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A Washington state Democrat called out her party and Vice President Kamala Harris after the election loss to President-elect Donald Trump.

U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez managed to hold on to her seat in her own critical re-election bid this week despite running in a district made up of Trump-supporting counties. But her more purportedly moderate views paid off and she offered her thoughts on the national race in an interview with the New York Times.

Gluesenkamp Perez revealed she had only “had one interaction with Harris, at her Naval Observatory Christmas party.”

“When Harris first came out, I was open to talking with her. I know she called a lot of my colleagues; she never called me,” she explained.

“I’m not super comfortable at that kind of thing,” Gluesenkamp Perez said of the Christmas party.

“I’d had a couple of beers, and I noticed that almost all of the garlands were plastic. My district grows a hell of a lot of Christmas trees,” she recalled. “I was strong-armed into taking a picture. I said, ‘Madam Vice President, we grow those where I live.’ She just walked away from me. There was kind of an eye roll, maybe. My thinking was, it does matter to people where I live. It’s the respect, the cultural regard for farmers. I didn’t feel like she understood what I was trying to say.”

She reflected on how the Democratic Party has not shown a general respect for the concerns of voters.

“I was talking to a woman who runs one of the largest labor and delivery wards. She said 40 percent of the babies there have at least one parent addicted to fentanyl. What is empathetic — to tell them that’s their problem, or to take border security seriously?” she wondered in her interview with the Times. “People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.”

The congresswoman was asked if “the Democratic Party will be forced to change after this crushing election cycle.”

“It’s a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do. It is not fun to feel accountability. It requires a mental flexibility that’s painful,” she replied. “So who knows?”

Evidently, Gluesenkamp Perez’s break with Democrats on the issues has not been a popular stance with the establsihment.

“In an effort to distance herself from potentially polarizing issues, Gluesenkamp Perez did not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris or other Democrats in Southwest Washington,” Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. “At the federal level, she sometimes split with her party, voting against student debt forgiveness and showing support for Israel. While those votes frustrated some Democrats, it showed her independence.”

The congresswoman’s take on meeting Harris met mixed reactions on social  media though CNN political commentator David Axelrod referred to her as “a red district survivor.”

Frieda Powers
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