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A major Democratic super PAC embarking on perhaps the party's only comprehensive public effort to assess what went wrong in 2016 released their first findings Monday, assessing missed opportunities among what it has determined are two key voting groups.

Priorities USA, which spent nearly $200 million supporting Hillary Clinton last year, commissioned two Democratic pollsters to the two blocs. The first is a group they've identified as "swing voters," who went from voting for President Obama to President Trump. The second is "turnout voters," who lean Democratic but stayed home on Election Day last year, such as millennials and African-Americans.

"Our initial research clearly shows that there are real opportunities to increase turnout and to reach swing voters who are already finding out that Donald Trump and the Republican Party will consistently turn their backs on the American people," said Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil.

The Democratic National Committee has so far not established any formal "autopsy" process, like the one the Republican National Committee famously created after their loss in the 2012 presidential election.

Some Democrats were frustrated by the lack of follow through on a similar postmortem report issued by the DNC in response to losses in the 2014 midterm elections. And after watching the RNC's 2012 report be used against Republicans who did not follow its recommendations, especially on immigration reform, they wonder if it's worth the trouble and money for Democrats to commission a public autopsy report now.

That decision will likely be made by whomever emerges as the new party chairman, set to be elected next week.

For now, Democrats can turn to Priorities USA, which as a super PAC depending on major donors, has a more pressing need to justify its existence than the official party apparatus.

Cecil will formally unveil findings of what they're calling "Project Blueprint" at a conference later this week. Later, he plans to travel the country to share the research with Democratic officials.

The research, based on surveys of Obama-Trump voters and three sets of focus groups in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida, argued swing voters are already having some buyer's remorse about Trump.

They were drawn to Trump by his businessman persona and the perception that he's not a typical politician, according to the group, so Priorities USA suggests Democrats work to undercut that image, especially among non-college educated women.

Related: In Race for DNC Chair, Tom Perez Pledges to Woo Back Red, Rural America

And their research found that congressional Republicans are far less popular than Trump with Obama-Trump voters, creating another potential avenue of attack.

Meanwhile, among "turnout voters," like African-Americans and millennials, disillusionment kept many of them home, but Trump may get them back out, according to the group.

"They were surprised about the 2016 outcome and are distraught about the prospect of four years under Trump," according to the Priorities USA memo, which was prepared in conjunction with the Global Strategy Group and Garin Hart Yang Research.

To target both sets of voters, the pollsters argue, Democrats should argue that Trump, despite his campaign rhetoric, is helping the rich at the expense of the middle class.

"Both groups are concerned about Trump and the Republicans putting the interests of wealthy Americans and corporate executives first," the memo continues.

It sees an opportunity for Democrats in defending Medicare, a perennial party messaging tactic, but also in sticking up for Obamacare.

"Democrats should not shy away from talking about the situation the Republicans have put themselves in regarding the Affordable Care Act: repeal with no replacement is a real concern," the memo states.

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The Two Key Voting Groups Democrats Need to Win Back After 2016: Report - NBCNews.com

Donald Trump's phone use is under security scrutiny.

Donald Trump's phone use is raising security concerns among a pair of senate Democrats.

Sens. Tom Carper and Claire McCaskill sent a letter last week to Secretary of Defense James Mattis about whether the president is using a secure device to make calls and post tweets. The senators, who both service on the Homeland Security Committee, worry that an unsecured device could be vulnerable to hacking, posing a national security risk.

"Public reports originally indicated that President Trump began using a 'secure, encrypted device approved by the U.S. Secret Service' prior to taking office," the senators wrote in the letter, which was made public Monday. "Subsequent reports, however, suggest that President Trump may still be using his personal smartphone, an 'old, unsecured Android phone.'

"While it is important for the President to have the ability to communicate electronically, it is equally important that he does so in a manner that is secure and that ensures the preservation of presidential records," the senators wrote.

The Secret Service issued Trump a secured phone for his inauguration, but the president has since reportedly used an unsecured Android phone to tweet from the White House while watching television.

Trump's use of an unsecured phone comes after an election filled with hacks of the personal communications of Democratic political figures and organizations. Individual phones are easy to hack for anyone motivated enough, security experts say.

The White House was contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.

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Donald Trump's phone security questioned by Democrats - CNET

A bitterly divided Senate on Monday confirmed Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary despite strong objections by Democrats that the former banker ran a "foreclosure machine" when he headed OneWest Bank.

Mnuchin was sworn in Monday night in the Oval Office, where President Donald Trump said Americans should know that "our nation's financial system is truly in great hands"

Trump hailed Mnuchin as "a financial legend with an incredible track record of success." He said Mnuchin had spent his entire career making money in the private sector and now will go to work on behalf of the American taxpayer.

Republicans said Mnuchin's long tenure in finance makes him qualified to run the department, which will play a major role in developing economic policy under President Donald Trump.

"He has experience managing large and complicated private-sector enterprises and in negotiating difficult compromises and making tough decisions and being accountable for those decisions," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee.

Votes on Trump's Cabinet picks have exposed deep partisan divisions in the Republican-controlled Senate, with many of the nominees approved by mostly party-line votes.

The vote on Mnuchin followed the same pattern. He was confirmed by a mostly party-line vote of 53-47. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined the Republicans.

The Senate also confirmed a less divisive nominee Monday evening, physician David Shulkin, to be secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The vote was unanimous.

Like others in Trump's Cabinet, Mnuchin is a wealthy businessman. He is a former top executive at Goldman Sachs and served as finance chairman for Trump's presidential campaign.

As Treasury secretary, Mnuchin is expected to play a key role in Republican efforts to overhaul the nation's tax code for the first time in three decades. Trump has promised to unveil a proposal in the coming weeks.

Mnuchin will also be in charge of imposing economic sanctions on foreign governments and individuals, including Russia.

The president, who has known Mnuchin for years, said his longtime friend will help make the U.S. a "jobs magnet."

"He'll work 24 hours a day, I know him. He'll work 28 hours a day if they give him the extra four hours," he said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Mnuchin "is smart, he's capable, and he's got impressive private-sector experience."

Democrats complained that Mnuchin made much of his fortune by foreclosing on families during the financial crisis.

In 2009, Mnuchin assembled a group of investors to buy the failed IndyMac bank, whose collapse the year before was the second biggest bank failure of the financial crisis. He renamed it OneWest and turned it around, selling it for a handsome profit in 2014.

"Mr. Mnuchin has made his career profiting from the misfortunes of working people," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. "OneWest was notorious for taking an especially aggressive role in foreclosing on struggling homeowners."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said, "I simply cannot forgive somebody who took a look at that banking crisis and took a look at the pain that Wall Street had sent in a wave across all of America, and thought, 'Ah, there's a great new way to make money, foreclosing on people.'"

Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, called Mnuchin "the foreclosure king."

Mnuchin has said he had worked hard during the financial crisis to assist homeowners with refinancing so that they could remain in their homes.

He said his bank had extended more than 100,000 loan modifications to borrowers.

But several Democratic senators raised examples of residents in their states who they said were not treated fairly by OneWest, including elderly homeowners and members of the military.

Democrats also complained that Mnuchin failed to disclose nearly $100 million in assets on forms he filed with the Senate Finance Committee.

In his testimony before the committee, Mnuchin defended his actions while heading OneWest. He said he had worked hard during the financial crisis to assist homeowners with refinancing so that they could remain in their homes.

He told the committee that his bank had extended more than 100,000 loan modifications to borrowers.

Mnuchin called his failure to disclose assets an oversight. After meeting with committee staff Mnuchin amended his disclosure forms and also disclosed his position as director of Dune Capital International in the Cayman Islands, a well-known offshore tax haven.

When pressed by Democrats to explain the omissions, Mnuchin said: "I did not use a Cayman Island entity in any way to avoid taxes for myself. There was no benefit to me."

The Treasury Department is responsible for a wide range of activities, including advising the president on economic and financial issues. The department oversees the IRS, negotiates tax treaties with other countries, imposes economic sanctions against foreign governments and individuals, and targets the financial networks of terrorist groups and drug cartels.

The department also issues the bonds that finance the government's deficit spending.

Republicans and Democrats praised Shulkin, who is charged with delivering on Trump's campaign promises to fix long-standing problems at Veterans Affairs.

Shulkin, 57, a former Obama administration official, has been the VA's top health official since 2015. He secured the backing of Senate Democrats after pledging at his confirmation hearing to always protect veterans' interests, even if it meant disagreeing at times with Trump.

He has ruled out fully privatizing the agency and says wide-scale firings of VA employees are unnecessary, describing the VA workforce as "the best in health care."

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Senate confirms Steve Mnuchin as Treasury secretary over objections by Democrats - Chicago Tribune

If no man is an island, no political party should be an archipelago. Such are the Democrats blue islands in a sea of red.

True, an America becoming younger, better educated, and less white trends Democratic. Thus Democrats have carried the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, an unprecedented run. But 2016 confirmed that demography writ large does not decree success.

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Young people, for example, are often unengaged. Voter suppression laws target minorities and the poor. Above all, political polarization and demographic sorting control the electoral map.

Most obvious is the electoral college. Hillary Clintons 3 million-vote edge was erased by a cluster of less educated whites in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But the preponderance of red states over blue also affects the Senate, where Idaho and California each elect two senators.

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As for the House, this advantage permits state legislatures two thirds of which are controlled by the GOP to draw congressional districts that tilt Republican. Half those states also have Republican governors; Democrats enjoy this hammerlock in only six. The result? A GOP that won half the votes cast in congressional elections claimed 55 percent of the seats.

But this demographic divide goes deeper. As Paul Taylor shows in his seminal book The Next America, we are increasingly sorted into think-alike communities defined by ethnicity, education, and economic status. And so geography mirrors demography.

Clintons 3 million-vote edge came from but 420 of our 3,100 counties. The space between is best measured by economics. The 16 percent of counties supporting Clinton accounted for 65 percent of our GNP, and their median home price was 60 percent higher than in counties carried by Trump.

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These economically ascendant counties, largely urban, are geographically isolated. Hence the archipelago islands of the relatively privileged surrounded by what is, to them, a mare incognitum, in which the less educated and more aggrieved dog paddle to survive.

One recalls the film critic Pauline Kael, who wondered aloud how George McGovern lost when everyone she knew had voted for him. However silly, Kaels observation was a precursor of the wasted vote phenomenon, wherein Democrats roll up huge margins in blue enclaves, only to be thwarted by the tripartite menace of the electoral map, gerrymandering, and demographic sorting.

But this social chasm is graver than elections can measure. As Taylor writes, the GOP skews older, whiter, more religious and more conservative, with a base that is struggling to come to grips with the new racial tapestries, gender norms, and family constellations. By contrast, Democrats tend to be younger, more nonwhite, more liberal, more secular, and more immigrant and LGBT-friendly, prepared to welcome diversity. Alienation follows.

The result, Taylor explains, is that 92 percent of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat in their core social, economic, and political views, while 94 percent of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican. Moreover, he adds, two-thirds of consistent conservatives and half of consistent liberals say most of their close friends share their political views. Easier to do, he notes, when liberals prefer cities to the small towns and rural areas favored by conservatives.

Our growing economic disparity also aggravates what one could call a despair gap. As reported in The New York Times, a study by the Center for American Progress found a direct correlation between the percentage of underwater homes and counties that voted for Trump. Similarly, a sociology professor at Penn State found that Trump fared better in counties where the mortality rates caused by drugs, alcohol, and suicide were highest. Among many other things, some poisonous, what issued from Trumps America was a desperate and angry cry for help.

The grievous truth is that ever more Americans fear other Americans, whose lives they can no longer imagine, save as the enemies of all they hold dear. And partisan media and social media purveyors of alternative facts fortify these gated communities of the mind.

The GOP must preserve them, lest their residents notice that Trumps populism of false promises and racial animus masks its service to the wealthy. The Democrats road is infinitely harder but potentially more unifying than merely firing up their subgroups while scaring seniors about entitlements. The party must become a credible force for betterment in the lives and minds of more Americans, no matter who or where. Only then will we learn whether politics can help restore a country so fractured and embittered.

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The Democrats' demographic dilemma - The Boston Globe

State House Sound Bites

Capitol reporter Katie Meyer covers Pennsylvania politics and issues at the Pennsylvania state capitol.

One of the party's biggest projects over the next year will be getting the state's top Democrats--Governor Tom Wolf and US Senator Bob Casey--reelected. (Photo by AP)

(Harrisburg) -- The 2016 general election wasn't too kind to Democrats in the Keystone State.

Not only did the commonwealth go red in the presidential election for the first time since 1988, Republicans gained their biggest majorities in the state House and Senate since the Eisenhower administration.

Now, the beleaguered party is trying to update its message.

The PA Dems just held their annual winter meeting, and in his Keynote address, governor Tom Wolf had one particular overarching message: double down on economics.

State party chairman Marcel Groen said that's going to be key in winning back some of Pennsylvania's longtime blue collar Democrats outside of big cities--many of whom voted for Trump.

"These are areas where people are somewhat socially conservative, so the Republicans try to get us to discuss social issues when we should be talking about economic issues because they're the ones that matter," Groen said.

He conceded that some areas will be more difficult than others.

"In some of the southwest counties, it's going to take a lot more work," he said. "People have lost their jobs. They're scared. So the union affiliation is not as strong as it once was."

However, Groen added that as Trump's administration gets underway, he's actually feeling optimistic.

He said there's been a huge outpouring of grassroots support from Democrats; now the only question is how to best harness that energy.

"I've never seen protests in the street after a president's been elected, regardless of which party.," Groen said. "And those protests seem to be growing. And they're spontaneous--I mean we don't have anything to do with them."

The Democrats' main focus over the next year will be on two races in particular: Governor Tom Wolf and US Senator Bob Casey--the state's top Democrats--are both up for reelection in 2018.

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What's next for Pennsylvania's Democrats? - witf.org