Author: Juan Williams

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New Message Needed

Republicans won the May special election for Montana’s congressional seat even after their candidate throttled and body-slammed a reporter. The upcoming special election in Georgia remains close even with a weak Republican candidate.

Juan WIlliams

So, what will it take for Democrats to start winning?

First, the Montana fisticuffs showed that Republicans can react volcanically to questions about President Trump’s failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Their candidate went ballistic when the reporter, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, asked about the projected higher premiums and fewer people insured under Trump’s health-care plan.

Second, last week’s poor jobs numbers and Trump’s lack of progress on tax reform offer more evidence that the GOP lacks a strong record for its candidates to run on. And, third, the Democratic base is fired up. With Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate deal, the party is unified in its fury at him.

But with the president retaining strong support among his GOP base, are these hopeful signs just mirages similar to the illusions that led Democrats to think Trump could never be elected president? Is there any concrete reason to think that the nation’s politics have changed enough to give the Democrats the 24 seats they need to take control of the House and set themselves up to defeat Trump in 2020?

In Montana, the Democratic candidate lost by only six points, while Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, lost by 20. That margin narrowed even as the GOP outspent the Democrats. And most people voted long before the Republican, Greg Gianforte, resorted to violence.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the Crystal Ball newsletter from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, says: “Democrats can point to overall special election trends that suggest the opportunity for significant gains next year if they can be replicated on a nationalized scale.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced last month that it was expanding the targets for GOP-held House seats in 2018 beyond the 23 districts currently represented by a Republican but won by Clinton. They are now aiming at an incredible 79 seats.

Before he withdrew from the climate deal, Trump’s approval rating was underwater by 14 points: Gallup reported last week that the president’s job performance was approved by 40 percent of the country, while 54 percent disapproved.

And as the FBI, special counsel, and congress continue to probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the GOP policy agenda could be derailed before the 2018 races.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll last week found that 43 percent of voters want impeachment proceedings right now. A Quinnipiac University poll last month found the president with the support of just 29 percent of self-described independents — a group with which he had scored plurality support last November.

But all that is noise inside a political bubble unless there is a winning message from Democrats that goes beyond another dose of fury at Trump.

Last week, a group of Democrats formed the People’s House Project to elect left-of-center candidates. The new group’s goal is to give Democratic candidates in the Midwest and rural areas a new look, with a jobs-first focus. It is one front in the battle to shape the Democrats’ future. That includes the search for an energetic, charismatic leader able to withstand Trump’s attacks.

Former Vice President Biden announced last week that he is forming a political action committee to support candidates in the 2018 congressional races. It is also a possible platform for him to run in 2020.

And two senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey, also look to be auditioning for the role of leading Democrat. They offer different looks for the anti-Trump brigade.

Warren satisfies Democrats who want to go toe-to-toe with a president they view as illegitimate, corrupt, dangerous, and even treasonous. They want Trump treated by Democrats the way President Obama was treated by Republicans for the last eight years — with contempt and unrelenting opposition.

Meanwhile, Booker wants to offer a contrast to the president by branding himself and Democrats as a force for unifying the nation across political lines. “It’s gotta be about love. It’s gotta be about the connections we have to each other,” he told Vox recently.

The Democrats’ search for answers remains a work in progress.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Testing Trump

This week marks President Trump’s 100th day in office. On day one, after listening to Trump’s inaugural address, former President George W. Bush reportedly said: “That was some weird s—t.” The GOP establishment still holds that view after 100 days of President Trump.

Juan Williams

Democrats are offering “we told you so” looks. Trump’s most striking achievement in his first three months is being the least popular new president in modern history.

A majority of Americans — 52 percent — disapprove of his job performance as president, according to the most recent Gallup tracking poll. Even Trump’s supporters have to admit these first three months have been defined by the administration’s failure to deliver on campaign promises. For all of Trump’s talk about being a great dealmaker, the flashing lights on the political scoreboard read as follows:

No repeal of Obamacare. No tax reform. No Muslim travel ban — the attempt to enact one is bogged down in the courts — and no evidence to support the incredible claim that President Obama had Trump wiretapped.

There is also no wall on the southern border and no indication that Mexico will pay for it. And in the last few weeks, the reversals on campaign promises have come thick and fast.

Now, Trump approves of the Export-Import Bank. Now, Trump is no longer a fan of the border adjustment tax. Now, he believes in NATO. Now, China will not be listed as a currency manipulator. Now, Janet Yellen is a good chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) put all the flip-flops in delicate terms so as not to offend the Trump faithful: “I think President Trump is learning the job, and some of the things that were said during the campaign, I think he now knows — that’s simply not the way things ought to be.”

Trump’s singular success was getting Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court. But the credit for that win should properly go to the Heritage Foundation and the conservative legal minds at the Federalist Society. They compiled a list of their favorite conservative judges and handed it to Trump.

Now, let’s look ahead to Trump’s next 100 days. The biggest threat to Trump is the split between him and Republicans in Congress. FiveThirtyEight.com forecaster Harry Enten tweeted earlier this month that the House GOP caucus is in the worst position of any party holding the House majority since 1954, when voters were first asked their preference for which party rules the House. That ballot question was simply, “If the election were held today, would you vote for the Republican or the Democratic candidate?” Enten’s average of polls has the Republicans down by six points.

There is more than a year for the Republicans to dig out from there, but it is a big hole. That gives Republicans every reason to start distancing themselves from the Trump White House. Democrats are already standing far away. Yet Trump needs Congress’s help right now to avoid a government shutdown.

After a two-week Easter recess, Congress returns to work with just four days left until funding for current government operations is set to expire on April 29th.
The top two Senate Republicans, McConnell and Majority Whip John Cornyn (Texas), are calling for a bipartisan, stop-gap funding measure to stave off a shutdown.

So, now we have leading Republicans calling on President Trump to work with the Democrats. But Democrats know that Trump’s plans for future budgets anger their base. So why would they help him?

The Trump blueprint for future budgets, released last month, outlined draconian cuts to funds that support popular education, social welfare, and economic development programs. Meals on wheels for the elderly and after school programs for disadvantaged youths were two that invited public outcry.

Trump recently said he remains focused on health reform and is threatening to withhold subsidies to insurance companies to force Democrats to help him pass a bill to replace Obamacare.

If you are a Democrat who enjoyed the disastrous GOP civil war over their health-care bill, then you are going to love the upcoming GOP slugfest over spending and taxes.

Juan Williams is an author and a
political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Trumpcare?

How can President Trump and the GOP Congress escape the political damage from their failed pledge to produce a better health-care plan than Obamacare?

If Congress can’t pass the current flawed Republican plan, Trump told leading conservative groups last week, he has a Plan B. It is to keep badmouthing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a “disaster” and then blame Democrats when Obamacare collapses.

He is going to need a Plan C, because there is a big problem with Plan B.

If the ACA ever fails, it will be because of Republicans. It was Senate Republicans, led by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who drained money from “risk corridors” created to protect insurance companies from losing money. And Republicans in 19 states refused to expand Medicaid, keeping about 4 million eligible Americans away from health insurance offered by Obamacare.

It was Trump who cancelled advertising aimed at bringing more people into the program. Congressional Republicans also made a point of scaring away sports teams and celebrities ready to join in public service campaigns to tell people about the benefits of getting health insurance under the ACA.

Who can forget all the scary claims coming from Congressional Republicans and candidate Trump about skyrocketing premiums under Obamacare? They sounded the alarm without saying that most people in Obamacare had nothing to fear because of federal subsidies. They also did not mention that premiums would have been higher without Obamacare.

Despite the Republican effort, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected enrollment in Obamacare would jump from 10 million in 2017 to 13 million in the next 10 years. 

Actual enrollment for Obamacare in 2017, despite the nonstop GOP chorus predicting its death, came in at 9.2 million, about 500,000 less than in 2016. “Open enrollment was a success, and it would have been even higher without the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress enrollment,” Leslie Dach, director of the Protect Our Care Coalition, told CNBC in February.

Standard and Poor’s investment ratings service said an increasing number of insurance companies participating in the Obamacare program would make money this year. And the CBO reported last week that Obamacare would cost one-third less than originally projected.  

Opinion polls also show rising public support for Obamacare. Pew Research Center and Kaiser Family Foundation both report record high levels of support for Obamacare, with Pew finding 54 percent of the public approving of the health-care program while 43 percent remain in opposition.

A Monmouth University poll released last week also found that a majority of Americans — 51 percent — say they want Congress to keep the ACA and improve it. 

These polls are evidence that Republicans are so intent on damaging Obamacare that they are no longer listening to voters.

Critics on the left and right have been fiercely critical of the House Republicans’ replacement plan, the American Health Care Act. And the CBO estimates on how many people it will leave uninsured are daunting. 

Even among conservative hardliners, there is opposition to the House version of a new health-care plan. Tea Party pressure groups like Heritage Action and Koch brothers-funded groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks came out swinging against the bill. 

Perhaps the most important foe of the House bill is the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which represents over 38 million senior citizens. 

“This bill would weaken Medicare’s fiscal sustainability, dramatically increase health-care costs for Americans aged 50-64, and put at risk the health care of millions of children and adults with disabilities and poor seniors who depend on the Medicaid program for long-term services and supports and other benefits,” wrote AARP senior vice president Joyce A. Rogers. 

Also standing in opposition to the GOP plan are the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Nurses Association (ANA), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the American College of Physicians (ACP). 

According to exit polls, voters over the age of 65 backed Trump over Clinton, 52 percent to 45 percent. The blowback from those voters over the GOP failure to produce a better health-care plan could produce a nightmare for Republicans in the 2018 midterms.

President Trump, however, is pushing the bill, and Congressional GOP leadership say they are confident that it will pass. Perhaps they have been in the right-wing media bubble so long that they can no longer discern reality from their talking points when it comes to Obamacare. 

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Enter the Prosecutor

In 40 years of covering Washington politics, I have never seen anything like President Trump’s amazing rise to power. I have seen presidents laid low by botched Congressional investigations that lead to special prosecutors. That’s why I’m starting to feel like I’ve seen this movie before.

Spoiler Alert: This political thriller ends with the president’s top aides striking plea bargains with federal prosecutors to reduce prison sentences.

Juan Williams

The U.S. has a rich recent history of special prosecutors. The odds are rising that one more is coming to look into alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The dwindling trust in the GOP majority in Congress to conduct such a probe is due to the fading credibility of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Republican chairman of that panel, Senator Richard Burr, is widely perceived as a Trump acolyte. 

When FBI director James Comey announced shortly before last year’s election that his agents had reopened their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, Burr bragged there is “not a separation between me and Donald Trump.”

Senator Charles Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, was slow to bury Burr with a call for a special prosecutor, perhaps seeking to avoid charges that he was politicizing the probe. But on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Schumer made that call. A special prosecutor was necessary, he asserted, to probe “whether the Trump campaign was complicit in working with the Russians to influence the election.”

Now Republicans, including Senators Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Susan Collins, are starting to peel away. Graham has said that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke with Russian diplomats, “then, for sure, you need a special prosecutor.”

On cue, last week Sessions had to recuse himself from the FBI’s probes into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia after The Washington Post revealed he met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. twice last year. Those details seemed to contradict sworn testimony he gave during his Senate confirmation hearing. 

If trust in the Senate probe is weak, then the credibility of any House investigation is even weaker. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) served with Sessions on Trump’s presidential transition team. Nunes was also one of the lawmakers actively recruited by Reince Priebus to counter stories about Trump’s ties to Russia. In a rambling press conference last week, he said he did not want the committee’s investigation to turn into a “witch hunt” and warned of “McCarthyism,” where innocent Americans were “haul[ed] before Congress.”

Representative Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat on the committee, further diminished trust in any House probe when he said last week that the FBI director refused to share with the committee more than “a fraction of what the FBI knows.”

Last week, we learned that the Trump White House Counsel’s office issued a memo to all White House staff instructing them to preserve all documents related to Russia. If history is a guide, all that is left now is for public pressure to build on the GOP and the special prosecutor to be named.

Here’s a quick look at that history: During the Iran-Contra affair, President Reagan tried to put the scandal behind him by agreeing to the appointment of a special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh. Walsh indicted several of Reagan’s top aides, including Defense Secretary Caspar “Cap” Weinberger.

During President Clinton’s first term, shady controversies from his time as governor of Arkansas led to the appointment of the special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and set the stage for the Monica Lewinsky sex story that resulted in Clinton’s impeachment.

President George W. Bush’s Attorney General, John Ashcroft, recused himself from a White House probe. His deputy then appointed an independent special counsel to find out who leaked the name of a CIA agent. That special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, won the conviction of the Vice President’s chief of staff,  Lewis “Scooter” Libby. 

Senator John McCain said that he has “more hope than belief” that the GOP Congress will properly investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. “Have no doubt, what the Russians tried to do to our election could have destroyed democracy,” McCain said.

Julius Caesar feared the Ides of March with good reason. As the middle of the month approaches, President Trump and his GOP supporters will be under fearsome pressure to go along with the naming of a special prosecutor.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Post-Election Prediction: More Gridlock

Here is your preview of the House and Senate under President Hillary Clinton: Current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said he views a potential Clinton presidency as a third term for President Obama. He promises that Senate Republicans will block Clinton from making good on campaign promises such as raising taxes on the wealthy, hiking the minimum wage, strengthening regulations on Wall Street, and enacting even modest gun control. 

Juan WIlliams

If Republicans retain control on both sides of the Capitol and Clinton wins, it will just result in shameless obstruction of the first female president instead of the first black president. 

The permanent, standing filibuster of legislation and nominations that McConnell implemented under Obama will continue and become the norm. Sixty votes, not 51, will be required to pass anything through the Senate, just as it has been under Obama. If you liked the dysfunction, gridlock, and petulance of the 114th Congress, then you are going to love what’s in store for the 115th Congress. 

Now, some surprising news for Team Trump: It will be much the same for them if he wins. Even with total GOP control of the Senate, the House, and the White House, President Trump is likely to face pure obstruction from Capitol Hill.

The reason is simple: Trump has broken with years of conservative Republican orthodoxy on free trade, military interventionism, U.S. participation in NATO, and, recently, paid maternity leave.

Trump’s positions on these and many other issues are anathema to everything McConnell has said he believed throughout his political career. The same goes for Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has accused Trump of making “textbook” racist comments and who will have a GOP majority in the House capable of blocking Trump’s agenda. 

For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has had a vacancy since Antonin Scalia died in February. Senate Republicans have refused to schedule a confirmation hearing much less a vote on Obama’s eminently qualified nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. His confirmation remains stalled. There is every reason to expect more delay if not outright denial of the nominee, especially if Clinton eventually nominates a stronger liberal.

The most recent New York Times “Upshot” forecast says the Republicans have a 58 percent chance of holding the Senate. In his latest “Crystal Ball” forecast, University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato predicts that the Democrats will have at least 47 seats while at least 49 seats will be held by Republicans. Four seats — Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania — are toss-ups, according to Sabato, who predicts that GOP incumbents in Illinois and Wisconsin will lose their seats. 

“Democrats can still manage to win the four or five seats they need to claim the Senate majority, but the battle has shifted from purple states that Barack Obama twice carried — Ohio and Florida — to Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina, where Obama lost in 2012,” The Washington Post noted recently.

Even in the New Hampshire Senate race, Governor Maggie Hassan, the Democratic candidate, is in a dead heat with incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, despite the fact that Hassan is much more popular than Clinton in the Granite State.

At data forecasting website FiveThirtyEight, Harry Enten wrote that the Senate and presidential races are moving in near lockstep. “Polls continue to show a tight race in states such as New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, three of the four most important seats in determining who wins control,” Enten wrote. “Not coincidentally, the contest between Clinton and Donald Trump in those three states is also close.”

If the Democrats pull through to regain the Senate majority, it will be by a thin margin — possibly relying on a tie-breaking vote from a Vice President Tim Kaine. In that scenario, the power of the GOP filibuster returns.

And if Trump wins and faces a Democratic majority in the Senate, the likely Majority Leader, Charles Schumer, will likely follow the Republican playbook used to obstruct Obama. Trump’s campaign has turned off major GOP donors, but their money continues to flow into key Senate races, with the goal of offsetting four more years of a Democrat in the White House. If the polls keep going the way they are, Senate Republicans look like they will pay no tax for their years-long blockade of the Obama agenda. And there is no indication they will pay a price for continuing the blockade under Clinton or Trump.

Even with record disapproval ratings, the GOP House and Senate majority appear to be on track for continuing more of the same gridlock.

Juan Williams is a contributor to Fox News.

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Political Warming

CREDIT: Dmitry Rukhlenko | Dreamstime.com

NASA announced last week that July 2016 was the hottest month in the recorded history of planet Earth. Last month, the agency reported that the first six months of this year was, overall, the hottest half-year in recorded history. That news came as a spate of record-breaking floods killed people and destroyed property from Maryland to West Virginia to Louisiana.

Something big is going on, threatening coastlines, crops, and wildlife, but Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on what’s causing the heat and destruction. They also can’t agree on what to do about it. 

A Stanford study recently found that 90 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of independents believe global warming will be a serious or very serious problem for the United States. Barely half of Republicans feel that way.

“It’s more politically polarizing than abortion,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told the news agency last week. “It’s more politically polarizing than gay marriage.”

That political divide is on display in the presidential campaign. 

“I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump told a Florida journalist this month when asked about its effects on coastal communities in the Sunshine State. “There could be some impact, but I don’t believe it’s devastating impact.” 

Previously, Trump had tweeted “Any and all weather events are used by the GLOBAL WARMING HOAXSTERS to justify higher taxes to save our planet! They don’t believe it $$$$!”

Mike Pence, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, was one of the most vocal climate-change deniers in Congress during his tenure, saying flatly “global warming is a myth” on his campaign website.

Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is calling out Trump and Republicans for being blinded to scientific reality by politics.

Dmitry Rukhlenko | Dreamstime.com

“I believe in science,” Clinton said in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last month. “I believe that climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good-paying clean energy jobs.”

There is also good political reason for Clinton to fight Trump and Pence on the issue. At a minimum, she gains points with environmentalists and the large number of young voters who, according to polls, strongly believe there is a climate change problem.

And it’s not just young people. A Gallup poll taken in March found that 64 percent of Americans say they are concerned a “great deal or a fair amount” about global warming — the highest number in eight years.

Trump, however, sees political gain in downplaying climate change. He promises to reopen coal mines and reopen smokestack industries in Midwest states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

The latest RealClearPolitics polling average shows Clinton with a solid lead over Trump in two of those three states: 7 percent in Michigan, 9 percent in Pennsylvania.

President Obama is adding to the pressure on Trump and the GOP majority in Congress. Last week, he released new fuel-efficiency standards on “heavy-duty” trucks and equipment in order to meet a goal agreed on with Canada and Mexico for half of all power in North America to be free of carbon dioxide by 2025.

The president devoted his entire weekly address to the issue two weeks ago: “One of the most urgent challenges of our time is climate change. We know that 2015 surpassed 2014 as the warmest year on record — and 2016 is on pace to be even hotter.” He challenged Congress to build on the progress made in the Paris Agreement last year, where the nations of the world made proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Even after Obama leaves the White House, the issue will remain at the front of the political agenda. Congress is going to have to deal with reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program next year. 

As a political issue, climate change is definitely heating up. Expect one of the candidates to get burned on it in the debates; the polls show the candidate on the defensive will be Trump.

Juan Williams is a Fox News political analyst and the author of Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.

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Appeasing the Bern

What does Bernie Sanders want in exchange for endorsing Hillary Clinton?
And what can Clinton and the Democratic Party give Sanders to get him to campaign aggressively for her in the fall, harnessing the voting power of the passionate, mostly young, white, left-wing voters who favor him?

Obviously, Sanders expects a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. Neither the Clinton camp nor the party’s leadership will have a problem with that demand. But wh

at if he wants to be the vice presidential candidate on a Clinton-led ticket? That’s a reach.

Sanders’ “socialist” label is a liability in a general election. The Vermonter will hurt Clinton’s effort to win support from political moderates, especially older voters. Sanders would also be a bridge too far for Republicans disenchanted by their party’s wild primary season and the prospect of either Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz as the GOP’s presidential candidate.

But if Sanders is not to be made the prospective veep, Democrats will have to find something else to give him. He has exceeded all expectations during the primary season. The depth of his support was underlined by his three strong victories in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington. And Democrats fear him mounting a third-party run along the lines of the populist campaign run by Ralph Nader in 2000 that arguably gave the White House to George W. Bush.

The heart of this troublesome political puzzle for Democrats is how to get Sanders’ passionate supporters to line up behind Clinton. In early March, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found a third of the people voting for Sanders saying they “cannot see themselves voting for Hillary Clinton in November.” The Nation magazine reported recently that “nearly 60,000 people have signed the ‘Bernie or Bust’ pledge,” vowing to remain loyal to him even if Clinton wins the nomination.

President Obama is now getting involved in this escalating debate. According to The New York Times, the president privately told Texas Democrats that Sanders’ continuing campaign against Clinton stalls party organizers, donors, and activists from getting started on beating the GOP in the fall campaign.

The president and leading Democrats in Congress are all but calling for Sanders to get out of the race now. The Democrats’ unstated anxiety is that Clinton, while a clear winner among primary voters, does not set the campaign trail on fire. Sanders and Trump, the leading candidate for the GOP nomination, are arsonists by comparison. Sanders has continued to condemn a “corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy.” Clinton’s campaign is taking money from political action committees while Sanders’ is not.
Sanders is also casting an unfavorable light on Clinton by celebrating the “energy and excitement” of his crowds and claiming that it is because “we are telling the truth.” He does not mention Clinton, but the comparison is obvious, if implicit.

Sanders’ big issue is income inequality. He continues to accuse Clinton of being too close to Wall Street, further arguing that this makes it implausible that she will rein in wealthy bankers and hedge-fund managers. It is easy to see how his followers might be convinced Clinton is the no-change, establishment candidate and become permanently turned off to her.

Sanders’ lack of formal connection to the Democratic Party is another part of the problem. At an Ohio town hall meeting, he admitted having considered running for president as an independent but decided to run as a Democrat because “in terms of media coverage, you have to run within the Democratic Party.”

Last year, former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner (D), whose wife Huma Abedin is a top Clinton aide, publicly expressed the reservations Democratic insiders still have about Sanders.

“What exactly does he think he’s doing in a Democratic presidential primary?” Weiner wrote in Business Insider last July. “Why is he asking for the nomination of a party he always avoided joining? Now he wants to not only be a member of the party but its standard bearer?”

To bring Sanders inside the camp, Democrats will have to do more than make him a TV star at the convention. They will also have to put Clinton, union organizers, and money behind his issues, creating a permanent movement inside the party for a living wage, for lower-cost college education, and a sharper critique of Wall Street.

The party is going to have to buy into Sanders if they want him to buy into them.

Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel. His latest book is We the People.

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Pope and Change

Pope Francis

Name the biggest 2015 event on Capitol Hill — the one event it was near impossible to get a ticket to attend. 

It is not close: the pope’s visit.

Who said: “If someone is gay and searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” 

If you said the pope, you win again.

Speaking to a Congress that is 31.7 percent Catholic, and within earshot of a Supreme Court with six Catholics on the bench, who said this:

“Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money, money that is drenched in blood. It is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.”

Did you answer, the pope? Right once again. Those words came from a leader with a higher approval than any American politician — a 59 percent favorable rating among the population at large.

And who called for Congress to make a courageous effort to halt “environmental deterioration caused by human activity”?

Some wild, lefty tree hugger? Well, if you consider the pope a tree hugger, yes.

On issues ranging from climate change to gun control to gay rights, the liberals in Congress found a surprising ally in 79-year-old Pope Francis.

The pope’s visit was a mind-bender for the GOP, given the party’s reliance on opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights, two key elements of Catholic doctrine. Those wedge social issues have stirred the Republican base since President Nixon adopted a “silent majority” strategy to defeat Democrats on issues of sexuality and race.

Pope Francis is changing the religion-politics dynamic in a way that is sure to ripple through the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.

“The contemporary world, with its open wounds, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps,” the pope said to a Congress paralyzed by division.

Instead of politicians taking advantage of fear, anxiety, and anger, the pope called for Congress to engage with a “renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.”

The pope’s willingness to step into Congress’ big political fight over immigration reform really stung the “deport them all” caucus among Republicans.

Standing next to President Obama at the White House, who, in the face of Congressional inaction, issued an executive order shielding 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation, the pope said he is “the son of an immigrant family,” and was pleased to be visiting a nation “which was largely built by such families.” Francis said the members Congress have to reject a “mindset of hostility” toward refugees and undocumented immigrants.

And later, speaking to America’s bishops, he added: “Perhaps you will be challenged by their diversity. But know that [immigrants] also possess resources meant to be shared. So do not be afraid to welcome them.”

The pope’s blessing of compassionate immigration policies came as the front-runner for the Republican nomination won standing ovations for calling Mexican illegal immigrants “rapists” and later proposed a halt to the flow of refugees from war-torn Syria and a block on all Muslim immigrants.

Congressional Republicans did not publicly criticize the pope. But conservative talk radio did not hold back. Rush Limbaugh, the top-rated talk radio host, trashed the pope as a Marxist.

“We have a president and a pope who speak down to us,” radio host Mark Levin said. “Whether it is immigration, whether it is poverty, frankly they do not appreciate American history.”

Among the Republican presidential contenders, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Catholic, also turned thumbs down to the pope. “I just think the pope is wrong. His infallibility is on religious matters, not political ones.” 

Another GOP contender, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, said he “doesn’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.”

Republican candidates in 2016 will try their best to close their ears to what Pope Francis is saying. But Democrats have found a surprising voice to counter the conservative tendencies of churchgoers, especially evangelical Christians.

Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Paul Ryan and Bernie Sanders

In keeping with the polarized politics on Capitol Hill, I have one winner for Republicans and a very different winner for Democrats. Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Bernie Sanders perfectly embody the polarization that prevents Congress from getting anything done on the nation’s most pressing issues, from immigration to stopping gun massacres to fighting the Islamic State. 

This dysfunctional Congress deserves its dismal 13 percent approval rating from the American people. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate reached a new nadir in broken politics by inviting a foreign leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to use the Congress as a setting to disrespect the American president back in March. They acted without first consulting with the White House. And then there was the refusal to hold confirmation hearings on the president’s nominees for judicial posts or to the Foreign Service.

Congressional Republicans have made it their everyday practice to obstruct initiatives from the twice-elected leader of the nation.

The GOP antipathy toward President Obama is not new. The bigger change is the out-of-control elbowing inside the Republican tent that came to define the year on Capitol Hill. Republicans in the House successfully launched a coup earlier this year against then-Speaker John Boehner, forcing out a man who is by any measure a strong conservative but still not conservative enough for the party’s far right. The eventual winner after several weeks of embarrassing party infighting was the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate Ryan. But Ryan won without winning the official endorsement of the rebellious Freedom Caucus, who dictated Boehner’s departure. All this led the new speaker, in his very first speech as the top Republican in the House, to stare failure in the face. 

“Let’s be frank: The House is broken,” he said. “We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.”

The real story is that he is the most conservative speaker in recent times. Ryan rose to prominence as the defiant right-winger who proposed, as top Republican on the budget committee, to change Medicare from a guaranteed health-care program for the elderly to a limited, untested voucher plan. He also backed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations. He has been a reliable opponent of abortion rights and gay rights, and he supported President George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security.

Despite that very conservative record, the new speaker had to deflect charges from the Freedom Caucus, conservative talk radio, websites, and bloggers that he is just one more establishment Republican. That outrageous indictment fits with a Pew Research poll from May that found 75 percent of Republican voters want congressional Republicans to obstruct, defy, and challenge President Obama more frequently.

The GOP’s deference to the far right has resulted in a backlash from liberal Democrats around the nation and on Capitol Hill, and that finds expression in the presidential bid of Sanders.

Democratic voters still strongly back former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the party’s 2016 nomination, but the defiant roar of the party in 2015 can be heard at Sanders’ political rallies.

He has been a political sensation all year long, in every corner of the nation. He attracts energized, loud crowds by identifying the Republican majority in Congress as the tool of big business and extremely wealthy Americans, including Charles and David Koch and other plutocrats. Sanders’ anger at the power of big money is resonating among left-wingers looking to identify those responsible for rigging the economic and political system against workers, unions, students, immigrants, and minorities.

Sanders succeeded in forcing Clinton to do a flip-flop and become an opponent of Obama’s Asia trade deal. He lashed out at her for being slow to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. He critiqued her 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

“He [Sanders] is where the economic heart and soul of the party is right now And he’s got the outsider thing, which is so big this year,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said recently.

Sanders and Ryan are the year’s political leaders in Congress because they captured that “outsider thing” for the left and the right. 

As the year ends, both parties and their leading men are in a critical struggle over whether the outsiders are now in charge.

Juan Williams serves as a Fox News political analyst and is the author of the bestseller, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Buck Passes on Obama’s Economy

Senator Bernie Sanders

In the GOP primary race, the economy is the dog that has not barked. Given low unemployment, low gas prices, and low inflation, it is easy to understand the GOP’s silence. The current unemployment rate is 5.1 percent, the lowest since April 2008.

Under President Obama’s stewardship, the economy has added over 7 million private sector jobs. The Dow Jones has more than doubled, and the NASDAQ has more than tripled. The president has exceeded every promise for speedy economic recovery made by his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in the 2012 campaign.

But now Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders is drawing crowds with harsh indictments of the American economic system as unfair to the poor, the working class, and the middle class. Sanders recently described the nation as having a “rigged economy, designed by the wealthiest people in this country to benefit the wealthiest people in this country at the expense of everybody else.”

His criticism echoes that of Senator Elizabeth Warren who has blasted erstwhile Obama economic officials such as Larry Summers and Tim Geithner for being too cozy with the Wall Street banks they were supposed to be regulating.

Unions have for decades been suffering from declining membership and declining leverage at the bargaining table. That was before the president beat them and their Democratic supporters in Congress on the trade deal in question, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He stood with the Chamber of Commerce and the GOP majority in Congress to win approval for fast-track authority pertaining to TPP.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sanders, and other top Democrats give Obama credit for leading the nation’s steady economic growth after the 2008 recession. But, as with the unions, their current focus is on income inequality and stagnant wages.

“The defining economic challenge of our time is clear,” Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, said in July. “We must raise incomes for hard-working Americans so they can afford a middle-class life.”

The president, however, prefers to emphasize how the nation has recovered from an extraordinarily deep recession, pointing out the errors of his past Republican critics. In a recent speech to the Business Roundtable, the president focused on those Republican criticisms, not the new carping from Democrats.

‘”Seven years ago today was one of the worst days in the history of our economy,” he said, going on to note that in September 2008 “stocks had suffered their worst loss since 9/11, businesses would go bankrupt, millions of Americans would lose their jobs and their homes, and our economy would reach the brink of collapse.”

Obama then offered a contrasting picture of the current economy:

“Here’s where we are today,” the president said. “Businesses have created more than 13 million new jobs over the past 66 months — the longest streak of job growth on record. The unemployment rate is lower than it’s been in over seven years. There are more job openings right now than at any time in our history. Housing has bounced back. Household wealth is higher than it was before the recession.”

Obama’s victory lap might also include a mention that this year’s Republican candidates have no answer for income inequality. In fact, with the exception of Donald Trump, the current Republican candidates consistently call for tax cuts for the rich that would worsen inequality by widening the wealth gap.

These are facts. They are powerful ammunition for any Democrat who wants to run on the strength of the Obama economic record in 2016. But as debates begin next month among the Democrats, you can expect that consultants will be advising the candidates that they need to distance themselves from Obama because of stagnant wages and income inequality.

In light of the actual economic facts, perhaps a winning message for Democrats would be to promise to continue and improve on the president’s record by dealing with stagnant wages as they seek “Obama’s third term.” Yet, even among Democratic candidates, that seems to be too much to ask.

My advice for President Obama? Just bite your tongue, and let it go. A fair reading of history will show the economy came back to life on your watch.

Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel.