Ex-Gov. Beshear as pick for Dems’ Trump response was ‘mistake,’ House Dem says

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/02/ex-gov-beshear-as-pick-for-dems-trump-response-was-mistake-house-dem-says.html

Democratic officials made “a mistake” by picking a 72-year-old ex-governor from a state that voted for President Trump to deliver the party's response to Trump’s congressional speech, a prominent House Democrat said Wednesday.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who has represented Missouri in Congress since 2005 and previously chaired the Congressional Black Caucus, told MSNBC a day after Trump’s Tuesday night speech that Democrats picked the wrong man in ex-Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear to represent their party.“I don’t mind saying when we make mistakes. And that was a mistake,” Cleaver said.Beshear delivered a widely mocked speech during which he accidentally claimed to be a Republican at one cringe-inducing point.

The response also featured a peculiar backdrop of people sitting behind him, near motionless, in a dimly lit diner. Asked what Democrats were thinking when they selected Beshear, Cleaver was blunt: “The problem is, you’re asking about thinking, and that didn’t happen.”So-called “responses” to major presidential addresses are typically a difficult assignment, producing panned remarks from Sen. Marco Rubio, ex-Rep. Michele Bachman and former Gov. Bobby Jindal – among others – during the years President Barack Obama was in office.