Politics

Trump appoints Keith Kellogg as Ukraine peace envoy

Published

2 years ago

November 28, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday named former national security aide and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as a special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, commissioning him to lead negotiations to end the war. In a statement, Trump said that Kellogg, who served as national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence…
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Politics

Democrats are still looking for a message, even if they win big on Tuesday

Published

3 hours ago

October 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats are poised for a good night next Tuesday. That doesn’t mean they’ve figured out how to win.

More than a dozen lawmakers, campaign operatives, strategists and pollsters warned in interviews that national Democrats risk drawing the wrong conclusions if they take back control of at least one chamber of Congress next week.

Those figures from across the party worry that the midterms, which have become a referendum on President Donald Trump, have done little to improve the Democratic Party’s brand. They caution that a favorable political environment has papered over persistent problems for a party still grappling with why it lost the 2024 presidential election. And they admit they are still sharply divided over what its message should be heading into 2028.

“Don’t confuse them losing with us winning,” said Morgan Jackson, the senior adviser to Democrat Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign in North Carolina. Cooper has consistently led in the polls by a wide margin in a state Trump won three times.

“This is not an affirmation of the Democratic Party in any which way,” said one veteran Democratic pollster working on Senate campaigns, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It is very much a rejection of Trump.”

The Democratic Party’s approval rating plummeted in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, and remains relatively weak. That’s even as voters tell pollsters they are more likely to trust Democrats than Republicans on several fronts, including addressing the cost of living, which voters consistently say is their top issue this cycle.

Democrats’ quest for a coherent, positive pitch to answer rising prices and perceived corruption in Washington has at times been stymied by infighting between the party’s progressive and moderate factions over the best way to respond to the Trump administration.

Democrats fought over whether to prolong government shutdowns to protest funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the slashing of health care subsidies in late 2025 and early 2026. They were quick to attack their own upon release of the Democratic National Committee’s formal autopsy on where the party went wrong in 2024.

But as Americans soured on Trump’s agenda and the Iran war drove up costs, Democrats zeroed in on a broad “costs, chaos and corruption” message that blamed the White House — without having to resolve their own internal tensions and disorder.

“When your opponent is destroying themselves,” said Matt Barron, a Democratic strategist who has done work across the rural Midwest and Rust Belt, “just get out of the way and let it happen.”

Nabbing wins in a midterm election with a historically unpopular president is one thing. Building a winning brand for a party that was soundly defeated at the polls just two years ago is another.

“If all you do is say the other people are terrible, that only gets you so far,” said Democratic donor Oliver Libby, who has advised Democratic House candidates Cait Conley in New York and Johnny Garcia in Texas this cycle. “You can have a minimum viable product of a midterm with criticism. You definitely don’t win a presidential year with just criticism.”

In a new Blue Light News Poll conducted by PF Global, more than half of Americans said if Republicans lose control of both the House and the Senate, it would be either because of Trump’s actions since he became president, or because Republicans have run weak campaigns. Just one in four said a Democrat-controlled Congress would be because the party had run a strong campaign.

“There are people who are going to vote in this election who are going to vote against Republicans,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist and adviser to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “That does not mean they are in love with Democrats. It just means they are voting against the people in charge.”

Democratic strategist Lis Smith, an architect of Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, said the Democratic candidates performing well in historically deep-red territory are the ones distancing themselves from the national party.

“That should tell party leaders something,” she said.

Smith helped found the moderate groups Majority Democrats and The Bench, and is advising Democratic Senate candidates like Adam Hamilton in Kansas, James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa — all of whom have taken on that tack.

In Kansas, Hamilton publicly asked former Vice President Kamala Harris to stay away from his campaign, and said he would vote against Chuck Schumer remaining the party’s leader in the Senate. In Texas, Talarico vowed to challenge the party’s “establishment” and “change the Democratic Party.” And in Iowa, Turek says he rarely thinks about the party, while Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state, has said he wants to end the two-party system altogether.

“The reality is that a lot of very average and even mediocre candidates get across the line in a wave election,” Smith said. “A wave can hide a lot of weaknesses, and so we need to be able to make sure that the party can survive when the wave recedes.”

Assuming Democrats take back control of at least one chamber of Congress next week, top party operatives see an opportunity for their side to deliver for voters who have wanted more checks on the Trump administration’s expansive use of executive power. But many caution that Democrats on Capitol Hill should avoid leaning too hard into an anti-Trump message next year, while others argue that the anti-corruption message will continue to galvanize the electorate.

“The thing that I would be concerned about, if you go from 2026 to 2028, is that people think that corruption, that elite control over our economy, is just a Trump issue,” said Bill Neidhardt, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and is now advising left-leaning Democratic candidate Will Lawrence and working to boost Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. “What they need to focus on is that corporate power, those billionaire elites who are dictating the terms of our economy, that’s what people are upset with.”

William Garcia, the co-chair of Wisconsin’s La Crosse County Democratic Party, has been canvassing extensively for his party in the state’s rural-heavy 3rd district, where voters swung toward Trump in recent years. Democrats are now trying to claw back that support.

“I think we’re going to have a great night on Nov. 3. And then all these Democrats are going to have to deliver on all of these things we’re talking about,” Garcia said. “If we get to the end of 2027 summer and we haven’t passed bills to make a substantial difference in people’s lives, that’s my biggest fear. We gotta deliver.”

Others acknowledge that voters may hold the party to a higher bar if they succeed in taking back control of both chambers of Congress — and they’ll be ready to punish Democrats in 2028 if they don’t follow through on their campaign promises to hold the Trump administration to account and bring down the cost of living.

It’s a slippery slope for a party that has historically struggled to convince voters that it is well equipped to handle the economy. In 2024, Trump persuaded the majority of voters they would be financially better off with him in the White House, while painting Democrats as a party more concerned with social issues.

“If we start getting back into a party that cares more about non-economic issues, then we haven’t learned the lesson,” warned Pete Giangreco, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on House, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns this cycle. “People just are going to keep hitting the change button until the economy starts working for them again.”

Samuel Benson and Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.

Politics

Josh Shapiro aims for a strong finish in a campaign with 2028 implications

Published

9 hours ago

October 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

POCONO RACEWAY, Pennsylvania — High up in the starting stand of a famed race track, Josh Shapiro waves a black-and-white checkered flag with an unmistakeable meaning: It’s over.

The metaphor isn’t entirely accurate.

“We may have a lead, but you’re coming down this home stretch. People are nipping at your heels,” the Pennsylvania governor told Blue Light News. “You’ve got to run hard.”

Shapiro, the potential 2028 contender and 2024 veepstakes short-lister, does have reasons to be optimistic — and careful.

He’s threatening a double-digit blowout over Stacy Garrity, a candidate backed by President Donald Trump, in the most important swing state in the nation.

He’s also putting his coattails to the test.

None of the other potential 2028 Democratic candidates has more at stake in their own backyard on Tuesday than Shapiro. He doesn’t have California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s map-breaking Proposition 50, designed to beat back the GOP redistricting, nor his platinum email list. He doesn’t have Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s billions or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s deep bench of donors or former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s large map or the red-state credentials of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

Shapiro is on the brink of flipping four hotly contested congressional seats — and guaranteeing Democrats the House. Pennsylvania Democrats could also take control of the state Senate, including some heavily gerrymandered seats, giving the party a governing trifecta for the first time since 1992.

“I’m not thinking about this as a victory for me,” he told Blue Light News during a swing through the state. “I’m thinking about this as a victory for our country.”

All of which paves the way for him to pass a $15 minimum wage and a raft of other measures that could buttress a 2028 presidential bid.

Shapiro is very much following the Ron DeSantis theory of a presidential primary campaign: demonstrate dominance at home before branching out nationally — a strategy, it should be noted, that didn’t pay off for the Florida governor.

“I think what really hurt DeSantis was that he decided he wasn’t going to announce until after his legislative session, and that was May,” political strategist David Axelrod said. “Time is at a premium. If that’s his plan, that would be a miscalculation.”

Will we see him venture beyond Pennsylvania’s boundaries before the end of the year?

“I don’t know what my plans are,” Shapiro said.

The day had the feeling of both an ending of one campaign and the beginning of another. Even as he urged a midday audience of about 100 people to vote for Paige Cognetti, the Scranton mayor running against Rep. Rob Bresnahan, and Brian Wrightson, the state Senate candidate challenging Sen. Rosemary Brown, he is nationalizing his rhetoric.

“Don’t let Trump take away your hopefulness,” he told people gathered at East Stroudsburg University. “Don’t let him make you feel pessimistic. Don’t let him feel like change can’t come or that we have to look in the rearview mirror for answers. The answers are always straight ahead.”

Then there’s his set piece about the “American dream slipping away.”

He’s broadening out his message beyond the commonwealth.

“I think the work I do here in Pennsylvania, the confidence I give them about their government here can hopefully restore some of their faith in democracy, and I want in our democracy, and I want them to feel like they’ve got power to be able to shape the future of that American dream,” Shapiro told us.

A few hours later, Shapiro materializes inside Salerno’s, a tavern in Old Forge known for its American cheese-topped pizza. He sets a room in which patrons already have had a few too many Rolling Rocks and pumpkin martinis.

On the televisions, his own ad for Wrightson is playing on TV. He grips and grins and backslaps his way through the room.

At the end of the bar, he picks up five pizzas for the road, ducks out the door and boards his bus for another Cognetti rally.

Shapiro’s gubernatorial reelect isn’t drawing the buzz of some of the more razor’s-edge, online Senate races in the waning days of election season. But his project is no less remarkable.

“If we can win enough seats here in Pennsylvania to change the balance of power in Washington and be a check on Donald Trump, then we can both hold the president accountable and get stuff done in Washington,” Shapiro says. “Likewise, here in Pennsylvania, if we can win a trifecta for the first time since Bill Clinton’s election, I can raise wages almost immediately for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who are at or below minimum wage and raise wages for others. That’s a concrete thing that we can accomplish.”

At the raceway, he has just finished cutting a video racing around the Pocono Raceway’s Tricky Triangle when he flashes a grin.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says, inviting Blue Light News to the starting stand above the storied three-turn NASCAR track in the Pocono foothills.

Up the stairs, the burnt-orange fall foliage dances on the Pennsylvania horizon. It’s a vantage point Shapiro, as a NASCAR fan, has taken in many times.

Despite the apt setting, he deflects when asked if he’s ready to announce the launch of his campaign.

“If this is a metaphor,” he says, “it’s for finishing the race strong.”

There is just one wrinkle: Before he brandished the black-and-white flag, he picked up a green one, waving it vigorously.

“I think you mis-saw that,” Shapiro said with a smile. “I was waving a checkered flag to finish the governor’s race.”

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