Democrats Played to Small Base While Abandoning Traditional Base

P1010126I wrote how  the article “Democrats lack strong voice amid Trump’s Russia investigation meltdown“ made me recognize  how old the Democratic leadership had become. It also points to the lack of appeal the party of the ancients has to younger folk and why the Republicans control Congress and most state governor offices and legislatures.

As devastating as that is it does not account for an even larger problem in the Democratic Party. It just so happened that the last two paragraphs of the article address it. The writers of the article Annie Linsky and Matt Viser hit the nail on the head. (or as my wife would say “hit the head on the nail.”)

They pointed out: “Democrats will huddle this week in Washington at an “ideas conference” sponsored by the left-leaning Center for American Progress.”

It seems to me the last place the Democrats would want to go to for ideas is a progressive think tank. It was funded by George Soros and founded by Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta. Having seen the American people reject the ideas of this group why are they going back to them?

The article went on: “It will feature some of the names that generate the most enthusiasm from the party’s base, including Senators Elizabeth Warren [68-years-old next month] of Massachusetts, Cory Booker [48-year-old] of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris [52 year old] of California.” [my emphasis] 

Warren is as old as Clinton. Chuck Shumer pointed to her along with Bernie Sanders as being people who keep tugging the party to the left. Booker and Harris are African-Americans.  Booker has been in the Senate since 2013; Harris this year. They are of the right age (Obama was 47 when he became president) to lead but have yet to show leadership ability. Either one may rise to the top depending on their actions over the next two years. Leading will mean pulling the party back from the edge.

Then the article noted in the last paragraph the true problem the Democrats have aside from age: “But the venue for the conference speaks volumes. At a time when many are calling for more Democratic outreach to the working class, the gathering will take place at The Four Seasons Hotel. The party still looks to be reaching inward, rallying its base of activists, insiders, and wealthy donors, but unready to broaden its reach — and effectively take on Trump” 

That has been the problem with the party all along. It is catering to a small group of activists who lean to the socialist idea for America. They seem to have the party in their grasp even allowing a socialist to masquerade as a Democrat. For some reason the traditional base like labor cannot  seem to loosen those fingers. Until it does it will forever be a minority party for it offers nothing to the broad middle working class in our country.

It is easy to see where each party gets its votes. In 2016 the Republicans won every state north of Texas, under or adjacent to the Mason Dixon line and to the east except Virginia and states bordering the Atlantic above it, New England, Illinois and Minnesota. It lost 6 of the eleven states west of Texas including those bordering the Pacific, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. Normally the upper mid-West was a safe Democratic area including the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan. In 2016 they went red.  Get them back and they get the presidency. They won’t get them back looking to advance more progressive ideas.

Pennsylvania is 82% white with 28.5% German, 18.2 % Irish; 12.8% Italian, and 9.6% African-American;  Ohio is 83% white with 26.5% German, 14.1% Irish; 9% English; and 6.4% Italian; Michigan is 78% white with 20.6% German,  11% Irish; 9% English, and 8.4% Polish;  Wisconsin is 86% white with 46.2% German, 10.9% Irish, 9.3% Polish, and 8.5% Norwegian; Iowa  is 91% white with 35.7% Germans, 13.5% Irish, 9.5% English and 6.6% American.

These groups are not usually associated with progressive movements. It is these groups that the Democrats need to look to for its future. Address their needs rather than the desires of the Hollywood-type or the rich donors.

27 Comments

  1. Matt: You OK, man?

  2. The Republican replacement health bill that’s threatening to bump folks off MEDICAID.

  3. How about a post on the health care bill? If you dare.

  4. Does Glorious Leader, seriously, believe the gusanos will get their tobacco plantations, and, cigar factories, back from the present Cuban government? That stuff is long gone. There’s no going back to 1958, whatever, Trump promises. As the Dallins (Stanford) discovered in their investigation of the observable Soviet economy, there was an illegal “off the books” economy much larger than the perceptible surface economy operating beneath it. They analyzed CIA data, and, found that with the figures provided the Soviet economy just couldn’t work. That being the case, how did the mass of goods, and, services, really get exchanged? Who organized the networks that facilitated transfer? Russian mobsters, of course. They’re called “oligarchs,” these days. The key to Cuba is to find out who’s making moves on the island, these days. Since you can get shot for stealing a bag of government cement, they are probably hard to get to know, as was the case with their Russian counterparts during the Soviet era. The Soviets executed many people for economic crimes. Glorious Leader’s ridiculous public posturing, and, anti-Communist rhetoric, are closing the door on our portal into Cuban society. Backwards we approach the future. All hail Glorious Leader!

  5. The Dems need another FDR to rewrite a social contract with the American citizens that takes giant corporations out of the political equation. A study has shown that 95% (I might be slightly low on this number) of legislation passed by Congress over the past few decades has overwhelmingly been in response to special interests and not the will of Congressional constituents. Solve that problem and I think everything else falls into place. It is big $$$ misinformation propaganda on both sides of the spectrum that has the left and the right at each others’ throats.

  6. Abe:

    The last census taken in Lebanon occurred in 1932. If a modern census was taken, Hezbollah would be the big winner.

  7. well, Matt, I was pleasantly surprised to see this post. Welcome back.

    A while back, I think you went off the deep end with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and I glad to see that you have shaken off the disease of The Unhinged and come back to reality.

    You are absolutely correct – the Dem party of today is not the party of JFK, or of Moynihan. There is no reason, there is no common sense, there is no logic, there are no facts – only empty, highly inflammatory pussyhat rhetoric.

    If nothing else, like never before, the election of Trump was an answer to:

    1) what are the proper functions government
    2) how shall those functions be funded

    The Dems, through the Clinton machine, fully expected the ascension of Queen Billary Pandersuit to her throne, where she would promptly bestow transgender bathrooms upon the population, and assorted other largesse, like carbon “sequestration,” “green energy” which offered “job opportunities” – for properly connected people, of course, and other goodies – to properly connected people.

    The fact that the populace and Trump shattered these grand plans infuriated the self-righteous progressives.

    Before the election of the first half-black president, Obama, there was a comedienne – her name escapes me at the moment – who said “you can’t complain about The Man if you are The Man.”

    I took that to mean that if a member of the perceived minority is elected to a position of power, then that person must be held accountable.

    Boy, was I wrong.

    On further reflection, it turns out that if a half-black man is elected to be president, thus proving that the people of the US judged a candidate on his merits, everyone is thereafter PROHIBITED from criticizing the newly minted “The Man”, because he is “progressive” and because he is “half-black.”

    The last election, according to what you note, was supposed to be the glorious continuation of Comrade Obama and progressives.

    Hillary Clinton even had a bottle of hot sauce – Aunt Billary Pandersuit’s Yo’ Sho’ ‘Nuff Won’t Get Tahred Hot Sauce – to seal the deal.

    What an “idea”!

    Didn’t work.

    So welcome back to the real word, I think and I hope.

    I am hoping against hope that the likes of Peelousy and Maxine Waters and Shmuck Schumer and Al Frankenshteen and Wyden and Pocahontas Warren and others who constantly seek attention from Rachel Madcow will also come back to the real world.

    • Elmer: The short reign of Glorious Leader, and, his Trumpsovki, is almost over. How do you feel about Trump selling out Ukraine? Is it more important to be an American fascist than a Ukrainian nationalist? I can’t see how the two are compatible. Cognitive dissonance, maybe?

  8. 1. Only a lunatic (or ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nustra member) would be thankful that people are “angry enough to kill” over democratically enacted health care legislation. How many people killed when premiums skyrocketed under Obamacare?

    Wonderful Middle Eastern ethics: No difference between direct deliberate killings and hypothetical loss of life due to social policies. I suppose those advocating a 65 mph speed limit (guaranteed to cause 1,000 excess annual deaths) should also be killed.

    Khalid sometimes sounds like that character in Gunga Din: “Kill for the love of Khali, Kill for the love of killing, kill, kill, kill.”

    If it’s O.K. in your ethics to kill someone who alters your health care policy (or removes it), is it O.K. to kill a boss who cuts your pay or fires you; how about killing the Mayor who raised your taxes?

    Where does your killing end?

    2. The man who shot Giffords was a paranoid schizophrenic without political beliefs.

    3. Trump did say, “Knock the hell out of them”— “them” being disruptive protesters interfering with his free speech rights — but that was a speck of sand, compared to the constant daily barrage of vitriole spewing from the MSM since the election.

    4. Visit the official Anti-fa site today. It says, re: the Virginia shooting, “the only good fascist is a dead fascist.” That’s the left’s venom. Like the HuffPost columnist who wrote: “Trump should be tried, convicted and executed.” Like BLM, “What do we want . . . dead cops . . . now!” Like the “artists” who shoot a Trump character (Snoop Dog), decapitate him (Griffin) and stab to death his likeness (NYC Shakespeare in Park) and like Khalid who calls for the killing of those with different social policies.

    5. You’ve read and heard the constant rhetoric: Trump is Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini.
    And Honest Abe compares that with an isolated, one time call to punch out someone?

    6. Khalid’s rhetoric mimics Mao’s and Stalin’s “terminate the capitalists”. Many others’ rhetoric against Trump and Republicans since the election has been beyond the pale, as Tadzio correctly noted.

    The “haters” are from the left. They hate opposing views. They demand “diversity”, but hate diversity of opinions. Today’s generators of hate are predominantly big government liberals and leftists, in my humble opinion.

    • The bourgeois shoe fits you, eh?

      • It occurs to me that some of the people that post on here have never been in stir with White Supremacists.

        • Abe: That’s for sure. ABs would eat these guys alive. I don’t think they’d like what their ideas become on the sharp end.

    • “5. You’ve read and heard the constant rhetoric: Trump is Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini.
      And Honest Abe compares that with an isolated, one time call to punch out someone?”

      You have no idea what you are talking about. But please, keep talking.

    • Bill:
      “Liquidate” the capitalist roaders, and, NEPmen. Haven’t you read Dune? We must return their water to the tribe.

  9. Some of the rhetoric here sounds like shooter James Hodgkinson’s! Read Hodgkinson’s facebook posts. See his pictures holding signs: “Tax the Rich!” He crucified Reagan for lowering taxes. He was a Bernie supporter, a socialist, a good Democrat according to his voting records of the last 12 years. Look at the groups he belonged to: “Terminate the Republicans!”
    Where do you think he got his ideas? It was the rhetoric of the Lefties and angry Demos which provoked him!
    And psychiatrically speaking, he wasn’t “psychotic”! Simply put, he was an angry lefty, like the rabid radicals at Berkeley, Middlebury, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Wapo, and the Boston Globe, who’ve continuously fed us malarkey, fake news, venomous disinformation and hysteria since losing the November 2016 election.
    2. Today, the Deep State and MainStreamMedia are the focal point of duplicity in the modern world. And they are joined at the hip with the Democratic Party.
    In the early 80s Reagan described the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire” which would lie, cheat, steal, and do anything to advance its interest. Six years later, he admitted the Soviet Union was no longer an evil empire, because it had changed. The Media, Deep State and Democratic Party will have to work very hard to rid itself of its evil elements over the next six years. Hopefully, more men like Steve Lynch and women like Tulsi Gabbard will take over that party.

    • As Lenin remarked, the Revolution will not be a dinner party. Thank you Glorious Leader for making folks angry enough to kill. When health care is taken away from the people, it will be open season on supporters of the Republican health bill. If the poor must suffer, and, die, from lack of treatment, its only fair they should take their tormentors with them. What’s the difference between killing with the stroke of a pen, or, using an assault rifle? Noise? The end is the same.

      The storm approaches. Eastern skies are red. All power to the dialectic!

      • After all, it was Trump that said, “Beat the hell out of him. I’ll pay for the lawyers.” It works both ways. What were the political leanings of the man that shot Gabby Giffords? The Speaker pleaded for unity. The opinions expressed above plead for separation.

        • Trotsky thought compromise with the bourgeoisie impossible. So much, for unity. If history has taught workers, anything, it’s that the bourgeoisie, by their very nature, are the social enemy of the proletariat.

    • Please give me a break, the GOP is the party that is beholden to the NRA and the 165 armed militias running around this country are right wing militias. Wasn’t Trump who was advocating for the physical abuse of his protesters at his rallies?

  10. “….a provocative act that would further inflame unstable leftists to more terrorist acts.”

    And who provoked today’s?

    • The Swamp. And all the creatures in it. The upper reaches of the Democrat Party and their allies in the media are playing Pontius Pilate. They are setting the stage for violence, desensitizing the population while carefully washing their hands of any blood by uttering insincere platitudes. Shout, “Come out, damned spot” all they want, history will judge that those cheering the murder of Trump in Central Park’s Julius Caesar or the ‘comedienne’s’ severed head had a motive – to provoke the weak and unstable to do what they are too cowardly to do themselves.

      Did anyone commission Hodgkinson to massacre Republicans in Congress? No. The drumbeat of hate emanating from those unwilling to concede that the election was lost last November pushed the witless fanatic over the brink. The guilt is not Hodgkinson’s alone.

      Do you understand gambling? Playing the odds? If you play the number every day you will win 3/4 times a year. Not every year. But over a fifty year period you will approximate that result. Theoretically you could be an outlier. But that is very rare.

      By setting a tone of violence the left extremists are setting up murder because they know that some poor soul will crack and do their bidding. Conversely. If you play Heads or Tails how many times would you have to lose in a row before you would demand to look at the coin? The principle is the same. You know nothing about an individual flip, but you know when the game is rigged.

      The Swamp – the Clintons, Soros, Heinrich, Schiff, Maddow, Blitzer, Warren, etc., – is provoking terrorism. They know that some poor broken sap will come along and do the dirty work for them.

  11. It is growing clearer that the Ds would benefit from a changing of the guard. One of the problems they will face is that the backbenchers have no sparkling candidates to replace them.

    Today, while a terrorist, burning with hatred, attempted a mass murder of GOP congressmen, two Democrats are circulating a causeless petition in Congress to impeach President Trump, a provocative act that would further inflame unstable leftists to more terrorist acts. The future of the Democrat Party in the hands of the likes of Brad Sherman and Alan Grayson is not very bright.

    After decades of pushing forward mostly communist leaning individuals for office the party of Jefferson and Jackson is stuck with some pretty odd bedfellows. The sanest Bay State congressman, Lynch, is hands down the least likely member to be moved forward. You reap what you sow.

  12. All the Democrats have to do is totally support universal, cradle-to-grave, healthcare, and, tell the insurance companies, and, their wealthy stock holders, to go to Hell. Every working class guy with three digits of IQ can get behind that. How to pay for it? Bleed the rich folks pale!

    All praise to the Social-Democrats. All power to the dialectic!

  13. What do the Democrats stand for? Do they support tax cuts? Are they backers of the sanctity of life? Do they support the police and the military? Are they defenders of the Bill of Rights? Just about every Democrat voted against Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Most Americans don’t want liberal judges inventing law. What are their proposals to stimulate growth and help small business? Do they have a clue on how to create jobs? Would they cost a million jobs to advance green energy? How do their policies strengthen the American family? Do we need more government or less? 2. Your assessment is correct. The party is in a bind. The far left controls the primaries so expecting a non radical nominee might be wishful thinking. You can’t nominate a career criminal for the Presidency and expect to win. The positions of the Times, Post and Globe are offensive to the bulk of Americans yet the Dems follow them in lockstep. Drastic change is needed but who can bring it? 3. Trump has assembled an excellent cabinet. Tillerson and Mattis are far superior to the Obama officials. Happy days are here again.

    • Citizens United was not a liberal decision, yet it seems like a pretty broad reading of the Constitutional text.