Could an Amy Klobuchar Solve Democrats’ Dilemma?

They seek a presidential candidate who appeals to both their liberal coastal base and to Midwestern working- and middle-class voters

When asked recently who Republicans should fear most in the 2020 presidential campaign, two prominent GOP figures, both women speaking independently of each other, gave the same response: Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

A third Republican, a male, asked which kind of candidate Democrats should want, replied: “They need a boring white guy from the Midwest.”

So, there you have it: The dream ticket of Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Case closed, cancel the primaries, on to the general election.

So if all that creates an opportunity for Democrats in 2020, here’s their dilemma: Can they pick a candidate who can blend the party’s conflicting impulses?

This may seem a long ways off, but the reality is that most Democrats thinking of running for president—and the number probably runs into the 20s—plan to make their decision over the next several weeks, so they can move out starting in early 2019.

As this drama begins, the key question is whether the party will find somebody who appeals both to its coastal base dominated by progressives, upscale college graduates, millennials and minorities, or choose someone who is more appealing to traditional working- and middle-class voters in industrial Midwest states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all of which helped Democrats reclaim the House in this year’s mid-term elections.

.. The winning lottery ticket, of course, goes to somebody who can appeal to both. And that’s why Ms. Klobuchar’s name—and profile—attract attention. She’s a woman, obviously, which is important at a time when newly energized women are a growing force within the party. She pleased her party base in the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh when she challenged him about his use of alcohol, but did so in a sufficiently calm and understated manner that she won an apology from Mr. Kavanaugh after he initially responded angrily.

.. She also won re-election this year with more than 60% of the vote in the one state Trump forces lost in 2016 but think they have a legitimate chance to flip their way in 2020.

.. The question is whether she or anyone can put together a policy agenda that pleases both party liberals, who are pushing for

  1. a Medicare-for-all health system,
  2. the demise of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system and an
  3. aggressive new climate-change action plan, and more moderate Midwestern voters, who may be scared off by all of those things.

Ms. Klobuchar’s policy priorities may suggest a path. To address health care, the top priority of Democratic voters, she advocates a step-by-step approach, one that seeks to

  • drive down prescription drug costs by opening the door to less-expensive drugs from Canada,
  • protect and improve the Affordable Care Act, and
  • expand health coverage by considering such steps as allowing more Americans to buy into the Medicare system.

.. She’s talked of a push to improve American infrastructure that would include expanding rural Americans’ access to broadband service, paying for it by rolling back some—though not all—of the tax cuts Republicans passed last year. She pushes for more vigorous antitrust enforcement, more protections for privacy and steps to curb undisclosed money in politics

.. For his part, Sen. Brown, a liberal who this year won Ohio as it otherwise drifts Republican, offers a working-class-friendly agenda that combines progressive impulses for government activism to drive up wages with Trumpian skepticism about trade deals and corporate outsourcing.

 

 

 

 

 

Trump begins making overtures to Democrats amid skepticism it will lead to any deals

President Trump, facing a Congress that will become dramatically more antagonistic toward him in January, has begun courting Democrats who could determine whether his next two years are spent scoring legislative deals or staving off an onslaught of congressional investigations.

Trump’s charm offensive was on display Monday when he hosted Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) at the White House for a meeting that the two men had spent days trying to schedule. Over a lunch of chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes, Manchin preached bipartisanship — urging the president to work with lawmakers on ending a pension crisis affecting tens of thousands of coal miners nationwide, said Jonathan Kott, Manchin’s spokesman.

During the hour-and-a-half lunch, Manchin also suggested that Trump take a look at a comprehensive immigration bill the Senate passed in 2013 as another area of potential cooperation with Democrats — even though Trump has vehemently opposed the legislation and pursued tougher immigration policies while in office. Trump and Manchin were joined at the beginning of the meeting by Vice President Pence and the president’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump.

.. In recent days, Trump has invited the top Democratic congressional leaders to the White House amid a pressing government funding battle and privately told a Democratic senator he would consider legislation to help stem the loss of auto manufacturing jobs in Ohio.

The overtures are a signal that Trump and his White House are at least feeling out whether the self-professed dealmaker can find common ground with Democrats next year even as he faces pressure from Republicans to keep the opposition party at arm’s length.

.. “I’ve seen him when others advise not to make a deal and he moves ahead,” said Marc Short, the former White House legislative affairs director.

But others cautioned that Trump’s bipartisan urges can be episodic and fleeting — a dynamic of which lawmakers and his aides are well aware.

“When he thinks he needs to be bipartisan, he does it for a while,” one adviser said.

.. Trump had requested that Pelosi and Schumer meet with him at the White House this week. Aides said the White House did not specify any agenda, but the meeting has been put off until next week, after memorial services are held for former president George H.W. Bush, who died Friday.

.. In previous interactions with Trump, the two Democratic leaders have shown they can push the president toward their desired policy outcomes — and quickly set the narrative. Last year, Pelosi and Schumer left a White House dinner and eagerly put out word that Trump had agreed to a deal that would combine permanent protections for young undocumented immigrants with border security measures, only to have the administration dispute that any agreement had been reached.

Pelosi and Schumer would often skip the staff and try to meet with Trump, who would welcome a deal and emphatically support one.

“The president would learn the details and then would realize it was a bad deal,” a former administration official said.

Trade is another area that could be ripe for cooperation between Trump and congressional Democrats — leaving GOP leaders increasingly uneasy about Trump’s tendencies.

.. Lighthizer has spoken encouragingly of Pelosi — who has repeatedly bucked presidents, including Barack Obama, on trade — to GOP lawmakers since her views are more likely to align with Trump’s and she could be willing to work with the administration, according to two Republicans briefed on those exchanges.

Last week, Pelosi — joking that the new North American pact “has some kind of gobbledygook name” — said the trade deal “formerly known as Prince” was still a work in progress.

.. Pelosi said. “But what isn’t in it yet is enough enforcement reassurances regarding provisions that relate to workers and to the environment. There also has not been a law passed in Mexico in terms of wages and working conditions in Mexico.”

.. The notion still has plenty of skeptics in the West Wing, with questions over how to pay for new projects. Yet Shahira Knight, Short’s successor as Trump’s main liaison to Capitol Hill, has told one key House Democrat that the president wants to pursue an infrastructure deal and acknowledges that it’ll take real money. 

.. The notion still has plenty of skeptics in the West Wing, with questions over how to pay for new projects. Yet Shahira Knight, Short’s successor as Trump’s main liaison to Capitol Hill, has told one key House Democrat that the president wants to pursue an infrastructure deal and acknowledges that it’ll take real money.

The White House outreach has only gone so far — particularly when it concerns committees and lawmakers more likely to be investigating the administration than cutting deals.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Md.), the likely incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has heard “not a word” from the White House as he prepares to lead a panel that plans to scrutinize the administration’s immigration directives and response to natural disasters.

.. Last Wednesday, Trump phoned Sen. Sherrod Brown after the Ohio Democrat requested a call to discuss General Motors’s recent decision to shutter several auto plants, including one in northeastern Ohio. During the call, Brown, who also talks trade with Lighthizer, urged Trump to get behind legislation he drafted that would get rid of tax provisions that could incentivize companies to ship auto manufacturing jobs abroad.

.. Trump said he liked the bill, according to Brown’s retelling, and his office rushed a copy of the legislation over to the White House. But Brown has tried to negotiate with the White House before — notably on the tax legislation last year — only to find that Trump ultimately decided to shun bipartisan dealmaking and go toward a Republican-only approach.

Brown hopes that this time it’s different.

Donald Trump Is Lyin’ Up a Storm

Is there an election coming up, or something?

With Republicans struggling to keep their grip on Congress, President Trump is dialing up the demagogy. At campaign rallies and on social media, he’s spewing dark warnings about a

  • Democratic mob clamoring to usher in an
  • era of open borders,
  • rampant crime,
  • social chaos and
  • economic radicalism.

As is so often the case, Mr. Trump is not letting reality interfere with his performance. At a rally in Nevada this weekend, the president told the crowd that Californians were rioting to “get out of their sanctuary cities.” (They aren’t.) He also suggested that Democrats will soon be looking to hand out free luxury cars to illegal immigrants. (They won’t.) “Give ’em a driver’s license. Next thing you know, they’ll want to buy ’em a car,” he riffed. “Then they’ll say the car’s not good enough, we want — how about a Rolls-Royce?”

Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed has been electrifying as well, full of statements intended to thrill his fans — and, better still, bait his opponents into a partisan rage. In recent days, he has dubbed Stormy Daniels “Horseface,” escalated his taunting of Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” and grumbled about the fact that Bruce Ohr, one of Mr. Trump’s nemeses in the “rigged” Russian “witch hunt,” is still employed by the Department of Justice. He has asserted that the Democratic nominee for governor in Florida, Andrew Gillum, is looking to turn the state into “the next Venezuela.” He has threatened to dispatch troops to shut down the southern border and renewed his vow to cut off the “massive foreign aid” sent to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras for those nations’ failure to stop their people from flocking to the United States.

In particular, the caravan of Honduran migrants making its way north has emerged as a focus of his fantasies. Mr. Trump has repeatedly implied that Democrats are paying Honduran youth to join the caravan. On Monday, he claimed, based on nothing, that the caravan is awash in “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.”

.. Mr. Trump plays the polarization game because he enjoys it — he does love a brawl — and because he doesn’t appear to care about much beyond his political and personal fortunes. And, more practically speaking, these days he doesn’t have much else to talk about.

It’s not that this president has failed to achieve anything in his first couple of years in office. The economy is chugging along right now, and many Republican candidates would be happy for him to play that up on the campaign trail.

But his most notable achievements do not resonate beyond Mr. Trump’s base. He has overseen a conservative overhaul of the federal judiciary, seating a record number of judges, including two Supreme Court justices. And he has been an aggressive deregulator in areas ranging from education to transportation to health care to the environment.

Stephen K. Bannon has won

This is the victory not only of a Trump personality cult, as it has been described, but also of an ideology, one closer to Putinism than Reaganism.

.. Back then, you may recall, some of the “crazies” — such as national security adviser Michael Flynn — had left the White House, and supposed pragmatists had taken charge: H.R. McMaster for national security, Gary Cohn for economics, Jared and Ivanka for — well, for general reasonableness.

.. There was talk of working with Democrats on infrastructure. Trump wanted to help the “dreamers,” those blameless young immigrants brought to this country as children. It seemed that existing international agreements — NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Paris climate accord — might be preserved, with some face-saving adjustments. Trump was still the politician who had spoken tolerantly on LGBT issues.

..  The White House defines itself and prepares to motivate its voters by the “enemies” it constantly creates, refines and rediscovers, including African American athletes, the press (“Our Country’s biggest enemy,” in a recent Trump tweet), Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (“very dishonest & weak”), and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III (directing a “Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats”). Also: Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Democratic leaders in the Senate and House, former FBI director James B. Comey, his own attorney general, his deputy attorney general . . . The list will never end.

.. But Bannonism is not just a snarling attitude. It encompasses a contempt for democracy and a respect for authoritarianism. When Trump refused to sign a statement of solidarity with the world’s other six leading industrial democracies and then proceeded to slather praise on North Korea’s dictator (“a tough guy . . . a very smart guy”), this was not just a sign of personal pique or favoritism: The U.S. president raised questions in the minds of other leaders about whether the concept of the West itself can survive his presidency.

.. It encompasses an “America First,” for-me-to-win-you-have-to-lose philosophy

.. It encompasses a contempt for immigrants, for outsiders of any kind. Certainly it is possible to support lower levels of immigration without being a racist. But to countenance the deliberate policy of tearing away small children from their parents that we are seeing today on the U.S.- ­Mexico border is consistent only with a worldview that deems Mexicans and Salvadorans somehow less human, less worthy, than white Americans.

..it’s no coincidence that Trump, who boasted about being the first Republican to say LGBTQ in his convention acceptance speech in 2016, has, as The Post’s James Hohmann noted last week, tried to ban transgender people from the military, removed protections for transgender inmates, employees and students, failed to acknowledge Pride Month and disbanded the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. As in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, this revival of bigotry dovetails with an effort to woo the conservative Christian establishment.

.. Finally, Bannonism encompasses contempt for the government itself.

.. his constant disparagement of the Justice Department and the FBI; his at times insultingly unsuitable appointments (such as his personal physician to head the mammoth Department of Veterans Affairs); and his generally cavalier attitude toward staffing. Even today, 17 months into his first term, fewer than half of the 667 key positions tracked by The Post in collaboration with the Partnership for Public Service are filled, and for almost 200 there are no nominees.

.. How has Bannonism prevailed without Bannon? In part, with the help of true believers who remain in the White House, including Stephen Miller (on immigration) and Peter Navarro (on trade).

.. But another answer came from Trump himself, who said after Bannon’s firing: “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. . . . Steve was a staffer.”

Even discounting for Trump’s normal petulance and self-aggrandizement, there may have been an element of truth in what he said. The anti-democratic, protectionist, anti-immigrant, pro-authoritarian administration that has now taken shape, in other words, is not only Bannonism. It is raw and unvarnished Trumpism, too.