Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos argued Tuesday after Jon Ossoff’s special election defeat in Georgia that the party’s “anti-Trump message” won’t be a winning strategy going into 2018.
“It’s not going to work for us just to have an anti-Trump message,” Ms. Bustos, co-chair of the House Democratic Policy & Communications Committee (DPCC), said on “CNN Tonight,” according to a clip highlighted by Breitbart News.
“It’s showing up and it’s talking nonstop about the economy and jobs and that we’re going to fight for people who need us to fight for them,” she said. “In the last election, Donald Trump, frankly, had a message that resonated with people who haven’t gotten a raise in the last five years, who saw their jobs, like a plant in my district, Maytag, ship every last one of the jobs over to Mexico.
“We’ve seen so many of those stories, and when he talked about making America great again in very simple terms, that resonated with people who wanted hope,” she said. “What we didn’t talk about enough, consistently, was about jobs, the economy, and fighting for people who want better times ahead.”
Despite her criticism, Ms. Bustos said the “silver lining” in Mr. Ossoff’s loss to Republican Karen Handel was that it was a closer race than previous elections in Georgia’s 6th congressional district.
“So I’m going to take that away as a silver lining in saying we’re moving in the right direction,” she said. “We’re inching the ball forward. We just didn’t get in the end zone the way we had hoped to.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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