Mediaboss Marketing

Now that President Trump has delivered his State of the Union-style address, my fellow Democrats are settling in for a long fight. Our new DNC Chairman Tom Perez is leading the charge, promising to be a nightmare for the president and his fellow Republicans.

The reason is clear: Mr. Perez tastes political blood in the water. Trumps approval rating is at historic lows, hammered by allegations of Russian collusion, a contentious immigration ban, and emotional Twitter outbursts.

Yet smart Democrats know that our position with the American people is just as weak. We hold the fewest number of state legislatures, governorships, and federal offices than at any point since the 1920s. And its a trend that started well before the 2016 election.

In short, America isnt buying what Democrats are selling.

The reasons for this are numerous, and they include efforts by Republicans to suppress voters in North Carolina and gerrymander Congressional districts in Wisconsin.

But finger pointing at GOP operatives hides a much more painful truth.

Six weeks ago, the U.S. Senate considered an amendment that would have allowed Americans to import cheap prescription drugs from Canada. This common sense solution would have saved families thousands of dollars and lives. Not surprisingly, 72 percent of voters supported the proposal.

Yet the amendment failed, with 14 Democratic Senators rejecting it.

What could explain their vote? Cynics highlight the fact that many of these officials collect large sums of campaign cash from pharmaceutical giants. Top collectors of drug money include Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), all of whom voted against the bill.

Fair or not, this leaves voters with a very clear impression: Democrats are more interested in securing their reelection than helping sick Americans.

Regrettably, this wouldnt be the first time weve been accused of abandoning principles for profit.

Starting in the mid 1990s, President Clinton and other Democrats embraced free trade deals first NAFTA and then with China despite clear warnings about the damage both would cause manufacturing America.

As it turns out, the alarms were well placed: studies have shown that these trade deals have left many communities throughout the U.S. in poverty and deeply mired in unemployment.

Why then were we surprised when these voters turned down Secretary Clinton considering her support for not only the trade deals but also the bankers who benefitted from them?

All told, many Americans have come to view us as hypocrites. And I dont blame them. We are Perezs nightmare.

Which leaves us with a critical question: how can Democrats win back these angry voters?

Contrary to Perezs recent statements, its not about communicating our affirmative message. Its about an apologizing for what weve done or chosen not to do.

Lets start with trade. For 20 years, my fellow Democrats have advanced global deals that left too many behind, particularly in rural and blue collar America. We discardeded our roots as champions of the working class in exchange for campaign contributions.

For that, America, we are sorry. We failed you.

While were at it, lets be honest about how weve tackled environmental issues. For 20 years, our important and virtuous commitment to a healthy planet wasnt properly balanced with the needs of workers in places like Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest. In other words, we shut down the coal and timber industries without a plan to safeguard the communities left behind.

For that, we are sorry. Democrats let you down.

Finally, we have failed the country in the realm of national security. For the past 20 years, our repeated mistakes in Iraq, Libya, and Syria have left American families with more death and less stability. These botched conflicts have also pushed refugees and terrorists on a chaotic march around the globe.

For that, we are sorry. We have blood on our hands.

Yet apologies ring hollow without a remedy. We have to repair the harm that weve caused in order to inspire a new beginning. Elected leaders like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg are offering intriguing paths forward while Democrats like me are outlining initiatives like Our American Oath. This effort to be launched in the coming months promises a new covenant with the American people.

Without question, this approach of apologies and making amends is horrifying for hyper-partisan Democrats. In some cases, they (correctly) believe Republicans share equal blame. In other cases, its simply because they hate apologizing. I fully expect this to be their response.

And so does science.

In a book wonderfully titled, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), the authors reveal that our brains are hardwired to make us believe we are always right, even if faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, no one escapes this basic element of human psychology.

But believing were perfect takes a toll. In our personal lives, righteousness causes us to abandon or be abandoned by the people we cherish the most family, friends, and partners.

Its no different in our political lives. Just ask the voters in rural America and the Rust Belt who stayed home or voted for Trump in 2016. Or ask the voters who have punished us by reducing our power to the lowest levels since the 1920s.

All of which leaves the Democratic Party with an important choice. We can apologize and make amends, or we can walk down Perezs path of nightmares.

If we follow Perez, rest assured that we will continue to lose. Why? The humble majority of this country will grow ever more exhausted, first by Trumps fiery antics and then by our knee-jerk partisanship.

Alternatively, we can choose to be men and women who inspire integrity and humility. With an apology and better path forward, we can do something unique in American history: we will show that not only can we win an election but that we deserve to.

We will give America something to vote for, not against.

Bryan Dean Wright is a former CIA ops officer and member of the Democratic Party. He contributes on issues of politics, national security, and the economy. Follow him on Twitter @BryanDeanWright.

Read more:
I'm a Democrat and it's time for our party to apologize to America - Fox News

Congressional Democrats heard President Donald Trump dangle olive branches in their direction on Tuesday night but most departed his much-anticipated speech still deeply skeptical of Trumps interest in bipartisanship.

Trump threaded two ideas that retain Democratic appeal into his otherwise GOP-friendly remarks: an infrastructure plan that includes public investment and criticism of high prescription drug prices. He even earned some Democratic praise on the divisive topic of Obamacare for proposing that governors get the resources and flexibility they need to avoid cutting Medicaid coverage.

Story Continued Below

Yet the Democratic goodwill Trump earned with those priorities paled next to the disappointment among the minority, whose votes he will need to push many of his key priorities through the Senate. Most Democrats left Trumps speech predicting that his newly softened tone would not translate into different strategy or policy. And many panned a controversial new immigration proposal from the president.

Yeah, this wasnt one of his crazier speeches, but at some point hes actually got to follow through and do the things hes talking about, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview.

Murphy added that I stood and applauded when I think he clearly, specifically, chose to pitch an infrastructure plan that involves public and private money, a potential break from Republican leaders leery of any new federal spending. But once again, were five weeks in and we dont even have a whiff of an infrastructure plan from the president.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), facing re-election next year in a state Trump carried by 19 percentage points, shrugged off Trumps rhetoric as unsupported by action.

There was a lot of talk in the speech, but we still havent seen a plan for any of it, McCaskill said in an interview. Not for any of it. If we knew it was so simple, all we could do is lower the price of health care and everyone gets it, we would have done that a long time ago.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was more pointed.

It was more conciliatory, but it wasnt very substantive, the Illinois Democrat said in an interview. Trumps tone appeared calmer, Durbin later added, but well wait for the early morning tweets. Lets see how they look.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) graded Trump on a curve, saying that there were improvements in substance as well as tone given that Trump didnt lash out at the media or government employees behind recent leaks that have plagued his administration.

It was less concerning to our allies and less alarming to the average American than many of the speeches hes given in the last month, Coons offered.

Democratic members of congress wear aw U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress on February 28, 2017 in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. | Getty

Other Democrats were kinder to Trumps invocations of infrastructure and prescription drugs. Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, said that I shot out of my chair to applaud the talk of lowering drug prices, which Trump is expected to discuss at a meeting with a pair of Democrats next week.

Even Rep. Keith Ellison, the Democratic National Committees new deputy chair, allowed that "if he puts forth a meaningful infrastructure program, well look at it and well see."

"But that is an incredibly large leap," Ellison added. Given Trump's bitterly partisan and contentious first month in office, the Minnesota Democrat said, "he cant just say something to me and make me think, oh, awesome! No, no, no, no, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and Im not tasting nothing so far."

Other House Democrats condemned Trump's proposal for a new Department of Homeland Security office aimed at spotlighting victims of crimes perpetrated by immigrants. The proposed program vilifies an entire sector of our country, the immigrant community," House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) said in an interview.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), a potential challenger to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) next year, said that Trump's "tone was softer, not as bombastic," praising the president's talk of an infrastructure deal and action on expanding paid family leave.

"But his words, in many ways, were still very divisive," Castro added, slamming the DHS immigrant-crime-victims program as a bid to "use the abhorrent behavior of a few to generalize towards all. And thats unfair and its dangerous."

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper echoed several fellow Democrats in jokingly proposing that Trump keep using whichever speechwriter crafted his palpably warmer remarks Tuesday night. Still, Carper said, "with this fellow, you just dont know" whether a change in words would lead to a change in behavior.

"Lets see what he does," Carper said. "Well start getting a glimpse of that when we get a budget."

Burgess Everett and Heather Caygle contributed to this report.

Visit link:
Democrats: Trump wasn't crazy, but let's see if he keeps it up - Politico

By Bastien Inzaurralde By Bastien Inzaurralde March 1 at 1:14 AM

Astrid Silva, an undocumented immigrant, delivered the Democratic response in Spanish to President Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28. (The Washington Post)

Astrid Silva, an immigration activist and dreamer, delivered the Democratic response to President Trumps speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. Below is the English translation of Silvas response.

Good evening. My name is Astrid Silva and I am a dreamer and activist from the great state of Nevada. My family came to this country when I was 4 years old, looking for a better life. And like many of you, it is the only home that I have known. It is an honor for me to be here today to give the Democratic response in Spanish to the first speech by President Trump before Congress.

I am here representing the Democrats, the Latinos and the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are an integral part of this country and who constitute the values and the promise of the United States, and whom Trump is threatening with his mass deportation plan.

The speech by President Trump that we heard moments ago was divisive and its goal is to cause fear and terror in communities across the country. This serves as evidence and notice that the plans and vision of President Trump and the Republicans go completely against our values as Democrats, as Americans and as human beings.

The United States is not a country guided by hatred, fear and division as he makes it look like. Our country is guided by respect, hard work, sacrifice, opportunities and hope. In this country, there is no place for discrimination, racial prejudice or persecution.

However, this is what the administration of President Trump has brought about for Latinos and immigrants. During his first weeks as president, Trump signed executive orders that put our entire community in danger. He took actions that specifically aim to harm the immigrant community and refugees.

He is spending resources to transform working families into targets for deportation. He wants to spend thousands of millions of dollars to build an unnecessary wall. And he is seeking ways to deny entry to our Muslim brothers and sisters.

He has made very clear since the days of his presidential campaign that he wanted his supporters to believe that we immigrants are criminals and refugees are terrorists. And recently he directed immigration officers to arrest and deport any undocumented person that they encounter, essentially legalizing racial prejudice and setting his mass deportation plan in motion.

Among the people who were captured are mothers, fathers, dreamers, recipients of DACA, a victim of domestic violence and many more. Indeed, in the gallery of Congress today, listening to President Trumps speech were the children of Guadalupe Garca de Rayos, a working mother from Arizona who reported for her appointment with ICE only to be arrested and deported for no reason.

Today, Guadalupe is far away from her children, who are U.S. citizens and are an example of the great impact that Trumps actions have over the American people in general, not only in the undocumented community.

President Trump promised to lower taxes, combat terrorism and replace the Affordable Care Act in a speech to a joint session of Congress, Feb. 28. Here are key moments from that speech. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

These people must not be a target or priority of ICE. This is not the kind of country that we are. President Trump is returning to the darkest times of our history, criminalizing whoever is different, pitting us against one another, and sending a mistaken message to the rest of the world, thus helping foment the anger and hatred of terrorist groups toward our country.

But we must remember that this country is good and full of hope, where freedom of speech reigns and the people have the power. Instead of mass deportation, President Trump should focus on creating jobs and growing our economy. He should recognize the contribution of immigrants, from which he himself has benefited.

Instead of separating families, President Trump should pass a sweeping reform that would honor this countrys tradition of welcoming immigrants. Instead of closing the door on Muslims and insulting countries around the world, President Trump should work with our allies to fight and defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups and seek peace.

Instead of being on the side of oil corporations and special interests, undoing our progress in fighting climate change, President Trump should be a leader in protecting the quality of our air and our water, because we only have one planet. And if we destroy it, what will we leave for our children?

We Latinos suffer from asthma more than other groups. The condition of the environment is key for our well-being. Instead of repealing the health care law, which gave health insurance to millions of Latinos, Trump and the Republicans should improve it so that the program cover more people and be less expensive.

The Republicans want to cut funding to Planned Parenthood even though community health clinics provide preventive and primary health care for hundreds of thousands of people.

People across the country are attending town hall meetings with their Republican senators and congressmen and expressing their discontent with the possibility that they take away access to health insurance from millions of people, many of whom cant pay for it on their own. The Republicans must listen to these people and make sure that the nearly 30 million Americans dont lose their coverage.

And instead of hiring millionaires and Wall Street executives for his Cabinet, such as Steve Mnuchin, President Trump should fulfill the promise of working for the well-being of the American people. Our schools need more funding, our teachers better salaries and our vulnerable children need protection.

We dont need an education secretary like Betsy DeVos, who has worked to weaken our public education system and who has personally benefited from cutting funding to our schools. The fight for the confirmation of the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, is nearing. Now more than ever, we need a check on an out-of-control administration.

Judge Gorsuch must confirm that he will be an independent judge, that he wont yield to the administration. We are living in times of uncertainty, completely outside of the ordinary, in which the administration is constantly questioning the news media and actively tries to destroy its credibility.

We cant allow those actions to become normal. It demands that those of us who understand the risk for women, for the LGBT community, for our environment, for the workers, immigrants, young people and refugees, work together to protect our communities from deportations, violence and discrimination.

Only that way will we be able to claim the values that make this a great country. We immigrants and refugees are the soul and the promise of this country and we are not alone. The Democrats have made a pledge to fight for us and for the working middle class. They are our line of defense against President Trump and the harmful policies of the Republicans in Congress, in the Senate, in the courts and in the streets.

We Democrats understand that we must protect our immigrant families, that we must improve our infrastructure, that we need better jobs with higher salaries and that the cost of higher education is too high.

We must make changes so that education, the great equalizer, be within everyones reach. We Democrats want equality, respect, and that all people have the opportunity to fulfill themselves. Because we know that our nation is stronger when we treat each other with respect and when we work together for the common good.

I was lucky to grow up surrounded by my family and to fulfill my aspirations. I was able to go to school and university, I obtained an arts certificate from the College of Southern Nevada and my bachelors from Nevada State College. I am a living example of the promise of this country. And I know that Democrats will continue to fight for the promise of a better life for all.

President Trump and the Republicans can use calmer rhetoric and appear moderate, but we know that the wind blows words away. Actions are what matter.

I am here today to tell you that Democrats are with us and to ask you not to lose hope because we are in the struggle together. May God bless you. Thank you very much and good night.

More here:
Read a translation of the Spanish-language Democratic response to Trump's speech - Washington Post

Senior Democratic officials reportedly say that they will adhere to the call from their liberal base and take an all-out-war stance against President Trump.

The New York Times reported Thursday that there was a time when Democrats were divided on their Trump approach. Trump did win former blue states in his November victory and Democrats in those states witnessed a new vulnerability.

The report, however, said that protests and angry emails have prompted Democrats to "cast aside any notion of conciliation with the White House.

My belief is, we have to resist every way and everywhere, every time we can, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington told the paper. Inslee said there was a tornado of support for a wall-to-wall resistance.

TRUMP GETS READY TO TAKE CENTER STAGE AT CPAC

Douglas E. Schoen, a former pollster for President Clinton and Fox News contributor, wrote in an opinion piece that Trump's ascendance is rooted in Americas preference for center-right policy."

"As the Democratic Party shifted ever leftwards under Obama, it suffered net losses of 11 Senate seats, 62 House seats, and 10 governorships since 2010, as well as nearly 1000 state legislative seats.

He went on to say, The groups driving the Democratic Party to the left believe their only path to victory is mobilization. These forces are pushing the party away from the American public, which fundamentally is center-right, and channeling the concerns and priorities of the core Democratic coastal base.

Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., is considered a middle-of-the-road. He told The Times that loathing Trump is not a governing strategy.

There is this vitriol and dislike for our new president, he said. The challenge for us is to harness it in a productive way and a constructive way, and I think we will.

Original post:
Democrats reportedly plan total war on Trump | Fox News

ATLANTA Unable to get closure on the partys stunning losses in November, nearly 20 Democratic interest groups, operatives, and state committees have commissioned their own private 2016 election autopsy reports.

The projects, which aim to diagnose the partys ills and pave a path forward, are designed in part to fill the void left by Hillary Clinton's campaign, which has yet to offer any formal explanation for its defeat. Instead, leaders of her campaign effort have let the candidate's complaints to donors about Russia and FBI Director Jim Comey's intervention stand alone, leaving a public silence about the details of her defeat that has spawned tangible frustration among party operatives.

Story Continued Below

While Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and members of his team have been privately presenting their own findings to Clinton and other influential party figures, the absence of a full, public accounting of the factors and forces underlying her shocking loss has generated a cottage industry of projects dedicated to explaining and understanding how things went so wrong for the party in November.

Some of the investigations would have happened anyway: There are two parallel probes of what happened in the U.S. House alone one from New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, and another led by New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.

By far the largest effort to take stock of the last election cycle is a project thats unlikely to produce any public-facing set of conclusions. AFL-CIO Political Director Mike Podhorzer in January quietly convened leading political, data, and polling professionals from Clintons campaign, outside groups, and progressive organizations for four sessions in Washington where the group shared their own findings.

The Democratic data firm Catalist has also stepped in to provide analyses for a wide range of groups with which it works, pulling together sophisticated, exhaustive looks at turnout and party support based on precinct data, voter files and the group's own models and figures within the states one presentation describing the situation in a non-battleground state, obtained by POLITICO, stretched to over 50 pages.

I certainly did mine for the DNC Executive Committee, but hell, every conference call theres someone with an opinion of what went wrong and why, said Cornell Belcher, a leading party pollster who presented his initial findings to that group in Denver at the end of last year.

The projects are taking place under the aegis of both national and local-level groups from super PACs to state parties to organized labor officials and they often disagree in both their focus and their conclusions.

A number of state parties are conducting deeper-than-usual audits of the election, from the Florida Democratic Partys analysis of its performance at the state legislative and presidential level to efforts led by party committees in states including Iowa, Minnesota, and Georgia.

The Womens Voices Womens Votes Action Fund has analyzed the groups own November 7-9 polling, exit polls, and its mail-based registration campaign the largest in the country to look for response rates in their target demographic groups: unmarried women, millennials, and people of color, explained Page Gardner, president of that group and the Voter Participation Center.

All of it represents tens of millions of dollars worth of investment in research, and hundreds of hours of under-the-radar meetings and panels, according to interviews with a wide range of their drafters and a review of six comprehensive or partial reports obtained by POLITICO.

Spanning from informal pollster presentations to secret hundred-page documents some of which are finished, and others of which are still being assembled the constellation of reports is circulating at a time when the Democratic Party nationwide is at one of its lowest depths in a century, and when a persistent chorus of party donors and candidates are demanding answers on the failures of 2016 as they wait for the Democratic National Committee to elect a new chairman.

There is a widespread assumption that the partys new chairman will also eventually put together a formal party-wide assessment.

The lingering question for party leaders and consultants is how much of the intel and assessment will eventually be made public to ameliorate the fears and concerns of a furious base demanding a clear path forward.

Its a good thing for everybody to be involved in rebuilding the Democratic Party, so as many people want to throw their opinions into the mix, eventually the truth will come out of that. My post-mortem is not the complete picture, and I dont think anyones is. The more the merrier, and its really important that Democrats look in the mirror and dont just lean on Russia or fake news, said veteran party strategist Donnie Fowler, who drafted his own assessment at the request of interim party chairwoman Donna Brazile, referring to two explanations for Clintons loss that are frequently proffered by Democrats.

The donors are really looking of clarity and direction, absolutely, he said. But if you want to be Maoist about it, this is a time for a thousand flowers to bloom.

Crafting an election autopsy before the official party committee builds its own is no easy feat. Its a politically delicate endeavor in any year, and at the moment operatives still dont have access to a completely updated voter file with comprehensive nationwide data from 2016. That means that most of the conclusions offered thus far are tentative.

Most of these analyses are based on exit polls, and the one thing we know about exit polls is that they were wrong, explained Tom Bonier, CEO of Democratic data firm TargetSmart.

Yet Democrats who are actively engaged in fundraising say the lack of an official party-wide autopsy is a constant topic of conversation for donors considering contributions especially the big whales who sat on Clintons national finance council only to receive a thank you note, but no accounting of the loss from the candidates team after November.

Not all of the circulating analyses are meant to be comprehensive. Instead, some are designed to zero in on a demographic or issue most important to the organization in question. But that has led to results that often appear to coexist uncomfortably at a time when party leaders are wrestling with how to fit moderates and increasingly empowered progressives under the same big tent.

When Bernie Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver presented his own findings to the Senate Democratic caucus this month, for example, he told senators they need to face up to the reality that more and more primary voters consider themselves liberal, according to a Democrat familiar with the report. The liberal Center for American Progress think tanks 12-page The Path Forward report similarly makes the case that a majority of Americans, including Trump backers, support progressive policies, from safeguarding Social Security and Medicare to combating money in politics.

America did not sign off on a radical-right agenda with Donald Trumps election, and progressive leaders should remember that, reads the report, which was published in December.

But the centrist think tank Third Ways $20 million New Blue initiative is looking at the circumstances under which recently Democratic Rust Belt states voted for Trump -- and one of its initial findings, published Wednesday, was that, Despite the large change in the demographic composition of the electorate, most voters still do not self-identify as liberals. In fact, liberals remain bronze medalists in the ideological breakdown of the electorate ever since the question was first asked decades ago."

Other projects have led to disagreements over which slices of the electorate are worth focusing on in particular an elaboration of the broader fight over whether it makes sense to invest more in winning back working class white men or the young, minority voters of the so-called Obama coalition.

Priorities USA Action, which grew to become the largest Democratic super PAC ever in its support of Clinton last cycle, is using polling and focus groups in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida to study both Obama voters who sat 2016 out and Obama voters who backed Trump. Guy Cecil, the group's chairman, presented some of the findings to the DNC's executive committee on Friday morning. Brazile said she asked Mook to present too, but he was unavailable.

The groups initial report noted that the party has a clear opportunity to win back the Obama-Trump voters. Its a popular group to study: more than 200 counties swung from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016, and 10 sitting Democratic senators are up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won.

In a reflection of the partys inability to come to a consensus on the causes of Clintons defeat, Belcher contends that focusing on such a group is missing the forest for the trees.

Are there people who voted for Obama and voted for Trump? Yeah, there are some. Are there millions and millions of people who did that? No, its fucking absurd, he said. Its not like Trump blew through the Mitt Romney number in any of these states. You know what Trump got in Florida? 49 percent. You know what Romney got in Florida? 49 percent."

The story is different in Ohio, however, where Obama won by three points in 2012 and Trump won by eight in 2016.

There, state party chairman David Pepper is spearheading one of the most comprehensive state-level projects, which includes a series of "kitchen table conversations" beginning last month, wherein party officials listen to groups of 20-30 locals both Democrats and Republicans to ensure they arent in a bubble when it comes to issues that matter to those communities, in Peppers words.

Part of a presentation of the 2016 Strategic Ohio Post-Mortem obtained by POLITICO includes county-level maps comparing Democrats disappointing 2016 results to 2012, and charts comparing turnout between the two cycles. It also presents the finding that smaller urban counties saw Democratic performance plummet, while counties that voted for Obama saw a drop-off of roughly 182,000 votes for Clinton in 2016. Among the states 50 smallest counties, it also notes, Democrats lost by 20 percent in 2012, and 46 percent in 2016.

You cant lose those red counties that badly, you cant make up that difference. So understanding what happened in those scattered counties is important, because if you dont do better there, there just arent enough Democrats in urban areas to make up for it, said Pepper.

Treading on more sensitive territory, the presentation also includes a slide titled, No Persuasion Canvass, which includes images of three Clinton ads and criticizes the campaign for mandating that organizers not try to persuade voters through conversations a decision that has been roundly criticized since November.

Its one of the more explicit critiques of Clintons Brooklyn-based operation among the existing autopsies, which tend to shy away from direct criticism but often note the imperative of finding an affirmative message rather than the anti-Trump one pushed by Clinton in the campaigns closing stretch.

In fact, thats an argument made in A Way Forward, an early January analysis from former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and party consultant David Eichenbaum.

The candidate and party with a simple, compelling and consistent economic message that empowers people is the side that usually wins. No matter what polling may say about the efficacy of a positive message at any given time, we need to give voters a reason to be FOR us. A positive vision is not something we can start talking about in the last two weeks of an election, or not at all, the report concludes.

After all, as Beshear told DNC members at a recent candidate forum in Houston, The Democratic Party has lost its way. Lets face it: Weve been getting our butts kicked in elections. Weve been losing elections around the country that we should win."

Read the original here:
Democrats pile up election post-mortems - POLITICO