The head of the House Democrats campaign arm says House Republicans’ dogged desire to show fealty to former President Donald Trump shows how far the party has drifted away from the mainstream and will haunt them in the November elections.
Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, who took the reins of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after the 2022 election, said the House GOP’s misguided priorities were on full display this week. She pointed to House Speaker Mike Johnson and a cadre of his fellow Republicans making a pilgrimage to New York to sit in a courtroom with Mr. Trump and assail the prosecutors.
“That shows you and probably tells you all you need to know where Republicans are at,” Ms. DelBene said at a breakfast meeting with Washington reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. “There are no original ideas. They are all just waiting to have Donald Trump to tell them what to do next.”
The charge is muddied by Mr. Trump’s refusal to endorse legislative efforts on Capitol Hill seeking to restrict abortion access. Instead, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has said those decisions should be made at the state level in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had provided a constitutional right to abortion
Nonetheless, Ms. DelBene and Democrats are plowing ahead with the warning that Republicans are all-in behind a “federal abortion ban” — sending a message to voters that they should not take Mr. Trump at his word given his proven willingness to lie when it benefits him.
At the same time, however, they say voters should take Mr. Trump’s word on other fronts, including his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and say he will accept the results of the 2024 election.
House Democrats need to flip four seats to gain control of the House following Rep. Tom Suozzi’s victory in a special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District to fill the seat that opened up after Republican Rep. George Santos was expelled from the House last year.
Ms. DelBene said the DCCC is focused on 65 House races playing out in competitive districts across the country. The contests feature 29 incumbent Democrats, 20 GOP-held seats that Democrats hope to flip from red to blue, including 16 of which are in congressional districts President Biden carried in the 2020 election.
Asked how concerned she is about Mr. Biden’s lackluster polling on the economy and slipping support among Black voters, Ms. DelBene said Democrats are reminding voters of the administration’s accomplishments on everything from the infrastructure bill to the CHIPS Act.
She said they are hammering home the message that the Biden administration and Democrats could get more done if dysfunctional MAGA Republicans were not always infighting, pushing an “extreme agenda” and standing in the way of efforts to address the border and the immigration system, affordable housing and child care.
“President Biden has been at the table trying to move forward. It’s Republicans who have been forwarding policy over and over and over again,” she said.
“We have seen nothing but chaos and dysfunction and extremism in this Congress from day one,” she said. “Folks want to see governance work, and that’s going to play a big, significant, role at the ballot box.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.