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26,849
“Contest Every Race, a new coalition of Democratic groups, is launching a seven-figure campaign to challenge Republican incumbents in 26,849 down-ballot local races,” Axios reports. “2020 is more than just the presidential election. Democrats are getting serious about trying to gain more power at the local level, whether through city council seats, school boards, or state legislatures. … There are 520,000 elected offices in the country. As many as 75% go uncontested, per the group, ceding many of those seats to Republicans.”
President Obama is off the bench. Members of Congress are chanting with the protestors. The party has found its cause –blocking the Trump agenda. Just a week ago, talk in Washington was about how Chuck Schumer could be a closer partner to the president than Mitch McConnell. Now, the president is making fun of Schumer’s tears when he appeared alongside people impacted by the travel ban. Add that to the late-night firing of an acting attorney general over an entirely political disagreement and you have a base plus elected officials who are losing any incentive to work with the new president. Democrats can thank the president for showing them the strategy that now seems inevitable for the next four years: stand strong, and stand in his way.
59
Number of Democratic who lawmakers have now announced they’ll boycott Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, The Hill reports.
8
Number of Trump cabinet picks Democrats will oppose, reports the Washington Post: “Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that Democrats will home in especially on Rex Tillerson, Trump’s choice for secretary of state; Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), his pick for attorney general; Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), tapped to lead the Office of Management and Budget; and Betsy DeVos, selected to serve as education secretary. … There’s also Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and oversee changes to Obamacare, who is expected to be attacked by Democrats for his support for privatizing Medicare. Andrew Puzder, a restaurant executive set to serve as labor secretary, will face scrutiny for past comments on the minimum wage, among other policies. Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner set to serve as treasury secretary, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, will also be the focus of Democratic attacks, aides said.”
Senate Democrats are approaching the January confirmation battle over Donald Trump’s Cabinet as a chance to launch their political comeback and expose the president-elect as a fraud. … Lawmakers know they’re unlikely, at best, to stop any of Trump’s Cabinet picks from being installed. But they still see major opportunity in the confirmation hearings. The goal, according to lawmakers and aides: to depict Trump’s chosen inner circle of billionaires and conservative hard-liners as directly at odds with the working-class Americans he vowed to help.
Republicans did not assent in 2009 after Obama won 365 electoral votes, 52.9 percent of the popular vote, and nearly 10 million more votes than his Republican opponent. If Democrats, and even a few Republicans, don’t buy this 46 percenter’s claim to a mandate, that seems more like common sense than fighting dirty.
