Mediaboss Marketing

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lashed outSaturdayat California Democrats for shelving an ambitious single-payer bill, urging them to vote on the health-care legislation estimated to cost $400 billion per year.

California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announcedFridaythat Senate Bill 562 had been pulled indefinitely because it does not address many serious issues, including financing, deliver of care, [and] cost controls.

Mr. Rendon left open the possibility that the measure could be reconsidered, noting that this is the first year of the two-year legislative session, but Mr. Sanders called on him to allow a floor vote.

I am extremely disappointed that the speaker of the California Assembly is refusing to allow S.B. 562, the single payer health care bill passed by the state Senate, to come to the Assembly floor for a vote, Mr. Sanders said on Twitter.

He asked supporters to contact Mr. Rendon, saying that, California has the opportunity to lead this nation in a very different health care direction.

If the great state of California has the courage to take on the greed of the insurance companies and the drug companies, the rest of the country will follow, Mr. Sanders said. The eyes of the country are on California today. Lets go forward.

Progressives have placed single-payer at the top of its agenda, but support for the universal health-care measure cooled after a legislative analysis last month placed the annual cost at $400 billion, more than twice the size of the statebudget.

At least $200 billion of the total would have to be raised with tax hikes, according to the analysis, such as a 15 percent payroll tax on employers.

As someone who has long been a supporter of single payer, I am encouraged by the conversation begun by Senate Bill 562, Mr. Rendon said in his statement. However, SB 562 was sent to the Assembly woefully incomplete.

Progressives blasted the decision. The California Nurses Association ripped the move as cowardly, while the Healthy California Acts sponsors, state Sens. Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins, insisted that we will not turn our backs on this matter of life or death for families.

We are disappointed that the robust debate about healthcare for all that started in the California Senate will not continue in the Assembly this year, said the jointstatement.This issue is not going away, and millions of Californians are counting on their elected leaders to protect the health of their families and communities.

Mr. Rendon has been bombarded on social media by those condemning his action, said the nurses group in a Saturdaystatement.

Nurses and the activists who are so critical to rebuilding the Democratic Party after a decade of massive losses across the country will not be silent in demanding all corporate Democratic officials, including Rendon, become part of the movement to join the community of nations in guaranteeing healthcare for everyone, said CNA co-president Deborah Burger.

The California Democratic Partys 2016platformincludes a provision calling for universal comprehensive health care for all Californians that includes medical and dental care, full reproductive health services that respects a womans right to choose, preventive services, prescription drugs, and mental health and substance abuse counseling and treatment.

Read the original here:
Sen. Bernie Sanders rips California Democrats for pulling $400B single-payer bill, calls for vote - Washington Times

Supporters of US Senator candidate Bernie Sanders cheer at a recent speech. Photograph: Jim Young/AFP/Getty Images

America is in the middle of a major political realignment. While the focus is on the Republican partys internecine fight among corporate realists, political ideologues and the wild-card president, it is a mistake to assume that the Democrats are going to sweep into office in 2018 and 2020 to replace the corroding Republicans. The Democrats are also in a profound struggle over their future.

The 2016 election marked the end of a political era. Just as Republicans expecting an easy nomination of Jeb Bush in 2016 were blindsided by the rise of charismatic outsider Donald Trump, so too were Democrats expecting the easy nomination of Hillary Clinton surprised by a powerful challenge from elderly Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. Both Trump and Sanders ran on powerful populist messages, slashing at politics-as-usual and bemoaning that Washington served the wealthy. Democratic primary rules put in place after the partys disastrous nomination of South Dakota senator George McGovern in 1972 meant that, unlike Republicans leaders who were incapable of stopping Trump, establishment Democrats could hold off the Sanders surge. But the insurgency opened a rift in the party.

The election of Trump exacerbated the Democrats intra-party conflict as Sanders supporters insisted that he could have won, while Clinton supporters dismissed those claims, pointing out that, among other things, Sanders never had to endure an opposition news dump. The two sides squared off in February, three months after the election, over the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. This position, contested for the first time since 1985, tossed new names to the front of the party. Ultimately, the choice came down to establishment-backed Tom Perez, President Obamas secretary of labor, or Minnesota representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. Perez won 235 votes to Ellisons 200, and then, acknowledging the tensions in the party, tapped Ellison to be deputy chair.

Ellison pledged support for Perez, but cooler heads have not prevailed. Last week, when 30-year-old political newcomer Jon Ossoff lost a special election to reactionary Republican Karen Handel in Georgias 6th district, Democratic critics laid blame for the loss not on the nature of the district (staunchly Republican) it was Newt Gingrichs but on the toxicity of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

In 1972 the Democrats continued to move away from their traditional defence of labour towards social issues

To understand whats going on now, it might make sense to return to pre-war America, since the Democrats, like the rest of America, are coming to grips with the end of the New Deal era. The party came out of the 1930s having created a new, activist liberal state designed to prevent the return of the great depression by using the government to defend the rights of labour and level the economic playing field that had tilted so steeply toward the wealthy. This liberal state was wildly popular, so popular that Republican Dwight D Eisenhower felt obliged to adopt and expand its premises.

With the country firmly behind what was known as the liberal consensus, Democrats continued to expand FDRs New Deal, recognising that economic fairness required ameliorating racial inequality. When Republicans ran the reactionary Barry Goldwater against President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964, the resulting landslide gave Democrats a super-majority in Congress. Working with moderate Republicans to cut racist southern Democrats out of their centrist coalition, they passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and launched LBJs War on Poverty.

But, in part because of the economic prosperity it created, this centre did not hold. In 1968, Republican candidate Richard M Nixon attacked it from the right by bringing white racists into his party, while Democrats destroyed it from the left by shattering over the Vietnam war. Angry at the establishment Democratic hawks who had carried the nation to war in southeast Asia, affluent American youth flocked to the standard of anti-war Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Democrat.

The outcome was a free-for-all for the party leadership. President Johnson withdrew from the race, to be replaced by his vice-president, Hubert Humphrey; Senator Robert Kennedy jumped in to challenge McCarthy only to be assassinated. The Democratic National Convention dutifully nominated establishment candidate Humphrey, but the mayor of Chicago, where the convention was held, turned police against the protesters who descended on his city. The resulting violence enabled Republicans to tar the Democratic party as an elite establishment using tax dollars to cater to lawless thugs. The result just went Nixons way.

In 1972 the Democrats continued to move away from their traditional defence of labour towards social issues, and they haemorrhaged voters. In that year, anti-establishment candidate Senator George McGovern won the partys nomination with the support of young activists, only to go down to such a sweeping popular defeat that the party establishment created superdelegates, party war horses and leaders who would also vote on nominees, and presumably avoid another disaster similar to that in 1972.

Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976 after Nixons spectacular implosion over Watergate, but the partys crumbling coalition was no match for the rise of Movement Conservatives. Their narrative was simple: the Democrats New Deal government redistributed tax dollars from hardworking white men to lazy minorities and women. This easy and false explanation for the economic stresses of the 1970s drained working-class Americans away from the Democrats and into the party of Ronald Reagan. And there they stayed, for the most part, even as neoliberalism gutted the American middle class.

The upstart Democrats who rallied to Sanders are demanding a focus on economic fairness, in echoes the 1930s.

As they did so, Democrats tried to undercut Republican accusations that they were nascent communists hell-bent on redistributing wealth by moving to the centre on economic policy while mobilising voters by focusing on social issues. President Clinton famously ended welfare as we know it and signed the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which had prevented financial bubbles by keeping commercial and financial banks from being one and the same; President Obama defended banks in the aftermath of the great recession as key to recovery.

And so, we have come to the end of an era. The destruction of the New Deal state in a time of globalism has created an American economy that looks much like that of the 1920s, with extraordinary wealth concentrated at the very top of society. Thus the populist moment of 2016, when voters on both sides set out to smash the establishment, on the one hand electing Donald Trump and, on the other, rending the Democratic party in two.

Unlike the Republicans, though, who will have to reinvent themselves if they are ever to recover from the damage of the Trump era, the Democrats have the opportunity to heal their differences for an easier transition to a new political era. Establishment Democrats are not wrong to put faith in experience: Clinton, after all, lost the electoral college, but won the popular vote by more than two points. The upstart Democrats who rallied to Sanders are, though, demanding a focus on economic fairness, one that echoes the Democratic leadership of the 1930s. True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence, FDR said in 1944. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College

One might have thought that the November election would have drawn a clear line under Democratic centrism. But the defeat of Jon Ossoff in Georgias 6th congressional district may have been its true death wheeze. Even with six times as much funding as his opponent and a crazed and incompetent Republican president, Ossoff could not get enough of the districts wealthy and well-educated Republicans to vote for him to flip the district.

When Bernie Sanders remarked that he wasnt sure that Ossoff was a true progressive, it wasnt a kind thing to say, but it also wasnt inaccurate. The future of the Democratic party is not men like Ossoff. We must learn from the comeback of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK election and start putting our might and money behind candidates who are truly on the left.

We scoff at accounts of the 45th president still presenting visitors to his office with a map that lays out his electoral victory, but many Democrats are also preoccupied with the details of the election and the reasons for Hillary Clintons defeat. Its clear that sexism was a significant factor, as was the intervention from ex-FBI director James Comey and possible interference from Russia. But those in the party who are willing to do real soul-searching must admit that the lack of the anticipated Democratic party landslide must also be blamed on the failure of the partys policies to resonate with people in the states that decided the election places in the middle of the country that have seen their livelihoods dry up, rather than flourish, under late capitalism.

Trumps promises that he would solve the problems that plague their communities problems such as unemployment, poverty and the opioid crisis seem to be empty promises. But the Democrats could have done a far better job of showing that they cared about these middle-American communities: for example, through actually turning up in them. Clintons hobnobbing with Hollywood stars held little appeal for Americans in the middle of the country.

We need to look to movements such as the Womens March, which inspired a record-breaking number of people to take to the streets, and the Run for Something campaign, which helps progressive people to run for office and has elicited a huge, enthusiastic response from new candidates. Theyre the best hope Democrats have of effecting change in 2018 and beyond. But only if they motivate turnout from the young voters who came out for Obama but couldnt be bothered to vote for Clinton.

This means focusing on real issues that mean a lot to young people: education debt relief; steady employment; healthcare that makes it possible for them to afford to start families.

If Sanders will not commit to working on the inside for change, he needs to support someone who is willing to do it

Though his continued engagement with the DNC shows Bernie Sanderss ambition to promote this agenda, its time for him to step aside. His refusal to register as a Democrat invalidates any true claim he has to be at its helm. Many of his critiques of the party are legitimate, but if Sanders is not willing to commit to working on the inside for change, he needs to support someone who is willing to do it.

Elizabeth Warren is the obvious choice: compared to the likes of Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden, shes an outsider, but shes still a Democrat who has shown her commitment to the party. Her economic populism speaks to many of the same concerns that Trump claimed he would alleviate, but she offers solutions that will buoy the middle class by making the wealthy contribute more, rather than promising to drive growth through deregulation that simply makes the ultra-wealthy more so. And her commitment to progressive social values is clear, unlike Sanders, whose remark that you just cant exclude people who disagree with us on [reproductive rights] elicited blowback from women on the left who do not want their rights to be regarded as something to bargain with.

As the Senate Republicans push forward a healthcare bill that will cause the death and bankruptcy of many Americans who have the misfortune to be unwell and middle-class, now should be a clear opportunity for Democrats to assert that theyll offer a better alternative. The opportunity will be lost if we continue to debate what it means to be a Democrat. The centre had its shot. Its time to clear a path for Warren, the left, and a party that values diversity and speaks to young people.

Jean Hannah Edelstein is a writer based in New York

It has been a rough couple of months for the Democratic party. As Republicans have sought to roll back the key legislative accomplishments of President Obama, it has been one disaster after another. Even with President Trumps approval ratings at historically low levels, Democrats continue to lose special elections around the country.

But in spite of these losses, there is a clear glimmer of hope one that could presage a significant Democratic victory in congressional elections next year. Democrats are losing, but they are losing by much smaller margins than they have in the past.

Take for example, the special election in Georgia last week. The race, which quickly took on national import, will end up as the most expensive congressional election in US history. While the Democratic candidate narrowly lost by almost four points the district had been solidly Republican for decades. In a race the same night in South Carolina, the Democratic candidate lost by three points in a seat that Republicans had won by more than 20 points just last November.

What all this suggests is that there is serious enthusiasm among Democratic partisans and not as much among Republicans. If, in 2018, Democrats are able to perform as well as their candidates did in these four special elections, they would be the odds-on favourites to win back the House of Representatives.

So how do they keep that momentum going? First, they must make the 2018 election a referendum on Trump, who is singularly despised by Democrats and increasingly by much of the country. Second, if Republicans somehow succeed in repealing Obamacare and passing legislation that will take away health insurance from more than 20 million people, it will hand Democrats a slam-dunk campaign issue. But even if they fail, Republican votes in Congress could be an albatross that Democrats can hang around the necks of Republican candidates in 2018.

But for Democrats to expand their support they may also need to also take a page from Trump. In 2016 Trump ran the nastiest and most dishonest presidential campaign in modern American history. But one thing he did effectively was convince millions of voters that he would drain the swamp in Washington and be a voice for the struggling middle class. That anyone believed he would actually follow through on such an agenda is strong evidence that you can fool some of the people all the time.

For Democrats to expand their support they may also need to also take a page from Trump

But Democrats should take a similarly populist approach. Many liberals argue that means talking about single-payer healthcare and free college education, but its far from clear that those policies are what voters want. Pledging to raise taxes on the wealthy, protecting health insurance for poor and working Americans, expanding childcare and social security benefits, raising the minimum wage, making college loans more accessible and waging war on the opioid epidemic ravaging broad swatches of America will be far more effective.

Populism is key for Democrats, but it needs to be the kind of economic populism that signals to the American middle class that the party is in touch with their concerns and will fight for them if they are returned to power.

Doing so will give Democrats the opportunity to reach not just their most loyal partisans who will be committed to vote no matter what but also disillusioned Trump voters or those who sat out 2016.

Certainly, Republicans will have their message ready to go: harsh attacks on liberal elites that have long worked for the party and were critical to victory in the Georgia special election. In an era of intense political polarisation, pledging to stick it to the other side is still a pretty effective strategy for Republicans.

But with a fully mobilised Democratic base and a smattering of moderate and independent voters, it might just be enough to return the Democrats to power. In the end, Trump hatred will be a boon to the party, but the kind of seismic victory Democrats need may require a return to the partys populist roots as the voice of the American middle class.

Michael Cohen is the author of American Maelstrom: the 1968 Election and the Politics of Division

Read the rest here:
Civil war has broken out inside the Democratic party. Does the future belong to the populist left or the centrists? - The Guardian

U.S. President Donald Trump and senior Democrats joined inblamingBarack Obama for not doing more to stop Russia interfering with the 2016 presidential election.

In an early morningtweet, Trump appeared to acknowledge that Russia had meddled in the election. He has previously decried multiple investigations into alleged collusion between his officials and Russia as a witch hunt.

Daily Emails and Alerts- Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inbox

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as well as House and Senate committees, are investigating Russia's interference in the election and the alleged complicity of Trump officials.The presidentencouraged greater scrutiny of the Obama administration, tweeting Thursday: "By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?"

Trumps Democrat rivalsalso criticized the former presidentFriday, after the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence briefed Obama in August that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered a campaign of interference to help elect Trump.

DemocratEric Swalwell, amember of the House Intelligence Committee,criticized Obama for being excessively cautious.

[The response] was inadequate. I think [the administration]could have done a better job informing the American people of the extent of the attack, he said.

Others accused Obama for failing to sufficiently sanction Russia once the election was over and the Trump administration was preparing to take power.

In October, the Obama administrationaccused Russia of hacking emails from Democrat party serversin an attempt to discredit Hillary Clinton and sway the election. Two months later, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. in retaliation for the hacking, but, according to the Post report, the administration ruled out releasing information potentially embarrassing to Putin or enacting harsher sanctions. Democrat Jim Himes, another House Intelligence member, called the penalties barely a slap on the wrist.

In a previously undisclosed measure, the Post reported that Obama also authorizedcyber attacks against Russian infrastructurewhen he left office in January.

In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, former director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, said that evidence of Russian hacking had been uncovered by the FBI last August, but said the Obama administration was reluctant to respond for fear of being accused of partisan attempts to influence the course of the 2016 election.

According to the Post,Obama and key advisers were concernedthat Russia could launch a potentially crippling attack on U.S. voting systems before election day.

Read the original:
Democrats Back Trump Assertion That Obama Administration Is Responsible for Failing to Halt Russia Election Meddling - Newsweek

Kansas. Montana. Georgia. South Carolina. A string of special election defeats in each state, and with each one, a missed opportunity to take over a Republican House seat, has left Democrats facing the question: Why does the party keep losing elections, and when will that change?

The most obvious reason that Democrats fell short is that the special elections have taken place in conservative strongholds. In each case, Democratic candidates were vying to replace Republicans tapped by the president to serve in his administration, and in districts that Trump won. Despite the unfavorable terrain, Democrats improved on Hillary Clintons margin in every district except in Georgia. But if the party wants to take control of the House in 2018, it needs more than just a strong showing in Republican districts. It needs to win.

Why Ossoff Lost

It is a bit surprising that Democrats havent managed a single victory yet, and havent had more success in turning their anger against the Trump administration into something tangible, said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The party can weather that for a while, but at some point it could become demoralizing.

The special elections are a test case of the policy agendas, messages, and strategy Democrats are putting forward in the hope of winning Republican districts. The fact that candidates fared better than Clinton in races that arent as high-stakes as a presidential election signals that Democratic voters are energized after losing the White House. Despite efforts to rebuild, however, the Democratic Partys national brand remains damaged, and it is still unclear whether the party will coalesce around a core message in the Trump era.

In Montana and Georgia, Republicans worked to make the special elections a referendum on the national Democratic Party by attempting to tie Democratic candidates to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. While party leaders are often targeted during elections, theres reason to believe the national party could be a liability for Democratic candidates in upcoming races. A Washington Post-ABC News poll recently found that most Americans think the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of average voters. Only 30 percent of voters approved of the job Democrats are doing in Congress in a CBS News poll earlier this month, and just 31 percent said Democratic control of Congress would be an improvement over the status quo.

The national brand is toxic, said Democratic Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who unsuccessfully challenged Pelosi for the title of House minority leader last year, in an interview. Theres just no doubt about it. We are not connecting with people the way we need to connect with them.

On the campaign trail, Democrats worked to distance themselves from the national party. In Montana, Democratic candidate Rob Quist reportedly didnt want Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez to campaign with him, though Perez did campaign for Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff in Georgia and Archie Parnell in South Carolina. Quist instead promised that he would be an independent voice in Washington, while in Kansas, Democratic candidate James Thompson argued that things arent working no matter whos in charge.

Democrats in conservative parts of the country have long tried to prove theyre not typical Washington liberals. But if candidates feel heightened pressure to separate themselves from the national brand amid public skepticism toward the party, voters may be left wondering what it is they represent.

I think voters still dont totally trust Democrats. I think they dont know necessarily what Democrats stand for, and how they differentiate from Republicans, Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who won election in November with the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders, said in an interview.

In the wake of the partys losses, Democrats are once again rushing to assign blame. There are rumblings among discontented House Democrats that party leaders are the problem. Its time for Nancy Pelosi to go, Democratic Representative Kathleen Rice told CNN after Democrats lost in Georgia and South Carolina on Tuesday. Pelosi pushed back on Thursday, saying that she feels confident in the support that I have and that her leadership is recognized across the country.

Advocacy groups trying to push the party in a more progressive direction seized on the losses to argue that the party needs to put forward a bolder liberal agenda. Democracy for America Chair Jim Dean called Ossoffs message uninspiring, after the Democrat lost in Georgia, adding the same, tired centrist Democratic playbook that has come up short cycle after cycle will not suffice.

The problem for Democrats is that the results of the special elections have not definitively shown what playbook will succeed in capturing Republican seats. Candidates tested out different messages in districts with different demographic profiles, and all of them came up short. In an affluent, well-educated and suburban sixth congressional district in Georgia, Ossoff ran on a platform light on policy specifics, and deployed talking points with a distinctly conservative flavor. He told voters that cutting wasteful spending is not a partisan issue, and promised to ease the tax burden on small businesses.

In districts with a heavy concentration of rural, white-working voters in Montana and Kansas, Quist and Thompson embraced a populist message. Did you know in Congress there are nearly 300 millionaires? Quist asked in one campaign spot. No wonder their so-called health reform was just another tax break for the rich. Thompson campaigned on the idea that trade deals have hurt rural communities, and told voters that the working-class people of this country need people that represent them, and thats what I want to do.

It makes sense that candidates would tailor their messages to the district they run in. But that wasnt enough to win in Georgia, Montana, or Kansas. Further complicating the picture: The Democrat who lost by the narrowest margin did so in a largely rural district, but could hardly be described as a progressive darling. Parnell, a former Goldman Sachs executive, ran as a wonky pragmatist. The Democrat did talk about making big corporations pay their fair share, but during his under-the-radar campaign, he also assured voters that he know[s] how to cut taxes. And he didnt try to make his race about bold ideas. I wont promise you the world, Parnell said in one ad, but Ill work every day to make your life better.

Democrats in conservative parts of the country also seem unsure how to effectively talk about President Trump, even as Republicans have coalesced around an attack on Democrats as inextricably linked to a party of out-of-touch coastal liberals.

Trump's narrow win in Georgia's sixth congressional district last November convinced many Democrats that the special election was the best opportunity to win a House seat and test whether an anti-Trump message could win over Republicans and Independents who might be skeptical of the president. But Ossoff didnt run a staunchly anti-Trump campaign. His campaign launched with a promise to Make Trump furious, but as time went on, Ossoff shied away from blunt criticism of the president. I dont have great personal admiration for the man, he said in an April interview with MSNBC, before adding that theres room to work across the aisle.

Its possible that kind of cautious message is best suited to the long-time Republican district. But Democrats may have missed an opportunity to test out a campaign rooted in blunt criticism of the president.

We dont quite know yet whether an anti-Trump campaign could be successful for Democrats, or not, in districts where Clinton came close to winning, or did win, given that Ossoff didnt really run that kind of a campaign, Burden said.

Democratic candidates competing in districts Trump won by a wide margin also dont seem to have settled on a clear strategy for talking about the president. In races in Montana and Kansas, the Democratic candidates largely avoided talking about Trump, while in South Carolina, Parnell found a middle ground between Trump-bashing and Trump-avoidance by saying he would work with President Trump if I think hes right, and fight him tooth-and-nail if what hes doing hurts the folks back home.

There are silver linings for Democrats in the midst of the special election losses. The fact that Democratic candidates improved on Clintons margins in Kansas, Montana, and South Carolina, and ran a close and competitive race in Georgia, indicates that the party has a chance to make inroads not only in affluent conservative suburbs, but in rural, white-working class parts of the country.

The results of these races really throw cold water on the idea that Democrats are doomed with rural or white-working class voters, Tom Bonier, the CEO of Democratic data firm TargetSmart, said in an interview. That suggests theres opportunity to win back some of the voters we lost in the presidential election.

Losses in 2017 dont mean the party wont compete successfully in 2018. The party out of power in the White House historically gains seats in midterm elections, and a majority of the American public continues to disapprove of the president.

Democratic Representative Ben Ray Lujn, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, attempted to console Democrats in the wake of losses in Georgia and South Carolina by arguing that the House is in play. Democrats have a real shot at taking back the House in 2018, he said in a video message on Wednesday.

There are a number of congressional districts currently held by Republicans that Democrats believe they can contest in the 2018 midterms where the political terrain may prove more favorable than the conservative strongholds where special elections have taken place. Democrats need to win 24 seats held by Republicans to gain control of the House. In a memo earlier this week, the DCCC identified somewhere between 94 and 71 districts as more competitive than Georgias sixth district where Ossoff lost.

If Democrats plan to contest seats in an expansive battlefield, that makes it all the more pressing for candidates to make clear to voters exactly what they will fight for, and what they plan to fight against, in Washington.

View post:
Why Do Democrats Keep Losing in 2017? - The Atlantic

In the late 1960s, some white liberals especially college-age baby boomers began to adopt a secularized version of liberal Protestant values. Yet even then, the Democratic Partys leaders retained a connection to those religious traditions, which allowed them to maintain their appeal to religious voters.

Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, the partys leading antiwar candidates for the presidential nomination in 1968, were practicing Catholics who found inspiration in the churchs teachings. Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist deacon who regularly taught an adult Sunday school class during his 1976 campaign for president.

Jesse Jackson, who won several primaries in 1984 and 1988, was an ordained minister. Al Gore was a Southern Baptist who had attended divinity school. Bill Clinton had deep roots in the Southern Baptist tradition, despite his troubled relationship with some of the conservative leaders of his denomination during his presidency.

Hillary Clinton frequently cited her Methodist faith as a source of her values. And Barack Obama, despite a secular upbringing, learned to speak in the theological cadences of a Protestant Christian tradition while attending a progressive African-American church in Chicago.

Yet now younger, secular Democrats are attempting to separate their partys progressive values from those religious traditions. Some may belong to a religious tradition or consider themselves to be spiritual people, but they are not able to speak the language of a communally based faith because it does not inform or shape their political views.

This has posed a problem at the polls, because most Democratic voters are not as secular as these activists might assume. While only 47 percent of white, college-educated Democrats identify as Christians, Christianity remains the faith of 81 percent of African-American Democrats and 76 percent of Latino Democrats.

The religious differences between generations are just as stark as the differences between racial groups. While 35 percent of millennials report having no religious affiliation, only 17 percent of baby boomers and fewer than 11 percent of Americans born before 1945 are religiously unaffiliated.

The party is thus split between a minority of young, educated, secular white activists and a larger group of African-Americans, Hispanics and older whites whose political values are closely tied to their faith. No wonder candidates like Mr. Ossoff struggled to connect with key blocs of the Democratic coalition.

And its also no wonder that the Democratic congressional leadership is still dominated by a graying generation of leaders; they are the only ones who can bridge the partys religious divide. The median age of House Democratic representatives is now well over 60 the highest in decades, and several years older than the median Republican age.

All four of Georgias Democratic representatives are 60 or older, and most have deep roots in the African-American Baptist tradition. If Mr. Ossoff had been elected to represent the Sixth District, he would have been over 30 years younger than the next-youngest member of the Georgia Democratic delegation, and he would have represented a very different set of cultural values.

What can Democrats do to bridge the divide between young, secular party activists and the rest of voters? Oddly, last years presidential run by Senator Bernie Sanders, a secular Jew, may suggest a way forward.

Mr. Sanderss non-Christian background may have hurt him in the South; he did poorly among African-American voters, despite his consistent civil rights record. But he did what few other secular candidates have done: He won a sympathetic hearing from conservative evangelicals with a speech that gave a religious grounding for his economic views, complete with biblical citations. When Mr. Sanders spoke at Liberty University, he did not pretend to share evangelical Christians faith, but he showed respect for his audiences religious tradition.

To do the same, secular Democrats need to study the religious language of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. They need to take the time to learn the religious values of their audience. They need to be honest about their own secularity, but acknowledge their debt to the religious traditions that have shaped their progressive ideology.

Only through a willingness to ground their policy proposals in the religious values of prospective voters will they be able to convince people of faith that they are not a threat to their values but are instead an ally in a common cause.

Daniel K. Williams is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia and the author of Gods Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 24, 2017, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: The Democrats Religion Problem.

Link:
The Democrats' Religion Problem - New York Times