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Kirsten Day | The Washington Post

A week ago, New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, the Democratic Congressional Campaign chairman, announced there will be no litmus test based on abortion for Democrats seeking office in 2018. "As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America," Lujn said.

This attention to local values and interests was the crux of Howard Dean's "50 state strategy," which earned victories nationwide for the party in 2006 and 2008. As Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez put it back in April: "To execute a 50-state strategy, we need to understand what's going on in all 50 states, and attract candidates who are consistent with their messages but perhaps not on 100 percent of the issues. ... If you demand fealty on every single issue, then it's a challenge."

Still, many Democrats were horrified by Lujn's remarks. "Shame on Democrats backing anti-choice candidates," Guardian writer Jamie Peck declared, for acting "as if issues like abortion don't have profound economic implications." "Of course abortion should be a litmus test for Democrats," New York Times contributing columnist Lindy West added. "There is no recognizable version of the Democratic Party that does not fight unequivocally against half its constituents' being stripped of ownership of their own bodies and lives." Plenty more chimed in along those lines.

But when Democrats or others on the left bash the party for funding Democratic candidates with whom they disagree on abortion, they miss a key point: Democrats who oppose abortion aren't like Republicans who oppose abortion. Not only are their priorities different, so are their policies. While Republicans who oppose abortion usually aim simply at banning the practice or making it difficult, Democrats who oppose abortion tend to take a whole-life approach, and to focus especially on reducing incentives to have abortions, rather than creating penalties.

Consider Peck's allegation that by funding candidates who oppose abortion, the Democratic party is de facto refusing to consider the economic aspects of abortion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats who oppose abortion are keenly aware of how many abortions are the result of financial stress and economic pressures, and we advocate constantly to reduce those burdens.

Signed into law along with the Affordable Care Act were several legislation proposals crafted by Democrats for Life of America called the Pregnant Women Support Act. We intended our proposals to reduce abortion by getting rid of many of the forces that push women toward abortion in the first place. We moved to eliminate pregnancy as a pre-existing condition for insurers, require State Child Health Insurance programs to cover mothers, fully and federally fund WIC and provide federal funding for day care. Likewise, when Senate Republicans moved last year to institute a 20-week ban on abortion, we at Democrats for Life of America urged legislators to include a paid family leave package along with the bill, with the aim of reducing financial burdens on pregnant women and their families. And in 2012, antiabortion Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) introduced the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a law that would ensure that pregnant women receive reasonable adjustments on the job and that they don't face retribution for asking to be accommodated.

In other words, one of the factors that best distinguishes Democrats who oppose abortion from Republicans who do is the very fact that Democrats are cognizant of the pressures that finances and the economy can place on a person's life, and we are invested in freeing people from them to the greatest degree possible.

Democrats who oppose abortion want to stop abortion, but that doesn't entail a wholesale stripping away of women's autonomy, as the policies outlined above indicate.

When Lujn says that Democratic candidates who run for office in districts with strong antiabortion leanings deserve funding from the party, he isn't saying that the party is going to fund candidates whose positions are tantamount to those of Republicans. He's rightly observing that Democrats real, bona fide Democrats do have a range of views on abortion, and to win as many elections as possible, the party has to recognize that.

Day is the Executive Director of Democrats For LIfe of American and advocates for a pro-life voice within the Democratic Party.

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KIRSTEN DAY: Democrats need not be afraid of anti-abortion liberals - The Northwest Florida Daily News

House Democrats sent a letter to the Trump administration Monday demanding information about the task forces established by the president to reduce burdensome government regulations.

The letter points to a report that found the task forces have been operating "largely out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and political conflicts."

Democrats are demanding Mick Mulvaney, who runs the Office of Management and Budget, produce a long list of information about the task forces.

"Simply put, it is unacceptable for federal agencies to operate in such a clandestine and unaccountable manner, especially when the result could be the undoing of critical public health and safety provisions," Rep. Elijah Cummings, of Maryland, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote along with three other party lawmakers who serve on related panels.

The Democrats are demanding Mulvaney provide specific documents and information related to the work of the task force groups, including a list of the names, titles and organizations of every member of each task force and all documents and communications by non-government employees participating on the task forces.

Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 24 ordering each agency to establish a task force aimed at reducing "the regulatory burden placed on the American people."

Democrats said the composition of the task forces need scrutiny.

In one instance, the Environmental Protection Agency task force includes the wife of a top oil company lobbyist.

Some of the agencies have refused to provide a list of task force members, the Democrats noted.

"Withholding the names and titles of task force participants may also violate the Freedom of Information Act," the letter said.

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Democrats demand information on Trump regulation reduction - Washington Examiner

News & Observer

NC Republican leader slams Democrats for 'murdering blacks in Wilmington' News & Observer A North Carolina Republican leader on Sunday slammed Democrats for murdering blacks when he referenced the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot in several tweets. NCGOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse was responding to a tweet from the N.C. ...

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NC Republican leader slams Democrats for 'murdering blacks in Wilmington' - News & Observer

WASHINGTON California Gov. Jerry Brown said on Sunday that Democrats troubles cannot simply be attributed to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," he said the party needs to rise above to appeal to a wider swath of the country.

If you added up pluses and minuses, I think Nancy Pelosi is a major pillar of the Democratic Party, Brown said. And the answer is not to try to replace her with somebody, but to make sure the candidates represent and can empathize and be a part of the district they're running in.

Despite President Donald Trumps unpopularity nationwide, Democrats have lost a string of high-profile special elections. Those failures have put Pelosi's long-time role as the leader of congressional Democrats under the magnifying glass as calls for her to step aside have grown.

But Brown said he does not believe the party has a Pelosi problem. Instead, he countered, the Democrats need to focus on finding better candidates and not forcing members to be beholden to litmus tests on polarizing issues like abortion.

If we want to be a governing party of a very diverse, and I say diverse ideologically as well as ethnically, country, well, then you have to have a party that rises above the more particular issues to the generic, the general issue of making America great, if I might take that word, Brown said.

Brown and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona appeared on a special edition of Meet The Press focused on how to bridge the countrys political divide. Flake has been highly critical of both the president and his party. His new book, Conscience of a Conservative, is a take-down of the GOPs embrace of Trump.

Flake has irked the White House to the point where the administration has openly floated the idea of supporting a primary challenger to run against the incumbent in Arizona.

On Sunday, Flake also denounced the presidents frequent calls to jail his former rival Hillary Clinton, and said his party should do more to speak out against the chilling rhetoric.

I wish that we as a party would have stood up, for example, when the birtherism thing was going on, Flake said.

We shouldnt be the party for jailing your political opponents, he added.

Flake accused Trump of simplifying the country's problems, especially when it comes to manufacturing. He said he plans to oppose forthcoming trade legislation likely backed by the White House.

My concern is that populism is a sugar high," Flake said. "Once you come off it, its particularly troublesome for the party."

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Gov. Jerry Brown: Democrats Don't Have a Pelosi Problem - NBCNews.com

Last week saw the Democratic Party save the Affordable Care Act, a remarkable victory for an out-of-power party. Members celebrated in the traditional Democratic way tumbling into pointless and repetitive infighting, prodded happily along by people(like me) in the media. Watching the latest round of this, I had a question that cut against some of my reportorial interests:

Why do Democrats keep falling for this stuff?

Start with the abortion litmus test fight,which is on at least its third iteration since March. It's the same every time a Democrat (Tom Perez/Nancy Pelosi/Ben Ray Lujn) is asked whether the party will make support for abortion rights mandatory for its candidates. Of course not, a Democrat says as Rep. Ben Ray Lujn (D-N.M.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, put it, You need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district. This comports with our current version of reality, in which the DCCC dutifully spends money every two years to send antiabortion Democratic Reps. Collin C. Peterson (Minn.) and Daniel Lipinski (Ill.) back to Washington.

Continue with the Pelosi Question the nagging, obvious issue that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will become Speaker of the House if Democrats win next year. McClatchy's Alex Roarty finds, as I have found, that Democrats running in swing districts including districts Hillary Clinton won last year can rarely bring themselves to say whether they want Pelosi to be speaker again. Like Roarty, I have tossed this question into every interview with an aspiring Democratic member of Congress; hardly ever has one indicated, without qualification, support for Pelosi.

In both cases, I keep wondering why Democrats can't find the escape hatch. Republicans have had similar problems with messaging very recently, and to a great extent, they've figured them out.

In a word: They pivot.

They start with the shared notion that the media's questions are meant to hurt them, and they find ways to spin the question around.

The Republican version of the Pelosi Question was (and still is) the Trump Question. In 2016, vulnerable Republicans handled questions about their explosive nominee by saying that he had his flaws, but their opponents would be puppets of Hillary Clinton.

It baffles me that no 2018 Democrat can do something similar. Pelosi is unpopular; they can acknowledge right away that they disagree with her. But they never pivot to say that their opponents back Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), whose favorable numbers have tumbled to Pelosian levels, or Donald Trump, who's tumbled even further. Seriously, I've never heard a Democrat do this they've just internalized that Pelosi is unpopular, so they curl up as if hiding from a hungry bear.

The Republican version of the abortion question? It's asked all the time: Do they support a total ban on abortion, even in cases of rape and incest? After 2012, when two Republican candidates blew winnable Senate races by using the question as a cue to ramble about pregnancies that result from rape, Republicans (led by the antiabortionSusan B. Anthony PAC) actively trained their candidates to pivot. The new answer: Why, exactly, were Democrats so extreme? In 2014, multiple Republicans turned the question around, daring the media to ask Democrats, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) put it, When is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?

Democrats should know by now that they'll be asked whether they have abortion litmus tests for candidates. In almost every case, they can redirect the question by pointing out that even antiabortionDemocrats refuse to defund Planned Parenthood; refuse to make the Hyde Amendment permanent (as we saw in a House vote this year); refuse, in other words, to sign onto scores of unpopular antiabortion measures.

Republicans had to lose a series of elections to figure out these pivots; they got lucky with Trump. As a reporter, I benefit tremendously when politicians can't figure a way out of a question. But I'm surprised every time.

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One weird trick Democrats could use to stop stumbling over Pelosi and abortion questions - Washington Post