Greg Casar Pitches a ‘Resistance 2.0’ for Democrats in the Age of Trump

When he was a 29-year-old on the Austin City Council, Greg Casar led a charge to repeal a ban on camping in the city so that homeless people would not rack up criminal records that could make it harder to find permanent housing.

Tent cities sprang up, conservatives protested and residents voted to reinstate the ban.

These days, Mr. Casar, 35, is the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus and a rising star in a Democratic Party struggling to find its footing during the second coming of President Trump. He has shifted his emphasis to respond.

“We can’t be known as the party of just the most vulnerable people,” Mr. Casar, the bilingual son of Mexican immigrants, said in a recent interview in an Uber en route to a town hall in Thornton, Colo. “This isn’t just about lifting up the poorest people, and that’s where the progressive movement has been.”

Mr. Casar’s goal now is winning back the working people who feel as though the Democratic Party is not for them anymore. He said that also means making economic matters, rather than cultural or identity issues, the party’s bread and butter.

“I’m shifting and changing,” he said. “On immigration, for example, in 2017, I would say, ‘Immigrant rights are human rights.’ I still believe that, but I’m now saying, ‘We need to make sure that all workers have equal rights.’ ”

He and his team refer to it as Resistance 2.0, and Mr. Casar took it out for a test drive last week. On a school stage here in this city north of Denver, more than 900 miles away from his district, he stood beside a cardboard cutout of a Republican lawmaker whose feet had been replaced with chicken claws.