2018 General Election Elected 55 – 45
How Do You Become A Democrat from Trump Country
Go to school out of town, go to school out of the country. Try Upper Canada College in Toronto. Complete your Bachelor’s degree and graduate magna cum laude from private Upstate New York Hamilton College. Earn a Phi Beta Kappa Key while you are at it. Stay home for law school and edit the Law Review at Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. Get a doctorate there, too. Since that’s not enough education, take a little time to study at the London School of Economics. Come home from London with something tangible — a wife who is local who joins her father’s law firm. Join the firm too.
This education doesn’t seem to be the right way to get on Trump’s side of the culture war or his politics. .
Matt Cartwright http://cartwrightcongress.com/home/ says he favors Good Government. He has introduced bills requiring transparency and efficiency and reducing duplication. These bills became law and were signed by President Obama. This is draining the swamp.
Matt Cartwright introduced bills to promote American manufacturing as a way to promote better jobs in this country, gained bipartisan support, but hasn’t got the bills passed. He was America First before Trump. Without the slogan.
Matt Cartwright has supported cap and trade bills as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This approach would not be Pruitt’s cup of tea at the EPA.
Matt Cartwright supports same sex marriage, He supports gun safety laws such as eliminating legal immunity for gun manufacturers rather than gun control. He would raise taxes on those with the highest income and describes himself as a moderate on abortion. (He seems to avoid talking about what that means, but he has described himself as pro-life.)
Matt Cartwright is not exactly a Liberal Democrat in Trump country, but he is not a Trump Democrat either. He ought to be endangered and he probably is endangered even though he is trying to win his fourth Congressional election. When this Note was originally written, Matt Cartwright’s district was still PA 17, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had not imposed redistricting. Everything became a little less certain.
How Matt Cartwright approaches a controversial issue is instructive. On health care, he created a panel of more than twenty leading local figures to identify weaknesses in the Affordable Care Act. Some of the panelists were donors to his campaign, for which he received criticism. The donors were not all Democrats. For instance, one was a Republican who donated to his campaign and was also head of psychiatric services at a local hospital. Cartwright did not sit around waiting for the report. While waiting for the report Matt Cartwright signed on for he the Medicare for All proposal.
Matt Cartwright seems to have figured out how not to be all or nothing, how to listen to locals about an important issue, and how to make sure that the locals he listens to are both independent and loyal enough not to be destructive. His website notes that Cartwright has been named a Moderate Democratic Leader in the House by a leading legislator ranking organization. Another ranking organization uses a scattergram. Cartwright is in a large cluster in the scattergram to the left of the center of the Democratic House Members.
Matt Cartwrighthttp://cartwrightcongress.com/home/ beat the incumbent Democrat in a primary in 2012 and has had opponents in primaries and elections since then. This year his Republican opponent is an investment banker with ties to the district. Matt Cartwright has had help from public sector and private sector unions. Here is another way Cartwright is unlike Trump –– his net worth appears to be getting smaller while he serves in Congress. Cartwright is neither a swamp creature nor a Democrat interested in resembling the President. Help him. Get him get reelected.
