Democrats aren't listening to Republicans or the American people, so maybe their friends can get to them.
A Cabinet secretary in former President Barack Obama's administration and a left-leaning talk show host on a far-left network had advice for the party last week, but it wasn't the kind of advice they've taken to heart lately.
The messages were these: Continue with your open borders push, and the migration of illegal immigrants at the Southern border will explode, and keep up the politically correct "wokeness" if you want to assure the re-election of President Donald Trump.
Recall that at the first Democratic debates almost every Democrat raised his or her hand when asked if it should no longer be a crime for noncitizens of the United States to come into the country. In other words, they were welcoming open borders. And to give the idea an exclamation point, they all said they'd be delighted to give each of those border crossers free health care.
Whoa, said Jeh Johnson, Department of Homeland Security secretary for Obama, that is outrageous.
"That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of the American people or the Congress," he told the Washington Post, "and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it would be multiples of that."
In May, the last month for which numbers are available, U.S. customs and border agents dealt with more than 144,000 uninvited people, which is equivalent to the population of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Hayward, California. The number marked a significant increase over the past several months.
Johnson also has said recently - becoming the first Obama administration official willing to admit it - that having to use chain link fence or "cages" at the border wasn't ideal, but that no facilities exist to properly house all the illegal immigrants who have crossed the border. For the moment, he said, they must either be detained that way or put "on the streets."
"Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages - whatever you want to call them - were not invented [in] January 2017," he said.
In other words, a truth Democrats know but don't want to admit, the Obama administration did the same thing. But no one cared then.
Meanwhile, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough thought Nike was handing Trump another easy issue when it pulled the shoes it had created bearing a Betsy Ross-designed American flag. Social justice warrior Colin Kaepernick - he who kneeled at the national anthem when he had a National Football League job - had felt the shoe invoked slavery.
"The Betsy Ross flag is now a symbol of White Nationalism and slavery?" Scarborough tweeted. "Not defiance against a distant monarchy? Really Nike? [Politically Correct] madness is accelerating just in time for 2020. Trump feeds on your reflexive Wokeness. Great job, everybody."
Scarborough then went on to cite the extreme stances Democrats took in the debates, including "universal health care for illegal immigrants," "making illegal crossing America's border legal" and "a return to forced busing." He wondered if they would "now support the banning of the Betsy Ross flag from public places."
Busing didn't come up as a subject in the debates until U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, mentioned that she had been bused but that then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, once opposed the measure along with several Southern Democratic senators. Since then, she has said the federal government should return to busing to further desegregate schools.
The Betsy Ross flag flap probably will have disappeared from view the next time Democrats debate in August, but it certainly will be filed away by some Democratic voters who pulled the lever for Trump in 2016.
Time and again that year, although the New York businessman and reality show host was not given a chance to win the election, voters talked about how much they believed he spoke for them when he cited the multitude of sins of the Obama administration, the way it had ruled against what the majority of people wanted and the ways in which it was trying to change America.
It was both big and little things - the porous border, transgender bathrooms, the Iran nuclear agreement, gay marriage.
It turned out, of course, many of those people wouldn't tell pollsters they supported Trump, but they gave him their vote in November.
That easily could happen again, said Scarborough, who once was buddies with the candidate but became one of his fiercest critics.
"Let me disabuse Woke Democrats of the notion that I expect them to adjust their beliefs and strategies to suit former Republicans," he tweeted. "I don't. But I do want them to refrain from blowing themselves up politically and re-electing Trump. But y'all be y'all and lose another election to Trump that you should have won."
Just as the president didn't change who he is once he took office, much to the consternation of those of us who hoped he would adapt a more civil tone, it's not likely Democrats are going to change, either. Not even with a little advice from their friends.