On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) argued that Democrats should focus on taking better approaches to crime in some areas like New York City and Seattle and on homelessness and “failing” public schools and on arguing against things the Trump administration is doing instead of “flying off the handle at things that might happen” like they did with proposed tariffs.
Smith said that while it wasn’t 100% clear the tariffs were a bluff, “for us to be out there talking about how prices are going up before the tariffs are even fully implemented was a mistake. He said it. So, let’s wait until Tuesday when they were going to be implemented and not sort of take the bait. I think that was a mistake. It’s all perfectly okay to warn about the impact of that, but to jump out there up front.”
He added, “I think the area where we need to work is on the state and local level. When it comes to Congress…we’re not in charge. Donald Trump’s in charge. We have limited options to actually do things. It’s how we message. And you touched on that, we can message more effectively. The real opportunity lies in jurisdictions that we control, in states run by Democrats and cities and counties. We can start to have a more reasonable approach to crime, certainly in New York City and Seattle, we could. We could deal better with homelessness. We could do something to increase education standards. Bloomberg had a great piece talking about how public schools are failing and we should take a different approach to it. That’s what we ought to be doing, is showing that we can fix our governance struggles where we’re in charge and where we have decision-making authority, while, also, yes, holding Trump accountable to the extent that we can, making arguments not — as you correctly pointed out — not flying off the handle at things that might happen but dealing with what is and making our arguments against Trump. But I really think the area we’ve got to get after is on that state and local government, where we could actually impact things.”
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