House Democrats kicked off a three-day policy retreat on Wednesday by presenting themselves — despite their minority status — as champions for the majority of voters who did not vote for President Trump.

“President Trump is exactly who we thought he is: incompetent and in some cases, in terms of our national security, dangerous,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “As long as that president continues down this path, there is nothing Democrats can work with him on.”

The annual issues conference, House Democrats’ first with control of neither Congress nor the White House since 2006, unfolded at a waterfront hotel in Pelosi’s native Baltimore. Members of Congress were set to hear from a series of authors, labor organizers, think tankers and fellow politicians about why they had lost the 2016 election. Other sessions would home in on how to oppose Trump with an agenda of their own.

“We’ve got to have some honest conversations,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who rang warning bells about how her party was on track to lose blue states in the Midwest.

[I said Clinton was in trouble with the voters I represent. Democrats didn’t listen.]

: Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) delivers remarks while attending an opening news conference during the House Democratic caucus "Issues Conference" on February 8, 2017 in Baltimore, Md. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)

“We’ll fight Trump where we gotta fight him, press back where we gotta press back, but then we gotta keep pivoting to what our vision for the country is,” said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who mounted a failed bid against Pelosi for minority leader after the 2016 defeat. “I think people are gonna get whiplash with Trump.”

Rank-and-file Democrats volunteered a number of ideas to resist Trump, capitalizing on the energy being seen across the country from liberal activists and others at congressional town halls, lawmakers’ offices and airports after Trump’s travel ban was issued. They want to think about new ways to communicate, given Trump’s un­or­tho­dox tweets, focus on changes to the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial regulations. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), for instance, believes Trump’s “broken promises” will add up.

“It’s great, it’s exhilarating, but I realized just now that the last three weekends, I’ve spoken at rallies of 10,000 people or more,” Dingell said. “And none of them had been organized the week before.”

Progressive groups are riding so high, in fact, that they condemned the fact that a representative of the centrist group Third Way has a speaking slot at the retreat on Wednesday night.

This week’s Democratic retreat will be the 15th under Pelosi and the second after an election in which the party gained seats but fell short of taking back the House. In 2012, Democrats increased their numbers by eight, but were hindered by a map that gerrymandered most of the Midwest, as well as North Carolina and Virginia, in favor of Republicans. In 2016, they gained six seats, putting them about where they were after the party’s landslide 2010 defeat.

On Thursday, members will hear preliminary findings of a “red team”-style review of the party’s House campaign arm after the underwhelming 2016 election results. House leaders, including Pelosi, had predicted double-digit gains and raised the possibility that Democrats could win the 30 seats they needed to reclaim the majority. Instead, their half-dozen wins were largely because of court-ordered redistricting.

“It’s just an honest assessment of what we do well, and what we need to work on, simple as that,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who is leading the review and declined to discuss the findings in detail.

Two people familiar with the preliminary report but not authorized to comment on it expect the review to be critical of some Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee practices, including some long-standing relationships with outside consultants. Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), the DCCC’s chairman, is scheduled to follow that presentation with an outline of the committee’s plans for 2018, including encouraging signs in candidate recruiting.

“They’re coming out of the woodwork,” Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), the committee’s recruiting chairman, said Tuesday. One prized target who had fended off Democratic recruiters during the 2016 cycle, he said, called him days after the election and said, in his words, that “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” from a 2018 run.

But the hard memory of Trump’s win — which few Democrats saw coming — has lasted, and influenced how Democrats are thinking about opposing a president who polls poorly across the country but stronger in swing seats.

“He tweets,” said Rep. Cedric L Richmond (D-La.), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Others tweet back at him. I don’t think there are rules of engagement like there used to be. People need to know we’re hearing them, and that we’re working on the issues that are important to them, not the issues that are polling well.”

Swalwell called Trump “masterful at throwing a hundred balls in a hundred directions,” said he’d like to see Democrats concentrate on defending Obama-era milestones such as the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank.

He urged independent investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia, the crafting of a forward-looking economic message and holding Trump responsible for his campaign promises.

“I think this stuff adds up,” said Swalwell, who chairs a group of younger Democratic lawmakers called the Future Forum. “He may have promised 1,200 Carrier jobs and delivered 800; he may have promised 4 percent GDP [growth] and it’s around 2 percent. I think just kind of going at those individually may not resonate as much with folks, but . . . those broken promises will add up, and I think that may be the undoing.”

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), a freshman who represents much of Prince George’s County, said that he and his colleagues were looking for buy-in on ideas they could take back home, like workforce training.

“Probably the most important thing is coming out with a proactive, positive agenda,” Brown said. “My hope is that we come out of it with a clear vision and an agenda, and a set of action items.”

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