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But the Democrats did it too! Its a refrain frequently deployed by supporters of President Donald Trump, whether to defend his treatment of the press or his relationship with Russia. The comparisonsto President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in particularare often inaccurate, but they serve to remind Trumps base that he will never get fair treatment from the liberal media and its enablers in the so-called deep state.

Now, Trumps supporters are using that line of argumentation to explain Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was said to have damaging information on the Clinton campaign. While that meeting would seem to only deepen suspicions of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, including possibly hackers on its payroll, right-wing media outlets have been feverishly pointing to a story about a Democratic operative who met in the spring of 2016 with Ukrainian government officials during the campaign.

They are doing so at the direction of the White House.

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If you are looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC which actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday.

The source for that encounter is a Politico story from January. The reports key revelations have to do not with Trump, but Paul Manafort, his second campaign manager and a lobbyist with deep ties to Russian power: A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

As the revelations over Donald Jr.s meeting seemed to plunge the White House back into crisis, supporters on the right seized on the Politico story as proof that, yet again, the Trumps were the subjects of unfair treatment from the establishment.

The Daily Caller, the site started by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, said that the significance of the meeting with Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in Manhattan, which was attended by Donald Jr., Manafort and Jared Kushner, pales when compared to the coordination between Clinton allies and Ukrainian government officials who hoped to see Clinton win the 2016 election.

In fact, the Politico reportand the Daily Caller summary of that reportdescribed only one meeting, involving Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa and Ukrainian ambassador to the United States Valeriy Chaly. The Daily Caller also ignores a crucial point that Politico does not: Ukraines attempts to sway the election were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russias alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

For its part, the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States said in a statement that it did not coordinate with the DNC about opposition research. While some politicians who are not part of the Ukrainian government might have taken sides during last years elections in the U.S., the government of Ukraine did not.

Chalupa did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian interference with the election was meant to benefit Trump. Trump has rejected those findings while casting aspersions on the American intelligence community. After Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, it was widely reported that Trump accepted Putins denial of Kremlin meddling. While reports on that point have diverged, it would be stunning for an American president to so openly side with a foreign adversary.

At least five senior Trump officials failed to disclose meetings with Russians. ThinkProgress, the liberal politics site, has compiled a list of 20 occasions on which Trump surrogates, staffers or family members have misrepresented or downplayed their connections to Russia. There are now five separate inquiries on Capitol Hill regarding the Trump campaigns ties to Russia. Some have compared those inquiries to the Watergate scandal that ended the presidency of Richard Nixon.

But in defending Donald Jr., the right ignores these inconvenient facts. All that matters is that someone affiliated with Hillary Clinton did something that was somewhat similar. That is all the absolution the right requires. Absent is any evidentconcern for American democracy, Russias attempts to undermine it, or the Trump camps willingness to participate in those efforts.

Appearing on MSNBC on Tuesday morning, Sebastian Gorka, a blustery terrorism expert with alleged ties to neo-Nazis, continued this line of attack. He, too, referenced the Politico report. He also called Donald Jr.s meeting with Veselnitskaya a massive nothing-burger. It is not clear if Robert Muller, the special counsel appointed by the FBI to investigate Trump campaigns ties to Russia, will feel the same way.

By Tuesday afternoon, the story about the DNC meeting with Ukrainian officials had effectively become the central argument for Donald Jr. defenders:

Pointing to the supposed sins of Clinton and Obama has become a familiar recourse for supporters of the President. After Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn for unreported and potentially troubling ties to Russia, chief White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the oversight was Obamas fault, as Flynn had once been Obama chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency. if President Obama was truly concerned about Gen. Flynn, why didn't he suspend Gen. Flynn's security clearance? Spicer wondered.

And as the Trump administration moved to curtail televised White House briefings, The Daily Wire, a conservative outlet, ran a story headlined, Obama WH Held Private Briefings, Too.

After Trump fired FBI director Comey, professional fulminator Rush Limbaugh came to his defense. "What Trump is alleged to have done is actually no different than what Barack Obama did in April last year when he made it known that he didnt want Hillary prosecuted, he said in May, misrepresenting an exchange Obama had with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

7 Times The Obama Administration Obstructed Justice, declared a Daily Wire headline from June.

Obama Collusion with Russia? wondered WorldNetDaily.

Such headlines speak to Trumps inability to move beyond the presidential campaign, a difficulty compounded by his own obsession with the scope of his Electoral College victory. Grievances over Obamamany of them heavily dusted with racial animusin part propelled Trump to the presidency. Now, six months into his presidency, he finds himself unable to govern. So he continues to blame.

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Republicans Explain Trump Email: Democrats Did It Too! - Newsweek

President Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for obstructing his nominees, even as he lags other presidents in acting to fill high-level posts.

President Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for the slow pace of confirming his nominees, even as he lags his predecessors in tapping people for high-level positions.

In a tweet on Tuesday morning, Trump said Democrats cant win so all they do is slow things down & obstruct! He said only 48 of 197 nominees have been confirmed.

As of June 30, Trump had nominated 242 people to key executive posts, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. That compares to 336 and 379 nominated during the same period by Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively.

There are more than 1,200 positions that require Senate confirmation, including cabinet secretaries, agency directors and ambassadors, as the Partnership for Public Service notes in its political appointee tracker.

Republicans control the Senate and thus consideration for nominees. But Democrats can use the filibuster to slow down the process.

On Monday, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had run an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against Trumps nominees for high-ranking government positions.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in response that no administration in recent memory has been slower in sending nominees to the Senate.

Also read: Trump taps Randal Quarles to be Feds top banking regulator.

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As Trump blames Democrats for stalled nominations, the bigger problem may be man in mirror - MarketWatch

While the liberal news media hunts for evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, the public record shows that Democrats have willfully used Moscow disinformation to influence the presidential election against Donald Trump and attack his administration.

The disinformation came in the form of a Russian-fed dossier written by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. It contains a series of unverified criminal charges against Mr. Trumps campaign aides, such as coordinating Moscows hacking of Democratic Party computers.

Some Democrats have widely circulated the discredited information. Mr. Steele was paid by the Democrat-funded opposition research firm Fusion GPS with money from a Hillary Clinton backer. Fusion GPS distributed the dossier among Democrats and journalists. The information fell into the hands of the FBI, which used it in part to investigate Mr. Trumps campaign aides.

Mr. Steele makes clear that his unproven charges came almost exclusively from sources linked to the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He identified his sources as a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure, a former top level Russian intelligence officer active inside the Kremlin, a senior Kremlin official and a senior Russian government official.

The same Democrats who have condemned Russias election interference via plying fake news and hacking email servers have quoted freely from the Steele anti-Trump memos derived from creatures of the Kremlin.

In other words, there is public evidence of significant, indirect collusion between Democrats and Russian disinformation, a Trump supporter said.

If anyone colluded with the Russians, it was the Democrats, said a former Trump campaign adviser who asked not to be identified because of the pending investigations. After all, theyve routinely shopped around false claims from the debunked Steele dossier, which listed sources including senior Kremlin officials. If anyone should be investigated in Washington, it ought to be Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Mark Warner and their staffers.

That is a reference to Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California, Democrat on the House intelligence panel.

By his own admission, Mr. Steeles work has proved unreliable.

As first reported by The Washington Times on April 25, Mr. Steele filed a document in a sealed court case in London acknowledging that a major dossier charge about hacking Democrats computers was unverified. The entire dossier never should have been made public and Fusion GPS should not have passed it around, Mr. Steele said in a filing defending himself against a libel charge.

About Carter Page

Other dossier targets vehemently deny the dirt thrown by the Kremlin sources.

Mr. Steeles Russian sources accused Mr. Trumps attorney, Michael Cohen, of attending a meeting with Russian agents in Prague to cover up their role in Moscows hacking. Mr. Cohen has said he has never been to Prague and was in California at the time.

One of the main targets of Mr. Steeles Russian sources is Carter Page, who lived and worked in Moscow as a Merrill Lynch investor. He had loose ties to the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser and surrogate.

Mr. Steeles Russian sources accused Mr. Page of a series of crimes: teaming up with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to help Russia hack Democratic computers, meeting in Moscow with two Putin cronies to plot against Mrs. Clinton and working out a shady brokerage deal with a Russian oligarch.

Mr. Page told The Washington Times that he has never met Mr. Manafort, knew nothing about Russian hacking when it was happening, never met the two Russians named by Mr. Steele and never completed the supposed investment deal.

The dossier accusations against Mr. Page surfaced during the campaign in a Yahoo News story, citing not Mr. Steele but intelligence sources. It then went out on the U.S. governments Voice of America.

In the meantime, the Clinton campaign used the Yahoo story to attack Mr. Trump: Hillary for America Statement on Bombshell Report About Trump Aides Chilling Ties to Kremlin, blared the Clinton campaigns Sept. 23 press release.

Since the dossier was circulated widely among Democrats, Mr. Carter said, he believes the Clinton team possessed it and relied on it based on what some of Mrs. Clintons surrogates said publicly.

After the report by Yahoo News, the Clinton campaign put out an equally false press release just minutes after the article was released that afternoon, said Mr. Carter, who has tracked what he believes is a series of inaccurate stories and accusations against him.

Of course the [Clinton campaign representatives] were lying about it with the media nonstop for many months, and theyve continued until this day, Mr. Carter said. Both indirectly as they planted articles in the press and directly with many TV appearances.

Democrats cite Russias dirt

Even before the Yahoo story, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, was using the Russian-sourced dossier.

On Aug. 27, with the campaign in high gear and knowledge that Russian hackers had penetrated Clinton campaign computers in the public domain, Mr. Reid released a letter to then-FBI Director James B. Comey.

Mr. Reid called for an investigation into Mr. Carters trip to Moscow, where he supposedly met with high-ranking sanctioned individuals. Any such meetings should be investigated and made part of the public record.

Mr. Reids evidence surely came from the dossier and its Russian sources.

In the dossier, Mr. Steele clearly states that his anti-Trump accusations are from the Kremlin, which means some Democrats have been willingly repeating Moscow propaganda for public consumption in Washington.

No Democrats have embraced the Russian-sourced dossier more than members of the House intelligence committee, which is investigating Moscows interference in the election.

Mr. Schiff read from the dossier extensively at a March hearing featuring Mr. Comey and Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, who leads the National Security Agency.

As Mr. Schiff and other Democrats were bemoaning Kremlin activities against Mrs. Clinton, they were more than willing to quote Kremlin sources attacking Mr. Trump during the election campaign.

Mr. Schiff lauded Mr. Steele for disclosing that Rosneft, a Russian-owned gas and oil company, planned to sell a 19.5 percent share to an investor and that Mr. Page was offered a brokerage fee.

Trouble is, the 19.5 percent share was announced publicly by Moscow before Mr. Steele wrote that memo. Mr. Page said he was never involved in any talk about a commission.

Mr. Schiff was more than willing to quote Kremlin sources.

According to Steeles Russian sources, the campaign has offered documents damaging to Hillary Clinton, which the Russians would publish through an outlet that gives them deniability like WikiLeaks, he said.

Mr. Schiff also said: According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. intelligence, Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin, CEO of the Russian gas giant, Rosneft. Sechin is reported to be a former KGB agent and close friend of Putins.

Mr. Page has said repeatedly that he does not know Mr. Sechin and did not meet with him in Moscow.

Meanwhile, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, another Democrat on the House committee, lauded Mr. Steeles Kremlin sourcing.

I want to take a moment to turn to the Christopher Steele dossier, which was first mentioned in the media just before the election and published in full by media outlets in January, Mr. Castro said. My focus today is to explore how many claims within Steeles dossier are looking more and more likely, as though they are accurate.

This is not someone who doesnt know how to run a source and not someone without contacts. The allegations it raises about President Trumps campaign aides connections to Russians, when overlaid with known established facts and timelines from the 2016 campaign, are very revealing, he said.

Rep. Andre Carson, Indiana Democrat, said: Theres a lot in the dossier that is yet to be proven, but increasingly as well hear throughout the day, allegations are checking out.

On MSNBC in March, Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, said she believed the dossier section on Mr. Trump and supposed sex acts with prostitutes in Moscow were true.

Oh, I think it should be taken a look at, she said. I think they should really read it, understand it, analyze it and determine whats fact, what may not be fact. We already know that the part about the coverage that they have on him with sex actions is supposed to be true. They have said that thats absolutely true. Some other things they kind of allude to. Yes, I think he should go into that dossier and see whats there.

Fusion GPS widely circulated the dossier during the presidential race. The public got its first glance when the news site BuzzFeed posted it online in January, with its editor saying he doubted it was true.

One person who says he knows it is a fabrication is Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.

The dossier quotes Russian sources as saying Mr. Gubarevs technology company, XBT, used botnets to flood Democratic computers with porn and spying devices.

Mr. Gubarev is suing Mr. Steele for libel in London and is suing BuzzFeed in Florida.

It is in the London case that Mr. Steele acknowledged that his memo on Mr. Gubarev was unverified.

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Democrats spread false Russian information on Trump, campaign aides - Washington Times

But my emails? Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Its one of the oldest messaging challenges in politics, one that has bedeviled countless administrations, Republican and Democratic alike: What do you say when the presidents son publishes emails on Twitter that prove the highest-ranking members of your campaign including a current senior White House adviser eagerly accepted an invitation to participate in a Kremlin-orchestrated effort to swing the American election, after virtually everyone in the White House spent months mocking that idea as a defamatory crock cooked up by sore-loser Democrats?

Its quite the sticky wicket. And yet the public-relations geniuses at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have already settled on a rock-solid rebuttal: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are bad. Per Axios:

Theres an emerging strategyto turn this back around on the Democrats.

An extreme example of this approach is Roger Stone, who texted Axios:The president can turn the tables and dominate the dialogue by ordering the indictment of [James] Clapper, [John] Brennan, [Susan] Rice and [former president Barack] Obama for the wholesale unconstitutional surveillance of Americans I would seriously arrest [and] perp walk every one of these criminals, making as big a show of it as possible.

Although Stone is a longtime confidant of Trump, this in no way reflects the strategy preferred by current White House staffers.With that said, there are already internal conversations about turning this into a conversation about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and the way they handled sensitive intelligence.

To Stones credit, sending the entire Obama administration to Guantnamo Bay would go a long way toward burying this Trump Jr. story. But assuming the president declines to go full authoritarian, this is some pretty thin gruel and old, stale, leftover thin gruel at that.

Its unclear exactly what the connection between Don Jr.s emails and Obamas handling of sensitive intelligence is supposed to be.Ostensibly, the only way the email exchange could function as evidence of Obamas mishandling of intelligence and/or surveillance is as a sign that he should have been much more aggressive about spying on the Trump campaign. (Perhaps, President Trump plans to drop Obama wire-tapped my team as part of fake Russia WITCH HUNT for weak Obama didnt even bother to wiretap my team while they were colluding with RUSSIAN HACKERS total incompetence, no wonder Putin didnt respect!)

More likely, the Trump team plans to breathe new life into its (wholly unsubstantiated) claim that the Obama administration excessively used its (legitimate) authority to unmask the names of American citizens caught up in routine surveillance so as to better understand the content of intelligence reports. Even before we learned this scandal was a fraud manufactured by the White House, it was a snoozer a controversy over bureaucratic protocols that was somehow supposed to attract public attention away from the real-life, tragicomic spy novel that is the Russia story.

Officially, the president has said little beyond denying that he had any knowledge of the meeting, and insisting, My son is a high quality person and I applaud his transparency.

The administrations defenders in the media and Congress arent having much better luck putting lipstick on this warthog. The Washington Posts Ed Rogers had to rewrite his column decrying the medias hysteria about imaginary collusion multiple times on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Sean Hannity argued that the emails actually prove Trump didnt collude with the Russians because if he wanted to engage in a criminal conspiracy then why would he have tried to put some distance between himself and the crime?

Rush Limbaugh took a similar tack.

Utah senator Orrin Hatch argued that the story was being overblown, since Trump Jr. is not part of the administration, he doesnt carry any banner, he doesnt have any particular job inthe administration an argument that (bizarrely) ignores the fact that Jared Kushner attended the same meeting as Trump Jr. and was forwarded the same emails that informed the presidents son that agreeing to that meeting would mean cooperating with the Kremlin.

Many GOP lawmakers declined to comment, offering variations on the sentiment lets wait to see what the investigation finds. Which would be a halfway reasonable response if Kushner wasnt still working in the White House with a top-secret security clearance.

Ohio senator Rob Portman decided to go out on a limb and express the opinion that accepting an invitation to benefit from a Russian-government conspiracy to manipulate the American electorate was not appropriate.

But Ted Cruz, for one, found virtue in the administrations game plan, contending that Donald Trump Jr.s emails are just one more piece of evidence than the Obama-Clinton policy of constant weakness and appeasement of Putin was a total failure that facilitated Russian aggression.

The Texas senator said that he was, therefore, glad that the Trump administration is returning to a commonsense defense of our allies against our adversaries.

This is true enough if one stipulates that Vladimir Putin is now one of the GOPs allies, and a well-functioning American democracy the partys mortal enemy.

The money, included in a Homeland Security spending bill, is likely to set up a shutdown fight with Democrats.

The administration is already brainstorming how they can spin this into a conversation about Clintons mishandling of sensitive intelligence.

Will the extra time enable Republicans to come up with a health-care bill 50 senators support? Or deals on taxes and the budget?

Kushner attended a meeting that was explicitly framed as an opportunity to benefit from Russian meddling. And he still has a security clearance.

Weve gone from evidence of collusion to proof.

A man of many talents.

GOP base voters have long regarded the media as biased allies of their enemies. Its taken Trump to convince them any bad news is just made up.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.

Protesters promised to greet him if he made his official state visit.

An unedited Q&A with the prominent climatologist, who took issue with New Yorks latest cover story for being overly doomist.

The Kremlin-linked lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. claims that he was desperate for dirt on Clinton but she had none to give.

Hua Haifeng was investigating factories where the First Daughters shoes were made before his arrest.

In their desire to see Trump banished, theyve embraced some unusual bedfellows, like Benjamin Wittes.

It involves a beauty pageant, a Russian pop star, and Trumps decades-old dream of building in Moscow.

Sources say before meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, he was told the dirt she had on Hillary Clinton was part of a larger Russian effort.

The pro-Trump local-news giant has tripled the number of Boris Epshteyn segments that all its affiliates must air each week.

He could tap McConnells favorite Luther Strange or Hannitys favorite Mo Brooks. Theocrat Roy Moores in the mix, too.

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White House: The Real Story of Don Jr.'s Emails Is That Democrats Are Bad - New York Magazine

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After a string of losses in the 2017 special House elections, its clear Democratic candidates are continuing to struggle reaching rural voters. Thats partly because our playbook for appealing to voters outside of urban areas remains unchanged: take a poll, repackage the DNCs national messaging and target voters with mail and advertising. The problem is many rural voters become alienated when campaigns attempt to micro-target using messaging distilled from a national or statewide poll.

Campaigning in rural Illinois, Montana or West Virginia and talking about the importance of not defunding Planned Parenthood, for instance, wont get you anywhere unless you can help voters make the connection that it's about cancer screening and women's health. Republicans continue to define Planned Parenthood as an abortion-only organization so finding the right nuance to the message is vital.

Rural voters who have seen factories shuddered over the past 15 years want to talk about jobs, not economic development. Economic development is a Beltway term that they hear on the nightly news and campaign ads. These voters want to know what the candidate can do to address farm issues, cell phonesignal, and broadband internet access. Rural voters want to know what a candidate can do to fix broken roads and keep the cost of gas and milk down.

In coal country, voters knew Trump wouldnt be able to revive the lifeblood of Appalachia. But from small town to small town, Trump recognized coal miners, their families, and their struggles on a national stage covered by fake news. He mentioned time after time how he knew these families were struggling and hed make coal great again.

These coal miners and their families were so appreciative to finally have someone recognize the struggles they had been facing for years that they voted for him. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton knew she couldn't bring coal back, but the term coal was all but absent in her campaign speeches in rural areas.

In the 2017 special election to replace former Rep. Mick Mulvaney in South Carolinas 5th district, Archie Parnell lost by a mere four points. Yes, it was a loss. But Mulvaney defeated his 2016 Democratic challenger by 21 points. Trump carried the same district by 18 points just nine months ago.

Similarly, Kansas Democrat James Thompson campaigned as a Kansas veteran for Congress with ads that showed him firing an AR-15. He turned what should have been an easy Republican win into a nail-biting contest that attracted the attention of the president, Mike Pence, and Ted Cruz.

Now, whoever was in charge of Trumps cabinet appointments chose strategically from deep-red districts. But while a win is a win and a loss is a loss, coming within single digits in a deep red district shows tremendous progress for Democrats. In Georgia, Jon Ossoff didnt lose because of lack of strategy (or money), he lost because there simply were not enough Democratic voters in that district.

To appeal to rural voters, Democrats need to be where rural voters are the grocery store, the gas station in a one-stop-light town, advertising on terrestrial radio and in local newspapers. Micro-targeted digital ads sound great to consultants, but theyre not nearly as effective as shoe-leather campaigning in rural areas.

Admittedly, this West Virginia native concedes that some of these rural voters live down gravel roads that are just too long or the campaign doesn't have access to a vehicle worthy of truck nuts tomake it up the hill on a rainy spring afternoon. These voters dogo to the grocery store, they have post office boxes where they pick up their mail, and they need to refill their gas tanks. These voters are reliable visitors to the county fairs and ramp dinners. Democratic candidates need to be at these places listening to voters concerns.These optics persuade rural voters better than a mail piece with the candidate wearing a barn jacket.

If Democrats want to have any chance of taking back state legislatures, the House, or the Senate in 2018, we must re-engage the rural vote in person and in messaging. Meet these rural voters where they go, speak with them rather than at them, and incorporate these conversations into messaging that matters.

Cartney McCracken is a partner at Control Point Group, a D.C.-based Democratic consulting firm.

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A Rural Strategy for Democrats - Campaigns & Elections