Democrats got shellacked in 2010, 2014, and now 2016. They’ve failed to retake the House, and Republicans have reclaimed and retained the Senate. In the meantime, as the Democratic Party indulged in their own hubris (GOP went through this too) over the phantom permanent majority, the GOP regrouped after 2008, where they now have over 4100 lawmakers elected into office at the state level (the most since the GOP’s founding), over two-thirds of the governorships, and control 69/99 state legislatures. And how do the Democrats respond, especially after Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss to Donald Trump, they put a New York liberal and San Francisco progressive to helm the ship because New York and San Francisco, two urban bastions, know exactly how to connect to the working families who voted Trump this cycle—said by no one.
On CBS’ Face The Nation, host John Dickerson asked the newly re-elected House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about what she’ll do with members of her party who want a new direction. Pelosi responded by saying, “I don’t think people want a new direction, our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families. That is one that everyone is in agreement on. What we want is a better connection of our message to working families in our country.”
Lady, the country wants a new direction. That’s why Donald Trump won. And your party has some people in the Rust Belt, who live there, and are on the ground noting that the party needs to change in order to reach these people again. In fact, these very people, activists, local Democratic Party chairpersons etc., warned the national party about this pitfall; they were ignored. Just how the Democratic Party has ignored the working class voter. To the urban-based liberal elites, these voters don’t matter. They’re too uneducated, too stupid, and too country bumpkin to be considered part of America. Deep down, these people don’t have a college education, they’re certainly not Ivy League, and they don’t speak with learned diction. Progressive elites hate these people. And the re-election of Pelosi and the ascendency of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to helm Senate Democrats isn’t a good sign that the Left has actually read the results of the election.
Dickerson pressed Pelosi on her party’s dismal losses since 2008, where she said that Democrats and Republicans usually come back big in the midterms when the opposite party control the White House. She also tried to put the numbers in perspective, trying to say that Democratic Party power was so great that the losses are less devastating, or something. If Democrats knew what they were doing, they would still have a healthy vibrant party across the spectrum. They don’t. One-third of House Democrats (198 members) come from three states, Massachusetts, New York, and California. Does any Democrat think members from these states care about working families? They don’t. They care about minimum wage hike bills, which working class voters don’t really care about in the same manner are the metropolitan elite since they don’t want to work fast food all their lives. They want good paying jobs to raise their families. Yes, childcare is important, but it isn’t a replacement for a good job. And these folks felt that the elite wing of the Democratic Party cared more about which bathrooms a transgender person could use than jobs. These urban snobs have time to think ideology; the Rust Belt does not have that kind of time. In the cities, the debate is centered on nauseating, petty discussions about being on the right side of history. In the rural areas, it’s about survival.
Now, I’m not going to complain here. The Democrats are setting themselves up for a disappointing 2018 midterm season, but the GOP has to deliver. Obama will be gone in less than ten weeks. There are no excuses for botching legislation on jobs, tax reform, and getting coal and natural gas production booming again.
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