Democrats fear another Trump trouncing

Individual elected officials, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Sherrod Brown, have already signaled their intention to put loud and sustained pressure on the president-elect through a series of speeches, statements, TV appearances, op-eds, and on social media. But they are doing so without the benefit of any party-wide communication about a coordinated message behind their Trump barbs — the kind of guidance and direction so recently provided by Obama or Hillary Clinton and her campaign surrogate operation. In some corners of Capitol Hill, senior senators have even taken to blindly calling advocacy groups in town, asking where they can find relevant opposition research against Trump’s cabinet picks…

“Who’s the messenger? It’s bigger than his first 100 days. If Trump controls the message, which he has continued to do and will only do more as the sitting president of the United States, this could snowball into a very big issue for Democrats and independent voters out there,” said Boyd Brown, a South Carolina Democrat who until recently was a DNC member. “We are totally letting him control the message and control the story. He’s setting traps and we’re taking the bait. Carrier? Prime example. We’ve got him on this Russia deal, but we’ll find a way to mess it up.”

“Maybe an emergency meeting of the party needs to happen in December to appoint a message chairman, and then go through the regular process of nuts and bolts for the February [DNC chair election],” said Richardson. “Something needs to be done.”