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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

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Posted: Feb 05, 2017 12:01 AM

When I wrote my Thursday column, I worried I might have gone a little overboard with the Nazi references about the political left. Thats why I added the note about how Id written it while angry.

But events since I wrote that piece on Monday made me realize I probably had not done it enough.

There does not seem to be a bottom to the depravity of progressives. The 100 million-plus people slaughtered on the altar of various forms of their political philosophy and tactics in the last 100 years havent caused them to pause even for a second. For the agenda of an all-encompassing government, nothing else matters.

In Maryland, where I live, Gov. Larry Hogan gave the annual State of the State Address on Wednesday. Hogan has the highest approval rating of any governor in the country, which is amazing for a Republican governor in a deep-blue state.

Immediately after the speech, Democrats attacked him for not criticizing President Trump in his speechabout the state of the state of Maryland. Trump had not been president for two weeks, but Democrats were demanding Hogan condemn him anyway.

Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who has been unable to install air conditioners in his countys schools after years and millions of tax dollars dedicated to do it, went so far as to start an online petition attempting to pressure Hogan to attack the president.

While the not-so-bright Kamenetz attempted to force a fellow American to speak, his fellow-traveler progressives were on the other side of the country rioting to stop someone else from speaking. Did Kamenetz condemn the fascists at the University of California Berkeley? Unsurprisingly, he did not.

Does this mean Kamenetz supports Nazi tactics? Of course not, but it wouldnt surprise me considering the fact that if Gestapo-esque goons rioted in support of any or all of my political agenda, Id go hoarse condemning them. To each their own, I suppose.

But Kamenetz isnt the problem by himself; he just happens to personify what the Democratic Party across the nation has become the latest purveyors of fascism in the name of justice.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin (guess which party?), tweeted before the riot, Using speech to silence marginalized communities and promote bigotry is unacceptable. Hate speech isn't welcome in our community. His community then set about making sure that speech he said isnt welcome didnt happen.

Once his Brown Shirts took his words to heart and started a riot, he chimed in with, Violence and destruction is not the answer.

How else would they stop something the top politician told them is hate speech and isnt welcome?

Im not saying he incited itmostly because he wasnt alone.

The media and the Democratic Party have been building up to Berkeley since the election, and theyre still building on it now. Unlike Kamenetz, Arreguin issued a statement on the violence, mostly because he didnt have a choice. More of a CYA than anything else, he blamed everyone but himself.

Police strategy was ordered by the department, not me, he tweeted. Was he napping? How did he not know a riot was going down in his own city? And if he did, how did he not immediately order the police to put it down? Berkeley police didnt make a single arrest. The strategy appears to have been to sit by and watch it all happen: Watch things burn, property destroyed, people assaulted for disagreeing with leftist ideology.

Kamenetz and Arreguin are indicative of Democrats across the country, at every level of office theyve embraced fascism. Unlike their ground-level goon squads who employ violent fascist tactics, theyre passive fascists -- willing, and happy, to incite action with just enough distance between them and the Molotov cocktails for plausible deniability.

But that gap is closing quickly.

The American people are noticing how I abhor violence and I do not support violence are simply words, especially when those employing violence sit on the same side of the aisle as those speaking those words.

As these goons and their enablers continue to try to goosestep over those who wont fall in line at riot scenes the press calls mostly peaceful, its important to remember: If you truly are something, you dont have to tell anyone. Truly smart people dont have to tell people theyre smart; funny people dont have to tell people theyre funny. And people who oppose fascism dont have to insist they oppose fascism. And they especially dont employ fascistic tactics.

If you truly abhor violence, dont lie down with the dogs who advocate it. If you know what they do and continue to ally yourself with them, its probably because youre a dog yourself.

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Democrats Lie Down With Dogs - Townhall

For at least the next two years, this much is true: Democratsare inthe minority at virtually every level of government. Theycould stay in the minority for years to come.

That means the party'sability to fight backagainst a Republican-controlled Washington is limited. But they can offer some strategic blows, and in some cases already have.

Much of the nation's attention has been focused on Washington, where Senate Democrats are trying to delay Trump's Cabinet nominees in dramatic fashion. But outside Washington, Democrats across the country are mustering a less-flashierresistance that has the potential to coalesce into aformidable roadblock toa Republican-controlled Washington.

As the second week of Trump's presidency wraps up,Democratic attorneys general across the nation filed a flurry oflawsuits to try to stop hiscontroversial travel ban in its tracks. It worked, at least temporarily. Democratic-controlled legislatures are readying legislation to expand health care if Congress trims it. Progressive groups are organizing to replicate success they've had recently with ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage. Big-city mayors are opening their doors and -- in at least one case-- their city halls to illegal immigrants Trump may want to deport.

In all of this, there is potential for big flash points with the Trump administration. Let's break down the cells of state and local Democratic resistance.

Nowhere is the Democratic Party's decimation over the Obama yearsmore evidentthan at the state legislative level. Democratscontrol state legislatures in 14 states; in just six of those do they also have the governor's mansion.

One of those all-blue states is Oregon, where Democrats are keenly aware of their status as a legislative and political counterweight to Trump. Lawmakers there are prioritizing bills to increase women's access to abortion, contraception and pre-natal care in anticipation of Congress defunding Planned Parenthood. They will also prioritize a bill to ban racial profiling by law enforcement andtry to expand state-funded children's health care.

It's a lot of work; progressives are playing defense on a lot of fronts, acknowledgedOregon House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson (D).

"Everything that makes me a progressive feels like it's under attack,"Williamson said. "What lets me sleep at night is we can move policy forward on every issue that makes me a progressive."

In Nevada, Democrats are back in control of the legislature inone of the only states to flip both chambers from red to blue last year. Like Oregon, they're prioritizing unabashedly progressive legislation, like ensuring same-sex marriage stays the law of the land as well as working to ban or limit fracking and expand voting rights if the Trump administration tries to limit them.

But someof that legislation is destined to remain atalking point. Nevada, along with sevenother Democratic-controlled legislatures, must work with a Republican governor. Still, the chance to be any kind of counterweight to a conservative Washington is a chance Democrats are eager toseize, said Aaron Ford, the new Senate majority leader in Nevada

"I get giddy every time I think about the fact we have such a great opportunity in this state," Ford said. "We are not afraid to stand up for what our constituents want."

In perpetually blue California, Democratic lawmakers are expecting to have so many confrontations with Trump that the legislature has hired former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder to counsel them on any impending legal battles with Washington.

2) Democratic attorneys general

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said a federal judge in Seattle has granted a nationwide temporary restraining order blocking President Trump's recent action barring nationals from seven countries from entering the United States. (Reuters)

Legislation can only take Democrats so far, given half of states are controlled entirely by Republicans. That's where Democratic attorneys general say they come in: To sue the heck outta the Trump administration, much like Republican attorneys general did under Obama.

They'vealready started: Democratic attorneys general across the country have filed lawsuitsagainst Trump's temporary ban of travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries and indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. On Friday a federal judge responded to the lawsuit filed by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and temporarily blocked the ban from going into effect nationwide.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association Democratic, said Democratic attorneys general will also be examining "really carefully" any legal action they can take with regard to repealing Obamacare and defunding Planned Parenthood. They're also looking into ways to provide legal counsel for advocacy groups like the ACLU.

Like Democratic legislatures, these lawyersknow they're going to have to be in fight stance, especially early on in the Trump days.

"I figure every day there's going to be a new executive order," Rosenblum said, "so the state attorneys general really need to coalesce around what we can do."

3) Mayors

Mayors are one of the few officesin politics where Democrats dominate;22 of America's 25 largest cities are run by Democrats.

These mayorshave the ability to carry out oneof the most high-profile acts of defiance to a Trump presidency: Settingup sanctuary cities -- and, in the case of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (D), literally promising to open city hall to illegal immigrants.

The first sanctuary city battleground is in Austin, where GOP governor Greg Abbott is threatening a Democratic sheriff's job if she doesn't obey federal deportation orders for illegal immigrants. Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) has vowed to back the sheriff.

As flashy as mayoral resistance can be, it can also be politically dangerous. AsGoverning Magazine details, mayors also risk biting the hand that feeds him, since cities rely so heavily on federal grants.

4) Ballot initiatives

Perhaps the best bang for Democrats' buck could come not from lawmakers or lawyers but from the voters themselves.

Progressive ballot initiatives have had fantastic success over the years, even in Republican states. Over the past two decades, initiatives to raise the minimum wage has rarely lost when put to the voter. This past November was no exception; minimum wage ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington passed by a larger margin than the winning presidential candidate,according toThe Fairness Project, which advocates for higher minimum wage laws.

What's more, voters in eight of nine states voted to ease restrictions on marijuana and three of four states voted to put in place gun restrictions.

Organizations that support progressive initiatives are looking to build on that momentum for 2018. And they're starting now by convincing big-money donors to get on board, since ballot initiatives is quickly becoming a big-money fight. In 2016, almost $1 billion was spent by outside groups on hundreds of initiatives in 39 states.

"We know that ballot measures won't solve all of our problems," said Justine Sarver, directorof the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said in a statement. "But they will be an important tool in policy, protest and platform setting in the during the Trump administration."

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Outside Washington, the Democratic resistance to Donald Trump is building - Washington Post

Last Updated Feb 4, 2017 7:32 PM EST

Vice President Mike Pence had a message for Senate Democrats threatening to filibuster President Trumps Supreme Court pick, Judge Neil Gorsuch: Dont do it.

In remarks to the Federalist Society in Philadelphia Saturday, Pence warned that a filibuster of Gorsuch, which would require the Senate to muster a 60-vote threshold to confirm the nominee, would be unwise.

Several [senators] announced their opposition within minutes of his nomination and now theyre even threatening to use the filibuster procedure in the Senate to stop him, Pence told the conservative audience members. Make no mistake about it: This would be an unwise and unprecedented act.

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President Trump wants Senate Republicans to change the rules if needed to confirm his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch. Some Senate Demo...

Never before in the history of our country has an associate justice nominee to the Supreme Court faced a successful filibuster, the vice president continued. And Judge Neil M. Gorsuch should not be the first.

The president has also hinted at the possibility of choosing the nuclear option when it comes to Gorsuchs nomination.

In remarks to the press earlier this week, Mr. Trump encouraged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, to go nuclear if theres gridlock in the upper chamber over his nominee. Deploying the nuclear option would change Senate rules allowing Gorsuchs confirmation vote to proceed on a simple majority vote instead of the usual 60 -- a risky precedent to set for political parties in the future.

In his Federalist Society remarks, Pence touted bipartisan cooperation in meeting with Gorsuch, a Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge who identifies as a constitutional originalist in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia.

In just a few short days, hes already met with 12 senators in both political parties, Pence said. And hes making himself available to meet with all 100 members of the Senate if theyll meet with him.

Pences remarks follow a Saturday morning statement by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, that put Gorsuchs nomination front and center in the ongoing legal battles over Mr. Trumps contentious travel ban.

With each action testing the Constitution, and each personal attack on a judge, President Trump raises the bar even higher for Judge Gorsuchs nomination to serve on the Supreme Court, Schumer said, alluding to Mr. Trumps Twitter smear of a federal judge who handed down a temporary stay of his executive order, which bars refugees and citizens from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the U.S. His ability to be an independent check will be front and center throughout the confirmation process.

As demonstrations around the nation continued to protest the ban, Pence highlighted his own familys immigrant past at the Federalist Society, praising the courage of his grandfather for crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland to the U.S.

My grandfather came to this country from a little town in Ireland called Tubbercurry, Pence recounted. He got on a boat, he crossed the Atlantic and he went through Ellis Island. Took a train to Chicago, Illinois, where he drove a bus for 40 years. He was the proudest man I ever knew.

His immigrant grandfather, Pence said, had the right idea about the U.S.

He was right about America, where anybody can be anybody because of the system of liberty that we have enshrined in the Constitution, in the founding documents of this nation, he said.

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Daniel Riemer Published 1:54 p.m. CT Feb. 3, 2017 | Updated 6:13 p.m. CT Feb. 3, 2017

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security bill in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 14, 1935.(Photo: Associated Press)

A fortune cookie my mom recently opened contained this advice: If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.

The message, as Thomas Jefferson would say, is self-evident. Some may think it trite. But nothing better expresses the predicament and the challenge that Democrats across Wisconsin and our nation now face.

If we do not change the ideas and strategy that weve been using since 2008, we Democrats are going to end up where were heading: on the downward path of losing influence and losing elections.

Democrats urgently need to change direction. The starting point, to use the title of a famous movie, is to go back to the future, back to our roots in the New Deal.

By returning to the principles of the New Deal, principles we have mistakenly ignored, we can recapture and revise a core set of ideas about governments role about what government should do, and not do that will appeal overwhelmingly to Wisconsins voters and the American electorate.

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Based on the enormous appeal of what Democrats will then stand for, we can recruit candidates in every election, win more legislative seats and governorships, and eventually recapture Congress and the presidency.

President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers including our own Progressive Republican Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr. believed that government should provide what I call a Foundation for Freedom.

It is governments role, they believed, to guarantee economic security and confidence, promote equal opportunity in health and education, and make sure that the market is free.

Based on these principles, Roosevelt and his New Deal allies largely eliminated the welfare system created by his Republican predecessor, Herbert Hoover. In place of welfare, FDR and his allies put in place the opportunity for the unemployed to work in wage-paying jobs, for programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration, until they could be absorbed into what FDR called a rising tide of private employment.

FDR promoted economic security in other ways. He championed and signed laws that allowed collective bargaining, set a minimum wage and created Social Security. He favored national health insurance.

Roosevelt and the New Dealers also worked to restore Americas collapsed economy. They enacted legislation to protect the environment, workers, consumers and investors.

FDR and the New Deal were not perfect. They made mistakes, and they could not predict the future. They could never have imagined that trade with China, Mexico and Europe combined with amazing advances in technology would wipe out millions of manufacturing jobs, as well as both destroy and create millions of other jobs.

Democrats today should again embrace the core values and aims that FDR and the New Deal pursued, adapting those values and aims to todays conditions and the futures challenges. We should again envision government as a Foundation for Freedom. That foundation should rest on three pillars. First, protect us from true dangers, whether foreign or domestic; second, connect individuals to work, decent incomes, health care and education; and third, respect the free market by making sure the market is freed from cheaters who dump on the environment, workers, consumers and investors. Thats what classical economic thinkers, such as Adam Smith, really meant by free markets.

Democrats also should make clear that, except for performing these essential functions of government and protecting our rights, we want government to do nothing. Since Thomas Jefferson, Democrats have been the party of limited government. Since FDR and the New Deal, Democrats have been the party of economic and political freedom. We need to make it clear through word and deed that we, todays Democrats, are again the party of freedom.

To this end, I propose that Democrats in Wisconsin and the U.S. should promote these five specific policies as we build a New Foundation of Freedom:

First, guarantee economic security, by growing short-term jobs for adults who cannot easily find full-time work, raising the minimum wage, strengthening the effective Earned Income Tax Credit, restoring and strengthening collective bargaining, and for those who truly cannot work because of a severe disability or seniors retired on Social Security providing payments that lift them out of poverty.

Second, provide equal opportunity in health and education, by making sure that all citizens have excellent and affordable health insurance, requiring equal funding for K-12 students at good public schools, and in time allowing qualified high school graduates to attend, tuition-free, a public university, such as Wisconsins technical colleges and world-class public universities.

Third, restore balance to the tax system with cuts to property, sales and income taxes for working families and the middle class, while requiring the super-wealthy and those who live on loopholes to pay their fair share.

Fourth, truly free the market, by prohibiting once and for all the kind of dumping on the environment, mistreatment of workers and defrauding of consumers and investors that lets cheating firms steal an advantage from reputable and law-abiding businesses. We should further level the playing field by eliminating the unfair subsidies and tax loopholes that distort the markets efficiency and freedom by unfairly picking winners (campaign contributors) and losers (the middle class).

Finally, end the welfare programs that require people to be poor to get help. Right-wing Republicans love welfare. It serves as a scapegoat that diverts attention away from their unpopular agenda of holding down wages, abandoning health care for tens of millions, hurting education, tolerating pollution and doling out tax cuts for the super-rich. Rather than defending a welfare system that fails to end poverty, Democrats should do what Roosevelt did in the 1930s and call for its end, replacing it with a path for all people to the middle class through work and wages. This will sharply distinguish us from welfare-loving Republicans who need welfare to last forever to distract from their harmful agenda.

If Democrats advance these (and other) worthy and overwhelmingly popular ideas that create a new Foundation for Freedom, we will not only be adapting the New Deal tradition to meet the needs of the 21st century. We will be proposing whats right for Wisconsin and America.

And we will start winning again. I believe that, with this vision of freedom, Democrats will win sooner than later.

The future does not come to us in the form of fortune cookies. We make the future. Democrats can win again and earn the right to enact laws that actually put in place a new Foundation for Freedom. The future starts now.

Daniel Riemer, a Democrat, is a member of the state Assembly from Milwaukee.

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