Congress

Centrist group to Dems: Reject radical staff, embrace patriotism

Published

2 years ago

March 2, 2025

When several dozen Democratic political operatives and elected officials gathered at a tony resort off the Potomac River last month, frustration boiled over at the left wing of their party.

Democrats had become too obsessed with “ideological purity tests” and should push back “against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging,” according to a document of takeaways from the gathering produced by the center-left group Third Way and obtained by Blue Light News.

The group of moderate Democratic consultants, campaign staffers, elected officials and party leaders who gathered in Loudoun County, Virginia for a day-and-a-half retreat, where they plotted their party’s comeback, searched for why the party lost in November — and what to do about it. Much of what they focused their ire on centered on the kind of identity politics that they believed lost them races up and down the ballot.

One of the key ways to win back the trust of the working class, some gathered there argued, was to “reduce far-left influence and infrastructure” on the party, according to the takeaways document. That included building a more moderate campaign infrastructure and talent pipeline, pushing “back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging,” and refusing to participate in “far-left candidate questionnaires” and “forums that create ideological purity tests.”

The gathering resulted in five pages of takeaways, a document Blue Light News obtained from one of the participants. (Not all attendees endorsed each point, and the document — and Third Way — kept the identities of participants private.)

“In the wake of this election, where it became so evident that the things that the left was doing and saying deeply hurt [Kamala] Harris and down-ballot Democrats, a lot of people are looking to us, not just Third Way, but the moderates in the party, and saying, ‘We got to do it your way, because the other way ain’t working,’” said Third Way’s Matt Bennett, who helped organize the February retreat.

The document itself is perhaps one of the most comprehensive and sweeping of its kind following the election — both in its analysis of what went wrong and how to fix it.

The retreat’s conversation centered on the party’s disconnect with the working class. Among the causes of that detachment: weak messaging and communication, failure to prioritize economic concerns, overemphasis on identity politics, allowing the far left to define the party, and attachment to unpopular institutions such as academia, media and government bureaucracy.

If Trump’s first term energized the party’s progressives, there are early signs his second term is doing the same for Democratic moderates.

The party chose the battleground-state moderate Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan to deliver its response to Trump’s address to Congress and the nation on Tuesday. Slotkin outperformed Harris by more than a full percentage point in all but 28 of the state’s 83 counties, according to a Detroit Newsanalysis.

Those gathered then laid out 20 solutions for how Democrats can regain working-class trust and reconnect with them culturally.

Among their takeaways:

The party should “embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery.”

Candidates should “get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches).”

The party needs to “own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities and commit to improving local government.”

The party, many of those gathered also argued, needs to “develop a stronger, more relatable Democratic media presence (podcasts, social media, sports broadcasting).”
Bennett said that, with the meeting coming just three months after the election, “we didn’t expect to have a lot of answers about exactly what the Democratic offer to the working class on the economy ought to be going forward. We were still kind of picking through the rubble here.”

Bennett added, “I think what we discussed there on economic issues was the profound disconnect that we saw between the way that leading Democrats were talking about the economy and the way that people were actually experiencing it.”

Congress

Democrats drop $5M into Kansas Senate race

Published

3 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Democrats’ top super PAC is pushing into Kansas.

The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC is launching a $5 million statewide television ad blitz starting Saturday through Election Day — the latest sign that Democrats believe the Senate map is shifting onto red turf.

SMP had signaled in recent days it could get involved in the race, telling Blue Light News late last month it was “actively thinking” about whether to wade into the state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in nearly a century but where Adam Hamilton narrowly leads GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in recent polls. Internal SMP polling that found an increasingly competitive race factored into the group’s decision to spend. It will also run digital ads.

“The gap is closing in Kansas,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring families understand Marshall’s real record of making health care and basic goods more expensive for working Kansans.”

Republicans are scrambling to shore up Marshall. Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC aligned with Republican leadership, has booked over $10 million in ads through Election Day in the state, per ad tracking firm AdImpact.

SMP’s first ad attacks Marshall for joining Senate Republicans in voting to table a Democratic-led amendment last year to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Senate later approved legislation to release the files by unanimous consent. It’s the latest in a slate of ads from Democrats hitting their Republican rivals over the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Marshall’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats’ plunge into the state comes as the midterm battle map is undergoing a major realignment. Georgia and North Carolina — primed to be two of the cycle’s premiere battlegrounds — are tilting left to the point where national Republicans are retracting spending in both states and Democrats are starting to follow suit, freeing funds on both sides to shift elsewhere.

Republicans are racing to reinforce incumbents across what was once safer red turf. SLF has also pledged $5 million to bolster Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

Democrats, meanwhile, are starting to spend more in red states. SMP has dropped over $2 million on digital ads in Texas. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.

Congress

House Democratic campaign arm says it needs $17 million, and fast

Published

3 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is begging for resources, and setting a hard deadline for donors to give $17 million in order to compete in a handful of districts that Republicans carried easily in 2024.

DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said the committee needs the cash influx by Oct. 22 in order to “to take advantage of the opportunities we have” outside of the core battlefield, according to a memo shared with donors on Friday and obtained by POLITICO.

If they don’t pony up, Merz warns, the party “could be leaving winnable races on the table.”

Democrats have been clear that they have a fundraising disadvantage this cycle, but they have so far been reluctant to place a specific dollar amount on their needs, making the DCCC’s memo Friday a particularly surprising outlier.

“Here’s the tough reality though: the Republican ecosystem has amassed a massive war chest that is significantly greater than ours and is spending it,” Merz says in the memo after arguing that the members of the committee “remain confident that we will win back the majority in 25 days.”

Specifically, Merz dedicates significant portions of the memo to four districts where the committee is desperate for more money in order to compete — all of which President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024:

— Florida’s 27th District (Trump +14.6)

— Nevada’s 2nd District (Trump +13.9)

— South Carolina’s 1st District (Trump +13)

— New York’s 21st District (Trump +20.7)

The fundraising disadvantage has created headaches for both House and Senate Democrats over where, exactly, to deploy the resources they do have.

The committee tells donors that their internal polling shows all of those races within reach, but that Republicans’ big cash advantages — especially in the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. — will make it harder to win those and other reach seats.

Merz also name drops a handful of other deep-red districts that are “worthy of additional investment in this environment,” including seats held by GOP Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee.

The NRCC was quick to mock the DCCC’s memo.

“No amount of money fixes candidates voters don’t want. These seats are staying red, and Republicans are on offense across the map,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.

Congress

Capitol agenda: How Warren could link arms with Trump’s GOP

Published

9 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Elizabeth Warren may get her clearest shot yet to take on corporate America next year — thanks to the once unthinkable help of Republicans.

The Massachusetts Democrat is poised to chair Senate Banking if the party takes back the chamber. And while the progressive has long been a boogeyman to corporate America, lobbyists worry she’ll have powerful backup thanks to the surge of populist Republicans eager to take big swings at Wall Street and Big Tech.

One longtime financial industry lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Warren “has a streak that is not just wanting to be a progressive gadfly, but to actually reach across the aisle to push for policy ideas.” There is “absolutely” reason for concern, the person said.

Atop the panel, Warren would also have a strong position to shape the 2028 presidential debates on both sides.

“There’s very little doubt that the agenda of the Senate Banking Committee is going to overlap substantially with the core issues that the candidates in the 2028 election cycle are going to be grappling with,” said Dennis Kelleher, the outgoing leader of the progressive group Better Markets.

As Banking chair, Warren is expected to try to recruit Republicans in a crackdown on artificial intelligence — specifically restrictions on chip giant Nvidia’s exports to China, which already has some GOP support — and a follow-up of this year’s bipartisan housing law that sought to rein in private equity’s role in the market, according to people close to the senator.

Some of President Donald Trump’s own populist ideas, like credit card interest rate caps and limits on stock buybacks for defense contractors, would provide fertile ground for Warren.

But Trump would also likely be Warren’s biggest obstacle, as he’s been resistant to embrace policy overlaps with her. He’s also been resistant to any AI restrictions.

Warren’s approach also threatens to expose rifts between GOP populists who have been ascendent under Trump and more mainstream conservatives.

Asked about the possibility of a Chair Warren, Sen. Mike Rounds, a more moderate South Dakota Republican, said he doesn’t “think anything would get done except lots of investigations and lots of accusations.”

What else we’re watching:

— LAWMAKERS CLAMOR FOR GAO v. TRUMP — Lawmakers are desperate for a government watchdog to step up and help them in their fight against the Trump administration over control of federal cash. The independent Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this week that the White House illegally withheld more than $1 billion for education and health care research programs — the latest in more than a half-dozen such findings GAO has published since the start of Trump’s second term. But the agency has yet to use its unique power to take the president to court to challenge those “impoundments,” and lawmakers who are tired of the administration running roughshod over their funding prerogatives want GAO to act.

— MURPHY’S DEFENSE FUNDING ULTIMATUM — Democrats should not approve Pentagon funding or the annual defense policy bill if they control Congress next year unless those bills would hasten the end of the Iran war, Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Thursday. “We should make the end of the war a priority,” said the Foreign Relations Democrat who was returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Murphy also accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and officials of attempting a “cover-up” of the war’s damage and obscuring its true cost after he was denied entry on a base in Qatar. Given the damage to bases in the region, Murphy also told reporters that the U.S. should “reconsider its footprint” in the Middle East.

Jasper Goodman, Jennifer Scholtes and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.