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State House Sound Bites

Capitol reporter Katie Meyer covers Pennsylvania politics and issues at the Pennsylvania state capitol.

One of the party's biggest projects over the next year will be getting the state's top Democrats--Governor Tom Wolf and US Senator Bob Casey--reelected. (Photo by AP)

(Harrisburg) -- The 2016 general election wasn't too kind to Democrats in the Keystone State.

Not only did the commonwealth go red in the presidential election for the first time since 1988, Republicans gained their biggest majorities in the state House and Senate since the Eisenhower administration.

Now, the beleaguered party is trying to update its message.

The PA Dems just held their annual winter meeting, and in his Keynote address, governor Tom Wolf had one particular overarching message: double down on economics.

State party chairman Marcel Groen said that's going to be key in winning back some of Pennsylvania's longtime blue collar Democrats outside of big cities--many of whom voted for Trump.

"These are areas where people are somewhat socially conservative, so the Republicans try to get us to discuss social issues when we should be talking about economic issues because they're the ones that matter," Groen said.

He conceded that some areas will be more difficult than others.

"In some of the southwest counties, it's going to take a lot more work," he said. "People have lost their jobs. They're scared. So the union affiliation is not as strong as it once was."

However, Groen added that as Trump's administration gets underway, he's actually feeling optimistic.

He said there's been a huge outpouring of grassroots support from Democrats; now the only question is how to best harness that energy.

"I've never seen protests in the street after a president's been elected, regardless of which party.," Groen said. "And those protests seem to be growing. And they're spontaneous--I mean we don't have anything to do with them."

The Democrats' main focus over the next year will be on two races in particular: Governor Tom Wolf and US Senator Bob Casey--the state's top Democrats--are both up for reelection in 2018.

See the rest here:
What's next for Pennsylvania's Democrats? - witf.org

There's a purposely provocative piece in Politico magazine this week that aims to make the case that Hillary Clinton is going to run for president for a third time in 2020. Citing the scaling back of the Clinton Global Initiative and her plans to write a seventh book as evidence, Matt Latimer concludes: Yes, barring some calamity, Clinton is running. And this brave columnist will go one step further. Not only will Clinton run again, she has an excellent shot at getting the Democratic Party nomination again.

Wrong. And not just wrong on Clinton running again. But wrong on the fact that if she runs she could or would have the inside track on the Democratic nomination.

Let's take it piece by piece.

First, the idea that Clinton is angling to run again.

Ask yourself a simple question: Why?

Clinton has now lost twice in runs for the White House. And they were defeats of the devastating variety.

In 2008, Clinton was not only seen as the clear favorite but, up until December 2007, it looked like she would cruise to the nomination as then-Sen. Barack Obama struggled to energize his supporters. Fast forward a few months and it was clear that Clinton was going to lose on delegates alone, but she chose to slug it out all the way until June before bowing to the inevitable.

Then came 2016 when Clinton, again, was seen as the clear favorite for not only the Democratic nomination but also the White House. The Democratic field was significantly less talented than eight years prior, but Clinton was unable to put them away, and Bernie Sanders pushed the nomination all the way to the bitter end. In the general election, Clinton was regarded as a massive favorite against Donald Trump who did, literally, the opposite of what every seasoned campaign aide told him to do for the duration of the campaign. He was engulfed by a scandal regarding sexist comments caught by an Access Hollywood mic. She drastically outspent him everywhere. Polling showed she would win easily. And she lost.

One loss like that would be more than enough for most politicians. Two is approaching Greek tragedy levels.

Then there is the fact that Clinton will be 70 this October. She has two young grandchildren. A daughter and son-in-law. A husband. Why commit to spending at least two years more away from your family on an activity that has brought you nothing but heartache for the past decade?

The only possible answer is that Clinton is deeply committed to public service. That she promised not to fade away in her concession speech in November 2016.

I'd argue there are lots of ways that someone as high-profile as Clinton could remain relevant to the country and her party without running again. National spokeswoman. Fundraiser. Policy maven. Key endorser.

Which brings me to the second point: If Clinton showed signs that she truly is interested in running, Democrats should make very clear that they aren't interested.

Clinton ran two national campaigns. In each, she looked on paper to be a sure thing. In each, she didn't win. Why? Because there was something about her that people didn't like or trust. Her email problems in this past campaign exacerbated that problem, to be sure, but there was always an undercurrent of distrust surrounding her.

It's possible that as the Trump presidency continues, there will be buyer's remorse that benefits Clinton. I wouldn't be surprised if there is polling some time in the next few months that shows Clinton's popularity surging even as Trump's continues to sink.

But what we know about politics is that the perceptions people have of politicians rarely change all that much. Mitt Romney, had he run again in 2016, would have been saddled with the out of touch rich guy label he had to wear in 2012. John F. Kerry, if he had run again in 2008, would be the Swiss-cheese ordering, windsurfing Boston Brahmin.

So, too, with Clinton. The second she started to show interest in running for president again, people would remember all of the things they didn't like about her. The same trust and likability issues would dog her. She would be forced to grapple with perception issues beyond her control to fix. And, as the last two campaigns have proven, Clinton simply lacks the candidate skills and they are significant to have any chance of fundamentally altering the narrative about her. Had she been able to do so, she would have already done it in time for the 2016 race!

Then there is the matter of Trump. While it is, of course, possible that Trump doesn't make it to the point where he stands for a second term, that seems less than likely at the moment. (Trump has already established a 2020 reelection committee and is raising money into it.) And Trump beat Clinton with a simple message: She is the status quo you hate; I am radical change. She's a politician; I'm not. She is of Washington; I hate Washington.

The best way for Democrats to beat Trump, to my mind, is to not allow him to claim the outsider mantle again. Nominating Clinton would do just that. Sure, Trump will have spent four years in Washington by 2020. But Clinton, in the eyes of lots and lots of voters, will never be able to shake the image of being a traditional Washington politician. It's exactly the sort of race Trump wants to run against Washington but needing four more years to truly overhaul it.

The simple fact is that the public has had two chances to elect Hillary Clinton president. Neither time has it done so. You can argue forever about her relative qualifications and how she has worked her entire life to hold that one job. But this is a democracy where the electoral college vote decides who the president is. And twice, the public has chosen someone other than Clinton. That's just the reality.

Clinton should not and I believe will not run again in 2020. But Democrats would be foolish to, again, place all their bets on Clinton. That time has passed.

Some had it good, others had it bad in 2016. However, who had the "worst year" in Washington? (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

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Hillary Clinton should absolutely not run for president in 2020. And Democrats should stop her if she tries. - Washington Post

Democrats are preparingto try and stop President Trump's agenda at all costs. Senate Democrats have voted more and more in unison against Trump's Cabinet nominees, and now there is even talk of an unprecedented filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. It's what the party's base is demanding is right now.

But there is a difference between doing what feels good and whatis strategically sound. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it well this week: "You've got to pick which ones you're going to fight about; not every pitch has to be swung at."

To which some Democrats quickly respond: What about Republicans?

Republicans, they point out, stood firmly against most anything President Obama did for much of his presidency, and while they didn't unseat him in 2012, they won back the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and after 2016 they're in as powerful a position as they ever have been. Call it what you want -- "obstruction" or "principled opposition" -- it seems to have worked out quite well for the GOP.

But that's not a sure sign that it will also work for Democrats.

The reason I say that is because polarization in this country favors Republicans more than Democrats, at least when it comes to Congress. Republicans have something of an inherent advantage in both the House and Senate, and polarization helps reinforce those advantages these days.

Why? There are simply more red states and more red districts. Republicans took over the House and Senate in recent years largely because they knocked off some of the final hangers-on among Democrats in conservative-leaning places. It first happened in the South; then it spread to Appalachia and the Midwest.

Thanks to that trend and the fact that Republicans drew friendly House maps in many key states before the 2012 election, a straight-partisan vote for Congress pretty much ensures a Republican majority.

The 2016 election is a good example of this. Trump, as everyone knows, lost the popular vote by two full points, 48-46. But despite that loss, he actually won 230 out of 435 congressional districts, compared to 205 for Hillary Clinton, according to numbers compiled by Daily Kos Elections. And in the Senate, he won 30 out of 50 states.

So basically, 53 percent of House districts are Republican and 60 out of 100senators hail from red states, according to the 2016 election results (in which the GOP, again, lost the popular vote).

The question from there becomes how much -- and how -- Democrats will need to overcome this inherent disadvantage.

The median House district in this country in the 2016 election was Virginia's 2nd district, which went for Trump by 3.4 points.Democrats hold just five districts that went stronger for Trump than that median district -- a reflection of our polarization and how predictably these districts tend to mirror the national vote. So Democrats would need to win just about every district that went for Clinton or narrowly for Trump.

Republicans also have more districts "in the bag," so to speak. Trump won 186 districts by double digits, compared to 171 for Clinton. And he won 211 districts by 5 or more points, compared to just 185 for Clinton.

So Trump won more districtsby at least 5 points than Clinton won overall, and he won more districts by 10 points than Clinton won by at least 5. If we consider every district decided by less than 10 points in 2016 to be a battleground, Democrats need to win more than 60 percent of them to win the House majority back. And if you define the battleground more narrowly as every district decided by 5 points or fewer, Democrats need to win 85 percent of them.

What a lot of people don't realize about the Republicans' big wins in 2010 and 2014 is that they didn't really penetrate a whole lot of Democratic territory. Here's what I wrote when there was some chatter about Democrats re-taking the House last year:

...In the big GOP wave of 2014, Republicans only took over four districts that leaned toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Voting Index (PVI). Were Democrats to win back the House this year, they would likely have to win a dozen or more seats that clearly lean toward Republicans, just by virtue of how friendly the map is to Republicans (both because of natural partisan sorting and gerrymandering). Republicans have an inherent advantage in holdingthe House that serves as essentially a sand dune beating back whatever wave Democrats can produce.

And that's even more the case in the Senate, where Democrats'path back to the majority in 2018 is difficult, to say the least. Given the states that are holding elections, Democrats will need to reelect every Democratic senator in big Trump states like Indiana Missouri, Montana and North Dakota, while also stealing GOP seats in Arizona, Nevada and a heavily Trump state like Nebraska, Tennessee or Texas. Are they really going to do that if they go against everything Trump does?

What got the GOP over the top in 2010 and 2014 was largely nailing down districts and states that, in a strictly partisan world, would have been theirs in the first place. Being partisan in Congress seems to have helped them accomplish that task.

But for Democrats, being completely partisan and playing to their base without expanding the party's appeal has less upside when it comes to winning House and Senate majorities. That's not to say they can't do it -- just that the strategic roadmap Republicans used doesn't necessarily apply to Democrats.

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Why Democrats can't just obstruct their way back into power - Washington Post

Fear is running high among immigrant communities since President Donald Trump's inauguration -- and after the recent publicized deportation of an undocumented Arizona mother of two after a routine visit with immigration officials, reports have been spreading of Immigration and Customs Enforcement stepping up its actions in the southwestern US.

The actions are the first concerted effort by ICE under the Trump administration to arrest targeted undocumented immigrants for deportation proceedings.

It's unclear at this point in the nascent administration whether it was a sign of things to come, or whether the actions were conducted under any different procedures than could have been in place under the Obama administration. It was the uncertainty, the publicity of the raids and the high tensions raised by public comments on immigration by Trump administration officials that had Democrats asking for more information.

"These reports show the serious consequences of the president's executive order, which allows all undocumented immigrants to be categorized as criminals and requires increased enforcement in communities, rather than prioritizing dangerous criminals," California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a statement responding to media reports of the stepped up enforcement, including some accounts that the actions were targeting low-priority undocumented immigrants, including family men and women.

ICE in Los Angeles said Friday it had conducted a five-day operation targeting criminals and fugitives, and said that the vast majority of those arrested had criminal histories.

Seeking to push back on reports of indiscriminate raids, ICE released the results of the operation from its Los Angeles office, saying about 160 foreign nationals were arrested during the week. Of those, 150 had criminal histories, and of the remaining arrests, five had final orders of removal or were previously deported. Ninety-five percent were male, they said.

While specific numbers weren't available, ICE said "many" of the arrested individuals had prior felony convictions including violent charges like child sex crimes, weapons or assault charges.

An ICE official confirmed Atlanta had conducted a similar surge this week, and roughly 200 arrests were made in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina in a similar routine enforcement action. Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro said in a statement that he had confirmed with ICE's San Antonio field office that similar actions were conducted across Texas, calling the action "Operation Cross Check." He said he would be following up to make sure the actions were targeting the worst offenders.

Full numbers for the actions across the country will be made available Monday, the agency said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said overall about the agency's actions that everything is "routine," and are not part of casting a widespread net.

"ICE Fugitive Operations teams are out every day as part of routine, targeted enforcement operations," said acting press secretary Gillian Christensen. "These are existing, established fugitive operations teams. ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately. ICE only conducts targeted enforcement of criminal aliens and other individuals who are in violation of our nation's immigration laws."

Still, as Trump continues to talk about cracking down on illegal immigration, advocates remain concerned that the new administration could be stepping up enforcement against otherwise peaceful undocumented immigrants.

On Thursday, protests sprang up at the deportation of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a 35-year-old mother of two, who had checked in with ICE at an office in Phoenix the day before, as she had regularly since a 2008 conviction of using a fake Social Security number.

Friday, Democrats decried the actions nationwide as needlessly causing fear for immigrant communities.

"The President wants to show off and it appears he has unleashed the Department of Homeland Security to kick-out large numbers of immigrants and anyone they encounter, without much oversight, review or due process," said Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez. "The goal of such policies is to inject fear into immigrant communities, frighten families and children, and drive immigrants farther underground. It damages public safety and the fabric of American communities while putting a burden on local social services and the foster-care system."

Gutierrez's concerns were echoed by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Democrat from California.

"I am outraged to hear of the recent ICE arrests in southern California. If the Trump administration is genuinely concerned about threats to American security, it should prioritize violent felons and others who pose real danger," Roybal-Allard said in a statement. "My office has been working to get detailed information from ICE."

"These activities have caused fear and uncertainty for many of constituents," Correa wrote, and listed 10 questions he wanted answers for from ICE, among "How far in advance were these enforcement activities planned?"

And a city councilman from Austin, Texas, said he was concerned that ICE was making a public show of force in his city as retribution for being a sanctuary city.

"ICE actions like these are beyond reprehensible," Greg Casar said in a statement. "They instill fear in the community, and they make everyday people fear for their lives."

While ICE characterized the actions as routine, fear remains that the Trump administration's recent executive order beefing up interior enforcement of immigration laws could mean a vast expansion of deportations of undocumented immigrants.

While the Obama administration had clear guidance prioritizing deportation of high-level criminals, an executive order signed by Trump in his first week set up enforcement priorities that could include virtually any undocumented immigrant living in the US.

Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a central focus of his presidential campaign. On Saturday, the President defend another part of his campaign promise on immigration, vowing to keep costs down on a border wall that would span the US southern border with Mexico.

"I am reading that the great border WALL will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the ... design or negotiations yet. When I do, just like with the F-35 FighterJet or the Air Force One Program, price will come WAY DOWN!" Trump wrote in two consecutive tweets.

Go here to read the rest:
Democrats, advocates question ICE enforcement raids after hundreds of arrests - CNN

Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Brandon Dillon is not expected to face a significant challenge in his bid for re-election on Saturday, but new activists and current leaders will compete for a series of caucus, congressional district and central committee seats.(Photo: Detroit News file)

Detroit Michigan Democrats are gathering Saturday at the Cobo Center in Detroit, where theyll look to regroup after a series of stinging election losses and choose new officials who will lead the party into the 2018 cycle.

State party chairman Brandon Dillon is not expected to face a significant challenge in his bid for re-election, but new activists and current leaders will compete for a series of caucus, congressional district and central committee seats.

Two separate groups inspired by Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 2016 presidential candidate and democratic socialist, are hoping to breathe new life into the party by engaging the grassroots. The two organizations are at odds, however, and are promoting separate candidates for various party positions.

Leaders of Michigan for Revolution have blasted "establishment" Democrats and say they want to "revolutionize" the state party. Michigan to Believe in, meanwhile, has worked with labor leaders to deveop a joint "progressive unity slate" of convention candidates.

Just months after President Donald Trump became the first Republican to win Michigan since 1988, Democrats are plotting to return the state to the "blue" column in 2018. Voters next year will pick a new governor, attorney general, secretary of state and decide races for the Michigan Legislature and Congress.

Dillon has spent months traveling Michigan and talking to activists about his plan to refocus on local parties and candidates, retrain local leaders and activists and rebuild the Democratic brand. He's promised to organize and rebuild the party as he and other Democrats "resist" Trump.

East Lansing Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who was the first high-profile candidate to announce her 2018 campaign for governor, is expected to make the rounds at Saturday's convention, dropping by various caucus meetings to discuss her plans for the state.

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, who is also considering a run for governor, is expected to speak at the convention and have a large presence at Cobo, where his supporters plan to wear t-shirts declaring the Flint Township Democrat "fits Michigan like a glove.

In Detroit's 13th Congressional District, Chairman Jonathan Kinloch is attempting to hold off a challenge from precinct delegate Theo Broughton, who is backed by former mayoral candidate Tom Barrow.

The race has turned negative in recent weeks, with Barrow accusing Kinloch of trying to bend the rules to allow additional voters at the convention. Kinloch has responded by comparing Barrow to Trump and calling him "Detroit's own alternative facts author."

The convention is exepcted to run through Saturday evening.

joosting@detroitnews.com

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Michigan Democrats plot new course at Cobo - The Detroit News