For as long as I can remember, the Democrat Party advertised itself as the Party of the working man, while casting Republicans as the representatives of evil interests, a/k/a employers and people who actually earn money.  The Democrats’ hold on blue collar voters was so complete that the desertion of many of those voters to Ronald Reagan led them to be called “Reagan Democrats.”  Of late, the Dems have cast themselves as the champions of minority groups.  Sometimes this made sense.  African-Americans and Hispanics represent sizeable blocs of voters, but for Democrats, no group is too small.  Democrats are strident supporters of illegal aliens, to the point that they put the interests of the illegals ahead of those of American citizens.  No matter what the actual number of illegal aliens is, they come first for Democrats.  This apparently, is “progressive.”  The same holds true for Democrat support of LGBT, Q, and whatever new initials have been added this week.  That community, if such disparate groups indeed constitute a community, actually is very small.  Yet Democrats will go to any length to ensure that a 6’5″ bearded man, who identifies as a woman, is free to use the same bathroom as your 11 year old daughter.  Progressive, right?  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not a matter of either being for these groups or against them.  I certainly don’t wish any of these groups ill.  It’s just that Democrat advocacy of their every demand would seem to put the Democrats at odds with the bulk of the American electorate.  The last election proves this point.  Hillary Clinton actually pursued a stated policy of neglect of non-minority working class voters in the Midwest.  She said she didn’t need them.  Her mistaken judgment cost her Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the presidency.  Democrats have not learned from her mistake.  Today’s Democrat Party is a far cry from the coalition that kept Democrats in control of the Congress for nearly all of the period from the 1930’s to the mid-1990’s.  That Party consisted of Northern liberals, Labor, including conservative working class people, Southern conservatives and minorities.  By contrast, the new Democrats are a hybrid of extremist groups, such as wild-eyed, anti-growth environmentalists; anti-capitalist/anarchists; the illegal alien/La Raza crowd; and out and out Marxists.  Sadly, the new Democrats are nothing new.  Instead, the new Democrat Party represents an alarming echo of the worst of history’s malefactors; a sickening melange of doctrine borrowed from fascist and communist dictators and virulent racists.  The Democrats ruthlessly stifle any and all expressions of opinions that do not mindlessly accept and parrot their positions.  Divergent opinions are denounced as extreme and dangerous.  Want to make a conservative speech on or near a college campus?  You can’t.  It’s not allowed, because, for Democrats, free speech exists only when they’re talking.  Try being a conservative actor, and get work in Hollywood.  Good luck with that.  Even the news has to conform to Democrat standards.  They set out to destroy Bill O’Reilly, because he was too conservative (not to me) and too popular (not to me) on Fox News.  O’Reilly’s gone.  Maybe his next book will be Killing Bill O’Reilly.  But maybe his ouster wasn’t political, maybe O’Reilly was just a bad guy.  Apparently not, because Tucker Carlson took over O’Reilly’s slot, and the Leftists announced he’s next to go.  Last week, they tried, and failed, to knock Sean Hannity off the air.  And this week, the lawyer who engineered O’Reilly’s demise, set her sights on his acolyte, Jesse Watters, who is now on Fox in another time slot.  The Democrats borrowed this tactic from that great champion of civil rights, Joseph Stalin.  Joe Stalin also opposed diversity of opinion.  He said, “writers are engineers of the human soul.”  And that “the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.”  He engineered conformity by executing writers, intellectuals and artists who did not toe the party line.  Sound familiar?  Then there’s the current battle over sanctuary cities.  The Democrats insist that States and cities have the right, not only to ignore federal immigration laws, but also to frustrate their enforcement by the federal government.  This proves that, if nothing else, the Democrats are flexible.  In 2012, when Arizona tried to enforce the federal immigration laws that the Obama Administration refused to enforce, the Democrats said a State had no right to do that, and took the State to court.  The Supreme Court backed Obama, ruling, “The Federal Government’s broad, undoubted power over immigration and alien status rests, in part, on its constitutional power to ‘establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization,’ and on its inherent sovereign power to control and conduct foreign relations.”  Two years later, the Obama Administration announced, “For more than a half century, every president—Democratic or Republican—has used his legal authority to act on immigration.”  Now, under President Trump, the Dems have changed their minds.  Every Trump Order acting on immigration has been blocked by Leftist judges.  There are at least 340 “sanctuary cities” where elected officials hide aliens subject to arrest or deportation.  Last year, San Francisco released from custody 252 illegals that federal authorities had asked the city to hold.  One of these “dreamers,” Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, five times previously deported and convicted of seven felonies,  after his release, murdered Kathryn Steinle.  Democrats aren’t concerned though,  after all, she was only an American citizen.  Now, the entire State of California is about to declare itself a “sanctuary State.”  There even is a California secession movement.  They want to order state and local law enforcement officials not to cooperate with federal investigations, including immigration violations, of any kind.  California considers federal law to be unenforceable.  In a shocking acknowledgment of the concept of federalism, California’s Attorney General said “the U.S. Constitution gives my state the right to decide how to do public safety.”  So, a State has the right to declare a federal law null and void?  This is not a new Democrat position, it’s an old one.  “We will not submit to the application of force, on the part of the Federal Government, to reduce this State to obedience; but that we will consider the passage by Congress, of any act… to coerce the State … or to enforce the acts hereby declared null and void … as inconsistent with the longer continuance of [this State] in the Union.”  California 2017?  No.  South Carolina’s Order of Nullification of 1832.  Those Democrats challenged the authority of the federal government to regulate commerce, and threatened to secede.  It led to the Civil War.  The new Democrats’ sanctuary city and State position is identical to the “State’s rights” “nullification” position that the old Democrats used to oppose ending slavery and guaranteeing civil rights.  So everything old is new again.  The old Democrats were on the wrong side of history, and the new Democrats are equally afflicted.