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Democrats to offer platform on economy in attempt to end losing streak

Democrats have been losing elections by not offering voters a bold economic agenda, and the party plans to change that by releasing a platform within a month that won't be "baby steps," Senate Minority Leader Leader Charles E. Schumer said Sunday.

Congressional Democrats will try to pass the plan legislatively over the next year a remote possibility given Republican control of Congress and will campaign on it during the 2018 midterm elections, Schumer, D-N.Y., said on ABC's "This Week."

"Democrats need a strong, bold, sharp-edged and common-sense economic agenda," Schumer said. "Policy, platform, message that appeal to the middle class, that resonate with the middle class."

With Republicans controlling the White House and Congress, and Democrats unable to score a win in recent special elections for open congressional seats, the party's trying to find an effective approach beyond simply opposing President Donald Trump and Republican policies.

Some Democrats have questioned whether House Minority Leader Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should be replaced to give the party new leadership heading into the 2018 elections.

Schumer didn't offer details about the g economic plan but said the top lesson for Democrats after losing to Trump in 2016, and more recently a hard-fought and costly special election in Georgia on June 20, is that it's not enough for the party to simply oppose Trump and that an economic message is missing.

Continue reading here:
Democrats to offer platform on economy in attempt to end losing streak - Albany Times Union

The loss in last weeks special congressional election in Georgia produced predictable hand-wringing and finger-pointing inside the Democratic Party. It also raised anew a question that has troubled the party through a period in which it has lost political ground. Simply put: Do Democrats have a message?

Right now, the one discernible message is opposition to President Trump. That might be enough to get through next years midterm elections, though some savvy Democratic elected officials doubt it. Whats needed is a message that attracts voters beyond the blue-state base of the party.

The defeat in Georgia came in a district that was always extremely challenging. Nonetheless, the loss touched off a hunt for scapegoats. Some Democrats, predictably, blamed the candidate, Jon Ossoff, as failing to capitalize on a flood of money and energy among party activists motivated to send a message of opposition to the president. He may have had flaws, but he and the Democrats turned out lots of voters. There just werent enough of them.

Other critics went up the chain of command and leveled their criticism at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). She has held her party together in the House through many difficult fights ask veterans of the Obama administration but she also has become a prime target for GOP ad makers as a symbol of the Democrats liberal and bicoastal leanings. Pelosi, a fighter, has brushed aside the criticism.

Perhaps Democrats thought things would be easier because of Trumps rocky start. His presidency has produced an outpouring of anger among Democrats, but will that be enough to bring about a change in the partys fortunes?

(Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

History says a president with approval ratings as low as Trumps usually sustain substantial midterm losses. That could be the case in 2018, particularly if the Republicans end up passing a health-care bill that, right now, is far more unpopular than Obamacare. But Trump has beaten the odds many times in his short political career. What beyond denunciations of the Republicans as heartless will the Democrats have to say to voters?

Though united in vehement opposition to the president, Democrats do not speak with one voice. Fault lines and fissures exist between the ascendant progressive wing at the grass roots and those Democrats who remain more business-friendly. While these differences are not as deep as those seen in Trumps Republican Party, that hasnt yet generated a compelling or fresh message to take to voters who arent already sold on the party.

[Lessons from this years special congressional elections]

Hillary Clinton, whose rhetoric often sounded more poll-tested than authentic, never found that compelling message during her 2016 campaign. She preferred to run a campaign by demonizing Trump and, as a result, drowned out her economic platform. This was a strategic gamble for which she paid a high price.

The absence of a convincing economic message did not start with Clinton. Former president Barack Obama struggled with the same during his 2012 reelection. He wanted to claim credit for a steady but slow recovery while acknowledging forthrightly that many Americans were not benefitting from the growth. It was a muddle at best, but he was saved by the fact that Mitt Romney couldnt speak to those stressed voters either. In 2016, however, Trump did.

Clintons loss forced Democrats to confront their deficiencies among white working-class voters and the vast areas between the coasts that flipped in Trumps direction. Their defection from the Democratic Party began well before Trump, but until 2016, Democrats thought they could overcome that problem by tapping other voters. Trump showed the limits of that strategy.

The Georgia loss put a focus on a different type of voter, the well-educated suburbanites, particularly those who dont live in deep-blue states. While losing ground among working-class whites, Democrats have been gaining support among white voters with college degrees. In the fall, Clinton advisers believed she would do well enough with those college graduates to overcome projected erosion among those without college educations. She fell short of expectations, however, allowing Trump to prevail in the pivotal Midwest battlegrounds.

The Georgia district had the highest percentage of college graduates of any in the nation. Ossoff tried to win over those suburban voters with a moderate message on economic issues, but it wasnt powerful or persuasive enough to overcome the appeal of the Republican brand in an election in which the GOP made Pelosi-style Democrats a focus. Loyalty to party was strong enough to allow Karen Handel to prevail.

[In defeat, Democrats point fingers at one another, especially Pelosi]

The long-running debate over the Democrats message probably will intensify as the party looks to 2018 and especially to 2020. It is a debate that the party needs. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, writing in the American Prospect, sees a problem that goes beyond white working-class voters to those within the Democratic base who also were left behind by the post-2008 economic gains. He argues that the partys problem is with working-class voters of all types, not just whites.

Greenberg has long been critical of the tepidness of the partys economic message and puts some of the blame on Obama. He believes the former presidents economic message in 2012 and 2016 focused on progress in the recovery largely to the exclusion of the widespread pain that still existed. That mix of heralding progress while bailing out those responsible for the crisis and the real crash in incomes for working Americans was a fatal brew for Democrats, he argues.

For progressives, the answer to this problem is clear: a boldly liberal message that attacks big corporations and Wall Street and calls for a significant increase in governments role in reducing income and wealth inequality. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been aggressive in promoting exactly that, as he did during the 2016 campaign, with calls for a big investment in infrastructure and free college tuition at public colleges and universities. He has said he intends to introduce legislation he calls Medicare for All.

That kind of message probably will spark more internal debate, particularly among Democrats from swing districts or swing states. It points to one of the biggest challenges Democrats face as they move beyond being the anti-Trump party. That is the question of whether they are prepared to make a robust and appealing case on behalf of government in the face of continuing skepticism among many of the voters they are trying to win over. Trump might not succeed in draining the swamp, but he has tapped into sentiments about Washington that Democrats ignore at their peril.

Nor can Democrats ignore voters concerns about immigration. The Democrats message on immigration and immigrant rights (and some other cultural issues) plays well in many blue states, but it draws a much more mixed reception in those parts of the country where Trump turned the election in his direction.

In this divided era, its easy for either party to look at the other and conclude the opposition is in worse shape. Thats the trap for Democrats right now as they watch Trump struggle in office. But Democrats are in the minority in the House, Senate, governorships and state legislatures. Clinton may have won the popular vote, but that proved about as satisfying as coming close while losing last week in Georgia. Its no substitute for the real thing. If continued frustration with losing doesnt prompt rethinking about the message, what will?

Read the rest here:
Beyond opposing Trump, Democrats keep searching for a message - Washington Post

Some Democrats say nyet to their party leaders Russia obsession.

I did a 22-county tour, Rep. Tim Walz of Minnesota told The Hill Saturday. Nobodys focusing on that.

We should stay away from just piling on the criticism of Trump, complained Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont.

In the wake of the partys failure to win a much-watched special election in Georgia on Tuesday, Democrats in all but deep-blue districts are voicing doubts about the relentless anti-Trump strategy that the party has followed since his inauguration.

People back in Ohio arent really talking that much about Russia, Rep. Tim Ryan told MSNBC on Thursday.

If we dont talk more about their interest than we do about how were so angry with Donald Trump and everything thats going on, then were never going to be able to win elections.

In a Harvard-Harris poll conducted for The Hill last week, 64 percent of registered voters said the investigations into President Trump and Russia are hurting the country, and 56 percent want Congress to move on to other issues.

Continue reading here:
Democrats warn party to move on from Russia obsession - New York Post

You just knew it would happen.

After losing four straight snap congressional elections in each, attempting to harness bipartisan rage over an unpopular president anxious national Democrats instantly looked on the Virginia gubernatorial contest as their last, best chance at relevance in the first, worst months of the Donald Trump era.

The outside world ought to butt out.

National Democrats are mistaking apples for oranges in drawing a parallel between special elections in isolated patches of four reliably red states with a statewide race in a purple state thats becoming blue, the shade of which given the surprisingly robust turnout in the Democratic primary earlier this month may be somewhere between cornflower and cobalt.

The fundamentals, as the political professions would say, always favored Republicans in those congressional districts in Kansas, Montana, South Carolina and Georgia, where a historic level of spending so elevated expectations for a Democratic victory that the party was helpless to explain the embarrassment of defeat.

The districts were drawn to elect Republicans. By margins vast and slender, the districts were carried by Trump over Hillary Clinton. For both reasons, the president could install the freshly re-elected incumbents in his Cabinet, confident they would be succeeded by Republicans. And they were.

The fundamentals in an election for Virginia governor continue to favor Democrats because the contest is at-large, decided by a border-to-border vote of millions, not thousands in which roughly a dozen populous cities and counties, most in the eastern half of the state and many left-leaning, will decide the outcome.

Losing for governor, then, despite those baked-in advantages, would be an abject humiliation for Democrats one not explained away as a consequence of the baked-in advantages Republicans had in the congressional elections through gerrymandering and Trumps strength within those manipulated districts.

Put another way: The Democrats strength in the Virginia campaign is macro. The Republicans strength in the U.S. House campaigns was micro.

In a suburban-dominated, increasingly diverse state such as Virginia, national Democrats donors, strategists, commentators and officeholders also may be overlooking an important distinction between the congressional races they lost and the gubernatorial election they hope to win: The former were fully federal in their focus; the latter, partially so.

Indeed, Virginia Democrats voting in record numbers that Ralph Northams advisers feared might portend his defeat for the nomination to Tom Perriello sided by a lopsided margin with the low-key Northam. They believed he more closely reflects the state as a whole and what its divided government demands in day-to-day leadership.

Northam, originally from the countryside but now ensconced in a city, emphasized his decade in state politics a sharp contrast with Perriellos years in Washington. Northam briefly belittled Trump, who lost Virginia to Clinton by 5 percentage points, as a narcissistic maniac to assure activists he has a capacity for the jugular.

However, its a putdown that could screw up Northams promised overtures to rural voters who overwhelmingly supported Trump. Democrats, dependent on metropolitan areas, talk about reaching out to rural Virginia. But so far, its just talk.

Perriello, because he declared for the nomination only five months before the primary, pinned his candidacy almost entirely to the notion that the growing Democratic vote, supplemented by a steady stream of newcomers to this Upper South state, could be mobilized by his eloquent, full-throated appeal to animus for Trump.

Many of the handicappers and a few activists mistook for momentum Perriellos constant presence on social media and his ability to stir audiences of wistful Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders voters. Both rattled Northam, demanding he sharpen his message and spend, spend, spend emptying his treasury of $8 million.

That means that more than advice, Northam needs money from those nervous national Democrats.

Northam, validated by endorsements from almost every elective Democrat in Virginia, was considered a better fit for the nomination because of his Richmond-centric rsum and the conditions under which the governorship is decided: an off-year election with a lower turnout that has a steroid-like effect on the Republican vote.

It is a narrowing bloc white, conservative, aging, heavily male, and largely rural that is, nonetheless, reliable and whose strength is enhanced by the usual, sharp drop in a Democratic vote that tends to peak in presidential years and stirs a bit in congressional years.

To win in November, Northam and his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie assuming each secures his respective base, perhaps an uncertainty for Gillespie because of Corey Stewarts Trump-like renunciations must still secure a hefty slice of the right-leaning independent vote.

The Quinnipiac Poll this past week showed Gillespie ahead with self-identified independents, but trailing Northam head-to-head by 8 percentage points, apparently burdened by Trump-inflicted damage to the Republican brand and the accompanying erosion in grassroots morale.

No one should be surprised, then, if Gillespie and his running mates, Jill Vogel, for lieutenant governor, and John Adams, for attorney general, go their own way, scrounging for the votes of ticket-splitters.

Might that be the Republican candidates last, best chance at relevance in the first, worst months of the Donald Trump era?

Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Watch his video column Thursday on Richmond.com. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter, @RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis 8:45 a.m. Friday on WCVE (88.9 FM).

Continued here:
Schapiro: No matter what national Democrats say, Virginia's is a state election - Richmond.com

It didnt make any sense. After all the inspiring marches that photograph so beautifully from above. After all those congressional town-hall dressings down, in Southern and Midwestern regional inflections, straight from ordinary folk. After all that money and all that attention and all the excitement of the resistance, directed, laser-like, at a single congressional race in Georgia, the Democrat lost. Again!

The consensus take is that Jon Ossoffs loss in the special election in Georgias sixth district was a real blow for Democrats. For morale. Ossoff, the twenty-six million dollar man, presented like an amateur attempt at recreating President Obama. Lanky, sincere, handsome in a nerdy way. He lost just as Rob Quist, a cowboy hat with a face, had lost in Montana weeks prior. Ossoff lost even though his opponent, Republican Karen Handel, said she doesnt stand for a living wage. Quist lost even after his opponent body slammed a reporter. Both Democrats lost after oversized amount of attention and expectations were heaped on them, much of it from outside, much of it sudden. Much of it by a party apparatus that seems to have no idea how to effectively manage expectations or resources.

As I watched Democrats Ossoff dreams deflate in real time Tuesday, I thought about other times Id witnessed imagined value crash unpleasantly into reality.

In September 2008, I was working at a Merrill Lynch brokerage office in downtown Chicago. I wasnt in the part of the company that history would remember as the architects of the financial crash, the part that bundled bad mortgages into pools of poison; we were in the business of helping moderately rich people buy and sell stocks and mutual funds. Nothing particularly evil, as far as finance goes. Our clients drove expensive but sensible cars and sent their kids to public high schools and private colleges.

There were two large computer monitors on my desk. The one on the left I used for things like email and fucking around online when I should have been working. The one on the right displayed the behavior of certain stocks and indices on a black background, hundreds in total. When an individual stock would tick up in price, it would light up green. When it ticked down, it would light up red. When nothing was happening, all of the text was grey.

On the morning of September 15, we were all prepared for something bad to happen. The markets sour mood over the last year or so had put people in our corner of the industry in a constant state of flinch. Every day it was something, and when it was nothing, you knew the next days something would be even worse. That day, when the stock market opened in New York, my monitor immediately turned from grey to red, and it stayed that way all day, blinking like a Vegas casino sign on the fritz. Nobody was in a good mood. This was bad in a way that was much bigger than us.

The Bush administration announced a bailout that week, but it wasnt enough to halt the market freefall. Not right away, at least. Two weeks later, on September 29, the market experienced its biggest ever single-day drop. In the months that followed, it kept lurching to a promising start followed by a demoralizing stop, like a subway car during rush hour.

Bubblesas in finance, not as in whimsyhave formed and popped for almost as long as people have been buying and selling. In 1637, a Tulip bubble drove anthophiles to pay more for flower bulbs than some paid for houses.

In 1996, right around the time when parents of children were snapping up Beanie Babies with the hope that the toys would one day be worth thousands, then-Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan warned investors against succumbing to irrational exuberance. The internet was pretty new, and everybody with money and dreams wanted a piece of what they imagined it could be, maybe, in the future. Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and Pepe were nary a glint in our eyes, and nobody was really sure how it could make them money in a real way. But investors were hyped about the new technology, and in a battle between prudence and greed, greed almost always wins, until it loses.

From 1997 until 2001 investors gobbled up shares of dot-com companies with weak fundamentals. By the early aughts, the darlings of the dot-com boom had imploded spectacularly. Qualcomm lost more than 80% of its value. Meanwhile, across America, chastened Beanie Baby collectors placed their goofy toys with the tags still attached into tupperware storage containers.

Bubbles pop in a second in nature; theres no excruciating ratcheting down, no speculation about where the bottom might be. But when it comes to money and expectations, the only way to know something was a bubble is to experience the crash when its meager support gives way. Exuberance is only irrational in retrospect.

Ive been thinking about tulips, Alan Greenspan, and the Pets.com sock puppet a lot lately, and not only because Ive been having the strange dreams that come with a summer cold. Jon Ossoff and Rob Quists defeats didnt need to feel as big as they did. They only felt so big because they their campaigns had been over-valued and over-imbued with meaning. Both mens respective worth as candidates was run up in value by enthusiasm feeding and inflating itself, not on what market analysts would call fundamentals. Money poured in. Speculators wanted an underlying entity to be more valuable than it was. Classic bubble behavior.

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One of the legacies of the Obama era is lingering unrealistic expectations. Quiet losses for Democrats in 2010 and 2014 led to a loud one in 2016. State houses have turned red across the country, redistricting has strengthened Republicans hold on the House. In all likelihood, Democrats werent ever going to win that seat in Montana, or that seat in Georgia. Hillary Clinton was a much weaker candidate than her supporters and the media were willing to give voice to. On November 9, the only sound in the Javitz center was the sound of a crash that had already happened.

Pop, pop, pop.

But recent disappointments havent proven chastening.

On the same day Ossoffs candidacy evaporated, a new candidate into which the resistance could pour its time and resources emerged. His name is Randy Bryce, he is running for Paul Ryans seat in Wisconsins first district, and he has lost every single political office hes run for. But political watchers went apeshit over Bryces two-minute debut ad, because Bryce embodies what this Wisconsin native recognizes as a hacky coastal idea of what midwestern folksiness should look and sound like. The tinder-box virality of this ad betrays the cynical expectation that voters cast ballots the way reality-TV producers cast shows.

The ad has been viewed 350,000 times. The last time a sitting House Speaker lost reelection was in 1994. Before that, it was 1862.

Hope is important, but without a healthy dose of reality-based pragmatism, it amounts to little more than irrational exuberance.

See original here:
When Will Democrats Stop Being so Irrational? - Daily Beast