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WASHINGTON Still stinging from last week's health care defeat in the Senate, congressional Republicans are looking to move forward on another one of their major legislative goals tax reform. And emboldened Democrats Tuesday made clear their demands that any effort to restructure the nation's tax code be conducted on a bipartisan basis.

As long as both Donald Trump and our Republican colleagues try to go it alone, theyre going to have a very rough time, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

All but three of the Senate Democrats sent a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laying out Democratic conditions for tax reform, including an insistence that Republicans drop plans to advance the legislation through reconciliation a process that would eliminate the need for Democratic votes.

Theres a lot to work with here if you want to reject the my way or highway politics, said Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

The demands also include no tax cuts for the nation's top one percent of wage earners and an insistence that any reform not raise the federal debt.

McConnell responded that Republicans will go it alone in order to get their own priorities passed.

We will need to use reconciliation because we have been informed by the majority of Democrats, in the letter I just received today, that most of the principles that would get the country growing again, theyre not interested in addressing, McConnell said.

Republican goals for individual tax reform include making the tax code simpler and lowering rates. They also want to reduce corporate taxes, which they say will provide incentives for job creation and investment.

Reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority instead of the usual 60-vote threshold to pass legislation, was also the process used during the recent health care push. It was supposed to make it easier to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but 50 Republicans couldnt agree on the details.

Ramming tax cuts through under reconciliation the very same partisan process that failed for health care is the wrong way to do the business of the country, Schumer said Tuesday.

Despite McConnell's pronouncement, some Republicans said they still have hopes that tax reform is not strictly partisan.

Im not going to give up on anything, said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees tax reform.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., another Finance Committee member and part of the GOP leadership team, said hes also open to working with Democrats.

I would like to see us at least attempt to work with the Democrats to see if there are any of them who are willing to work with us on tax reform that we think truly is pro-growth, Thune told reporters.

The key word, however, is pro-growth" and Republicans' strict definition of it. The party outlined last week the broad measures of a plan theyve been working on for more than two months. We have always been in agreement that tax relief for American families should be at the heart of our plan, the plan says, indicating that Republicans want to lower rates for even the wealthy, something Democrats dont want to do.

Three Democrats didn't sign Schumer's letter: Sens. Joe Manchin D-W. Va., Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D. All three are centrists who are up for re-election in 2018 and could be members Republicans reach out to for possible Democratic support.

Schumer insisted on Tuesday that bipartisanship is necessary.

Were not going to get it all our way. There will be compromises. Thats what its all about; that's what the Founding Fathers created in this country," Schumer said. "Were urging our Republican colleagues not to go it alone but to work with us. Now that might mean their dream of huge tax cuts on the rich and almost crumbs or nothing for the middle class wont happen."

Key Republican leaders McConnell, Hatch, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady have been meeting with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn for more than two months, working on the broad points of tax reform.

Republicans say that the committees will write the legislation over the next month and hold hearings in September where Democrats can offer amendments and vote throughout the process.

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Democrats Demand Bipartisanship on Tax Reform - NBCNews.com

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, is gaining more buzz as a 2020 candidate for president.

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

On Tuesday, conservatives continued to assess the Democrats electoral prospects in 2018 and beyond. Several outlets ran posts on the skepticism rising from the partys left wing,highlighted in a Mic article Monday, about Sen. Kamala Harris of California as a 2020 presidential candidate. Breitbarts Joel Pollak:

The Daily Caller cited criticism of the Mic article from MSNBC host Joy Reid among others. These early scuffles are likely going to be emblematic of how Democrats choose a candidate for 2020, the Caller's Justin Caruso wrote. Many see a split in left-leaning voters between those who think lefty identity politics is key, and that liberal economics dont need to tack too much further to the left, and those who think that economic policy must be taken much further to the left, while identity politics is seen as somewhat less important.

The Daily Wire ran a post on reports that Obama advisers are encouraging former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to run. Patrick has been piling up money working as a managing director at Bain Capital, the same company Democrats vilified when they attacked Mitt Romney, the Wires Hank Berrien noted. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1982, he failed the State Bar of California twice before he passed on his third try.

The Daily Wire also puslihed an item on polling from the Democrats House Majority PAC that suggests the party may continue having trouble with white, working-class voters. The Wires John Nolte:

This echoed criticism Monday night from Fox News Jesse Watters of statements made by CNNs Fareed Zakaria partially attributing Trumps win to racism and xenophobia:

Some outlets ran posts assessing new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in the wake of the firing of Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. The Washington Free Beacons Cameron Cawthorne cited the widespread and respect for Kelly. John Kelly has received bipartisan praise from both Republicans and Democrats since President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would replace Reince Priebus as the new White House chief of staff, he wrote. Kelly, a no-nonsense, whip-cracking retired Marine general, developed a reputation during his tenure as secretary of homeland security in the Trump administration as someone not afraid to stand up to Trump when he needed to offer some tough talk, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. In National Review, Elliot Kaufman expressed concern about the penetration of military men like Kelly into Trumps inner circle:

Already, Trump has shown incredible deference to his generals, delegating control over troop levels in Afghanistan to Mattis and the Pentagon. Some may mistakenly find this abandonment of civilian political control reassuring, but they forget that War is too important to be left to the generals, as Georges Clemenceau once put it.

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Today in Conservative Media: The Democrats Are Still a Mess - Slate Magazine (blog)

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer speaks at an event unveiling the Democrats new Better Deal agenda in Berryville, Virginia, on July 24, 2017. (AP Photo / Cliff Owen)

At the 1932 Democratic National Convention, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, Never before in modern history have the essential differences between the two major American parties stood out in such striking contrast as they do today. Arguing that Republicans had offered no path for the people below to climb back to places of security and of safety in our American life, he called for a new deal to restore America to its own people.

Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvels column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrinas column here.

Under President Trump, the differences between the parties on domestic politics are similarly stark. Yet as the GOP fights to advance an extremist agenda that would take the nation backward, Democrats have struggled to offer a clear vision for the future or a path to security for struggling Americans. To that end, the Better Deal agenda that Democratic leaders introduced last week may not live up to Roosevelts lofty standard or the bold 21st-century populism that fueled Senator Bernie Sanderss (I-VT) insurgent presidential campaign, but it is a promising step in the right direction.

At the core of the Better Deal is a crackdown on corporate monopolies that represents a genuine shift for the party establishment.

Read the full text of Katrinas columnhere.

Go here to read the rest:
There's an Even Better Deal the Democrats Could Be Considering - The Nation.

Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 2:02 pm CST

The hottest new trend in Democratic politics these days is running for Congress everybodys doing it. So far, more than 200 Democrats have filed to challenge Republican incumbents and raised at least $5,000. Thats more than the number of Democratic congressional candidates who had announced at this point in the cycle in the last four elections, combined. Trumps election freaked people out, and this is how theyre responding. Obviously, its an encouraging sign for Democrats. You want people running everywhere, even in beet-red districts where they may not stand a chance.There are a boatload of people running for Congress in Texas, too. Which, again, is good! Strangely, though, the Democratic slate for statewide offices from the governor down to the land commissioner is so far mostly empty, or lacking credible candidates. And theres no sign (yet) of people lining up to run for the Legislature, where Democrats have traditionally been most in need of worthy candidates.The filing deadline isnt until December, so all that could easily change. But the imbalance seems to speak to a broader issue. Over the last few decades, American political culture has become more and more defined by an overemphasis on federal government over local government, and an overreliance on sweeping, top-down gestural campaigns to create political change. Its a national, bipartisan problem, one which has been greatly exacerbated by the Obama and Trump presidencies, but its particularly acute for Texas Democrats.

Thats not a new thing, and its not surprising or necessarily irrational. People on both sides of the aisle are rightly terrified of the power of the people who run the federal government. They can start dumb wars that ruin entire subcontinents, and they can provide or take away health care from tens of millions of people. For people who have a limited amount of time to follow politics, its natural that national crises tend to crowd out whats happening closer to home.So, more and more, politics has become an all-or-nothing game to win the presidency, or, failing that, to win control of Congress. Thats a cancer, and its ruining America. State parties and state politics used to matter more now a lot of donor money flows through huge, shapeless organizations in Washington, D.C., and top-dollar consultants fly in for regional elections when theyre not getting drunk on U Street and watching Morning Joe.

But its also perverted our understanding of how politics works. For one thing, the quality of the schools your kids go to, the transportation systems you use, the wages that workers earn, access to higher education and the availability of health care and mental health services are all most directly affected by what happens in state capitols. And ofcoursethe partisan composition of Congress flows from the maps state legislatures draw, which means your representation in D.C. is determined partly by state House races, often hyperlocal and low-turnout affairs that can hinge on a handful of votes.

Republicans have done a much better job at organizing at the local level. The tea parties of 2010 were comprised largely of the kind of dedicated activist who gets excited about community college trustee board races. Democrats, meanwhile, have suffered extraordinary losses at the local level in the last 10 years. One of the foremost lessons of the last decade is that political change that filters from the bottom up is more durable than change that flows from the top down.

In Texas, these problems are particularly acute. In huge swathes of the state, there simply is no Democratic Party to speak of. The local infrastructure doesnt exist. Particularly in rural areas, local elections may feature no Democrats at all, and decades may have passed since the last competitive race outside of the Republican primary.

Without local representation, the face of the Democratic Party becomes, at worst, the caricature presented on talk radio, or, at best, Barack Obama or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi Chicago, New York and San Francisco which produces the sense that Democrats could never be champions of their communities.

But it also means marginalized communities go unrepresented. As this great 2016 Austin American-Statesman series relates, the Panhandle, which has some of the most ideologically conservative elected officials in the country, has huge populations of Hispanic and nonwhite voters who have very little say in their local communities, let alone in Austin. Deaf Smith County, west of Amarillo, is more than 70 percent Hispanic, but every elected member of county government is Anglo. Thats a pattern repeated throughout much of the state.

Reversing that trend is gonna require a lot of local work, in places where Democrats are not necessarily strong and where they wont reap benefits right away. In Lubbock, where Democrats have a tiny footprint, two Democrats have already declared their intention to run against each other to challenge U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington. Trump beat Clinton by almost 50 percentage points in Arringtons district.You could make a plausible case that a vigorous, two-year congressional campaign is a good way to boost local organizing. But the candidates most able to reach out to individual voters are those with the smallest constituencies. Inside Arringtons district is Lubbocks state House District 84, represented by Republican John Frullo. Frullos district was teetering on the brink of being a majority-minority district at the time of the 2010 census, but a Democrat has only run once in the last three election cycles. In 2014, Frullo crushed a retired teacher named Ed Tishler, whose sole campaign expenditure was his filing fee. So far, nobodys stepped up to run this year.

The point isnt that Democrats are likely to turn the Panhandle blue. But the broader retreat from local politics allows Republicans to depress the nonwhite vote and run up high margins in red areas that cancel out Democratic votes in blue ones during statewide elections. Recently, $60 million was flushed down the toilet as part of Jon Ossoffs losing congressional bid in Georgia. What would happen if some rich person donated a few grand to the Deaf Smith Democratic Party and paid for a few advisory trips from some veteran organizers?Maybe nothing! My role is to second-guess, and Im often wrong. But nothing is also what Ossoffs loss left behind, which is the problem with blockbuster electoral bids in general. A lot of money will be raised by losing congressional candidates this cycle, and a lot of money will be spent in the top-dollar media markets of Dallas and Houston to buy ads to beat Pete Sessions and John Culberson. That gets a lot of people paid, which is partially why it happens. But I dont know how much it actually accomplishes. Investing in people, in the places they live, seems like a better bet.

Link:
Why Aren't More Texas Democrats Running for Office at the State Level? - The Texas Observer

Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill will spend the next 15 months talking up the new Better Deal economic message they unveiled last week.

Whats not clear is if anyone else will follow.

Story Continued Below

The national party remains far from consensus on a unified message Democrats cant even agree on whether the party needs one.

Just as there isnt one kind of Democrat, there are not just one kind of message that works, said California Rep. Jim Costa, a Blue Dog Coalition co-chair. One size doesnt fit all. We have an economically diverse country.

When the party's congressional leaders gathered in suburban Virginia to roll out the new affirmative economic message they'd long been promising, it was designed to give Democrats a way to talk about what exactly they stand for other than simply standing as the party of opposition to the White House.

But not every incumbent wants to be associated with the partys message. And many of the partys influential constituent groups and moneyed organizations are busy pursuing their own messaging and branding initiatives, and remain in the early stages of their own investigations into what went wrong in November. Some including the Democratic National Committee and individual state party committees are busy preparing their own, independent lines of messaging.

There are some really useful and interesting big-picture thoughts in the plans released [last week]. But candidates have to make that their own in their state were telling them to tell their own story, Democratic Governors Association executive director Elisabeth Pearson said of her instructions to the partys gubernatorial candidates running in 2017 and 2018 when 38 governors mansions will be up for grabs. Were counseling people to put forth their own focused economic agenda about how they would move their state forward.

Its led to a schism between those who insist the party will only succeed in 2018 if its candidates run on a centralized agenda, and those who point to recent wave elections like the GOPs 2010 victory and Democrats 2006 romp as evidence that mere antipathy toward the party in power, rather than a memorable message, can be effective.

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Its a good thing that national Democrats are trying to coalesce around a generally unifying message about economic opportunity and job creation as an alternative to Trumpism. However, very few candidates are going to run on a national platform nor should they, cautioned communications strategist Zac Petkanas. While there will likely be similar themes about a corrupt, out-of-touch Trump Washington and creating economic opportunity for all, candidates are going to tailor their own messages against their individual opponents while taking advantage of a national Trump backlash. Thats how races are won and lost."

While Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2018 were briefed on the new message ahead of time, their campaign teams are unlikely to rely heavily on a line that ties them closely to their unpopular national party, said a number of strategists working on those races. A similar dynamic faces the partys gubernatorial candidates: 27 of the contested seats are held by Republicans, including some in heavily conservative states where national Democrats are especially unpopular.

If youre not in the majority, there shouldnt be a coordinated message, said another Democratic consultant who is working on a wide range of 2018 races, acknowledging that arguing against a unified message is unfashionable at the moment. The message should be: The other guy sucks, or The Iraq War sucks, depending on the decade.

Moderate House Democrats have taken a cautious approach to the new messaging strategy.

Lawmakers from left-of-center groups like the New Democrats and the Blue Dog Coalition joined other members at the podium to tout the Better Deal during a press conference last week. But while both groups have broadly endorsed the idea of a pro-economic agenda something they said was sorely lacking heading into November 2016 theyve noticeably shied away from voicing support for the specific progressive-leaning policy ideas outlined so far.

We agree on the broader goal of creating economic prosperity for the American people, said Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, another Blue Dog leader. What we want to do is create economic opportunities, not guarantee results.

That tap dance isnt by accident. Moderates want to be seen as team players, which is why some attended the Better Deal roll-out press conference. They support the overall goals of the messaging initiative, but dont intend to run on a message that they worry can be interpreted as anti-business back home in their districts.

Still, several centrist lawmakers and aides told POLITICO they are encouraged that their leaders are shifting the spotlight away from social issues that threaten to divide the party and toward economic issues where there is more agreement.

Blue Dogs, in particular, say they are encouraged by the attention they have received from Democratic leaders after years of feeling like theyre stuck on the margins. Theyve worked closely with House Democrats campaign arm on recruitment in recent months and are relieved pro-jobs policies finally seem to be the partys focus.

Yet the Schumer-driven effort isnt the last word. The Democratic National Committee has for months been working on its own rebranding project. Led by new Chairman Tom Perez, the DNC has brought both public and private sector voices into a wide-ranging discussion about Democratic identity, while a handful of state party leaders left out of the congressional conversation are plowing ahead with their own unrelated efforts to define a new agenda.

In battleground Ohio, the state party formed a messaging working group after the election that included advertising and consumer marketing professionals in addition to party activists. They meet regularly to devise a new brand and narrative for Democrats in a state that Trump won easily after two consecutive Obama victories an effort supplemented by the state partys polling, focus groups, and extensive individual interviews of voters who backed Trump after supporting Obama or who sat out 2016 altogether.

Still more influential groups havent even tried pushing a specific new campaign message theyre still studying the 2016 results. That includes organizations ranging from the centrist Third Way think tank to a forum convened by the AFL-CIO political director, to the House Majority PAC.

Even Priorities USA Action, the largest Democratic super PAC, has stopped short of concrete suggestions, instead urging allies to spend more time talking about economic issues and less about others like the Russia investigations.

Frankly, Im not focused on national Democratic slogans as much as I am on whats going on at peoples kitchen tables at home, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who already faces one GOP challenger next year, said in an interview. But I think what theyre trying to do with it is really good and that is to simplify priorities on economic issues that really matter to working people.

In crafting the Better Deal plan that includes measures to keep drug prices in check, rein in big corporations, and improve job training, Schumer and others made sure to bring many allies of Bernie Sanders into the repeated meetings and strategy sessions. It was an attempt to find a message that could span the ideological breadth of the Democratic Caucus, satisfying both the Vermont senator and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who faces a difficult reelection campaign in a state Trump won by 42 points.

But neither side has embraced it fully. The group spawned from Sanders' presidential campaign, Our Revolution, continues to pressure lawmakers to sign onto eight progressive bills from a single-payer health care measure to automatic voter registration legislation. And many Sanders supporters remain deeply suspicious of anything produced by party leadership.

Manchin, a member of Schumers leadership team, openly questioned why it would take two new agencies a reference to the creation of two new government entities to help consumers, one focused on drug prices and another on antitrust to crack down on corporate influence.

Were not going to all have the same concerns and have the same fixes, said Manchin, who was consulted in advance on the rural broadband proposal included in the national agenda and otherwise praised Schumers attempts at creating an inclusive message.

So if theres going to be a big tent, he added, party leaders should understand that we have problems too in red states.

Other red-state Senate Democrats expressed similarly cautious support for the partys new messaging.

We need new ideas, and I appreciate the opportunity to have ongoing discussions about the overall agenda, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who joins Heitkamp and Manchin near the top of the GOPs 2018 target list, said generally speaking, I support the agenda because its got a lot of stuff for broadband and infrastructure.

Leaders dont expect every politically endangered incumbent to embrace the entire agenda on the campaign trail, according to one senior Senate Democratic aide.

There is no question that quality candidates and campaigns that focus on the particular needs of different states and districts are essential, the aide said. But anyone who doesnt think we Democrats need to offer a positive economic agenda need only look in the Oval Office and the Hill to see that what weve been doing hasnt worked. People in California, Montana, Florida and Missouri want better paying jobs and to see their expenses go down the appeal is universal.

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Democrats snub new party message - Politico