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Lost in the shuffle of national news last week was the publication of an assessment by Democratic operatives on why my party lost the 2016 presidential campaign.

Their argument? Voters chose President Trump because they had a fear of diversity.

The authors living in New York and San Francisco concluded that Hillary Clintons supporters were upscale and embraced an open society while Trumps were straight, white male Christians in small town America who lacked an appropriate education.

The message was clear: Democrats stood no chance in the face of ignorant bigots.

For Democrats like me in rural America, studies like this are nothing new. We are used to being cast as racist or homophobic Barney Fifes in modern-day minstrel shows. Our role is to serve as devious characters that explain electoral losses or frighten the Democratic Coalition to the ballot box.

But facts are stubborn. And so too are smart Democrats who see through the intellectually bankrupt theories of party hacks.

So why did we lose the election? Exit polling makes it clear.

It was the economy, stupid.

Counties that voted for Clinton represented 64 percent of the American economy. Said differently, most of the nations financial winners the wealthy, the privileged pulled the lever for Democrats.

The remainder of Americas counties measuring only 36 percent of the nations economic output voted for Trump. Tellingly, these counties were also home to the majority of Americas manufacturing industry.

Or whats left of it.

Since the year 2000, America has lost upwards of 5 million manufacturing jobs. How? Automation gets part of the blame, with robots replacing humans on the factory floor. Apparently, Corporate America prefers its labor to be metallic and non-unionized.

Yet the biggest culprits are congressional Republicans and President Bill Clinton. Nearly 20 years ago, these politicians worked hard to secure Chinas entry into the World Trade Organization. It was a decision that slit the economic throats of what would become Trump supporters and their communities.

Meanwhile, Communist China and Clinton counties profited mightily.

How could we have been so foolish? The blame sits squarely with economists. Many had sold our political ruling class on the idea that free trade lifted all boats.

But as it turns out, some boats didnt make it.

Rather than acknowledge this compelling data, partisan Democrats stick firmly to the culprit of skin color. After all, white working class people did vote for Trump in unprecedented numbers. But here again, facts are not on their side.

In rural counties, exit polling shows that Trump outperformed Obama, Clinton, and former Republican nominee Mitt Romney amongst Latinos as well as whites. That includes Hispanic voters in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona.

But how could this be? Did Latinos fear diversity too?

Of course not. They feared unemployment.

Despite what identity politics might say, Latinos are individuals and they think for themselves. Like white people in small town America, rural Latinos have limited education. They cant find good paying jobs.

And theyre often poor.

Sadly, they stay that way, too. Theres good data that shows that when you hit financial rock bottom especially in economically depressed cities youre usually stuck there.

But nevermind all that. For the Democratic authors of this latest study, it was far easier to smear these Latino victims with whiteface and toss them in the electoral dumpster with their unemployed white brethren.

Dropping the race card isnt a new tactic, of course. There is a long line of Republican and Democratic dividers who know how to play this dangerous game.

In my party, its gone all the way to the top.

In 2008, President Barack Obama claimed that small town America was bitter and clinging to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them. At the time, Hillary Clinton correctly slammed him as an elitist. Yet despite his offense, many of these clingy racists and xenophobes pulled the lever for him anyway twice.

Turns out that country folks know how to forgive.

Yet eight years later, my party did it again. Clinton doubled down on Obamas argument with the deplorable slur. (Nevermind that she and her husband along with plenty of Republicans gave these voters their deplorable state following the lopsided trade deal with China.)

For liberal readers bursting with examples of Trumps racial gaffes or Republican xenophobia, let me be clear: Im not interested in defending the man. Im interested in explaining why hes our president.

And that gets to the study of why we lost.

It boils down to this: If voters cant find a job with dignity when they have abandoned hope and settled for opioids why not vote for the guy who blows up the place?

Americas economic orphans had nothing else to lose in 2016. And maybe something to gain.

And that, my liberal friends, explains America and its politics. People in the Rust Belt and Smalltown USA were looking for a disruptor. We gave them a career politician promising more bad trade deals and an assortment of trust issues.

Not surprisingly, my neighbors chose the political newbie with a cranky Twitter account.

Makes sense to me.

All of this leaves my party with a choice. We can double down on the divisiveness of us vs. them or we can find inspiration and a new direction taken from our not-so-distant past.

Leaders like President Kennedy and House Speaker Tom Foley represent a time when Democrats offered something special to the American people. We fought for Main Street, not Wall Street. We bankrupted communist governments, not American industries.

And we extended a hand to Americas workers, not a slap in the face.

For the good of the country, I hope we go back to the future. If Trump implodes or leaves his voters wanting, the country is going to need thoughtful leaders to step up.

We better be ready.

Bryan Dean Wright is a former CIA ops officer and member of the Democratic Party. He contributes on issues of politics, national security, and the economy. Follow him on Twitter @BryanDeanWright.

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Democrats blind to real reason America elected Trump - Fox News

In their drive to resist President Donald Trump, Democrats so far have put a lot of political eggs into one basket: immigration. Their strident defense of immigrants past, present and future certainly satisfies the base but it's a strategic mistake that can only lead to electoral disappointment.

Let's recall why Trump won in November. He is the first president since 1876 to lose the popular vote by more than 2 percent and still win an Electoral College majority. He did so by winning five swing states Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with less than 50 percent of the vote. In each case, he attracted large numbers of whites without a college degree who had voted for President Barack Obama twice. Meanwhile, many Republicans who had voted for Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney threw their votes away on write-ins or third-party candidates rather than vote for Hillary Clinton.

If Democrats want to win again, they must do one of two things: Attract back the Obama-Trump voter or win over the Romney-non-Trump voter. Their protestations against border security and the travel ban are not likely to do either.

Surveys show that Obama-Trump blue-collar voters like Trump's anti-immigration stance. These voters are likely to have felt competition from immigrants legal and illegal, and they want that competition to stop. Even though many of these voters agree with Democrats on traditional economic issues like taxes and entitlement spending, their primary concern now is to protect their livelihoods and standard of living by reducing competition from foreigners living at home and abroad.

Loud opposition to Trump's immigration policies reminds those voters every day why they no longer feel at home in today's Democratic Party.

Wavering Romney-McCain Republicans, for their part, may be sympathetic to the plight of economic migrants, but are quite possibly worried about terrorism. By just saying no to Trump's travel bans, the Democrats give nothing to the Republican or GOP-leaning independent who wants a more balanced attitude.

The Democratic Party approach, such as it is, is anything but balanced. In the party's 2016 platform, immigration enforcement is at best an afterthought. The platform emphasizes a path to citizenship, reuniting families and ensuring that as few current immigrants as possible are removed from the country. It also denounces Trump's proposed religious test for immigration as well as what it called his vilification of Muslims.

While a platform is not binding, the party's behavior since Inauguration Day suggests that it accurately expresses Democrats' sentiments. Everything the party and its leaders in Congress have done since the inauguration simply restates these beliefs without modification.

It seems Democrats remain stuck in the rut that led them to electoral disaster in the first place. Firmly convinced that Middle America shared their fear and loathing of Trump, the party ran one of the most issue-free campaigns in modern history. In paid ads, campaign stops and in the debates, Clinton rarely gave people who weren't already committed Democrats or progressives a reason to vote for her. That failure explains the most telling and unexpected result on Election Day: Trump beat Clinton handily among the 18 percent of Americans who told exit pollsters they disliked both candidates.

Democrats are either unwilling to see the truth or unable to acknowledge it: They cannot win back the presidency without attracting people who disagree with some of their views. Doing that does not mean singing the same old songs louder and more clearly.

When it comes to immigration, Democrats need to ask themselves some hard questions. Can they acknowledge that the large number of immigrants in the country illegally, many of whom are relatively unskilled, gives rise to economic competition that harms job and wage prospects for voters who used to be part of their base?

Can they be pro-Muslim immigration without being blind to the fact that the very few Muslim immigrants inclined to terror can undermine public tolerance with just a few fatal attacks?

Can they admit that one can have concerns about either type of migrant without being prejudiced or racist that there might just be some rational reason for Americans to be wary of a lax or overly trusting approach to immigration?

If Democrats can entertain and act on these thoughts, then they can begin the hard work of uniting the anti-Trump majority into a political majority. If they cannot, their resistance will be futile.

Tribune Content Agency

Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism.

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The Democrats' immigration problem - Chicago Tribune

Establishment Democrats aim to adopt the anti-Trump movement News & Observer But it also reflects the effort underway within the Democratic Party, where operatives who have battled Republicans for years are now trying to cooperate with newcomers who have been more successful capturing the energy of anti-Trump Americans than the ... and more »

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Establishment Democrats aim to adopt the anti-Trump movement - News & Observer

The odds of passing a minimum wage hike in the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature are slim.

But with the minimum wage of $7.25 unchanged for many years, House Democrats on Tuesday once again pitched a variety of proposals in hopes of increasing pay for some of the lowest-paid Texans.

If were going to be looking out for working families, we ought to be about the business of seeing to it that they can move themselves above poverty as much as possible and to be able to afford themselves and get off of government assistance like food stamps, CHIP and Medicaid,"state Rep.Senfronia Thompsonof Houston told the House Business and IndustryCommittee in laying out her proposal.

Thompsons proposal would increase the minimum wage incrementally, reaching $10.10 per hour by 2022. A separate measure by state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie would ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment to set the minimum wage at $10.10.

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Some Democrats want to go even higher. The minimum wage would go up to $15 under proposals by state Reps. Roberto Alonzo of Dallas and Ron Reynolds of Missouri City. And another proposal by state Rep. Armando Walle of Houston would also ask voters to approve a hike to $15.

The Democratic bill authors pitched the increases as a way to improve life for low-income Texans and to reduce the number of people enrolled in government assistance programs. An individual is classified as living in poverty if they make less than $12,082 a year. A Texas resident working 40 hours a week at the minimum wage would make just about $3,000 more than that, but thats still low enough to qualify for some government assistance programs, the Democrats pointed out.

But Republicans on the committee appeared skeptical of the proposals and raised concerns about wage inflation and a possible negative impact on small businesses.

I just worry were going to benefit one group of people to the detriment of another, state Rep. Jason Villalba of Dallas said of the possibility that a higher wage requirement could actually reduce employment.

State Rep. Hugh Shine of Temple said he worried wage inflation would have second- and third-order effects on Texas businesses and ultimately adversely affect the economy. And state Rep. Jonathan Stickland of Bedford pointed out that the business community did not want a minimum wage hike.

Why havent those people self-imposed this if its so obvious that this is a good idea? Stickland said.

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Throughout the hearing, Democrats also insisted that many Texans working minimum-wage jobs are heads of households many of whom are working multiple jobs to make ends meet and not teenagers working part-time jobs as opponents claimed.

In 2015, 111,000 of the nearly 6.1 million hourly workers in Texas made $7.25 an hour, while 176,000 were paid less, according the the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A majority of those workers were women.

All they want to do is get paid for the work that they do nothing more or nothing less, Walle told the committee.

For years, Democrats in the Legislature have been unsuccessful in their push for minimum wage increases even as other states 29 as of January 2016 have set minimum wages higher than the federal requirement.

During the previous legislative session, House Democrats filed several proposals to increase the minimum wage, but only one measure made it to the full House for a vote. That proposal would have asked voters to approve a constitutional amendment setting the minimum wage at $10.10, but it was voted down on a mostly party-line vote with only two Republicans supporting the legislation.

Because of the Legislature's historical unwillingness to touch the issue at the state level,advocates for higher minimum wages haveinstead looked to local governments for wage increases. But any hikes at the municipal level are limited to local government employees or private-sector contractors that do business with those municipalities because state law pre-empts local governments from setting a city- or county-wide minimum wage that could require the private sector to increase wages for the lowest-paid employees.

Pitched as efforts to restore local control, two other proposals by House Democrats state Reps. Justin Rodriguez of San Antonio and Lina Ortega of El Paso would essentially reverse that state law.

Ortega told the panel that her proposaldoes not automatically increase the minimum wage, but it does give local government [the power]to doso.

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When Stickland questioned whether local control on this issue meant local governments could set minimum wages lower than the federal requirement,Ortega responded that her bill would only allow for increases.

They cant violate federal law, she said.

Its unclear whether any minimum wage proposal will make it out of committee, which is chaired by a Democrat but made up of three Democrats and four Republicans. The bills were left pending in committee on Monday.

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House Democrats try again for a minimum wage hike - Texas Tribune

Neil Gorsuch will step under a grueling national spotlight Monday as his Supreme Court confirmation hearing begins. And so will the Democrats who must vote on whether to confirm him.

Liberal groups have pushed for Minority Leader Chuck Schumers caucus to take a harder line against Gorsuch, publicly airing their disappointment with Democrats for letting the affable Gorsuch largely breeze through the run-up to his hearing. That tension could ease if the Colorado-born appellate judge stumbles or flop-sweats this week in the hothouse of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But no matter how Gorsuch performs, activists are vowing that Democrats who dont oppose the judge will face consequences.

Story Continued Below

"This is Schumer's first actual test of leadership, one former veteran Senate Democratic aide said in an interview. He has to understand that as leader he'll be held accountable for every big fight, not just the ones that are easy to win."

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue, whose abortion-rights group has rallied with Elizabeth Warren and other liberal senators against the high court nominee, said the Democratic base wants to see senators holding Gorsuchs feet to the fire.

Voters frustration with those who go easy on Gorsuch, Hogue added, promises to affect everything from the support incumbents will feel for reelection bids to the volume of communication that theyll see from their constituents."

But for now, some of the biggest players in the left's anti-Trump movement appear less than fully engaged themselves in fighting Gorsuch even as conservative groups lavish millions to promote him on the airwaves. The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA told CNN this week that it's not planning TV ads on Gorsuch because its internal polling showed that saving Obamacare was a more galvanizing issue.

Organizing for Action, which also has devoted major resources to protecting Obama's health care law, has shown similar restraint when it comes to the Supreme Court vacancy. The group emailed its list after Gorsuch's nomination on Jan. 31, but has done little since. As it weighs a Gorsuch strategy going forward, one source said, the group plans to keep a close eye on the hearings and the confirmation process.

Even Indivisible, the anti-Trump group founded by former Democratic congressional aides that's notched big successes hassling Republicans at town hall meetings, said in a Friday note to supporters that it's "throwing all our focus to the Houses Obamacare repeal vote.

Still, Indivisible executive director Ezra Levin said the Supreme Court nomination is also in the group's top tier of issues this week. "We believe Gorsuch is an extreme pick on just about any issue you want to look at," he said.

Activists ability to twist arms against Gorsuch depends to some degree on how successful Democratic senators are this week at finding pressure points in his record. The liberal Center for American Progress last week seized on Gorsuchs 14 months in President George W. Bushs Department of Justice, when he played a key role in defending the White Houses harsh treatment of terrorism suspects.

The Senate must demand answers from Gorsuch about that period of his record, CAP vice president Michele Jawando said in a statement, before even considering whether to confirm him.

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Adam Bozzi, a spokesman for the pro-campaign finance reform End Citizens United political action committee, predicted that the hearing also would help focus outside-the-Beltway attention on Gorsuch.

"I wouldn't expect him to flail like [Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos did she made the case on her own that she was not qualified for the job, Bozzi said in an interview. But his answers themselves will show that hes too extreme for this. He's going to have to stand on his record, which isnt good."

Gorsuchs hearings, however, will begin on the same day that FBI Director James Comey testifies publicly before the House Intelligence Committee; theyll also compete for attention with a week of House Republicans whipping support for their plan to repeal former President Barack Obamas signature health care law, with a vote expected Thursday.

Democrats are enjoying a significant degree of party unity on health care and the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia, as well as on the White House's budget and travel ban order. With moderates and liberals in their caucus unified on those issues, Democrats have less incentive to focus on a more internally contentious fight against Gorsuch especially when they're still concerned that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could trigger the so-called nuclear option and kill the right to filibuster Supreme Court nominees if they block the judge.

Another longtime ex-Senate Democratic aide warned that filibustering Gorsuch is "not a slam dunk" for the party.

"Activists really care about this," the aide said about the Supreme Court. "The everyday voters who should care about this dont."

Even some of Gorsuch's biggest opponents on the left acknowledge that the Hill's frantic pace this year threatens to steal attention from the Supreme Court confirmation fight. Hogue accused the Trump administration of cultivating a "strategy to try to distract from the hearing." Still, Democratic senators are aware that the grassroots will be watching the Gorsuch confirmation vote for a long time to come.

"It might take until Gorsuch is ruling on the Muslim ban later this year for Democratic senators who backed him to face harsh scrutiny, the first veteran Democratic aide said. But its not a question that people involved in the Trump resistance are going to get to the point where they say, 'what the hell happened with Gorsuch?'."

Schumer, a former Judiciary Committee member, underscored his own "strong presumption against" Gorsuch last week but he notably declined to commit to a filibuster. Perhaps for that reason, Republicans perceive Democratic reluctance to taking on Gorsuch and project confidence in his eventual confirmation.

"No one makes me nervous" on the Democratic side of the aisle, said Leonard Leo, a senior official at the conservative Federalist Society, who is advising Trump on the Supreme Court. "Because we're prepared."

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Democrats under fire as Gorsuch hearings begin - Politico