‘Fight Oligarchy’: Democrats Use Two-Week Congressional Recess To Go on Offense Against Team Trump

Despite the two-week vacation from day-to-day congressional work that kicked off Friday, Democrats aren’t planning on letting up on President Trump and Vice President Vance. Several lawmakers — some of whom may be running for president in 2028 — are planning public events to try and regain voters’ trust. Since being wiped out by Republicans’ last fall, Democratic voters, activists, and lawmakers themselves have been asking what went wrong and how they can successfully target the new administration. What they’ve come up with so far is essentially embracing a Tea Party-style protest against everything going on in the nation’s capital. Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are spending their two-week reprieve from Congress on a “Fight Oligarchy” tour across the country. On Saturday, Mr. Sanders made a surprise appearance at the Coachella music festival in California. “You can turn away and you can ignore what goes on but if you do that, you do it at your own peril. We need you to stand up, to fight for justice. To fight for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice,” Mr. Sanders told the crowd, preaching to his own choir. Despite the country’s rather rapid shift to the right in the last four years, the Vermonter is sticking by the same issues he has been speaking about on the national stage for the last decade in an attempt to rally dejected base voters. He and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez aren’t only sticking to blue states like California or Colorado. On Sunday, the two rallied in Utah before heading to Idaho and Montana later in the week. On Tuesday, the two self-described socialists will be in more conservative parts of California, including the cities of Bakersfield and Folsom. Based on the rallies so far, it’s clear that these protests aren’t only about specific policy issues like universal healthcare. They believe it is a larger political program — like the Tea Party — focused on throwing bombs at “the establishment” of both parties. With many Americans’ retirement savings and the stock market being roiled by the president’s ever-evolving tariff regime, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has been at the tip of Democrats’ spear talking about corruption, including the stunning amount of money that someone — or some group of people — made in the market last week with a few well-timed stock options trades. Conservatives have called the tour, and the sudden attempt at rebranding, nothing short of disingenuous. “Don’t sit there and tell me how populist you are,” Steve Bannon said on his podcast about the “Fight Oligarchy” tour. “They’re the controlled opposition for the elites — AOC and Bernie. … It leads nowhere.”Fellow liberals, too, believe some of the Democrats’ newfound resistance tactics are little more than theater. Bill Maher took a swing at Senator Booker’s recent record-breaking 25-hour Senate speech during his show on Friday, saying it was delivered “into the wind.”It isn’t just the two democratic socialists trying to rebuild from November’s rout. Congressman Ro Khanna will reportedly speak in Ohio on Monday and take aim squarely at Mr. Vance. According to a copy of Mr. Khanna’s speech obtained by Politico, Mr. Khanna plans to frame Mr. Vance as a betrayer of his fellow middle Americans. The California congressman will accuse Mr. Vance of advancing policies that will make “his own story — that of having it rough as a kid but getting a credential at Yale — less likely for those growing up here today.”“Vance may be young, but his ideas are as old as they come,” Mr. Khanna will reportedly say. The Democratic Party itself is embracing a more aggressive strategy than they have to date. The party recently launched a “People’s Town Halls” initiative that will organize town hall-style events in GOP-held districts across the country. On Sunday, Mr. Booker held among the first of such events — a town hall in Arizona’s sixth congressional district, which Republicans won last year by a mere two points. Governor Walz has also been on a national tour of his own, delivering speeches and taking questions at town hall meetings in Republican-held districts. The former Democratic candidate for vice president traveled to eastern Ohio this past week to rally at a union hall with the state’s former governor, Ted Strickland. Mr. Walz said his party needs to gain the trust of voters in states they may never win if they hope to be a viable party. “We can’t heal America if we leave Ohio out,” Mr. Walz told attendees. “We can’t heal America if we leave Montana out. We can’t heal America if we say we’re never going to win in Florida. We’ve become a party isolated on that, and we focus every four years on getting people out to tell them that.”

‘Fight Oligarchy’: Democrats Use Two-Week Congressional Recess To Go on Offense Against Team Trump

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