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The 2018 election is still 543 days away. But already, it seems clear that Democrats are poised to sweep Republicans out of power in the House. And if President Trump keeps up his tripartite trainwreck of monstrous policy, abuse of power, and addle-brained babbling, any sentient being with a D after their name should be able to stomp Trump in 2020.

However, as I argued yesterday:

Democrats' goals must be bigger than Trump himself. If they are to defuse the threat of Trumpism, and help cure the rot within the Republican Party, they must win not only in 2018 and 2020, but again and again and again and use the power thus gained to cement their own grip on government and to restore civic health to the whole population.

How can Democrats do that? They can start by learning the proper lessons from their failures in the Obama years.

Many liberals thought that after the disastrous failure of the Bush presidency they were in for a generation of political dominance, like Democrats after the Great Depression or Republicans after the Civil War. But their moment in the sun lasted a mere two years.

They lost in 2010 because they failed to understand both the nature of their political opponents and the nature of the policy problems they faced. In 2008, most Democrats disastrously misread the state of the political terrain, and none more so than Barack Obama. Instead of seeing the obvious truth that Republicans were increasingly nutty fanatics who hated his guts, and who win elections by basically cheating he bent over backwards again and again to try to get Republican votes, and only narrowly avoided disaster. Neither he nor the rest of the party even considered very obvious (and perfectly fair) moves to backstop their own power, like making D.C. a state (all but guaranteeing the party one House and two Senate seats in perpetuity), or making voter registration automatic (which just sharply increased turnout among Democratic-leaning demographics in Oregon), or making Election Day a holiday, or a voting rights amendment, or other such ideas. Democrats can't even properly counter-gerrymander states they control.

Similarly, it failed to sink in that being the party in power during an economic calamity you fail to fix is the number one way to get wrecked in the next election. The party did manage to pass a large stimulus package. But it was not nearly big enough. And quickly repossessed by idiotic Beltway nonsense about budget deficits, the party was pivoting to austerity by early 2010, with unemployment still brushing double digits. Instead of breaking up concentrated economic power, the government largely sat back and allowed Wall Street to continue to roll up whole markets into tyrannical oligopolies. Worst of all, Obama by himself could have prevented nearly all of 9 million fraudulent foreclosures. He chose not to enforce the law.

Is it any wonder that Trump was able to marshal the anger of much of America's beleaguered working class?

To this day most Democrats do not grasp that even the pre-2008 economic status quo was awful for a great many Americans. The crisis of economic inequality is still largely treated as a boutique issue, ranked below growth or "equality of opportunity," or other such hoary centrist notions. In reality, inequality means the country is failing to function for much of its citizenry: Millions of people are working many hours for little pay, unable to afford child care or a higher education, or going up to their necks in debt for a worthless degree, or being bankrupted by medical debt despite being insured, and on and on. People are dying by the tens of thousands of diseases of despair suicide, opioid overdoses, alcoholism, and so forth.

The general wretchedness of American life today has helped create an angry, restless, and bitter population. Many simply give up on politics, while others are increasingly willing to listen to previously fringe voices on the left and right some, like Trump, horrible bigots. It is not the only factor behind Trump's success, but it is an important one and one firmly within the grasp of federal policy.

Now Republicans are in charge, and they're doing their level best to make everything worse as fast as they can. Unless they cheat so badly as to erase the last fragments of American democracy altogether, chances are pretty good that they will be knocked out of power in the House in 2018 just like the Democrats were in 2010, for the same reason: They have failed to make the country function on behalf of the people.

But if Democrats are to avoid the same fate once more, they must take steps to restore a decent quality of life to every American, without exception. By all means, the 2018 and 2020 campaigns should include a large measure of railing against Trump's brazen corruption and abuse of power, and if Democrats win they should undoubtedly figure out the truth about Trump and Russia. But as I have outlined before, once they take control, they must do better than fiddly little tax credits and jerry-rigged private insurance markets. America has enormous problems that demand bold, sweeping solutions. Fiddling with the knobs of centrist policy simply will not do.

Read more:
How Democrats can roar back - The Week Magazine

In this weeks politics chat, we sift through all the different lessons Democrats are taking from the 2016 election. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Theres been a sudden resurgence of post-mortems on the 2016 presidential election. So todays plan is to discuss the various conclusions that have been floating around. But lets talk through them specifically in regards to what lessons Democrats should learn heading into 2018 and 2020.

Everyone got that?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): jksdfbdsafbskdf

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Sounds like a blast.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Its a retreat to move forward, so to speak.

micah: Exactly.

OK, so question No. 1: Lots of people think Hillary Clinton ran too much of an anti-Trump campaign, as opposed to running on an affirmative vision for the country. Do we think thats true? Do Democrats need a vision for 2018 and 2020? Or can they win just by running against Trump? (With the latest James-Comey-firing imbroglio, for example, there seems like plenty of material for Democrats to run on.)

natesilver: For 2018, an anti-Trump/anti-GOP message should suffice. For 2020, theyll need that plus something more affirmative.

micah: What makes you say that?

clare.malone: There are governors races in 2018; dont Democrats need an affirmative message in those?

harry: We do know that Clinton ran a very negative campaign. At least on television. That didnt work. Or, it didnt work well enough. Midterms can be very different, however. Theyre usually a referendum on the incumbent president. That said, the relationship between a presidents approval rating and the midterm results is not as strong as you might think.

natesilver: PARTIES DONT HAVE BROAD, SWEEPING VISIONS AT MIDTERMS.

micah: Contract With America.

natesilver: Thats the only example, Micah. Think of another.

Go ahead.

Please proceed, governor.

micah: Democrats ran on an anti-war, anti-corruption message in 2006. That was a pretty consistent message nationally.

clare.malone: What if were in a new time, MAKING HISTORY, Nate? Isnt there room to think that this might be a new paradigm? (Points for buzzword, right?!)

natesilver: You might need an affirmative message if you were running against a super-popular Dwight D. Eisenhower-type of president and trying to make the case for why he needed some constraints on his power anyway. But the Democrats are running against Donald Trump. And Republicans already control both branches of Congress, in addition to the presidency. Its not a hard argument to make.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I have never thought that Clinton lost because she lacked a more positive message. Lots of people agreed with Trumps core message that the country is struggling, Washington needs to be shaken up. And he appealed to cultural/racial concerns in a way that she couldnt. Im not sure a more focused economic message, whatever that means, would have won Clinton Wisconsin, for example.

And I think 2006, 2010, 2014 all showed that running largely against the incumbent president is fine for midterms.

natesilver: Im not sure its true either, but I think this topic (whether Clinton needed a more positive message) has actually been a bit under-studied, relative to other causes of Clintons defeat. She was a pretty big outlier in terms of having so few non-negative ads. And whether this was the right decision or not, it probably had more impact than whether she visited Wisconsin, for instance.

harry: One of the questions that I havent seen answered is whether running against Trump could work merely because Democrats are fired up. Or whether they will need to win over Trump voters. Right now, the generic ballot suggests that Democrats wont have that hard of a time convincing people to vote against Trump.

perry: People wanted to vote for Trump. Or enough of them, in the right areas. I think 2018/2020 are referendums on him. A 10-point plan on X is fine. But it will be ignored.

Who among us has read Chris Murphys foreign policy vision?

Or Elizabeth Warrens new book?

micah: Who hasnt!?

Pop quiz: Whats the title of Warrens book?

natesilver: Im not sure Ive ever read a book written by a politician. Or at least not a my vision sort of book.

perry: This Fight Is Our Fight. I read it last week. Raise?

micah: At FiveThirtyEight, you actually get your pay docked for reading that kind of book.

perry: Murphy says we should double the foreign aid and diplomacy budget.

micah: Thats a winning message for sure.

natesilver: This Fight Is Your Fight. This Fight Is Our Fight. From California. To The New York Islands.

harry: One under-studied group is people who voted for neither Clinton nor Trump and voted for a Democrat or Republican for the House in 2016. Third-party votes made up about 3 percentage points more of the presidential than the House vote. If Democrats can win a good chunk of those in 2018, it could help them out on the margins.

perry: Right. Its not clear Democrats need to win many Trump voters next year.

micah: OK, question No. 2: Do Democrats need a message or plan that appeals to white working-class voters?

clare.malone: They need a message that appeals to all working-class voters. We touched on this a little bit last chat (I think theyre starting to blur), but Democrats need a front-and-center message that is hard-core populist economics (or at least rhetorically), appeals to white, black and Latino voters, and puts identity politics on the back burner a little.

Thats the real talk. Its not that Democrats need to get rid of talking about identity politics which is what people always read but its an emphasis thing.

natesilver: Theres the issue that white working-class voters are overrepresented in swing states. And also in the House and (especially) the Senate, given that they have something of a rural bias.

perry: I think the empirical answer to this is not really, right? You can win through gains in the suburbs, among college-educated whites, etc. And according to a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute, the data suggests that white working-class voters are being moved to Republicans by Trump-style rhetoric such as Make America Great Again and a kind of cultural nostalgia. Democrats cant out-identity the Republicans on issues like limiting immigration.

micah: Trumps appeal to white voters along cultural resentment lines particularly on issues like immigration was huge, right? I mean, that was Clares thesis in The End Of A Republican Party.

perry: The PPRI study suggests that its not that Democrats talked about Black Lives Matter too much, but that Trump talked about the problems of illegal immigration just enough.

This is where the Bernie Sanders approach falls apart, to me.

If the issue is not Democrats talking about race too much, but that Republicans have found cultural issues that work or them, thats a more complicated issue. How do Democrats appeal to white-working class people worried about cultural issues/the growing diversity of the country, etc?

That is what PPRI was highlighting.

harry: I havent read the report as in depth as you have, Perry, but I tend to think that over the long run, these things balance each other out. That is, it may not be tomorrow that Democrats win over enough college-educated whites in the Sunbelt to offset losses among working-class white voters in the Northeast and Midwest. But eventually, these things tend to work out to a 50-50 nation. (For what its worth, the PPRI study is not the first to mention the idea that Democrats would lose ground among whites fearful of the growing diversity of the country. Its been long discussed in academia. Its just that 2016 was the first time we really saw it in action on a national scale.)

perry: My point, to say this bluntly, is that if winning white working-class voters is about culture, not economics, Im not sure what a Democratic message for them sounds like.

micah: Yeah, I cant imagine a majority of Democrats will start dog-whistling on race.

natesilver: This point is a little hard to articulate, but are we overrating how much choice Democrats have in this area? A party, like any other large group, is sort of made up of its constituent parts.

clare.malone: Nate, by that do you mean catering to local culture? Catering to the different factions of the party in different geographic regions?

natesilver: I mean, you basically have a party made up of (1) white urbanites; (2) some wealthy white suburbanites, especially women; (3) blacks; (4) Hispanics; (5) Asians.

I guess Im just asking whether these things are self-fulfilling to a certain extent. People look at the sorts of people who are Democrats and they say, Thats not me.

perry: Right.

micah: But Democrats are recruiting 2018 candidates as we speak. Dont they have some agency there?

harry: Candidates still matter in House elections. Youre probably not going to win in Wyoming if youre a Democrat, but you have a chance to pick off some interesting seats if you run the right people.

perry: Yes, they have some agency. Candidates do matter. Im suggesting, if I were recruiting candidates, I would spend less time on populism, more time on finding people with cultural ties to their areas.

To me, if we think Joe Biden would have done better than Clinton, we are talking about culture/identity, not populism. (Although I dont deny they are related.)

clare.malone: The most interesting lab for all this are state legislative elections.

micah: Why, Clare?

clare.malone: Thats where Democrats can test hypotheses of who might win or if their fate is sealed in certain places by demographics and a shifting culture.

natesilver: The party can and should be more inclusive. And that means finding the right candidate to compete in lots of red-leaning areas. And a big tent attitude that permits multiple messages at a time.

clare.malone: So you could take your chance and see whether or not a populist running in a more Trump-leaning area can actually sell something in the Democratic-brand. Or if hes just perceived as, I dunno, the liberal elites tool in such-and-such locality.

micah: OK next question: Do Democrats need a better media strategy?

(This is Nates question, so, Nate, please explain the thinking behind it.)

natesilver: Haha. I guess I meant two things by that.

The first component is that if were diagnosing what went wrong for Clinton, her media coverage was an important part of it, particularly the coverage of email related stories (including FBI Director James Comeys letter).

micah: Here we go

clare.malone: Please just see Nates 30-part series on this.

natesilver: So do Democrats need to push back more against the mainstream media when the mainstream media latches on to dumb narratives? It might feel unnatural for Democrats because the mainstream media like Democrats have a center-left orientation. But it was certainly a problem for Clinton.

micah: Clare, Nates series is a skimpy 10 parts at the moment.

perry: The greater media push back is already happening: See Bret Stephens. Or look at Neera Tandens Twitter feed. Democrats now constantly attack The New York Times.

natesilver: See, Id argue that the pushback against the NYT, et al., is healthy for Democrats. The mainstream media has a lot of different hang-ups and biases, one of which is a liberal/cosmopolitan bias. But another one is that they respond to people who work the refs, and the right has been much better about working the media referees than the center-left has for a long time.

micah: Hasnt the media gotten better about not getting bamboozled by criticism into slanting coverage? Remember when climate change was a both sides issue? Thats not the case anymore.

clare.malone:

natesilver: The Times just hired Bret Stephens, and MSNBC just hired George Will, so Im not sure that climate is the best example.

perry: Right.

micah: Lol.

Im talking news coverage, though.

harry: Id say Democrats did a pretty good job of getting a network like CNN to call Trump a liar on its chyron. Trump lies more than the average politician, but still. Isnt that a sign that Democrats can do a pretty job of working the refs too?

clare.malone: Whoa. Stop, guys. The Democrats didnt make CNN do that. Lets give journalism some credit.

harry: Oh, I disagree tremendously. CNN was giving Trump wall-to-wall coverage with little pushback. For a very long time. Im not saying CNNs own journalists didnt also fight back. But I think Democrats definitely worked the refs.

natesilver: CNN became a lot more sophisticated over the course of the campaign, which is not to say they dont still have problems.

perry: Jeffrey. Lord.

micah: I mean, there was a learning curve for everyone in covering Trump. Us included.

natesilver: For sure.

clare.malone: Again, Ill make my now-tired response: TV news was very different than other news in how they were covering Trump.

micah: Yeah, we really shouldnt lump them together. TV has much different incentives.

micah: OK, so we think Democrats should keep working the refs?

perry: This will not be fun as a reporter, but I think the Democrats should invest as much time bashing the media as the Republicans have.

natesilver: Another media question: Do Democrats need to deal with the social media environment, the alt-right, fake news, WikiLeaks and the like?

perry: Thats where I think Democrats will have trouble. There is going to be active resistance on the left to the kind of misleading, false, crazy media style of some of the right-wing sites. Fake news, or what have you, can be an effective political strategy. And is dangerous for democracy.

clare.malone: The Democratic Party is a bigger tent. Breitbart works because of the out-group mentality of many Republicans and their relative demographic homogeneity.

harry: Im not sure there would be that much resistance, at least based on my Twitter feed.

micah: With Trump in the White House, there definitely has seemed to be an uptick in liberal conspiracy theories. But I think Clares right that theres something about the left culturally that keeps that wing of the party more contained?

perry: Right.

clare.malone: Although, theyre certainly more activated these days.

micah: So to Nates question about whether Democrats need a strategy to combat that stuff do they? What would it be?

natesilver: Yes, they need a strategy. And, no, I dont have any idea what the strategy should be.

Excerpt from:
Will An Anti-Trump Message Be Enough For Democrats In 2018? - FiveThirtyEight

New York Times

In New Jersey, Democrats Hope No Good Health Care Compromise Goes Unpunished New York Times Less than a week after Representative Tom MacArthur helped legislation that would repeal the Affordable Care Act clear a gridlocked House, he faced hundreds of outraged constituents and protesters on Wednesday in his district's Democratic stronghold. and more »

The rest is here:
In New Jersey, Democrats Hope No Good Health Care Compromise Goes Unpunished - New York Times

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- More than 200 Democratic committee members are casting a vote Thursday, choosing among the party's seven mayoral hopefuls.

"People are excited; there's a lot of energy," Onondaga County Democratic Chair Mark English said.

A candidate needs to win 50 percent plus one for a majority of the weighted vote. If that candidate isn't reached Thursday, the committee will vote again Saturday. If that vote doesn't lead to a majority, the top two candidates will go to a head-to-head vote. Committee members will evaluate everything.

"The personality and the quality of the person is the most important thing," English said.

Also important is the ability to raise money and win in November.

"We want to see energy; familiarity with the city, love of the city," English said.

Whoever comes out Saturday with the designation will have the financial backing and resources of the party, but with six other candidates in the race, a primary will almost be assured.

"We'll find out, English said. After the designations completed, we'll do everything we can to get people behind the designated candidate. If there's a primary, we'll deal with that too."

Candidates who don't get the party designation will have to find 1,000 signatures from party members to appear on the ballot. Some candidates have already said they will.

"It's just another part of the process," English said.

The Democratic candidates are Raymond Blackwell, Alfonso Davis, Chris Fowler, Marty Masterpole, Andrew Maxwell, Joe Nicoletti and Juanita Perez Williams.

More here:
Democrats Begin Process of Picking Mayoral Candidate - TWC News

(Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

Aftershocks from President Trumps firing of FBI Director James B. Comey roiled Washington on Wednesday, with Republicans divided over the presidents decision and news emerging that Comey sought more resources for a probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia shortly before he was fired.

I understand that there have been additional requests. Thats all I can say, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told reporters. The Justice Department, meanwhile, denied those reports.

Democrats on Capitol Hill slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and a growing number of Republicans questioned Trumps decision.

Comeys firing is expected to consume Capitol Hills attention until the weekend and potentially through Tuesday of next week, when the former FBI director has been invited to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panels chairman, who met with Comey on Monday, said the directors dismissal will frustrate bipartisan efforts to investigate Russian interference in the election and any possible ties between the Kremlin and associates of Trump.

[President Trump fires FBI Director Comey]

It creates challenges for the committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told reporters. An interruption in any of the access we have to the documents or the personnel would be harmful to our investigation.

The emergence of yet another Trump-related controversy also threatens to slow Senate Republicans progress on their agenda, including work on a health-care bill that would lay the foundation for tax reform.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however, downplayed the firing and sought to bring the debate back to friendlier territory.

Obamacare hasnt lived up to its promises, he said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor. Were working to keep our commitment to the American people to move beyond the failures of Obamacare.

Briefly addressing Comeys firing, McConnell accused Democrats of complaining about the removal of an FBI director who they themselves repeatedly and sharply criticized.

McConnells accusations of hypocrisy did little to subdue the controversy on Wednesday. Democrats responded by invoking an obscure rule that prevented committee hearings from continuing past midday an effort to slow the Senates work to increase pressure on Republicans to support an independent investigation.

I cant say its an ongoing strategy, said Feinstein. It certainly is for the day.

Several Democrats confirmed that Comey made a request last week for additional resources for his Russia investigation in a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Rosenstein is a Trump appointee who assumed office just 10 days ago. He wrote the memo that was used to justify Comeys firing; the memo, issued Tuesday, laid out the directors missteps in handling the FBI investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server.

Im told that as soon as Rosenstein arrived, there was a request for additional resources for the investigation, and a few days afterwards he was sacked, said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined several Democratic demands on the Senate floor. He said the Justice Departments highest-ranking career civil servant, rather than Rosenstein, should appoint a special prosecutor to lead the Russia investigation. And he called for both Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to brief the entire Senate on the events that led to Comeys firing.

Schumer also urged Comey to testify next week.

[Comeys removal sparks fears about future of Russia probe]

There are so many unanswered questions that only Mr. Comey can answer. We Democrats hope and expect that he will still come before the Senate in some capacity, he said.

House lawmakers, away on a week-long recess, were not in Washington Wednesday. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has said nothing publicly regarding Comeys dismissal, and he declined to answer shouted questions from reporters while touring a factory outside Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday. Im not doing questions right now, he said.

Democrats in the Senate, meanwhile, could further slow down business in that chamber.

They could refuse to allow consideration of any legislation, or nominees awaiting confirmation votes, until Trump agrees to appoint a special prosecutor.

With dozens of Trump administration nominees awaiting confirmation hearings or up-or-down votes on the Senate floor, such a move would likely hamper executive branch agencies that now lack political leadership.

Some Democrats said they wanted to give Republicans time to form their own response before deciding on next steps.

This is 12 hours old. I think we have to give a little time for Republicans to have a conversation and perhaps rise to the occasion, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) as he left the meeting.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) recommended that Democrats reach out to Republicans given that a small but powerful bloc of GOP senators has voiced concerns about the Comey firing. A former county prosecutor, McCaskill said Democrats needed to pressure Republicans to join the calls for the appointment of a special counsel.

Its about the integrity of law enforcement, she said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who has been calling for an independent probe since January, said he was powerfully impressed by the unanimity in our caucus behind appointing a special prosecutor, adding that everyone seems very persuaded.

While Democrats were discussing strategy, Republicans were trying to move on a sign of how unwelcome the Comey developments are for their agenda.

At a Wednesday lunch attended by Senate Republicans, Comey barely came up in the group discussion, according to attendees.

We were focused on health care and there might have been 120 seconds devoted to it, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

No talk when I was there, said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).

Vice President Pence repeated Trumps claim that Comey informed him several times that he was not under investigation. Pence made the claim, which the White House has not substantiated, during a visit to Capitol Hill.

The simple fact is, Director Comey had lost the confidence of the American people, Pence said, defending Trumps decision.

[The shocking firing of James B. Comey puts new pressure on Trump and his team]

Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) also dismissed the notion that Trump fired Comey to impede the FBIs Russia probe, calling it a phony narrative.

If you assume that, this strikes me as a lousy way to do it, he told reporters. All it does is heighten the attention given to the issue.

Among Republicans, only Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime Trump foil, has called for an independent investigation separate from ongoing probes by the House and Senate intelligence panels.

In a sign of his concern about Trumps decision, McCain stunned GOP colleagues on Wednesday by voting with Democrats to block final passage of a bill to repeal federal regulations on methane gas emissions. His vote ended Republican chances of reversing yet another Obama-era rule.

Other senior Republicans cast doubt on the decision to fire Comey, including Corker and Flake, who is up for reelection next year and did not support Trump in November.

I think the White House, after multiple conversations with many people over the last 12 to 14 hours, understand that they created a really difficult situation for themselves, Corker said. To move beyond this in a way that gives the American people faith and Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate faith in future efforts is going to be a really tough and narrow path for them to follow.

Flake tweeted Tuesday night: Ive spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comeys firing. I just cant do it.

Early Wednesday, as Blumenthal appeared on morning television programs to renew his calls for a special prosecutor, Trump went after him on Twitter for embellishing his Vietnam War record during his 2010 election campaign.

When caught, he cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness and now he is judge & jury. He should be the one who is investigated for his acts, the president wrote in tweets that Murphy later described as unhinged.

Blumenthal said he was unmoved by the attack. His bullying wont silence my call for an independent prosecutor, he said.

Karoun Demirjian and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:
Comey firing roils Washington, prompts calls for independent investigation and divides Republicans - Washington Post