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By Ron Klain By Ron Klain July 5 at 7:25 PM

Did Democrats ignore or worse, condescend to white working-class voters in 2016?Did many of these voters back Donald Trump because of his promises to restore economic growth for small towns and in manufacturing and mining or because they resented rising prospects for minorities and women?Can these voters be returned to the Democratic fold with sharper economic messaging? Or does appealing to them require an unthinkable retreat on issues of social justice and inclusion?

These questions have divided Democrats since Election Day. But who really condescended to working-class voters in 2016 and what should replace such condescension today?

The most damning piece of evidence for the Democrats condescended claim is Hillary Clintons statement last September that half of Trumps supporters were a basket of deplorables.I was with Clinton the next day, and it was clear how much she regretted that formulation.Worst of all, the focus on this comment drowned out the real point of her remarks:that Democrats had an obligation to understand and empathize with Trump supporters in the other basket people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, [and] nobody cares about them.

Far from condescending, Clintons campaign spoke truth to these voters: Our economic future is Stronger Together.Americas best hope to remain an economic superpower is an inclusive economy where immigrants start businesses and create jobs, where everyone can make meaningful contributions to an innovative economy and where the United States masters the economic opportunities that come from challenges such as climate change.That message may not have appealed to some working-class voters, but it isnt condescension its honesty.

By contrast, Trumps economic message has been a kind flim-flammery where the carnival barker lavishes compliments on his audience while whispering to his sidekicks, Can you believe they are buying this?He extolled the virtues of Buy American while building his own projects with imported Chinese steel.He made immigrants the scapegoats for a wide array of economic problems, while applying for special visas to import foreign workers for jobs at Mar-a-Lago.

It was Trumps campaign that reeked of condescension when he told working-class voters that he alone could make sure that jobs shipped overseas come back. Trumps presidency is erected on faux populism, as he claims to look out for forgotten people while saying that only rich people are qualified to formulate economic policy and using the presidency to promote his familys businesses. Appealing to working-class voters on false promises and flawed premises is not showing them respect:It is a condescending belief that with enough bluster and showmanship, you can get away with anything.

Democrats should respond to this not by writing off white working-class voters, or by mimicking Trumps divisive rhetoric and hollow promises but with a combination of honest talk and a new social and economic contract for the working class.

The honest talk starts with unapologetically reminding Trumps working-class voters that immigrants like their own ancestors have always made America greater, bringing new energy, ideas and job-creating businesses to our country.It means telling them (as President Barack Obama did), that the time has passed when you didnt have to have an education ... [and] you could ... get a [good] job.It means rejecting economic nostalgia, and embracing technology and innovation; when these forces are shaped by the right policies and a fair tax system, they can create a stronger middle class in our country, as they have during earlier periods of economic transformation.

A new social and economic contract for the working class would include replacing the confusing mishmash of higher education plans with a clear program to make four years of education after high school free and universal.It should include defending and then building on the Affordable Care Act so that every American has health coverage without fear or doubt.It should ensure that benefits such as unemployment compensation and workers comp are available to all, whether they are employees or contract workers.It should make affordable child care a right (not a scavenger hunt) and life-long skills training an American area of excellence.

But like any true contract, this set of benefits must be paired with obligations. This includes an uncompromising insistence that the economy it creates will be inclusive and that, with a program in place to restore economic opportunity for those who have been left behind, there can be no excuses for resentment of Americas growing diversity.It also includes acceptance that young people will have to get education after high school, working adults will have to continually improve their skills, and some long-beloved occupations will be replaced with new jobs. The nostalgia for an America where brawn alone was enough to create a middle-class life and where a comfortable stagnation was revered as tradition must be abandoned.

Candor, not condescension, is the Democrats path to unmasking the false promise of Trumpism and reclaiming working-class voters in 2018 and beyond.

Excerpt from:
To win the working class, Democrats need to start talking straight - Washington Post

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent out some tester bumper stickers for the midterm elections that have been met with about as much warmth as a fender bender. One reads: Democrats 2018. I mean, have you seen the other guys?

Slogan suggestions were sent out via email to DCCC subscribers on Wednesday, prompting several people to share the less than inspiring ideas on social media.

The National Republican Congressional Committee was quick to jump on the negative attention the bumper stickers stirred up, writing on its website: After Nancy Pelosi and national Democrats were roundly mocked for their ridiculous stickers, we decided to help them with one of our own.

It added: Nothing encapsulatestheir party better than our "Democrats 2018: We win moral victories, not elections" sticker.

Other, less criticized slogans suggested by the DCCC included: She persisted, we resisted, and make Congress blue again.

Subscribers were asked to vote for their favorite bumper sticker, with the winning slogan to be picked after the polls close at midnight tomorrow.

The Democrats have faced criticism that the party appears to be rudderless following Hillary Clintons surprise election loss in November.

Indeed, pundits on both the left and the right have voiced concerns that the party has no clear leader. For many, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did not give a satisfying answer in March when questioned on the subject by CNNs Anderson Cooper.

Nonetheless, the party is gearing up for the 2018 midterm elections, with very early predictions looking favorable for the Democratsquestionable bumper stickers notwithstanding.

Of the previous 20 midterm elections, the presidents party has lost seats in 18 of them, CNN reported, with an average of 33 seats lost per electionmeaning history clearly favors the opposition party.

The rest is here:
Democrats 2018: New Slogan Could Be, 'Have You Seen The Other Guys?' - Newsweek

Photo Credit George Tames/The New York Times

This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive more briefings and a guide to the section daily in your inbox.

After Democrats lost yet another election last month this one in a House race near Atlanta the historian Daniel Williams urged the party to confront its religion problem.

That problem centers on a generational and racial divide between a largely secular group of young, white party activists and an older electorate that is more religious and more socially conservative, Williams wrote. Put simply, outside of a few progressive districts, secular-minded young activists in the party are unable to win voters trust.

In yesterdays Times, the historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf offered a surprising suggestion for where Democrats can find a solution to their religion problem: Thomas Jefferson.

To be clear, Gordon-Reed and Onuf arent claiming to be offering political advice; theyre talking instead about broader civic values. But I was struck by the connection between the Jeffersonian values they describe and the Democrats modern-day religion struggles.

Jefferson infused his political philosophy with Christian values, even though he was not a deeply religious man in the traditional sense.

See more here:
Jefferson's Lesson for Democrats - New York Times

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel doesn't think the AHCA will pass through Congress and shares his ideas about how Obamacare could be improved, rather than repealed. He speaks with Susan Page, USA TODAY Washington bureau chief, on Capital Download. USA TODAY

People rally in favor of single-payer healthcare for all Californians outside the office of California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, June 27, 2017 in South Gate, California.(Photo: Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON Its not just the GOP thats divided on health care.

Legislation Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to introduce soon highlights a wedge issue for Democrats and is emerging as the Republican retort to their own problems with repealing and replacing Obamacare.

While defending the Affordable Care Act, the Vermont independent says the way forward in the long term is a Medicare-for-all single-payer system, a federally-administered program that would eliminate the role of private insurers in basic health care coverage.

Medicare-for-all...will be saving middle class families substantial sums of money, and it will be guaranteeing health care to every man, woman, and child in this country, said Sanders, who is part of the Senate Democratic leadership team, Sunday on CNNs State of the Union.

Single-payer health coverageis becoming increasingly popular with Democrats. But such proposalsgofurther than the Democratic Party platforms call for universal health care which could still include private insurers and beyond the fixes most other Democratic Party leaders are currently discussing for Obamacare. They are attempting to focus attention, instead, on the perils of the deeply unpopular GOP plans that would increase health care costs for middle-class and working-class families and raise the number of uninsured Americans by more than 20 million people.

Despite her prior support for single-payer plans, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said at a June 25 forum that right now we have to support the Affordable Care Act and defeat what the Republicans are doing, which she called grotesque.

But Republicans are pointing to the Sanders plan as Democrats only alternative to Obamacare, raising the specter of a government takeover of insurance that will cost trillions and be financed on the backs of taxpayers. An Urban Institute study of Sanders proposal during his presidential campaign said it would increase federal expenditures by $32 trillion over 10 years, though a Sanders aide says the forthcoming bill will cost less than the campaign plan.

The president believes that its completely unaffordable and creates a one-size-fits-all government approach to health care, said White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at "The People's Summit" in Chicago on June 10, 2017.(Photo: Jim Young, AFP/Getty Images)

Support forsingle-payer health coverageis growing, with 33% of the public favoring this approach to health insurance compared to 21% in 2014, a Pew Research Center poll found in June. The share of Democrats (52%) supporting a single national program to provide health insurance is up 19 points since 2014.But nearly two-thirds of liberal Democrats (64%) support single-payer health insurance while only 42% of conservative and moderate Democrats favor that approach.

In the House, a record 113 lawmakers all Democrats, including about half of the leadership team have signed onto Rep. John Conyers single payer bill.The Michigan Democratattributes the support to the success of Sanders presidential campaign message and Republican overreach with a truly sadistic bill.

By proposing to slash Medicaid and put poor people's lives in jeopardy to finance a tax cut for millionaires, they've defined the terms of the debate, frankly, better that we've ever been able to, said Conyersin a statement. Americans now understand they've got a stark choice between a Republican vision where healthcare is a privilege available only for those who can afford it, and a Democratic vision where healthcare is a right of all people that we collectively guarantee.

But the centrist think tank Third Way sees talk of a single-payer plan as an effective strawman argument for Republicans and an obstacle to preserving Obamacare. Americans dont want to start from scratch and a massive expansion of government wont help Democrats connect with voters who just elected President Trump, said Matt Bennett, Third Way co-founder.

Discussion of single payer right now is irrelevant at best and at worst a serious distraction from the fight to save Obamacare, he said. All Democratic energy has to be directed at saving Obamacare. We do not understand why anyone would take their eye off the ball at this moment.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., a Third Way co-chair, says its fine if states want to experiment with single-payer plans. But its premature to just drop everything at the federal level when there are fixes to save Obamacare. For instance, guaranteeing federal subsidies to insurers who offer reduced rates to working families would help stabilize the federal insurance marketplaces and drive down costs, he said.

Weve just gotten to the point where we know how to make this work, he said of Obamacare.

Some states have tried to implement single-payer plans, but none has succeeded yet. Vermont jettisoned its plans for a publicly financed health care system in 2014 after then-Gov. Peter Shumlin announced it was unaffordable, and the state is now in the process of implementing a different plan that pays medical organizations based on health outcomes. Meanwhile, single-payer health care legislation stalled in California after the assembly speaker blocked its passage last month.

Sanders supporter RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, blames private insurers for the exorbitant cost of health care. A litmus test for the progressive community will be whether politicians can support eliminating private insurers role in the health care system.

People are really suffering and they cant afford the insurance industrys model, she said. People want reprieve from this and they want to just be able to have health care without having to worry about being bankrupt. If they can do it in every other country, why cant they do it here?

Read more:

Poll: Only 12% of Americans support the Senate health care plan

White House official: If Senate health care bill fails, pass simple Obamacare repeal

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2tSlm9O

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United against 'Trumpcare', Democrats divided on next steps - USA TODAY

By now, comparisons between Watergate and Richard Nixon and the Russia investigation and Donald Trump have become stale.

Soon after Trump entered the White House, his national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign after getting caught up in the investigation into Russian meddling in the last yearselection.

Then his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the probeafter it was revealed he had met with one of the Russian officials at the center of the investigation.

Concernsescalated after the president fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May, drawing comparisons to Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, whenhe fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

The cloud hanging overTrumps first five months in officehas motivated many upstart Democrats to consider running for Congress, both in special elections this year, and in the 2018midterms. That enthusiasm has drawncomparisons to 1974, when Democrats won 49 House seats and 5 Senate seats in the first election after the Watergate scandal and Nixons resignation.

But Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Minnesota Rep. Rick Nolan, the last remaining of theso-called Watergate Babies in Congress (Democrats who ran and won their first races that year) say there are important distinctions between 1974 and todays political environment.

Weve gotten too used to put -gate on anything, Leahy said. Back then, what you had was domestic political corruption. Now were talking about a major foreign country trying to subvert our democratic institutions.

Leahy said it was important for Democrats to tell [voters] what they believe in.

Former Rep. George Miller, who was also elected in 1974 and left Congress in 2015, said the Watergate hearings improved Democrats odds of winning and encouraged more to run.

You could draw a conclusion [that he was going to win]because the evidence is compounding, the California Democratsaid. That was the nature of the Watergate hearings.

But Miller cautioned that 2017 is different since the investigations havent reached their conclusions. We dont know the end of this story, he said.

Another major difference between then and now, Leahy said, was there was still widespread trust inthe mediaat the time.

Even the legitimate press, they get this constant drumbeat from the White House denigrating [them], Leahy said of the current climate.

Public opinion on the media is much more divided today. A Harvard-Harris poll from last monthshowed 51 percent of those surveyed thought the media was being unfair toTrump.

Nolan, who left office in 1981 before running again and winning in Minnesotas 8th District in 2012, pointed to one similarity between today and the Watergate era.

There is a tremendous amount of, quite frankly, anger and concern and awareness that is very similar to the 1974 election, hesaid.

But Nolan, like manyDemocrats, said other topics have taken precedence overthe Russia investigationamong voters back home.

I think they are more concerned about health care and the environment and the direction that our government and our economy has taken, he said. Particularly as it relates to jobs and wages and benefits and environment and health care.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmaker, who recently passed on running for governor, also said simply opposing Trump could not work in a district like his, which broke for Trump by 16 points.

What Democrats have to do is not run around complaining about the Republicans and the direction of their budget priorities, hesaid.

What Democrats should be talking about are aspirational things, Nolan said, likeimproving infrastructure, and not just defending the 2010 health care law but working to improve the system.

I strongly advocate for a single-payer, universal system, he said. Thats the kind of aspirational advocacy that resonates.

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What the Last of the 'Watergate Babies' Can Teach Democrats About Trump - Roll Call