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Both followed similar strategies in the wake of controversy. RYAN ROSS

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., speaks to fellow Democrats at the West Side Community Center in Asbury Park to discuss the Democratic Party's agenda.(Photo: Doug Hood, staff photographer)Buy Photo

ASBURY PARK - What was billed as a congressional town hall seemed at times like a group therapy session for heartbroken Democrats and progressives still trying to grasp how enough Americans could have possibly voted for Donald Trump to elect him president.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. D-N.J., came before a friendly gathering at the West Side Community Center on Dewitt Avenue this Saturday to boost morale and offer hope for the future to an audience who had mostly been invited to be there by the congressmans political operation.

Pallone said he believed in abolishing the Electoral College,among other things, but called on those present to think local and focus on the future. He counseled a standing-room only crowdto focus their energies on New Jerseys gubernatorial and legislative races this year, particularly in the states 11th legislative district which overlaps a portion of his 6th congressional district.

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Pallone explained that Republican politics today was being driven by theology, revision and ideology.

Thats not us, were practical. I mean, for the most part, Pallone quipped to laughter. We for the most part dont think ideologically. When I talk about the Affordable Care Act, I dont talk about it in ideological terms, I talk about it technically.

When I talk about immigration, I dont talk about it as Muslim vs. Christian, or Jewish or whatever. I say, weve got 11 million people here who are undocumented. We cant throw them out, thats not a practical solution. A practical solution is to have a pathway to citizenship, Pallone said as the crowd erupted in applause.

Pallone said their political opposition had successfully found a way for the tail to wag the dog, meaning the ideological right had diverted the attention of enough voters away from the substantive issues at stake today. Going forward, he said Democrats and progressives needed to rebuildand strengthenthe Democratic Party, starting in one's own neighborhoods.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., gives a pep talk and takes questions from Democrats and other progressives at the West Side Community Center in Asbury Park about disappointment in the election of President Donald Trump and how to resist moving forward. His advice: think state and local elections first.(Photo: Doug Hood, staff photographer)

Hillary Clinton lost Monmouth County by 30,000 votes, Pallone said. But she won in the 11th (legislative) district by 7,500 votes. The Republican freeholder candidates won Monmouth County by a third, but they lost in the 11th district by 3,000. So this is a Democratic district.

The 11th District is comprised of Allenhurst,Asbury Park, Colts Neck, Deal, Eatontown, Freehold, Freehold Township, Interlaken, Loch Arbour, Long Branch, Neptune City, Neptune, Ocean Township, Red Bank, Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury Township, Tinton Falls and West Long Branch.

Incumbent state Sen. Jennifer Beck, R-Red Bank, who represents the 11th District,is expected be challenged for her seat in the Legislature by former Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal, who also addressed the rally on Saturday.

Gopal will run for Beck's state Senate seat on the Democratic ticket with incumbent Assembly members Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling, who unseated the Republican incumbents in 2015.

Pallone said it was essential that New Jersey elect a Democratic governor to succeed Chris Christie in November, beforea man in the room shouted: "Lock him up!" in reference to Christie on the issue of politically motivated lane closures atthe George Washington Bridge by members of the governor'ssenior staff in 2013.

During the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last July, it was Christie who presided overchants of "lock her up!" from delegates in reference to an FBI investigation offormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email use.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com

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Rep. Pallone fires up disillusioned Democrats - Asbury Park Press

Montana Democrats have announced that theyre bringing in a New Jersey politician for their keynote speaker at an annual fundraising event in Helena.

Executive board member Jorge Quintana tweeted Wednesday that New Jerseys U.S. Sen. Cory Booker would be coming to the Democrats Mansfield-Metcalf dinner on March 18.

The announcement comes as the Democrats continue criticizing Republican candidate Greg Gianforte as an outsider from, wait for it ... New Jersey.

Gianforte grew up in Pennsylvania and studied computer science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He co-founded a software company in that state in 1986, later selling it to Internet security firm McAfee for $10 million. He moved to Bozeman in 1995.

About 46 percent of Montana residents were born in another state. Gianforte has lived in Montana for more than 20 years, which, to be fair, is several years longer than he resided in New Jersey.

By inviting Booker to Montana, the Democrats have taken their New Jersey attack off the table, said Brock Lowrance, Gianfortes new congressional campaign manager.

Montana Democrats spent an entire election leveling false and dishonest attacks against Greg Gianforte and where he is from, Lowrance told the Chronicle on Thursday. Being the hypocrites they are, theyve invited a liberal senator from New Jersey to give them advice following their horrible election year. Thats not irony, its satire.

A spokeswoman for the Montana Democrats did not respond to a request for comment.

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Montana Democrats hosting New Jersey politician at fundraiser, Gianforte's spokesman calls them hypocrites - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Timothy Hennig 3:47 p.m. CT Feb. 18, 2017

Rioters loot and vandalize a Starbucks store during a protest against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley, Calif., on Feb. 1.(Photo: European Press Agency)

I wholeheartedly agree with Daniel Riemer, who wrote recently in Crossroads that Democrats need to return to their principles.

Unfortunately, he reverts to the same arguments weve heard from the left for years.

And, I would suggest, the first principle Democrats should return to is being law-abiding citizens.

During protests in Washington, D.C., on the day of President Donald Trumps inauguration, marchers broke windows, started a car on fire (owned by a Muslim immigrant no less) and were disrespectful of the law.

During her speech at the Womens March on Washington, Madonna stated that she contemplated assassinating the president. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, she said.

Apparently that sort of rhetoric is OK with Democrats because I didnt hear anyone condemn it.

More recently, consider the protests at the University of California-Berkeley campus, where protesters started fires and smashed windows because the students didnt like the conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News.

It seems like the all-inclusive party is all inclusive only for people who agree with its agenda. If you disagree, youre excluded, First Amendment be damned.

Contrast that with the recent peaceful march in Washington by pro-life groups or the tea party marches a few years ago. No vandalism. No profanities. Just law-abiding citizens making their opinions known, peacefully.

Finally, how many incidents have there been in which Trump supporters beat up or traumatized an innocent person? You know, all those Nazi incidents the left warned us about? Ive heard of none. Conversely, how may incidents have there been where Trump haters, beat up, tortured or traumatized a Trump supporter? Many.

As for Riemers New Deal contentions, let me address a few of them:

Riemer wants to provide equal opportunity in health and education. I thought Obamacare was supposed to provide affordable health care for all. Thats what President Barack Obama told us, repeatedly (along with the part about keeping your doctor and plan). Perhaps one of the principles Democrats should abide by should be to stop lying to the American people. I do compliment Riemer for at least acknowledging implicitly that Obamcare is a failure.

With respect to education, Democrats are always in favor of making changes to make the system successful, until those changes bump up against anything the teachers unions dont want. Then, theyre in full retreat. Unless all the professors, administrative and janitorial staff agree to work for free, a college education will not be free. Someone is going to have to pay for it.

Finally, Riemer argues for restoring balance to the tax system, with which we all agree. But consider this: Democrats controlled all three branches of government for two years after Obama was elected in 2008, and had a great opportunity to bring sanity to the tax code. Instead, they decided to pass Obamacare.

Riemer falls back on the usual rhetoric, requiring the super-wealthy and those who live on loopholes to pay their fair share. First, the super-wealthy didnt write the tax code. Congress and legislatures do that. So dont blame the wealthy for something over which they have no control.

And lets consider a few inconvenient facts: Over the long term, the top 1% pays about 40% of all personal income taxes. The next 9% pays about 30%. About half the people pay no income tax at all.

So, who exactly is not paying their fair share?

Seems to me that if you are a citizen in this country you should have at least some skin in the game, and its a problem when half of us do not.

Timothy Hennig is a resident of Pewaukee.

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Hennig: By all means, Democrats, return to your principles - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

We are living through another John McCain moment. The irascible, quotable war hero, just reelected to another six-year term to the Senate, has become once again a chief critic of President Trump.

At the Munich Security Conference, McCain in the words of my colleague Aaron Blake systematically dismantledthe president's worldview. The cover of this week's New York magazine is McCain vs. Trump, a fresh profile by Gabriel Sherman in which the Arizona Republicansays there must be investigations into Russian interference in our election, and looks gamely ahead to a growing resistance.

One thing politicians look at are ratings, and his ratings are going to continue to decline, McCain tells Sherman. That means members of Congress will be more likely to resist things they do not agree with rather than roll over.

McCain, who was personally insulted by Trump during the campaign and who pulled his support of him after the Access Hollywood tape was released, can command a lot of attention when he criticizes the president. For Democrats, who just lost an election that most people expected them to win, this appears to a boon. Historically, voters get concerned about where an administration is going if there is bipartisan opposition to its agenda. And historically, new presidents are not as unpopular as Trump, who, if not for the curiously buoyant Rasmussen poll, would be looking at average approval ratings below 40 percent.

But it's not necessarily good for Democrats when McCain leads a charge against Trump. In fact, it might represent a short-termproblem.

Trump feeds off mainstream Republican opposition.Just as the president can't stop talking about how he won the presidency, we should not stop remembering how he changed party politics to do so. Trump smashed the mainstream consensus of political science that nominees need party elite support to succeed. Instead, he ran as a figure outside the normal party system, pulling in voters who did not consider themselves Republicans.

When The Washington Post published audio of Trump gloating about sexual assault, and some Republicans backed away from him all of them expecting him to lose the election Trump and his allies said this attitude was to be expected.

This is basically the insiders versus the outsiders, Trump adviser Rudolph W. Giuliani said at the time.

Trump has gotten remarkably far by portraying Republican opposition not as a sign of weakness but as proof that he even in power is feared by the nebulous establishment. Trump's closing campaign commercial was two minutes of him promising to smash the globalists who had weakened America. That's the sort of approach that largely inoculates him against oh, let me see, let me pick an example at random a speech by McCain at a conference in Munich.

Democrats need their base to see them resisting. In covering the (extremely long, but almost finished) race to run the Democratic National Committee, I've been struck by how cynical rank-and-file Democrats are about their party. The day after the Super Bowl, I covered a meeting between DNC candidate Thomas Perez and rural Wisconsin Democrats, and more than a few grumbled that the party was not doing enough to oppose Trump's Cabinet nominees. This was exactly when Senate Democrats were forming a solid, 48-vote bloc against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, and forcing for the first time ever a sitting vice president to bail out a Cabinet pick.

Pushed by their party's base, Senate Democrats have been moved from generally supporting Trump nominees to mostly opposing them. Ten Democrats up for reelection in 2018 come from states that voted for Trump only two of them voted for Environmental Protection Agency pick Scott Pruitt. Yet the party's left is forever watching for a sellout. This meme from People for Bernie, a grass-roots group created in 2015 by veterans of Occupy Wall Street, illustrates it pretty well that one Republican senator opposed Pruitt is seen as more telling than how 46 of 48 Democrats opposed him.

As Democrats (finally) finish the race for DNC chair, there's already angst about the possible defeat of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Electing Tom Perez which, insanely, is still very plausible would be a grave misreading of the national mood, Hamilton Nolan said this past week in Deadspin. Worse, it would send a big flashing signal to not only Democrats but to everyone out there who is pissed that the Democratic Party is not taking this situation seriously.

Perez, like Ellison, has opposed every move Trump has made. But right now, progressives view the Democratic Party warily. They can ill afford a story line in which Republicans like McCain, (or Evan McMullin, or Joe Scarborough) are the real leaders of the opposition.

Democrats need to oppose Trump on issues McCain doesn't talk about. Since the election, the Center for American Progress, Priorities USA and other progressive/pro-Democratic groups have conducted polling and focus groups to find out why voters bailed on them. The answer has been mind-blogging voters in key states came to see Trump as the candidate who would smash special interests, and the Hillary Clinton-led Democrats as the party of the elites.

Many Democrats now see that problem as a creation of a misguided Clinton campaign, which chased after soft suburban Republican voters who could be persuaded to dump Trump. Clinton herself sometimes separated Trump from the larger GOP. This is not a normal election, she said last August. The debates are not the normal disagreements between Republicans and Democrats. The problem, as some Democrats worried at the time, was that Clinton was basically saying that the GOP led by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan whose economic policies had been decisively rejected by voters when he was the party's 2012 vice-presidential nominee was mainstream.

Ryan, right now, is critical of Trump's wilder comments, but generally happy with the opportunity for a unified Republican government to pass his agenda. Progressives and Democratic strategists alike now say they think the way todiscredit Trump and Republicans is to argue that his Cabinet picks and agenda are selling out working-class voters. This guy ran for president of the United States saying, 'I, Donald Trump, I'm going to take on Wall Street these guys are getting away with murder,'" Sanders said earlier this month on CNN. Then suddenly, he appoints all these billionaires.

McCain has voted to confirm every Trump Cabinet pick save one Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. He held out on him because of the former congressman's support for defense spending cuts. In the long New Yorkmagazine profile, McCain is not quoted criticizing any aspect of the Trump economic agenda. Democrats can criticize it all day unless, of course, the story of opposition to Trump is one of a coalition of Republicans and Democrats opposing him over Russia and foreign policy.

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Why John McCain's #resistance is bad for Democrats - Washington Post

WASHINGTON A few weeks after the 2013 government shutdown, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) compared the Republicans in the House to the preschoolers she once taught. To deal with a bunch of fractious, obstreperous 4-year-olds, she said, you need a plan.

When Murray made her comparison, she was about to sit down with Rep.Paul Ryan(R-Wis.) in what turned out to be the only significant successful bipartisan budget negotiation Congress has managed since the shutdown.

Four years later, the House is still roiled by a crowd of sharp-elbowed and feuding Republican lawmakers who cant agree even on how to do the one thing they all say they want repeal Obamacare. But now, theres a new alpha boy atop their playground monkey bars.

President Donald Trump outdid them all, belittling, bullying and insulting his way to the Oval Office.

Murray is familiar with the personality type.

There is a bully in every classroom,Murray said this week. And the best way to teach other children in your preschool class that its not OK is to make it not OK.

That is precisely what Murray and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are trying to do. Since there are only 48 senators on their side of the ledger, they lack the votes to beat back Trump and a raft of nominees that Democrats see as historically awful. What they can do is show the country and their Republican colleagues that its not OK. Murray is turning out to be Schumers deadliest weapon in that fight.

The greatest difficulty with that strategy is that Republicans dont especially want to be shown. None have been willing to admit even that nominees might lie to them, and voted to confirm two who at the very least said things that were not true. They confirmed Scott Pruitt as Environmental Protection Agency chief Friday, even knowing that they had not reviewedthousands of emails that had just been released related to his environmental lawsuits.

Still, there have been some notable successes from the Democrats perspective, particularly with nominees going through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on which Murray serves as the top Democrat.

Chief among them is the withdrawal of labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder, a fast-food maven who was fond of employing scantily clad women to peddle his Carls Jr. burgers, and whose restaurants have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for labor and safety violations.

The salacious ads and history of labor law infractions probably were not the daggers that did in the labor nominee, however.

Ironically, his troubles started with a video created by a woman who Trump floated as a potential presidential running mate on the Reform Party ticket in 1988 Oprah Winfrey, via her TV show. Avideo from The Oprah Winfrey Show featured Puzders ex-wife dressed in disguise in 1990 to allege domestic abuse.

That she had gone on the program had been known since shortly after Puzders nomination, but Winfreys producers stonewalled media attempts to obtain the episode. The Oprah Winfrey Networks lawyers did temporarily provide a videotape to the HELP Committee that they refused to leave behind. Murray and her staff worked with committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to make sure other senators saw it or at least had a chance to. Although Puzders former wife, Lisa Fierstein, later recanted the allegations, it had an impact. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that she had seen the tape and wanted to make it public.

Murray has made a habit of maintaining bipartisan relationships and working across the aisle, passing things like the rewrite of theNo Child Left Behind Act. A firm member of the Pantsuit Nation, and a politician who launched her Senate career as a mom in tennis shoes, she politely and privately wielded a stiletto against Puzder, offering trenchant insights into Puzders attitudes in private conversations with Republicans in hallways and on the Senate floor. One thing Puzder said in an interview was particularly disturbing to the handful of Republicans who were prepared to oppose him.

Someone asked him why he wanted to be secretary of labor, and he said that it would be the best job he could have with his clothes on, Murray said. I presented that to one Republican senator who said to me, quote, he doesnt get it, does he?

Whether it was specifically the video that felled Puzder can be debated. Revelations that he employed an undocumented immigrant as part of his household helpfor years hurt him with a number of conservative Republicans, as did Puzders advocacy for immigration reform.

For Murray, he was a walking highlight reel of all that is wrong with Trump.

This is a president who got elected after a video came out of him on the bus with Access Hollywood. When that happened, that was such a defining moment for many people, Murray said. But the people who voted for him said thats OK, he wont do this going forward. And yet to me his nominee shared many of those same sexist, horrible attitudes towards women.

Thats what I felt really took him down, and should have taken him down, she said.

Murray and the Democrats also scored a near miss with an especially focused strategy to question then-Education Department nominee Betsy DeVos.

The billionaire charter school advocate botched numerous questions that Murray and other Democrats on the HELP committee had prepared in advance, and then followed up on. Especially glaring was DeVos lack of understanding of federal disability laws, exposed when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked how her own disabled child would be able to get an education in one of the publicly funded charter schools that DeVos favors. DeVos did not understand that providers of public education are supposed to provide it to all of the public. Public schools spend significant resources to ensure disabled children get an education, and while charter schools are required to as well, they often fightthe requirement.

Other questions showed that she was unfamiliar with basic debates in the education community. She was also caught in a possible lie when she said she had nothing to do with her familys foundation giving $5 million to the anti-gay religious group Focus on the Family. Devos insisted it was all her mothers doing. Murray came back with a tax filing from the foundation that listed DeVos as a vice president. DeVos claimed it was a clerical error, but records showed she was listed in the position for 17 years.

DeVos terrible showing cost her two Republican votes, and for the first time in history, a vice president had to break a 50 to 50 tie in the Senate to confirm her.

None of that work to bring down those nominees was an accident, Murray said.

I felt from the beginning, this administration who I think expected to win was putting together a cabinet without doing the critical work that one should do at the cabinet in vetting people, in knowing what issues they might have, Murray said. So I directed my staff to do that with Betsy DeVos, with [Health and Human Services Secretary Tom] Price. And with Puzder.

Aides familiar with the strategy said that Murray vowed to do that vetting herself when she came back to Capitol Hill after the election. She reassigned a slew of policy staff and turned them into temporary investigators, churning out detailed memos that were then shared with other senators and their staff. No other committee appears to have done as thorough a dive into the backgrounds of the nominees coming before them.

Heading into the DeVos hearing, Murray made sure to coordinate Democratic questions, to avoid overlap and make sure effective follow ups were delivered. When, for instance, Hassan asked DeVos about her role in the Prince Foundation, and DeVos demurred, Hassan was able to pull out tax documents with her name on them.

As each new embarrassment and unflattering detail emerged, Schumer would often highlight them in his morning Senate floor speeches that the Democratic leaders then spread further in news conferences.

Since Democrats themselves changed the rules around nominations in 2013 to allow confirmations to pass on simple majority votes, theres little they can do beyond slowing down the process and trying to give the public enough time to see exactly who is ascending to power in the reign of Trump.

And Murray said she intends to keep showing why its not OK.

As I have had constituents tell me since the day of the election, Senate Democrats are the only barrier we have to fight back against things that arent right coming from a Republican administration, Senate and House, Murray said. So, were it. We started working from day one to be the people who take that role on.

Ryan Grim contributed reporting.

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A Mild-Mannered Woman From Washington Is The Democrats' Deadliest Weapon - Huffington Post