rasmussen Reports -Vox -The Hill (blog) all 157 news articles »

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Why the Democrats Won't Wake Up - Common Dreams