Updated

The Democratic Party is a mess. It has no effective national leader. It has no serious agenda. And Democrats have no idea how to win back the Rust Belt voters who propelled the ultimate political outsider, Donald J. Trump, to the presidency.

During President Obama’s eight years in office the Democrats became primarily a coastal party that caters to out-of-touch wealthy elitists in liberal enclaves like Manhattan and Hollywood, while ignoring the hardworking Americans who are the backbone of our country.

Democrats lost election after election during the Obama years, as voters strongly rejected the party’s bankrupt policies. In fact, according to a Fox News report, President Obama’s tenure was marked by an embarrassing “net loss of 1,042 state and federal Democratic posts, including congressional and state legislative seats, governorships and the presidency.”

Forgotten voters in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina – whose families had voted for Democrats since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time – have finally had enough. They feel like they’ve lost their country and that their leaders in Washington have lost faith in them.

Americans hailing from states that President Trump carried have well-founded beliefs about what today’s Democrat Party stands for – and it’s not good.

Then Donald Trump came into their communities, talking America First, American jobs, and American exceptionalism. Trump has backed those words up with an optimistic agenda anchored on the central promise to get Americans working again. The Make American Great Again effort is focused on reform: tax reform, trade reform, regulatory reform, domestic energy production reform, and health care reform.

Just a few days ago, nine months since being shell-shocked by the epic Trump victory, the Democrats rolled out a new, weak agenda. Washington Democrats clearly felt pressure to put forth something – anything – new because their allies in the mainstream media told them they needed to put new wrapping paper on their old and failed ideas.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that only 37 percent of the American people think that the Democratic Party stands for something. And 52 percent said all that the Democrats do is oppose President Trump. This polling data reflects reality. President Trump has been in office for six months and the Democrats up until now have done nothing more than run a permanent obstruction campaign against the president and his agenda.

The truth is that Americans hailing from states that President Trump carried have well-founded beliefs about what today’s Democrat Party stands for – and it’s not good. These folks think that the Democrats are the party of big government, bureaucratic decision-making, high taxes, open borders, abortion on demand, and weakness around the globe.

I will go a step further and offer what I hear from the liberals in Washington and in the mainstream media about what I would call the real Democrat agenda:

  • On health care, double down on the failing ObamaCare disaster.
  • On federal spending, continue to grow our $20 trillion national debt at an unsustainable rate. “Free” college, anyone? 
  • On illegal immigration, protect sanctuary cities.
  • On taxes, keep them high because government bureaucrats know how to spend your hard-earned money better than you do.
  • On the Second Amendment and gun rights, disregard the Constitution and only allow criminals to have guns.
  • On terrorism, refuse to acknowledge the underlying problem: radical Islam.
  • On campaign finance reform, pretend to be against Super PACs, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This list represents the deep hole that Democrats have dug for themselves outside of their shrinking far-left base.

The idea that ultra-liberals like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York City,  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, or Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of the People’s Republic of Vermont have any intention of fixing or even acknowledging the problems facing ordinary Americans is absurd.

This is all an upside for Republicans, for President Trump’s America First agenda and for the president’s promise to prioritize the working men and women in America’s heartland.