Democrats’ post-election playbook: Stay big in California

After painful November 2016 losses, Washington Democrats still appear committed to devoting resources to strongholds like California, instead of responding to party pleas to put time and money into Middle America to reconnect with disaffected voters.
The contrast came into full view when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee earlier this month started moving senior staffers to deep-blue California, then provided essentially no help to its candidate in the Kansas special election, who on Tuesday nearly pulled off a huge upset.
Washington Democrats hailed candidate James Thompson’s narrow loss as a moral victory, considering Republicans have held the seat since 1995.
But Thompson made clear that the DCCC and the Democrat National Committee could have done more, considering Washington Republicans including President Trump, Vice President Pence and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz invested time and money to save the seat.
“The DCCC and the DNC need to be doing a 50-state strategy,” said Thompson, after coming within 6 percentage points of winning Kansas GOP Rep. Mike Pompeo’s open House seat. (Pompeo won reelection there last year with roughly 60 percent of the vote before becoming the CIA director in January.)
GOPS WIN IN CLOSE SPECIAL ELECTION IN KANSAS
Thompson also pointed out that his campaign was largely financed by individual, small-dollar donations, saying 99 percent of the money came through average-$20 contributions.
The state Democrat party disputes a report that it gave Thompson just $3,000 late in the race but has failed to provide documentation showing the group in fact backed the first-time candidate’s campaign from the start.
The DNC contributed no last-minute money to counter the GOP infusion, with newly-installed Chairmen Tom Perez telling The Washington Post: “There are thousands of elections every year, though. Can we invest in all of them? That would require a major increase in funds.”
DNC Communications Director Xochtil Hinojosa told Fox News on Wednesday that the outcome of the Kansas race -- in a district Trump won in November by 27 percentage points -- proves voters’ “resounding frustration” with the president’s agenda and that Washington Democrats are “committed to organizing in every zip code.”
Meanwhile, the DCCC, which declined to comment for this story, is already sending staffers to Southern California to establish a base camp for 2018 House races in the state and in Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
“Moving out West is one of the improvements that we’re making at the DCCC in order to maximize gains in the midterms,” says group Chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján.
The New Mexico congressman also vowed that he and fellow Democrats are “on offense across the map -- including in districts that have not seen a serious challenge in a long time.”
To be sure, the DCCC has sent dozens of paid staffers and hundreds of volunteers to Georgia for the special election Tuesday for the open seat of former GOP Rep. Tom Price, in a district Trump barely defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. (Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff has raised more than $8 million in that race.)
But whether the plan is enough to satisfy rank-and-file Democrats after November 2016 remains to be seen.
Before last year, Republicans had already controlled both chambers of Congress as well as the majority of state houses and governors’ offices.
And losses in Democratic strongholds like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida in 2016 that led to Trump’s upset victory over Clinton -- and nixed the party’s chances to retake the Senate -- only reinforced the notion that the Midwestern, blue collar vote has been neglected.
“We have to talk to those people who take a shower after work, not those who just take a shower before work,” Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan said after the losses and amid his subsequent, failed effort to replace California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader.
He also joined fellow party members in saying Democratic leaders had become too focus on liberal bastions like California, New York and neighbor East Coast states.
Despite Democrats last year winning a handful of House seats, Republicans will still have a daunting, roughly 44-seat majority going into the midterms and a 52-48 seat edge in the Senate.
In California, Democrats are targeting seven incumbent House Republicans -- including high-profile Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Darrell Issa and three others in Southern California.
Ben Tulchin, a San Francisco-based Democratic pollster and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ pollster in the 2016 Democratic primaries -- supports the party’s California strategy.
He says such grassroots efforts in places like Los Angeles and Orange counties make sense because voter-registration drives can reach a large number of unregistered Latinos, Asian-Americans and others who frequently vote Democrat.
“There’s an untapped pool of Democratic voters that just doesn’t exist in place like Iowa,” he said.
Tulchin also argued that reaching voters by TV in the greater-Los Angeles market is too expensive and that voters in largely-conservative Orange County, particularly along the coast, are becoming more socially liberal or at least more moderate.
“They’re almost all pro-environment,” Tulchin said.

Democrats throw millions, Hollywood punch into Georgia House race

Another generation of dumb democrats.

Democrats are pumping millions into the Georgia congressional election set for Tuesday, hoping a 30-year-old political upstart who's attracting star power can deliver a rebuke to President Trump and help the party reclaim lost momentum.
Hollywood has even come out for the off-cycle vote, with actor Samuel L. Jackson cutting a radio ad urging voters to flip the seat once held by Republican Tom Price, who is now Trump's health secretary.
“Vote for the Democratic Party. Stop Donald Trump, a man who encourages racial and religious discrimination and sexism,” Jackson says in the ad, casting the race as a chance to undermine the Republican president and throwing in "Pulp Fiction" references for good measure. “We have to channel the great vengeance and fury we have for this administration into votes at the ballot box.”
Democrats tried a similar tactic last week in their failed bid for the open seat of Kansas' Mike Pompeo, arguing a win in that conservative district would prove just how eager Americans are to end Trump and fellow Republicans’ control of Washington.
Washington Democrats, however, put essentially no resources into the race. By contrast, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee staffers are on the ground in Georgia, and supporters have given top Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff  $8 million-plus, with 80 percent of the money coming from outside the state. 
Republicans have held the suburban Atlanta seat for nearly four decades. However, Democrats saw an opening for an upset after Trump last year narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in that district, while Price won with 61 percent of the vote.
Democrats also see a win as a catalyst for them in the 2018 midterm elections, though Republicans would still have a roughly 44-seat majority in the House and a four-seat advantage in the Senate.
The race Tuesday features 18 candidates -- 11 Republicans, five Democrats and two independents. To outright take the so-called “jungle primary,” the winner must get more than 50 percent of the vote. If not, the leader would face the second-place finisher in a runoff.
Ossoff is expected to get the most votes but not the majority, likely sending him and one of the Republican candidates to the June 20 runoff.
Trump and other Washington Republicans have gotten into the act -- a clear indication of their desire to keep the seat and blunt any momentum toward a possible 2018 Democratic comeback.
“The super Liberal Democrat in the Georgia Congressioal (sic) race tomorrow wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!,” Trump tweeted Monday.
He also tweeted Sunday: “The recent Kansas election (Congress) was a really big media event, until the Republicans won. Now they play the same game with Georgia-BAD!”
Republican field staffers also have been dispatched to Georgia. A GOP political action committee backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has spent more than $2 million attacking Ossoff.
In addition, the amount of money going to Ossoff is also a liability.
"I don't care what party you're from," said Marty Aftewicz, a 66-year-old Republican voter from Marietta. "If the money's coming from outside the district, it's dirty. … Anyone raising that much outside money can't represent me."
Republicans have also run a barrage of campaign ads trying to tie the 30-year-old Ossoff to House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and portray him as too sophomoric and inexperienced to govern.
The Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, for instance, is running ads showing him pretending to be “Star Wars” character Han Solo while attending Georgetown University.
"Jon is being bankrolled by the most extreme liberals,” said Karen Handel, a former secretary of state and one of Ossoff's Republican challengers. “No one is naive enough to think that he will not be beholden to those who are bankrolling him."
Ossoff, nevertheless, pledges to be an "independent voice" in Congress. And he defends his campaign as a grassroots success powered by small and medium donors.
Ossoff is a former staffer to Rep. Hank Johnson and intern for civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrats now supporting Ossoff in the race.
Though he could get the most votes Tuesday, national Republicans think he would lose in June to Handel or fellow GOP candidates Bob Gray, a technology executive, or Dan Moody or Judson Hill, former state senators.
Handel vows to work with Trump on common-ground issues but says her job is to “be a voice for people of the 6th District."
Gray says he would be a "willing partner" in the effort to fulfill Trump’s legislative agenda.

Tax Day Cartoons

Trump blasts Tax Day protests, says 'election is over!'

President Trump on Sunday criticized the weekend protests against his presidency and those demanding the release of his tax returns, suggesting deep-pocked opponents “paid” for them and saying the 2016 presidential “election is over.”

At least 20 people were arrested Saturday at a park in Berkley, Calif., when attendees of a pro-Trump and an anti-Trump rally clashed.
Police in riot gear confiscated sticks, knives and fireworks that were being hurled in the melee, after failed efforts to separate the events with makeshift fencing.
“Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” Trump tweeted Sunday.
The anti-Trump rally was one of about 150 across the country on Saturday to criticize the president’s policies and demand that he release his full IRS returns.

• Police arrest at least 20 as protesters clash at pro-Trump rally in Berkeley

• Tax March turns into demand for Trump's IRS filings; 20 reported arrests

• Tax Day protests: Anti-Trump marches planned nationwide to demand tax returns

Other events took place without major incidents in such U.S. cities as Chicago, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and outside of Trump’s south Florida resort home, Mar-a-Lago.
Many of the events, on Tax Day, the deadline for hundreds of millions of Americans to file their IRS returns, were organized by the group TaxMarch.org, whose executive committee includes a former Occupy Wall Street protester.
Others helping organize the events Saturday included labor unions and activist groups such as MoveOn.org and Common Cause.
“I did what was an almost an impossible thing to do for a Republican-easily won the Electoral College! Now Tax Returns are brought up again?” Trump also tweeted Sunday.
That Trump will cave to the pressure and release his full tax returns appears unlikely, considering the president has said he won’t amid an ongoing IRS audit and the White House saying in January that he will not.

DHS' Kelly defends more ICE, border hires; says illegal immigrants must be 'dealt with'

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly made clear Sunday that President Trump is unwavering in his commitments to close U.S. borders to illegal immigrants and remove those already in the county illegally but refuted the idea that the administration is assembling a so-called deportation force.
Kelly acknowledged the possibility of hiring as many as 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and thousands more border patrol agents but said the bolstered effort is a “law enforcement force.”
“There are a huge number, as you know, of illegal aliens or undocumented individuals that have to be dealt with in one way or another,” Kelly told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Most estimates show the country’s illegal immigrant population at about 11 million.
From the first day of his successful White House campaign, Trump has vowed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country, particularly criminals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. In addition, Trump vowed to build a security wall along that border and has remained steadfast on the point amid criticism that he’s flip-flopping on other key campaign issues such as supporting NATO and whether removing Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime is a top priority.
Kelly’s comments followed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' visit to the southern border last week. Sessions told Fox News again Saturday that the border is closed to illegal immigrants.
“This border is not open,” he said on Fox’s “Justice with Jeanine” show. “If you come to America, come lawfully. Don’t come unlawfully.”
Like Kelly, Sessions also made clear that stopping illegal immigration is only part of the solution and that removing people here unlawfully -- including those protected from deportation by so-called sanctuary cities -- is also a priority.
Sessions said he’s hiring 125 new immigration judges, which could improve delays in the legal process for deportation.
The former Alabama senator also said removing immigrants connected to gangs such as MS-13 remain a priority.
“We are going after them,” said Sessions, who also attributed record lows in illegal border crossings to Trump’s election victory and his stern commitment to keeping campaign promises on immigration.
Kelly on Sunday also argued the country’s illegal immigration problem goes beyond enforcement and called on Congress for legislative solutions.
“We have to straighten this out,” he said. “And I place that squarely on the United States Congress. It's a hugely complex series of laws, and I engage the Hill quite a bit and get an earful about what I should do and what I shouldn't do. But it all comes down to the law. … I would hope that the Congress fixes a lot of these problems.”

Will Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recuse himself on his first day on the job?

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s first day on the high court’s bench is likely to be a T.S. Eliot special: All whimper, no bang.
Gorsuch’s first time sitting with the Supreme Court as the newly-installed Associate Justice on Monday morning is set to include hearing a trio of cases, none of which are likely to grab any major headlines. However, that’s not to say there won’t be anything worth watching for (or, rather, listening for – as the Supreme Court famously does not allow cameras in the courtroom).
Perhaps the case featuring the most intrigue is “Town of Chester, New York v. Laroe Estates” – but not due to the facts of the case; instead all eyes will be on Gorsuch to see if he recuses himself due to the presence of Neal Katyal. Katyal, a former Obama administration acting solicitor general who is set to argue for Chester, wrote the New York Times op-ed “Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch” after President Trump nominated Gorsuch, and helped introduce Gorsuch during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At one point, Gorsuch referred to Katyal as “my friend.”
There are no rules on when or if a justice must recuse himself, however, The National Law Journal writes the standard procedure for doing so is simple: the judge will get up and leave. Gorsuch recused himself in more than 1,000 cases as a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court, so there would certainly be a precedent if he holds himself to a high standard.
The crux of “Chester v. Laroe” itself revolves around a dispute involving the interpretation of Article III of the Constitution as it relates to participating in a lawsuit.
Gorsuch and his eight fellow justices are also scheduled to hear two other cases Monday.
“Perry v. Merit Systems Protection Board” asks whether a Protection Board decision decided on jurisdictional grounds in a case involving both local and federal claims must be reviewed in the U.S. Court of Appeals or can be heard in district court on appeal.
“California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities, Inc.” asks a question about the timeliness of filing an individual lawsuit if the suit had been previously litigated as a class action.

Pence, speaking near the DMZ, delivers strong message to North Korea

Vice President Pence warned North Korea Monday the “era of strategic patience is over,” expressing impatience with the speed and willingness of the regime to ending its nuclear weapons program.
Pence, speaking near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, said President Trump is hopeful that China will use its “extraordinary levers” to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its weapons.
"But the era of strategic patience is over," Pence said. "President Trump has made it clear that the patience of the United States and our allies in this region has run out and we want to see change. We want to see North Korea abandon its reckless path of the development of nuclear weapons, and also its continual use and testing of ballistic missiles is unacceptable."
Pence called North Korea’s failed missile launch “a provocation.” He said the U.S. and its allies will achieve its objectives through “peaceable means or ultimately by whatever means are necessary” to protect Seoul and stabilize the region.
Pence’s remarks come amid heightened tensions and heated rhetoric on the Korean Peninsula. While, the North did not conduct a nuclear test, the chance that they were going to escalated the U.S. response ahead of Pence’s 10-day tour of Asia. Pence also visited U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
"This morning's provocation from the North is just the latest reminder of the risks each one of you face every day in the defense of the freedom of the people of South Korea and the defense of America in this part of the world," Pence said. "Your willingness to step forward, to serve, to stand firm without fear, inspires the nation and inspires the world."
Deputy national security adviser K.T. MacFarland told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that North Korea was a problem for everybody in the region, including China – the North’s strongest ally.
"North Korea is a liability to everybody and it's a threat not just to the United States, not just to South Korea, not just to Japan, not just to Russia, but it's actually a threat to China as well.”
H.R. McMaster, Trump’s top national security adviser, told ABC’s “This Week” the U.S. would rely on its allies as well as Chinese leadership to solve the issues with North Korea.
McMaster cited Trump's recent decision to order missile strikes in Syria after a chemical attack blamed on the Assad government as a sign that the president "is clearly comfortable making tough decisions." But at the same time, McMaster said, "it's time for us to undertake all actions we can, short of a military option, to try to resolve this peacefully."
A North Korean missile exploded during launch on Sunday, U.S. and South Korean officials said. The high-profile failure came as the North tried to showcase its nuclear and missile capabilities around the birth anniversary of the North's late founder and as a U.S. aircraft carrier neared the Korean Peninsula.

Funny Easter Bunny Cartoons 2017