Dem donors to discuss path forward

Prominent Democratic donors will meet in Washington this week to discuss their path forward under a President Donald Trump come 2017, according to a report from Politico.

The conference, hosted by the Democracy Alliance, will feature members of Congress and many heads of liberal groups and unions, according to the report.

{mosads}Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who is running to be chairman of the Democatic National Committee, are among those said to be attending.

The Alliance’s president, Gary LaMarche, told donor attendees last week that the meeting would evaluate “what steps we will take together to resist the assaults that are coming and take back power, beginning in the states in 2017 and 2018.”

In his surprise win of the White House, Trump lost the popular vote but became the first Republican in decades to win the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He is also ahead in Michigan, which hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.

One activist who works with the Alliance, Raj Goyle, argued the party’s donors and activists had become “disconnected from working-class voters’ concerns.”

“Progressive donors and organizations need to immediately correct the lack of investment in state and local strategies,” he added.

One goal of the Alliance has been to place resources in the “New American Majority,” which it describes as “people of color, women, and millennials.” The Alliance placed significant efforts in its New American Majority Fund in an effort to boost minority turnout in the 2016 election.

But according to CBS News exit polls, Clinton did not win enough minority votes to compensate for the white votes she did not get.

A strategist who attended the meeting told Politico that the Alliance, a network of donors founded by liberals including George Soros, should itself be called into question.

“You can make a very good case it’s nothing more than a social club for a handful wealthy white donors and labor union officials to drink wine and read memos, as the Democratic Party burns down around them,” the source reportedly said.

At the conference’s opening, LaMarche urged the group Sunday evening to avoid “finger-pointing” in the regrouping efforts following the loss to Trump.