Seattle is evolving and diversifying, new people are coming in with different experiences and backgrounds. Jayapal is doing something different as well. She’s running her 7th Congressional District campaign on a platform that hasn’t been common of Seattle politicians in the past, emphasizing racial justice and immigration reform.

And it’s working: Jayapal won the August primary with 42 percent of the vote. Her closest competitor, Brady Piñero Walkinshaw — who also represents a fresh, diverse face in the race — received only half of that. Jayapal and Walkinshaw will face off in November. …

Candidates running on progressive platforms are winning elsewhere, as well. Take Zephyr Teachout, running for the 19th New York Congressional seat, a rural swing district currently held by a Republican. She is up against John Faso, a Republican backed by big money, but she received substantially more votes in the August primary.

“I think people have always cared about progressive issues and we are beginning to show Democrats it’s the best way to win elections and get the biggest number of people behind them,” says Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “What you’re seeing now are voters demanding Democrats get back to talking about economic issues voters care about.”

It’s a direct challenge to the recent Democratic Party orthodoxy, which holds that the best way to win elections is to lead from the political center. That may hold true elsewhere, but in left-leaning, diversifying, fast-changing Seattle, Jayapal’s pitch seems to have powerful appeal.

Hillary Clinton has rankled anti-trade groups by hiring former Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) as her transition team leader.

Salazar, who also served as secretary of the Interior Department under President Obama, has expressed support for the trade deal with 11 countries spanning the Pacific Rim. …

”I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages — including the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Clinton said in last week’s address. “I oppose it now, I’ll oppose it after the election and I’ll oppose it as president.”

Democracy for America and CREDO have backed a petition that called on Clinton to publicly oppose a lame-duck vote on the TPP.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, says Clinton should publicly call on Obama to back away from the TPP.

“Now more than ever, Hillary Clinton should press the White House to take the TPP definitively off the table in the lame duck Congress,” Green said.

Aetna announced this week that, with a few exceptions, it would no longer participate in Obamacare exchanges run by individual states. The health-insurance powerhouse is following UnitedHealth and Humana out the door, leaving some state exchanges on, well, life support. Blue Cross and Cigna have also indicated they might get out too.

What’s the answer? Many left-leaning health-insurance experts and pundits say there’s only one way to save President Barack Obama’s signature domestic-policy achievement: the public option.

“Big commercial insurance corporations continue to put profits before patients’ health, which is why Hillary Clinton’s call for a public-insurance option so that everyone in every exchange in the country has a choice of an affordable option is more essential than ever,” Roosevelt Institute senior fellow Richard Kirsch declared this week through the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) renewed push for a government-run healthcare plan is getting a tepid reception from Democrats, with some saying he is waging a losing battle.

Democrats who back the public option say the public is on their side. Seven in 10 people said they supported the public option, according to a 2015 poll by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). Among Democrats, the support rises to about 77 percent. The PCCC is calling on Clinton to use the “super popular” issue to help drive Democrats to the polls in November and to make it a top priority early next year.

“Aetna’s announcement proves the larger point that private insurance companies are willing to deny care to make a few extra dollars,” Kait Sweeney, press secretary for the PCCC, wrote in a statement Tuesday, describing what she called “new urgency” for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s White House transition team, a mix of former advisers of President Barack Obama, close confidants, long-time colleagues and former elected officials, reflects the sense of careful organization the Democratic candidate has aimed to project in her presidential campaign. …

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee applauded the selection of O’Leary and Boushey, praising their economic positions. The environmental group Greenpeace criticized Salazar for not curbing fracking in his home state of Colorado.

On Tuesday, the former secretary of state announced Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator and secretary of the interior, would serve as the chairman of her transition committee. He brings with him one inconvenient policy position: outspoken support for TPP.

“President Obama’s events around the nation in favor of passing the corporate-written TPP after the election will hurt Democratic chances of success this November — and help Donald Trump’s chances with blue-collar voters,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement Tuesday.

Clinton has emphasized the high stakes for the high court, and while she has called on the Senate to confirm Garland, she has not indicated whether she would stick with him if there was still an opening come January 2017.

If she wins, Clinton will face pressure from her party’s left wing to select someone younger or more liberal than Garland. Standing by Obama’s man could alienate liberal Democrats, including those who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the presidential primaries.

Garland “was the most conservative possible Democratic nominee, and it makes no sense for that to be who Democrats offer the nation after winning a fresh mandate,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which stayed neutral in the primary. The energy of the liberal grassroots “plummeted,” he said, after Obama nominated Garland.

The White House is making an all-out push to win passage of the deal in the lame-duck session of Congress, organizing 30 events over the congressional recess to gin up support for the agreement, considered key to Obama’s strategy to counter China in the Asia-Pacific region. The strategy is to offer support and cover to the small flock of Democrats who supported legislation to fast-track the deal and to remind wavering Republicans that they oppose it at their own peril because of its strong business support.

“Every week that goes by that Donald Trump is allowed to undermine voters’ beliefs that the Democratic party stands for working people and against trade deals written by corporations, that’s another week that helps Donald Trump on this particular issue,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Warren-aligned Progressive Campaign Change Committee.

Green’s organization, along with liberal activist groups, Democracy for America and Credo Action, sent an online petition this week to an estimated 5 million members with the subject line: “Shame on Obama.”

Perhaps most importantly, she offered an unequivocal statement of opposition regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” she said. “I oppose it now. I’ll oppose it after the election. And I’ll oppose it as president.”
This is the stuff that activists want to hear, and the progressive groups that were slightly wary of Clinton heading into the speech were pretty ebullient over Hillary’s TPP remarks. “These were Hillary Clinton’s strongest words yet against the TPP,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green said in a statement. “For the first time, Clinton signaled she will personally work to kill the corporate-written TPP if it comes up after the election in an unaccountable lame-duck Congress.” The Roosevelt Institute also lauded Clinton’s speech in a statement released in conjunction with Democracy Corps: “With this economic speech, Secretary Clinton has made this election a choice about whether our economy works for all, not just the few, and that allows progressive economics to win a mandate in November.”

Clinton, casting herself as a champion of working people, appeared to assuage liberal concerns that her campaign’s attempt to attract moderate Republicans turned off by GOP nominee Donald Trump would weaken her attention to progressive priorities.

“Today’s speech shows that getting some Republicans to say Donald Trump is unfit to be president is not mutually exclusive with Clinton running on bold progressive ideas,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, said in a statement.

“Today’s speech shows that getting some Republicans to say Donald Trump is unfit to be president is not mutually exclusive with Clinton running on bold progressives ideas like debt-free college, expanding Social Security benefits and Wall Street reform,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Clinton has paid no price for leftward shift, since Trump is more interested in litigating her character than her policy in any kind of traditionally ideological way. Trump’s own rhetoric on taxes and spending have undercut his and other Republicans’ ability to tag Clinton as, say, a tax-and-spend liberal. Republicans siding with Clinton are doing so in spite of her policy, not because of it.

PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor went on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Tuesday to talk aboutAi??the role of progressives as the general election phase of the presidential campaign begins. During the 45-minute interview, she discussed the relationship between progressives and the Clinton-Kaine ticket: “There’s trust there, but it’s a fragile one.”

Take a look:

Stephanie pointed out that in order to build on that fragile trust, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine must campaign on bold, progressive issues including debt-free college, expanding Social Security, reforming Wall Street, a public health insurance option, and opposing bad trade deals like the TPP.

It was very exciting to see in [Clinton’s] acceptance speech a litany of issues that progressives have worked very hard on, like expanding Social Security, like debt-free and tuition-free college, opposing unfair trade deals. … She really needs to keep the volume high and keep talking about these issues throughout the campaign.

Stephanie also gave this analysis a few hours before Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination on Thursday, July 28, during a POLITICO Hub panelAi??in Philadelphia, including AFSCME president Lee Saunders, Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver, and pollster Mark Penn with POLITICO’s Susan Glasser and Glenn Thrush moderating.Ai??Click here to watch.

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