Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, accompanied by Congressional Democrats, speaks in Berryville, Virginia on July 24 to unveil their new agenda. | Cliff Owen/AP Photo Democrats sidestep social issues in new economic push

BERRYVILLE, VA. — Congressional Democratic leaders descended on this rural Virginia town Monday to unveil a progressive economic package they say can win back working-class voters next November, even in red states.

And noticeably missing, amid the talk of raising wages and reining in corporate interests, were the left-leaning stances on social issues that help form the backbone of the party, such as immigration, abortion and LGBT rights.


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed that his party’s red-state incumbents would largely embrace the new agenda — which, he acknowledged, purposefully avoids the social issues that have already opened a rift this year between the party’s liberal base and centrist bloc.

“There is not that divide on economic issues,” Schumer told reporters as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose anti-corporate agenda influenced Democrats’ new economic strategy, worked a small but adoring crowd in a county that went for Donald Trump by more than 55 percent last year.

“The focus starts on economic issues,” Schumer continued. “That’s where the American people are hurting. That’s what we most felt was missing in the past in the last several elections.”

The streamlined economic focus, if successful, offers a dual benefit for Democrats: First, it could appeal to center-right voters who may be open to Democrats’ populist economic pitch but turned off by their liberal social plank. Second, by focusing on creating jobs and increasing wages, Democrats can avoid, at least for now, some of the tough family conversations on issues like abortion and immigration that have lately magnified simmering party divisions.

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Still, the decision to downplay social issues is remarkable for a party that has largely defined itself in recent years by aggressively advocating for abortion access, expanding rights for LGBT Americans and providing citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Republicans jeered their opponents for offering an agenda that had some echoes of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, predicting a focus on policing corporate mergers in the airline and telecom industries would fall flat with voters in the red and purple states where Democrats have to win to claw back power in 2018.

The GOP also mocked the similarity of Democrats’ “Better Deal” to Speaker Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda for his party and the “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza” tagline of Papa John’s Pizza. Protesters on the sidelines in Berryville silently hoisted Papa John’s boxes with an image, created by the conservative opposition group America Rising, that lampooned House Democrats for reelecting Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Bob Salera predicted in a statement that red state Democrats up for reelection next year would be “in for a shock” if Schumer, Pelosi and Warren make good on their vow to travel around the country to sell “the same failed policies and same failed leaders that have already been rejected time and again.”

The Democrats who gathered in Berryville countered that their economic agenda, the product of months of polling and internal meetings, would play well in the heartland. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said that working-class voters care about corporate consolidation “when it starts hitting them in the pocketbook.”

Republicans “shouldn’t be so cocky about it,” she told POLITICO, “when maybe they need to look back at history, at Teddy Roosevelt.”

Those on the dais for Monday’s rollout notably included none of the 10 Senate Democratic incumbents who face reelection next year in states Trump turned red, although Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who represents a GOP-leaning district, was in attendance. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a member of Democratic leadership who Republicans are fighting hard to topple next year, was invited to the event but declined because of a scheduling conflict.

Manchin supports the tax, trade and expanded broadband elements of the agenda, spokesman Jonathan Kott said. He and 16 fellow Senate Democrats have not signed on to the $15 minimum wage bill that Pelosi has vowed to pass quickly if her party takes the House next year.

The chairman of Senate Democrats’ 2018 campaign arm, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, said in an interview that Democrats had achieved “overwhelming consensus” on the agenda, which was crafted through outreach in “places Trump won as well as those he didn’t.”

“Members will emphasize the parts that they think are most focused on the needs of their states,” added Van Hollen.

But hours before Schumer and Pelosi unveiled their agenda, the network of Sen. Bernie Sanders — one of their party’s most popular leaders, despite officially being an independent — took a shot at them from the left.

Our Revolution, the outside group the Vermont independent formed after losing the Democratic presidential nomination to Clinton, announced a Tuesday event alongside more than a dozen other liberal groups petitioning Democratic leaders to back bills that “reflect the real concerns facing the American people.”

Among the legislation on the progressives’ wish list agenda are some of the same issues Democratic leaders sidestepped Monday: immigrant and abortion rights, as well as action on climate change and a tax on Wall Street transactions.

Schumer, when asked about the Our Revolution push, said Sanders had “great input” in Democrats’ agenda.

“What we’ve tried to do here is choose things that just about every Democrat can support but that really resonates with the American people,” Schumer told reporters. “And a lot of them are things Bernie Sanders campaigned on.”