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After a string of losses in the 2017 special House elections, its clear Democratic candidates are continuing to struggle reaching rural voters. Thats partly because our playbook for appealing to voters outside of urban areas remains unchanged: take a poll, repackage the DNCs national messaging and target voters with mail and advertising. The problem is many rural voters become alienated when campaigns attempt to micro-target using messaging distilled from a national or statewide poll.

Campaigning in rural Illinois, Montana or West Virginia and talking about the importance of not defunding Planned Parenthood, for instance, wont get you anywhere unless you can help voters make the connection that it's about cancer screening and women's health. Republicans continue to define Planned Parenthood as an abortion-only organization so finding the right nuance to the message is vital.

Rural voters who have seen factories shuddered over the past 15 years want to talk about jobs, not economic development. Economic development is a Beltway term that they hear on the nightly news and campaign ads. These voters want to know what the candidate can do to address farm issues, cell phonesignal, and broadband internet access. Rural voters want to know what a candidate can do to fix broken roads and keep the cost of gas and milk down.

In coal country, voters knew Trump wouldnt be able to revive the lifeblood of Appalachia. But from small town to small town, Trump recognized coal miners, their families, and their struggles on a national stage covered by fake news. He mentioned time after time how he knew these families were struggling and hed make coal great again.

These coal miners and their families were so appreciative to finally have someone recognize the struggles they had been facing for years that they voted for him. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton knew she couldn't bring coal back, but the term coal was all but absent in her campaign speeches in rural areas.

In the 2017 special election to replace former Rep. Mick Mulvaney in South Carolinas 5th district, Archie Parnell lost by a mere four points. Yes, it was a loss. But Mulvaney defeated his 2016 Democratic challenger by 21 points. Trump carried the same district by 18 points just nine months ago.

Similarly, Kansas Democrat James Thompson campaigned as a Kansas veteran for Congress with ads that showed him firing an AR-15. He turned what should have been an easy Republican win into a nail-biting contest that attracted the attention of the president, Mike Pence, and Ted Cruz.

Now, whoever was in charge of Trumps cabinet appointments chose strategically from deep-red districts. But while a win is a win and a loss is a loss, coming within single digits in a deep red district shows tremendous progress for Democrats. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff didnt lose because of lack of strategy (or money), he lost because there simply were not enough Democratic voters in that district.

To appeal to rural voters, Democrats need to be where rural voters are the grocery store, the gas station in a one-stop-light town, advertising on terrestrial radio and in local newspapers. Micro-targeted digital ads sound great to consultants, but theyre not nearly as effective as shoe-leather campaigning in rural areas.

Admittedly, this West Virginia native concedes that some of these rural voters live down gravel roads that are just too long or the campaign doesn't have access to a vehicle worthy of truck nuts tomake it up the hill on a rainy spring afternoon. These voters dogo to the grocery store, they have post office boxes where they pick up their mail, and they need to refill their gas tanks. These voters are reliable visitors to the county fairs and ramp dinners. Democratic candidates need to be at these places listening to voters concerns.These optics persuade rural voters better than a mail piece with the candidate wearing a barn jacket.

If Democrats want to have any chance of taking back state legislatures, the House, or the Senate in 2018, we must re-engage the rural vote in person and in messaging. Meet these rural voters where they go, speak with them rather than at them, and incorporate these conversations into messaging that matters.

Cartney McCracken is a partner at Control Point Group, a D.C.-based Democratic consulting firm.

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A Rural Strategy for Democrats - Campaigns & Elections

Rosa Sabido, now receiving sanctuary in a Mancos church since her last application to stay in the country was denied, is not an example of problems caused by uncontrolled immigration. For the past 30 years, she has been gainfully employed, has paid taxes and has been an upstanding member of the community.

She is, though, the face of one large and often-undiscussed group of immigrants: those who have contributed to their community and the economy and who have tried to follow the rules that would allow them to remain in this country legally, but who, for a variety of reasons some logical and some arcane have come up short. These are the intended beneficiaries of immigration reform, which has languished on the national agenda for years. Unfortunately, a nuanced view of the complex issue, necessary for true and lasting progress, does not fit well into campaign speeches.

The United States gains no specific benefit by deporting Sabido. It would be better served with a sensible immigration policy that focused on identifying, locating and deporting those who are a danger to the country, and at the same time, dealing realistically with those whose only crime is being undocumented.

The problem with immigration is not only the behavior of individual immigrants, it is the effect of their aggregate number, and the specific issue for those like Sabido is not that they are causing trouble; its that their legal status does not allow them to stay.

Laws necessarily must be written in ways that cannot address every individuals circumstances, even though Sabidos legal circumstance indeed seems unfair. That she narrowly missed at least two opportunities that would have paved the way for permanent residency, including President Ronald Reagans broad path to citizenship, is sad but ultimately irrelevant; wherever a line is drawn, some people will fall just outside it. The law is the law, and selective enforcement without legal reform has contributed to the immigration mess that now exists.

The Mancos United Methodist Church has shown impressive caring and courage in shielding Sabido from a law that they believe is wrong or is being applied unfairly, and in taking a stand in opposition to the law. President Donald Trump has made clear that he disapproves of IRS regulations that penalize religious organizations from expressing political opinions, and although he surely did not intend it to play out in this way, the logical extension of that is for congregations to act on their beliefs. Kudos to this body for doing so.

Churches have no special legal status that exempts their premises from enforcement actions, only a tradition of being respected. The hands-off policy will not last much longer, although when ICE agents are ordered to breach a religious sanctuary, expect them to be in pursuit of someone far less appealing than Sabido.

This kind of sanctuary is not available to all who might wish to use it, and it is not a broad solution to the immigration dilemma. Elsewhere, families are being split, crops rot unpicked and some of the immigrants the president termed bad hombres evade deportation.

The true solution is reform, and Sabido and the church sheltering her have drawn attention to that need. This is one way change begins to happen, and that change is badly needed.

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Rosa Sabido: Immigration reform must address cases like hers - The Journal

Increased immigration enforcement has been one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration, with federal agents directed to seek the deportation of just about anyone they find in the country illegally no matter how long the person might have lived here or how deep the ties to family and community. In the first 100 days after the presidents inauguration, immigration arrests climbed nearly 40% over the previous year, a pace that will almost certainly increase if Congress accedes to President Trumps request to hire an additional 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be assigned to the nations interior, and another 5,000 Border Patrol agents to work within 100 miles of the border.

Those buying into Trumps view of illegal immigrants as rapists, murderers and job stealers have no doubt been cheered by the enforcement effort, and they probably arent bothered by the rush to expand detention space to house those facing deportation hearings. But even they should recognize that capturing and incarcerating people is only part of the equation.

While the government under President Obama and now Trump has been ramping up immigration enforcement and detention, it has not invested a parallel amount of money in expanding the immigration courts capacity to handle the cases. Spending on immigration courts increased only 74% from 2003-2015 while enforcement spending went up 105%. Trumps 2018 budget would increase the total number of judicial positions, but its not clear if that will become law and for the moment the backlog of cases is continuing to grow.

At the end of September, the number of pending immigration cases stood at 516,031, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. By the end of May, that backlog had jumped to 598,943 cases, which have been pending for an average of 670 days each. New York City has the biggest backlog (78,670 cases), followed by Los Angeles (57,090).

Making matters worse, the Trump administration has temporarily reassigned judges to detention centers in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to handle cases primarily involving recent border-crossers. The problem with that is that fewer people are getting caught at the border these days, so moving judges there makes little sense. Why then is it happening? The answer: Optics. Sending judges to the border looks like a commitment to stronger and more serious enforcement, when in reality its a Potemkin effort that exacerbates backlogs in the courts from which the judges are transferred. At the same time, immigration lawyers say government attorneys have lately become tougher in their cases, taking harder lines with immigrants and reopening cases that had been suspended, adding more drag on the system.

This enormous backlog has real-life consequences. People in detention centers or jails are spending more time incarcerated as they await hearings on whether they will be allowed to remain in the country. For those with legitimate requests for asylum or other relief from deportation, the delays prolong uncertainty about whether they have found a sanctuary.

This should not make the anti-illegal immigration folks happy. If people arent getting deported but are just stuck in limbo in the immigration system, then Trumps ramped-up enforcement program is a chimera. Those immigrants who should be found ineligible to remain in the country because of criminal pasts or other disqualifications wind up, in effect, with open-ended reprieves.

The system is not working well for anybody except, perhaps, the operators of private prisons and local jails with ICE contracts that handle most of the detained immigrants. For a president who prides himself on his business and managerial acumen, this is a grotesquely failed approach to management.

Instead of taking this piecemeal approach to immigration enforcement, the administration should work with Congress to develop comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would create a path to citizenship for those who have established roots in our communities while tightening up enforcement at the border and tackling visa overstays. The Republican Party controls the White House and Congress. It has no excuses for not getting this done.

The Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2017

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What others say: Administration must take steps toward immigration reform - Kenai Peninsula Online

Columbia Universitys Knight First Amendment Institute is suing Donald Trump for blocking people on Twitter, claiming that it violates free speech protections. The institute filed suit today on behalf of seven Twitter users who were blocked by the president, which prevents them from seeing or replying to his tweets. It threatened legal action in a letter to Trump in June, and now asks the court to declare that the viewpoint-based blocking of people from the @realDonaldTrump account is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, elaborates on the Knight Institutes earlier letter. It contends that Trumps Twitter account is a public political forum where citizens have a First Amendment right to speak. Under this theory, blocking users impedes their right to participate in a political conversation and stops them from viewing official government communication. Therefore, if Trump blocks people for criticizing his political viewpoints, hed be doing the equivalent of kicking them out of a digital town hall.

Trump has definitely used his Twitter account as an official platform. The White House confirmed that his tweets are official statements, and its preserving them as public presidential communications. However, its much less clear that it counts as a public forum, or that being prevented from viewing or participating in a Twitter thread chills free speech. Users can still view tweets by logging out or creating a new account, and as First Amendment lawyer and blogger Ken White told Vox, a successful lawsuit could make it difficult for any official Twitter account to block trolls or spammers without worrying about legal action.

Nonetheless, the Knight Institute has printed statements from its seven plaintiffs, who say they feel measurably impacted by the block. My Twitter following is relatively small, but because my tweets show up in the comment threads under the presidents tweets and can be seen by his millions of followers, my replies could gain traction, says surgery resident Eugene Gu. Now I have extremely limited access to the public forum where I once could be heard. I feel cut off and as though Im being treated like an outsider in my own country.

Read more here:
Trump is being sued by a First Amendment group for blocking Twitter users - The Verge

Even though a backlash against it arguably contributed to President Donald Trumps election, political correctness retains a firm foothold in American society.

The 2017 State of the First Amendment survey shows 54.9 percent of Americans believe racist comments should not be allowed on social media, 43.3 percent say colleges should be able to ban controversial speakers and 22.5 percent think the First Amendment goes too far in the freedoms it guarantees.

Taken together, those figures suggest discomfort with free expression resides largely on the left side of the political spectrum, but not all is as it seems.

Respondents who identified as conservative (24.6 percent) and moderate (26.3 percent) were more likely than those who said they were liberal (15.8 percent) to consider the First Amendment too far-reaching.

And while more conservatives than liberals understand that a free society must tolerate offensive speech, the right lagged behind the left and center where religious liberty one of the five First Amendment freedoms along with speech, press, assembly and petition is concerned.

Asked to respond to the statement, Government should be able to hold Muslims to a greater level of scrutiny in considering immigration applications or status, even if it infringes on their religious liberty, 33.3 percent of respondents agreed and 62.1 percent disagreed overall.

Among conservatives, support for religion-based vetting stood at 51.2 percent, compared to 32.9 percent for moderates and 17.9 percent for liberals.

Commissioned by the Newseum Institute, the State of the First Amendment survey has been conducted each year since 1997. While some questions remain the same, a new batch is added to the brew each year. Some of the 2017 queries were squishy, gauging attitudes rather than knowledge of legal absolutes. First Amendment advocates could plausibly find themselves on either side.

For example, the First Amendment does protect racist comments, but as private companies, social media sites can set the ground rules for fair play in their respective sandboxes. Freedom of speech means the government cant punish you for speaking your mind, but it doesnt prevent Facebook or Twitter from suspending your account.

As for campus speaker bans, public colleges and universities are arms of the government and cannot lawfully discriminate against controversial views, but private institutions can.

Results showed 26.5 percent of people believe the First Amendment should protect the publication of news reports even if they are purposely fake while 70.8 percent disagree that fake news should receive free-speech protections.

The case law here is murky while lies are often protected speech, knowingly false factual claims about individuals can constitute libel. Some fake stories are legally actionable and others are abhorrent but constitutionally permissible.

Of particular concern to us is the rising proportion of Americans who believe the First Amendment goes too far. The survey shows this figure has inched upward each of the past three years.

Neither conservatives nor liberals have a monopoly on the First Amendment. It transcends partisan politics, and its up to all Americans to defend its core constitutional rights from erosion.

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TAR HEEL VIEW: First Amendment challenges beliefs on right, left alike - Richmond County Daily Journal