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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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Riemer: A new direction for Democrats - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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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Mike Pence warns Democrats against filibuster of Supreme Court pick - CBS News

Forbes

How Democrats Can Reclaim The Political Center Forbes As Democrats sip kombucha in our coastal sanctuaries, we continue to despair about the results of November's election and question how we can rebuild our party. A growing portion of liberals seem to think that the solution to our electoral woes is to ... and more »

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How Democrats Can Reclaim The Political Center - Forbes

Democrats in Congress are grappling with how to deal with their new reality - a Republican president, Congress, and House - while facing tough pressure from their base, eager for them to resist any proposals that President Trump puts forward.

When President Obama took office, Republicans held strong with massive opposition and faced very few consequences, a result Democrats may look to as they contemplate their current actions.

Longtime Republican consultant Mike Murphy, appearing on 1947, the Meet The Press podcast with Chuck Todd, called this strategy "a brilliant political tactic" but acknowledged that, "a strategy tends to be a longer term deal."

"You can argue that when they started using mustard gas in the western front in World War I it was a brilliant tactic because it really worked for a while, but then everybody had mustard gas," he said. "We find out that the opposition theory works great in the short term, but you also teach the other guys how to use the same weapons against you."

Looking back at this election's outcome and how the nation ended up here, Murphy noted that polling has gotten harder as it gets more difficult to reach people on the phone, and he admitted one thing that's "dangerous to say in politics" - "I think there's been an over reliance on analytical data."

The political electorate has become so polarized, he said, that politicians are so focused on turnout of their base rather than catering to new voters.

"I came up doing Republican governors in blue and purple states where we got 40% of the vote for free and we had to go and earn the other 10% wit the right issues, persuasion," he reflected.

"You're a better politician and you understand the other guy's voters because you stole some to get elected.... ultimately we need politics to effectively govern, which is the only way to run a growing, rising superpower, and I'd sure like us to be one this century."

You can download 1947: The Meet the Press Podcast in iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Mike Murphy: A Never-Trumper Offers Advice for Democrats - NBCNews.com

Senate Democrats should use any and all means, including the filibuster, to block confirmation of President Trumps Supreme Court nominee. They will almost surely fail. But sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war.

This is purely about politics. Republicans hold the presidency, majorities in the House and Senate, 33 governorships and control of the legislatures in 32 states. If the Democratic Party is going to become relevant again outside of its coastal redoubts, it has to start winning some elections and turning the other cheek on this court fight is not the way to begin.

Trumps pick, Judge Neil Gorsuch , has the rsum required of a Supreme Court justice. But so did Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamas last nominee, to whom Senate Republicans would not even extend the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a vote. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) left the late Antonin Scalias seat open for nearly a year to keep Obama from filling it. That, too, was purely about politics.

Im not counseling eye-for-an-eye revenge. Im advising Democrats to consider what course of action is most likely to improve their chances of making gains in 2018, at both the state and national levels.

The partys progressive base is angry and mobilized. Many Democrats are convinced that FBI Director James B. Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin decided the election. The very idea of a Trump presidency sparked vast, unprecedented demonstrations in Washington and other cities the day after the inauguration.

(Bastien Inzaurralde,Alice Li/The Washington Post)

In the two weeks since, Trump has only piled outrage upon outrage, as far as progressives are concerned. He took the first steps toward building his ridiculous wall along the southern border, but with U.S. taxpayers dollars, not Mexicos. He squelched government experts who work on climate change. He weakened the Affordable Care Act in the hope that it would begin to collapse, which would make it easier for Congress to kill it. He displayed comic ignorance of our history. (Somebody please tell him that Frederick Douglass has been dead since 1895.) He signed executive orders banning entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world, an action so appalling that enormous numbers of people gathered at major airports in protest.

And Trump is just getting started. Democrats cannot even limit the damage, let alone reverse it, without more power than they have now.

That is the political context into which the Gorsuch nomination arrives. From my reading of the progressive crowds that have recently taken to the streets, the Democratic base is in no mood to hear about the clubby traditions and courtesies of the Senate. The base is itching for a fight.

The way McConnell, et al. treated the Garland nomination was indeed unforgivable. Senators who fail to remember that will get an earful from their constituents and, potentially, a challenge in the next primary. More importantly, those senators will be passing up a rare political opportunity.

With just 48 votes, all Senate Democrats can do is filibuster, denying McConnell the 60 votes he needs for a final vote on the nomination. In response, McConnell could employ the nuclear option changing the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations. In the end, Gorsuch would be approved anyway.

But I believe Democrats should wage, and lose, this fight. The 60-vote standard looks more and more like an anachronistic holdover from the time when senators prided themselves on putting the nation ahead of ideology. These days, so many votes hew strictly to party lines that it is difficult to get anything done. The Senate is supposed to be deliberative, not paralyzed.

And I cant help thinking back to 2009. Republicans made an all-out effort to stop the Affordable Care Act. Their motives were purely political; some GOP senators railed against policies they had favored in the past. Ultimately, they failed. Obamacare became law.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

But this losing battle gave tremendous energy and passion to the tea party movement which propelled Republicans to a sweeping victory in the 2010 midterm election. It is hard not to see an analogous situation on the Democratic side right now.

Democrats cannot stop Gorsuch from being confirmed. But they can hearten and animate the partys base by fighting this nomination tooth and nail, even if it means giving up some of the backslapping comity of the Senate cloakroom. They can inspire grass-roots activists to fight just as hard to win back state legislatures and governorships. They can help make 2018 a Democratic year.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

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Fighting Gorsuch is hopeless. Democrats should do it anyway. - Washington Post