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PHILADELPHIA The Democratic Party has a God problem.

And over the last couple of decades, as its base became more educated, less religious and more urban, this problem has only grown.

Some of this has to do with lower church attendance in cities versus rural areas, and the Democratic Partys increasing reliance on urban voters. Some of it is the divisiveness of social or cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage. And the divide has seemingly sapped Democrats ability to communicate to religious Americans.

Especially if those people of faith are white, according to Brad Chism, a longtime and respected Democratic strategist based in Mississippi.

And that problem extends to the national media, who by and large are mostly Democrats, meaning you have these powerful forces who do not understand more than half of the people in this country, he said.

Chism makes a crucial point about what this means for American politics: Some of the greatest moral advancements in our countrys history have been accomplished largely through the influence of the church and church-going people, especially through the 20th century.

You look at womens suffrage, civil rights, the abolition of slavery and all of these massive other changes religion and religious people have played a role in moving society toward a higher plane, said Chism.

Weve seen that recently as well, but a lot of progressives and liberal Democrats dont see the role of religion in society, and that is a big mistake, he said.

And its a mistake people like Kevin Washo are trying to rectify, though they feel like theyre swimming against the tide. A day before the Democratic National Convention opened here last July, Washo, a Catholic prominent national Democrat, organized a private mass led by a Jesuit priest in the conference room of a prestigious law firm in a shimmering Market Street skyscraper.

That imagery is a far cry from the 2012 Democratic convention, when the hall exploded in turmoil as Democrats voted to amend their partys platform to include the word God. The platform initially had dropped previous platform language that referenced God. After an outcry, convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa returned to the stage to take a floor vote on a motion to reinsert the language.

The floor vote quite clearly failed as Villaraigosa repeated the roll call. Eventually he declared that the ayes have it, and loud boos exploded across the arena.

The headlines that came out of that debacle Democrats boo God was a common one ended up making matters worse for those, like Washo and Chism, who would like to see their party counter the perception of its estrangement from people of faith.

Washo, a former executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, wants the national party to recognize this problem and invest heavily in solving it: One of the first things I think they need is full-time engagement at the DNC to focus on people of faith, not just for a cycle, but make something permanent within the party with real resources.

Washo said the messaging also needs to be sincere to people of faith a real, authentic effort, not lip service.

The 2006 midterm elections seem to have been a turning point. Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate as well as a majority of state governorships. As the Pew Research Center noted at the time, exit polls showed Democrats did well among their core constituencies; compared to 2002, they received increased support from Jews, the religiously unaffiliated, infrequent churchgoers and those who never attend religious services.

In other words, Democrats were hugely successful across the country by solidifying their base. In the process, they have pushed away religious voters not simply by ignoring them but by actively repelling them with accusations of bigotry and backwardness.

Unless they change that, Democrats havent got a prayer at solving their God problem.

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Democrats still haven't faced their God problem - New York Post

Brianna Wu Wants to Change the Democrats' Playbook New York Times Do you really think Democrats need to take pages from the Trump playbook? I would say we need to speak with our hearts more. The typical Democratic way of talking about, say, wealth inequality is to bring out Robert Reich, who will give a cute academic ...

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Brianna Wu Wants to Change the Democrats' Playbook - New York Times

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