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House Democrats lost seats in the 2016 elections. They're looking to narrow their 24-seat deficit in 2018, when the president's party typically loses seats in his first midterm elections. David Goldman/AP hide caption

House Democrats lost seats in the 2016 elections. They're looking to narrow their 24-seat deficit in 2018, when the president's party typically loses seats in his first midterm elections.

National Democrats are investing more resources in an upcoming Georgia special election, hoping new research gained from focus groups could not only pull off an upset in the suburban Atlanta district, but also give them clues to how they can best put the House in play next year.

According to details first shared with NPR, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is sponsoring three focus groups in the district over the coming week aimed at better discovering how to target younger voters, African-American voters and swing voters many of whom have not been reliable in turning out in midterm elections.

"Understanding that people are more than numbers, we have made a strategic decision to invest in qualitative research that will not only help up us in Georgia's 6th District, but also inform our message to key groups of voters ahead of 2018," said DCCC spokesman Tyler Law. "In order to learn lessons from last cycle and maximize our gains on an expanded battlefield, we must listen to real people and see what drives them to vote, and these focus groups are an important early step towards achieving that goal."

Democrats believe they have a unique opportunity in the race to succeed now-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The suburban Georgia district voted for Mitt Romney by 24 points four years ago; President Trump carried it by just over 1 point last November.

Places like the 6th District, where Trump drastically underperformed past Republicans, are the key to Democrats taking back the House, where they already have limited options due to a gerrymandered map. They need 24 seats to win back control, and there are 23 districts that voted for Hillary Clinton that are currently held by Republicans. They'll be on defense in 12 districts with Democratic incumbents that were won by Trump.

The DCCC and other progressive groups have thrown their weight behind Democrat Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, ahead of the upcoming April 18 all-party "jungle" primary. There are 18 candidates running, and the top two finishers regardless of party will advance to a June 20 runoff if no one gets a majority.

Ossoff has already raised upwards of $2 million for his bid, and his campaign is also pitching in funds for two of the focus groups. The DCCC previously sent nine staffers to help with the race as well.

Special elections are not always accurate harbingers of future electoral success, but the Georgia contest gives Democrats a potential early bellwether of whether backlash to Trump can hurt Republicans at the ballot box. Ossoff's own ads have tried to paint himself as more of a centrist, but also have a clear anti-Trump message.

Democrats' first focus group, conducted Tuesday evening by Anzalone Liszt Grove (ALG) Research, was targeted at Romney voters between the ages of 55 and 74 who flipped to Clinton. Older voters typically turn out more reliably in presidential years, and Democrats will need to persuade more like them to vote for their candidates in November 2018. Among the questions Democrats were looking to answer is how they feel about Trump, whether those feelings about the president can trickle down to a GOP congressional nominee and whether they can persuade voters to elect a Democratic House to be a check and balance on a Trump White House.

The second focus group, set for Wednesday evening and also conducted by ALG, will survey younger voters between the ages of 18 and 45 on how Democrats can keep them engaged and motivated through the midterms.

The final focus group, this one targeting black voters, will be conducted next week by Cornell Belcher, a longtime Democratic pollster who worked on both of President Barack Obama's campaigns. The 6th District is about 12 percent African-American, but that number has nearly doubled in the past decade as the Atlanta suburbs have grown and diversified.

Democrats will need those reliably Democratic voters to turn out not just for Ossoff, but in November 2018, too, and they'll be looking to find how motivated they are to send a message to Trump with their vote and how they can be persuaded to get to the polls.

Many Democrats privately acknowledge that the district is still an uphill climb, though that could depend on which Republican advances to the June runoff. Top GOP hopefuls include former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, who has run twice before statewide and in some comments has looked to put some daylight between herself and the president. Johns Creek City Councilman Bob Gray just picked up the endorsement of the Club for Growth on Monday and has touted that he would be a "willing partner" to Trump.

National Republicans have dismissed the idea that running an anti-Trump strategy will work, saying Democrats tried and failed with that message last fall. But there are signs the party is taking Ossoff and his momentum seriously. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a superPAC aligned with GOP leadership, launched a $1.1 million buy against Ossoff. Its ad campaign began with an ad featuring footage of Ossoff dressed as Han Solo for a Star Wars-themed parody his college a cappella group did about drinking on campus.

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Democrats Eye Georgia Special Election To Test 2018 Messages - NPR

In sports, spectators generally watch the ball. In politics, they generally watch the people who govern. Often, however, important dynamics occur offstage, as parties out of power remake themselves in exile.

Thats likely happening to the Democrats. Quietly, in the shadow of Trump, the party will move left. The Democrats will never nominate another presidential candidate as friendly as Hillary Clinton was to a mainstream group like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Some of the reasons have nothing to do with Donald Trump. Theyre simply demographic.

Millennials are less sympathetic to Israel than their elders. African Americans and Latinos are less sympathetic than whites. The religiously unaffiliated are less sympathetic than are regular churchgoers. And the young, the secular and racial minorities are all growing as a share of the American population and, especially, of the Democratic electorate. This past January, for the first time since the Pew Research Center began asking the question in 2000, Democrats were as likely to identify with the Palestinians as with Israel.

But while this shift left would likely have happened anyway, Trump will accelerate it. First, hell accelerate it by giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a freer hand to do things that alienate American progressives, like building settlements, silencing dissent and perhaps even annexing parts of the West Bank.

If Israel and Hamas again go to war, Trump will place fewer restraints on Netanyahus military campaign than Hillary Clinton would have, and that will alienate progressives, too. Jewish Voice for Peace, which represents the left edge of the American Israel debate, saw dramatic membership growth during Israels 2014 war with Gaza. Another Gaza war which Trumps election makes more likely will boost it further.

Even more important, Trump will become the prism through which Democrats see Netanyahu. Because most Americans know little about foreign leaders, they often see them as analogues to the American politicians they know well. Why did American progressives develop such a passionate hostility toward South Africas apartheid leaders? Because those leaders resembled the politicians of the segregated South. Why has Vladimir Putins popularity dipped among Democrats and risen dramatically among Republicans since 2016? Because some Americans now see Putin as a Russian version of Trump.

Thats especially true for Netanyahu. His English is so good, and hes so intimately involved in American politics, that to many Americans he simply sounds like another Republican.

Netanyahu is a big part of the reason Democrats grew more critical of Israel during the Obama years. His fear-mongering, bellicose rhetoric about Iran reminded them of the Bush administrations fear-mongering, bellicose rhetoric in the run-up to the war in Iraq. When he spoke, they heard Dick Cheney.

Now, when Netanyahu speaks, Democrats hear Donald Trump. When Democrats read about Israel not allowing critics into the country, theyll think of Trumps travel ban. When they hear about Netanyahus threats to freedom of the press, theyll think of Trumps attacks on journalists. When Netanyahu claims his wall stopped illegal immigration, theyll think of Trumps proposed wall along the border with Mexico.

Many Democrats already saw Israel as another red state. Now unless Israel undergoes some unexpected political shift theyll view Netanyahus Israel as authoritarian, hyper-nationalist, nativist and anti-Muslim, everything they fear Trump will make the United States. Netanyahus failure to publicly press Trump to speak out against rising American anti-Semitism will only compound that view.

If you squint, you can already see evidence of the Democrats move left. Although Keith Ellison, one of the most vocal proponents of Palestinian rights in Congress, lost his bid to chair the Democratic National Committee in February, he came closer than he would have a few years ago. Despite a fierce attack from the Jewish right, he won the endorsementsof the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and the Senate Minority leader,Charles Schumer, and received the deputy chairman as a consolation prize. Nine of the 10 Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee including New Jerseys Cory Booker, a darling of the American Jewish establishment voted against David Friedman, Trumps pro-settlements nominee to be ambassador to Israel.

And in February, at the J Street Conference, Bernie Sanders went further in his criticism of Israel than he had during the presidential campaign even hinting that if the two-state solution dies, he might embrace one equal state for [both Palestinians and Jews.

In the conclusion to his speech, Sanders explicitly linked the struggle against Netanyahu to the struggle against Trump. To my Israeli friends here with us today, he declared, we share many of the same challenges. In both our countries we see the rise of a politics of bigotry and intolerance and resentment. We must meet these challenges together.

When Sanders finished, the crowd roared. It was a sign of things to come.

Peter Beinart is a Forward senior columnist and contributing editor. Dont miss the latest episodes of Fault Lines, his new podcast with Daniel Gordis.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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Donald Netanyahu: Many Democrats See The Two Leaders As One - Forward

In the nearly two months since President Donald Trump was sworn in, a self-described Resistance has emerged at mass marches, energetic protests and raucous town halls from coast to coast. The town halls in particular have invited a substantial amount of speculation: Will the Resistance become the lefts counterpart to the right-wing Tea Party?

Its not hard to imagine why Democrats might welcome a populist movement of their own, given the successes the GOP has enjoyed since the Tea Party took shape in 2009. Over eight years, the movement helped Republicans gain majorities in state legislatures, win both houses of Congress and lay the groundwork for Trumps ascent to the White House.

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But for the sake of the country, I certainly hope the Resistance isnt a liberal Tea Party lookalike. As a Republican in the moderate mainstream tradition of my party, Ive been aghast at the distorting effect of the Tea Partys influence, on both the GOP and American democracy. If the Republican and Democratic parties become dominated by angry, dogmatic populist movements, the political center will die, with horrific consequences for our democratic system and even our ability to hold together as a nation.

In many respects, the Tea Party was an admirable example of democracy in action and gave many citizens their first experience with political engagement. But as a whole, the Tea Party became the extremist tail that wagged the Republican Party dog. Participants in the movement tended toward ideological rigidity and absolutist demands, bringing to the fore far-right ideas that had long been resisted by principled conservatives. Paranoid conspiracy theories once peddled by the likes of the John Birch Society became commonplace, with President Barack Obama portrayed as a foreign-born dictator ravaging the Constitution, rather than simply a Democratic president with whom we respectfully disagreed. The entire GOP was pushed toward obstruction and hyperpartisanship. Expertise and experience became liabilities, compromise the deadliest sin. The Tea Party claimed the mantle of fiscal conservatism, but had no real strategy to reduce the deficit beyond cutting programs for Democratic constituencies while preserving programs for Republican voters, all while avoiding any serious reforms to defense spending or middle-class entitlements. (If you think that sounds a lot like Trumps proposed budget, youre right.)

In Congress, the Tea Party gave rise to the House Freedom Caucus, which devoted most of its energies to overthrowing its own partys leaders and undermining the legislative branch as an institution. The activists populist fervor and disdain for negotiation led directly to the 2013 government shutdown, as hard-liners in Congress attempted to force concessions from the administration that they couldnt achieve through the legislative process. Perhaps more troublingly, the Tea Party weakened the Republicans capacity to govern. The constant threat of primary challenges intimidated GOP legislators into taking extreme ideological positions that had no basis in reality or the needs of their constituents. Problem-solvers were marginalized or purged. Terrible threats to the countrythe opioid epidemic, rising income inequality, the collapse of work, stagnating social mobility, terrorism and global instabilitywere ignored while Congress passed base-pleasing motions that the president predictably vetoed.

The hour is too late for more of this pointless and irresponsible Kabuki theater. And yet many Democrats seem eager to stage a drama of their own, following exactly the same script.

***

Its too soon to say if the Resistance will develop into a left-wing Tea Party with lasting political influence. Perhaps it will instead be like the Occupy Wall Street movement and implode after a few months, done in by a suspicion of leadership and the lack of a coherent agenda. But for now, the Resistance seems to be not only retracing the Tea Partys trajectory, but adopting its techniques.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in their tactic of showing up, organized and en masse, to town-hall meetings held by elected officials from the opposing party. Sometimes those meetings take the form of constructive dialogues, while at other times theyre more akin to Maoist-style denunciations. Where will this lead, given the lefts growing appetite for violent suppression of free speech, as seen in places like Middlebury College?

For now, many Resistance participants, like the Tea Partys novice activists before them, are following the conventional track of citizen engagement by building a more formal organized structure, holding meetings, writing to and calling their representatives, and running for unglamorous but critical jobs as convention delegates and precinct chairs in the Democratic Party.

Thats not to say that the Resistance and the Democratic Party are working in tandem. Indeed, whats happening carries real risks for the Democrats: In yet another parallel with the Tea Party, the Resistance is fighting against its own partys leaders as well as the opposing party. We saw this in the replay of the Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton 2016 primary spat in this years race for chair of the Democratic National Committee, with Keith Ellison playing the role of Sanders and Tom Perez standing in for Hillary Clinton.

Just as the Tea Party pushed the GOP toward obstructionism and ideological rigidity, the Resistance is starting to force the Democratic Party toward its extremes and away from long-held norms of bipartisan give-and-take. Resisters threaten Democratic politicians with terrible retribution if they vote in favor of any of Trumps nominees or major Republican legislation, regardless of merit. As a result, Democratic officeholders have less and less to say about the value of compromise, seemingly fearing that anything they say will be seen as normalizing and legitimizing the Trump presidency.

Odds are growing that 2018 will see a rash of Resistance-driven primary challenges to centrist Democrats. Privately, the partys professionals dread a repeat of what has happened on the Republican side, when successful center-leaning politicians lost low-turnout primaries to fringe candidates who went on to crashing defeat in the general election. (Think of Indiana Senator Richard Lugar losing the 2012 primary to Richard Mourdock, who then went on to lose to Democrat Joe Donnelly.) Its not hard to imagine an Elizabeth Warren-style challenger upsetting Sen. Joe Manchin in the West Virginia Democratic primary in 2018, but that liberal victor would face long odds in a state where Trump took nearly 70 percent of the vote in 2016. The impulse to primary moderates from your own party is real and has a certain appeal, but those victories are often Pyrrhic, forfeiting long-term success for short-lasting gratification.

At the moment, Democrats are so far down in the minority in both the House and Senate that many grass-roots activists would welcome whatever Faustian trade-offs would accompany a liberal Tea Party. Its uncertain, however, whether the Resistance can succeed on the scale of the Tea Party-driven Republican victories in the past several elections, for reasons that have a lot to do with Americas political geography.

The Tea Party movement prevailed because it targeted vulnerable Democratic officeholders in areas that already leaned conservative. After the 2010 elections, membership in the congressional Blue Dog Coalition, made up mostly of centrist Democrats from Sunbelt states, dropped by half; after 2012, it halved again. Rural and heartland America accounted for most of the nearly 1,000 state legislative seats, 30 state legislative chambers and dozen governorships the Democrats have lost since Obama took office. Its possible that Democrats might try to retake the Blue Dogs old territory in 2018 and 2020, but the centrist Democratic candidates who could succeed in those districts will not run if the national party moves sharply to the left and the Resistance emulates the Tea Partys animus toward moderates.

Far more likely is that Democrats will concentrate most of their efforts against comparatively moderate, governing-minded Republicans in purple states and swing districts, just as they did in 2016. Quite a few of the Republicans who represent politically diverse states and highly educated suburban districts are likely to go down in flames if Trumps ratings continue to decline. But these are also the last remaining Republicans who might be counted on to cooperate with the opposing party, hold the executive branch accountable and keep the GOP from overreaching on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act to tax reform. If theyre forced out, the Republican Party will become even more extreme, and our governing system will become even more dysfunctional.

If the Resistance is legitimately troubled by President Trump and his implications for American democracy, they could do something more constructive and creativeand a successful model for it already exists.

Each election cycle in the early 1970s, the environmental movement targeted a dirty dozen of the worst polluters in Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, and defeated most of them. Its not impossible to imagine a movement today that would seek to remove the members who are doing the greatest damage to Congress and effective governance. Such a campaign would do a lot more good for the country than the current dynamic, in which moderates from both parties are locked in a death struggle while extremists go unchallenged in safe seats.

But Im afraid thats unlikely to happen. Scratch the assumptions of many Tea Party and Resistance participants and youre likely to find a belief that nothing good can be accomplished in politics unless the correct side controls all branches of government and can run roughshod over its opponents. Many Republicans are now rejoicing as Trump and Congress work to repeal every part of Obamas legacy and force their agenda on Blue America, while many Democrats dream of someday reversing every Republican action and imposing their own maximalist program on Red America.

What both sides overlook is that the only enduring causes in American life are those that have at least some degree of bipartisan legitimacy, and the only government actions that achieve lasting success are those involving popular persuasion and outreach, cross-party cooperation and compromise. That was true of the creation of Social Security, the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the birth of Medicare and Medicaid, the Clean Air Act in 1970even Ronald Reagans 1986 tax reform. Politics-as-warfare can achieve no lasting victories; in the long term, its only accomplishments will be to break apart the country and accelerate Americas downfall as a global power.

Political movements of left and right alike stand in a long tradition dating back to the American Revolution of giving ordinary citizens a voice in the counsels of their leaders and representatives. But the Founding Fathers also dreaded the consequences of unchecked popular passions, the overthrow of moderation and the erosion of mutual tolerance and respect among Americans of differing views. The coming years may witness the realization of their worst fears.

Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party.

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Are Democrats Becoming Extremists? - POLITICO Magazine

The last two groups are a direct result of the opportunity provided by Monday's non-partisan evaluation of the GOP's repeal and replace Obamacare plan, which shows seniors and the poor suffering the most, including potentially devastating Medicaid cuts that could cause headaches for Republican governors.

The trio of targets will make up the thrust of Democrats 2018 health care argument, according to CNN interviews with about a half-dozen Democratic campaign strategists and aides.

It is still early in the process and Democrats have yet to recruit candidates in most of the targeted races. But Democrats are cheered by a series of polls and focus groups showing health care animates swing voters to their side more than other issues, including White House initiatives such as building a costly Southern border wall and the travel ban initiated against six Muslim majority countries.

The Republican health care plan, which has White House support, received a damaging score from the Congressional Budget Office Monday. The report found 14 million more people would be uninsured by 14 million in 2018 and 24 million by 2026.

Most damaging in the eyes of some Democrats is the finding there would be a steep premium hike for older people with lower incomes. A 64-year-old making $26,500 would pay $1,700 for coverage in 2026 under Obamacare, thanks to its subsidies -- but under the GOP plan, that person would get hit with a annual premium bill of $14,600.

The GOP proposal would cut also Medicaid, a federal program administrated by states that provides health coverage to low-income Americans, by $880 billion over 10 years.

"I am not trying to be too cute here, but House Republicans have truly constructed a bill that offends every important group," said Tyler Law, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I do think it is fair to take it to the bank that we will be talking about this through 2018."

The prospective messaging has also infused previously downbeat Democrats with a boost of confidence in the wake of their disappointing 2016, which left them out of power in both the House and Senate and Republican Donald Trump in the White House.

In the House, there are eight Republicans in congressional districts that Clinton won who also have already cast preliminary votes of approval for the GOP health plan because of the committees they sit on.

Reps. Leonard Lance in New Jersey, Ryan Costello in Pennsylvania, Mimi Walters in California, Erik Paulsen in Minnesota, Peter Roskam in Illinois, Carlos Curbelo in Florida, Pat Meehan in Pennsylvania and Dave Reichert in Washington each sit on either the Energy and Commerce Committee or the Ways and Means Committee and voted last week to back the bill.

Though most of these races don't yet have Democratic candidates, the DCCC has already begun working with local politicians to stress the need to push voters over the health care votes.

"From a purely political standpoint, you are talking about a lot of vulnerable Republicans who have already voted on it," said one operative tasked with winning back the House,

Already, several Republicans are feeling the pressure over health care.

Lance, one of the vulnerable Republicans who represents a district Clinton won in northern New Jersey, told reporters Tuesday that the Republican bill wouldn't make it through the Senate and wouldn't be worth supporting.

"I do not want to vote on a bill that has no chance of passing over in the Senate," Lance said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican from a district Clinton won, also announced on Tuesday that she wouldn't back the Republican bill.

"I plan to vote NO on the current #AHCA bill. As written the plan leaves too many from my #SoFla district uninsured," she tweeted.

National Republicans heading up the midterm campaigning say the targeted members, some of whom have long represented Democratic districts with a localized-style of Republicanism, will be just fine.

"These particular members of Congress were in the cross hairs this past cycle ... these guys have been targeted by the DCCC right along and they have proven they can separate themselves," said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"We have run on repealing and replacing Obamacare. We have won on that issue. All that Republicans are doing right now are fulfilling a promise they made to the American people," he added.

On the Senate side, Democrats told CNN they see opportunities to message directly to older voters in states with 2018 elections such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Maine.

"This is moving from theoretical conversations about what the plan would potentially do, to a very real impact on seniors where they could be forced to pay up to five times for care," said one Democratic aide tasked with winning back the Senate.

The aide added Democrats expect the predicted rate hikes could be felt on seniors right before voters go to the polls making the message resonate even more.

Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada are of particular interest to Democrats. Both their states have a sizable number of senior voters, and were fertile ground for Clinton -- she won Nevada and lost Arizona by just 4%. Voters 65 and older backed Trump over Clinton nationally by 7% in 2016, according to exit polls. In Arizona, that number was a more stark -- 13%. But in Nevada, Clinton won seniors by 5%.

Florida and Maine, meanwhile, are two of the oldest states by population.

Democrats are hopeful that concerted messaging will mean their candidates -- both Senate and House -- could turn out seniors, a reliable voting bloc even in off-year elections. On average, voters over 65 make up close to 20% of voters in midterms, more than their share in presidential elections.

Then there are states that expanded Medicaid, which, under the Republican plan, would see their funding go down due to both cuts and changes in how federal monies will be allocated.

Democrats plan to push Republican candidates in Nevada, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which both expanded Medicaid and have 2018 Senate races.

The GOP plan, according to experts, would likely endanger Medicaid funding for issues like drug treatment and mental health rehabilitation.

Richard G. Frank, a professor of Health Economics at Harvard University, told CNN that since the new plan would allow states more flexibility but pare back their funding, states are forced to choose to continue the existing services at their own expense or make cuts.

"Historically, states have been loath to cover substance abuse treatment," he said.

Some Republicans have already expressed concerns over this aspect of the plan.

"Don't kill Medicaid expansion," Ohio Gov. John Kasich said earlier this month. "Here's what we're talking about: If you're drug addicted, if you're mentally ill, you have to consistently see the doctor. From what I see in this House bill, the resources are not there."

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told CNN Tuesday that stripping Medicaid funding from states will be a top issue in 2018.

"The Republican plan is one broken promise after another, forcing older Americans to pay as much as five times more for their care and stripping Medicaid funding that states from West Virginia to Arizona use to fight the opioid epidemic," Van Hollen said. "In every Senate campaign, we will make sure voters know that Republicans will make you pay more for less care so that the insurance companies and rich can profit."

The focus on health care, especially in states with vulnerable Republicans, also fits with the message testing Democrats are already doing for the 2018 midterms.

Groups -- including American Bridge, the liberal super PAC and opposition research firm led by longtime Clinton adviser David Brock -- have found out through polls and focus groups that voters who backed Obama in 2008 but Trump in 2016 are more swayed by Trump's plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act than they are by other issues.

Longtime Democratic operative James Carville bluntly told donors at an American Bridge summit in Florida earlier this year: "The mover on health care loses; to do something is to lose."

That logic accounts for the backlash Democrats felt after passing Obamacare and the pain they hope to inflict on Republicans in 2018.

"The Republican plan to repeal Obamacare is a disaster that is going to be a political liability in 2018," Brock said. "Bigly."

This story has been updated.

CNN's MJ Lee contributed to this report.

Original post:
How Democrats will use the GOP health care bill against Republicans in 2018 - CNN

Donald Trump carried Missouri by 19 percentage points on his way to the presidency. But Sen. Claire McCaskill, who faces a fight for reelection next year in the conservative-leaning state, isnt exactly voting like Washington, D.C.s idea of a red-state Democrat.

McCaskill has sided with Democratic leaders against all of Trumps most contentious Cabinet nominees and six of the eight regulatory rollbacks teed up by the Senate GOP since Inauguration Day, according to a POLITICO analysis. She is not alone among red-state Democrats who lately have remained in their partys fold: On the Senates highest-profile votes since the president took office, eight of the 10 most vulnerable Democrats on the ballot next year voted with their party at least four-fifths of the time.

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Even famously GOP-friendly Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has sided with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren more often than he aligned with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

It's obviously still early in Trump's presidency to draw sweeping conclusions. But the voting behavior of Senate Democrats particularly the 10 from states Trump won in November suggests that the president has a lot more bridge-building to do with red-state Democrats. Their support could prove critical to the success or failure of his legislative priorities, such as infrastructure and tax reform.

So far, Trump has mostly fostered Democratic unity by tweeting combatively and sparking protests around the country with his order barring travelers from majority-Muslim nations.

"The Trump administration has been so outrageous in its early stages that it's probably made it easier for Democrats to hang together," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview. "It's not hard to be united around the United States not discriminating against people based on religion."

The burgeoning unity among Democratic senators about the only emergency brake on the Trump train, as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) put it one week after his ticket lost the White House is about to face its biggest test yet in the coming confirmation vote on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. While Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) caucus has stuck together against the GOP's Obamacare repeal bid, it's far from clear that Democrats can deny Gorsuch 60 votes.

McCaskill said she has based her votes so far this year on substance, not partisanship.

"I have not voted for some Trump Cabinet members. I have voted for others," the Missourian said in a brief interview, adding that the same pattern holds for the eight rollbacks of Obama-era regulations that the Senate has passed so far. "So I make a decision based on each individual issue, and its not about party."

Liberal activists who are mobilizing demonstrations to protect Obamacare and pushing Democrats to block Gorsuch say Republicans are kidding themselves if they think senators who must court Trump voters next year are easy marks for his agenda.

Grass-roots mobilization has already opened the way for red-state Democrats to follow their conscience, MoveOn.org Washington director Ben Wikler said in an interview. Everything about the way this administration operates suggests it will keep inflaming an incredibly broad resistance movement."

Democratic senators facing reelection in states Trump carried understand that these are not normal times, said Ilyse Hogue, president of the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America. They understand that there is a heightened sense of desire and expectation that people are going to be heard.

Theres also a heightened GOP awareness that Democrats from swing states where Trump prevailed narrowly such as Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, both members of Schumer's leadership team have more incentive to vote with the rest of their party. But that doesnt mean they wont face political pressure to move to the right.

In the past week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has slammed Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) as an unapologetic Washington liberal and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) for his knee-jerk opposition" to Gorsuch.

To identify the most divisive Senate votes of Trumps young presidency, POLITICOs analysis focused on confirmation of the seven Cabinet nominees whom Democratic leaders singled out for opposition and the eight deregulatory measures that Senate Republicans have teed up for Trump to sign so far.

The Democrat crossing the aisle most often during those 15 votes, Manchin did so on seven of them. Excluding Manchin, Trump's most controversial Cabinet nominees lost Republican votes as often as they won Democratic votes.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) was close behind Manchin with five GOP-aligned votes. Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, broke from the bulk of their party on three of the 15 votes.

McCaskill, the fourth-most conservative Trump-state Democrat, has split from her leaders on two deregulatory measures under Trump, voting to kill an Interior Department rule for the disposal of coal mining waste in streams and a teacher preparation rule at the Department of Education that drew criticism from teachers unions. Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, up for reelection next year in a state Trump carried by 21 percentage points, voted to strike down the education rule and another regulation governing background checks for Social Security recipients seeking to buy guns.

Moderate Maine Sen. Susan Collins of Maine broke with her Republican leaders on more of the Senate's 15 most consequential votes under Trump than McCaskill and Tester split from Schumer, Warren and Sanders. Collins strayed from the GOP pack three times, voting against Scott Pruitt's bid to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, against Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, and against axing the coal mining waste regulation.

Both McCaskill and Tester opposed all seven of the Cabinet nominees at the top of Democrats' target list: Pruitt, DeVos, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

Among less politicized Cabinet confirmations, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson got a "no" from McCaskill and a "yes" from Tester, while both joined most other red-state Democrats in supporting Trump's picks to lead the departments of Commerce, Energy and Interior.

McCaskill also called for Sessions to resign amid the ongoing controversy over his meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak while serving as a Trump campaign surrogate (that landed the Missouri Democrat into a pickle of her own over her attendance at a group meeting with Kislyak). Even Manchin, who voted for Sessions, quickly pressed him to recuse himself from investigations into Russian meddling in the presidential election.

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Few other Democratic senators have crossed the aisle to side with the GOP on polarizing votes since Inauguration Day. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia supported Tillerson, while Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada voted against axing the teacher preparation regulation.

POLITICO's analysis excluded three Cabinet-level nominees who Senate Democrats did not add to their top tier of targets for confirmation fights: Defense Secretary James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Fifteen Democrats backed Pompeo on the Senate floor on Jan. 23, triggering a groundswell of grass-roots liberal fury.

Despite the early solidarity, however, Democratic senators are well aware that their red-state colleagues will break from the pack on future votes.

"Every member of our caucus is going to make a decision about what's right for their state," Murphy said. "Chuck's not twisting anybody's arms, so there are going to be times when members of our caucus will vote with Republicans. That's democracy."

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Trump-state Democrats choose party over president - Politico