Democrats in Disarray.

The road back.

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The following piece was written by Jerry Seib, former Executive Washington Editor for The Wall Street Journal and author of ‘We Should Have Seen It Coming From Reagan to Trump — A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution’.

In political circles there are four subjects much discussed: (1, 2 and 3) President Trump and (4) How does the Democratic Party get its mojo back? Jerry addresses the last question, which you can read below. His prescription is straightforward: when you’ve reached the end, you go back to the beginning.

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By Gerald F. Seib

What are Democrats to do? They’ve lost the House, the Senate and the White House. They have full control of only 18 state legislatures across the country. In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, just 37% have a favorable view of the party.

Here’s an idea: Perhaps Democrats should do what Republicans and conservatives did, to great success, over the last quarter-century: start building back not in the hothouse of Washington, where they have limited power and little room for maneuver, but out in the states and at the local level.

Slow, steady, un-flashy work out in the states is what really laid the groundwork for the dominant position Republicans now enjoy. The states, not Washington, became the springboard for political success, the testing ground for policy and the sounding board for messaging.

Intriguingly, there are at least some early signs Democrats may be starting to move down this path—and enjoying a bit of success as they do.

Recent history would validate such a strategy. To see how that process can work, take a look at the situation in 2009, right after Barack Obama was elected to the first of his two terms as president.

Republicans then were pretty much where Democrats are now. Republicans had lost control of not just the White House but both houses of Congress. Democrats were in charge of almost twice as many state legislatures as were Republicans, and held 28 of the nation’s governors’ seats. Amazingly, in retrospect, Democrats had full control of the state governments of West Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa and Arkansas.

So, while Democrats were reveling in their national power, the Republican National Committee began a concerted effort to revive the party’s standing in the states. In early 2010, Ed Gillespie, a former Republican national chairman, took over the little-known Republican State Leadership Committee, a party group dedicated to help win elections at the state and local level, and began ramping up its fund-raising.

Republicans began climbing back, turning the Obama years into a disaster for Democrats at the state level. By the last year of Obama’s term, Republicans had taken control of 30 state legislatures and picked up some 900 state legislative seats across the country, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. They held 32 governor’s seats.

Success at the state level ultimately paid big dividends for Republicans nationally. By taking control of state legislatures, Republicans also won control of the decennial congressional redistricting process in more states, which allowed them to create a whole new set of safe Republican House seats. Republican dominance in the redistricting process helped the party win control of the House in six of the last eight elections—including last year, which produced a Republican House that now is only too happy to enact the Trump agenda.

Beyond electoral success, Republicans at the state level were busy road-testing some of the ideas that form the backbone of today’s agenda. A handful of conservative policy organizations—most notably the American Legislative Exchange Council, financed in part by the business community and the Koch brothers—flew below the radar nationally as they Republicans steer state policies to the right.

Charges that the election system is rigged to help Democrats? ALEC began pushing that line after 2008. Defunding liberal groups? Ditto. Broadening the investigation and detention of undocumented immigrants? ALEC was pushing those policies at the state level. (Alex Hertel-Fernandez wrote an excellent book on this process a few years ago.)

Today, after a quarter-century of work out in the states, Republicans are the ones who have full control of 28 state legislatures, compared to just 18 for the Democrats. They occupy 868 more state legislative seats. They hold 27 governors’ seats, compared to 23 for the Democrats. Republicans have full control of the state governments of West Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa and Arkansas, and control of the state legislature in North Carolina.

Could Democrats go down a similar path now?

Maybe they are about to try. Three weeks ago, Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the party plans to send money every month to state parties across the country—and will spend extra money to help party organizations in red states. Martin described his strategy as “organize anywhere, win everywhere.”

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, , the arm of the party that helps candidates at the state level, has announced a list of six target states on which it intends to focus: Alaska, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. All have state legislatures that are narrowly divided between the two parties.

The States Project, a group aligned with Democrats that focuses on state races, spent $70 million on state legislative elections last cycle and has organized more than 75,000 donors into “giving circles” that gather to raise funds for state candidates. “We need in this moment to push back against the false sense that all is lost,” says Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator and now the project’s president. “Too many people think that because of the power structure in Washington there is nothing to do but wait and pray.”

Democrats are heartened by success they’ve had in state-level elections this year, most notably in the high-profile race for a seat on the Wisconsin state supreme court. But they’ve also over-performed expectations in state legislative races in the less likely state of Iowa, as well as in local races in red Texas and Nebraska.

Meantime, the real stars in the Democratic party—to the extent it has any—are governors. The hottest Democrat at the moment is Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who thrilled party activists with a recent speech in New Hampshire in which he blistered Trump and declared that it’s “time to fight everywhere, all at once.”

Behind Pritzker, a series of capable and attractive governors in red and purple states may be better positioned than anybody in Washington to lead the party out of the wilderness. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Stein of North Carolina, Jared Polis of Colorado, Laura Kelly of Kansas—all have shown the ability to pull the party to the center and attract voters from both parties.

Those politically moderate, ideologically centrist governors also highlight the Democrats’ principal challenge: deciding whether the party is prepared to pivot to the middle. That would require focusing on developing a better working-class economic message and a tougher line on immigration, while downplaying progressive social issues, including transgender rights. Governors and state legislators around the country might offer a much different answer than, say, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez would from their perch in Washington.

In any case, Washington is a tough place for Democrats right now because, for better and for worse, Donald Trump is setting the agenda and forcing everyone to play his game on his turf. In the states, maybe, just maybe, Democrats have a better chance to break into the open field.