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Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) accused Senate Democrats on Wednesday of being Russias best friend for refusing to approve a measure making technical corrections to a bill on sanctions for Russia and Iran until they get assurances that the House will pass the measure.

Senate Democrats do not trust that House Republican leaders will put the measure on the floor in its current form, according to a senior Senate Democratic aide, who explained that many of them suspect House leaders are using the procedural complaint as a delaying tactic or an excuse to alter the bill in deference to President Trump, whose administration opposes the measure.

The bill steps up sanctions against Iran for its ballistic missile tests and against various sectors of the Russian economy for Moscows aggressive moves in Ukraine and Syria, and charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections. The Senate passed a version of the bill last week, 98 to 2, before House leaders complained that the bill had the potential to affect government revenue and constitutionally had to be tweaked before they could take it up.

The measure is controversial for the White House because of a provision giving Congress the right to review any attempts the president makes to change the Russia sanctions before he can go ahead restraining him, in effect, from rolling back existing sanctions against Russia.

Its in that section of the bill that the Houses technical complaint arose and although members of both parties say they have found an acceptable fix, some Democrats are still suspicious.

Corker, however, has lost his patience with Democrats.

Its a ridiculous position to take that youre not going to let our bill go to the House in an appropriate manner until you know exactly how the House is going to deal with a bill that weve passed. That is a losing strategy, he said. The added delay, Corker continued, is actually accommodating Russia.

House leaders have not offered to take up the sanctions bill without the Senate acting first, although House committee leaders have indicated they are eager to move ahead with the legislation. In an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.) said: Our goal is to pass this measure as soon as possible. We need to send this message to Putin and to Russia that there will be consequences.

Not all Senate Democratic leaders seem worried that the House wont make good on its word.

Wed love to see them do it, we want to get them into a position where they can do it, said the committees ranking Democrat, Benjamin L Cardin (D-Md.), who added that there was never a request for a commitment.

Cardin speculated that the Senate could repass the new version of the sanctions bill by weeks end, cuing it up for the House to vote on the measure shortly after Congresss week-long Independence Day recess.

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Democrats want House guarantee on Russia sanctions; top Republican accuses them of being 'Russia's best friend' - Washington Post

And perhaps most important, Mr. Trump has rarely bothered to ask.

I am a moderate from a state Trump won, said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, who is up for re-election next year in a state where Hillary Clinton received just 38 percent of the vote. Youd think they would have called me sometime.

I am ready to work with President Trump on things like infrastructure. I happen to agree with him on the water rule, she added, referring to a regulation that Mr. Trump is seeking to roll back. These are just lower priorities for them, I guess.

Rather than trying to bring Democrats to his side, Mr. Trump has instead waged a war of Twitter insults against lawmakers who oppose his agenda. He has picked fights with allies, proposed giant budget cuts to programs dear to many in his own party and inserted himself into the health care fight in ways that hurt congressional Republicans efforts, all under the cloud of a federal investigation into possible connections to Russian meddling in the election.

All this has undermined the notion, born just six months ago, that Mr. Trumps surprising win had rewritten the political map, as Ronald Reagan did in 1980, in a way neither party could ignore. Confident that the political order is largely intact, Democrats have been emboldened to oppose his agenda, and Republicans, who adamantly refused to help Mr. Obama, are learning what turnabout feels like.

Early in new administrations, members look to work together where they can, said Scott Mulhauser, who served in senior roles for several Democrats and committees in the Senate over the past decade. There was a postelection moment where this president might have reached toward the center, delivered on priorities like infrastructure that cut across party lines and reconfigured the electoral math. Instead, he made little effort to collaborate, lurched rightward to his base while taunting the center and the left, and is now feeling the consequences. You reap the discord you sow.

Some Democrats, including Mr. Schumer, tried to appeal to Mr. Trump early on.

I told him infrastructure and tax reform should have been the first thing out of the box, said Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, whom both parties expected to be an early ally of Mr. Trump. But, Mr. Manchin said, the president chose a more partisan agenda. Someone got to him, he said.

Mr. Manchin spoke with the president early in his administration leading to speculation that he might even land a job within it but has since been largely ignored by White House officials and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who has mostly iced out Democrats in this Congress.

Mr. Manchin has no interest in the Senate health care bill, which would greatly cut the Medicaid program in his poor, rural state, a concern shared by his Republican counterpart from West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito. Mr. Manchin has largely voted against Mr. Trumps agenda and nominees. (He was the one Democrat who voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as attorney general, but that was out of friendship with Mr. Sessions more than fealty to Mr. Trump.)

The country has a long history of senators from the opposite party working to help pass a new presidents agenda. Former Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, supported President George Bush on a broad trade agreement, and sided with President George W. Bush on a large tax cut and the expansion of a prescription drug benefit for older Americans, infuriating his own party.

Both Bushes were very deeply experienced, as were their cabinet officials, Mr. Baucus said in a telephone interview from Paris on Wednesday, noting that the White House had courted him on every measure he ultimately supported. Jim Baker took the cake, Mr. Baucus said, referring to George H. W. Bushs chief of staff, who called him to wheel and deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Donald Trump and his people have no public policy experience, and it shows.

Congressional leaders, emboldened by the total Republican control of Washington, are now pursuing a partisan agenda largely through methods that require no help from Democrats. Senate committees, where bipartisan bills have historically been forged, are not developing big bills right now, which have been left to leadership teams instead.

Mr. Baucus, who served in leadership roles on the Senate Finance Committee, met with his Republican counterpart, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, every Tuesday at 5:30 for 12 years, even if it was just to talk about our kids, Mr. Baucus said, and that helped pave the way for bipartisan legislation.

The most successful bills have historically come out of committees, because successful committee votes provide evidence of a policys ability to pass the full Senate, and pressure members of both parties to participate. I know this sounds corny, Mr. Baucus said, referring to votes for bills that cross party lines, but if you do whats right, its a terrific shield against critics.

Should the Republicans health care bill fail in the Senate, there is already nascent talk of bipartisan bills to fix the existing law.

At the same time, Democrats have sought a parallel unity, coming up with their own infrastructure and child care plans to lay down markers if the White House decides to bargain on bills that, unlike health care and the next item up, tax reform, will need 60 votes, and therefore the support of at least some Democrats, to pass.

We Democrats have set the goal posts, Mr. Schumer said. If President Trump is going to talk the talk on these issues, then we look forward to him working with us and walking the walk.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 2017, on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Spurned by Trump, Conciliatory Senate Democrats Take a Harder Line.

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Senate Democrats Sought to Work With Trump. Then He Began Governing. - New York Times

As Democrats begin to rebuild in the wake of their 2016 presidential election defeat, the partys official political organ is tapping Raffi Krikorian, a former top engineer at Ubers self-driving-car program, to be its next chief technology officer.

The hire, confirmed by multiple sources on Wednesday, comes as the Democratic National Committee looks to improve its tech tools in a bid to reach more voters while preventing another major cyber breach, the likes of which by Russian-backed hackers in 2016 helped sink Hillary Clintons campaign.

Krikorian departed Uber in February; he had served as the senior director of engineering at Ubers Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. He then briefly joined New America, a nonpartisan policy think tank, as the director of engineering focused on public-interest technology. He did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the DNC. And he previously spent five years as vice president of platform engineering at Twitter.

When he assumes his new role, though, Krikorian will face no shortage of endemic tech troubles to tackle beginning with shoring up the DNCs cyber defenses after Russian hackers targeted Democrats in 2016, stole their private emails and shared them with WikiLeaks.

The DNCs new leader, former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, has specifically said that the party needs its own in-house cyber security officer not just to help the DNC, he told Politico in January, but to support local political officials as they also try to fight off future breaches.

Beyond that campaign-changing, narrative-shaping cyber incident, many believe the DNC has fallen behind in supporting and deploying tech tools to target voters, raise money and send those supporters to the polls on Election Day.

Even Hillary Clinton has criticized the DNC for disorganization, stressing at the Code Conference in June that it was bankrupt and on the verge of insolvency when she won the partys presidential nomination.

Its data was mediocre to poor, Clinton said.

Clintons comments quickly drew sharp rebukes from DNC veterans. Many also charged that the partys next challenge is corralling and harnessing the myriad tech-focused groups that have sprung out of Silicon Valley to oppose Trump.

Update, 1:14 p.m. ET: Hours later, Kirkorian confirmed the hire.

i'm so excited for this new role as the CTO for @TheDemocrats. let's do this.

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Democrats have hired Raffi Krikorian, a former Uber exec, as their ... - Recode

The Democratic Party has some problems.

It keeps losing elections, some of which have been extremely winnable, and its message has fallen flat with voters not just in the South, but in the Midwest as well. The party has suffered four straight special election losses since Donald Trump was elected president.

Democratic leadership is scrambling now for solutions.

To that end, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced this week the creation of an office whose head has been tasked with the singular objective of training Democratic candidates on how to connect with voters in the Midwest. It has come to this.

The DCCC's office of Heartland Engagement, as it's being called, will be chaired by Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who represents the Quad Cities area and is currently the only Midwesterner with a role in House Democratic leadership.

"Cheri is a key member of our leadership team, and her efforts to help recruit and mentor candidates and carry our economic message is critical to our strategy this cycle," DCCC chairman Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, D-N.M., said this week.

The Democratic Party took severe beatings in both the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections. In both years, their losses were particularly staggering in the Midwest. In 2016, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton barely carried Minnesota and won her home state of Illinois and that was it in the entire Midwest against her historically unpopular competitor.

With the creation of its new office of Heartland Engagement, Democrats hope to turn all this around.

The position is new and Bustos is the first person to chair it, her office confirmed to the Washington Examiner. The Illinois congresswoman comes to the leadership position fresh, and she is free from the expectations normally associated with political ascendancies.

However, that's not to say her mission is an easy one. Indeed, to sum it up, Bustos has been given the enormous task of teaching Democrats on how to connect with small-town and rural areas, and all of this in the hopes that they can recapture the House in 2018.

That's no small order, hoping a single Illinois congresswoman can train her colleagues to speak clearly and effectively to areas where their message has been rejected for the better part of a decade.

As daunting as this sounds, she said this week that she is excited by the opportunity.

"The heartland is critical to winning back the majority, and we must do a better job listening to the hardworking families from small towns and rural communities if we hope to earn their support," Bustos said in a statement.

"As Democrats, we believe in making sure everyone has a chance to find a good-paying job, raise a family and live the American dreamregardless of where they call home. As the Chair of Heartland Engagement, I'm looking forward to helping lead our efforts to build a lasting partnership with the hardworking men and women of America's heartland," she added.

The creation of the office of Heartland Engagement, and the announcement that Bustos would head it, marks another telling moment of introspection from a party that has not enjoyed many electoral successes outside of Barack Obama's successful White House bids.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., himself said this weekend that one of his party's biggest problems is that they have no coherent or winning message.

"I think if we come up with this strong, bold economic package, it will it will change things around. That's what we were missing. People don't like [President Donald Trump]; he's at 40 percent. But they say what the heck do the Democrats stand for?" the New York senator asked in an interview this weekend.

"[W]e better stand for something and it can't be baby steps," he added.

They may be somewhat late to realizing their weaknesses as a party, but hey: Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

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Democrats realize they have a problem: Part 2 - Washington Examiner

For San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, theres nothing new about being targeted by Republicans. After 30 years in Congress and 15 years as leader of the House Democrats, it comes with the territory.

But since a devastating June 20 loss for an open House seat in the Atlanta suburbs capped a 0-for-4 run in GOP-friendly special elections, the 77-year-old Pelosi has found herself taking fire from fellow Democrats who argue that the famously liberal minority leader is just too controversial and add, in whispers, too old to effectively remain the face of the party.

We cant keep losing races and keep the same leadership in place, said Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York, who hosted a meeting of about a dozen dissident Democrats in her office last week. You have a baseball team that keeps losing year after year. At some point the coach has to go, right?

Texas Rep. Filemon Vela was even more direct.

I think youd have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Nancy Pelosi on top, Vela said in a Politico interview.

Pelosis answer has been simple. Shes not going anywhere, she said, so bring it on.

When it comes to personal ambition, having fun on TV have your fun, she said in an undisguised shot at her Democratic opponents at a news conference last week. I love the arena. I thrive on competition.

Theres little argument that with former President Barack Obama and defeated 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gone from the political landscape, Pelosi and the liberal city she represents has become the go-to bogeyman for Republican campaigns across the country.

In the race for the Georgia congressional seat, for example, voters could barely turn on their televisions or open their mailboxes without learning how 30-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff, who was born in that district, was nothing more than a stalking horse for Pelosi and her San Francisco values.

One 30-second TV spot, for example, featured a huge Pelosi-Ossoff banner hanging from the Golden Gate Bridge and a hipster-looking guy enthusiastically saying, Ossoff and Pelosi. Thats a dream team!

Democratic losses in four House special elections have spurred some party chatter about replacing Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic losses in four House special elections have spurred some...

And then there was the mailer that showed a sinister-looking Pelosi pulling off a rubber Ossoff mask. Behind Jon Ossoff is Nancy Pelosi ... Only YOUR vote can STOP them, the ad read.

If voters in that Georgia district, once represented by former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, were more intent on voting against Pelosi than for Republican Karen Handel, the eventual winner, thats no problem for Republican leaders.

Pelosi continues to be a huge liability for Democratic candidates, Corry Bliss, executive director of the Republicans Congressional Leadership Fund, said in a memo released Tuesday. His group, which spent more than $6 million on the Georgia attack ads, will spend millions of dollars highlighting Nancy Pelosis toxic agenda and reminding voters across the country that Democratic candidates are nothing more than rubber stamps for her out-of-touch, liberal policies.

Pelosis backers were quick to dismiss Bliss plan, arguing that four special election wins in deep-red districts in strong Republican states like Georgia, Montana, Kansas and South Carolina dont make a trend.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. speaks to reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 22, 2017. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. speaks to reporters...

There is no evidence to suggest this strategy works, said Jorge Aguilar, a spokesman on Pelosis political team. Desperation is not a strategy.

But in at least those four special elections, tying Democrats to Pelosi worked.

Thats an old trick. (Former Assembly Speaker) Willie Brown was used in exactly the same way by California Republicans, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a professor of public policy communication at the University of Southern California. Parties will alway find someone to be a target. For Democrats now, its Donald Trump. Like it or not, its politics.

But for House Democrats, those results are hard to ignore, especially when theyre accompanied by a taunting tweet from Trump saying: I certainly hope the Democrats do not force Nancy P out. That would be very bad for the Republican Party. And things like an electronic card from the California Republican Party thanking Pelosi for being such a wonderful contributor to Republican victories!

The issue I think strategically is that Trump energizes their (Republican) base, and Leader Pelosi energizes their base, Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Pelosi for the House leadership last November, told The Associated Press.

That focus on Pelosi effectively nationalizes the local congressional races and takes the focus off the hometown candidates battling on issues that directly affect voters in those districts.

Still, its a hard call for Democrats to talk about ousting a longtime party leader because Republicans are saying bad things about her, especially when whoever leads the Democrats instantly becomes a GOP target.

Republicans always want to choose our leaders. And usually they go after the most effective leaders, Pelosi said at last weeks news conference. But I dont think that members of a party should pick up the line of the Republicans.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 27, 2017. (Eric Thayer/The New York Times)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Capitol Hill in...

With congressional primaries across the nation beginning in less than a year and fewer than 18 months before the November 2018 midterms, the last thing Democrats need is internecine battle that could shatter the party just when it most needs unity to win the 24 GOP seats needed to take control of Congress, said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at Stanford University.

The real problem for the Democrats is who is going to moderate between the (Vermont Sen. Bernie) Sanders and the Clinton factions, he said. Replacing Pelosi with a more centrist leader would mean the cleavage between the two groups is only going to grow larger.

Besides Pelosis unparalleled ability to raise the type of campaign cash Democrats will desperately need in next years congressional contests, the San Francisco congresswoman also has an ability to serve as a unifying force for Democrats that no one else can match, Cain added.

Thats where Nancys unique contribution is, he said. As the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor who also served in Congress, Pelosi was raised to play the inside game. But at the same time shes one of the most liberal and progressive Democrats ... someone able to deal with both the centrists and pragmatists, and the idealists and the progressives.

That could be one of the reasons that, despite the grumbling, no strong candidate has talked seriously about challenging her. The most likely contender, 55-year-old Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York City, is No. 4 in the party hierarchy and turned down calls to take on Pelosi last November.

Since party rules make it nearly impossible to challenge a Democratic leader before the end of the two-year congressional term, even those most eager for change are resigned to standing behind Pelosi through the 2018 elections. Even Rice, the New York congresswoman, now says that all she wants to do is start a conversation about new leadership.

But after the election, all bets are off.

If we take the House back in 2018, then I think shed stay leader, Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, told the Associated Press. If we dont, then I think its incumbent upon her and all of us to reassess who our leadership should be.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermth

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Nancy Pelosi rebuffs Democrats antsy to change - San Francisco Chronicle