The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Democrats ready to fight Trump
Earlier pledge to look for common ground reversed.
BALTIMORE — House Democratic leaders on Wednesday abandoned earlier assertions that they would look for some areas of compromise with President Donald Trump and insisted they will fight him at every turn.
“As long as the president continues down this path, there is nothing Democrats can work with him on,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference, a reversal from the initial days of Trump’s administration, when she repeatedly said they would look for common ground where they could find it.
“Fighting, love that word,” she said at the opening of the Democrats’ annual retreat here.
House Democrats have appeared split in recent weeks about whether they should fight Trump on everything — as did Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate on former President Barack Obama’s agenda — or try to work with Trump on some issues in an attempt to win back more conservative Democratic voters who had abandoned the party and voted Republican in the presidential election.
Less than three weeks into Trump’s presidency, New York Rep. Joe Crowley, the chairman of the Democratic conference, said he has never seen his party so unified in a single goal: to fight Trump and congressional Republicans.
“The fight before us, though, is a difficult one, the list is long,” Crowley said. “These are the fights that will define generations to come and quite frankly determine the fate of our country.”
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, piled on.
“No one in America ought to think that this party is in retreat,” Hoyer said, noting that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump.
In reality, Democrats have little leverage to assert their will in a House, where the majority Republicans have all the power. That’s unlike the Senate, where minority Democrats can slow nominees and block legislation.
The leaders said they will continue to get the message out to voters about what they feel Trump is doing wrong, including his executive order temporarily banning refugees and entry to the U.S. from seven majority-Muslim countries and Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obama’s health care law. Pelosi noted large protests around the country and in airports after the ban was imposed.
“The American people are getting the message. We have to make sure they know on a day-to-day basis how this affects their daily lives,” she said.
At the three-day retreat, Democrats will attend sessions titled “Listen, Talk and Tweet to Seniors,” “A 2016 Review: What Role Did Guns Play?” and “Rumors, Truth and Reality: Political Misinformation in the Modern Day.”
On Thursday, members had the option of sitting in on one of several sessions aimed at winning back working-class and middle-class voters, many of whom supported Trump in the election. Leaders have repeatedly emphasized that focus going forward.