Democrats plan to announce their 2018 campaign agenda from a ruby-red corner of Northern Virginia
David Daley
ALECs Scary Plan For Electing Your Senators
July 24, 2017 7:10 am
By Jenna Portnoy and Ed O'Keefe July 24 at 6:00 AM
BERRYVILLE, Va. Democrats knew what they were doing when they chose this quaint town of mom-and-pop stores and historic homes for the soft launch of their new strategy to convince voters that they stand for something and not just against President Trump.
Its here that Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), plan to announce proposals on Monday designed to appeal to middle-class workers ways to lower prescription drug prices, provide more federal funding for jobs training and apprenticeship programs, and more aggressive monitoring of proposed corporate mergers all poll-tested ideas that they think will draw support back from voters who supported Trump last year.
A relatively convenient 90-minute drive from Capitol Hill for busy lawmakers but a world away from there, Berryville is the seat of Clarke County, a splotch of red in a congressional district that Democrat Hillary Clinton won by double-digits in November. Trump won the county with 57 percent of the vote to Clintons 37 percent 15 points worse than she performed across the rest of the district.
For Democrats to gain control of the House, they would have to unseat members such as the two-term congresswoman here. Rep. Barbara Comstock outperformed Trump by 16 points with a relentless focus on local issues and a refusal to allow national politics a place in her campaign. She voted against the House health-care bill this spring and avoids Trumps drain the swamp rhetoric anathema to the thousands of federal workers she represents.
Whether mentioned or not, top Democratic leaders think their new campaign-style agenda, A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future, has the potential to unseat Republicans such as Comstock. It already has drawn the ire of liberal critics believing it is a cute corporate-style attempt to reshape well-worn party ideas, and its sure to draw criticism from pro-business Democrats.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrats-plan-to-announce-their-2018-campaign-agenda-from-a-ruby-red-corner-of-northern-virginia/2017/07/24/607aeb4e-6e66-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)They better find a way to make health care universal, like any other civilized nation, rather than leave 24 million without healthcare and call that a solution, and continuing the epidemic of people going bankrupt due to health crises despite the fact that they have health insurance.
"provide more federal funding for jobs training and apprenticeship programs,"
Restore power to the worker so that collective bargaining has the ability to drive wages rather than corporatism stifling wages when the economy is supposedly back to a level that it was pre-recession.
"more aggressive monitoring of proposed corporate mergers"
Don't "monitor" corporate mergers, regulate them, and unwind the ones that have already happened and have created monopolies.
So far I'm hearing namby pamby, mealy mouthed half measures that will have no impact whatever for the working class. Tinkering around the edges and not addressing the core problems.
We need something along the lines of, "They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match."
You know who said that. The last liberal that this nation's leadership has ever had at any level.