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As Republicans return to their home districts to sell a flailing health-care bill, liberal groups are using the congressional recess to build opposition. They believe tens of thousands of phone calls, emails and in-person pushes will force on-the-fence senators to reject the legislation for good.

The fresh activism is coming with encouragement from Democratic lawmakers who are mired in the minority and have been mostly left to watch as Republicans struggle to reshape the nations laws to their liking. After starting the year on the defensive with their own base, party leaders and House and Senate Democrats are finally taking cues from these groups, believing that tactics honed far outside Washington could help scare Republicans into abandoning long-standing promises to upend Obamacare.

Ahead of the recess, while Republican senators toiled over details of their health-care overhaul behind closed doors, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, did whats become natural for Democrats lately: He lashed out on Twitter.

This thing is a %#$@ sandwich, he tweeted shortly after the release of the Congressional Budget Offices report that estimated 22 million more Americans be uninsured under the Senate GOPs plan. He tweeted later that the lefts fight against the legislation is a test of the morality of our country. We have to win this one.

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Democrats can see with their eyes where the energy is in American politics right now, said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org, a liberal group initially launched to oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Its to abandon politics as usual and put up a bare-fisted fight. Thats really sinking in.

Schatz won re-election last year with more than 70 percent of the vote and acknowledges he did so by airing really pretty ads and taking advice from expensive consultants. It might have worked for him in Hawaii, but Donald Trump won the White House and Democrats failed to win back control of the House or Senate.

So now he admits to being a recent convert to the tactics used by Wiklers group and other organizations such as CREDO Mobile, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, and the fast-growing Indivisible movement. The groups have organized protests or sit-ins at congressional district offices and urged followers to flood Capitol Hill phone lines in opposition to Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss confirmation or President Trumps travel ban. Neither pressure campaign stopped DeVos or the Trump ban, but Schatz said they signaled to Democratic lawmakers that the groups could quickly mobilize Americans against Trump.

Our playbook needs a refresh. Its predictable and its stale, Schatz said. That refresh is not just new language or a new standard-bearer, but a recognition that for Democrats to win, we need to fight for Democrats - and then theyll fight for us.

For Schatz, that has meant firing off quick stream-of-consciousness tweets that have earned him headlines and 30,000 more followers so far this year. Its also meant marching in the streets for the first time in his life as he did last week with activists who opposed the GOP health-care plan. And it means providing counsel to constituents or activists who still want a little guidance from an elected official.

The senator who once chastised Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Twitter for calling Hawaii an island in the Pacific said his change in tone is a recognition that people dont want to be sold soap.

They dont want a prepackaged product, they want to know that were people and that we respond to outrages in the same way that they do.

Democrats willingness to fight, particularly on health care, has not gone unnoticed by progressive activists who say they deserve credit for drawing in even wary moderates.

Sens. Joe Manchin III, W. Va., Heidi Heitkamp, N.D., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. - who are all up for re-election in states Trump handily won - have all been eager to speak out. They joined a protest-turned-photo-op on the Senate steps with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats, with each senator holding a portrait of a constituent who had benefited from Medicaid.

The way theyve coalesced around the health-care issue has been better than expected; theyve done so because of how many people were demanding it, said Winnie Wong, the co-founder of People for Bernie and an Occupy Wall Street veteran.

Schatz was one of only a handful of Democratic lawmakers to actually march in last weeks health-care rally - other party leaders just showed up to give speeches. He waited restlessly as Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Schumer addressed the crowd.

They have lots of powerful wealthy people on their side, Schumer said of Republicans. Who do we have? You!

Schumer especially has seen his fortunes change with the far left. In February, hundreds of protesters marched to Schumers Brooklyn home to demand resistance to Trumps Cabinet nominees; some chanted What the f ---, Chuck.

The infighting has largely stopped since then. Schumer has been a regular presence at protests, thanking activists for having Senate Democrats back. Theyve returned the praise. Schumer is both speaking out at every opportunity and keeping the caucus aggressive, said Wikler, whose group helped organize the Capitol protest.

After Schumer spoke, Schatz stepped on stage and called the GOP health-care bill literally an $800 billion cut in Medicaid and literally an $800 billion wealth transfer to people who dont need it.

He offered some advice for the recess: Dont wait for instructions from any organization. Whatever you think you can do in that moment, just do it.

Six months ago, everyone in that building thought that repeal of the Affordable Care Act was a done deal, Wilker said, pointing to the Capitol. Since then, he said, Democrats had learned to take some cues from the resistance.

Weve mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to participate in our democracy, and thats taught us something crucial about the resistance to Trump: its working, said Faiz Shakir, national political director for the ACLU.

In many ways, Schatz is an ideological counterweight to conservative foot soldiers such as Sens. Mike Lee. R-Utah, James Lankford, R-Neb., or Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, other senators in their 40s with no obvious White House dreams, who could find themselves in the Senate for decades to come. While many of his Democratic colleagues ponder a run for president, Schatz said he intends to stay in the Senate.

Somebody has to not run for president, Schatz quipped.

Schatz came to the U.S. Senate in late 2012 as the appointed successor of the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who died after 49 years in the Senate just as Congress was in the throes of the fiscal cliff fight. The day after Christmas, Schatz flew to Washington aboard Air Force One with then-President Barack Obama, who cut his annual Hawaiian vacation short to avert a financial disaster.

As he prepared to travel from Washington to Honolulu Thursday, a trip he makes nearly every weekend to see his wife and two young children, Schatz admitted that despite doling out advice on how progressives should pressure Republicans during the upcoming recess, he hadnt determined what he will do. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have urged Democrats to hold news conference, rallies with progressive groups and submit op-eds to newspapers.

Schatz said thats not good enough.

You cant fill a calendar and think thats a plan, he explained, meaning that he will avoid a strategy that dictates, Im going to use Facebook on Tuesday and use Twitter on Wednesday and then Im going to send an op-ed in and hold a news conference on Friday.

Its a pretty chaotic environment out there, he said. We need to be a little more flexible.

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AS GOP struggles with health care, Democrats forge ties with 'resistence' - The Morning Sun

Reeling from across-the-board defeats in attempts to flip congressional seats in Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas and Montana, Democrats are searching for answers. How they can appeal beyond their urban coastal base to the working-class, rural voters who propelled Trump to victory?

Enter the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, the Senates attempt to repeal Obamacare. Like the House legislation, it would usher in deep cuts to the Medicaid program, jeopardizing the 14 million low-income Californians who rely on Medi-Cal (Californias version of Medicaid) for health care and create an opportunity for Democrats to appeal to working-class Trump voters whose coverage will be decimated by the legislation.

But if Democrats dare to seize the opportunity (and thats a big if), they need a message. And a messenger.

So far they are 0 for 2.

Take Kern County, the heart of Californias rural Central Valley, where almost half of residents depend on Medi-Cal for health care. As a health policy expert in Los Angeles, born and raised in Kern, Im alarmed by the devastating impact repeal would have on friends and family back home. At least 95,000 Kern residents those newly eligible for Medi-Cal under Obamacare stand to lose coverage under the proposed legislation. And the deep cuts proposed under the Senate legislation could force California to cut Medi-Cal eligibility and services even further.

Democrats recognize a chance to drive a wedge between working-class communities across the nation with the most to lose under the House and Senate legislation, and their Republican representatives who support it.

But working-class voters distrust of Democrats runs deep. Democrats fail to understand these voters way of life, and the recent challenges that further isolate working-class voters from the coastal elites who dominate the Democratic Party. In the Central Valley, plunging gas prices have decimated jobs and opioid overdoses have skyrocketed. Voters here play second fiddle to coastal elites who hoard their water; raise taxes on the gas they produce to pay for road repairs they will never see, and speak with the kind of arrogant authority claimed by those with fancy college degrees. Simply put, these voters dont feel represented by Democrats who make them feel inferior, as if they dont matter.

Case in point. I cringed at a recent Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles when an entertainment executive stood up to proclaim, I just want to shake these low-income people and make them understand. Why are they voting against their economic self-interest? I rolled my eyes. Arent you voting against your economic self-interest? Its too easy to judge a world youve never inhabited nor tried to understand.

Attempts by Democrats to preach to working-class voters about the dangerous impact of the Senate legislation on their access to health care will fall on deaf ears. Especially when the only solution offered is to rail on Republicans.

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There is an opening, however, for Democrats who demonstrate a real understanding of working-class communities cultural landscape (messenger), and a willingness to posit a legislative agenda that invests in the future of working-class communities (message).

With both the House and Senate legislation removing the requirement under Obamacare that addiction services be made available to Medicaid beneficiaries in states like California which expanded Medicaid, the working-class voters who have been hit the hardest by addiction will be stripped of the help they need the most.

Democrats can demonstrate a genuine understanding of working-class communities and commitment to helping them by bringing the hidden addiction crisis to the fore. Champion a strategy to provide vital medication, counseling and therapy for those struggling with addiction. And run candidates who relate to the plight of working-class voters.

Criticizing Republicans and running out-of-touch carpetbaggers as candidates only serves to further alienate working-class voters.

The campaign by Democrats to overtake the House in 2018 can begin now, with health care if they are humble enough to go back to the drawing board, and bold enough to truly earn the hearts and minds of working-class voters.

Courtney Powers is an attorney and lecturer at UCLA School of Law. She lives in Pasadena.

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How can Democrats win back working-class votes? Start with health care: Guest commentary - LA Daily News

About 25 Democratic lawmakers have signed on to a bill that would create an Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity.

Their goal: declare the President of the United States mentally incompetent under Section IV of the 25th Amendment and remove him from office.

This is a distraction on so many levels, but it is disingenuous of those lawmakers ini part, because they know they cant get bi-partisan agreement, and also because they would need the vice president to sign off on it, too. That wont happen.

Particularly disturbing is the fact that lawmakers would turn to this as Americans are coming together to celebrate the birth of our nation, this Independence Day.

When accusing the president of Russian collusion and misogyny didnt stick, it looks as though Democrats have sought a new low: declaring the President of the United States insane. This is a dangerous and petty sideshow. Not to mention it is unethical for anyone except health care professionals to give medical diagnoses.

John D. Feerick is a former Dean of Law at Fordham University who was a chief architect of the Section of Article 25 that the lawmakers are attempting to use. He cites the original congressional debate on the section that he spearheaded, and he says that policy and political differences are not grounds for enacting Section IV of Article 25 to declare the president mentally incompetent.

Only 24 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. Tactics like this are part of the reason why Americans dont trust Congress.

These lawmakers are 100 percent Democrat, and this is a partisan effort designed to undermine the work of this president.

In 1964, Democrats used this tactic against Barry Goldwater during his campaign. A news magazine called Fact published a pictorial of mental health professionals who declared Goldwater was unfit for office. Though his presidential bid did not prove victorious, his libel suit against the magazine was. This is commonly referred to as "The Goldwater Rule," and it is the reason why the mental competence argument is almost never asserted against a serving president.

It is unethical to attempt to make diagnoses on living public figures one has not clinically evaluated. This is commonly accepted across the medical and mental health professions.

A recent Gallup study said that 61 percent of Americans want tax reform. A FOX News poll said a majority of Americans want Obamacare fixed. Only 24 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. Tactics like this are part of the reason why Americans dont trust Congress.

This is low-brow, even for Democrats who worked with Russian nationals to create a now discredited dossier on the president. This is low for a party who has lost more than 1,000 state and local elections in the past eight years, and is 0-5 in special elections since this Republican president was inaugurated.

Democrats continue this witch hunt because as long as they do that, they excuse themselves from tending to the work of the American people in a bipartisan way. Their problem, in reality, isnt with this president. It is with the American people who elected him, and continue to support him despite their relentless smears and collusion against him.

This blatant, partisan attack speaks more to the despair of a broken Democratic party than it does to the sanity of a very productive president of the United States.

Dr. Loudon is a behavior analyst and bestselling author who often appears to talk about mentalhealth issues on FOX News and FOX Business.

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A new low for Democrats - trying to declare the president mentally incompetent - Fox News

Democrats remain shaken by the loss of last weeks special House election in Georgia, but are taking solace from voter data there that yields hopeful omens for them in next years congressional elections.

Republicans retained a congressional seat they have held since 1979 in a suburban Atlanta district thats populated by many of the kind of well-educated voters who tend to disapprove of President Trump.

Some disappointed Democrats have argued that they failed because their candidate wasnt tough enough on Trump, and didnt take strongly progressive positions that would energize their most loyal voters.

That theory doesnt hold up to an analysis of voter-turnout data by John Anzalone, the pollster for the Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff.

Anzalones breakdown shows that Democrats turned out to vote in impressive numbers. There were 125,000 votes for Ossoff, more than Democratic congressional candidates had gotten in the district before and more than Barack Obama received in the presidential elections of 2008 and 2012.

We did excite the Democratic base, Anzalone said. Trump was the accelerant that brought out Democrats who would not normally vote in a midterm or special election.

The problem for the Democrats was that there was a larger-than-expected Republican turnout too, enabling the GOP candidate, Karen Handel, to win by 10,000 votes. Some Democrats had hoped that Trumps unpopularity would dampen turnout for the Republican House candidate; it didnt happen.

Democrats learned in Georgia, and also recently in Kansas and South Carolina, that its going to be hard for them to win in districts where Republicans have been solid, despite any Trump undertow. That would take some 2018 contests off the board for Democrats.

They also learned that the national-security card still resonates for Republicans; supporters of Handel hammered Ossoff in the closing weeks of the campaign for inflating his national-security resume and for working with the Qatari-based media network Al Jazeera. (Democratic polls also showed that Trumps favorable poll ratings in the district rose only once, when he ordered the bombing of Syria in April.)

Republicans spent millions linking Ossoff to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, filming television commercials in her hometown of San Francisco. That tactic is likely to be repeated in other congressional districts next year.

Yet Democrats note that in every special House race and statewide contest this year, they have significantly outperformed their showing in recent elections even in defeat.

This makes them think they have a chance to gain the two-dozen seats theyd need in 2018 to take back control of the House.

They claim that they expect to contend seriously for more than 70 Republican-held seats in districts where Democrats have done better in recent years than theyd previously done in the Georgia district that was up for grabs last week.

Says Anzalone, This isnt bad news for 2018.

Albert R. Hunt is a Bloomberg View columnist.

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Albert R. Hunt: A hopeful omen for Democrats? - Topeka Capital Journal

RALEIGH The North Carolina Democratic Party has ordered Robeson County Democrats to re-do precinct meetings and hold a new county convention after finding that local Democrats did not follow party procedure when they elected their chairman and executive committee members.

The state partys 13-member Review Committee rendered its ruling Saturday after holding a hearing in response to a petition filed by several county Democrats charging that the process used to elect local party officers at the April 8 county convention violated the state partys Plan of Organization.The Review Committee consists of one representative from each of the states 13 congressional districts.

After several hours of testimony, the 11 members of the Review Committee present at the hearing in Raleigh voted 10 to one that state party rules were violated when local Democrats other than those elected convention delegates at precinct meetings were permitted to vote for their party leadership.

Basically the Robeson County Democratic Party is now defunct, Sheila Beck, a Democrat from Saddletree and chairman of the Lumbee Tribes Elections Board, said. Everything that the party has done since the convention, including the election of Pearlean Revels as chairman, means nothing.

No date for the precinct meetings or countywide convention has been set, but John McNeill, a former Robeson County Democratic chairman and mayor of Red Springs, said he believes the convention will be held late this month or in August.

The decision to allow all of the approximately 50 Democrats at the convention to vote for their party leaders, rather than just delegates from the 10 of about 40 precincts that were organized when the convention was held in April, ended with Ed Henderson, a Red Springs town commissioner who is black, not being re-elected to another two-year term as chairman. According to McNeill, Robeson Countys Democratic Party for the past 46 years has operated under a gentlemans agreement that the party chairmanship would rotate by race to guarantee equal representation among the countys white, black and American Indian communities.

The agreement, McNeill said, is that a member from each race can serve a two-year term as chairman and another two-year term as chairman if they choose to seek re-election. At the April convention, however, Henderson, who just finished his first two-year term and wanted another term, was defeated by Pearlean Revels, an American Indian.

This was Eds year to serve, McNeill said. By not following this longstanding agreement, the Robeson County Democratic Party kicked the African American population thats so much needed here to win election in the rear end.

McNeill acknowledged, however, that the gentlemans agreement that has governed selection of Robeson Countys Democratic leader over the years is not part of the state partys regulations and requirements.

McNeill said that Henderson did a good job as chairman considering the time and situation during which he served. Democrats took a beating locally during the General Election, with two Republicans elected to the General Assembly and Robeson County favoring the GOP from top of the ticket and Donald Trump on downward.

McNeill has blamed a depressed Democratic turnout locally, especially among blacks, for the results.

It wasnt easy to organize and win an election with the challenges of Hurricane Matthew, he said.

The petition challenging the convention results was filed by several black elected officials from Red Springs, Maxton and Fairmont.

The last convention, that allowed more than just delegates to vote, was not proper, said Charles Townsend, the mayor of Fairmont. Lets do things the right way, no matter where they lead.

Those defending the local partys decision to allow anyone to vote at the convention include Johnson Britt, Robeson Countys district attorney. Britt made the motion to suspend party rules and allow all Democrats present at the convention, not just delegates, to participate in the election of the party leadership.

If we want more people to come out to the convention and participate in the party we have to allow them to take part, said Britt. Historically Democrats have been the party of inclusion.

Britt, who is white, also said he opposes the continued use of the gentlemans agreement governing the rotation of party chairman by race.

What difference does the chairmans race make? In this day and age race shouldnt matter in who holds public office, Britt said.

McNeill said that he believes when the next convention is held and the state party regulations about who can participate in elections and vote on policy is followed, the results will be drastically different.

There was a huge mistake made at the convention, McNeill said. It was clear violation of the state Democratic Partys Plan of Organization . That plan is a 42-page document that tries to handle any situation that can come up. It tries to address issues to avoid conflict.

The Robesonian was unable to reach Revels for comment.

John McNeill

http://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/web1_John-McNeill_12017746736353-2.jpgJohn McNeill

Johnson Britt

http://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/web1_Johnson-Britt_12017746128382-2.jpgJohnson Britt

Sheila Beck

http://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/web1_sheila-Beck-Jones_cmyk20177461253772-2.jpgSheila Beck

Charles Townsend

http://www.robesonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/web1_Townsend-Charles20177461616232-2.jpgCharles Townsend

Bob Shiles can be reached at 910-416-5165.

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Robeson Democrats ordered to redo local election - The Robesonian