California Gov. Gavin Newsom noted that Democrats in Washington, D.C., have been gripped with national attention-grabbing recent events, from the Mueller testimony to the House Squad. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images politics Democratic governors sound alarm on Trump reelection Outside the Beltway there are worries the party is losing control of its message and forgetting the lessons of 2018.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Washington Democrats keep talking about the "Squad" and impeachment.

Democrats outside the Beltway wish they'd remember how the party retook the House and gained ground in state capitals last year with a rigorous focus on health care and the economy.


With all the infighting and intraparty intrigue in recent weeks — most recently over the prospect of impeaching the president — many Democrats in the states are beginning to worry the party is losing its grip on its message, potentially paving the way to Donald Trump’s reelection.

The anxiety reverberated far from Washington this week, as the nation’s governors gathered here for their annual summer meeting.

“Nationally, the focus has been on last week’s hearings and quote-unquote oversight, the question of impeachment, the effectiveness of Trump to make it about … the four [congresswomen who constitute the “squad”],” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday. “That’s been the zeitgeist, and so Trump being the master of deflection and distraction … it’s been hard for the Democrats to sort of hold that message.”

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak — the governor of an early primary state and a potential battleground in the general election — said that going into 2020, his constituents “want to look forward, and how are we going to make their lives better.”

And Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, when asked if impeachment talks are beneficial for Democrats politically, said, “We should be focused on what Americans care about and what Oregonians, for me, care about, right? Making sure we have good quality jobs, that we have an education system we can be proud of and that everyone in the state has access to health care. … We saw in 2018 that when we talked about health care, we won, and we won handily. I mean, we kicked their butts.”

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For Democrats attempting to focus the electorate’s attention on health care and economic positions popular with general election voters, a second round of presidential primary debates next week is likely to add to their frustration. The party’s sprawling field of presidential candidates are outbidding each other with increasingly liberal positions on impeachment, criminal justice and immigration that are being demanded by the party’s base.

In the run-up to the debates in her state, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer cautioned that Democrats’ “strength is on the dinner-table issues.” The party’s presidential candidates, she said, “should stay focused, I think, on solutions that really improve people’s lives.”

She said, “In this environment, with all the social media and all the stuff coming out of Washington, D.C., it’s so easy to get distracted by the tweet of the day.”

For several days at the National Governors Association meeting, Democratic and Republican governors touted bipartisan work in the states on the economy and other issues, while Democrats labored to keep a heavy focus on health care. But the fallout from special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony on Russian interference in the 2016 election hung heavily over the proceedings.

Looking at Washington, a top adviser to one Democratic governor said, “The feeling here is that everybody just needs to get on the same fucking page.”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who first called two years ago for Trump’s impeachment, said in an interview that, for tactical reasons, he is no longer certain if Democrats should pursue impeachment.

“I think that we’re now a year and a quarter away from the general election, and so I think there is a question, could you actually accomplish the goal of removing the president by impeachment before he would be removed by virtue of the election,” Pritzker said. “It’s a question of timing: How long would that take, how effective would that be?”

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Trump’s public approval rating remains relatively low, and most Democratic governors remain confident that once the primary consolidates around a handful of candidates, it will present a more unified vision.

Democratic governors are not in lockstep — ideologically or on impeachment. Their degrees of concern about the state of the party's messaging vary. Maine Gov. Janet Mills said the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 election is so serious that it is “an issue that cannot be dropped,” while Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said Democrats “can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Newsom said Democrats are “well positioned to pivot,” and Pritzker said the 2020 Democratic primary field, though “a cacophony at the moment” will re-focus once the field narrows.

“Then I think we should be asking the question are we articulating the message properly,” he said. “And, I believe that we will.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said that in confronting Trump, whom he called a “master messenger,” Democrats “have to have that capacity, as we do in Minnesota, to multi-task, to not normalize that behavior.”

With Trump attacking the four high-profile progressive congresswomen who make up the “Squad” — tweeting that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts should “go back” to the “crime infested places” they came from — Walz said, “It’s a fine line. Because if you all of a sudden say, ‘You know, I don’t have time for this. I need to focus on roads.’ Really, you don’t have time to address racism? You don’t have time to address interference in our elections?”

The first primary debates last month laid bare how fractured the Democratic Party remains, with significant ideological disagreements not only about health care, but also immigration and criminal justice reform — issues Trump is already signaling he’ll leverage in his re-election effort. A Fox News poll this week found Democratic primary voters’ support for health care for undocumented immigrants and decriminalizing crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border are opposed by a majority of the electorate.

Trump is pushing to revive the federal death penalty the same week former Vice President Joe Biden reversed his decades-old position and came out against capital punishment. The entire field, minus Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, opposes the death penalty, which some Democrats fear the president could exploit in the general election. He is also ramping up his rhetoric on immigration.

In the midterms, Democrats were able to blunt Trump’s immigration assault with House candidates who knew the attack was coming and responded with strongly-worded statements centered on protecting American security. Now, the national immigration debate around the Democratic primary is being waged in a way some in the party worry will heavily favor Trump, as candidates debate decriminalizing border crossings.

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A recent poll by a leading centrist think tank found that less than three in 10 Democratic primary voters support abolishing ICE. But 64% of those who tweet at least once a day do. The alarm for Democrats is that the gulf between those presidential primary voters and the general public is also quite deep, said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy and politics at the Third Way.

“If it sounds like Donald Trump is the only one who cares about keeping our country safe, that’s bad politics by Democrats,” Erickson said. “What voters want to know is that Democrats also care about knowing who is coming into our country and following the laws and making sure it’s a not a free for all. But that part is much more difficult in a Democratic primary.”

Between private dinners, shows and a rodeo in Salt Lake, the Democratic governors’ concerns about the party’s discipline ahead of 2020 echoed among moderates and progressives alike. In part, this is because Democrats have seen the damage that Republicans can still wreak on their agenda — either federally or by Republican legislative minorities in states that Democrats carried last year.

Democratic governors this week were discussing contingency plans in case a court ruling challenging former President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul is upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In Nevada, where Democrats won the governorship and large majorities in the legislature in 2018, Republicans this month filed litigation challenging a tax extension worth about $100 million. And in Oregon, Brown remained furious about the dramatic episode this year in which Republican lawmakers fled the state to block a vote on major climate legislation.

“With the current occupant in the White House, it’s really clear that all types of misbehavior are being tolerated,” Brown said, calling her state’s Republican walkout a “subversion of democracy.”

She said Republicans’ “actions will haunt them over the next decade.” When asked if she planned to veto bills in retribution, Brown said, “I will just say … revenge is a dish best served cold and slowly.”

With Trump waging war on America’s legal and intelligence communities to help undermine public opinion of the Mueller probe and his dialing up the rhetoric around illegal immigration, the deeply divisive and often personal partisan rancor that has marked his tenure in Washington is bleeding into the states. Along with a stalemate on an immigration solution, spiraling federal debt and a lack of progress on fixing America’s infrastructure has added to the dysfunction.

“At the state and local level, usually some votes are easy to get through — those of a nonpartisan nature, or more community focused,” said Tom McMahon, a political consultant in Washington who served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee. “The nature of the political environment today is every vote has a political slant to it that makes everything more complicated. Everything is viewed though a political lens. That’s alarming. How do you start bringing that rhetoric down?”

For Democrats, it’s easy to fall into a false choice between mobilization and persuasion, said David Heifetz of New Politics, a bipartisan group focused on training and messaging among candidates with military and intelligence backgrounds.

“It’s important to remind people that Twitter isn’t real life,” he said as political fallout from Mueller’s testimony ricocheted across the Capitol. “And to remember that you still need to meet people where they are and where their lives are and not get caught up in all the day to day.”