Archive for the ‘Democrats’ Category

Mueller report: Democrats tell Trump officials not to ‘bury …

The conclusion of the Mueller investigation into whether Trump colluded with Russia in the election has been submitted. And, Mueller's report will be governed by rules written in the wake of the Starr Report. We explain. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON Members of Congress continued to wait Sunday for Attorney General William Barr to provide a summary of conclusions from a nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.Barr told lawmakers on Friday he could release the findings as soon as this weekend.

Democrats have raised concerns that officials may try to limit access to the report to a select few the top eight Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress and on key committees known as the Gang of Eight.

"Do not think you can bury this report," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABCs "This Week." "Do not think you can bury the evidence in secret by briefing eight people in Congress and say we have discharged our responsibility. That's not going to cut it. So it is essential that the report be made completely public."

Waiting for the Mueller report: Justice Department could reveal conclusions of Russia inquiry on Sunday

Mueller report: Here's what we know and still don't know (and may never know)

Despite the findings, Democrats have vowed to continue their own investigations.

Republicans criticized the Democrat's ongoing probes, saying the focus of the Mueller investigation was to determine whether there was conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to impact the 2016 election.

"Weve not seen any of that,"Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, also said on ABCs "This Week."

Jordan said Democrats had said Mueller was the right person to conduct the investigation.

"He is the best person we can pick. Hes right next to Jesus. He can almost walk on water,"Jordan said. "He will have the definitive statement on that fundamental question but all indications are that theres not going to be any findings of any collusion whatsoever."

House Democratic leaders held a conference call with members Saturday afternoon urging members to press for access to the report.

With the White House in the background special counsel Robert Mueller walks to St. John's Episcopal Church, for morning services, across from the White House, in Washington, March 24, 2019.(Photo: Cliff Owen, AP)

Leaders of key House committees led by Democrats said Sunday investigations will continue, including one looking into Trump's finances and other aspects of his presidency.

The House Judiciary Committee recently launched an investigation into whether Trump sought to obstruct justice or misuse his powers, requesting documents from 81 "agencies, entities, and individuals" connected to the administration and Trump's private businesses.

The House Intelligence Committee announced it will look into Russian interference in the 2016 election as well as Trumps foreign financial interests.

"The job of Congress is much broader than the job of special counsel.The special counsel was looking and can only look for crimes,"Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Fox "News Sunday." "We have a much broader mandate and we have to exercise that mandate to protect the integrity of government and protect the integrity of liberty and the country."

Republicans slammed Democrats for continuing the investigations, calling it part of a "fishing expedition."

"They dont think this Muellers report is going to be the bombshell they all anticipated it was going to beso now theyre launching all kinds of other charges, all kinds of other investigations," Jordan said,

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, agreed.

One day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded his Russia investigation, President Donald Trump spent Saturday in Palm Beach, at his Mar-a-Lago estate and golfing at his golf club. (March 23) AP, AP

"If anyone thinks that the Mueller report being concluded is the end of the Democrats attempt to take down President Trump, they havent been paying attention the last two years," he said on CNNs "State of the Union."

The House overwhelmingly supported a resolution in Marchpressing for lawmakers to get a copy of the full Mueller report. TheSenate, however, blocked the measure.

Some Republicans also called Sunday for full access to the report.

I want to see all of it,'' Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on NBCs Meet the Press. "What was the underlying criminal predicate for the entire investigation."

He said Trump should also support transparency,The best thing for the country and for the president is for this probe to move forward and to be concluded."

Despite earlier calls by some Democrats to try to impeach Trump, Nadler and Schiff said Sunday its too early to talk about impeachment.

"Our mandate is not to impeach the president or anything like that,"said Nadler. "Our mandate is to defend the rule of law and to vindicate our constitutional liberties and to buck up the institutions that have been weakened by the attacks of this administration."

Republicans, however, said Democrats are backpedaling on their call to impeachment and have every intention of trying to unseat Trump.

"What theyre basically saying is they are going to impeach the president for being Donald Trump," said Cruz. "And they dont care about the evidence."

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/24/mueller-report-democrats-reaction-investigation-congress/3261238002/

Read the original:
Mueller report: Democrats tell Trump officials not to 'bury ...

2020 Democrats Entertain Ending The Electoral College …

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg proposed scrapping the Electoral College from the start of his campaign, one of several radical changes to American politics now embraced by several candidates. Charles Krupa/AP hide caption

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg proposed scrapping the Electoral College from the start of his campaign, one of several radical changes to American politics now embraced by several candidates.

Democratic presidential hopefuls are betting on bold.

The majority of the Democrats running for president want to create a national health insurance program. Several want to do away with private health insurance entirely. Candidates are engaging on questions about reparations for slavery, and most of the White House hopefuls have endorsed the goal of a carbon-neutral economy within the next decade.

Increase the size of the U.S. Supreme Court? Several candidates are now on board.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren underscored the trend toward outside-the-box thinking this week during a CNN town hall, when she endorsed eliminating the Electoral College and selecting presidents through the national popular vote.

"My view is that every vote matters. And that means get rid of the Electoral College," Warren said.

The repeated rush to endorse radical proposals is starting to make some Democratic officials and operatives worried. They're concerned it could turn off moderate voters and play into President Trump's strategy of painting the Democratic Party as radical and socialist.

"The only way Trump can win is making the Democratic nominee and the Democratic positions the issue," said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. "Even if the eventual nominee is Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar, even if they're a left-of-center moderate, there will be so much flak out there with these proposals that I think it's going to be fairly easy for president Trump to pin all those on the Democratic Party in the general [election]."

Rendell is especially worried about the power that message could have in the three states that put Trump in the White House: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg disagrees. "I think part of how you inspire people is by offering bold proposals," he told NPR. "Now they have to make sense, they have to be something that can earn respect on both sides of the aisle, but we shouldn't be afraid of talking about big ideas."

Buttigieg pushed for abolishing the Electoral College on the first day of his exploratory presidential campaign. He was one of the first candidates to propose expanding the size of the Supreme Court a proposal with a historical record. Fellow Democrats blocked a similar plan when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed it in his second term.

Even as Buttigieg promotes himself as a candidate who can appeal to the types of disaffected Midwestern Democrats who helped fuel Trump's 2016 victory, Buttigieg said he made a decision to emphasize big, radical proposals. "Part of the idea of proposing something that probably can't be done without a constitutional amendment is to remind everybody that constitutional fixes are one of the best features of the Constitution itself. There's nothing exotic or unthinkable about tuning up our democracy through the amendment process."

Besides, he argued, "If the system weren't broken we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today. We're going to look, I think, unconvincing if we're unwilling to change whatever features of the system."

Here are some of the major changes currently on the table in the 2020 Democratic primary campaign:

Reparations: While most Democrats aren't backing direct financial payments to descendants of slaves, many of the candidates are framing various economic reforms around the idea of making up for centuries of systematic racism. "We have to recognize that everybody did not start out on equal footing in this country. And in particular black people have not," California Sen. Kamala Harris told The Grio. "And so we have got to recognize that and do something about that and give folks a lift up."

Farewell to the filibuster: Several candidates have embraced eliminating the legislative filibuster, a Senate rule requiring support from 60 lawmakers to advance most bills, so that legislation can pass with a simple majority like in the House. "The filibuster will essentially doom us to a situation where we'll never be able to fight climate change," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told NPR. Though, several of the senators running have been cautious about this idea.

Eliminate the Electoral College: A constitutional change wouldn't be the only route for this. Colorado recently became the latest state signing onto a compact to award its electoral votes to the national vote-winner, though the agreement wouldn't kick in until enough states have joined to produce the 270 electoral votes a candidate currently needs to win the White House. Buttigieg said it's a simple argument: "We ought to actually be place where the person who gets the most votes for president gets to win the election." Of course, it's the Democrats who have twice won the popular vote and lost the White House within the past twenty years.

End private health insurance: Not only do the majority of the Democratic candidates want to implement a national Medicare-for-all health care system, several have said that under such a setup, private medical insurance wouldn't be needed.

Amidst all this, several Democratic strategists and operatives are eyeing the voters who ditched the party for Trump in 2016, and pleading for moderation. "Given Trump's performance, a good chunk of those are up for grabs," said Rendell. "We can get them if we have a candidate who they believe is honestly interested in moderating the views of the party and making progress."

"Incremental progress can be terrific," the former mayor, governor, and DNC chair told NPR. But it's increasingly clear that's a view that many in the party are leaving behind, as Buttigieg and most of the rest of the Democratic field are placing their bets elsewhere. That's despite the fact that most party leaders believe Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives by banking on moderate, cautious candidates in Republican-leaning districts.

The eye-popping online fundraising many of the candidates are bringing in, as well as the large crowds they're commanding at rallies held a year before primary and caucus votes, indicate these big, bold proposals are exciting Democratic voters.

Go here to see the original:
2020 Democrats Entertain Ending The Electoral College ...

The Democrats Dilemma – POLITICO Magazine

Tim Alberta is chief political correspondent at Politico Magazine.

MINNEAPOLISThey have gathered in defiance of the freezing temperatures on a late Februarys night, scores of them twirling Somali flags in one hand and American flags in the other, crowding around the arrivals terminal and waiting to welcome one of their own. The vast Somali community in the Twin Cities is like one sprawling extended family, explains Ali Aden, a 39-year-old engineer who came to the U.S. two decades ago, as we survey the scene. When a prominent member of the family arrives, its customary to greet them this way.

Is it Congresswoman Omar theyre waiting for? I ask, referencing the freshman Democrat whose district were standing in.

Story Continued Below

Ilhan? he smiles broadly. No, no. If it were Ilhan, the whole city would be here.

As it turns out, the reception is for an obscure Somali government dignitary. In normal times, his arrival would be the talk of the local expat community; some 80,000 people of Somali descent are estimated to live in Minnesota, the largest community of the Somali diaspora in the United States, one that has distinctly flavored the Twin Cities culture and caused some occasional unease on the right, such as when then-candidate Donald Trump warned in 2016 of the disaster of Somali refugees moving into Minnesota and becoming radicalized by Islamic State.

But these are not normal times. The voters of Minnesotas 5th Congressional District knew they were making history last November: Omars victory made her both the first Somali-American to serve in Congress and, along with fellow newcomer Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, its first Muslim female member. What they didnt expect was that in her first seven weeks on the job she would become one of the most prominent, polarizing and recognizable politicians in Americathe subject of fierce debates on the House floor and cable news, lauded on the left for standing up to Israel and vilified on the right for comments seen by many as anti-Semitic.

Omar was destined to stand out: After Congress changed its 181-year-old rule prohibiting headwear to accommodate her, she became the first person to wear a hijab on the House floor. But it wasnt her wardrobe, or her religion, or her gripping biography as the congresswoman who came of age in a refugee camp, that distinguished Omar in her early days on Capitol Hill. Rather, it was her usage of social media and the uproar that ensued.

First, Omar tweeted that Lindsey Graham had been compromised, suggesting that his support for Trumpwhom hed verbally mauled throughout the 2016 campaignowed to blackmail collected on the South Carolina senator. (Conservatives accused Omar of playing on the long-running, unsubstantiated insinuation that Graham is gay; she denied this, but apologized.) Then, after being seated on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar was lampooned for a 2012 tweet in which she wrote during an Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. (Omar later apologized and deleted the tweet; she claimed ignorance of the anti-Semitic trope that conceives of Jewish hypnosis.)

After uproar over an Omar tweet that some called anti-Semitic, supporters placed notes on Omar's nameplate in the Longworth House Office Building on Feb. 11, 2019, in Washington, DC. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Finally, in early February, after just over a month on the job, Omar made the jump from occasional agitator to permanent lightning rod. Arguing that U.S. lawmakers back Israel because of campaign donations from Jewish donors, the congresswoman tweeted, Its all about the Benjamins baby, a reference to $100 bills. The fallout was fierce: The entire House Democratic leadership denounced Omar, forcing yet another apology, and both the president and vice president piled on, skewering the congresswoman for her remarks, with Trump even suggesting that she should resign from Congress. (Notably, neither Trump nor Mike Pence has ever criticized Congressman Steve King despite his well-documented record of openly racist rhetoric.)

All of this proved agonizing for Omars constituents, particularly those in the Somali community. Her arrival in Congress was meant to bring them legitimacy and representation. Instead, almost immediately, it invited controversy and humiliation. I was shocked. I dont like her on Twitter, Aden tells me. Shes very smart, and I didnt think she would talk that way. It was an embarrassment for me as a Somali-American, because we do not like extreme left or extreme right. But she will do better. This is new to hershe will learn how to handle it.

The more essential question, it seems, is whether the Democratic Partyits base bursting with energy, riding high off the House takeover of 2018will learn to handle Omar.

The Minnesota congresswoman, along with the likes of Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, represents the unapologetic new guard of progressivism, pushing the partys establishment to embrace tactics and positions that have heretofore been considered outside of the mainstream. Yet they face resistance not just from party elders but from many of their fellow freshmen, centrists who campaigned as fixers not firebrands, moderates who are watching warily as the Democrats brand is being hijacked by the far left. One of these members is Omars neighbor in Minnesota: Dean Phillips, a wealthy businessman who represents the 3rd District.

To better understand these dueling visions for the Democratic Party, I sat down with both Omar and Phillips, spent several days in their communities and talked with some of their constituents. What I learned is that, despite the cautionary tale offered by years of vicious Republican infighting, Democrats are dangerously close to entering into their own fratricidal conflict. On matters of both style and substance, the fractures within this freshman class are indicative of the broader divisions in a party long overdue for an ideological reckoning.

And Omar isnt shying away from it. I am certainly not looking to be comfortable, and I dont want everyone necessarily to feel comfortable around me, she told me, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips. I think really the most exciting things happen when people are extremely uncomfortable.

Sign up for POLITICO Magazines email of the weeks best, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Phillips, a friendly soul and consensus-builder by nature, is among those feeling a bit uncomfortable. Amid a discussion of Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, he complained, Suddenly an entire party is being branded by the perspectives of two of its members who represent 1 percent of the caucus.

For Somali-Americans like Aden, the Democrats identity crisis cuts more deeply. Joyful yet jittery in this era of anti-immigrant politics, they knew that she, as a Muslim woman born in Africa, would be a magnet for scrutiny, and its going to take more than a few careless tweets to diminish their immense pride in her success. What worries Aden and others in the Somali community I spoke with is that Omar has walked into a trapstumbling into these controversies not because she is motivated by anti-Semitism, but by a background in grassroots activism and a belief that the only way to defeat Trump is to play the game by his rules: accusing instead of inquiring; wielding hyperbole as an everyday weapon; tweeting first and asking questions later.

Trump is a radical. Maybe I should say hes a racist, because thats what I believe. But I dont want to see others becoming radical as the result, Aden, a naturalized citizen and a loyal Democrat, says. Like more than a few members of Pelosis team, he shudders at talk of impeaching the presidentnot because he likes Trump, but because he thinks it will help the president paint his opponents as extreme, just like him, and benefit his reelection in 2020.

Above: Omar campaigns on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2016 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Below: Phillips greets guests at a picnic in Excelsior, Minnesota, on Sept. 15, 2018. | STEPHEN MATUREN/AFP/Getty Images; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

I just worry Ilhan will be too much left, like the woman in New York, Aden says. You knowAOC.

***

In January, Democrats reclaimed the House majority with a freshman class of over 60 members, the partys biggest in nearly a half-century. It has already distinguished itself as perhaps the most consequential crop of new lawmakers ever to arrive in Washington. Even more immediately than the 2010 wave of Tea Party Republicans rebranded the GOP just two years removed from George W. Bushs presidency, this 2018 class has demonstrated at warp speed its capacity for manipulating the trajectory of the post-Barack Obama Democratic Party, its presidential hopefuls succumbing to the gravitational pull of the freshmen agitators within weeks of their taking office.

For Omar, there is no danger in calling for Trumps impeachment, or in advocating the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or in pushing Medicare for All, or in supporting the Green New Deal: Hillary Clinton carried her district by 55 percentage points in 2016. The same can be said for Omars closest friends: Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley from Massachusetts. This clique of rookie lawmakers, who call themselves the Squad, represent four of the safest Democratic districts in America. They have come to Congress not to pursue incremental victories, but to push for wholesale change in the government and inside their own party, secure in the knowledge that their deep-blue backyards will buffer them from whatever recoil might damage other Democrats in less ideologically insulated parts of the country.

The dilemma for the party is that Democrats would not have won their majority without the influx of some 40 newcomers who flipped Republican-held battleground seatsthe vast majority of them running on platforms of good government and bipartisan productivity.

In Michigan, while Tlaibs flamboyant liberalism suits the Detroit-anchored 13th DistrictWere going to impeach the motherfucker! she declared hours after being sworn init makes life considerably harder for Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin, a pair of moderate freshmen who won difficult races in the suburban-heavy 11th and 8th Districts, respectively.

And in New York, while Ocasio-Cortez puts the Bronx-based 14th District on the map with her championing of Democratic socialism, her fellow freshman Max Rose, a combat veteran who won a major upset in the 11th District by playing to the cultural conservatism of Staten Island, is forced to answer for his partys lurch to the left.

But perhaps nowhere is the divergence inside todays Democratic Party better crystallized than here in greater Minneapolis. Omars 5th District, which includes the airport, has not been represented by a Republican since 1962. A five-minute cab ride away is the Mall of America, located in Minnesotas 3rd District, which had not been represented by a Democrat since 1960until January, when Phillips took office after knocking off GOP incumbent Erik Paulsen last fall.

The districts couldnt be more remarkably different. Theyre neighboring, but dont have a lot of similarities, says Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Omars district is entirely urban, a mix of the very prosperous and the very poor, with a median household income of $63,202 and a mean household income of $88,390, according to the Census Bureau. Phillips district is mostly suburban, enwrapping Minneapolis like a giant C, containing blue-collar boroughs to the north, affluent areas to the west and upper-middle-class communities to the south of the city. Its median household income is $89,442, and its mean household income is $123,574.

That Phillips is Jewish and Omar is a Muslimthe only such neighboring members of Congress in American historymakes their intersection all the more intriguing, particularly in light of recent events.

Yet to focus too narrowly on this unique dynamic is to obscure the phenomena of polarity that Omar and Phillips represent. With a new generation of Democratic leaders emerging, and the left splintered over some of the existential questions of governing in the age of Trump, two warring iterations of the modern Democratic Party can be found in one overlapping zip code. Where Omar and her fellow safe-seat Democrats prescribe a fearless liberalism and believe Trumps scorched-earth approach calls for zero-sum political warfare, Phillips and his swing-district confederates preach cooperation and a post-ideological pragmatism, fearful that the presidents surest path to reelection is to portray their party as even more dogmatic than his own.

The weight of these circumstances is not lost on either lawmaker. In separate interviews, both Omar and Phillips had kind words for the other, downplaying intraparty rivalries while offering bromides of shared goals for their caucus.

But once I began drilling down on specificsof policy and strategy, ideological branding and political temperamentthe tensions quickly bubbled to the surface. Their responses revealed not just disagreements within the Democratic coalition that will prove difficult to reconcile on Capitol Hill amid an acrimonious presidential election cycle, but also a hint of distrust that if unchecked could yield the sort of bloody internecine struggle that crippled the GOP for much of the past decade.

Welcome to the opening salvos of the Democrats Civil War.

***

Phillips has a pedigree that orients toward resolution, making him remarkably well-suited to the task ahead.

The grandson of renowned advice columnist Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby), he traffics in relationships and common ground, viewing no problem as too big for people collaborating in good faith. The first group he joined in Congress was the Problem Solvers Caucus, a club of business-minded centrists that accomplishes little legislatively (and earns sneers on the far left and far right) but provides something of a spiritual oasis for moderates in both parties. The closest friendships he has made on Capitol Hill are with Republicans, though as a courtesy he checked with them before giving me their names, not wanting to inadvertently damage their standing on the right. And when Omar tweeted what was panned as an anti-Semitic trope, Phillips held off for many hours on issuing a news release, much to the irritation of Jewish friends and colleagues. The reason: He hadnt spoken with his fellow Minnesota freshman and wanted to have a private dialogue before commenting publicly on the matter.

That's how I wish more people would conduct themselveslets share it face to face, Phillips says. You know, a little more talking, a little less tweeting. Its the tweeting that gets us into trouble.

Phillips in his Washington, D.C., office. | Allison Shelley for Politico Magazine

Even as he said that, Phillips managed to show a level of empathy worthy of his grandmother. Our conversation was about as much about me expressing my feelings and why I was hurting, why such language and statements are destructive, as it was an invitation to work together and start a respectful understanding and talk about our differences in life experience, he said. I mean, Representative Omars life experience and mine couldnt be more dissimilarbut thats the beauty of the United States.

Fifty years old and fabulously wealthy, with black-rimmed glasses and waves of toffee-colored hair swept neatly back and behind his ears, Phillips looks the part of an industry mogul. His family is corporate royalty in the Twin Cities, with a liquor distilling empire he took over after earning his MBA and various properties scattered across the metro area. On a Wednesday afternoon, were inside one of them, a historic downtown building two blocks from the Mississippi River, once owned by the Pillsbury family (of biscuit fame) and now being sold off by Phillips family, which has used the estate to house its philanthropic work. Phillips mastered every gofers position in the distilling company before running it, then launched several other fruitful ventures of his own. It was only after he had established his own name, his own brand, that Phillips turned to politics.

Paulsen, the GOP incumbent in the 3rd District, had cruised to a fifth term in 2016winning by 14 pointsdespite Trump losing the district by nearly 10 points. Unbowed and armed with a personal fortune, Phillips convinced party elders that he was just the sort of Chamber of Commerce-friendly, compromise-minded Democrat who could win independents and disaffected Republicans in the Minneapolis suburbs. He was right: Running as a problem solver on issues of health coverage, gun violence and fiscal profligacy, Phillips thumped Paulsen by double digits, flipping a GOP district that had stymied Democrats for years.

Two things have stood out about Phillips, as a candidate and during his baptism by tweet-fire in Congress. The first is his tolerance ofdare I say deference towardTrump, a man for whom reflexive loathing is a prerequisite on todays left. Phillips labored throughout his campaign not to mention the president at all; though Trump was deeply unpopular in the district, he says, voters rarely mentioned the chaos emanating from the White House. They were more interested in his bread-and-butter issues: expanding health-care coverage, getting corporate money out of politics, balancing the budget. To the extent Phillips talked about Trump, however, he came across as reverent, even appreciative, praising the president for channeling the angst of voters who felt abandoned by the governing class. This has continued since taking office: Several times in our conversation, unsolicited, Phillips cites Trumps ability to connect with the neglected masses, once going so far as to credit him with showing Democrats how to campaign differently in 2018.

The second thing that distinguishes Phillips is his allergy to labels. He talks frequently of outcomes but can prove impossible to pin down on policy details, the result of a studied effort to avoid being typecast either as a wild-eyed progressive or a weak-kneed moderate. (According to the Minneapolis City Pages, he told voters at an event last year, Im pro-life. And Im also pro-choice. And I dont think theyre mutually exclusive. I think its really important to be both. And I celebrate both.)

Top: Dean Phillips talks with people outside City Hall during early voting in Plymouth, Minnesota, on Sept. 21, 2018. Bottom: A newly elected Omar speaks to a group of supporters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Nov. 6, 2018. | Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call; KEREM YUCEL/AFP/Getty Images

In one breath, Phillips tells me, I cant think of many Americans who wouldnt want better access to health care at a lower cost, wouldnt want cleaner air, wouldnt want to protect our environment, wouldnt want to have better access to education at a lower cost, he says. These are all shared outcomes. There isnt a lot of daylight between what I want to see done and what some of my colleagues perhaps further to the left on the political spectrum may want.

Yet in the next breath, when quizzed on some of the specific proposals in question, the daylight becomes blinding. He promptly points out that he didnt sign onto the Green New Deal, a plan calling for tens of trillions of dollars to transform America into an Elysium of renewable energy. He scoffs at the mention of modern monetary theory, the fashionable notion pushed by Ocasio-Cortez and others on that left that Americas national debt is a meaningless number. He does not support a single-payer, Medicare for All health care apparatus. Nor does he subscribe to the increasingly common proposal of tuition-free college.

This is not to accuse Phillips of duplicity or doublespeak. Like many rookie lawmakersat least, those of his moderate tribehe doesnt want to rock the boat. Those Democrats who flipped red districts campaigned on promises not to clash emptily with Republicans; the irony, of course, is that they arrived in Washington only to realize that the greater threat to their jobs is coming from the left flank of their own party.

Phillips approaches the subject like he approaches every other political subject: gingerly. Its creating some interesting challenges in that some very young and new members have followings. Two people, their collective following exceeds the entire remainder of the Democratic caucus, he says, deploying some digital hyperbole in referring to Omar and Ocasio-Cortez. By definition, they become to the public the voice of a party, they become even de facto leaders of a party.

As if this point isnt explicit enough, Phillips adds, This majority was achieved not by winning in AOCs district or Ilhan Omars district, [but] by victories in districts that had not been terribly favorable to Democrats in the past. So if theres a tension in the party, its how do you maintain that majority?

***

Omar has a simple answer to her colleagues question.

I think you endanger your majority by not doing what got you into the majority, she says. And this is something that the Republicans often are in tune with that the Democrats are not. We seem to be afraid of our own shadow. Weve become too afraid, I think, to actually listen to the people, and to recognize who our base is. Im fascinated by Republicans. They seem to have, for good or bad, a full understanding of their base and complete loyalty to them. We have a bigger base, but we seem to not understand them or have loyalty to them. When you are constantly trying to figure out how to appease everyone, you end up not appeasing anyone.

The congresswoman is leaning forward in her chair, a sudden urgency inflecting her voice as she evaluates the diverging paths before the Democratic Party. Seated inside her fifth-floor congressional suite, a brunet headscarf framing her face and a winter coat draped around her shoulders to fight the morning chill, Omar was cautious when we began speaking. Understandably so: Between the Lindsey Graham controversy, the two early incidents of alleged anti-Semitism, and a recent viral sparring match with Trumps special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, she has the wary look of a battle-scarred trouper rather than a rookie lawmaker not two months into her first term.

But her guard doesnt stay up for long. Though she is just 37, with delicate features, a puckish giggle and a strident social media voice that reflects her relative youth, Omar is a woman in a hurry.

Omar wore white with a group of female Democratic lawmakers at the State of the Union address on February 5, 2019. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Having fled the civil war in her native Somalia at age 8, spending the next four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before finding asylum in America, her adolescence was spent questioning why the land of opportunity she had read so much abouther new home, the United Stateswas falling short of its promise. Landing briefly in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and then in Minneapolis, she saw dire poverty. She saw broken schools. She saw people without health care. Naturalized at age 17, she set off for college in North Dakota, studying political science and beginning her journey as a community activist focused on nutrition and education. She knocked on doors and startled many a rural, white woman with her headscarf, only to form deep bonds over their shared anxieties, such as having affordable child care, making it work with school, holding down a job, and making it home in enough time to make dinner.

As the Somali population in her city continued to swell, so did the young activists discontent. By the time she ran for office in 2016, knocking off a 22-term incumbent to win a seat in the Minnesota statehouse, Omar was fed upnot so much with Trumpism, or with politics in general, as with the Democratic Party.

As she saw it, the party ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo. Omar says the hope and change offered by Barack Obama was a mirage. Recalling the caging of kids at the U.S.-Mexico border and the droning of countries around the world on Obamas watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.

We cant be only upset with Trump. His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was, Omar says. And thats not what we should be looking for anymore. We dont want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.

80,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, a sizeable diaspora that lends a distinctive feel to the state's major cities like Minneapolis, pictured above. | Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures for Politico Magazine

Omar embraces the comparisons between the Squad and the Tea Party. Despite the obvious philosophical differences, the models are strikingly similar: a two-term president leaves office with unfulfilled promises to the ideological core of his partys base; that core base is galvanized by the election of the other partys president; two years later, in that presidents first midterm election, the energy of that core base helps the out-of-power party retake control of Congress.

What remains to be seen is whether Democrats follow the comparison to its natural conclusion, with the insurgent activist wing swallowing up the partys establishment. Its a thought that paralyzes lawmakers like Phillipsand animates those like Omar. We look at the negative aspects of the Tea Party and not really at the part of them that spoke to the American people, that made them feel like there were people actively fighting for them, she says. Theres a resemblance there. A lot of us are not that much different in our eagerness to want to come here and fight for our constituents, fight for the American ideals we believe in.

The problem as Omar sees itand not coincidentally, as some Tea Party conservatives saw it back in 2011is that many of her fellow freshmen didnt come to Washington to fight.

I dont believe that tiptoeing is the way to win the hearts and the minds of the people, she says. I get saddened by some of my freshman colleagues who cant understand that within their districts the idea of Medicare for All is extremely popular. The Green New Deal is a very popular idea in their districts. Making sure that we have a final fix to our broken immigration system is very popular in their districts. What they pay attention to is the rhetoric that says, This is a red-to-blue district, you have to be careful, you cant talk about these policies. Well, in reality, these people are like everyone else: They struggle with the cost of health care, they struggle with our broken infrastructure, they struggle with having an economy that brings them into the 21st century. And we have to be willing to have those conversations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, center, holds a news conference on Friday, Nov. 30, 2018. | AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Some of Omars colleagues in the Democratic caucus grumble that those difficult conversations need to be handled sensitivelyand that the overzealous crop of young lawmakers are acting like bulls in a china shop. Indeed, just hours after I left her office, Omar was at the center of a fresh firestorm: This one owed to videotape that surfaced featuring comments made at an event in Washington the night before, in which she again took issue with Israeli influence over American policymaking, questioning some lawmakers allegiance to a foreign country.

Facing another round of denunciations, including from some of the most powerful members of her own party, Omar refused to back down. What ensued was a week of unmitigated chaos within House Democratic ranks: Senior Democrats pushed for a vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, younger Democrats rallied behind Omar and objected to her being singled out, and the partys leadership, desperate to defuse the situation, finally settled on a catch-all version of the resolution condemning all forms of hate speech, including against Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. It was a clear-cut victory for Omar and her allies on the left.

In a preview of her defiance, just hours before the videotaped comments thrust the congresswoman back into the national limelight, Omar told me that Washingtonand especially her Democratic colleaguesshould get used to her troublemaking.

As much as other people are uncomfortable, Im excited about the change in tone that has taken place that is extremely positive. The insightful conversations that were having about money and its influence in Washington. And my ability, I think, to agitate our foreign policy discussions in a way that many of my colleagues who have been anti-intervention, anti-war have been unable to do in the past, she says. So, Im OK with taking the blows if it means it will ignite conversations that no one was willing to have before.

***

Its easy to overlook the fact that, as Phillips points out, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership made their legislative priority, H.R. 1, a massive anti-corruption and voting-rights package that has near-unanimous support across the partys internal divides.

Its also easy to overlook the fact that, as Phillips also points out, the largest caucus within the House majority is that of the centrist, business-minded New Democrat Coalition. It boasts 101 members, many of them freshmen from swing districts. The group doesnt get many headlineswere not filled with show horses, Phillips saysbut its sizable membership reflects an ideological equilibrium in the caucus that isnt widely appreciated.

And yet, if the divisions within the House Democratic caucus are a proxy war for the identity of the party, these insider battles are shaping up to be unfair fights. The intensity of the freshman progressives aside, leading Democrats hail primarily from areas of the country where working with Trump on virtually anything is a non-starter. For these members, even those inclined toward restraint, the realities of divided government and the zeal of their base provide an impetus for collision instead of collaboration.

Its not just the divide in the freshman class, its the divide between the Democrats who just got elected from swing districts and the Democrats who were elected to committees and committee chairmanships who come from ultra-safe districts and are now under heavy pressure from activists to investigate 10,000 different things in the executive branch, says Dave Wasserman, the House editor at the Cook Political Report. It was only a matter of time before these fissures in the Democratic caucus emerged, and theyre emerging with a vengeance.

Meanwhile, in the nascent race for the right to take on Trump in 2020, the hearts and minds of Democratic voters are waiting to be won. No two elections are alike, and its premature to handicap the presidential field based on the cult followings enjoyed by freshmen members of Congress. But its increasingly difficult to envision a Democrat capturing the partys center of gravity without replicating some model of what Trump did in 2016 and what Omar is doing in 2019: shunning the rules, turning up the volume and connecting with voters on their terms.

Its a most discouraging thought for Phillips. The only way to build a national brand it seems in this day and age, the only way to be listened to on a broad scale, is to throw political bombs, he sighs. And thats a misalignment of incentives. There is not an incentive to conduct ourselves respectfully and decently.

Inside the Mall of America on another snowy February night, a pair of local 25-year-old women, Duyen Lieu and Jeannie Farrell, cant stop talking about the freshman congresswoman from Minneapolis. They praise Omar as courageous, trailblazing, a progressive visionary. Lieu says her supposedly anti-Semitic comments have been blown out of proportion by Democrats who fear her disruption of their clubby existence, and Farrell says theres a target on her back because of her hijab, her refugee background and her Muslim faith.

Phillips and Omar at a roundtable against gun violence on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018, in Minneapolis. | AP Photo/Jim Mone

They both follow Omar on social media. They also follow Ocasio-Cortez and other popular young Democrats. One person they dont follow: Phillips, their representative in the 3rd District. In fact, they have never heard of him. (Omar has 800,000 Instagram followers and about the same on Twitter between her personal and political accounts, while Phillips has about 6,000 followers on Instagram and just over 20,000 on Twitter.)

Its an open question whether the views of young, swing-district Democrats like Lieu and Farrellwho embrace the term socialism and are backing Bernie Sanders for presidentportend the sort of rapid, sweeping changes Omar and her allies see in the partys future. (Omar does not openly identify as a democratic socialist like Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez; Phillips says the socialist labeling drives me nuts, and believes its a damn big problem for the country if his party gets branded that way because two members out of 200 are so affiliated.)

What appears certain, however, is that the fault lines within this freshman class of House Democrats are the same ones shaping the contours of the partys presidential nominating contest. Phillips, the business-oriented moderate, is backing Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, someone who is pragmatic and will build bridges to win over independents and disaffected Republicans. Omar, the audacious progressive, has not endorsed, but says she is most excited by Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, candidates who are not afraid and have offered bold proposals that will turn out the partys base.

One defining question Democrats will be expected to answer in the months aheadboth on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hillis whether Trump should be subjected to articles of impeachment. While some progressives, including Tlaib, are actively pushing to begin impeachment proceedings, Democratic leaders have urged caution. They want members to wait for the release of special counsel Robert Muellers report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, fearful that the perception of overreaching could alienate the middle of the electorate and boost the presidents prospects for reelection.

Phillips and his fellow majority-makers from purple districts dont need to be told twice. Theyll be dependent on ticket-splitters to keep their own jobs in 2020 and have little to gain by so much as uttering the I-word.

Omar is also reluctant, though, she professes, for a very different reason. She believes Trump is completely insane and has proved himself unfit for office. However, she adds, I think the vice president is more dangerous than the man who is running the circus. So, impeachment is something that I think might become necessarybut Im also afraid of it.

See original here:
The Democrats Dilemma - POLITICO Magazine

Democrats Want to Tax the Wealthy. Many Voters Agree.

A wealth tax finds support, but challenges loom.

The Times poll found strong support for a wealth tax akin to Ms. Warrens plan. Sixty-one percent of Americans said they approved of imposing a 2 percent tax on the wealth of households with a net worth of more than $50 million. (Under Ms. Warrens plan, the rate would rise to 3 percent on wealth over $1 billion, but the Times survey didnt ask about that provision.) An earlier Morning Consult poll found similar results.

We pay taxes on our property, why not on your wealth? said Gary Montoya, a school safety officer in Panama City, Fla.

Mr. Montoya, 39, is a registered Republican and a supporter of Mr. Trump. But he said taxes on the rich must rise to reduce the federal budget deficit, among other priorities.

The idea of a wealth tax, however, is newly prominent in American politics, and it isnt clear whether support will hold up. Republicans havent had time to attack the policy, as they have with the estate tax, and it would face legal challenges if enacted. Moreover, voters used to hearing about income-tax rates might not fully understand the idea of a wealth tax, said Vanessa Williamson, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution who has studied public opinion on taxation.

The wealth tax also raises practical challenges that could turn off some voters. Kris Stallard, a data analyst in Tulsa, Okla., says he wants to raise taxes on the rich, and has no problem with a wealth tax in principle. But he questions how it would work in practice.

You might own houses, businesses, that sort of thing, said Mr. Stallard, a Democrat. Is the government going to take parts of businesses from people?

Other Democrats are taking a more traditional approach to taxing the rich: raising income taxes on the highest earners. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a marginal rate as high as 70 percent on annual income over $10 million. The top rate today is 37 percent, down from 39.6 percent before the Republican tax law that passed in late 2017.

Continue reading here:
Democrats Want to Tax the Wealthy. Many Voters Agree.

Liberal Democrats (UK) – Wikipedia

FoundingEdit

The Liberal Democrats were formed on 3 March 1988 by a merger between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, which had formed a pact nearly seven years earlier as the SDPLiberal Alliance.[1] The Liberal Party, founded in 1859, were descended from the Whigs, Radicals and Peelites, while the SDP were a party created in 1981 by former Labour Party members, MPs and cabinet ministers, but also gained defections from the Conservative Party.[21]

Having declined to third party status after the rise of the Labour Party from 1918 and especially during the 1920s, the Liberals were challenged for this position in the 1980s when a group of Labour MPs broke away and established the Social Democratic Party (SDP).[21] The SDP and the Liberals realised that there was no space for two political parties of the centre and entered into the SDPLiberal Alliance so that they would not stand against each other in elections. The Alliance was led by David Steel (Liberal) and Roy Jenkins (SDP); Jenkins was replaced by David Owen.[21] The two parties had their own policies and emphases, but produced a joint manifesto for the 1983 and 1987 general elections.

Following disappointing results in the 1987 election, Steel proposed to merge the two parties. Although opposed by Owen, it was supported by a majority of members of both parties, and they formally merged in March 1988, with Steel and Robert Maclennan (who had become SDP leader in August 1987) as joint interim leaders. The new party was initially named Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD) with the unofficial short form The Democrats being used from September 1988.[22] The name was subsequently changed to Liberal Democrats in October 1989, which is frequently shortened to Lib Dems.[21] The new party logo, the Bird of Liberty, was adopted in 1989.

The minority of the SDP who rejected the merger remained under Owen's leadership in a rump SDP; the minority of the Liberal Party divided, with some retiring from politics immediately and others (led by former Liberal MP Michael Meadowcroft) creating a new 'Liberal Party' that claimed to be the continuation of the Liberal Party which had just dissolved itself. Michael Meadowcroft eventually joined the Liberal Democrats in 2007 but some of his former followers continue still as the Liberal Party, most notably in a couple of electoral wards of the cities of Liverpool and Peterborough.[21]

The then-serving Liberal MP Paddy Ashdown was elected leader in July 1988. At the 1989 European Elections, the party received only 6% of the vote, putting them in fourth place after the Green Party.[21] They failed to gain a single Member of the European Parliament at this election.[23]

Over the next three years, the party recovered under Ashdown's leadership. They performed better at the 1990 local elections and in by-electionsincluding at Eastbourne in 1990, and Ribble Valley and Kincardine & Deeside in 1991.

The Lib Dems did not reach the share of national votes in the 1990s that the Alliance had achieved in the 1980s. At their first election in 1992 (which ended in a fourth successive Conservative win), they won 17.8% of the vote and twenty seats.[24]

In the 1994 European Elections, the party gained its first two Members of European Parliament.[25]

Following the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader in July 1994 after the death of his predecessor John Smith, Ashdown pursued co-operation between the two parties because he wanted to form a coalition government should the next general election end without any party having an overall majority.[26] This Lib-Lab pact failed to form because Labour's massive majority after the 1997 general election made it an irrelevance for Labour, and because Labour were not prepared to consider the introduction of proportional representation and other Lib Dem conditions.[26] The election was, however, something of a turning point for the Liberal Democrats. They took a smaller share of the vote than at the previous election, but they managed to more than double their representation in parliament,[27] winning 46 seats,[24] through tactical voting and concentrating resources in winnable seats.[28]

Ashdown retired as leader in 1999[29] and the party elected Charles Kennedy as his replacement. The party improved on their 1997 results at the 2001 general election, increasing their number of seats to 52 and their share of the vote to 18.3%.[30] Liberal Democrat candidates won support from former Labour and Conservative voters due to the Lib Dems' position on issues that appealed to those on the left and the right: opposition to the war in Iraq[31] and support for civil liberties, electoral reform, and open government. Charles Kennedy expressed his goal to replace the Conservatives as the official opposition;[32] The Spectator awarded him the 'Parliamentarian of the Year' award in November 2004 for his position on the war.[33] The party won seats from Labour in by-elections in Brent East in 2003 and Leicester South in 2004, and narrowly missed taking others in Birmingham Hodge Hill and Hartlepool.[34]

Under Kennedy's leadership the majority of Pro-Euro Conservatives, a group of former members of the Conservatives, joined the Liberal Democrats on 10 December 2001.[35]

At the 2005 general election, the Lib Dems gained their highest share of the vote since the SDPLiberal Alliance (22%) and won 62 seats.[36] Many had anticipated that this election would be the Lib Dems' breakthrough at Westminster; party activists hoped to better the 25% support of the 1983 election, or to reach 100 MPs.[37] Much of the apparent lack of success resulted from the first-past-the-post electoral system: the party got 22% of the votes nationally but only 10% of the seats in the Commons.[36] Controversy became associated with the campaign when it became known that Michael Brown had donated 2.4 million to the Liberal Democrats. Brown, who lived in Majorca, Spain at the time, was charged in June 2008 with fraud and money laundering and subsequently jumped bail and fled the country.[38] In November 2008 he was convicted in his absence of thefts amounting to 36 million and sentenced to seven years imprisonment.[39]

The 2005 election figures revealed a trend of the Lib Dems replacing the Conservatives as Labour's main opponents in urban areas. Many gains came in previously Labour-held urban constituencies (for example, Manchester Withington, Cardiff Central, Birmingham Yardley), many of which the Conservatives had held in the 1980s, and Lib Dem aspirants had over 100 second-place finishes behind Labour candidates.[36] The British electoral system makes it hard for the Conservatives to form a government without winning some city seats outside its rural heartlands, such as the Lib Dem Bristol West constituency, where the Conservatives came third in 2005 after holding the seat until 1997.[40]

In a statement on 5 January 2006 Charles Kennedy admitted to a long battle with alcoholism and announced a leadership election in which he intended to stand for re-election, while Sir Menzies Campbell took over as acting leader.[41]

For several years rumours had alleged that Kennedy had problems with alcoholthe BBC's Nick Robinson called it "Westminster's worst-kept secret".[42] Kennedy had on previous occasions denied these rumours, and some suggested that he had deliberately misled the public and his party.[42]

Kennedy had planned to stand as a candidate, but he withdrew from the election citing a lack of support among Lib Dem MPs.[43] Sir Menzies Campbell subsequently won the contest, defeating Chris Huhne and Simon Hughes, among others, in a very controversial race. Mark Oaten withdrew from the contest because of revelations about visits to male prostitutes. Simon Hughes came under attack regarding his sexuality while Chris Huhne was accused live on Daily Politics of attempting to rig polls.[43]

Despite the negative press over Kennedy's departure, the leaderless party won the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election over Labour in February 2006. This result was viewed as a particular blow for Gordon Brown, who lives in the constituency, represented the adjacent seat and featured in Labour's campaign.[44] The party also came second place by 633 votes in the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, threatening the safe Conservative seat and pushing Labour into fourth place behind the UK Independence Party.[45] In July 2007, Sir Menzies announced that the party wished to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20 to 16p per poundthe lowest rate since 1916and wanted to finance the cut using green taxes and other revenues, including making gains from UK properties owned by non-UK residents eligible for capital gains tax.[46]

Opinion poll trends during Campbell's leadership showed support for the Lib Dems decline to less than 20%.[47] Campbell resigned on 15 October 2007, and Vince Cable became acting leader until a leadership election could be held.[48] Cable was praised during his tenure for his performances at Prime minister's questions over the Northern Rock crisis, HMRC's loss of child benefit data, and the 2007 Labour party donation scandal.[49]

On 18 December 2007 Nick Clegg won the leadership election, becoming the party's fourth leader. Clegg won the leadership with a majority of 511 votes (1.2%) over his opponent Chris Huhne, in a poll of party members.[50] Clegg was the Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam until 2017, and was an MEP for the East Midlands from 1999 to 2004.[51]

In his acceptance speech, Clegg declared that he was "a liberal by temperament, by instinct and by upbringing" and that he believed "Britain [is] a place of tolerance and pluralism". He claimed that his priorities were defending civil liberties; devolving the running of public services to parents, pupils and patients; and protecting the environment,[52] and that he wanted to forge a "liberal alternative to the discredited policies of big government".[51] He also proposed a target to double the number of Lib Dem MPs within two elections, and before the 2008 local elections confirmed that he was pleased with their performance in the polls.[53]

Shortly after the election Clegg reshuffled the party's frontbench team, making Huhne the replacement Home Affairs spokesperson, Ed Davey the Foreign Affairs spokesperson, and keeping Vince Cable as Shadow Chancellor.[54] His predecessors were also given roles: Campbell joined the all-party Commons foreign affairs select committee, and Kennedy campaigned nationwide on European issues, as president of the European Movement UK.[54]

Clegg became deputy prime minister to David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, in a 2010 coalition agreement that placed a centre-right government at the helm of the United Kingdom.[55][56] Political commentators identified Clegg's leadership as promoting a shift to the radical centre in the Liberal Democrats, bringing more emphasis to the economically liberal side of social liberalism.[57][58]

After the first of three general election debates on 15 April 2010, a ComRes poll put the Liberal Democrats on 24%.[59] On 20 April, a YouGov poll put the Liberal Democrats on 34%, the Conservatives on 33% and Labour on 28%.[60]

In the general election held on 6 May 2010, the Liberal Democrats won 23% of the vote and 57 seats in the House of Commons. The election returned a hung parliament with no party having an absolute majority. Negotiations between the Lib Dems and the two main parties occurred in the following days. David Cameron became Prime Minister on 11 May after Gordon Brown's resignation and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government with the Conservative Party, with Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and other Liberal Democrats in the cabinet.[61] Three quarters of the Liberal Democrat's manifesto pledges went into the Programme for Government.[62] Of the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, only two refused to support the Conservative Coalition agreement, with former leader Charles Kennedy and Manchester Withington MP John Leech both rebelling.[63]

After joining the coalition poll ratings for the party fell,[64] particularly following the government's support for raising the cap on tuition fees with Liberal Democrat MPs voting 27 for, 21 against and 8 abstaining.[65] Shortly after the 2015 General Election, Liberal Democrat leadership contender Norman Lamb conceded that Clegg's broken pledge on university tuition had proven costly.[66]

On 8 December 2010, the eve of a vote on the raising of the cap on tuition fees in the United Kingdom to 9,000, an opinion poll conducted by YouGov recorded voting intention figures of Conservatives 41%, Labour 41%, Other Parties 11% and Liberal Democrats 8%.[67] the lowest level of support recorded for the Liberal Democrats in any opinion poll since September 1990.[68] In the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, 2011 held on 13 January 2011, the Liberal Democrats gained 31.9% of the vote, a 0.3% increase despite losing to Labour. In a by-election in the South Yorkshire constituency of Barnsley in March 2011, the Liberal Democrats fell from second place at the general election to sixth, with the candidate Dominic Carman, losing his deposit.[69]

In council elections held on 5 May 2011, the Liberal Democrats suffered heavy defeats in the Midlands, North and Scotland. They also lost heavily in the Welsh assembly and Scottish Parliament, where several candidates lost their deposits.[70] According to The Guardian, "they lost control of Sheffield council the city of Clegg's constituency were ousted from Liverpool, Hull and Stockport, and lost every Manchester seat they stood in. Overall, they got their lowest share of the vote in three decades".

Clegg admitted that the party had taken "big knocks" due to a perception that the coalition government had returned to the Thatcherism of the 1980s.[71]

As part of the deal that formed the coalition, it was agreed to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote, in which the Conservatives would campaign for First Past the Post and the Liberal Democrats for Alternative Vote. The referendum, held on 5 May 2011, resulted in First Past the Post being chosen over Alternative Vote by approximately two-thirds of voters.[72]

In May 2011, Clegg revealed plans to make the House of Lords a mainly elected chamber, limiting the number of peers to 300, 80% of whom would be elected with a third of that 80% being elected every 5 years by single transferable vote.[73] In August 2012, Clegg announced that attempts to reform the House of Lords would be abandoned due to opposition for the proposals by backbench Conservative MPs. Claiming the coalition agreement had been broken, Clegg stated that Liberal Democrat MPs would no longer support changes to the House of Commons boundaries for the 2015 general election.[74]

The Lib Dem Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne in 2011 announced plans for halving UK carbon emissions by 2025 as part of the "Green Deal" which was in the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto.[75]

In council elections held on 3 May 2012, the Lib Dems lost more than three hundred councillors, leaving them with fewer than three thousand for the first time in the party's history.[76] In June 2012 it was reported that membership of the party had fallen by around 20% along with falling poll numbers since joining the coalition.[77] On 20 September 2012 Clegg personally apologised for breaking his pledge not to raise university tuition fees.[78]

On 28 February 2013, the party won a by-election in Eastleigh, the Hampshire constituency that had previously been held by the former minister, Chris Huhne. The party's candidate, Mike Thornton, had been a local councillor for the party, and held the seat.[79] In eighteen other by-elections held throughout the 201015 Parliament, the party lost its deposit in 11;[80] in the Rochester and Strood by-election held on 20 November 2014, it came fifth polling 349 votes or 0.9% of the total votes cast. This was both the worst result in the history of the party, and of any governing party.[81]

In local elections held on 22 May 2014, the Liberal Democrats lost another 307 council seats[82] and ten of their eleven seats in the European Parliament in the 2014 European elections.[83]

Despite Clegg's efforts at triangulation,[84][85] the Liberal Democrats experienced its worst-ever showing in the 2015 general election, losing 48 seats in the House of Commons, leaving them with only eight MPs.[86][87] Prominent Liberal Democrat MPs who lost their seats included former leader Charles Kennedy, former deputy leaders Vince Cable and Simon Hughes, and several cabinet ministers. The party held onto just eight constituencies in Great Britain, with only one in Scotland, one in Wales and six in England. The Liberal Democrats' erstwhile coalition partner, Cameron's Conservatives, won an outright majority, negating the need for them to accommodate the smaller party in government.[88] On 8 May 2015, Clegg announced his resignation as party leader.[89]

Membership of the Liberal Democrats rose from 45,000 to 61,000[90] as the party prepared to hold its 2015 party leadership ballot. On 16 July 2015, Tim Farron was elected to the leadership of the party with 56.5% of the vote, beating opponent Norman Lamb.[20] On 29 July, Farron unveiled his frontbench team, with Tom Brake MP taking on Foreign Affairs, Alistair Carmichael MP Home Affairs, Susan Kramer Economics and Judith Jolly representing Defence.[91]

In the May 2016 local elections, the Liberal Democrats gained a small number of council seats, though they lost ground in the National Assembly for Wales. The party campaigned for a Remain vote in the referendum on United Kingdom membership of the European Union in June 2016. After the Leave vote, the Liberal Democrats sought to mobilise the 48% who voted Remain,[92] and the party's membership rose again, reaching 80,000 by September.[93]

On 1 December 2016, the Liberal Democrats won its first by-election gain in ten years when Sarah Olney won a seat in Richmond Park previously held by the Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who had resigned and was contesting the election as an Independent. The main theme of the party's campaign was opposition to the manner of the government opting for a hard Brexit in leaving the European Union.

In the 2017 snap general election, the Liberal Democrats had an overall vote share of 7.4%, down 0.5% from 2015. Nevertheless, the party made a net gain of four seats from the last election, taking their seat total to twelve (an unprecedented 50% increase in their seats). The party recaptured several of its former strongholds: Sir Vince Cable was elected in Twickenham, with a majority of 9,762 votes and a swing of 14.7%. Despite making some gains compared to the previous general election, former party leader Nick Clegg lost Sheffield Hallam to Jared O'Mara of the Labour Party, and Zac Goldsmith of the Conservatives regained Richmond Park from Sarah Olney with a very narrow majority of 45 votes.[94] Party membership exceeded 100,000 during the campaign. On 14 June, following the election, Farron announced his intention to stand down as leader of the Liberal Democrats.[95]

Sir Vince Cable was elected unopposed to the leadership of the party on 20 July 2017 following Farron's resignation. Before his election, Cable argued for an "exit from Brexit"[96], calling for a second referendum on the UK's relationship with the European Union.[97]

In the 1992 General Election the Lib Dems succeeded the SDPLiberal Alliance as the third most popular party, behind Labour and the Conservatives. Their popularity never rose to the levels attained by the Alliance, but in later years their seat count rose far above the Alliance's peak, a feat that has been credited to more intelligent targeting of vulnerable seats.[28] The vote percentage for the Alliance in 1987 and the Lib Dems in 2005 is similar, yet the Lib Dems won 62 seats to the Alliance's 22.[36]

The first-past-the-post electoral system used in UK General Elections is not suited to parties whose vote is evenly divided across the country, resulting in those parties achieving a lower proportion of seats in the Commons than their proportion of the popular vote (see table and graph). The Lib Dems and their Liberal and SDP predecessors have suffered especially,[148] particularly in the 1980s when their electoral support was greatest while the disparity between the votes and the number of MPs returned to parliament was significantly large. The increase in their number of seats in 1997, 2001 and 2005 was attributed to the weakness of the Conservatives and the success of their election strategist Chris Rennard.[28] Lib Dems state that they want 'three-party politics' in the Commons;[149][150] the most realistic chance of power with first past the post is for the party to be the kingmakers in a hung parliament.[151] Party leaders often set out their terms for forming a coalition in such an eventNick Clegg stated in 2008 that the policy for the 2010 General Election was to reform elections, parties and Parliament in a "constitutional convention".[152]

The party had control of 31 councils in 2008, having held 29 councils prior to the 2008 election.[153] In the 2008 local elections they gained 25% of the vote, placing them ahead of Labour and increasing their control by 34 to more than 4,200 council seats21% of the total number of seats. In council elections held in May 2011, the Liberal Democrats suffered heavy defeats in the Midlands, North and Scotland. They also lost heavily in the Welsh assembly and Scottish Parliament.[70] In local elections held in May 2012, the Lib Dems lost more than 300 councillors, leaving them with fewer than 3000 for the first time in the party's history.[76] In the 2013 local elections, they lost more councillors. In the 2014 local elections they lost over 300 councillors and the control of two local governments.[154]

In the 2016 local elections, the number of Liberal Democrat councillors increased for the first time since they went into coalition in 2010. The party won 43 seats and increased its vote share by 4%. A number of former MPs who lost their seats in 2015 won council seats in 2016, including former Manchester Withington MP John Leech [155] who won 53% of the vote in a traditionally safe Labour seat. Leech's win was hailed as 'historic', signifying the first gain for any party in Manchester other than Labour for the first time in six years, and provided the city's majority Labour administration with its first opposition for two years.[155] Cheadle's former MP Mark Hunter also won a seat on Stockport Council.[156]

The party has generally not performed as well in elections to the European Parliament. In the 2004 local elections their share of the vote was 29% (placing them second, ahead of Labour)[150] and 14.9% in the simultaneous European Parliament elections (putting them in fourth place behind the UK Independence Party).[157] The results of the 2009 European elections were similar with the party achieving a vote of 28% in the county council elections yet achieving only 13.7% in the Europeans despite the elections taking place on the same day. The 2009 elections did however see the party gain one seat from UKIP in the East Midlands region taking the number of representatives in the parliament up to 11.[158] In 2014 the party lost ten seats, leaving them with one MEP.[159]

In Europe, the party sits with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) political group, which favours further strengthening the EU.[160] The group's leader for seven and a half years was the South West England MEP Graham Watson, who was also the first Liberal Democrat to be elected to the European Parliament when he won the old Somerset and North Devon constituency in 1994.[161] The group's current leader is the former Prime Minister of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt.[162]

The first elections for the Scottish parliament were held in 1999 and resulted in the Liberal Democrats forming a coalition government with Labour from its establishment until 2007.[164] The Liberal Democrat leader Jim Wallace became Deputy First Minister, a role he continued until his retirement as party leader in 2005. The new leader of the party, Nicol Stephen, then took on the role of Deputy First Minister until the election of 2007.[165]

For the first three Scottish Parliament elections, the Lib Dems maintained a consistent number of MSPs. From the 17 elected in 1999, they retained this number in 2003 and went down one to 16 in 2007.[166] However, this fell to only five seats after the 2011 election as a result of the widespread unpopularity of their coalition with the Conservative party at the UK level.

The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats is the MSP for North East Fife, Willie Rennie, who took up his role in 2011.[167]

The first elections to the newly created National Assembly for Wales were in 1999; the Liberal Democrats took six seats in the inaugural Assembly; Welsh Labour won a plurality of seats, but without an overall majority. In October 2000, following a series of close votes, the parties formed a coalition, with the Liberal Democrat leader in the assembly, Michael German, becoming the Deputy First Minister.[168] The deal lasted until the 2003 election, when Labour won enough seats to be able to govern outright.[169]

The party had polled consistently in the first four elections to the National Assembly, returning six representatives in the first three elections and five in the 2011 Election, thereby establishing itself as the fourth party in Wales behind Labour, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru, but fell to just one seat in 2016. Between 2008 and 2016, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats was Kirsty Williams, the assembly member for Brecon & Radnorshire, the Assembly's first female party leader.[170]

Read the rest here:
Liberal Democrats (UK) - Wikipedia