U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-13th dist.) joined Texas Rep. Marc Veasey in announcing the formation of the Blue Collar Caucus to focus congressional efforts on alleviating the economic anxiety felt by working-class Americans that was so pronounced in the 2016 election, and re-engage Democratic efforts to reach these voters.
Boyle said, “Too many Americans think the best days for their families are behind them. And they’ve lost faith in their elected leaders to stand up for their best interests, protect their rights, and promote their prosperity. We can and must do better. The America I grew up in — and the one I still see today — is a forward-looking nation built by blue-collar workers of all colors, crafts and creeds. These workers literally built our nation. Now it is our duty in Washington to rebuild their trust in government by working for them.”
The Blue Collar Caucus will foster member discussion and legislative ideas focused on addressing wage stagnation, job insecurity, trade, offshoring and dwindling career opportunities for those in the manufacturing and building trades. The caucus will focus on bringing together a diverse array of Democratic members of the House of Representatives to generate solutions that will protect American workers from globalized competition, maintain the viability of domestic manufacturing and help to cultivate innovative industries that can provide stable employment amid rapid technological advancement.
Exit polls showed Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton by about 40 percent among so-called “working-class whites.”
Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents a blue-collar district in Youngstown, Ohio, challenged Nancy Pelosi, a multimillionaire who represents liberal San Francisco, for Democratic House leader. Pelosi won easily, 134–63, with Ryan now eyeing a run for governor.
Boyle voted for Pelosi.
Ryan has joined the Blue Collar Caucus along with Reps. Donald Norcross (N.J.), Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), Rick Nolan (Minn.), John Garamendi (Calif.), Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), Debbie Dingell (Mich.) and Dan Kildee (Mich.).
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Joe DeFelice, chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party, called for the firing of assistant city solicitor Duncan Lloyd in connection with anti-Trump vandalism.
Lloyd was allegedly caught photographing another man’s vandalism at the Fresh Market on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill. The man spray-painted “F — — Trump.”
“If the image of an upper-middle-class city attorney clad in a blazer and sipping wine while vandalizing an upscale grocery store with an anti-Trump message strikes you as perhaps the most bourgeois sight imaginable, that’s because it is,” DeFelice said. “Nothing can better represent the hysterical pearl-clutching of the ‘progressive’ elite in response to this earth-shattering election, when residents of Chestnut Hill and similar neighborhoods across the country discovered — gasp — that other people have a voice, too. The assistant city solicitor in question had ostensibly taken the law into his own hands, since a democratic election didn’t yield his preferred outcome.
“For somebody with extensive legal training to feel entitled to vandalize a newly opened supermarket strikes us at the Philadelphia Republican Party as an astonishing feat of idiocy. Did the extra glass of Shiraz give him some sort of delusional confidence that there are no cameras on Germantown Ave.? The taxpayers should be entrusting exactly none of our faith into this man. He should be fired from our city’s law department immediately.”
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The Green Party’s Jill Stein on Saturday abandoned her statewide Election Contest to challenge President-Elect Donald Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania.
Lawrence Tabas, lead counsel for Trump, his Pennsylvania Electors and the state party, said, “The filing of a discontinuance of the Election Contest by Jill Stein’s petitioners tonight is a recognition that their Election Contest was completely without merit, and meant solely for purposes to delay the Electoral College vote in Pennsylvania for President-Elect Trump. Candidate Jill Stein’s allegations created the false allusion that some unidentified foreign government hacked our state’s voting systems when absolutely no such proof existed. We believe that she always knew that she had no such proof.”
Stein and her supporters are continuing to push scattered recounts.
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In another sign of Democrats still reeling from Trump’s upset victory, state Sen. Daylin Leach will introduce legislation that will result in Pennsylvania joining the National Popular Vote compact.
The compact is an agreement among states pledging to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in presidential elections. The agreement takes effect once states representing a total of 270 electoral votes join the compact.
So far, 10 states and Washington, D.C. are part of the compact. All 11 regularly vote for the Democratic presidential nominee.
“In the heart of every American, you’ll find an instinctive commitment to the principle of one person, one vote. Despite that, our country elects its leader using a convoluted and unfair process that values the votes of some over the votes of others. It’s time for Pennsylvania to do the right thing, the fair thing, the democratic thing,” Leach said. ••
