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

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

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

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