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Democrats have launched a long-overdue debate about what they will stand and fight for. The party is impressively united and its activists mobilized against President Trump and the right-wing Republican agenda. With Trump unpopular and the Republican Congress even less so, Democrats are salivating at the prospect of a wave election next year that would allow them to take back Congress. After they came close but lost this years handful of special elections, there is increasing recognition that were not them is not sufficient. Democrats have to have a more compelling economic agenda and message. Not surprisingly, there is widespread disagreement about what that message should be.

In the New York Times, Mark Penn and Andrew Stein argue that the path back to power for Democrats is to unquestionably move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party. Penn and Stein are deliciously unseemly personifications of the partys money wing. Penn served as chief strategist for Hillary Clintons failed 2008 campaign while continuing as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm with clients such as Blackwater, the shady private mercenary firm; drug companies such as Amgen; and British Petroleum, the company besmirched by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He was forced to resign from that campaign when it was revealed he had met with Colombian officials about a free-trade agreement that Clinton nominally opposed. The multimillionaire Stein, a former Manhattan Bureau president, was convicted of tax evasion and endorsed Trump in 2016.

Penn and Stein invoke President Bill Clinton as their ideal, arguing that Democrats should be the party of fiscal responsibility, above partisanship, and focused on economic growth and rising wages. They trot out a range of issues that are standard Democratic Party fare infrastructure investment, immigration reform, community policing, protecting workers in the gig economy and holding the line against Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. Adopting the scabrous rhetoric of the right, they warn that bigger government handouts wont win working-class voters back. Their particular btes noires are identity politics and political correctness, represented by transgender bathroom issues and sanctuary cities.

To make their case, Penn and Stein summon up a fictional account of our political history. Democrats relied on identity politics and a government solution for every problem in the early 1990s, leading to Republicans taking the House in 1994. Democrats came back when Clinton embraced a balanced budget, welfare reform and the crime bill, leading to his reelection in 1996. Under President Barack Obama, they say that Democrats, misled by politicians such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), once more ran to the left, embracing identity politics, class warfare and big government, and thus lost 1,000 legislative seats, the presidency and control of both houses of Congress.

This is fake history. Clinton ran and won in 1992 on a populist economic agenda promising to raise taxes on the rich, launch a jobs program and provide health care for all. He complemented that with purposeful racial signaling rejecting Jesse Jackson in the Sister Souljah incident, calling for ending welfare as we know it and parading in front of black prisoners while touting harsh three strikes criminal sentencing. Upon entering office, Clinton abandoned the populist promises and embraced a budget that he privately termed one of an Eisenhower Republican. The effort to gain bipartisan support for health-care reform was torpedoed by Republican obstruction. Clinton then championed the North American Free Trade Agreement, over the warnings of labor leaders and the opposition of most Democrats. That contributed directly to the Democratic defeat in 1994. In 1996, Clinton came back after the Republican Congress shut down the government and campaigned as the defender of Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment.

Similarly, Democratic losses under Obama did not come from identity politics, class warfare and big government, as Penn and Stein suggest. Rather, Democrats paid a big price for bailing out Wall Street bankers while homeowners were abandoned. Obama passed an inadequate stimulus and then moved to embrace deficit reduction tightening our belts while unemployment was still in double digits. Democrats suffered from the resulting slow recovery and from Republican assaults on Obamacare.

Utterly absent from the Penn and Stein analysis is the terrible cost and utter failure of the neoliberal policies they espouse. Clintons free-trade policies sustained by Obama racked up unprecedented trade deficits, with companies shipping good jobs abroad and driving down wages at home. Clintons fiscal austerity echoed by Obama left U.S. infrastructure decrepit and dangerous, while forgoing needed investments in education, affordable college and housing, and more. Clintons tough-on-crime agenda was catastrophic for African American men and left the United States with the highest prison population in the world.

Penn and Stein speak for a failed political establishment. The energy, ideas and activist base of the party come from the left. Sanders told 4,000 activists assembled at the Peoples Summit last month in Chicago that we have won the battle of ideas. Sanderss calls for a $15 minimum wage, a $1 trillion infrastructure investment, leading the green industrial revolution, fair taxes on the rich and corporations, tuition-free college and an end to the corporate trade regime are slowly becoming staples in the party consensus. Medicare for all is gaining ever more adherents. Even Penn and Stein move to embrace fair trade, without saying that they are abandoning a pillar of Clintons New Democrat agenda.

Sanders and Warren and the activists and movements driving this debate dont just want hollow political victories. They want what is needed to make this economy work for the vast majority, not just the few. That requires fundamental economic reforms and a political revolution, with small donors and volunteer energy challenging and eventually ending the reign of big money. Progressive groups are recruiting populist candidates up and down the ballot. They plan to challenge sitting Republicans everywhere. Conservative or corporate Democrats will increasingly face populist primary challengers.

Old party pros such as Penn and Stein dont get it. They see how unpopular Trump and the Republican Congress are, but their credibility on what to do next is shot. The populist temper of the time is rousing citizens across the country. Politics as usual wont suffice anymore.

Read more from Katrina vanden Heuvels archive or follow her on Twitter.

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The debate Democrats can't duck - Washington Post

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez at a rally outside the White House on May 10, 2017. Perez has sworn frequently in public speeches since taking over the DNC earlier this year. Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Last month, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., bluntly summed up the Democratic Partys goals under President Donald Trump.

If were not helping people, Gillibrand told an audience at a New York University forum, we should go the f**k home.

Earlier this year, newly-elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez didnt mince words when assessing the White House budget proposal. Its a s**tty budget, Perez said in a speech in Maine, part of a cross-country tour that included several expletive-laced speeches.

In the aftermath of Mr. Trumps victory in the 2016 election, a growing number of Democrats have begun cursing in public, using language that in the past was reserved for private conversations away from voters and the media.

The trend isnt entirely unprecedented, of course. In 2010, then-Vice President Joe Biden famously let an expletive slip during the White House signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act. But the rise in examples of public cursing from Gillibrand, Perez, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and other Democrats marks a sharp departure from the usual language used by politicians on the left in recent decades.

The shift seems to be a reaction, at least in part, to Trumps crass tone as a candidate, and may have paved the way for a new age of political incorrectness. Whatever the reason, the rhetoric of Democrats in the Trump era, including that of rumored 2020 hopefuls like Gillibrand and Harris, appears to mark a departure from former President Barack Obamas professorial language and Hillary Clintons focus group-tested remarks, representing instead a tone thats angrier and perhaps more authentic.

The political atmosphere has changed since the anomaly of Donald Trump swearing and getting away with it, Indiana University English professor Michael Adams said.

Swearing has been in public spaces over the past few decades, Adams added. Until recently, in political discourse, people thought you needed dignity, and some voters would object to profanity.

That changed during the 2016 election, when Trump used crass and politically incorrect language to send a signal to voters that he was an outsider figure, said Jennifer Mercieca, a communications professor at Texas A&M University.

His whole argument as a candidate was that he wasnt corrupt, and he knew he wasnt corrupt, because he used politically incorrect language as one way to differentiate himself from establishment politicians who followed traditional political norms, Mercieca said.

Trump may have been onto something. His language on the campaign trail and its positive reception by supporters fits neatly into the well-known sociolinguistic theory of overt and covert prestige.

The theory holds that individuals use standard, widely accepted language to gain recognition and status or overt prestige, in linguistics jargon with a wide group of people. In a field like politics, that means using politically correct language that appeals to the broadest swath of voters and offends the fewest and thats what traditional politicians do.

On the other hand, individuals seeking covert prestige with a smaller, specific group of people use language geared toward that audience language that might offend society at large. Politicians often seek covert prestige by using local political dialect to appeal to certain voters, Adams said.

Bill Clinton could speak in a fairly statesperson-like way, but [when] he was talking to people in a small town in Louisiana, he would talk like those people, Adams said.

Then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during the third 2016 presidential debate. Mr. Trump use curse words frequently on the campaign trail. File photo by Joe Raedle/REUTERS

During his presidential campaign, Trump stood out in a crowded Republican field by working profanity into his speeches.

In a November 2015 speech in Iowa, Trump called the press scum and garbage, and announced his plans to bomb the s**t out of ISIS.

In a speech leading up to New Hampshires Republican primary, Trump said companies that move overseas for lower tax rates can go f**k themselves. In the same speech, he attempted to draw a contrast between Obamas work ethic and his own, saying that as president hed abstain from golfing and insteadstay in the White House and work [his] a** off.

Trumps primary opponents adopted his tone and coarser language in their stump speeches and press interviews in a futile attempt to catch up to him in the polls. Sen. Rand Paul R-Ky. said the idea of increasing phone surveillance after a 2015 Paris terrorist attack wasbulls**t. During an MSNBC Morning Joe appearance before he bowed out of the race, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Trump crazy as hell.

Since taking office, Trump has yet to curse in public, though he has often taken to Twitter to air his grievances. Nevertheless, longtime political observers said Trumps language was part of a broader cultural shift.

Theres a long history of presidents using crude language, but it was mostly done in private.

Trump follows a long line of coarsening in culture in general, whether in music or comedy or movies, said Floyd Ciruli, a Colorado-based pollster. I didnt expect it to jump into politics, especially at the highest level.

Theres a long history of presidents using crude language, but it was mostly done in private. President Richard Nixon was captured swearing often on tape in the Oval Office, but he assumed the conversations wouldnt be made public. President Lyndon Johnson had choice words for his advisors and tailors but they rarely made their way out of the White House.

Being polite was the default of politicians, Chris Hayden, the director of communications for the liberal Center for American Progress, said. Our president has completely thrown that out the window.

As a result, Democrats now feel more comfortable getting looser with their language since there arent severe ramifications for the totally out-of-bound things [Trump] has said, Hayden added.

Hayden said the change could be good for the party because voters like it when politicians can talk like normal people. It demystifies that Washington politician, Hayden said.

With Democrats in the minority in Congress, I think theres a general sense that you have to show passion, resistance to all of these issues that liberals oppose, Ciruli said. Making the language basic and more profane demonstrates that.

Senator Kamala Harris, D-Calif., at a ceremony in Los Angeles on July 3, 2017. Harris and other Democrats have grabbed headlines by dropping curse words in public in recent months. Photo by REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

In May, during a guest appearance on the popular podcast Pod Save America, Harris grabbed headlines by offering an unusually candid response for a U.S. senator to Rep. Raul Labradors, R-Idaho, claim that nobody dies because they dont have access to health care.

What the f**k is that? Harris said. Her reaction to the House health care bill was not an anomaly. The New York Times reported that the freshman senator is no stranger to curse words.

But Mercieca warns that Democrats need to be careful when using crude language. It can work when trained at unpopular legislation, but can backfire if its used to disparage other politicians, she said.

There are plenty of recent examples of lawmakers profane comments misfiring.

On the Senate floor in 2004, then-Vice President Dick Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy D-Vt., to go f**k yourself, a comment that did not sit well with Senate Democrats.

While speaking at an event in New Orleans last weekend Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ripped into Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carsons credentials to run the department. Waters said she planned to take his ass apart when Carson testified before the House Committee on Financial Services, where she is the ranking Democrat.

The comment drew heavy criticism from conservatives, suggesting that coarse language by lawmakers may rally their partys base, but doesnt necessarily boost bipartisanship.

Democrats will need to figure out the right balance between laying down a well-placed curse word to prove a political point, and coming across as just plain vulgar.

Carolyn Lukensmeyer, the executive director for the National Institute for Civil Discourse, said that by electing Trump, voters clearly rejected political correctness. Still, Americans dont want profanity to become commonplace in political speech, she said.

The public does not want this type of political correctness where politicians talk out of two sides of their mouths, Lukensmeyer said. But also, they arent ready for politicians to use swear words or degraded language about other groups of people.

Polling bears this out. According to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, seven in 10 Americans think civility in Washington has gotten worse since Trump was elected. A January poll by the public relations firm Weber-Shandwick found that nearly eight in 10 Americans believed the 2016 election was uncivil. In the same poll, a majority of Trump and Clinton voters 72 percent and 81 percent, respectively said that incivility has risen to crisis levels.

[There is] absolutely no question political discourse and everyday discourse has been profoundly degraded, Lukensmeyer said.

What that means for Democrats who are cursing more frequently remains to be seen, said Hayden of the Center for American Progress. Voters will respond to politicians who show more visceral anger, but Democrats will need to figure out the right balance between laying down a well-placed curse word to prove a political point, and coming across as just plain vulgar.

Thats the line that we draw, he said. The question is, are Americans smart enough to make the distinction.

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What the #$@! Democrats are swearing more. Here's why - PBS NewsHour

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Democrats don't back down even as Republicans struggle on health care - Sacramento Bee

The Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is nearing its end at least the most dramatic and consequential part. While they still might find a way to pass a bill, at the moment the most likely outcome seems that their attempt at repeal will fail, after which theyll try to pass some kind of limited fix to shore up the exchanges. For now, Im going to assume that will indeed be the outcome, so that I can discuss what happens next.

The biggest winner in this whole debate and the vehicle for Democrats to take their next steps in expanding health coverage and security for Americans is Medicaid.

This isnt an outcome that many people expected. For a long time, Medicaid was seen as Medicares less glamorous cousin, insurance people didnt fall in love with and which didnt have a powerful constituency to protect it. Programs for the poor are poor programs, as the maxim has it, and Medicaid was supposedly always vulnerable to cutbacks and attacks from Republicans eager to undermine the safety net.

But when the ACA was passed, health wonks understood that while other provisions got more of the attention the creation of the exchanges, the new protections for people with preexisting conditions the Medicaid expansion was the most significant piece of the law in terms of the effect on peoples lives. More than 14 million Americans got coverage who didnt have it before, and in many cases it was absolutely life-changing.

There are now nearly 75 million Americans who get Medicaid (not just low-income individualsbut also those who are elderly and disabled). Republicans are positively horrified by that number. Their current health-care bill tries to do what theyve always wanted: not just rewind the expansion, but go further to cut Medicaid back and transform the program from an entitlement (in which anyone who meets the eligibility criteria gets the benefit) to a block grant (in which people can be kicked off or denied coverage even if theyre eligible), thereby enabling it to wither over time.

Yet something unexpected has happened. This debate over health care has educated the entire country about what Medicaid does. The prospect of millions losing their coverage has helped make the Republican health-care bill the most unpopular piece of legislation in recorded history, with polls showing it supported by as little as 12 percent of the public.

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll shows the Senate health-care bill is deeply unpopular and not just among Democrats. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

And while Republicans describe getting on Medicaid as a cruel fate from which people need to be liberated, it turns out that people really like it. As an enormous survey that was released this week shows, Medicaid recipients are overwhelmingly happy with their coverage the average score they gave it on a scale of 1to 10 was 7.9, and 46 percent rated their coverage a 9 or a 10. And while Republicans often cite the fact that many doctors dont accept Medicaid patients as a reason why the program supposedly stinks, only 3 percent reported problems getting care because of wait times or the inability to find a doctor who accepted Medicaid. For the other 97 percent, it apparently wasnt a problem.

In fact, Medicaid has been overwhelmingly popular with its recipients for a long time (see hereandhere), but the rest of the public just wasnt all that aware of it. Now that Republicans are threatening the program, awareness is growing, as people tell their stories and explain the devastation Medicaid cuts could cause.

The disaster of the Republican plan has opened the door for Democrats to advocate for more sweeping change to the health-care system in order to cover everyone and rein in costs. And the next wave of Democratic proposals is unlikely to center on complex, technocratic fixes to the existing system the way the ACA was. So Medicaid provides the perfect place to start from the perspective of both good politics and wise policy.

What should Democrats propose? The first demand should be that the 19 Republican-run states that refused the Medicaid expansion finally accept it. That decision has been spectacularly stupid the states that accepted the expansion have fewer uninsured, healthier state government balance sheets, rural hospitals that are less in danger of closing, and private insurance markets with more competitors. If your governor and/or legislature refused the expansion just to give President Barack Obama the finger, you were the one who got the shaft.

Next, Democrats should propose that a Medicaid buy-in be available on the exchanges, particularly in places where there are few private options. Republicans will object, but thats because the idea of people being free to choose Medicaid terrifies them. If they had the courage of their convictions, theyd agree to it, because their philosophy predicts that nobody would voluntarily pick a big-government program over a private one. But they know that if the option is there, lots of people will choose it.

If and when Democrats start advocating this kind of further expansion of Medicaid, Republicans will cry that this is just the camels nose under the tent and will lead to single-payer health care. And you know what? Theyre right. Or at the very least, it might be the first step toward creating a hybrid system with a basic government plan that covers everyone, combined with private supplemental insurance that allows you to buy as much fancy coverage as you want and can afford.

If Democrats are going to make real steps toward an outcome like that, the next time they have the power to make real change (2021, perhaps?), they should start charting their path now. Theyve been given the opportunity, courtesy of the GOP, to use Medicaid as the core of their proposals to create universal coverage and real health security. They shouldnt waste it.

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Republicans trying to destroy Medicaid have only made it stronger. Take note, Democrats. - Washington Post (blog)

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