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San Diego Rep. Scott Peters has held town halls for years. The reality?It was common for the Democratsstaff to outnumber the constituents who showed up.

Since Donald Trump won the White House and took office a month ago, Peters says thousands of people have asked to meet with him, many of them asking, What can I do?

The 700 seats available at a how to get involved workshop hes hosting this weekwith fellow San Diego Democrat Rep. Susan Davis were claimed in two days and they say people are pushing them to hold another.

They just want direction. People are hungry for places to go and ways to be helpful, Davis said. Theres this element where people think someday their grandchild will say to them, where were you when all this was happening in the country?

For the Democrats in California's congressional delegation, thisweeklongPresidents Day recess reflects both anew opportunity and a dilemma: Can the surge of anger and activism in Democratic California be harnessed to win moreelections?

In a state where 6 in 10 voters picked Hillary Clinton, many of them are looking for a way to resist the new Republican administration and Democratic leaders are looking for a way to turn the blue state even deeper blue. Nationally,theyretargeting 61 Republican districts, includingseven California districtswhere voters electeda Republican to the House but picked Hillary Clinton for president.

Some of the districts targeted by Democrats have seen the biggest outpouring of activists. Protesters have appeared repeatedly outside the offices of Reps. Mimi Walters, Dana Rohrabacher, Darrell Issa, Duncan Hunter and others, asking for in-person town halls.

If they can harness the protest energy, there could be some parallels between the lefts resistance movement and the tea party wave that swept Republicans into power after Barack Obama took office. Democrats need to pick up24 seats nationwide to take back the House in 2018.

Peters said getting there will require being disciplined enough to turn the current protests and meetings into longer-term momentum.

We have to point it in the right direction, not at each other, Peters said. "Elections have consequences and theres elections all over the country in two years.

California Democrats have planned more than 25 town halls or meetingsin the next few weeks, according to a list curated by the progressive Town Hall Project 2018. Despite activists repeated protests and petitions,only one Republican Rep. Tom McClintock has scheduled any in the near future. (McClintock, who was escorted out of Roseville town hall by police earlier this month, is planningtwo more town halls this week.)

Across the country, progressive activist groups are forming under a variety of names, including Resistance, Indivisible and Huddles, to try to direct the progressive energy embodied in town hall efforts, and a few members of the California delegation are jumping in to help.

Ethics rules bar members of Congress and their staffs from using federal funds to encourage constituents to grass-roots lobby, so some eventsareorganized and paid for by their reelection campaigns.

Noisy town hall protests show how the left is trying out tea party tactics

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) said 950 people RSVPed for her town hall in San Francisco last Saturday, an event that would normally draw200 people at most.

They feel that democracy is about to implode in front of their eyes and they desperately want something done, Speier said. The argument that we dont have a majority doesnt cut it for them. They werent satisfied [hearing] I dont have any control over that.

Shes planning to have her campaign rent space and direct herdissatisfied constituents toward activist groups they can work with.

In a town hall meeting I cant direct them to do anything politically, Speier said.

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) plannedtwo organizing meetings this weekend with activists in her district. She expectedat least 100 people to show up. Then shell hold a town hall funded by her congressional office on Wednesday.

There is the awareness that 2018 is where people need to be focusing, Bass said. Protesting without a goal of changing something, I think, makes you feel good,but we need to channel it into taking back the House.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow@sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of California's delegation at latimes.com/politics

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California's Democrats are trying to harness a new wave of progressive energy - Los Angeles Times

Both followed similar strategies in the wake of controversy. RYAN ROSS

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., speaks to fellow Democrats at the West Side Community Center in Asbury Park to discuss the Democratic Party's agenda.(Photo: Doug Hood, staff photographer)Buy Photo

ASBURY PARK - What was billed as a congressional town hall seemed at times like a group therapy session for heartbroken Democrats and progressives still trying to grasp how enough Americans could have possibly voted for Donald Trump to elect him president.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. D-N.J., came before a friendly gathering at the West Side Community Center on Dewitt Avenue this Saturday to boost morale and offer hope for the future to an audience who had mostly been invited to be there by the congressmans political operation.

Pallone said he believed in abolishing the Electoral College,among other things, but called on those present to think local and focus on the future. He counseled a standing-room only crowdto focus their energies on New Jerseys gubernatorial and legislative races this year, particularly in the states 11th legislative district which overlaps a portion of his 6th congressional district.

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Pallone explained that Republican politics today was being driven by theology, revision and ideology.

Thats not us, were practical. I mean, for the most part, Pallone quipped to laughter. We for the most part dont think ideologically. When I talk about the Affordable Care Act, I dont talk about it in ideological terms, I talk about it technically.

When I talk about immigration, I dont talk about it as Muslim vs. Christian, or Jewish or whatever. I say, weve got 11 million people here who are undocumented. We cant throw them out, thats not a practical solution. A practical solution is to have a pathway to citizenship, Pallone said as the crowd erupted in applause.

Pallone said their political opposition had successfully found a way for the tail to wag the dog, meaning the ideological right had diverted the attention of enough voters away from the substantive issues at stake today. Going forward, he said Democrats and progressives needed to rebuildand strengthenthe Democratic Party, starting in one's own neighborhoods.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., gives a pep talk and takes questions from Democrats and other progressives at the West Side Community Center in Asbury Park about disappointment in the election of President Donald Trump and how to resist moving forward. His advice: think state and local elections first.(Photo: Doug Hood, staff photographer)

Hillary Clinton lost Monmouth County by 30,000 votes, Pallone said. But she won in the 11th (legislative) district by 7,500 votes. The Republican freeholder candidates won Monmouth County by a third, but they lost in the 11th district by 3,000. So this is a Democratic district.

The 11th District is comprised of Allenhurst,Asbury Park, Colts Neck, Deal, Eatontown, Freehold, Freehold Township, Interlaken, Loch Arbour, Long Branch, Neptune City, Neptune, Ocean Township, Red Bank, Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury Township, Tinton Falls and West Long Branch.

Incumbent state Sen. Jennifer Beck, R-Red Bank, who represents the 11th District,is expected be challenged for her seat in the Legislature by former Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal, who also addressed the rally on Saturday.

Gopal will run for Beck's state Senate seat on the Democratic ticket with incumbent Assembly members Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling, who unseated the Republican incumbents in 2015.

Pallone said it was essential that New Jersey elect a Democratic governor to succeed Chris Christie in November, beforea man in the room shouted: "Lock him up!" in reference to Christie on the issue of politically motivated lane closures atthe George Washington Bridge by members of the governor'ssenior staff in 2013.

During the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last July, it was Christie who presided overchants of "lock her up!" from delegates in reference to an FBI investigation offormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email use.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com

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Rep. Pallone fires up disillusioned Democrats - Asbury Park Press

Montana Democrats have announced that theyre bringing in a New Jersey politician for their keynote speaker at an annual fundraising event in Helena.

Executive board member Jorge Quintana tweeted Wednesday that New Jerseys U.S. Sen. Cory Booker would be coming to the Democrats Mansfield-Metcalf dinner on March 18.

The announcement comes as the Democrats continue criticizing Republican candidate Greg Gianforte as an outsider from, wait for it ... New Jersey.

Gianforte grew up in Pennsylvania and studied computer science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He co-founded a software company in that state in 1986, later selling it to Internet security firm McAfee for $10 million. He moved to Bozeman in 1995.

About 46 percent of Montana residents were born in another state. Gianforte has lived in Montana for more than 20 years, which, to be fair, is several years longer than he resided in New Jersey.

By inviting Booker to Montana, the Democrats have taken their New Jersey attack off the table, said Brock Lowrance, Gianfortes new congressional campaign manager.

Montana Democrats spent an entire election leveling false and dishonest attacks against Greg Gianforte and where he is from, Lowrance told the Chronicle on Thursday. Being the hypocrites they are, theyve invited a liberal senator from New Jersey to give them advice following their horrible election year. Thats not irony, its satire.

A spokeswoman for the Montana Democrats did not respond to a request for comment.

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Montana Democrats hosting New Jersey politician at fundraiser, Gianforte's spokesman calls them hypocrites - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Timothy Hennig 3:47 p.m. CT Feb. 18, 2017

Rioters loot and vandalize a Starbucks store during a protest against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley, Calif., on Feb. 1.(Photo: European Press Agency)

I wholeheartedly agree with Daniel Riemer, who wrote recently in Crossroads that Democrats need to return to their principles.

Unfortunately, he reverts to the same arguments weve heard from the left for years.

And, I would suggest, the first principle Democrats should return to is being law-abiding citizens.

During protests in Washington, D.C., on the day of President Donald Trumps inauguration, marchers broke windows, started a car on fire (owned by a Muslim immigrant no less) and were disrespectful of the law.

During her speech at the Womens March on Washington, Madonna stated that she contemplated assassinating the president. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, she said.

Apparently that sort of rhetoric is OK with Democrats because I didnt hear anyone condemn it.

More recently, consider the protests at the University of California-Berkeley campus, where protesters started fires and smashed windows because the students didnt like the conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News.

It seems like the all-inclusive party is all inclusive only for people who agree with its agenda. If you disagree, youre excluded, First Amendment be damned.

Contrast that with the recent peaceful march in Washington by pro-life groups or the tea party marches a few years ago. No vandalism. No profanities. Just law-abiding citizens making their opinions known, peacefully.

Finally, how many incidents have there been in which Trump supporters beat up or traumatized an innocent person? You know, all those Nazi incidents the left warned us about? Ive heard of none. Conversely, how may incidents have there been where Trump haters, beat up, tortured or traumatized a Trump supporter? Many.

As for Riemers New Deal contentions, let me address a few of them:

Riemer wants to provide equal opportunity in health and education. I thought Obamacare was supposed to provide affordable health care for all. Thats what President Barack Obama told us, repeatedly (along with the part about keeping your doctor and plan). Perhaps one of the principles Democrats should abide by should be to stop lying to the American people. I do compliment Riemer for at least acknowledging implicitly that Obamcare is a failure.

With respect to education, Democrats are always in favor of making changes to make the system successful, until those changes bump up against anything the teachers unions dont want. Then, theyre in full retreat. Unless all the professors, administrative and janitorial staff agree to work for free, a college education will not be free. Someone is going to have to pay for it.

Finally, Riemer argues for restoring balance to the tax system, with which we all agree. But consider this: Democrats controlled all three branches of government for two years after Obama was elected in 2008, and had a great opportunity to bring sanity to the tax code. Instead, they decided to pass Obamacare.

Riemer falls back on the usual rhetoric, requiring the super-wealthy and those who live on loopholes to pay their fair share. First, the super-wealthy didnt write the tax code. Congress and legislatures do that. So dont blame the wealthy for something over which they have no control.

And lets consider a few inconvenient facts: Over the long term, the top 1% pays about 40% of all personal income taxes. The next 9% pays about 30%. About half the people pay no income tax at all.

So, who exactly is not paying their fair share?

Seems to me that if you are a citizen in this country you should have at least some skin in the game, and its a problem when half of us do not.

Timothy Hennig is a resident of Pewaukee.

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Hennig: By all means, Democrats, return to your principles - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

We are living through another John McCain moment. The irascible, quotable war hero, just reelected to another six-year term to the Senate, has become once again a chief critic of President Trump.

At the Munich Security Conference, McCain in the words of my colleague Aaron Blake systematically dismantledthe president's worldview. The cover of this week's New York magazine is McCain vs. Trump, a fresh profile by Gabriel Sherman in which the Arizona Republicansays there must be investigations into Russian interference in our election, and looks gamely ahead to a growing resistance.

One thing politicians look at are ratings, and his ratings are going to continue to decline, McCain tells Sherman. That means members of Congress will be more likely to resist things they do not agree with rather than roll over.

McCain, who was personally insulted by Trump during the campaign and who pulled his support of him after the Access Hollywood tape was released, can command a lot of attention when he criticizes the president. For Democrats, who just lost an election that most people expected them to win, this appears to a boon. Historically, voters get concerned about where an administration is going if there is bipartisan opposition to its agenda. And historically, new presidents are not as unpopular as Trump, who, if not for the curiously buoyant Rasmussen poll, would be looking at average approval ratings below 40 percent.

But it's not necessarily good for Democrats when McCain leads a charge against Trump. In fact, it might represent a short-termproblem.

Trump feeds off mainstream Republican opposition.Just as the president can't stop talking about how he won the presidency, we should not stop remembering how he changed party politics to do so. Trump smashed the mainstream consensus of political science that nominees need party elite support to succeed. Instead, he ran as a figure outside the normal party system, pulling in voters who did not consider themselves Republicans.

When The Washington Post published audio of Trump gloating about sexual assault, and some Republicans backed away from him all of them expecting him to lose the election Trump and his allies said this attitude was to be expected.

This is basically the insiders versus the outsiders, Trump adviser Rudolph W. Giuliani said at the time.

Trump has gotten remarkably far by portraying Republican opposition not as a sign of weakness but as proof that he even in power is feared by the nebulous establishment. Trump's closing campaign commercial was two minutes of him promising to smash the globalists who had weakened America. That's the sort of approach that largely inoculates him against oh, let me see, let me pick an example at random a speech by McCain at a conference in Munich.

Democrats need their base to see them resisting. In covering the (extremely long, but almost finished) race to run the Democratic National Committee, I've been struck by how cynical rank-and-file Democrats are about their party. The day after the Super Bowl, I covered a meeting between DNC candidate Thomas Perez and rural Wisconsin Democrats, and more than a few grumbled that the party was not doing enough to oppose Trump's Cabinet nominees. This was exactly when Senate Democrats were forming a solid, 48-vote bloc against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, and forcing for the first time ever a sitting vice president to bail out a Cabinet pick.

Pushed by their party's base, Senate Democrats have been moved from generally supporting Trump nominees to mostly opposing them. Ten Democrats up for reelection in 2018 come from states that voted for Trump only two of them voted for Environmental Protection Agency pick Scott Pruitt. Yet the party's left is forever watching for a sellout. This meme from People for Bernie, a grass-roots group created in 2015 by veterans of Occupy Wall Street, illustrates it pretty well that one Republican senator opposed Pruitt is seen as more telling than how 46 of 48 Democrats opposed him.

As Democrats (finally) finish the race for DNC chair, there's already angst about the possible defeat of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Electing Tom Perez which, insanely, is still very plausible would be a grave misreading of the national mood, Hamilton Nolan said this past week in Deadspin. Worse, it would send a big flashing signal to not only Democrats but to everyone out there who is pissed that the Democratic Party is not taking this situation seriously.

Perez, like Ellison, has opposed every move Trump has made. But right now, progressives view the Democratic Party warily. They can ill afford a story line in which Republicans like McCain, (or Evan McMullin, or Joe Scarborough) are the real leaders of the opposition.

Democrats need to oppose Trump on issues McCain doesn't talk about. Since the election, the Center for American Progress, Priorities USA and other progressive/pro-Democratic groups have conducted polling and focus groups to find out why voters bailed on them. The answer has been mind-blogging voters in key states came to see Trump as the candidate who would smash special interests, and the Hillary Clinton-led Democrats as the party of the elites.

Many Democrats now see that problem as a creation of a misguided Clinton campaign, which chased after soft suburban Republican voters who could be persuaded to dump Trump. Clinton herself sometimes separated Trump from the larger GOP. This is not a normal election, she said last August. The debates are not the normal disagreements between Republicans and Democrats. The problem, as some Democrats worried at the time, was that Clinton was basically saying that the GOP led by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan whose economic policies had been decisively rejected by voters when he was the party's 2012 vice-presidential nominee was mainstream.

Ryan, right now, is critical of Trump's wilder comments, but generally happy with the opportunity for a unified Republican government to pass his agenda. Progressives and Democratic strategists alike now say they think the way todiscredit Trump and Republicans is to argue that his Cabinet picks and agenda are selling out working-class voters. This guy ran for president of the United States saying, 'I, Donald Trump, I'm going to take on Wall Street these guys are getting away with murder,'" Sanders said earlier this month on CNN. Then suddenly, he appoints all these billionaires.

McCain has voted to confirm every Trump Cabinet pick save one Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. He held out on him because of the former congressman's support for defense spending cuts. In the long New Yorkmagazine profile, McCain is not quoted criticizing any aspect of the Trump economic agenda. Democrats can criticize it all day unless, of course, the story of opposition to Trump is one of a coalition of Republicans and Democrats opposing him over Russia and foreign policy.

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Why John McCain's #resistance is bad for Democrats - Washington Post