BALTIMORE (AP) – House Democrats are united against President Donald Trump, but as they wrapped up a somewhat painful, inward-looking retreat on Friday, they are still trying to figure out how to turn that opposition into a winning strategy.
They agree that they need a stronger message about helping working-class Americans who propelled Trump to a surprising win and a better way to communicate that message, especially amid the daily cacophony that has so far characterized Trump’s presidency.
But they are still struggling with how to do that, exactly, and spent much of the three-day conference dissecting 2016’s difficult losses that caught them unaware. New York Rep. Joe Crowley, the Democratic caucus chairman and the organizer of the event, said that attendance was higher than usual as members are eager to figure out how to move forward.
“We’re still going through the seven stages of something,” Crowley said. “But we’re getting to the point though that we’re realizing, look, we have a role to play, and a meaningful one. The American people expect us to stand up and defend what we have accomplished, and express to them when and if we’re in power, what will we do to improve the lives of the average American.”
Part of the introspection was some early data from an upcoming report by New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who did an independent analysis looking at 127 races, isolating 350 data points for each race. He says what he found was that Democrats have been looking at some of the wrong things.