Western Democrats spearhead Trump resistance

[flamingdem]

Western Democrats spearhead Trump resistance

The party's center of gravity may be moving away from the East.

HELENA, Mont. — After eight years of watching Democrats hemorrhage state and local offices, a collection of ambitious Western pols is attempting to muscle into Democratic Party politics and move its center of gravity away from the East Coast.

They've seen two decades of presidential nominees who hail from east of the Mississippi River. Now they are intent on taking the lead against the Trump administration policy agenda and setting the terms for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

"This is where the action is, where the action can be, and where the action has to be," said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, one of the White House’s most prominent critics and a leading defender of a health care system under which eight Western states have expanded Medicaid. "Nationally [and] in D.C., the party’s been flummoxed by the combined effects of gerrymandering and the massive accident of democracy named President Donald Trump."

Inslee, whose stature is rising within the national party as his state repeatedly challenges Trump’s travel bans in court, joins a handful of other West Coast and Mountain West Democrats who are suddenly drawing mention as presidential prospects in 2020. Among them: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, California Sen. Kamala Harris, and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley.

Their rise appears to herald a shift in a party that has regularly promoted Westerners to positions of power within Congress, but not once nominated one for the presidency from west of the Rockies.

One reason is that the West Coast is one of the few remaining pockets of Democratic strength outside the Northeast. Nearly a third of Democratic governors are now from Western states, and California and Oregon are two of just six states nationwide where Democrats have unified control of the governorship and both branches of the state legislature.

"The center of the Democratic Party — the heart and soul — has moved to the West, there’s no question about it. In the arena of younger political leaders, in the arena of fundraising, and in the arena of political organizing," said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, one of just five Western Democrats to run for president since 1980. “The Democratic base of younger, minority, entrepreneurial, civil rights-oriented electorate has dramatically shifted West."

[Wounded Bear]

1. Look to the west...

our salvation lives there.

[flamingdem]

2. Go West young Democrats!

[Wounded Bear]

3. Was going to go there, but...

we actually need Eastern Dems to stay home and help flip their districts. This is about leadership as much as about voting or moving. Increasing voter bases on the West Coast won't win us the electoral college.

For 2018, we need rust belt dems to get out and vote. I think there are a couple of red districts in my state that might flip.

Keep the faith and work hard.

[flamingdem]

4. True. Here in California we call other states before elections

since we're okay here vote-wise. The Eastern Dems are critical of course