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

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

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

If the base allows it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the tea party, Democrats.

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

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

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

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

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

And theyre demanding their leaders do the same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

nfinley@detroitnews.com

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Finley: Tea time for Democrats - The Detroit News

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

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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

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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Riemer: A new direction for Democrats - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel