Mediaboss Marketing

Democratic candidate for governor J.B. Pritzker on Friday won the backing of the Cook County Democratic organization, which rejected calls by his rivals that the party modernize and make no formal endorsement.

Pritzker, a billionaire entrepreneur and investor, has pledged to both fund his own campaign and help out the party's candidates across the ticket next year, providing a financial allure for Democrats to support his bid to take on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Rauner, an equity investor prior to becoming governor, has used his personal wealth to not only help pay for his own campaign, but also subsidize the Illinois Republican Party and back GOP legislative candidates.

With Democratic committeemen from Chicago's wards and suburban Cook County townships gathered at a River North restaurant, Pritzker touted his early field organizing and communications efforts to counter Rauner and the state GOP.

"Like no other candidate in this race, I am focused on building up the party, uniting the Democratic Party and winning up and down the ticket," Pritzker said.

"So now more than ever, we Democrats need to come together to defeat Bruce Rauner, to stand up against (President) Donald Trump, and today I ask you humbly for your support and endorsement," he said.

The vote for Pritzker by the state's largest Democratic county organization had been expected. It comes as a precursor to next week's gathering of party activists at a large annual county chairmen's brunch to mark Democrat Day at the Illinois State Fair.

Some of the county party's more progressive members had sought an open primary with no endorsement a concept that Pritzker's rivals readily encouraged in an apparent acknowledgment he was likely to get the nod.

"I think it's essential to have an open primary," said businessman Chris Kennedy, an heir to the iconic Massachusetts political family. He urged the slatemakers to "bring the Democratic Party into the 21st century" and restore trust with voters.

"We can't ask them to make our choice theirs if we're not prepared to make their choice ours. We're alienating ourselves from the voters. No voter wants to be told who to vote for in the primary," he said.

Later, Kennedy issued a statement saying top party officials were more concerned with "preserving the status quo."

"So, in the backroom of a restaurant, they anointed their choice for governor," he said.

Another contender, state Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston, urged the party not to endorse by asking, "Are we going to hold an election or are we going to hold an auction?" After the organization announced it endorsed Pritzker, Biss issued a statement saying the vote was unsurprising and represented "more of the same."

"More backroom deals and more closed door coronations to replace one billionaire with another," he said. "For far too long, families like mine have felt the pain of a system rigged against us, and we're ready to choose something new. Today's vote doesn't change that."

Biss and Ald. Ameya Pawar represent the more progressive candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor. Pawar used his appearance before slatemakers to criticize government run by the wealthy, warning that Rauner was an example.

"I am sick and tired of watching a wealthy few decide what's best for the rest of us," Pawar said.

"If we simply anoint someone based on fame or fortune, then nothing changes," he added.

Also appearing before top Cook County Democrats were governor candidates state Rep. Scott Drury of Highwood, lone downstate contender Bob Daiber, anti-violence activist Tio Hardiman and a new contender who surfaced Friday, perennial candidate Robert Marshall of Burr Ridge.

The organization also endorsed all of the current incumbent statewide Democratic officeholders: Secretary of State Jesse White, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Treasurer Michael Frerichs and Comptroller Susana Mendoza. All county incumbents received endorsements, too. And Cook County Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough was endorsed to replace retiring Clerk David Orr.

White has said he will announce next week whether he will seek a sixth term for the office he has held since 1999.

rap30@aol.com

Twitter @rap30

Read more here:
Pritzker endorsed by Cook County Democrats - Chicago Tribune

Aug. 10, 2017 at 6:47 AM

In the past few months, Democrats have been on a search for saviors who can lead them out of the wilderness. Even though nationally its still unclear who will take on the partys mantle in 2020 Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Cory Booker and countless others have been floated as possibilities theres been an uptick in the number of Democrats writ large who want to run for office on the local level. In the midst of this surge of enthusiasm, Ive noticed that a particular crop of white young men from state-level offices have captured national attention. Their prominence, coupled with their appeal to a certain kind of voter, has left me wondering what these men say about the strategic direction of the Democratic Party.

Self-possessed, serious, maybe a little self-serious these politicians seem to be taking stylistic cues from the dominating political figure of their era, President Obama. Army veteran Jason Kander proved masterful in creating a compelling personal political narrative during his bid for a Missouri Senate seat; a campaign ad showing him assembling a rifle while blindfolded went viral. Jon Ossoff, who ran in a special House election in Georgia, admitted that his careful parsing of language, often about Americans coming together, made him sound a little like Obama. Tom Perriello, a candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial primary, spent formative time abroad and came home adamant about creating a new kind of Democratic politics. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is a well-credentialed (Rhodes Scholar, Naval Reservist) Midwesterner who seemed to come out of nowhere to wide, approving attention as he sought the chair of the Democratic National Committee in February.

President Obama in 2004, before he was elected as a U.S. senator.

Getty images

They are all, as Obama was when he burst onto the national scene, young, well pedigreed, and varying degrees of attractive on the Brooks Brothers scale; each inoffensively clean cut, the sort of guy who cuts himself off after two light beers because he has to wake up early.

These men are figures of relative obscurity who have capitalized on a political moment to vault their careers several levels up. The same could be said for Illinois state Sen. Obama, who made waves in 2004 with a blockbuster convention speech. This groups moment is different than Obamas, though these politicians caught the Democrats magpie eye following the rise of Donald Trump, though it should be noted that all did so while losing elections.

Each has claimed in his campaign that he is a droplet of that fresh blood needed to reinvigorate the party, a clean slate upon which to write the Democratic compact of the future. This was more or less Obamas line when he entered the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton all those years ago; he had no Iraq War vote to sully his record, no decades of political battles weighing him down.

But Obama, of course, was a figure of incredible historical import the first black major party nominee and then the first black president. His promise of change was economic he was the (relative) outsider fixing the mess of the financial crisis created by craven New York and D.C. insiders but also cultural: voters, black and white, could cast a ballot for him and be a part of history.

Kander, Ossoff, Perriello, and Buttigieg offer the promise of change as well, but the meaning of that change is more vaguely implied. Each has promised to bring the message of the Democratic Party back to the people it has forgotten. Thats all well and good, but who exactly are those people?

Clockwise from upper left: Jon Ossoff, Tom Perriello, Jason Kander, Pete Buttigieg.

Getty images

Since the election, a debate has been raging in the Democratic Party about the best path to electoral victory: appeal to whites who voted for Obama and later Trump, or turn out those who stayed home in 2016, namely black voters?

This group of newcomers appeal is in part to white voters, and the attention given to Kander, Ossoff, Perriello and Buttigieg in recent months suggests Democrats are, consciously or not, leaning most toward the plan of winning back white voters. Election results for these men do show certain promising patterns. Though Kander lost his Senate race, he outperformed Clintons 2016 and Obamas 2012 showing in a number of places and outright won counties that neither Clinton nor Obama could swing, namely Platte and Clay, outside Kansas City. Both Platte and Clay are wealthy and white places each is 87 percent white, and the median income is $68,254 in Platte, $62,099 in Clay and are in Missouris 6th Congressional District, represented by Republican Sam Graves. Graves won reelection in 2016 with 68 percent of the vote in the district.

The counties have similar demographics to Georgias 6th Congressional District, where Ossoff campaigned and lost, but by a slim margin. Republican Karen Handel won that race by about 4 percentage points, a notable result since only a few months before, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price overwhelmingly won reelection in the district with 62 percent of the vote. Ossoff ate into Republicans support substantially in the district.

The Kander/Ossoff appeal to suburban voters (Kander helped Ossoff campaign) seems built in part on their ability to assure voters with a more rightward cultural bent that Democrats arent to be disdained. Kanders ad showing him assembling a rifle blindfolded became a sort of shorthand for his understanding of a certain milieu gun owners and Second Amendment advocates while Ossoff became known for his keen ability to say almost nothing controversial. Young, handsome, kind of preppy, it made him a nice blank slate onto whom voters could project their desires.

Perriello, too, has demonstrated success with white voters, despite losing the Virginia primary against Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. He performed best in the parts of the state that are largely white and rural. Northam (who had the advantage of being a party insider) won areas like Hamton Roads, which are filled with black voters, the kind that swung the state blue for Obama in 2008. Perriello courted rural Virginians specifically, spending far more time in the states non-urban areas than Northam did, according to a candidate tracker from the Virginia Public Access Project.

Given that Buttigieg has only been elected as mayor, its more difficult to know if he has broader appeal, though South Bend is whiter than many other urban areas 61 percent and solidly Democratic.

Theres a risk that in hyping the effort to win back white Obama/Trump voters, black candidates get lost in the shuffle or female candidates are passed over because of a Hillary Clinton hangover. (The fear of the complicated challenges that women face when running for office is real.) Nina Turner articulated this view to me back in January: African-Americans, no matter what, will vote hook or crook for Democrats, and so that particular demographic is owed a lot more by the Democratic Party than what we have gotten, and what I mean by that is no African-American woman has ever been governor in this country. Democrats need to be making sure that happens.

Thrown into relief against Turners sentiments, the attention that Kander et al. have received seems significant. Buttigieg, known pretty much only to the good people of South Bend prior to this winter, was recently on Late Night with Seth Meyers talking about Republicans appropriation of the idea of freedom and on Chelsea Handlers show chatting about what its like to be a Democratic mayor in a deep-red state. Kander had enough grist coming off of his loss to start a voting rights group, Let America Vote, and be named the head of a DNC voting rights commission. A Nexis dive of coverage from the last six months finds him quoted in numerous national outlets on voting rights issues The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Houston Chronicle but also written about as a potential presidential contender in The Hill and in a recent Washington Post profile.

Ossoffs campaign is now infamous for how much press attention and money it received, while Perriello got endorsements from a series of high-profile Obama administration officials and was profiled in national outlets. (I wrote about him in March.) Pod Save America, the brainchild of former Obama staffers that has become a de facto outlet for Democratic politicians, the fireside chat for the Resistance, has hosted and promoted all of these young, white Democrats.

And its not as if there is a dearth of minority talent. Turner herself has been floated as a potential 2018 Ohio gubernatorial candidate, while Stacey Abrams, another black woman, is making a bid for the Georgia governors mansion, and Ben Jealous, former head of the NAACP, recently announced a long-awaited bid for Maryland governor. Where is their national party hype machine?

It might be that at the heart of the matter, Democrats have internalized most acutely the accusation that they shamed and alienated white constituencies by elevating cultural conversations around issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and gay rights. The more subtle argument, that exciting the partys base namely, minority groups could be just as electorally rewarding, has been less interrogated. There are years left for younger Democratic talent to develop, and perhaps for the party to again focus on strengthening its base. But for now, at least in its promotion of rising talent, it seems the Democratic approach is lopsided.

CORRECTION (Aug. 10, 1:40 p.m.): An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Pete Buttigieg had not run in a statewide election. He ran for state treasurer in 2010.

Continue reading here:
The Future Of The Democratic Party Is White Guys? - FiveThirtyEight

The high-profile stars of the Democratic Partys populist wing have steered the agenda their way on Capitol Hill this year, but the fight over the partys direction is far from settled.

As the party faces great expectations of big gains in the 2018 midterm elections, Democratic centrists are increasingly worried that the disproportionate share of attention shown to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the agenda pushed by his anti-establishment allies will do more harm than good.

That direction, the thinking goes, will energize liberals in places where Democrats are already winning by big margins. But it may drive away the voters needed to win inland races that will shape the House majority and determine which governors and state legislators are in charge of redrawing federal and state legislative districts early next decade.

Enter a group called New Democracy, a combination think tank and super PAC trying to reimagine the partys brand in regions where Democrats have suffered deep losses.

Leaders of the group want to focus on rebuilding in states where, during the Obama presidency, Democrats lost nearly 1,000 legislative seats and more than a dozen governors mansions.

Our most important work will be done outside of Washington, Will Marshall, founder of New Democracy, said in an interview.

The effort is publicly being labeled as supplemental to the emerging agenda being crafted on Capitol Hill, including the highly populist Better Deal proposal that party leaders in the House and the Senate touted last month. But the new groups leaders do not see that agenda, including a push for lower prescription-drug prices, as particularly helpful to Democrats in exurban districts or key Midwestern states that President Trump won last year.

That is an accurate reflection of many Democrats who represent deep blue districts. But it has limited appeal beyond the coasts, Marshall said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have been trying to offer the sort of economic agenda items that can appeal to voters in Iowa as well as California, targeted at working-class voters who abandoned Democrats for Trump.

But some centrists fear that this populist message will be tuned out by heartland voters if it is accompanied by the partys increasing embrace of staunch liberal positions on cultural matters, including abortion rights and transgender issues.

Should House Democrats write off rural congressional districts?

Marshall helped begin similar efforts as Democrats lost three straight presidential elections in the 1980s, under the auspices of the Democratic Leadership Council and its offshoot, the Progressive Policy Institute.

Back then, operating under the New Democrat banner, the centrists helped create the ideas behind the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, who became the first two-term Democrat in the White House since FDR.

New Democracy is taking shape under the failure of another Clinton Hillary whose loss to Trump helped solidify the already growing divide between Democrats and voters beyond large urban centers. Several dozen Democrats have signed on with New Democracy, including Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Rep. Stephanie Murphy (Fla.), a freshman rising star.

The two Democratic wings could be headed for a fierce clash over what the party needs to stand for in the wake of the stunning 2016 defeat. Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and other liberals have been making gains in getting congressional Democrats to support ideas, including a $15-an-hour minimum wage and some form of free college, and demanding a full-frontal assault on big banks and big corporations.

So far, however, the college plans pushed by Sanders have not been in the Better Deal. Senior Democratic advisers say that their effort has been to embrace economic populism without focusing on less politically popular liberal ideas.

The early portions of the Better Deal agenda tilt in the populist direction, with calls for stronger antitrust regulations and tough talk on trade deals. The belief is that white, working-class voters millions of whom voted for Barack Obama but then Trump felt left behind in an economy with fewer manufacturing plants, and those jobs went offshore or disappeared through automation.

Marshall and other Democrats fear that the populist tone is built around a negative message of casting blame, and lacks the optimistic tones around which Bill Clinton and Obama built their successful presidential bids.

Combine that negative tone with what critics say is a cultural elitism among urban liberals on social issues, and the centrist wing feels that voters in the heartland simply do not embrace the Democratic message anymore.

The partys gotten a little too comfortable with its urban and coastal strongholds, Marshall said.

New Democracys mission statement is even more blunt, warning that both parties have engaged in a civically corrosive form of identity politics and that Democrats should avoid vilifying people whose social views arent as progressive as we think they should be.

For many working class and rural voters, the partys message seems freighted with elite condescension for traditional values (especially faith) and lifestyles, the group says.

The first big public event for New Democracy will come at an October summit hosted by Vilsack, who grew increasingly disenchanted last year with what he viewed as the Clinton campaigns unwillingness to court rural voters.

Vilsacks tough message for fellow Democrats: Stop writing off rural America

In the 2008 election, Obama won the Hawkeye State by nearly 10percentage points, giving Iowa Democrats a 32-to-18 edge in the state Senate and a 56-to-44 edge in the state House. The governor, Chet Culver, was a Democrat, as were four of the states seven members of Congress.

In 2016, Trump won Iowa by nearly 10percentage points, and Republicans now hold a comfortable nine-seat majority in the state Senate and a 19-seat majority in the state House. Trump appointed the states popular Republican governor, Terry Branstad, to be ambassador to China.

Iowa now sends just one Democrat to Congress.

That kind of shift happened across many states far away from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts over the past eight years.

It remains to be seen how much efforts like New Democracy really will supplement the partys efforts to reach new voters and how much of this will turn into a deep fight with the liberal wing.

New Democracy is reserving the right to wade into primaries to support moderate candidates, which could foreshadow the type of expensive primary battles Republicans have had over the past eight years.

Obamas success has masked the narrowing of the partys appeal, Marshall said, fearing that Democrats are not reaching beyond liberal elites. Dogma seems to be in the drivers seat.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

See the original post here:
Centrist Democrats begin pushing back against Bernie Sanders, liberal wing - Washington Post

After crashing and burning on health care last month, Senate Republicans and the White House are desperate for a legislative victory and Democrats are feeling emboldened that they may have more leverage in the upcoming fight. This month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is continuing conversations with his members on how they will message tax reform, but the key takeaway for now is that Democrats won't flatly agree to go along with a Republican bill that benefits the top 1% of earners.

"Donald Trump campaigned as a populist, for God's sake. It's a different world than it was 10 or 15 years ago. The idea that people will support huge tax cuts for the rich when they're given a crumb won't work anymore," Schumer told CNN.

Democrats outlined their principles in an August 1 letter to Republican leaders and the White House. If Republicans want help in their effort to overhaul the tax code or give tax cuts to the American people, 45 Democrats signed a letter stating that Republicans had to work through regular order, could not raise taxes on the middle class or cut taxes for the one percent and their reforms couldn't increase the deficit.

But Republicans don't seem to feel the pressure to meet Democratic demands.

After Democrats sent that letter, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would use reconciliation to overhaul the tax system, a process that only requires 51 votes -- as opposed to the usual 60 -- and gives McConnell the option of passing tax cuts without a single Democratic vote.

"We will need to use reconciliation because we have been informed by a majority of the Democrats in a letter I just received today that most of the principles that would get the country growing again, they're not interested in addressing," McConnell said earlier this month. "I don't think this is going to be 1986 when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code. Maybe there will be a few. There were several Democratic senators who did not sign the letter that may be open to pro-growth tax reform."

So far, it appears Republicans, who hold 52 seats in the chamber, are prepared to go it alone on tax reform. The so-called "big six" a group of Senate, House and White House stakeholders are all Republicans. And while Republicans would certainly welcome any Democratic support they could find from red state Democrats up in 2018, under reconciliation it's not necessary they have them.

In an interview with CNN Wednesday afternoon, Schumer said he still hoped McConnell would rethink using reconciliation.

"I think when they look at it, they are going to see how hard it is to do," Schumer said adding that he thinks rank-and-file Republican members are more interested in a bipartisan approach.

If Republicans use reconciliation, Schumer says it means that "any two or three Republicans can bring this down" just like health care.

Behind the scenes, Democrats are dubious that Republicans are as close as they claim to be on tax reform.

Many point out that without health care, Republicans have less money to finance tax cuts. And, Republicans are still fighting about their budget -- the vehicle the GOP would need to pass if they are going to use reconciliation in the first place.

"Congressional Republicans are at war with themselves, so color me skeptical they can all get together on a massive undertaking like this," a Senate Democratic aide told CNN.

Before the recess, the "big six" -- after working for several months -- released a five-paragraph statement of principles on how their tax reform proposal would look, but it was devoid of the kind of details necessary to finalize a bill. And, there are still many questions about what tax reform proposals could pass the Byrd Rule, the arcane set of rules that dictate what can be included in a reconciliation bill.

But Democrats face challenges themselves when it comes to Republican efforts to reform the tax code.

Unlike the health care debate where Democrats could clearly point to millions of Americans who stood to lose insurance under the Republicans' repeal of Obamacare, even some Democrats acknowledge it's harder to campaign against tax cuts.

"It's a bit harder to explain if you vote for this, rich people get a tax break and middle class people don't get anything out of it. That's just harder to explain," said one Democratic aide. "It will be harder to sit there and just spout out one or two lines that makes it easy to understand."

And Republicans are keenly aware that their messaging must be about how tax reform is good for all Americans, not just the rich.

"There is a great focus on the middle class portion of this. That is an important part of providing the political momentum," said Kevin Madden, a strategist who is working with stakeholders to develop the GOP message on tax reform.

Former Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh, a Democrat, told CNN that his advice -- especially for members of his party running in red states in 2018 -- is to try to find some way to work with Republicans.

"There is an intersection here between good policy and good politics for Democrats. Just standing uniformly against any kind of tax cuts is politically very damaging," Bayh told CNN. "My advice: Democrats need to be for tax cuts, but the right kind of tax cuts. Ones targeted at the middle class and ones that are fiscally responsible."

CNN's Ashley Killough contributed to this report.

Read the rest here:
Here's Democrats' plan on tax reform this fall - CNN International

Democrats have been given an enviable political landscape, with an opposition president at a historically low approval rating and scandal besetting his White House. But they risk potentially blowing it due to a lack of central leadership, diffuse organizational structures and disputes over tactics and issues.

Thats the fear that some top officials harbor as they gear up for the 2018 elections: that the party has yet to learn its lessons from the 2016 cycle; that a horde of newly organized political groups are drawing money away from party infrastructure; and that a lack of a singular leader has complicated the need for a centralized message.

Those fears have been overshadowed, so far, by the partys Trump-era triumphsincluding the temporary defeat of efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. And to the outside observer, they seem odd considering the extent of progressive activism nationwide, which has produced indelible rallies, memorable town halls, and several electoral victories at the state level.

But signs of potential problems are there.

The Democratic National Committees fundraising in May was its worst since 2003. The committee only recently hired a new permanent finance director. And former chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultzs name continues to surface, and not in particularly helpful ways, with negative headlines about her fired IT staffer who was arrested on one count of bank fraud.

New deputy chair and Democratic congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) was bullish on the committees prospects. But even he acknowledged that there was work still to do.

What were doing is converting the DNC from a battleground-oriented party, from a presidential-oriented party, from an every-four-years type of party into not a battleground state, but an every state, not a presidential, but every race and not just every four years but every day, every year, all the time, Ellison told The Daily Beast in a phone interview last month, saying that he is optimistic about where they are going.

I think that we are heading in the right direction. Now fundraising-wise we have to do better, Ellison continued. I believe that were going to be just fine. We need to kick into another gear. We need to get people to invest in us. And my hope is that we can really attract that small dollar donor.

As Ellison and company try and create a small donor network, one of the problems theyve confronted is that there are many organizations now vying for Democratic donors. Indivisible, a national resistance organization comprised of former congressional staffers, raised over $40,000 on the Friday after the most recent ACA repeal effort failed. In June, they had taken in about $1 million from individuals. And other progressive groups like Daily Kos, ActBlue and Swing Left have collected inordinate sums of moneyover $2 million totalfor candidates who have yet to even be announced.

I know that activists have been looking for multiple outlets to channel their progressive energy since Trump's election, and Daily Kos has helped channel that enthusiasm in immediate and pragmatic ways, from raising millions of dollars to help elect Democrats this very year to providing a mechanism that lets activists invest in the defeat of Republicans in 2018 who don't even have Democratic challengers yet, Carolyn Fiddler, political editor and senior communications advisor for Daily Kos, told The Daily Beast.

Flush with cash, these independent progressive organizations have been able to throw their weight around in elections of their choosing, even if the national apparatus sits one out.

Daily Kos was instrumental in raising funds for the first special election of the year alongside Democracy for America, a political action committee founded by Howard Dean and Our Revolution, an organization spun out of Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) presidential campaign. Despite taking place in a district that President Trump carried by 27 points, the Democrat in that Kansas congressional race, James Thompson, lost in a surprisingly narrow fashion, raising questions as to why the national Democratic party stayed away until the last moment.

Get The Beast In Your Inbox!

Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.

A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).

Subscribe

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

The official Democratic party line has been that their involvement in certain Trump-friendly districts would hurt candidates more than it helps. And in some cases, the candidates themselves have said thats true. Montana folk singer Rob Quist reportedly turned down a visit from DNC chair Tom Perez earlier this year, for instance.

But the lack of apparent symmetry between the outside groups and the party committees has worsened the perception of there being diametrically different wings to the party. And as the Democrats wait for their first national win, tensions are beginning to surface.

No, I dont think theyre doing a good job, Nina Turner, the newly chosen president of Our Revolution, plainly said of the DNC. People are tired of being bought and sold, talking-out-of-both-sides-of-their-mouth politicians. Democrats are going to learn this lesson in 2018.

PUSH IT TO THE LEFT

Its not just a decentralized fundraising climate that has complicated Democratic electoral priorities in the age of Trump. The party has also struggled to find a uniform issue set that could form the basis of a mid-term agenda. Elected leadership tried to remedy this a few weeks back with an introduction of a policy platform called A Better Deal. Though it earned accolades from progressive, populist types for focusing on breaking up monopolies, there remain certain flash points that have left party members pitted against each other.

Turner, for one, takes specific issue with the reluctance of some Democratic congressional members, and the DNC overall, to explicitly embrace a Medicare for All platform which she views as the civil rights issue of the moment. And her group, Our Revolution, which has been active in national health care protests, has started to more aggressively call out Democrats who dont support that plank.

Its really what is going to push the political class to do the right thing, Turner told The Daily Beast. Were going to expose them. Let the people know.

Not everyone in the party is enthused by the idea of Medicare for All as a litmus test. Even Ellison, who was backed by Our Revolution in his run for DNC chair and is a Medicare for All supporter, said it was too big an ask for certain members.

I know that in my district when I say Medicare for All, people applaud, Ellison said. I know in other places Ive been, people applaud. But I dont know if they applaud everywhere. Lets save the patient protection and Affordable Care Act and lets start a conversation about how we cover even more people. And about how we relieve employers the burden of having to pay health care insurance. Lets do that and if we do it, we just might end up in a place thats really really cool.

Its not just on this policy where these fissures are breaking out. A similar debate has occurred in dramatic fashion over abortion rights as well.

Rep. Ben Ray Lujn (D-N.M.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said last month that his organization will not necessarily demand that candidates be pro-choicea comment which prompted sharp disapproval from abortion rights activists.

The media has been framing this as a split between Democrats, and thats not what it is, Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL, a pro-abortion-rights organization said in a statement. Among the rank-and-file groups that make up the majority of the Democratic base, there is really no split on abortion rights.

Already, the dust up over how pro-choice a Democratic candidate should be has caused electoral hiccups for the party. In April, Senator Sanders campaigned for Our Revolution-endorsed Heath Mello, a candidate for mayor of Omaha who had previously cosponsored a bill requiring a physician performing an abortion to tell a woman that an ultrasound was available. Though the bill was more complicated than its portrayal, Sanders received a wave of backlash for his endorsement. And in the midst of what was described as a unity tour with Perez, the latter ended up reversing his own course and saying a litmus test on abortion for Democrats is necessary.

That moment, like the gulf between Ellison and Turner on the importance of Medicare for All, illuminated a fear Democrats have heading into 2018: that tactical differences and policy disputes may end up complicating their message and--in a worst case scenario--depress their vote.

LACK OF A LEADER

All these disputes and disagreements existed prior to the 2018 cycle, of course. But the party was able to compartmentalize them in large part because they had a singular leader to set the agenda. Single payer advocates and abortion-rights groups have their qualms with Barack Obama. But his political preferences became de facto party priorities and his organizations -- the DNC and OFA -- sucked up much of the resources.

Now in the political wilderness, there is no sole leader setting the agenda and dictating the terms. Some operatives are fine with that, seeing it as an opportunity for the grassroots to develop new talent.

What I want is followers, well find a leader, Paul Begala, a political commentator who worked in the Clinton White House, told The Daily Beast. I dont want to do a top down fix here; not when your party is at a 100 year low in the state legislatures. Our problem is not simply the White House. Its way more important to repair the grassroots.

But its also true that in the absence of a figurehead, different sects within the Democratic Party are competing over direction and policy priorities.

Ive never been a big fan of the singular person, Ellison told The Daily Beast. I like the idea of having a singular message and a singular set of values we stand for. Now that theres no individual who can sort of direct the flow, I think we can take a much more Democratic, small D, look at who we are and where were going.

The hope from Ellison and others is that, in the absence of central leader, the party and its supportive outside organizations will shift its focus to much needed state and local races. As Turner noted, Democrats in the age of Obama found ourselves just kind of celebrating that for 8 years and not doing a whole lot of planning. There is some evidence to suggest that this might come true. Though Democrats have yet to flip a congressional district, they have made inroads in statehouses.

But stopping Trumps agenda wont happen with the flipping of Oklahomas 44th district. It will come by taking over a chamber of Congress. And with the 2018 elections fast approaching, progressives and party leaders are beginning to fret that theyre mucking up their golden opportunity.

If the Democrats are serious about introducing legislation even if it doesnt have a snowballs chance in passing, thats saying something, Turner said. If theyre just doing that just to seduce people in 2018, were going to be in for a rude awakening.

See the original post here:
The Democratic Party Has a Great Opportunity In 2018. It Might Still ... - Daily Beast