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Posted: Feb 04, 2017 12:01 AM

Last week on Townhall I did a column called Answering 20 Questions Liberals Wanted to Ask a Conservative. In it, I noted that I had promised to answer liberal questions to conservatives without sarcasm. Since there was a great reaction to the column, I decided to do a part 2. Id like to give a special thanks to Conor Friedersdorf and Glenn Greenwald for helping me get liberal questions. Now, here are the answers.

1) Kamran ?@KamRancisco y are u so afraid of Muslims? Before 9-11, we were token Aladdin/Apu. Laughably, we are now out to destroy USA?

As a matter of fact, on 9/11 I had a Turkish roommate. So, no, I dont find Muslims scary. The conservatives who do find Muslims scary feel that way because they have been regularly reading headlines that feature Muslims murdering, raping, enslaving and torturing people in the name of Islam for the last 15 years.

Now is the average Muslim responsible for that? No, but that doesnt change the fact that a significant minority of Muslims support Sharia, are anti-Semitic, are pro-terrorist, etc. Unfortunately, these people have had some success in recruiting moderate Muslims to their way of thinking.

If we had an effective way to screen the radicals out, then Muslims wouldnt be any different than any other religious group. Unfortunately, we dont. In other words, there are unique risks to bringing in Muslim immigrants or refugees that dont exist with any other religious group. That leads to a certain amount of tension between screening out the not insubstantial number of Muslims who want to murder us while we try to avoid antagonizing moderate Muslims.

2) Paola Thomas ?@realpaolathomas Why don't women deserve equal pay for equal work?

Conservatives would argue that if you compare apples to apples, women already do have equal pay for equal work. Christina Hoff Sommers does a good job of explaining the conservative approach to the subject.

The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to about five cents. And no one knows if the five cents is a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers.

Much of the wage gap can be explained away by simply taking account of college majors. Early childhood educators and social workers can expect to earn around $36,000 and $39,000, respectively. By contrast, petroleum engineering and metallurgy degrees promise median earnings of $120,000 and $80,000. Not many aspiring early childhood educators would change course once they learn they can earn more in metallurgy or mining. The sexes, taken as a group, are somewhat different. Women, far more than men, appear to be drawn to jobs in the caring professions; and men are more likely to turn up in people-free zones. In the pursuit of happiness, men and women appear to take different paths.

3) John Q. Public ?@BusterWindle Why don't liberty loving conservatives ever utter the phrase "voting rights"?

This is a perspective difference between conservatives and liberals. Many conservatives believe that if anything, weve gone way overboard in an effort to maximize the number of people voting. Not asking for an ID seems nuts to conservatives. Think about it: you need a drivers license to get on a plane, buy alcohol, get a place to live, cash a check, rent a car, but having one to vote is too difficult? Its hard to take that seriously. There are also a number of states where illegal aliens are allowed to get drivers licenses which automatically qualify them to potentially vote. When were not even taking the most basic precautions to safeguard the integrity of the vote because someone, somewhere might potentially have a problem if theyre completely incompetent, weve gone too far in the wrong direction.

4) Deeply Troubled ?@derivativeburke finally it seems like conservatives have a hard time mixing smaller government with a desire for that gov. to be competent

That would only be true if you believe that more money leads to better government programs and thats often not the case.

Conservatives actually have a different view on that issue. We generally believe that the federal government doesnt do anything as quickly, cheaply and efficiently as the free market. Moreover, we think the biggest reason that the government is so incompetent is that its doing so many things it was never meant to do in the first place. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution reads, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. If we actually stuck to that, the federal government would only be a fraction of its current size and the competence level of the government would probably dramatically escalate.

5) Paolo Bacigalupi ?@paolobacigalupi Are you at all concerned that Trump is undermining our national security? Kremlin links? Australia fight? NATO?

I think Trump could conceivably undermine our relations with other nations via careless words or tweets, but I dont know that will happen. For example, I think having a more positive relationship with Russia could turn out to be a good thing. The Obama Administration used to think so as well. Remember Hillary and her reset button? As to the Australia fight, Im not convinced that it happened. To me, an anonymous source dredged up by the Washington Post to a call that very, very few people would have had access to isnt very credible in the face of denials from Trump and Turnbull that it happened as it was reported. When it comes to NATO, I agree with Trump that changes need to be made. Essentially, the United States and Britain are supposed to do all the fighting while everyone else does almost nothing except complain about how things are going. Additionally, many of the nations in NATO have let their militaries degenerate to the point where they couldnt fight their way out of a wet paper bag. In other words, we should be taking a hard look at NATO and either making some changes or going in a different direction. Long story short, there could certainly be problems with how Trump handles our national security, but so far, so good.

6) Alex Chrisope ?@AlexChrisope Will GOP Congress or Trump admin consider a basic universal income, whether as a replacement or supplement to entitlements?

That seems very unlikely because there would be a great deal of concern on the Right that it would lead to large numbers of people refusing to work and just living off their universal income. If anything, we should want to bring a much greater share of the population into the work force, not encourage people to drop out of it.

7) James R. Hoffman ?@JRickHoffman Can we make grand compromises? Voter ID, but Early Voting/Nat. Holiday. Abortion restrictions but free birth control/welfare

The incentives in our political system make it difficult to cut any big deals. If youre in a safe state or district (and most Democrats and Republicans are), this is an extremely risky move for you because youre not going to lose to the other side in your race. Youre only going to lose in a primary and signing on to deals that help the other side get what it wants is how you get primaried.

For example, imagine what would happen to the politicians who signed on to the abortion restrictions in return for free birth control and a more generous welfare system deal. Any Democrats who voted for that would get skinned alive by Planned Parenthood, theyd have NARAL organizing protests on their doorsteps and every liberal blog would talk about them like the devil. On the other hand, groups like Heritage Action and FreedomWorks would hammer any Republicans who signed on, while Rush Limbaugh would call them RINOs, conservative blogs would roast them, etc.

In an environment where the partisanship level is off the charts on both sides, its very difficult to compromise.

8) Jess Remington ?@JessRems Do you believe Trump will significantly revive the manufacturing industry thru higher tariffs and alienating trade partners?

Manufacturing jobs went away because per capita income went up a lot, shipping containers and computers made overseas factories much more viable and because of automation. Tariffs might bring back a few jobs, but they would also raise costs. Barring an economic collapse that made it possible to hire American workers at a fraction of their current rates, low skill manufacturing jobs are unlikely to come back, no matter what Trump does.

9) Lina ?@linalinablina why doesn't character matter to you anymore?

Although I have been generally pleased with how Trump has governed so far, I didnt vote for him, in part because I did have concerns about his character. On the other hand, if character is your first concern, Hillary was probably even worse than Trump. So, its not as if either party put up a candidate who was beyond moral reproach. I think there were a lot of conservatives who didnt really feel comfortable with Trump, but who looked at the only viable alternative and felt he was the better moral choice. I can understand that reasoning.

10) Miles Palmer ?@palmerpolitics At what point will taxes be so low that you would cease advocating for them to be cut further?

This is a simple question that has a very complex answer.

To begin with, America already has the most progressive tax code in the Western World. Thats how you end up with some people paying north of 50% of their income in taxes (if you add in state, sales, gas, etc.) while roughly 40% of the population is paying no income taxes at all. So, given that we run a massive deficit every year, you could make the argument that the wealthy are simultaneously being overtaxed while the poor and lower middle class arent being taxed enough. Since thats political suicide, nobody will openly make that argument, but eventually politicians will sneak in a VAT or some other type of sneaky tax to try to get more money out of the poor and middle class.

I know that doesnt quite answer your question, but thats because the answer is dependent on the level of government spending. If we, lets say, cut the government spending in half, not only would it create a massive spike in economic growth, wed need a lot less tax money to pay for it. In an ideal world, the federal government would be a fraction the size that it is currently and therefore, wed only need a fraction of the taxes that are currently paid in to maintain it.

11) Anti-Fascist ?@jacobtaber why is the religious freedom of an anti-LGBT baker important to you, but not a Muslim soldier or physician?

All religions, including Christianity, tend to pay more attention to infringements that impact their faith. So, yes, conservative Christians probably care much more about a baker being harassed for not serving a gay marriage than they do about something that impacts people of another religion. However, that being said, per the 1st Amendment, the religious freedom of Muslim soldiers and physicians is important and it should be treated as such.

12) Jess Remington ?@JessRems Do you think Christian refugees are more deserving of American assistance than non-Christian refugees?

As a Christian, I do put a higher priority on helping Christians & Jews than I do on helping people from other religions. Christians dont look out for each other the way they should. Setting aside my religious beliefs, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world right now. Given that, if we are going to bring refugees here, Christians would seem to be the natural choice. Also as an added bonus, Christianity is the largest religion in the United States; so theyd be more likely to fit right in with the existing culture.

13) America 1776 - 2016 ?@ExGOPer How do conservatives square 8 yrs of calling Obama a "tyrant" while supporting an actual tyrant?

I have absolutely nothing good to say about Obama, but I dont know that Id say he was a tyrant. I think he was habitually dishonest, incompetent, hyper-partisan and deserved to be impeached, but I dont think he was Kim Jong-Il. He didnt try to put conservatives in camps. He didnt try to seize power although he certainly didnt care much about the Constitution or the law

As to Trump, I can see how some people may worry that he has authoritarian tendencies. I can understand how liberals would strongly dislike the fact that hes aggressively moving to the right just as Obama tried to move things to the Left. I could even see criticisms with how some of his policies have been executed, but he hasnt done anything Id consider tyrannical. In fact, other than a few divergences on trade, hes essentially governed so far as a standard conservative (albeit a very active one).

You may disagree, but Im not really sure that the reaction to President Ted Cruz or President Marco Rubio would be radically different than the one weve seen to Trump. After hearing that Bush, McCain, and Romney were all Hitler, its hard to seriously consider that Trump is tyrannical, particularly when it doesnt fit with what hes actually done so far.

14) DanFostersEthos ?@DanFostersEthos Why do you think a lot of conservatives are so receptive to stern father types on cable news and talk radio?

I dont know that Id describe Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, etc. as stern father types. That being said, theres an analogy that has fallen out of favor that may help explain the differences in what liberals and conservatives like to hear from the media.

Heres Larry Sabato explaining it back in 2008,

The Democratic Party is the mommy party, and the Republican Party is the daddy party. Now, you and I both love both our mothers and fathers, right? But they play different roles in many families. The mother is loving and caring and takes us back in and provides the safety net. The father is the disciplinarian -- tough love. He makes us face up to hard realities, at least in many families. Well, the mommy party is the Democratic Party. The daddy party is the Republican Party. And I think if you look at the economy, you look at the housing, the mortgage crisis, a whole wide range of things, you'll find that the parties fulfill these images.

These are very different approaches, but they have a great deal of influence on the attitudes, ideas and policies of both sides.

15) Osaye ?@Osaye1 why do you hate helping people?

Ive never mentioned this publicly before, but for the last three years Ive reached out to churches, found families that are struggling at Christmas time and bought presents for their whole family. It was all done anonymously and none of them have ever known who helped them out. Over the years, Ive also bought at least a weeks worth of groceries for three different friends in need. Incidentally, this sort of thing isnt unusual at all. Most of the missionaries, people working soup lines and tithing 10% of their income are conservatives. We tend to judge helpfulness based on what you actually do for people personally, not on whether or not you support a government program paid for with other peoples money. Its a different way of looking at it.

Here is the original post:
Answering 15 Questions Liberals Wanted to Ask a Conservative Part 2 - Townhall

The Gallup organization regularly publishes reports on the partisan leanings of the states, snapshots of the ebb and flow of political self-identifications across the country. The most recent compilation provides one more piece of evidence of the degree to which Americans have moved away from the Democratic Party since former president Barack Obama was first elected.

The story of the Democrats over the past eight years is well known. Obama twice won a majority of the popular vote and left the White House with an approval rating in the high 50s. Despite that, his party suffered massive losses in Congress, among governors and in state legislatures. Hillary Clinton, his designated successor, lost to Donald Trump in November.

President Trump has generated anger and energy across the country among those who oppose him and much of his agenda. Trumps disapproval ratings are higher than for any new president. Republicans in Congress sometimes appear flummoxed, even alarmed, by what Trump says and does. Democrats see all this as an opportunity for recovery. But they start from a very deep hole.

Gallups most recent findings on party identification in the states provide one indicator, perhaps imperfect, for measuring what was lost during Obamas presidency and a benchmark for gauging whether Trumps presidency moves the pendulum in the opposite direction.

Partisan identification as measured in polls is in constant flux. Monthly surveys record occasional spikes, depending on what is in the news. If Democrats are having a bad week, fewer people want to identify with them, and vice versa. Gallups report measures changes based on annual averages of party identification (not party registration).

The most telling headline in the latest report, written by Jeffery M. Jones, says, All movement since 2008 in GOPs direction.

For context, the year 2008 was a banner year for the Democrats in terms of party identification, thanks to Obamas candidacy. Gradually, things fell back to Earth. The effect is the portrait of a changed country.

[Trump taps into fears as a tool of governing]

In 2008, Gallup found 35states either solid or leaning Democrat in party identification, compared with just five for the Republicans. The remaining 10 were listed as competitive, which meant the gap between Democratic and Republican identification was fewer than five points. In 2016, there were just 14 states that were either solid or leaning Democrat, compared with 21 for the Republicans. Gallup listed 15as competitive.

Some of the change reflects the decades-long ideological sorting-out of the two parties. Many Southerners, for example, continued to call themselves Democrats long after they had started voting regularly for Republicans, first at the presidential level and later at the congressional level.

Two examples of this are Arkansas and West Virginia, two states Democrats have not carried presidentially since 1996. From 2008 to 2016, adults in Arkansas shifted from a net plus of 12 points for the Democrats to a net plus of 14points for Republicans. West Virginia moved 28 points in the GOPs direction. In 2016, Trump carried Arkansas by 27 points and West Virginia by 42 points.

More pertinent to the election results, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin states that Trump won narrowly and that provided him with his electoral college majority moved during the Obama years from a solid Democratic rating in 2008 to a competitive rating in 2016.

Partisan identification as measured in surveys is not rigid or perfectly correlated with voting behavior. But the degree to which Gallups findings mesh with what happened in 2016 are notable. Trump won all 21Republican states, and Clinton won all 14 Democratic states. Trump carried nine of the 15competitive states (some of which arent really competitive presidentially).

The 2016 election was another example of the degree to which red-blue partisanship has hardened and now affects voting up and down the ballot. There are suggestions that, because Trumps views cut across traditional ideological lines, his presidency could roil the coalitions of both parties. Eventually that might be the case, but for now theres no better indicator of how someone will vote than how they align by party.

In November, about 9 in 10 Republicans voted for Trump and about 9 in 10 Democrats voted for Clinton. Thats been true for a number of election cycles. More significantly, ticket splitting was, again, a rarity, despite earlier speculation that Trump might scramble voting patterns in down-ballot races. Trump and Clinton altered recent voting patterns in some counties. But overall, the 2016 election produced a consistent outcome up and down the ballot.

[Outside of Washington, resistance to Trump builds]

As Democrats look to rebuild their strength in the House and Senate, the implications of all of these threads are problematic. Geography and party-line voting are working against them. Gerrymandering is certainly a factor, but the problem is not limited to that.

The Cook Political Reports David Wasserman and Amy Walter have recently highlighted the continuing shrinkage in the number of House seats held by the party that lost the presidential vote in those districts. Eight years ago, there were 83 congressional districts held by the opposite party. At the start of this Congress, there were just 35 12 Trump-won districts in Democratic hands and 23Clinton-won districts held by Republicans.

The party that holds the White House generally loses seats in midterm elections, but that is in part because presidents often sweep in House candidates from districts where they otherwise would lose. The absence of seats that are out of order means there are fewer easy targets for Democratic pickups in 2018 than has often been the case.

Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego, offered his analysis of this pattern in the draft of a recently scholarly paper. Victories against the partisan grain have become exceedingly rare in this decade and now account for only 2percent of House seats, he said. Consistent party-line voting has magnified the advantage Republicans enjoy from the more efficient distribution of their regular voters across districts.

Democrats are already at a big disadvantage in the 2018 Senate elections, having to defend 25seats to just eight for Republicans. Ten of those Democrats sit in states won by Trump, with five of them in what would be considered truly red states. Incumbency is often a strong shield against shifting partisanship within a state, but it wasnt enough, for example, to protect Mark Pryor in Arkansas in 2014. Elected twice before (and unopposed by a Republican in 2008), he lost to Sen. Tom Cotton by 17 points after Obama lost the state by 24points in 2012.

The Gallup report notes that because Democratic states tend to be more populous, nationally more people still identify as Democrats than Republicans. That helps explain why Clinton won the popular vote and lost the electoral college and the presidency, and it points to the disadvantage for Democrats in House and Senate races.

Much obviously depends on how the public reacts to Trumps presidency. In 2002, Gallup found that more states identified as Republican than Democratic. The later years of George W. Bushs presidency caused many people to identify as Democrats. But at the start of Trumps presidency, the country is aligned geographically in a way that remains advantageous to Republicans. As a result, Democrats should not underestimate the challenges they face regaining ground lost.

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Democrats have no quick fixes in their bid to regain ground lost - Washington Post

USA Today Network Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press Published 6:29 p.m. ET Feb. 4, 2017 | Updated 12 hours ago

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile talks to party members at a forum in Detroit.(Photo: Kathleen Gray/Detroit Free Press)

DETROIT While Hillary Clinton wasn't at Wayne State University on Saturday to commiserate with fellow Democrats about her election loss, her race for president loomed large over a forum of candidates who want to lead the Democratic National Committee.

The 10 candidates for DNC chair gathered in Detroit for the third of four Future Forums. They told a group of several hundred people that a data-driven campaign was not the way to win elections. Instead, such tactics led to the loss of rural and labor voters that turned out to be key to Republican Donald Trump's electoral victory on Nov. 8 that delivered the White House to the GOP.

"We start by organizing, organizing, organizing. Data analytics are important, but nothing beats house calls and phone calls. If we had done more phone calls we would have won Michigan," said former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, one of the top contenders for DNC chair. "We ignored the basics."

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, another DNC chair candidate and Detroit native who now lives in Minnesota, said the loss of labor votes was a key downfall for the party in November, noting "the Democratic Party is the one that fights for working people all the time."

USA TODAY

The first 100 days of the Trump presidency

USA TODAY

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More than 300 people attended the forum Saturday, which was designed to examine the losses Democrats suffered in 2016 as well as introduce party activists to the people who are running for leadership posts in the DNC.

We have some serious work to do as Democrats, said Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman of the DNC, who took over the party when U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped aside after the partys email server was hacked and embarrassing messages were leaked to the media.

What happened to us in 2016 is allowing us to figure out how we move forward. The recovery of the Democratic Party is inevitable; we are going to come back.

Those emails, which showed a DNC leadership that was more supportive of Clinton than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the presidential primaries, were a running issue throughout the campaign, leading many Sanders' voters to either stay home, support Trump or vote for a third-party candidate.

"So many people thought the primary process was rigged, and its true," said Sam Ronan, a DNC chair candidate and Air Force veteran from Ohio. "We messed up as a party and we need to own that. We have to offer olive branches and build bridges to Berniecrats."

We have some serious work to do as Democrats. What happened to us in 2016 is allowing us to figure out how we move forward. The recovery of the Democratic Party is inevitable; we are going to come back.

Chuck Jones, the United Steelworkers local president from Indiana who was on the receiving end of a blistering Twitter attack by Trump, told the crowd that many union members in his state were crazy about Sanders, "But when Bernie got put out of the primary, a lot of our folks started drinking Trumps Kool-Aid and we couldnt reel them back in.

Despite union membership almost always backing the Democrat, they couldnt make the leap to Hillary Clinton, Jones said.

We couldnt argue with Trump when he came out and said keep jobs in this country and weve got to do something with NAFTA, he said, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement. What the hell is Hillary going to argue on? She couldnt. Her husband gave us NAFTA. We had a candidate who we couldnt argue in her defense when our people were affected by trade and loss of jobs.

As a result, the traditionally blue states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan flipped after decades of voting for Democrats for president and gave Trump slim victories, including a narrow 10,704-vote margin in Michigan.

And now, Democrats are getting ready to select their leadership of the national party and speaker after speaker said the forums are an essential exercise to reverse the policies that have been pouring out of the Trump administration in his first two weeks in office.

Weve been unapologetic in our support for President Obamas refugee program. In the city of Detroit today, we have 50 families who are refugees from the war in Syria who have moved into our west-side neighborhoods, said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. When these families moved in, they werent greeted with anger and protest. They were greeted with smiles and hugs, which is what Detroit is about and what America should be about.

The answer to winning back Trump voters and attracting new Democratic votes is simple, Duggan said.

Weve got a lot of folks with high school degrees who want to improve their standard of living, theyre willing to work hard and get additional skills, they just want to know how, he said. At the end of the day, our success in (the) Democratic Party is going to be whether we make sure those opportunities are there.

Building on the success of the Womens March on Washington and many other cities across the nation and world as well as the protests of Trumps immigration order at airports is also key.

Fifteen days into this new administration were all aware of the divisive path thats been taken, said Sandra OBrien, a member of Wayne State Universitys Board of Governors. This is why its supremely important that the next DNC chair help cultivate a plan of action that can harness the energy of Womens March and airport protests."

The DNC will hold its last forum on Feb. 11 in Baltimore and leadership elections will be held Feb. 23-26 in Atlanta.

FollowKathleen Grayon Twitter: @michpoligal

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Democrats meet to dissect 2016 losses, plan for future - USA TODAY

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez bragged to the Democratic National Committee's "future forum" about racing to airport protests in Houston and then San Francisco. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, made sure everyone knew he was the only one to skip David Brock's donor summit to participate in the Women's March in Washington.

Put him in charge, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison pledged, and "We will be asking Democrats all over the country, 'Bring coffee to the marches. Be in the marches yourself. Carry a sign.' "

As for those white rural and exurban voters who so brutally rejected Democrats in November -- well, bringing them back into the fold is also a priority for those vying to lead the party.

If the base allows it.

After three weeks of anti-Trump protests, Democrats are still stunned by the sudden burst of energy. The party's organs are all racing to keep up as dozens of events pop up -- often on Facebook, without any party chapter or progressive organization's involvement at all -- each weekend.

"The activism of people who are concerned about the Trump administration's threat to the country is very energizing to us," said US Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee and one of the swing-state senators up for re-election in 2018. "We don't view that as threatening -- we love the energy."

The energy, though, is all rooted in ferocious opposition to Trump -- the same strategy that failed Hillary Clinton in 2016.

That reality has some Democrats on Capitol Hill fretting that the rising anti-Trump fervor is putting the party at risk of papering over the same problems with voters in rural and exurban America they woke up with on November 9.

"If you can't get them back to where they're looking and thinking, 'The Democratic Party still represents me,' then you'll always be in the minority," said US Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia.

"The anger that people feel is righteous and justified, but it can't just be a party against Mr. Trump," said US Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia.

"I understand the righteous anger against some of the President's policies, but we also need to lay out a narrative that's more than just a series of position papers -- that gives us an overarching theme," Warner said. "And that's what I'm looking for."

Manchin and nine other Senate Democrats are up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won.

Four of those Democrats -- Indiana's Joe Donnelly, Missouri's Claire McCaskill, North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp and Montana's Jon Tester -- are in states where Trump crushed Clinton.

Just how much latitude those senators need -- and should be given by the base on votes like Cabinet and Supreme Court confirmations -- is the challenge confronting Democrats now, as the party frantically searches for ways to protect those red-state Democrats without jeopardizing the base's energy and enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, much of the base is demanding total opposition to Trump -- no matter the political costs for Democrats in red states.

And there are no sacred cows, as US Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, learned when she voted in committee to confirm Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development secretary. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, was the target of protective protesters who recently marched to his home, chanting an expletive that rhymed with his first name.

These progressives see the party's future in energizing women, minorities and young people in cities and suburbs -- particularly in Sun Belt states, including Georgia and Arizona.

"Those working-class white voters aren't the future of the party," said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal blog DailyKos.com, which has already raised $400,000 for a Democratic candidate in the expected runoff for the US House seat in Georgia soon to be vacated by Tom Price, Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.

"Most of them are stuck in fake-news land anyway, and no amount of reality will penetrate that bubble. They think 1.5 million people attended Trump's inauguration. They think Obama only needed 50 votes to pass his Supreme Court nominees," Moulitsas said. "They're lost. It's a waste of time to try and win them back when there are so many core-Democratic-base who didn't register or vote last cycle. Almost half the country didn't vote, and the bulk of the non-voters were liberal-leaning people many of them now marching in the streets.

"So instead of trying to chase people trapped by Breitbart and its cohorts in conservative media, give them a reason to get excited about rallying around Democrats," he said.

Democrats' short-term fate, though, rests in part on whether the party can hold onto Senate seats in Trump states.

In those areas, senators are struggling to wrap their minds around the alternate universes of the Trump presidency so far.

In one -- where the women's marches, airport protests and pro-Obamacare town hall turnout are the dominant storylines and former alt-right Breitbart news executive Steve Bannon is seen as a shadow president -- Trump has walked himself into repeated controversies and revealed himself to be just what the Clinton campaign warned he was.

In another -- where rural and exurban voters with little economic opportunity sought to send someone to shake up a political world they thought had lost touch with their needs -- Trump has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, jumpstarted the Keystone pipeline, taken steps toward renegotiating other trade deals, hosted top labor union leaders at the White House and is fulfilling some of his top campaign promises.

"You folks have been terrific to me," Trump told union representatives as they joined Harley-Davidson executives in a recent meeting at the White House. "Sometimes your top people didn't support me but the steelworkers supported me."

Many left-leaning organizations are still trying to feel their ways around the new White House.

"It's like 'Game of Thrones' right now in the Trump administration -- it's kind of hard to tell who's going to come out on top," said Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO's deputy chief of staff.

US Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who represents many of those "downriver" voters, said she is focused on how to use language that makes clear that "I am inclusive of everybody, but I'm also fighting for those UAW workers who think we've forgotten them, or those Teamsters whose pensions are being threatened to be cut."

Dingell added: "Those are our constituents who we have to be a voice for, too. We've got to find a way to talk about it so they know we are the fighters for them and that we will stand strong, and that we care about those issues."

Increasingly, Democrats are moving toward a message styled after populist stalwarts such as Warren, Bernie Sanders and US Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Their case: The problem wasn't Trump's promises, or what his campaign represented -- it's that in office, he's promoting his billionaire friends and failing to take care of those who carried him to the presidency.

US Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, another Democrat up for re-election in 2018, said 9,000 people turned out in January at a pro-Obamacare rally in Macomb County -- a key swing region that helped tip Michigan for Trump.

"There were people that I know that attended that supported President Trump that didn't really believe he was going to take away their health care or cut their Medicare," she said. "People thought they were voting for change, and now are saying, 'Wait a minute, I didn't mean that.'

"I'm still fighting for the same people in Michigan that want a shot to stay in the middle class," Stabenow said. "I think this is really more about (communicating) that."

Other Democrats made a similar argument -- saying the activist energy is increasingly pushing them toward populist policies.

US Rep. Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat who easily won in a district Trump carried, said the party's problems can be addressed partially through simple moves such as "supermarket Saturdays," job-shadowing blue-collar workers and sitting through lengthy appearances on rural radio stations.

"We've also got to make sure that we're disciplined about what our values are. We know that our policies resonate with people -- with these folks who want to try Trump," she said.

"Our theory right now is that they're going to have buyer's remorse -- that they tried him because they wanted something different; they were tired of the status quo; they felt left behind by this wage stagnation," Bustos said. "We have the right policies to address that. But we haven't always gone deep into the kind of districts where people have felt left behind."

A particular cause of heartburn for red-state Democratic senators is the upcoming confirmation battle over Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

It was, after all, the expectation that Trump would appoint conservative justices -- whose tenures would long outlast his presidency -- that kept many moderate Republicans behind his candidacy.

It's a conundrum: Do Democrats risk undercutting their own cause by waging war over Trump's most conventional decision yet?

So Senate Democrats are slow-walking their way around Gorsuch, promising to give him due consideration -- buying themselves more time to figure out whether they have 41 out of 48 Democratic votes necessary to block him, and whether it's even the fight they want.

"Explaining anything having to do with courts or law is a challenge -- not because it's inconsequential but because it can't be dramatized with a picture and a face and a voice," said US Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut.

"So we need to make sure the American people understand what's at stake," Blumenthal said. "The gobbledygook and the legal jargon are very confusing. And just now as I'm talking to you, I'm realizing that I'm sort of going off into the ether."

Moulitsas said red-state Democrats should forget using those votes to try to prove themselves as moderates.

The likes of Donnelly and Heitkamp "aren't going to win re-election on the strength of Trump voters impressed by their confirmation votes," he said.

"The best chance they have to win in their tough states will be by riding this incredible wave of energy. It may not be enough, but pissing off the base certainly isn't the better bet. You either ride in with the people who brought you, or go down fighting honorably," Moulitsas said. "Pretending to be a 'Republican, but a little less bad' has never inspired a dramatic re-election victory."

Originally posted here:
Is anti-Trump furor papering over Democrats' working-class woes? - CNN

Michael Moore, the sometime movie maker and full-time America hater, put Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on notice: Hell recruit and finance primary challengers to any Democrat who votes for Trumps Supreme Court nominee, Finley writes.(Photo: Jose Luis Magana / AP)

Welcome to the tea party, Democrats.

For eight years Democrats drifted further out of the American mainstream, stubbornly refusing a course correction to bring them closer to the middle.

Their inherent smugness and ingrained sense of superiority made it impossible to see the warning signs in their loss of 1,000 state and federal offices since 2010.

If something was wrong, it was with the people, not their party. They continued to obsess over identity politics and cull their base of its objectionables, certain the countrys changing demographics made their hold on the White House ironclad.

Now they have Donald Trump, a reality they just cant choke down.

So they are resisting it, pretending they can make Trump go away if they refuse to acknowledge him as president.

And theyre demanding their leaders do the same.

Michael Moore, the sometime movie maker and full-time America hater, put Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on notice: Hell recruit and finance primary challengers to any Democrat who votes for Trumps Supreme Court nominee. Cooperation with the administration will be viewed as a betrayal, and will be punished.

This American Resistance Movement, as singer Bruce Springsteen dubbed it during a concert in Australia, sounds a lot like the tea party.

Those grassroots Republicans rose out of the passage of Obamacare, and have sent scores of arch conservatives to Congress since 2010. They arrived with the same marching orders Democrats are now giving Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and crew: Resist.

Gridlock was the predictable result. And a frustrated president turned increasingly to extra-constitutional executive orders to move his agenda.

Expect the same if Democrats heed the warnings of the resistance movement. And they will. Most have already pledged to so.

Remember how appalled Democrats were when the tea party was marching, demeaning President Barack Obama and calling for a political revolution? Pelosi declared herself frightened for her life by the hateful words and angry signs.

As always in politics, much depends on whose ox is being gored. The former House Speaker seems unbothered by the sheer hatred expressed for Trump, and the outright calls for his death.

Democrats are no more obliged to salute an agenda they find offensive than Republicans were during the Obama years. And I get that many see Trump as an abomination.

But knee-jerk resistance to everything invites being ignored. The American system was designed to force consensus through compromise. Weve blown that up over the past two decades. Now, were lurching from one extreme to another, with executive orders enabling what may as well be rotating dictatorships.

Liberals are on the outside now, and theyre behaving the same way the tea party conservatives did, only worse. The language is identical. All or nothing. No middle ground. No deals.

I half expect to see Michael Moore squeezed into a Dont Tread on Me T-shirt.

Nolan Finleys book Little Red Hen: A Collection of Columns from Detroits Conservative Voice is available from Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble Nook.

nfinley@detroitnews.com

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Finley: Tea time for Democrats - The Detroit News