Readers React: A safely centrist Democratic Party is exactly what isn’t needed to defeat President Trump

To the editor: Doyle McManus’ prescription of Democrats keeping calm and catering to the rapidly vanishing center is what Hillary Clinton tried. Al Gore too, for that matter.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are always catering to the center. Democrats playing it safe for 40 years is how we ended up with Donald Trump in the White House.

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the New York primary against a high-ranking House Democrat is only a shock to those who haven’t been paying attention. The activists doing all the work to oppose and resist Trump feel that Democratic politicians haven’t noticed them. They believe the party they’re working to strengthen will once again take their money and their good work and throw them under the bus.

But maybe McManus is right. Maybe Democratic voters don’t matter.

Joe Crompton, Santa Ana

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To the editor: It’s great to see McManus on the op-ed page again. However, I must take issue with this piece and other media efforts to manufacture a crisis among Democrats where one doesn’t exist.

The last week of June was the first time I’d ever heard the name Joseph Crowley, the 10-term Democrat defeated in New York. I think it’s great that Ocasio-Cortez will almost certainly be going to Congress. Frankly, I don’t think it matters much whether Pelosi or Schumer come or go. I care about who can get things done.

Commentators continually wonder whether Democrats will have a winning strategy for defeating Republicans this fall. Some say they cannot win by opposing this nightmare president, that they must say what they stand for.

But Democrats know what they believe, and they must communicate it. They want healthcare for all, Roe vs. Wade to be protected, more gun control, a government that acts like climate change is real, and a Senate that will oppose Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

See? We are “centered.”

Bob Klein, Los Angeles

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