Stop the sniping, Washington Democrats. Learn from the grass roots. - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer November 19 at 7:11 PM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

Sometimes, the Democratic Party amazes me. And not in a good way.

Here is a party fresh off a series of big election triumphs all over the country. The nation faces an unprecedented challenge brought on by President Trump’s breathtaking irresponsibility. Republicans are pushing through the most reactionary tax bill since the 1920s. And what do leading Washington Democrats want to do? They would have us engage in the “move left” vs. “move to the center” squabbles that have obsessed the party for at least three decades. Old arguments feel comfortable, but they’re inadequate for the moment. And new research is finding that this bickering does not match the mood of local anti-Trump activists.

Ever since Trump’s surprise victory, the distinguished Harvard University scholar Theda Skocpol has been spending a lot of time in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio with her colleagues Mary Waters and Kathy Swartz. They are talking to leaders and rank-and-file citizens in two counties in each state to track changes in our politics wrought by the 2016 outcome.

All the counties they are studying voted for Trump, yet in every one of them, new anti-Trump organizations have risen up. The researchers have found 10 such groups so far. (By the way, all these groups are led or co-led by women, many of whom are also deeply involved in their local churches.)

What’s struck Skocpol is how irrelevant the Democrats’ tired quarrels are to these freshly engaged citizens. “At the grass roots, people are dealing with the crisis Trump’s presidency presents to America, and they’re not refighting the election of 2016,” she said in an interview. “They’re not talking about whether the Democratic Party should be more progressive or more centrist.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/stop-the-sniping-washington-democrats-learn-from-the-grass-roots/2017/11/19/788a9880-cbd9-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html