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The liberal resistance to President Donald Trump hasn't managed to capture any new congressional seats for Democrats but it's having a major effect on politics at a more local level.

In Jackson, Miss., progressives elected a candidate last month who promised to make his Deep South town "the most radical city on the planet." In Cincinnati, a liberal favorite earned more support than the incumbent mayor in the first round of voting this spring.

And in Philadelphia, a Black Lives Matter advocate won the Democratic primary in May to be the next district attorney in a city where even Democratic law enforcement officials have traditionally taken a hard line.

"We have a president who any sentient person recognizes is a wannabe dictator," said Larry Krasner, who won the Democratic Party's primary for district attorney in Philadelphia. "That's the kind of thing that can wake you up in the morning, make you lace up your shoes, and go vote. So, yes, I think that had impact."

Indeed, while Trump's election has whipped progressives into a frenzy and driven new activists and big dollars into high-profile federal races for the House and Senate, it's in cities and towns that the vociferous response against the president is transforming politics.

The effect has major implications for the Democratic Party, both in the agenda it pushes and its electoral bench of future candidates for higher office.

Krasner is the crown jewel of liberal success in local elections this year, winning a competitive multi-candidate primary in a city where the winners of Democratic primaries almost always win the general election. The civil rights attorney an open critic of the city's police who is closely aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement is on track to take office just eight years after the retirement of former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who over the course of nearly two decades in office earned the moniker "Queen of Death" for the frequency with which she sought the death penalty.

Liberals also have had success elsewhere: In Cincinnati, for instance, City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson won 45 percent of the mayoral race vote in May's election, earning more support than even the incumbent mayor. Democracy for America, a nationwide liberal group based in Vermont, endorsed Simpson.

They also scored a major victory in Jackson, Miss., where Chokwe Antar Lumumba became mayor-elect just three years after narrowly losing the mayor's race. Lumumba already has a national presence, after thrilling an audience of several thousand liberals gathered last month at a conference in Chicago, where he vowed to govern not as a calculating centrist but as a progressive champion.

Trump hasn't explicitly been at the forefront of any of these campaigns. But officials involved say the backlash he has elicited has left liberal voters hungry for aggressive candidates who promise big changes.

"In the Age of Trump, the political power of bold progressive visions and the social movements that generate them has increased substantially," said Joe Dinkin, spokesman for the unabashedly liberal Working Families Party.

The Working Families Party endorsed Lumumba, and its Pennsylvania chapter endorsed Krasner.

The national liberal groups involved in these races say they're also focused on even more obscure races than those for mayor or district attorney. Democracy for America, for instance, endorsed a candidate in a Library Board race in a western Chicago suburb, arguing that progressives should seek to press their advantage in every race.

"I don't think there's a position too small to start building progressive power, especially with all the energy you're seeing among progressives this year not just in opposing Trump, but also recognizing how important it is to push for progressive policies like minimum wage to universal health care," said Vivek Kembaiyan, DFA spokesman.

The effect of electing unapologetic liberals to local positions will be consequential immediately Krasner supporters argue that his election literally could mean life or death for some people.

But progressive strategists are also eyeing the long-term effect of putting so many liberal candidates in local office. For a party that often looks to citywide officials as its next generation of leaders, installing progressives now means that future governors, House members and senators share the activists' liberal values.

"Electing the next progressive president or a new generation senator or governor, really that work begins immediately and it begins at the local level, in city council and in mayor's offices and changing the way DAs think about their jobs," Kembaiyan said. "That's what it's going to take."

Liberals have had more success in municipal races even before Trump's election. In New York City, for instance, the election of Bill de Blasio in 2013 was a triumph of a liberal-backed candidate over the party's Democratic establishment.

The movement's ambition grew further still after the unexpectedly competitive presidential campaign of liberal icon Bernie Sanders.

"Bernie's movement expanded people's view of what was possible," Dinkin said. "And the Trump presidency has made people hungrier for a more aggressive vision of change."

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Angered by Trump, liberals are transforming city politics - MyAJC

Canadas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) and Finance Minister Bill Morneau walk to the House of Commons to deliver the budget on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, March 22, 2016. (Patrick Doyle/Reuters)

The Liberals campaigned on a platform that promised a short-lived period in which their government would run modest deficits. After incurring an accumulated deficit of $25 billion over 2016-19, the Liberals promised to return the budget to balance by 2019-20, the fourth year of their mandate. Instead of balancing the budget throughout their mandateas both the Conservatives and NDP were promisingthe Liberals would hold fast to two fiscal anchors of their choosing, as they stated in their costing planin 2015:

(Liberal.ca)

Yeah, well, not so much:

Neither of those promises is going to be delivered by 2019-20. According to the latest long-term projection provided by the Department of Finance, these objectives are scheduled to be achieved sometime between 2040 and 2050, which means approximately never. Fortunately for the cause of responsible governance, the federal Liberals have accepted responsibility for their failure to keep their word and are sufficiently shamefaced about the whole mess that theres not much point in investigating the matter any further.

Just kidding! The Liberals are blaming everything and everyone elseincluding their Conservative predecessorsfor the current state of public finances. So in this post, Im going to try and figure out what happened.

READ MORE:The unmasking of Bill Morneau, caped budget crusader

The Liberals standard talking point is that the larger-than-expected deficit is a result of slower-than projected economic growth. But as far as I can tell, this is only a partial explanation, accounting for roughly one quarter of the deterioration in the federal budget balance. Roughly three quarters of the increase in the federal deficit can be explained by the fact that the Liberals are spending much more than what they said they would during the election.

The idea that poor economic performance is to blame for the deficit is difficult to reconcile with near-record-low unemployment rates, but there is still something to it. The 2015 LPC platform used the economic baseline set out in the Conservatives 2015 budget. As new data have come in, these projectionsbased on an average of private-sector forecastshave been revised steadily downwards. But its important to understand how and why this has happened, and it comes down to making the distinction between nominal and real GDP.

READ MORE:A budget for make benefit glorious economy of Canada

When it comes to forecasting the revenue numbers that show up in the budget, nominal GDP is what matters: economic activity measured in current dollars. But an increase or a decrease in nominal GDP doesnt necessarily reflect an increase or decrease in real economic activitythings like output, employment and household purchasing power. If the only thing that happened in the economy was that the prices of all goods and services went up, nominal GDP would increase, even if real economic activity stayed constant. Of course, the mirror scenario can also happen: an increase in real economic activity will increase nominal GDP, even if prices stay the same.

Its useful to break down nominal GDP into its real and price components:

Nominal GDP = Real GDP x Price Level

When referring the GDP, the price level is often referred to as the deflator: to obtain real GDP, you deflate nominal GDP by dividing by the price levelthe deflator. If you take the growth rates of both sides of this equation, this relationship becomes

Growth in Nominal GDP = Real GDP Growth + Inflation

So theres a two-part explanation to lower-than-projected growth in nominal GDP:

It turns out that the price level story is actually more important than the one involving real economic activity. According to the most recent projections in the 2017 budget, most of the shortfall in nominal GDP is due to lower-than-projected inflation. Real GDP over 2016-20 is projected to come in 2.1 per cent lower than projected in 2015, while the GDP deflator is expected to be on average 2.4 per cent less than projected. The average shortfall in nominal GDP is the sum of these two components: 2.1 + 2.4 = 4.5 per cent.

(My excel file going through the various projections with risk adjustments stripped out is available here.)

Theres no great mystery about the effects of lower-than-expected real GDP growth on the budget balance: it leads to lower revenues and a deteriorating budget balance. But what about lower-than-expected inflation rates in the GDP deflator?

I think its easier to explain and understand if we ask the opposite question: what if inflation had come in higher than expected? If this were the case, then the government would be well within its rights to say something like this:

We committed ourselves to purchasing a certain quantity of goods and services. The price of respecting this commitment has gone up more than we expected, and so we will be spending more than we projectedin nominal termsto carry out our obligations. Higher inflation has also increased revenues above what had been projected, so this increase in nominal spending will not affect the budget balance in real terms or expressed as a percentage of GDP.

There is nothing wrong with this sort of statement: what matters is real economic activity, and adjusting nominal expenditures in response to a pure price change is the proper thing to do.

But of course, thats not what has happened: prices are coming in lower than expected. If you thinkas I dothat the above statement makes sense in a context of higher-than-expected prices, then this is what youd expect a government to say when prices come in below projection:

We committed ourselves to purchasing a certain quantity of goods and services. The price of respecting this commitment has gone up less than we expected, and so we will be spending less than we projectedin nominal termsto carry out our obligations. Lower inflation has also reduced revenues below what had been projected, so this reduction in nominal spending will not affect the budget balance in real terms or expressed as a percentage of GDP.

Here is where the Liberals have tripped up. Instead of adjusting nominal spending down as inflation came in below projection, the path of nominal expenditures has been revised upwards in the first two Liberal budgets. Real levels of spending are higher than what the Liberals had promised.

READ MORE:21 ways the federal budget will hit Canadians wallets

We now have to make a detour to note that the Liberals never actually set out what their revenue and spending commitments were in the last election. Their costing was set out in terms of the 2015 budget balance baseline (with adjustments), where items were added and subtracted to obtain a projection for the budget balance over 2016-20: no numbers for revenues or spending were provided that could be used as a basis for comparison with what came later.

In this excel file, Ive tried to fill that gap, using the original 2015 budget baseline as a starting point, adding the Liberals risk adjustments, and then classifying the various proposals in the Liberal platform as either revenue or expenditure measures. For example, the canceling of the Universal Child Care Benefit is a revenue increase (the UCCB was a tax credit), the introduction of the Canada Child Benefit is a revenue decrease (the CCB is also a tax credit), the Middle Class Tax Cut is a revenue reduction, and so on. The final budget balances reproduce the projections in the Liberals platform. (Some of these revenue/spending classifications are judgment calls, so if you see an item that Ive misclassified, Ill be pleased to make the necessary changes.)

This table summarizes nominal revenue and spending projections in the Liberal platform and in their two budgets:

Although Ive broken the numbers down for each year, Ill try to keep things as simple as possible by talking only about the four-year totals for 2016-2020. Total nominal spending as projected in the 2017 budget ($1 240.1 billion) is four per cent less than the total projected in the platform ($1 292.4 billion)a gap slightly less than 4.5 per cent average shortfall in nominal GDP. On the spending side, the projected total of $1 229.8 billion is 2.5 per cent higher than projected in the platform.

Lets look at the primary balance, which is the difference between revenues and spendingthat is, the balance with debt service payments excluded. Revenues in the 2017 budget are $52.3 billion lower than in the platform, and spending is $30.3 billion higher, for a total reduction in the primary balance of $82.6 billion over 2016-20. The Liberal government would presumably argue that since most of this reduction52.3 out of 82.6, or 63 per centcomes from revenue side, revenues are the principal culprit in the deterioration of the federal budget balance.

But this story leaves out the part where prices undershot the projection. If the Liberals wanted to maintain their spending commitments in real termswhich is what mattersthey should have reduced nominal spending below the targets set out in their platform. Because prices came in under projection, and because nominal spending has actually increased over the platform commitments, real federal government spending is running 5.1 per cent higher on average than what the Liberals promised during the election.

By the same token, lower-than-projected prices also means that the shortfall in real revenues is less than the shortfall of nominal revenues. Real revenues are running 1.6 per cent on average below projection, compared to 4 per cent in nominal terms.

In constant 2007 dollar terms, the 2016-20 primary balance is $68.7 billion below what was projected in the Liberal platform. Of that, some $51.2 billion, or about three-quarters, is due to real expenditures running above projection. Translated back to nominal terms, the Liberals are spending about $15 billion dollars a year more than they had promised to spend during the election campaign. Put another way, the Liberals would have to cut spending by about fiveper cent a year to bring real expenditures down to the commitments in their platform. And put yet another way, the 2016-20 federal deficit would be reduced by two-thirds if the Liberals had stuck to their spending commitments in real terms.

It should be noted that the conclusion here is not that spending has increased under the Liberals: the obvious retort to that claim is that increased spending is a campaign commitment that the Liberals have a mandate to carry out. The point is that real federal spending has increased to levels significantly greater than what the Liberals had promised in 2015.

MORE ABOUTTHE FEDERAL BUDGET:

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The Liberals are spending far more than they said they would - Macleans.ca

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton debate during the Univision News and Washington Post Democratic Presidential Primary Debate at the Miami Dade College's Kendall Campus on March 9, 2016 in Miami, Florida.Joe RaedleGetty Images

Grijalva is a U.S. Representative for Arizona.

Since the Donald Trump Administration took office, an ocean of ink has been spilled scrutinizing Democrats minority status in Washington, rehashing the presidential race from every angle, second-guessing recent House special election losses especially the recent race in Georgia and generally wondering how the party can get back on track.

Its largely thanks to this outpouring that Americans are now familiar with the supposedly tidy division between Bernie Sanders style progressives and Hillary Clintonstyle pragmatists, vying for what is sometimes called the soul of the party. This ongoing conversation has drawn in Democrats in elected office at every level, myself included.

Its often struck me that one big thing is missing from this conversation. All the think pieces, agonized columns and point-counterpoint skirmishes, which weve seen more of in the last six months than we did during President Obama s eight years in office, have largely addressed a question whose answer is already known.

As Democrats, the secret to reviving our fortunes turns out not to be a secret at all: The American people want us, and anyone else who hopes to earn their vote, to talk about economic fairness, which they still feel is in short supply. They want us to lay out a plan for making sure they share in the profits they help create. They want to hear that from top to bottom, Democrats will close corporate tax loopholes and make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.

Its well known that I was the first member of Congress to endorse Senator Sanders for president. That shouldnt affect anyones objective reading of the data, and the data pointing us on this course is overwhelming. There is simply no substantive debate about whether this is the strongest winning message for the Democratic Party.

How do we know? A comprehensive post-election analysis by the polling and consulting firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, funded by multiple groups with nothing to gain by paying for bad information, found that fully 60% of voters believe Jobs still dont pay enough to live on and it is a struggle to save anything and that belief motivated their votes. The same analysis found that when Clinton changed the focus of her campaign message from the economy (on which she soundly beat Trump for months, especially after the presidential debates) to a vague call for unity and opportunity, she lost the most important ground of the campaign: who voters trusted more to help their pocketbooks.

According to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, by the end of the campaign, voters ultimately trusted Trump more on the economy by a 48-42 margin. That simple fact transcended a good number of the other factors in play last November. Unless the President ushers in the era of blanket prosperity he keeps promising, being trusted on the economy will be similarly decisive in 2018, 2020 and beyond.

Perhaps just as importantly, the firm found that a generic congressional candidate running on a message of economic contrast roughly, Democrats support investing in Social Security , education and jobs with rising incomes, while Republicans support tax cuts for the richest significantly outperformed a more general contrast with Trump and his personality across multiple demographic groups. Like it or not, what youll do is more important to voters than who you are or what private values you stand for. Democrats need to understand that.

Unfortunately, many on the left are busy fortifying themselves into mutually exclusive camps that cant agree on what the right message was in the last election, let alone the next one. We are rapidly losing our ability to cohere around a formula that everyone whatever his or her feelings about Clinton, Sanders, James Comey or any other public figure can reproduce to regain a governing majority.

The largely rhetorical fights weve indulged in lately are producing drastically diminished returns and wasting time we should be spending building a forward-looking economic agenda. This will take some hard looks in the mirror. We cannot treat the Obama era as the best we can hope for; the American people certainly dont.

To the skeptics, I would only say this: Shouldnt we focus on the same thing the American people are focusing on, rather than arguing with what theyre trying to tell us?

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Rep. Ral Grijalva: The Bernie-Hillary Debate Is Destroying the Democratic Party - TIME

Liberals target the Rust Belt: 'Democrats should be able to win in all these places' Charlotte Observer As the Democratic Party struggles to find its moorings after losing a handful of special House elections this spring, liberal activists say the party's future in Washington, D.C., isn't in moving centrist, but rather in moving left. A trio of new ... and more »

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Liberals target the Rust Belt: 'Democrats should be able to win in all these places' - Charlotte Observer

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Rep. Paul Ryan, R.-Wisconsin, was elected the 54th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, October 29, after receiving the votes of 236 members. The vote was largely a formality after House Republicans nominated him for the position on Wednesday, October 28.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan announced Monday, January 12, that he would not run for president in 2016, preferring instead to focus on policy work as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, has long been seen as a top contender for the presidency.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan, center, speaks with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, before a House Ways and Means Committee meeting on March 12, 2014.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan and his wife, Janna, arrive at a state dinner at the White House in honor of French President Francois Hollande on February 11, 2014 .

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Willie Robertson of the reality TV series "Duck Dynasty" poses for a picture with Ryan and his wife, Janna, before President Obama delivers his State of the Union address on January 28, 2014.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan greets supporters during a presidential campaign rally with Mitt Romney at The Square at Union Centre in West Chester, Ohio, on November 2, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin speaks during a campagin stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on August 13, 2012. It was the newly minted GOP vice presidential candidate's first solo stop since becoming Romney's running mate.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks after Romney announced him as his running mate in Norfolk, Virginia, on August 11, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Romney introduced Ryan as his running mate in front of the USS Wisconsin. The seven-term congressman provides a strong contrast to the Obama administration on fiscal policy.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Romney jokes with Ryan in April 2012 during a pancake brunch at Bluemound Gardens in Milwaukee.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan looks on as Romney greets people June 18, 2012, during a campaign event in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks while campaigning for Romney at a textile factory in Janesville, Wisconsin, on June 18, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan, left, and Romney greet each other on stage April 3, 2012, during the primary night gathering at The Grain Exchange in Milwaukee.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan introduces Romney at a town hall meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 2, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan is introduced before speaking about the federal budget at Georgetown University on April 26, 2012.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan holds a news conference in December 2011 in Washington to introduce a package of 10 legislative reforms designed to revamp the budget process.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan listens as Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, speaks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget annual conference in Washington on June 14, 2011.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan looks over papers as he waits for other House Republicans to arrive for a news conference in the Capitol Visitors Center in 2010.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks to the media in 2009 about President Barack Obama's 2010 budget proposal.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan, left, and Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire speak to reporters about the 2010 federal budget.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Then-Budget Committee Chairman John M. Spratt Jr., left, and ranking member Ryan listen to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testify during the House Budget hearing on the economy on January 17, 2008.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan follows President George W. Bush off of Air Force One at General Mitchell International Airport - Air Reserve Station in Milwaukee on July 11, 2006.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Ryan speaks at a Cato Institute briefing on Medicare reform in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on July 22, 2003.

Paul Ryan, rising GOP star

Speaker of the House Denis Hastert, left, administers the oath of office to Ryan at the beginning of his first term as representative of Wisconsin on January 6, 1999.

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Paul Ryan's seat isn't within reach for Democrats (yet) - CNNPolitics ... - CNN