U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, said she\u2019s sick of playing defense. <\/p>\n
Michigan\u2019s junior senator, a first-term Democrat, has been an outspoken member of the party since President Donald Trump took office in January, including when she gave the Democratic response<\/a> to his State of the Union address in March. <\/p>\n During a half-hour interview with the New York Times<\/a> this week, Slotkin shared what she believes Democrats need to do to rebrand and be more effective, which she called bringing back \u201calpha energy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t just point at Donald Trump every day and point out the bad things that he\u2019s doing,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to show a positive, affirmative vision of what you\u2019re going to do if you\u2019re in power.\u201d<\/p>\n In the July 17 article, which gave a nod to Detroit Lions Head Coach Dan Campbell\u2019s 2021 \u201cWe\u2019re going to bite a kneecap off\u201d<\/a> speech, Slotkin said she views the shift as synonymous with being bold, calling the tough play or taking the risk.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Midwest, alpha energy is about emotion,\u201d Slotkin said. \u201cWhether you\u2019re a coach and you know what your team has put into the game, or you\u2019re frustrated that they didn\u2019t give it their all, you\u2019re not speaking from wonky details. You\u2019re speaking about your gut and your emotion. <\/p>\n \u201cI think Democrats have lost that,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cWe respond to people\u2019s pain with a long list of wonky policies.\u201d <\/p>\n Slotkin is now delivering a series of speeches in hopes of inspiring a shift. Last month, she laid out an \u201ceconomic war plan\u201d<\/a> before the Center for American Progress (CAP), and told The Times she\u2019s planning more later this year on security and democracy.<\/p>\n This month, she\u2019s also prompted a response from Trump<\/a> as one of the sponsors on a bill requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to unmask and identify themselves. <\/p>\n Immigration and border security are two issues where Slotkin said Democrats need to be less afraid.<\/p>\n During last month\u2019s CAP speech, she said for the past 20 years both parties have \u201cabandoned immigration deals,\u201d either because they were \u201cgood but not perfect, or because they preferred to use the immigration issue as political ammo.\u201d <\/p>\n Now, she told The Times Republicans are using anti-immigrant hate \u201cas a policy and a strategy, and Democrats are so scared of offending either immigration groups or people to the left of them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are concerned about saying: \u2018No, not everyone gets to be here,\u2019\u201d Slotkin said. \u201c\u2018Not everyone has a right to live in the United States, and we, like every other country in the world, get to know who and what is coming across our borders.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cThat kind of clamping down with rules tends to make a lot of my Democratic colleagues really nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n Slotkin said during her CAP speech that big, bold change is needed to fix a \u201cbroken system,\u201d adding that an immigration system must also be keyed into the economy, as \u201cimmigrants fill critical labor shortages on our farms, in our factories, in our hospitals and in our firms.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need a system that brings legal, vetted immigrants into our country,\u201d Slotkin said. \u201cThat means talking directly with employers. Setting up a completely new system that automatically sets visa caps to the needs of our workforce.\u201d <\/p>\n She also spoke about the importance of economic policy for Democrats, namely moving away from a \u201cprioritize everything\u201d mentality. <\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats were saying we were for everything, that everything was a priority, everything was important,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so the American public couldn\u2019t understand what we really prioritized and cared about. <\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump, whether you believe him or not, prioritized the talking point of cost of living and the economy.\u201d <\/p>\n Slotkin also said it\u2019s important to recognize that it\u2019s not just Trump supporters frustrated with their government.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s across the board,\u201d she said. \u201cWhile Trump is being sloppy about how he cuts programs and cuts personnel and throws tariffs on, very few people in America are hoping that we just return, hook, line and sinker, to the status quo from before Trump.\u201d <\/p>\n Since taking office in January, Slotkin said she\u2019s spent her early days pushing for these conversations and prodding for some sort of unified approach. <\/p>\n Eventually, \u201cI got tired of pushing on other doors across Washington and decided that I was going to take my best stab at it, as someone who comes from a swing state, who won on the same ballot as Trump,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Slotkin likened the Democratic party, with \u201ca lot of leaders,\u201d to a solar system, and said a new generation of fresh-faced leadership is necessary. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have stars, and we have planets with their own gravitational pull, but we don\u2019t have a sun that we all center around.\u201d <\/p>\n She said what concerns her is that some of her long-time legislator peers have seen so many things happen in Washington that their approach to Trump is just to wait.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Senate, we don\u2019t really divide into progressive versus moderate when we\u2019re behind closed doors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Instead, the real debate now is, \u201cDo you believe that Trump\u2019s second term is an existential threat to American democracy, or do you believe Trump\u2019s second term is bad but, like his first term, survivable if we just wait it out and let his bad policies boomerang on him?<\/p>\n \u201cI do not fall in that camp,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, said she\u2019s sick of playing defense. Michigan\u2019s junior senator, a first-term Democrat, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439],"tags":[49,48,551,546,559,527,525,523,526,524,82],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaaf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-college","tag-college-football","tag-collegefootball","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaaf","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}