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Bernie Sanders supporter jumps in to unseat Democrat in one of nation's hottest House races Sacramento Bee A 30-year-old lawyer who backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders last year has jumped into the race to challenge Rep. Ami Bera, a three-term Democrat representing suburban Sacramento. Brad Westmoreland, a Democrat and political newcomer, said he ... Democrats Try 'Medicare for All' as New MessagingBreitbart News all 12 news articles »

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Bernie Sanders supporter jumps in to unseat Democrat in one of nation's hottest House races - Sacramento Bee

Aug. 15, 2017 at 11:34 AM

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in Berryville, Virginia, on July 24 to unveil the Democrats new agenda.

The events in Charlottesville over the weekend put President Trump on the defensive about why white nationalists see him as an ally, led key figures in his own party to distance themselves from the president and inspired some Democratic Party officials from around the country to either consider or accelerate the process of taking down symbols of the Confederacy in their cities and states. If American politics increasingly revolves around questions of culture, identity and race, as it often seems, the Democratic Party looked unified and confident amid the Charlottesville news, while Republicans were divided and a bit at sea about what exactly to say.

But there is a real, pressing battle in the Democratic Party over identity issues too, with some in the party worried that movements like Black Lives Matter turn off white voters while others say the Democrats should speak bluntly and unequivocally on issues that particularly affect women and nonwhite voters.

We also have to avoid vilifying people whose social views arent as progressive as we think they should be, reads the mission statement of a new group of centrist Democrats called New Democracy. The group, whose advisory board includes Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell, argues that both parties have indulged in a civically corrosive form of identity politics.

But Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a key figure in the partys left wing and a potential 2020 candidate, said in a recent speech, The Democratic Party isnt going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill. It is not going to happen. Were not going back to the days of being lukewarm on choice.

Before Charlottesville at least, Democrats appeared to have arrived at a compromise between their two wings: keeping their liberal stands on cultural issues, but highlighting them a bit less. Last month, congressional Democrats unveiled a new slogan, A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future, and a batch of populist-tinged policies like making it harder for big companies in the same industry to merge.

The proposals themselves and the FDR-style rhetoric surrounding them show the Democrats trying to capture the populist appeal that seemed to drive both Trump and Bernie Sanderss presidential runs last year. The Better Deal ideas are almost exclusively about economic issues and largely do not address subjects like immigration, abortion or racial discrimination.

Economic populism could work for Democrats. Trump, as FiveThirtyEight detailed after the election, was particularly strong in areas where residents had lower credit scores, men had stopped working, and where jobs are vulnerable to automation and outsourcing. Areas, in other words, where people have reason to worry about their economic future.

But heres the big potential problem for Democrats: What if Trumps victory carrying more than 200 counties where former President Barack Obama had won in 2008 and 2012 was not primarily driven by his populist economic appeals, but by his rhetoric and policies around race and identity issues instead? Trumps denunciations of Black Lives Matter, his embrace of building a wall to keep Mexicans from coming to the U.S., and his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country were just as much a part of his campaign as his promises to bring back coal jobs.

In short, what if the Democrats problems with white working-class voters are more about them being white than working-class?

There is reason to be skeptical that economic populism will win back Trump voters for Democrats; some scholars argue that cultural and racial issues were more important than economics to voters who cast a ballot for Obama in 2012 and then Trump in 2016. An analysis by New Americas Lee Drutman (based on a series of polls conducted by YouGov) concluded that Obama-Trump voters had more liberal views on economic issues (like the importance of Social Security and Medicare) but more conservatives ones on cultural issues, such as immigration and their attitudes toward blacks and Muslims.

The Obama to Trump voter looks very much like [Mitt] Romney to Trump supporters on attitudes toward African-Americans, feelings on immigration, and attitudes toward Muslims. Interestingly, the Obama to Trump voter is not as conservative on moral issues, and looks like a [Hillary] Clinton voter on concerns about inequality, Drutman wrote.

Political scientist John Sides, looking at that same YouGov data set and concentrating on white Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton voters, found that the factors that were more highly correlated in 2016 than in 2012 in terms of predicting peoples votes were immigration, feelings about blacks and feelings about Muslims, not economic factors.

Similarly, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that fears of America becoming too influenced by foreign nations and favoring the deportation of undocumented immigrants were both stronger predictors of support for Trump among white, working-class voters than whether those voters said they were personally suffering from a lack of money.

Were not going to settle whether race and culture or economic anxiety was the primary driver of Trumps victory here both likely played some role but if culture and race are a big part of the problem, what should the Democrats do? The Better Deal is one move, but not the end of the debate about the Democratic Partys future. More populism was the easy part of the new agenda; figuring out race and identity is more challenging as the events in Charlottesville showed.

Generally, the what do Democrats do next conversation features two big questions in terms of race and culture: message and messenger.

Should the Democrats take more conservative stances on race and identity issues, keep the same policies but talk about them less, or keep the same policies and the same strong message regarding them?

I suspect Democrats will largely take the middle course: more populism, less talk about race and identity but without any real shifts in position on those issues. This is essentially a bet that Trumps unpopularity will help lift the Democratic Party to major gains, so they dont need a broader political course correction on race and identity. Such a middle course would also acknowledge reality: Democrats, with a party that is about 45 percent non-white, cant try to ape Trumps racial appeals to woo whites. The days of a Democrat running for president and distancing himself from a black hip-hop artist to appeal to whites (as Bill Clinton did in 1992) are probably over. Not moving right would also reflect the increasing liberalism of the Democratic Party.

But this is a tense divide, and a hard one for Democrats to discuss openly. The voices in the party advocating that it tone down its cultural messages tend to be white and male, while the strongest advocates of strong liberal stands on identity issues are often female and nonwhite.

Should Democrats run candidates who they think appeal specifically to white Trump voters, be mindful but not overly focused on that factor or ignore it completely? For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has annoyed some Democratic activists by saying that Democrats should embrace some congressional candidates opposed to abortion rights, particularly in more conservative areas.

We dont totally know exactly what kind of candidate appeals to a white Trump voter, since some of those voters backed Obama in 2008 and 2012. But you could argue that the most logical candidate, in terms of identity politics, to appeal to white, Christian male voters would be a white Christian male. (Trump ran very strong among white men and white evangelicals.)

Looking forward, this makes the 2020 Democratic field interesting. The well-known white Christian men who might otherwise be logical candidates for the Democrats have some obvious potential challenges. Trump, at age 70, was the oldest person ever first elected president. So California Gov. Jerry Brown, who is 79, and Joe Biden, 74, are facing Americas historic preference for younger candidates. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is 59, but liberal activists hate him. Hickenlooper, 65, just has not galvanized party activists so far. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, 59, has already said he will not run. Ohios Tim Ryan and Massachusetts Seth Moulton are hinting that they might consider presidential runs, and the kind of unspoken assumption here is that those relatively obscure U.S. House members could have a chance in part because Democratic primary voters might be looking for candidates who they think can appeal to Trump voters in a general election.

Many of the people whom party activists are talking about running in 2020 are not the most obvious fit with Trump voters, at least in terms of their identities: Bernie Sanders (who is Jewish), New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (black), California Sen. Kamala Harris (a black woman) and Warren (a white woman). This dynamic is playing out at the state level as well, as a lot of the candidates who have been energized to run for office since Trump won are women and people of color.

The easiest response for Democrats is to ignore this candidate factor: Obama won in 2008 and 2012, after all. We simply dont know which candidates will appeal to voters in the future. And its unfair to Trump voters to suggest that they wouldnt consider a black woman, since some of them backed Obama, and unfair to Harris and Warren to suggest that they shouldnt run for president because Americans havent elected a female candidate before.

But Trump highlighted issues of race and identity much more explicitly than John McCain or Mitt Romney did in their campaigns against Obama. I would expect him to do so again if he runs in 2020. The president has abandoned some of his campaign promises, but not the Muslim ban and the border wall. So we can expect these identity issues to be front of mind for voters. Or, as Drutman put it:

As long as ethno-cultural identity issues are salient, it will be hard for Democrats to win back Obama-Trump voters. And as long as Trump is president, ethno-cultural identity issues will be salient, because thats Trumps MO.

Several Democratic officials I spoke to privately took a more enthusiastic view. Essentially, they argued that its impossible to figure out exactly why Clinton lost in 2016 and that trying to figure out how much was race, how much was economics and how much was just Clinton is impossible and not that important: She barely lost in a weird race, and maybe a combination of more voters turned off by Trump, increased populism from Democrats and candidates other than Clinton is enough to win at least some Obama-Trump voters back.

That doesnt sound convincing. But remember: Democrats were sure that they were screwed with Christian and Middle America voters after the 2004 elections, then won the presidency in 2008 while making some small gains among those voters. Republicans were convinced they were screwed after the 2012 elections because of their unpopularity with people of color, but then won in 2016 while barely making any gains among people of color. Populism may not be the path back, but it looks a lot more logical than running a first-time senator (Obama in 2005) or a businessman with no political experience (Trump 2013) were three years before those approaches worked.

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Democrats Have Their Own Challenges In Talking About Racial Issues In The Trump Era - FiveThirtyEight

CNN Host Allows Democrat to Tell Black Republican to 'Shut Up!' CNSNews.com (blog) CNN's Newsroom Host Brooke Baldwin sat by and allowed a Democrat to racially attack a Black Republican and tell him to Shut up! on Monday. Earlier in the day, another CNN host demanded a Republican apologize for telling someone who kept ... and more »

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CNN Host Allows Democrat to Tell Black Republican to 'Shut Up!' - CNSNews.com (blog)

We in labor, we may not have the billions of dollars, but we still have a lot of people, said New Jersey State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, a Democrat and the general vice president of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers.. And theres a lot of seats that belong to working class people. Its up to us to claim them.

The Democratic Party leadership recently released its Better Deal platform, a progressive policy agenda designed to address issues central to the working class.

Along with Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, who could not make the final leg of the trip, the four Democratic House members are planning to release their report, The Future of Work, Wages and Labor, in the coming months. Though they view their work as a complement to the partys progressive platform, they also acknowledge that fellow Democrats may disagree with some of their proposals.

Some of them that might even sound, well, Trumpian.

Those trade agreements, were still paying a price on NAFTA, Mr. Norcross said in an interview, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a frequent target for Mr. Trump on the campaign trail last year.

Mr. Norcross argued that some of the demands within his party for uncompromising legislative positions has left Democrats on the wrong side of the jobs argument.

Its not yes to everything environmental, no to everything with jobs, he said. Its a matter of working those together to try to move them forward.

The idea for the initiative began a year ago when Mr. DeSaulnier, a freshman congressman from the Bay Area, saw the booming so-called gig economy spawned largely by Uber and other tech start-ups in his district, and wondered how lower paying, part-time jobs might be affecting working families. So he asked the two tradesmen he knew in the House, Mr. Pocan, a painter, and Mr. Norcross, an electrician.

That conversation inspired a yearlong tour by the four members of Congress, which culminated this month in a labor town hall meeting inside a crowded Teamsters building in this struggling city in southern New Jersey.

Ending the tour here, after stopping in California, Michigan and Wisconsin (which have right-to-work laws that prevent organized labor from forcing all workers to pay union dues or fees), offered a bit of a throwback case study: Though working class families in New Jersey face similar problems as the working class elsewhere, the state still maintains strong ties between organized labor and the Democratic Party.

The Democratic candidate for governor, Philip D. Murphy, heavily courted the major state unions and relied on union-organizing efforts to help him to his overwhelming primary win. The New Jersey Education Association, which endorsed Mr. Murphy, is considered one of the most powerful teachers unions in the country, while Mr. Sweeney holds a powerful position in an international union.

Unions may be weaker than they once were, given the dynamics of the American political landscape, said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. But New Jersey remains a place where unions are very politically active and are relied upon by politicians to help deliver in politics.

After the town hall meeting, Mr. Paylor expressed both comfort and frustration. He did not know that Mr. Norcross had been working to introduce bills aimed at his interests, including one that would direct the Department of Energy to provide training for energy industry jobs and another that would allow people paying for apprenticeships to receive the same tax benefits as those paying for traditional college.

Most working class people dont even understand that thats going on in Washington, so theyre willing to vote against their own personal interest in many cases, Mr. Paylor said. The Democratic Party and its elected officials, he added, need to do a better job of communicating, and to identify themselves that they are representative of the working class.

And, if Mr. Norcross has his way, maybe a few more working class candidates will appear on the ballot.

Mr. Norcross told the crowd in the Teamsters hall that there were more than 200 attorneys in the House of Representatives. Theres one electrician, one painter, and one iron worker and one carpenter. We need some more help folks. We need some more.

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On Four-State Tour, Democratic Leaders Try to Reconnect With Workers - New York Times

Georgia state Rep. Stacey Evans, a white Democrat seeking the partys nomination for governor, struggled to get through her speech Saturday at the Netroots Nation Conference in Atlanta as supporters of her Democratic rival, state Rep. Stacey Abrams, who is black, repeatedly shouted over her.

Ms. Abrams, who hopes to become the countrys first black female governor, was treated like royalty at the liberal event compared to Ms. Evans, who could barely eke out a sentence over disruptions and chants of support black women, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

As soon as Ms. Evans started to speak, protesters fanned out in front of the stage with their backs turned to her, chanting and holding signs comparing her to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

A handout accusing Ms. Evans of siding with Ms. DeVos, a Republican, on key education issues read, Voted FOR the bill to create the private school voucher program and voted FOR constitutional amendment to allow state charter schools, The Washington Post reported.

Were gonna talk, yall, Ms. Evans told the rowdy audience.

As we built resistance to President Trump not me, to Trump we must unite over these ideals, she said, the Journal-Constitution reported.

Ms. Evans later criticized the protesters for refusing to let her speak.

They have a right to be heard, but so do I, she said. We cant move forward in Georgia or the country if we dont have productive dialogue.

Ms. Abrams, on the other hand, said she would not condemn peaceful protest and that the demonstrators were simply voicing their grievances over Ms. Evans positions on education.

From what I observed from Savannah, activists in Atlanta peacefully protested this morning on the critical issue of preserving public education for every family in our state, she wrote in a series of tweets Saturday. The mantra of trust black women is an historic endorsement of the value of bringing marginalized voices to the forefront, not a rebuke to my opponents race.

The race between Ms. Abrams, who dedicated her Netroots message to mobilizing black voters, and Ms. Evans, who has focused mainly on winning back white working-class voters, has caused a divide in the states Democratic party, the Journal-Constitution reported.

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Stacey Evans, white Democrat, shouted down at Netroots conference: 'Support black women!' - Washington Times