Trump's Going To Hell-- Will He Drag The Evangelical Church Down With Him? Has He Already?

Fascism Comes To America by Nancy Ohanian

Writing for Politico this week, Gabby Orr reported that only 1 in 4 Americans see Trump as a man of faith. Trump uses religion to manipulate his followers. Most Americans don't fall for it-- but 27% (of registered voters) do. 40% of evangelicals believe Trump is a Christian. "During an interview with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer last week," wrote Orr, "Trump, who was raised Presbyterian but infrequently attends church, was asked whether he’s 'grown in his faith' since becoming president. 'So I think maybe I have, from the standpoint that I see so much that I can do. I’ve done so much for religion,' he replied... Despite being perceived as religious by a majority of conservative Republicans, a slew of recent polls show that some key religious demographics are beginning to sour on the president-- a development that triggered alarm bells inside his reelection campaign late last month."

Data released last Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute showed a 12-point drop in the president’s favorability since 2019 among white Catholics-- 60 percent of whom supported Trump over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton four years ago-- and a 20 percent decline in his support among evangelical voters since March. In May alone, Trump’s favorability among all white Christians declined from 57 percent to 46 percent, according to the PRRI study.

The erosion in Trump’s support among religious Americans, particularly white evangelical Protestants, disrupts a critical component of his 2020 strategy. To compensate for a staggering decline in the president’s appeal among suburban voters and women, his campaign has worked to strengthen his appeal for the religious right.

Die For Me by Nancy Ohanian

The American Conservative ran a Rod Dreher essay this week, The Coming Christian Reckoning, which begins with a long quote from Erick Erickson's final free post, which we'll get to in a moment. Dreher revisited his own book, The Benedict Option-- A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. "Fair or not," he wrote early in 2017, "conservative Christianity will be associated with Trump for the next few years, and no doubt beyond. If conservative church leaders aren’t extraordinarily careful in how they manage their public relationship to the Trump phenomenon, anti-Trump blowback will do severe damage to the church’s reputation. Trump’s election solves some problems for the church, but given the man’s character, it creates others. Political power is not a moral disinfectant. And this brings us to the more subtle but potentially more devastating effects of this unexpected GOP election victory. There is first the temptation to worship power, and to compromise one’s soul to maintain access to it. There are many ways to burn a pinch of incense to Caesar, and some prominent pro-Trump Christians arguably crossed that line during the campaign season. Again, political victory does not vitiate the vice of hypocrisy."

One reason the contemporary church is in so much trouble is that religious conservatives of the last generation mistakenly believed they could focus on politics, and the culture would take care of itself. For the past thirty years or so, many of us believed that we could turn back the tide of aggressive 1960s liberalism by voting for conservative Republicans. White Evangelicals and Catholic “Reagan Democrats” came together to support GOP candidates who vowed to back socially conservative legislation and to nominate conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The results were decidedly mixed on the legislative and judicial fronts, but the verdict on the overall political strategy is clear: we failed. Fundamental abortion rights remain solidly in place, and Gallup poll numbers from the Roe v. Wade era until today have not meaningfully changed. The traditional marriage and family model has been protected in neither law nor custom, and because of that, courts are poised to impose dramatic rollbacks of religious liberty for the sake of anti-discrimination.

Dreher is advocating that conservative Christians turn "inward to build (rebuild) our spiritual houses, and cultivate not passion for 'issues,' but disciplines of prayer, catechesis, and cultivating a willingness to suffer for our faith... Even if Trump is re-elected, don’t be deceived: we are in the twilight of Trumpism. He is a spent force. There’s a report that White House advisers are considering having the president give a speech to the nation on racial unity. The only passions such a pre-discredited speech would inspire would be anger and mockery. Events of this spring and early summer have emasculated him-- that, and the fact that he wasted his presidency tweeting, making a fool of himself, and demeaning the stature of his office. It’s over. Even if the Democrats somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and America gets four more years of Trump, it’s over. As Erick Erickson points out, not only has Trump done little to stop the forces tearing the church apart in post-Christian America, he has actually accelerated them. To be fair, no politician could have stopped those forces, because they are spiritual and cultural forces, not primarily political ones. Still, he really has hastened the reckoning for believers, in part by anesthetizing a lot of them about the nature and severity of the crisis."

So here's the Erickson essay he referenced, He Cannot Save You, "he," signifying Señor Trumpanzee. Erickson is a conservative Republican and evangelical from Georgia, a former member of the Macon city council, the former editor-in-chief of RedState and, currently, an Atlanta radio host on WSB-AM. He famously described Trump as "a racist" and "a fascist," vowed "I will not vote for Donald Trump. Ever." In February 2019, he endorsed Trump's reelection bid. This week he wrote that he does not recall in his lifetime "seeing a President with so much public loyalty and private revulsion among the same people."

Righteous Violence by Nancy Ohanian

Describing rural Georgia Trump supporters in his new essay, Erickson wrote that "There is no real allegiance to the GOP, just to Trump. Republican candidates are forced to go through bizarre rituals to prove who is the most loyal. Some privately grumble. They know these voters will come for them if they are not loyal enough. There are others who stand with President Trump reluctantly. Frankly, for many evangelicals, the only person they can stand with is Trump even if they resent it. I imagine if he loses in November there’ll be a bit of a scene in some corners, not just among Senate Republicans, like the Witch of the West melting. Once Dorothy threw the bucket of water on her, the loyal soldiers were not so loyal. The flying monkeys might have been, but the soldiers definitely were not. We will see that among many in Washington who even now ostentatiously hump the President’s leg with reckless abandon. A number of begrudging Trump voters will be sad to see him lose because of the policies and appointments of Joe Biden, but even many of them will privately sigh some level of relief that perhaps the chaos and constant rage and rage tweets will subside. The President’s most hardcore voters will have dozens of would-be Trump poseurs to choose from for 2024 arguing over who best humped Trump’s leg or has the most Trumpian policies. The purges will happen with fights over loyalty in one corner of the right and fights over ever actually voting for the man in the other corner."

I have to say something to my evangelical friends-- Donald Trump will not save you. He cannot save you. In the rhetoric, tone, tenor, and levels of support for President Trump, I am struck by how many people still view him as some defense against the left.

True, he is to an extent. But Christians are dealing with spiritual problems, not political problems. They are dealing with the things unseen, not the things seen. Donald Trump is, like the forces they are fighting, of the world. The world cannot protect you from the world.

If you are a Christian voting for Donald Trump because he is pro-life, not at war with Christians through public policy, has great judicial picks, and will defend the police, I’m with you.

But I continue to harbor a great belief that too many Christians are using Trump as a political savior for a spiritual problem both in their own lives and in the life of this country. Trump cannot stop the culture from turning against the faith and, if anything, more and more data shows Trump is a catalyst for the cultural turn. He is increasing the left’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as so many evangelical leaders constantly beclown themselves to hump his leg. He is also increasing the right’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as more political apparatchiks on the right do what is expedient for political victory, including tossing grace, truth, and love for neighbors to the wind.

I think we are in a great sorting. It is not a sorting of the world, but a sorting of the church. Those of us within the church are being sorted between those of us who truly believe Jesus is the answer and those of us who think we can find stopgaps on the road to glory. I don’t advocate for escalation or to bring on the persecution. But I do worry a lot of Christians have harmed their own witness in how they are engaging in the world and politics. Many younger evangelicals are abandoning even a passing interest in politics and voting.

Too many people, regardless of party, think they can and should behave like the President. They see him as a fighter, so they fight too. They have chosen to divide the world between us and them. They see the political fight of the day as a struggle between their way of life and something anathema to it. To a degree, they are right. But to a greater degree, they are so busy clinging to a way of life they identify as American or American Jesus that they cannot let go to cling to actual Jesus. Too many Americans on both sides of the aisle cling to the sovereignty of the presidency instead of to the sovereignty of God and fight accordingly.

We all get so worked up these days and I keep hearing Republicans say we need to fight like the other side or be like the other side or something else. Democrats, for what it is worth, always think the GOP fights nastier, dirtier, and is more united.

I’d just say we cannot do that. We are bound by a book with key lines carved in stone by the immortal Creator of all things who then carved those lines on our hearts. As we engage the culture, the world, and the politics of the age, we cannot be like those who are not bound by the Word. We shouldn’t even try. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Rom 12:9)

We are in a period of sorting and trying for the church. Stand for what is true and good, not for any man. If you’re on the right, Donald Trump cannot save you from what is coming. If you’re on the left, Joe Biden cannot save you either. But you and I can all love our neighbors as we go through this turbulent time-- including the ones with whom we disagree on politics, policy, and the future.

I turned to my old friend, Dr. Samir Selmanović, founder of Faith House Manhattan, an interfaith community of Christians, Muslims, Jews and humanists/atheists, who also served on the Interfaith Relations Commission of the United States National Council of Churches and currently chairs Vote Common Good and is a chef and life coach. "These articles," he told me, "show us what the coming reckoning looks like from 'the other side.' This is what the insiders see. Public opinion, progressive and spiritually-grounded Christians, and honest insiders of the Christian Right: all three are in agreement now. It's like watching what's happening in 3D. Christian Right insiders like Dreher and Erickson are bemoaning a number of things and the visceral temptation here is for all sides to turn their post-partisan thumbs up and say 'Finally!' From where I stand, however, as a former pastor, a currently-practicing Christian, and someone who believes that spiritual truth and authority reside in life itself, I am actually grieving. Grieving that the Christian Right has again missed the boat. The Trump debacle has presented an incredible opportunity for the Christian Right to learn something priceless, that for decades seemed so distant and foreign to them, and that they still, even in this sort of spiritual-political crisis, never talk about:  the simple, essential act of receiving."

Babies In Cages by Nancy Ohanian

He was just getting going, noting that "They see society as their project for witnessing, conversion, and service. We, the rest of society, are their object. They give themselves sacrificially (making significant contributions of money, time, and energy) in order to bestow grace and truth upon the world. They see themselves as the ones tasked to change the world. This one-way-street dynamic is a fatal flaw. They cannot comprehend that people outside of their tribe also have grace and truth for them. They cannot imagine themselves as interdependent with the wider culture, in any need at all of insight, inspiration, and blessing from those who are not their kind of Christians. God is not among us, the Other, they maintain. Thus they see only two options: witness or withdraw. Two quotes from Dreher are illustrative: 

"To be sure, Christians cannot afford to vacate the public square entirely. The church must not shrink from its responsibility to pray for political leaders and to speak prophetically to them."

"There is nothing left for us but taking the Benedict Option, which is to say, turning inward to build (rebuild) our spiritual houses, and cultivate not passion for 'issues,' but disciplines of prayer, catechesis, and cultivating a willingness to suffer for our faith."

"Witnessing or withdrawing allows them to maintain their foundational premise that they are the only brokers of God to the world," Samir continued. "THEY are the only legitimate brokers of grace, truth, and love. That's why truth from the outside cannot be acknowledged, let alone received. That's why love and kindness from the outside are always suspect. Any 'outside' virtue is a threat to their elemental construct and must be explained away to preserve the undergirding view of the world as enemy territory. God cannot possibly be in the Other, they still maintain. Unlike Jesus, who was happy to receive from the other and be grateful for the other, the Christian Right has decided that where they are not in charge, God is absent. It is unlikely that the imminent and bitter denouement of their Trump Alliance will shake that. 'The world that God so loved' (John 3:16) is devoid of God, except maybe for beautiful nature, cool movies, and random and accidental kindnesses of the lost. That world, they are certain, has no real grace, real truth, or real blessing to accord them. And for God to reveal things to them from the outside (like God did in the Bible all the time by the way) would be tantamount to the capitulation of their religion to the world. That's what is so deeply sad. What was once a wonderful religion, refusing to deepen, to evolve, and turning on itself. The fear, cynicism, and victimhood will continue as long as they don't know how to receive from that God, the same as theirs, but who is comprehensively resident in the world. I pray every day that I am wrong about this. I fantasize that they will surprise us one day and come out, healed, humble, and all love. Perhaps joining a Jesus who is alive and well outside their churches, in a parking lot, tailgating with all the diverse, beautiful, powerful, and revelatory humans they have been missing out on."

Does Trump Have Any Credibility Left? How About Paul Ryan?

Someone needs to explain to Señor Trumpanzee what "exonerated" and "vindicated" mean. No matter where you woke up Friday-- red state, blue state, purple state, there were no newspaper headlines talking about vindication. They were all talking about how we're saddled with a compulsive, manipulative liar in the White House. Even Karl Rove, in an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal took the opportunity to slam Trump this week-- as did widely-followed right-wing activist Erick Erickson.

Trump, wrote Rove, "may have mastered the modes of communication, but not the substance, thereby sabotaging his own agenda... [Señor Trumpanzee] lacks the focus or self-discipline to do the basic work required of a president... his chronic impulsiveness is apparently unstoppable and clearly self-defeating. He added Trump routinely disregards basic fact checking, making "the already considerable doubts Americans have about his competence and trustworthiness" worse day by day. Rating for were so high for TV (almost 20 million Americans watched Comey's testimony-- as though it were an NBA final) that broadcast media stocks went up while he was speaking. All those folks watching Comey continuously assert that Trump is a liar-- with no a single Republican claiming he isn't-- and then seeing that repeated endlessly on TV for 2 days hasn't hurt Trump's trustworthy and honest ratings among voters-- already the lowest anyone can remember for any president. Erickson actually tried to defend Trump but wound up writing that "we know President Trump lies regularly" and that "the public will latch on to Comey as the honest broker." Trumpanzee, he reminds his Republican readers, "only won because he convinced 70,000 people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that he was not as bad as Clinton... if there are at least 70,001" voters who decide to take Comey’s word over Trump’s, the GOP will be in very big trouble for the 2018 midterms.

And his 2 horrid sons have been molded to be just like him

Friday NBC's Chuck Todd began the day writing about Trump's credibility gap.

After former FBI Director James Comey accused President Trump, under oath, of lying and possibly obstructing justice, Trump and his lawyer fired back, trying to turn it all into a he said-he-said dispute. “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump tweeted this morning (after a two-day hiatus). The problem here for Trump: The president has used up so much of his credibility after:

• Misstating the size of his inaugural crowd.
• Claiming that 3-5 million “illegals” voted in the 2016 election.
• Accusing Barack Obama of wiretapping him.
• Boasting, incorrectly, of achieving “the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.”

And that’s just the tip of the fact-checking iceberg. “In a credibility battle between Trump and Comey, everybody knows Comey is going to win that war,” Adam W. Goldberg, a former associate special White House counsel under Bill Clinton, tells the New York Times... [T]his is important: In a battle over credibility, one person (Comey) has testified under oath; the other one (Trump) hasn’t. And one person (Trump) has raised the possibility of having “tapes” of their conversation but has not produced them; the other (Comey) is begging for any tapes to be released. "Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey told Congress.

...Tellingly, the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee paid no heed to the talking points distributed in advance by the Republican National Committee at the behest of the White House. Instead of attacking Mr. Comey’s credibility, as the R.N.C. and Donald Trump Jr. did, the Republican senators praised him as a patriot and dedicated public servant. They largely accepted his version of events, while trying to elicit testimony that would cast Mr. Trump’s actions in the most innocent light possible.

I didn't include the headline from the Denver Post in the collage up top. Instead, let me quote to you what voters in Republican Congressman Mike Coffman's very vulnerable swing district in the suburbs south and east of Denver were reading today (an area Hillary won convincingly-- 50.2% to 41.3%):

Whatever happens with the investigations into President Donald Trump’s campaign and his firing of FBI Director James Comey, significant damage has been done to the president’s reputation that brings into stark question his ability to lead.

Even if Trump isn’t implicated in colluding with the Russians, even if none of his campaign staffers are found guilty, Comey’s sworn testimony and the known facts about his firing cripple the president’s credibility.

Comey’s testimony portrays a president who only cares about loyalty to himself, and not loyalty to all Americans. By repeatedly pressuring the then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to swear allegiance to him, Trump betrayed America. He never reversed this error, and kept talking about the necessity of personal loyalty with Comey until the day he fired him.

Trump denies everything, of course. But who can believe him? He’s proven himself wonderfully skilled at telling lies.

...Trump’s only values are the constantly shifting ones he conjures to win for himself a favorable news cycle.

Even if he survives these investigations, his credibility going forward will be forever tarnished unless he’s able to reform.

Bob Inglis is a conservative Republican who was a South Carolina congressman. He pointed out that Trump isn't the only liar leading the Republican Party. Ryan has fully embraced the tactic and completely shot whatever remained of his own credibility as well. He's been trying to mislead voters by lying about the impact of TrumpCare, by lying about Trump's draconian budget and by lying about House Republican efforts to cement their ties with Wall Street by giving them the biggest legislative bonanza in decades.

Wisconsin iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce, who is rumored to be about to declare his much-anticipated candidacy for Paul Ryan's congressional seat told us this morning that "Ryan is still making excuses for Trump’s obvious incompetence. He told us to to cut him some slack because he’s 'new at this.' All kinds of French words run through my mind after hearing that because I specifically heard Trump boasting about how much better he was than everyone else running for the job of President. He’d have us all think that he is smarter than all of the generals. At what point can we expect Republican leadership to put the concerns of the country over that of their plans to destroy the country? I don’t think that we can. Our current government has become more corrupt than at any other time in history. Those who refuse to abide by the oaths that they took are complicit in the illegality. Every one of them needs to be removed and replaced. I’m looking forward to doing my part. Speaker Ryan-- the clock is ticking."

Trump accusing Comey of lying under oath, isn't going to help his own credibility. And coupled with Lyin' Ryan's casting scruples to the wind with regular alacrity, the party is taking on a certain undeniable odor. One thing seems certain: these Republican politicians are way more concerned about themselves than they are with the American people.

Another person who noticed how badly Ryan is hurting himself-- and his party-- is Brian Beutler who made the point at the New Republic that Comey's testimony won't just hurt Trump but, largely thanks to Trump, the whole party. "In the midst of the most devastating testimony delivered about a sitting president in the living memory of nearly everyone serving in Congress today, the Republican speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, shuffled before microphones to say that Donald Trump--vin trying to interfere with FBI investigations-- probably just made an innocent mistake: 'The president’s new at this. He’s new to government and so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this.' Ryan wants us to imagine Trump sitting alone in the White House with only his intellect and his muscle memory as his guides. He asks us implicitly to forget that Trump has a White House counsel, a vice president with years of governing experience, and an attorney general who campaigned with him for a year, all at his behest to instruct him. He asks us, again implicitly, to forget that Trump pierced the veil meant to separate the White House and FBI, to corrupt the rule of law, and that he then fired FBI Director James Comey, lied about why, and confessed-- to NBC’s Lester Holt, and to senior Russian officials in the Oval Office-- that he did it to remove “the cloud” of Comey’s investigation of his campaign.

It is an article of faith in Washington that no revelation about Trump’s conduct, no matter how severe, could convince Ryan and members of his conference to launch an impeachment inquiry. As dispassionate political analysis, this may well be true. It would certainly be foolish to believe the opposite-- that Trump’s impeachment is a certainty.

But for everything we know about Trump’s conduct already, all this means is that the ethical and strategic conduct of Republicans in Congress should now be as heavily scrutinized as Trump’s. Republicans may not know what they’re covering up, but covering up they are; and they may believe they’re acting in their own political self-interest, but they almost certainly are not.

Bracketing everything we know about Trump’s potentially illegal behavior almost makes the GOP’s somber indifference to his conduct in office more damning. Trump, we were reminded Thursday, is an abject liar who doesn’t even seem to understand the concept of the public interest. In his testimony, Comey asserted that he began his practice of taking notes after every encounter with Trump before the inauguration because he became “concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting.”

Comey used variants of the word “lie” repeatedly, as if to correct for the fact that reporters and news outlets are reluctant to use it themselves.

...Ryan’s special pleading on Trump’s behalf already requires him to insult the public’s intelligence. He may have sunk so much cost into his complicity that he sees no option other than to sink more. Rather than take the hits as they come, he should consider the predicament he’ll face if Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller refers an obstruction of justice complaint to Congress. Like Comey, Mueller is a former prosecutor and FBI director. If he tells Congress, in so many words, that Trump would face a federal indictment were he not the president, will Ryan still reconcile himself to ignoring the crisis he’s helped inflict on the country?

Let's give David Frum the last word on this: "Friends of the president will reply that the Comey hearing did not produce a smoking gun. That’s true. But the floor is littered with cartridge casings, there’s a smell of gunpowder in the air, bullet holes in the wall, and a warm weapon on the table. Comey showed himself credible, convincing, and consistent. Against him are arrayed the confused excuses of the least credible president in modern American history."

Democratic Candidates Need To Talk More About Paul Ryan's And The GOP's Dystopian Vision Than About Trump's Insanity

Yesterday, writing for The Hill, Christina Marcos reported that Republican members of Congress are now afraid angry constituents will kill them or do them physical harm.

A growing number of House Republicans are facing physical threats from angry constituents in their districts, leading many to fear for their safety.

In the last few weeks alone, the FBI arrested a man threatening Rep. Martha McSally's (R-AZ) life, a woman pursued Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) in her car, and Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA) heightened security at a town hall event in response to death threats.

Other Republicans still holding town halls say they haven't felt physically threatened by protesters, but they worry about the depth of anger from some constituents in the polarized environment and what it means for political civility... [A]n increasing number of lawmakers’ encounters with constituents, even in deep-red districts, have gotten ugly.

Poor snowflakes... maybe they should contemplate why their constituents are so angry-- starting with the ugliness behind a Republican agenda that includes gutting the social safety net, kicking their families off health care and redistributing the nation's wealth further in the direction of the 1%. Georgia Republican Party activist Erick Erickson, has been contemplating this, as he mentioned yesterday in a Washington Post column and has come to the conclusion that "Voters are increasingly dissatisfied with a Republican Party unable to govern. And congressional Republicans increasingly find themselves in an impossible position: If they support the president, many Americans will believe they are neglecting their duty to hold him accountable. But if they do their duty, Trump’s core supporters will attack them as betrayers-- and then run primary candidates against them."

Erickson is wrong if he thinks this is all about Trump though, rather than about the Republican agenda. Trump may be a clown and a fool, but Ryan and Ryan's enablers are the real heart of darkness for the Republican Party. Ericsson continued:

It is becoming ever clearer that Trump has the potential to cause more damage to the Republican Party than Obama did the Democrats. While there is no doubt the Democrats saw serious electoral setbacks under Obama, there remains a key difference here: Obama is deeply respected and liked by a majority of voters. Trump is increasingly disliked, and the Republicans who enable him are increasingly distrusted.

With a horde of vocal Trump supporters cheering on every inane statement, delusion, lie and bad act, the majority of the American people can be forgiven for thinking the GOP as a whole has lost its mind. The Republicans may soon lose a generation of voters through a combination of the sheer incompetence of Trump and a party rank and file with no ability to control its leader.

It isn't Ericsson's job to help Democrats figure out how to navigate this-- and the lack of any kind of vision inside the DCCC will insure that nothing meaningful or effective welcome from that quarter but, as Jonathan Martin pointed out over the weekend in a NY Times piece, local Democrats outside of the sway of the DCCC are looking for a way to reach voters over and above the DCCC-pushed themes of "Trump/Bad" and "Putin/Putin/Putin."

Katie Hill, the local, progressive, non-DCCC candidate running against Republican backbencher Steve Knight in the Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley district of Southern California dealt with the question in a guest post here at DWT Saturday. "Trump," she wrote, "is not the problem. He’s the symptom of a damaged political consciousness in America" and asked-- and took a stab at answering-- the key question: "what is our vision? We have a great, grassroots resistance that has emerged, but right now, all we’re doing is reacting to Trump’s every move. He is setting the agenda, maintaining the initiative, and we’re screaming on the sidelines. It’s understandable. Trump is a disaster. He’s doing things that would have been unimaginable in any other time. He is putting our country at risk, going against our every value with every unhinged twitter outburst. We, of course, must resist. But that’s not enough. We must be more than the anti-Trump party or we fail." Martin looked towards the special election coming up Thursday in Montana.

As the nation’s capital was rocked by revelation after revelation from the investigation into any connection between the Trump campaign and Russia, Democrats in Washington were focused on what they saw as nothing less than saving the republic.

More than 1,800 miles away, Rob Quist, a Democratic candidate in one of the House special elections that will gauge the mood of the country this spring, was concentrating on high insurance premiums, not high crimes.

Mr. Quist, who is running to fill the seat vacated by the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, was in Wolf Point, Mont., assailing his Republican rival, Greg Gianforte, over the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The appearance was part of a weeklong “Hands Off Our Health Care” tour that Democrats hope will hand them an upset on May 25.

“Russia is important to the American public, but health care hits home directly in people’s lives,” said Nancy Keenan, executive director of the Montana Democratic Party. “Regular Montanans are talking about the heck of a spring snowstorm we just had, this health care bill, the stuff that’s hitting them every single day. They know something is amiss in Washington, but in their everyday lives it doesn’t affect them right now.”

The contrast between what Democrats in Washington are consumed by and what their candidates are running on illustrates an emerging challenge for the party as the president becomes ever more engulfed in controversy: For all the misfortunes facing their foe in the White House, Democrats have yet to devise a coherent message on the policies that President Trump used to draw working-class voters to his campaign.

And at least for now, the voters whom Democrats need to win back are more focused on their own troubles than those of the president.

After a campaign in which they learned the hard way that an anti-Trump message was insufficient, Democrats are again grappling with how to balance responding to Mr. Trump’s apparent transgressions and devising an affirmative policy agenda of their own.

“The country wants answers on this, but they don’t want to see us be so consumed we can’t do anything else,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio facing re-election in 2018, citing a need to address infrastructure, trade agreements and health care.

Finding that equilibrium now is even more difficult because the party’s lawmakers believe they have a solemn constitutional duty to pursue what they see as the president’s misdeeds.

...“There’s this Washington narrative, and then there’s a voter narrative,” said Anita Dunn, a longtime Democratic strategist. “Significant parts of our base are following the Washington narrative very closely, but for voters who voted for Donald Trump or voters who didn’t vote at all, I think Democratic candidates are going to have to make the election meaningful to those voters’ lives.”

The more effective way to do that, in the eyes of many Democrats, is to draw more attention to the repeal of the health law than to the investigation of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

“The Trump story happens without us,” said Ms. Dunn, noting that the leaks will keep coming and Democrats have little control over the F.B.I. inquiry; the investigation by the newly named special counsel, Robert Mueller; or the inquiries being led by the congressional Republican majorities.

“But the health care contrast, which is a very, very powerful one if you look at the polling, is where we can draw a sharp contrast,” she added.

Ms. Warren, while insisting that Democrats could link the Trump campaign inquiry and his policy agenda under the rubric of accountability, acknowledged that she did not hear much from voters about Russia-related matters.

“The two issues people raise the most with me are health care and student loans,” she said in an interview. “And both of them make people cry.”

Some in the party are gamely trying to break through on the policy front, as Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii demonstrated on Friday shortly after yet more developments related to Mr. Trump were reported. In an all-caps Twitter post, Mr. Schatz wrote, in part, that in the middle of the White House’s troubles, “they are still trying to take away your healthcare and ruin the internet.”

And those Democrats facing voters next year in states Mr. Trump won are particularly eager to shift attention to policy, to demonstrate to voters they are focused on their most pressing concerns.

...Quist is putting his money where his message is: After a week of health care-focused events, he began airing a pair of closing television commercials. Both were focused on how the Republican-passed health bill would imperil individuals with pre-existing medical conditions.

As we've mentioned before iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce is likely to mount a campaign for the southeast Wisconsin congressional seat Paul Ryan operates out of. This is a district Obama won in 2008 and Trump won in 2016. Hillary was the wrong candidate in this kind of blue collar district. Bryce is the exact kind of candidate Democrats need in this kind of district, He's not counting on the DCCC to figure that out. He's putting together a locally-based/values-driven grassroots campaign now. His appeal is Wisconsin-oriented, working families-oriented... not DC-oriented. We reached him yesterday and he told us the issues his neighbors are talking about are kitchen table, bread-and-butter issues, far more than Putin-Gate and Trump's personality defects. Here's what he had to say:

One word best describes what the voters of Wisconsin’s 1st CD are concerned about-- survival.

In Wisconsin, the Middle Class is disappearing faster than any other state in the country. The extreme anti-worker legislation brought on by Scott Walker is decimating us. With the Republicans having complete control over the U.S. Government, the rest of the country is now feeling what has been going on in the Badger State since 2011.

Just this evening I heard a story about someone who needed medical help that was just planning on letting their illness take them away. That’s right. In the wealthiest nation in the year 2017 someone will be dying because they feel that they can’t afford to live.

Think about that for a minute. It’s not hyperbole, it’s a factual story.

That’s not my America regardless of who is in charge. I didn’t wear an army uniform and donate years of my life defending some land where people felt that way about simply existing. I wonder how many others who wore the same uniform and put their lives on the line were discharged only to find that their lives had no worth while they were no longer dodging bullets.

Looking at coworkers, and, certainly at my own situation, I see our children having less opportunities than we did. (well, for most of us at least. 99% to be exact) That tells me that we are going in the wrong direction.

Since I can remember, I have heard about an “American Dream.” I have seen it on television, but, it seems to be disappearing in my neighborhood. I’ve heard a slogan referencing “making America great again” uttered by someone who inherited his dream.

I don’t ask for much for myself. My vision of America being great would include a genuine freedom to be able to stand on one’s own feet and be allowed to keep what is earned in order to not be dependent on any government agency. Stop stealing from the people who do the work in order to send millions to an offshore account in order to avoid paying taxes. Workers are the job creators. When we have extra money, we buy things. Buying things creates demand. Demand creates jobs.

We don’t need to go back to the 1950s in order to make America great again. We have the wealth. We have the workforce. All that we need is genuine representation who understands-- who CARES-- about us.

Once we take back our country’s soul, the rest will follow. Money is not speech. The cries of our hungry, our poor, our sick, our children who are having their futures stolen are the speech that I am hearing. Our solution is so very simple. We need people to make decisions on our behalf who not only live in our neighborhoods, but, who want to be with us. We need more people who help us up the ladder, not kick it down once they get to the top. The rooftop is a very big place. There’s enough room for all of us. The only time that we should be looking down at someone is when we help lift them up.

Let’s be Americans. Let’s help lift others up with us.

Let’s take back the power that our forefathers bequeathed upon us-- demand that those who we pay to represent us hear the same voices that we hear. They chose to make decisions on our behalf. If they don’t, let’s replace them with one of our own who genuinely cares about what happens to us.