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Sen. Susan Collins said Wednesday that she was upset a Senate Aging Committee hearing had been blocked after Senate Democrats invoked a rule to prevent committee hearings from being held until more details emerged on the possibility of getting an independent review of Russian interference in the U.S. elections.

"We have witnesses who have come here from four different states," the Maine Republican said. "How does that contribute to solving anything that has to do with Jim Comey's firing? I mean, it's just ridiculous."

Collins spoke on the Senate floor about her frustrations that the hearing, which was set to examine aging, had been canceled.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats held their own hearing on the House measure to replace Obamacare in the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey Tuesday evening, citing his handling of the investigation involving the emails of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the race for the White House.

In a statement released Tuesday, Collins refuted suggestions that Trump's decision to fire Comey was based on the investigation into the president's collusion with Russia during the election.

"Any suggestion that today's announcement is somehow an effort to stop the FBI's investigation of Russia's attempt to influence the election last fall is misplaced," she said. "The president did not fire the entire FBI; he fired the director. I have every confidence that the FBI will continue to pursue its investigation. In addition, I am certain that the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I serve, will continue its own bipartisan investigation and will follow the evidence wherever it leads."

Collins also commented on the efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. She has introduced her own bill with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., which would allow states to decide whether they want to keep Obamacare or work to craft their own plans. Collins expressed concerns she had about the House's healthcare bill passed last week.

"There are a lot of concerns about the impact of the health bill passed by the House, whether it's the impact on premiums for people aged 50 to 64 or the Medicaid expansion that 31 states have embraced, or how the high-risk pool would work," she said.

Collins held a presentation Tuesday on a high-risk pool model that was tried in Maine, but she said that the funding would need to total $15 billion in the first year to be effective.

"That is not in the House bill," she said. "There's actually $3 billion specifically designated for high-risk pools in the first year. You could take some money from the patient stabilization fund, but that money has a lot of claims on it for other uses."

Asked whether Comey's firing would result in a distraction from a focus on healthcare, Collins replied: "I think it already has."

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Collins expresses frustration over Democrats halting Senate business - Washington Examiner

Historically, the party of the president gets a shellacking, as President Obama called it in 2010, in the first midterm that they face. There have been only two cases when the president's party gained in both houses of Congress since the Civil War: in 1934 and in 2002.

Besides the normal historical cycle of backlash against the White House, Democrats this time around are whetting their lips because House Republicans have just voted for a health care bill that rescinds benefits for millions of hard-working Americans.

This could prove to be a policy victory that ends in political defeat. Between the midterms' track record and the polarizing health care legislation, this week's events would seem to be a recipe for political disaster for the GOP.

Democrats, on the other hand, see a silver lining in the House vote. They are hoping that TrumpCare will become the Republican ObamaCare, producing the same flip of control of the House that Democrats suffered in 2010.

And according to one Republican political strategist who deeply dislikes the president, "What we've done here is political malpractice. Democrats will run ads with weeping parents who can't cover their premiums and Little Johnny dying ..."

But is a Democratic sweep in 2018 really so certain? Is it so obvious that Republicans are on the verge of total electoral disaster?

With the economy having reached full employment, the best conditions in more than 10 years, many voters will be in good spirits about the status quo. Notwithstanding all the talk about the impact of the health care legislation, the bottom line to Americans' pocketbooks will matter a great deal come the midterm campaigns.

If conditions don't change significantly, Republicans will benefit. President Trump and the GOP, whether they deserve it or not, will be able to claim credit for the recovery. (Presidents usually get the blame or credit for economic conditions, even if they don't have a big impact on them.)

Republicans will say that indeed he is making America great again. Trump's supporters will feel that he delivered. Many Republicans who never loved Trump will nevertheless be pleased with the state of economic affairs.

There has been much discussion about the current version of the House bill and its "losers" who will make their angry voices known. But there are winners as well who will support what the GOP has done: wealthy Americans whose taxes will be lower, upper-middle-class Americans without pre-existing conditions, younger middle-class people who don't want insurance or want more meager insurance, and large employers who don't face the the mandate to offer coverage as they did under Obamacare.

To be sure, Republican candidates will face the ire of hospitals, Medicaid recipients and elderly Americans who are furious about the impact of the reform, if it passes. But this is not a bill that only takes things away from voters. Indeed, the bill redistributes benefits to some very powerful sectors of the country.

The benefits of winning in politics are important. If a health care measure gets through the Senate, Republican voters will be energized about a watershed victory. On the campaign trail, Republicans will have something to brag about when discussing what they have achieved in the Trump Era.

It is also very possible that passing health care would open to doors to a major supply-side tax cut that would bolster the confidence of core Republican constituencies who have money to spend on campaigns.

Democrats who are counting on a backlash to Trumpcare should also be careful not to forget that we live in a political world where public perceptions of policy and government are not simply the product of rational calculations by voters.

They learned this in the 2016 election but seem to have forgot the lesson. Partisan forces, ranging from the president to biased media outlets, can have a profound impact on how voters interpret what is happening in the political world.

Republicans have proven to be enormously successful at shaping the narrative about government decisions and policy. President Trump is a master of spin.

As the impact of a health care bill becomes clear, statistics won't be the only thing that matters. Democrats will have to counteract the powerful public relations campaign that President Trump and Republicans will certainly mount to convince voters that all the positives in health care are a product of their efforts and all the problems are still legacies of President Obama's broken policies.

The midterms are more than 18 months away, and a lot can happen to shape how they will play out.

Yet Republicans can still count on gerrymandered districts to protect incumbents in a large part of the red map. While courts have forced some states to redraw districts put into place after 2010, many of them remain in place for 2018.

If they do, and Freedom Caucus Republicans in the House decide that they need to deliver some kind of legislation, even if flawed, this could fundamentally change the dynamics of how the bill is perceived in the near future.

The reality is that Democrats should not be too giddy about the recent vote and their prospects come 2018. It will be a long slog to retake control of Congress and even to put a significant dent in the size of the Republican majorities. And Republicans can make a credible case that they will retain control of Congress and carry out more of their conservative agenda in the years ahead.

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Democrats, don't get too giddy about 2018 - CNN.com

REMBERT, S.C. Archie Parnell arrived at the Black Cowboy Festival with an impossible mission talking politics to people who had paid $20 apiece to eat barbecue and watch horses gallop around a track. He was the local Democratic nominee for Congress, but hed never run for office before, and shaking hands did not come naturally.

Im running for Congress, Parnell said to a polite but quiet couple sitting down to split a fried turkey leg. Id be grateful if you consider me.

He shook more hands; he started and halted conversations as a loudspeaker blared the name of the next horses and riders. But after he found a rhythm, he won the vote for Reneth Jones, 59, by talking about the Republicans plan to gut the Affordable Care Act.

Man, when you take that away, people are going to suffer, Jones said.

We dont see any compassion in what they do, Parnell said. It was a close vote. If you send me to Washington, Ill be a vote against that bill.

Parnell, a 66-year old tax attorney, had been a candidate for South Carolinas 5th Congressional District for just two months. The seat had opened when Mick Mulvaney joined President Trumps administration, and Democrats, bullish on races in Georgia and Montana, had said almost nothing about it. Georgias Jon Ossoff had raised more than $10 million for his June 20 runoff; Parnell, whose election is the very same day, had raised less than one-hundreth as much.

In the wake of the Houses health-care vote, Parnell and South Carolinas beleaguered Democrats are trying to make Republicans sweat in a district that isnt making it easy: one drawn to elect a Republican, and with a substantial black population that Democrats struggle to turn out.

While Democrats grow bullish on how a suburban resistance can roll back Republicans, Parnell is testing whether black voters can be turned out with a warning that a Republican-dominated Congress is threatening the way they live.

[Klobuchar, others start making 2020 moves and the base starts making demands]

But with no air cover from national Democrats, Parnell tried to turn his scrappiness into an advantage. A former congressional staff member who went on to work for Goldman Sachs, he quickly tells people that he had never sought office until the 2016 election got him thinking and until his hometown mayor told him he would be a good candidate. He showed up to the Black Cowboy Festival wearing a sweater vest; in campaign material, he is pitched not as a partisan Democrat, but as a tax expert who wants to fix the ACA and broaden the base for tax reform. His most-aired ad mocks his very ordinariness, showing him striding toward the camera in slow motion before he finally tells the narrator to knock it off.

Hes the one man wholl solve all your problems, and bring Clemson and Carolina fans together, the narrator says.

Wait, what? Parnell says. Politicians promise and then dont deliver.

Republicans are skeptical, verging on cocky. Last week, they caught their first bad break in the district when their primary ended in a near-tie between Tommy Pope and Ralph Norman, two conservative state legislators. (Norman sought and lost the 5th District 11 years ago.) That kicked off a two-week runoff, forcing the candidates to spend money and keeping the state party neutral until it has a nominee.

Archie Parnells a nice guy, and hes got two weeks of being ignored, said Matt Moore, the outgoing chairman of the South Carolina GOP. But hes going to have a problem getting Democrats mobilized, while Republicans are excited that the House is keeping its promises. I dont expect us to pull the fire alarm.

But South Carolina Democrats like to point to Kansas, where a Democrat lost by 7.2 points in a district the last Republican congressman had won by 31.1 points. A swing that size in South Carolina would elect Parnell.

Pope and Norman, whose campaigns did not respond to repeated questions from The Washington Post, have made no statements whatsoever about the Republicans American Health Care Act. In their ads, both candidates pledge to repeal Obamacare, and in one spot Pope even invokes the image of the 44th president to say theres no justice in Washington.

The upshot is that both GOP campaigns believe that the 5th District is ripe for whoever wins their primary. Mulvaney, in 2010, was the first Republican ever to win the district, which stretches from the suburbs of Charlotte to the exurbs of Columbia. In 2012, it rejected Barack Obamas reelection by 12.5 points; in 2016, it voted for Donald Trump by 18.5 points.

Parnells theory of victory takes that into consideration, and asks what could be done to change the electorate. One reason that 2012 gave the Democrats a closer race was that 28.1 percent of the districts residents, and a smaller percentage of its voters, are black. South Carolina Democrats, without overselling their chances, are universal on one point: if Parnell can make the electorate resemble 2012, using health care as an issue, he is in the hunt.

Itll take a campaign that concentrates on voter turnout, rather than TV advertising, which is what previous candidates have tried and failed, said Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the sole Democrat in the states delegation.

Some of the Republicans Obama-era gains have come when nonwhite voters sat at home. In polling by Priorities USA, a pro-Democratic super PAC, black voters who did not usually vote in midterms remained less likely to express interest in voting next year than angry white liberal voters. According to a new analysis of the 2016 election turnout, the two states that broke most dramatically away from Hillary Clinton Wisconsin and Michigan saw a double-digit decline in black votes.

South Carolina Democrats have responded by telling black voters that they are facing new and direct threats. In a radio spot that helped Parnell win the nomination over two little-funded black candidates Columbias black Democratic mayor beseeched voters to send Trump a message. Donald Trump asked us, What did we have to lose? Mayor Stephen K. Benjamin asks in the ad. Now we know the answer.

This past weekend, as he stumped across black neighborhoods, Parnell did not get many questions about tax policy. He was not challenged on his Goldman Sachs rsum something Republicans plan to attack to alienate him from liberals. (Parnell plans to rebut them by saying he was not a banker, but a policeman for tax compliance.)

Instead, he was egged on to fight Trump. At several homes near his Rock Hill campaign office, he was stopped and invited in so that voters could rant about the president. One retiree rifled around in his pocket for $5, so he could start a fund to send Trump to Russia.

On Sunday morning, Parnell was invited to Faith, Hope & Victory Christian Church in Lancaster, shaking hands on the way in before taking a seat in the first pew. In the old days, Id have sat over there, he said, pointing at the back of the room. Im really an introvert.

Halfway through the sermon, between the hymns and an interpretive dance, Parnell introduced himself to the dozens of rapt voters (and phone-checking teenagers) who came every Sunday.

Can you imagine an America without Social Security? Parnell asked. It would be a very different place, a place I dont want to live in.

The congregation was polite, but unmoved. Parnell picked up a fan he had been given, covered in pictures of the first black president.

Can you imagine the world that wed be living in without Barack Obama? he asked. Softly, one congregant said health care and Parnell had his cue.

Im glad you mentioned that, he said. Actually, this past week, the House voted to repeal Obamacare. If I were there, at that time, I would vote against that repeal. One or two votes make all the difference in the world.

Read more at PowerPost

Link:
In South Carolina special election, Democrats try for another GOP House seat - Washington Post

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, several alums of the Bernie Sanders campaign came together with media entrepreneurs from The Young Turks to chart their path forward. Disappointed with the performance of a Democratic Party they felt had chosen a too-centrist position, they decided to seek out and promote candidates from the left using some of the distributed organizing tools that had helped the Sanders campaign punch above its weight.

The group, called Justice Democrats, advocates for policy positions such as Medicare for all, regulating Wall Street, ending the failed war on drugs, and bringing about election reform, according to their platform. Meanwhile the group proposes electing individuals to replace corporate Democrats, and has criticized Cory Booker, Claire McCaskill, and other US senators on Twitter as #DemsVotingBadly.

These tools helped the Sanders campaign turn this digital grassroots media support into $33 million raised in three months alone

The Justice Democrats plan to organize in what executive director Saikat Chakrabarti calls a distributed fashion. As the director of Organizing Technology for the Sanders campaign, Chakrabarti worked alongside Justice Democrats co-founder Zach Exley and communications director Corbin Trent to create software to organize grassroots support. Among the platforms they pioneered was map.berniesanders.com, a tool which allowed volunteers to organize events, with planned events appearing on a map for other interested volunteers to locate. Volunteers organized nearly 60,000 campaign events using this software, according to Exley. The tech they developed also allowed for these teams of volunteers to organize without direct supervision from campaign staff, while being on call to assist in official field operations when needed.

These tools helped the Sanders campaign turn this digital grassroots media support into $33 million raised in three months alone. Internet-based campaigns tend to fail to achieve their objectives when they cant leverage the full capacity of all the people who raise their hands and say I want to be involved, Exley told The Nation.

The Justice Democrats are partnering with Brand New Congress, a similar endeavor aimed at electing non-career politicians in both major parties by using grassroots support. Their policy goals include getting money out of politics and investing trillions of dollars to rebuild and repair towns. The group, which intends to be a consolidated resource and fundraising entity for all of its candidates, shares many of its members with Justice Democrats, including Chakrabarti, Exley, and Trent.

I think that our ability to organize with technology and our ability to set up phone banks and distribute in an effective way is going to allow us to nationalize more effectively.

While Justice Democrats is still developing their own versions of these strategies and has not had much of an opportunity to put them into play yet they formed in January and just announced Cori Bush as their first candidate Cenk Uygur, the CEO of The Young Turk Network and a Justice Democrats co-founder, has already started to use his platform to promote the group. His show alone has over 3 million subscribers, with The Young Turks Network drawing in 80 million unique views monthly and being the most-watched online network among 1834 year olds, according to Esquire.

Our goal is to nationalize those races and to really frame a narrative around these representatives that they arent just representing their district, which is a very big part of it, but theyre also representing the rest of America with their votes, Trent said in an interview with The Verge. So I think that our ability to organize with technology and our ability to set up phone banks and distribute in an effective way is going to allow us to nationalize more effectively. And then hopefully thatll be something that supports the field operations on the ground of those candidates in those districts.

On their website, Justice Democrats is soliciting nominations directly from supporters, and have so far received over 8,000 potential candidates. Many of these nominees, who may also be nominated by a team of Justice Democrats researchers, have little experience in the political process.

They may be civil engineers, they may be activists, they may be nurses, they may be librarians or teachers or principals, but they dont necessarily have the skills to run a winning campaign, Trent said. Chakrabarti says theyre looking for people with a good life record, such as participating in various forms of activism, or just being well-liked community members.

The group had garnered 217,651 supporters and raised a little over $1 million by mid-March, just two months after they launched

In order to address the lack of political experience, they have established a vetting process that includes a candidate training program and interviews with the Justice Democrats leadership, according to Trent. At least 70 individuals have gone through the process. Among the nominees that the Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress have publicly endorsed are Ronjonette Harrison, a foster mom and social worker in New Yorks 26th congressional district, and Chardo Richardson, ACLU president of Central Florida and an Air Force veteran.

So far, one candidate has officially taken up the cause of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats: Cori Bush, a teacher, nurse, civil rights organizer, and preacher who ran for US Senate in 2016, and is now running to represent Missouris 1st congressional district in the US House of Representatives. Justice Democrats initially tweeted their support for her on March 13th, and she was announced as a Justice Democrats / Brand New Congress joint candidate running as a Democrat on April 20th. They initially aimed to raise $10,000 by her launch rally on April 30th to get access to the voter file they need to contact voters, soliciting $3 and $7 donations in emails to supporters. By April 24th, however, they had already raised $20,000, and succeeded in getting the file.

But their goals of beating establishment Democrats and electing a new slate of candidates necessitated aggressive fundraising and organizing. The group had garnered 217,651 supporters and raised a little over $1 million by mid-March, just two months after they launched, but Chakrabarti says it costs about $1 million to run competitively in a congressional race.

Right now, theres one basic path to Congress for candidates, and that path goes through big donors and PACs and lobbyists and were trying to create an alternative path.

If Bernie can raise $232 million in a primary, we think if we can raise somewhere around a little bit more than that for primary season that we can be competitive, says Trent.

The group is working on growing their slate of candidates in hopes of eventually running in over 300 races, further developing their platform, and growing their infrastructure of distributed teams and campaign staff, according to Trent. A large focus of their endeavors, however, will be fundraising.

One of the biggest things that weve got to do is provide an alternative source of fundraising, Trent said. Right now, theres one basic path to Congress for candidates, and that path goes through big donors and PACs and lobbyists and were trying to create an alternative path.

The teams next major project is launching the campaigns of eight more candidates with Brand New Congress, the identities of which they have not yet disclosed, other than that they are from states including New York, Florida, Arkansas, and West Virginia. Theyre looking to raise $187,574 to buy voter files for the candidates, and they plan on accomplishing that goal by continuing to solicit small donations. They also plan to use their tech-based strategies to run a presidential style campaign in these congressional races, which Trent says allows them to mobilize people from New York to California and everywhere in between to be impactful in campaigns they generally wouldnt even be aware of, let alone be able to be involved in.

We saw this campaign that was grassroots fueled, Chakrabarti said regarding the Sanders campaign when Justice Democrats first launched. Were going to do that same thing, but were going to take it forward to Congress.

Read more:
Meet the tech-savvy activists trying to take over the Democratic Party - The Verge

With his nomination Monday of 10 conservative judges to the federal courts, President Donald Trump is reviving the long-running judicial wars with Democrats. And the two picks likely to rankle Democrats the most are the ones they have the most leverage to block.

Senate Democrats have few powers to prevent judges from getting confirmed to their lifetime appointments, due to rules changes they pushed through in 2013 that eliminated the 60-vote threshold for nearly all nominations. But Democratic senators can wage a silent filibuster of sorts against nominees from their home states through the so-called blue-slip process.

Story Continued Below

Two of the 10 judicial nominees the White House unveiled on Monday were on Trumps short list of potential Supreme Court justices during the campaign: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, who will be nominated to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Justice David Stras, who sits on the Minnesota Supreme Court and is Trumps pick for the 8th Circuit.

Minnesota and Michigan are each represented by two Democratic senators. That gives Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, who hail from Minnesota, and Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of Michigan, what amounts to veto authority over the nominees, who are already drawing objections from other Democrats.

We know that there is a prized list now from [conservative] special interest groups and one of them is now on the Supreme Court, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, said Monday, referring to recently-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. If thats the way the president is going to choose the leaders of the judiciary, we need to ask some probing questions about why these special interest groups believe these particular judges are the best choices.

Of the blue-slip powers, Durbin added: As long as we have the authority, well use it if necessary.

In a statement, Franken said he was concerned Stras nomination was "the product of a process that relied heavily on guidance from far-right Washington, D.C.-based special interest groups rather than through a committee made up of a cross section of Minnesotas legal community." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Trump of continuing to outsource the judicial selection process to hard-right special interest groups rather than consulting with senators. Democrats have long been critical that Trump's Supreme Court short list was crafted with input from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society.

A spokesman for Franken said the senator was not meaningfully consulted and that the White House declined the Franken's recommendations to fill the vacancy at the St. Louis-based appeals court. A separate Senate Democratic aide said the Trump administration notified, rather than consulted, the senators, declining to ask for input before announcing the nominee.

Lack of consultation on judicial nominees goes against traditional White House practice, said veterans of the nomination process.

In the Obama administration, people would not return their blue slips simply because they felt they werent consulted efficiently, said Christopher Kang, who served as deputy counsel to former President Barack Obama.

Kang, now the national director at the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, said 17 judicial nominees during Obamas tenure were blocked because home-state senators declined to give approval, or return their blue slips to the Judiciary Committee.

Battles over judicial nominations are often caustic. But tensions have been especially high following the contentious battle to get Gorsuch installed at the Supreme Court and Trumps frequent attacks on the judiciary, particularly after judges produce rulings against his executive orders.

Mondays announcement of Trumps 10 conservative nominees came the same day that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considered the legality of Trumps revised travel ban.

Democrats will retain the blue-slip leverage, at least for now. A broad swath of Senate Republicans is opposed to doing away with the tradition, even as GOP senators blew up the old filibuster rules for Supreme Court nominees while they shepherded Gorsuch through to confirmation earlier this year.

Some prominent conservatives, such as radio host Hugh Hewitt, are urging Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to ignore the century-old blue slip tradition. But Grassley said he plans to abide by it.

In addition to Grassley, more than a half-dozen other Republicans on the judiciary panel said in interviews that they have no plans to ditch blue slips. That's the case even though doing so would allow Trump to more easily install conservative judges, particularly in states with two Democratic senators.

Thats been the traditions of the Senate, that home-state senators have a say, said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior member of the committee. Im not about to give up my rights as a senator to have a say about district court judges wholl represent my constituents long after the presidents gone.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who has 11 district court vacancies in his home state of Texas, along with two empty appellate court seats, called the blue slip an equal opportunity irritant.

When its an impediment, then people dont like it. When its helpful, people like it, Cornyn said. What it does [is], it provokes a negotiation, which I dont think is an altogether bad thing.

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Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), John Kennedy (R-La.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) offered a similar defense of the practice.

We used it effectively myself with Sen. [John] McCain to negotiate with the Obama administration on judges, Flake said. I like that tradition.

Trump inherited a significantly higher number of lower-court vacancies than his two immediate predecessors, handing him a significant opportunity to reshape the federal judiciary for generations. Obama faced about 50 lower court vacancies, while President George W. Bush inherited about 80 open judgeships.

For that, Trump largely has Mitch McConnell to thank. During the Kentucky Republicans first two years as majority leader, only 20 district and circuit court judges were confirmed by the Senate, marking the slowest pace of judicial confirmations by the chamber in more than six decades.

Before Monday, Trump had nominated just one candidate for the 129 vacancies currently hampering the federal judiciary: Amul Thapar to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, a sitting federal judge who coasted through his 90-minute confirmation hearing in late April.

Even with the announcement of the new nominees, other Republicans are eager for the Trump White House to send more candidates for the judiciary, particularly for vacancies in their home states.

Were concerned, said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. There is one judicial vacancy in Utah, which has been open since 2014. Weve already made our suggestions. They know that were interested in getting that taken care of.

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Democrats take on Trump over court vacancies - Politico