For an indication of the power of Facebook in building opposition to the nomination of Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education, read “Social Media Playing Important Role in Democrats’ Strategy” by Natalie Andrews at The Wall St. Journal: “After Ms. DeVos’s confirmation hearing on Jan. 17, Senate Democrats posted short clips online of some of the comments she made under questioning. Two clips posted on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Facebook page picked up more than 34 million views…Liberal groups started targeting two Republican senators who they believed might be swayed to oppose Ms. DeVos, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Memes spread on Facebook with their phone numbers…A petition on progressive group CREDO’s site picked up more than 1.4 million signatures, besting the record set by a petition opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline…Ms. Murkowski said she’d heard from thousands of Alaskans about the Gorsuch nomination.”
In this short NPR interview Sen. Chris Van Hollen, chair of the Senate Democrats Campaign Committee, puts needed emphasis on the anti-worker track record of Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. “I can tell you my early investigation leads to some troubling conclusions about him siding with corporate interests over working people and consumers,” says Van Hollen, regarded as a potential 2020 presidential candidate. Asked by interviewer Scott Simon if he anticipates strong opposition to Gorsuch in the hearings, Van Hollen replied, “Well, it’s not going to be moved along if people determine that this judge is outside the mainstream and is effectively going to harm working people at the expense of – and support big corporate interests. Look, I think, Scott, the American public understands that Senate Democrats are the last line of defense between the Donald Trump administration and a lot of bad things happening, including the effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act without a replacement, including the effort to turn the keys of the economy back over to Wall Street.”
At The New Yorker John Cassidy asks “Have the Democrats Got the Right Supreme Court Strategy” and reports that key Democrats are focusing on Gorsuch’s rulings to disempower workers, as well as his problematice record omn womens rights and the environment: “While Merkley concentrated on the larger picture, his frequent ally Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, took Gorsuch and his record to task. “As a judge, he has twisted himself into a pretzel to make sure the rules favor giant companies over workers and individual Americans,” Warren said in a statement.“He has sided with employers who deny wages, improperly fire workers, or retaliate against whistleblowers for misconduct. He has ruled against workers in all manner of discrimination cases…As Schumer and Warren indicated, he has frequently ruled in favor of businesses.”
While nearly all Democrats are expected to vote against the Gorsuch nomination, Dems have some divisions about whether to allow hearings or filibuster and obstruct the nomination at every juncture of the process. Most of the nine Senate Dems in 2016 red states tend to favor the hearings, while those with ‘safer’ seats want to give Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a taste of his obstructionist medicine. Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan report at Politico on Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s efforts to juggle the concerns of the two camps and mount the most effective opposition to Gorsuch. They note one key strategic concern: Democrats are worried, multiple aides said, about Republicans having an excuse to kill the filibuster on the Supreme Court now, and later use it to ram through an even more conservative nominee if there is another vacancy during Trump’s presidency…Senate Democrats are “creating a totally unnecessary rift with the base and inviting primary challenges for many members who don’t deserve them,” said one leader of a progressive group, worried over Democrats’ being perceived as centrists for considering Trump’s nominee.”
Eric Bradner’s CNN Politics post, “Is anti-Trump furor papering over Democrats’ working-class woes?” includes this warning against spending too much time worrying about the white working-class: “Those working-class white voters aren’t the future of the party,” said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal blog DailyKos.com, which has already raised $400,000 for a Democratic candidate in the expected runoff for the US House seat in Georgia soon to be vacated by Tom Price, Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary…They’re lost. It’s a waste of time to try and win them back when there are so many core-Democratic-base who didn’t register or vote last cycle. Almost half the country didn’t vote, and the bulk of the non-voters were liberal-leaning people many of them now marching in the streets…So instead of trying to chase people trapped by Breitbart and its cohorts in conservative media, give them a reason to get excited about rallying around Democrats”…Moulitsas said red-state Democrats should forget using those votes to try to prove themselves as moderates…”The best chance they have to win in their tough states will be by riding this incredible wave of energy. It may not be enough, but pissing off the base certainly isn’t the better bet. You either ride in with the people who brought you, or go down fighting honorably,” Moulitsas said. “Pretending to be a ‘Republican, but a little less bad’ has never inspired a dramatic re-election victory.”
In his salon.com post, “As Democrats turn their attention to 2018, getting “marginal voters” to turn out will be crucial,” Sean McElwee takes an in-depth look at a critical constiuency for Democrats, “people who voted in the 2012 presidential election, but failed to turn out to vote in 2014,” and argues, “How can Democrats maximize their chances? First, they need to get the basics right. They should target widely because it’s impossible to know where the floor is for Trump. They don’t want to be in a situation where new terrain opens up and they’re unprepared. They need to start winning back state-level and county-level positions that feed into higher office. They’ll need money and an aggressive recruitment strategy to get good candidates to run. But, ultimately, the 2018 election, like all others, will be determined by who shows up. The Democratic Party must make a concerted effort to target the voters who have voted in presidential elections but stay home during the midterms…In the end, 76 percent of registered Democrats voted in the 2014 election, compared to 84 percent of registered Republicans. If Democrats want to seize on Trump’s unpopularity, they need to find a way to get these presidential voters to turn out in the off-cycle election. Donald Trump will probably help.”
Amber Phillips notes at The Fix, “Progressive ballot initiatives have had fantastic success over the years, even in Republican states. Over the past two decades, initiatives to raise the minimum wage has rarely lost when put to the voter. This past November was no exception; minimum wage ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington passed by a larger margin than the winning presidential candidate, according to The Fairness Project, which advocates for higher minimum wage laws…Voters in eight of nine states voted to ease restrictions on marijuana and three of four states voted to put in place gun restrictions.”
“Democrats need to stop the bleeding with working-class whites. But that’s only a small piece of the equation. To confront demagoguery and “populist” conservatism, Democrats should create a coalition that combines a diverse electorate with increased margins among college-educated voters. This approach could solve the party’s geographic problems and lead to victory in future elections…Running up the score with college-educated voters could help Democrats win Rust Belt states that were pivotal in 2016…Let’s compare two counties in the Detroit suburbs: Macomb, where only 23% of the population has a bachelor’s degree, and Oakland, where 44% of the population does. Hillary Clinton maintained Barack Obama’s 8% margin in Oakland County, a historically Republican suburb, while Macomb went from a 4% edge for Obama to a 12% advantage for Trump. Post-mortems of the presidential campaign focused on the drift away from Democrats in Macomb. But about a decade ago, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg pointed out that the future for Democrats lies in Oakland. Because the county is far more populous than Macomb, a mere 2% increase in Clinton’s margin there would have erased her 10,704 statewide deficit, and put Michigan in her column.” — from “The best way forward for Democrats: Target well-educated voters” by Matthew Rey, a partner at Red Horse Strategies in the Los Angeles Times.
This may not be the most dignified protest demonstration designed to urge Trump to release his tax forms like all other modern era presidents have done. But credit the organizers with a creative idea for a photo-op and a catchy slogan.
