When I was growing up in central Maine, it seemed as though everyone in our French Catholic neighborhood had two pictures on the kitchen wall. One was of Jesus. The other was of President John F. Kennedy. Virtually everyone in our mill town was a Democrat.

My parents’ generation became Democrats because of Franklin Roosevelt’s determination to make government work for all people and not just millionaires. I was inspired by John F. Kennedy’s vitality and hopeful vision. Today, both Roosevelt and Kennedy are fading memories, as are the mill jobs that were the blue collar Democratic foundation of Maine.

I’ve been a Democrat ever since, except for a brief stint a few years back when I ran for governor as an independent, at least in part because of the issues that I am raising here.

In those days, the Democratic strongholds ran like a string of blue pearls along the Turnpike and Interstate 95. Now, Democratic support is clustered along the coast and greater Portland.

Most of the jobs that kept those communities intact and vibrant were “free traded” to China so that we could fill our Walmarts, our storage bins and our landfills with cheap stuff — and make more billionaires at home.

It’s a different era for Democrats. In just a few years they’ve lost the White House and both houses of Congress, and the number of states that are considered “solid Democratic” has dropped from 29, in 2008, to 14 now, according to Gallup polling. The future for Democrats, if current trends continue, are not encouraging.

While recent polling shows Donald Trump at the lowest approval ratings of any president at the 100-day mark, they offer little comfort to Democrats, who a majority of Americans don’t trust to do better.

The heart of the crisis for Democrats is not Trump or MAGA. It’s the loss of their working class base of support, particularly over the last decade. Before then, Democrats could rightly claim to be “the party of working people.” Now, Republicans can and do plausibly make the same claim.

Those who have left the party will tell you that they didn’t change much, but the party did. In their eyes, the Democratic Party is now primarily a party of the educated and the professional, and of small groups built around identity politics. Ironically, while the party now regularly speaks of diversity it seems increasingly indifferent, if not hostile to, class diversity.

The best illustration of how the party has lost its way is in the words that it now uses to describe working people. These days they’re simply “less educated” people who “don’t vote in their own interest.” The party might as well put up a blinking billboard saying “Working people not wanted.”

That is a hard starting point for winning back the trust and support of working Americans.

So what is the Democratic plan to restore the party? There isn’t one. Democrats have been forced into a defensive crouch, relying on lawyers and rallies to counter the Trump onslaught. Reinventing the party isn’t even on the radar screen.

The newly elected party chair has promised more of the same — but somehow better— and much of the blame for recent losses is placed on tactical errors, advertising misfires, chauvinism, misguided voters and Republican luck. Democrats, in other words, are doing what they’ve done for too long: wait for Republicans to fail and hope to be next in line.

Make no mistake: this is a transitional moment for Democrats, filled with opportunity — if it can correct what is causing the working class exodus. Trump is aggressively pushing some of America’s most radical right wing ideas, while attempting to make himself the sole legislator, judge, jury and executioner for the country. He admires dictators and strongmen, and wants to join their ranks.

He’s also assembled one of the most amateurish and incompetent Cabinets in modern American history. Mistakes are happening every day, and they’re piling up, as the administration rushes to plant new land mines under their own feet, and then expresses outrage and shock when one of them goes off. Blaming Biden seems to be the favored excuse of the moment.

So how does the Democratic Party right itself to seize the opportunities that Trump and company are opening? It starts with a hard and honest look in the mirror, and the humility to change.

Here are some ideas for Democrats to consider on how to welcome working Americans back and expand the party:

• Speak less and listen more, even when you don’t like what you hear. The inability to listen and respond has been the central failure of the party over the last three election cycles. Working Americans don’t need more lectures, they need leadership.

• Be the party of real diversity and inclusion. While the Republicans are driving out anyone who disagrees with Trump, do the opposite. Invite everyone in. Become the party of real diversity, or gender, race, class and ideas. That means welcoming not only working people but also moderates and genuine conservatives, who were always a part of the “big tent” of the Democratic Party.

• It’s the economy, friend. Focus on what Democrats used to call “kitchen table” or “bread and butter” issues. Working people don’t want more programs and government jobs. They want better private sector jobs and more opportunities to lift themselves up.

• Learn more about how the economy works. It’s fine to rail against the oligarchs and greedy capitalists. They’ve earned it, and the country needs it. But thinking that all businesses are the same is a massive and damaging miscalculation.

• In the same vein, it isn’t enough to know how to regulate and tax businesses while leaving the task of growing the economy to others. Learn how job growth and businesses work. Help grow a robust, fair and sustainable economy by working with both businesses and workers.

• Be the party of the people, not of government. Not every problem requires a new government program and new spending to fix it. Instead of making government bigger, focus on making it smarter and more effective.

• Fix the immigration problem. Working class Americans are not anti-immigrant. Most, like me, have a grandparent or great-grandparent who was an immigrant. We know that immigrants are crucial to a dynamic and growing economy. But Democratic policies that encouraged millions of people to come here in a short amount of time, seemingly without thought or concern about our laws, have dramatically reduced trust in the party. It has also overwhelmed local and state resources.

• Stop demanding that people change their language. You wouldn’t visit another country and ask them to change their language because it’s easier for you. So why would you do it here? Specifically, don’t insist that people feel shame about the country’s past, use new words to describe our history or use plural pronouns to address individuals. This makes Democrats look they live in don’t like people much and lack basic common sense.

Embracing people who think and look like you is easy. It’s what Republicans are doing now. Building truly broad coalitions and alliances is a lot tougher. It requires a real respect for differences that goes beyond words. But that’s the work has to be done, and it’s the only path to everyone winning. Without that work, get used to the sound of these two words — President Vance.

The goal of reinventing the party can’t be simply to win elections in the short term. It needs to be about building a broader common sense party that is trusted and respected by the American people. It’s about building a new Democratic Party that helps the country advance without getting too far out front of people. A party that helps grow tomorrow’s jobs, sustains safe and clean communities, prepares children and students for a complex future and always strives to create new opportunities for people to lift themselves up and live out their dreams.