There is a gathering storm. The big money donors of the Left are getting a war chest ready and Democrats are plotting to try and retake the rural areas they once held, a tacit acknowledgement that that party is going nowhere unless they reconnect with white working class voters. And it wouldn’t be a liberal offensive without lawsuits alleging that gerrymandering screwed them over big league in Middle America. Should the Right be worried? Not at all, says the Republican State Leadership Conference, which keeps the GOP talent pool fresh. It’s at the state level that the newest string of leaders is born.

Given that Republicans are the dominant political force in the country, the RSLC is not at all in a panic mode about the latest left wing push into their turf. Simply put, because they control 69/99 state legislatures, coupled with the Democratic Party’s near extinction in rural America (especially Appalachia), there isn’t enough Democratic candidates to run for a lot of the state offices that are worth anyone’s time. GOP controls the majority of not just state legislature seats, but also attorneys general, secretaries of state, and lieutenant governors. Bill McCollum and Matt Walter, who serve in separate roles as chairman and president of the RSLC respectively, wrote that since Democrats seem to know that it’s an uphill climb at the state-level, they might as well try to change the local courts to make things more difficult when redrawing districts begins again at the next census:

From Barack Obama and Eric Holder to David Brock, George Soros and the Democracy Alliance, top-liberal talent and money is shifting focus to state politics. Following Tom Perez’s election as DNC chair, his leading example of success was a Democrat win in the recent Delaware State Senate special election. But what he omitted was essential: Democrats spent over a million dollars, more than twenty times typical Delaware Senate races and 10 times what Republicans spent, only to win by the same margin as Barack Obama. […] In 21 chambers that year, control flipped from Democrats to Republicans, and most of the districts where Republicans won in those states were drawn by Democrats. […] Contrary to Democrat myth, these victories were not in magically-gerrymandered districts. In 2012, 410 Republican state legislators won in districts that Obama simultaneously carried. Since 2009, almost 1,000 state legislative seats have changed from blue to red. Additionally, Republicans now hold majorities of governors, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general, the United States Senate and others defined by state boundaries not impacted by redistricting. More broadly, polling has shown that nearly every state is more likely to vote Republican than it was prior to 2010. […] Since the last redistricting, fringe liberals and their groups, billionaires and unions have spent millions bringing legal cases which would slant the playing field unfairly towards them. Courts were asked to intervene in 42 states with over 220 cases filed in federal and state courts. Democrat press releases about the lawsuits and crocodile tears about Republican “unfairness” were rarely followed by coverage of their ultimate failures in court. Now, liberals are spending millions to gain control of elected court majorities themselves in key redistricting states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

That’s why the RSLC has launched the Judicial Fairness Initiative. Democrats seem to know where to fight, but will they have the will keep up that fight. I doubt it. From a party that shuns white voters, thinks they’re backwards country bumpkins, racist, and deplorable, I find it hard for Democrats to reach out to a massive voter base that was once the backbone of their party. The ultra-progressive, overly educated elites that occupy the insufferable cities of America dictate the Left’s agenda—and its speech codes, political correctness, safe spaces, lectures about privilege, cultural appropriation, transgender bathroom rights, and other nonsense that won’t create jobs. These people are not going to be happy that they have to reach out to Trump’s America, talk with these voters, and find an issue they can wedge enough space to win.

Right now, it’s Trump: Total War. And reaching out to the enemy on the Left is not terribly popular. In fact, some progressive groups are threatening to primary those who aren’t anti-Trump enough. The Democrats are a coastal, urban-based, and marginal party at present. The road out of political hell is through the white working class, but I don’t think they’ll go that route. In the meantime, the Democratic Party’s leadership will grow older; the bench of new leaders will be smaller, or nonexistent in some areas, thanks to GOP dominance at the state level. As The Washington Post reported, every state since 2008 has shifted right in presidential and state contests. That leaves Republicans on some solid ground for 2018 and beyond.