You know there are times when former Obama adviser Van Jones makes sense and when he just goes off the deep end. On election night, he said that President-elect Donald J. Trump’s upset win over Hillary Clinton was a “whitelash,” despite the 2016 electorate almost being a mirror image of 2012. Then, he goes on The View earlier this month and says that he wasn’t saying that the 60 million voters who cast their ballots for Trump are racists, adding that would be unfair. But he did say that to ignore the alt-right element, which dabbles in white nationalism, is just not being honest and “unfair” to the rest of the country concerning discussions about the election. He also said that the Democratic Party has major problems with snobby elitists who are killing the party. Jones appeared on the daytime show on December 1 (via The Hill):
"[The GOP] have created a space for a small number of racially hateful people," @VanJones68 says. “Both parties got problems!" pic.twitter.com/3GCdgHvrd1
— The View (@TheView) December 1, 2016
“Everybody knows we have a problem with elitism,” he said on ABC’s “The View”…“Liberals and Democrats, we see ourselves as champions of the poor and downtrodden,” added Jones, a former adviser to President Obama.
“But we have somehow let a little camp of elitist-sounding, snobby people come into the party, and it's obnoxious. They talk down to people, and everybody hates it.”
[…]
The Republicans see themselves as the party of color-blind individualism, and that’s beautiful. But they have somehow created a space for a small number of racially hateful people to come in their party. They’ve got to deal with that too.”
I will give Jones a little bit of credit for admitting that urban-based liberal elites are a cancer to…pretty much everything. They still don’t get it. This was perfectly displayed when cast members of the Broadway show Hamilton decided to lecture Vice President-elect Mike Pence; Pence was not offended, as he understood that tolerating differences of opinion is key to preserving freedom. I’m not saying what the cast did was wrong. It was an exercise in free speech, but the contents were nothing more than echoes from the bubble.
Also, is Van Jones suggesting that Democrats don’t have a racial problem? They do. There are probably equal amounts of racists in either party since this is America, a country of 315+ million people, and sometimes these folks join organizations. It happens. And often times, both sides are good at policing their own side. Yes, the alt-right had their brief moment in the sun post-2016, especially with the coverage of their little conference of around 200 people in Washington D.C. We had some articles about the rise in their social media activity. And that was that. That’s all that could be covered because Van is right; they are a very small, radical element. Every organization has a loony faction and they’re out of the spotlight now. They’ll be relegated to every other white nationalist group in the country, which is relative obscurity. These folks aren’t new. They’ve been around for awhile—and they’ve mostly been routinely ignored. They only gained national prominence thanks to Hillary Clinton trying to use them to smear the entire Trump campaign. The gamble failed since she lost the election, but if Clinton hadn’t mentioned them in speeches, this group, like their affiliates, would still be clawing to get some attention. They did, it’s gone, and they’ll wither back into the underground. These folks don’t have popular support. Don’t give them any oxygen.
Now, while Van has noted that his side has snobby elitists crashing the show, Salena Zito noted that it also applies to their allies in the media:
And so journalists flew in from the coasts and lectured them instead of conversing with them, their reporting dripping with condescension. This applied to Trump, too: Pundits, academics and journalists pointed to his supposed intellectual deficiencies.But now the shoe’s on the other foot. Trump obviously knew what he was doing; he won. And his voters could’ve explained it to reporters who had an honest interest in understanding the Trump phenomenon.
The press, in other words, turned out to be the painfully uninformed ones.
Three weeks later, that’s still evident by the obsession with Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote. For a body of professionals who love to scold Americans about their lack of knowledge, reporters apparently don’t even know the basics of the American electoral system.
Yet, with the re-election of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as House Minority Leader and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) expected to lead Senate Democrats, it’s obvious that the Left does not understand why they lost, nor do they want to understand. They still think demography is destiny, which, again, blew up in their faces on November 8. Pelosi even said Sunday that she doesn’t feel Democrats need to change their message since their message is already good, they just need to do a better job reaching out to working families. Lady, you’ve presided over devastating losses for your party in three elections. You’re a regional party now thanks to your inability to communicate with working class voters. Why? Well, maybe it’s because you live in snob heaven: wealthy, progressive San Francisco. Schumer is no better being from New York City.
And these areas are exactly the problem areas Van was talking about. Democrats have been gutted at every level of government. Given the latest news concerning who will be helming the ship for Democrats in Congress, their strategy seems to rest on waiting until the midterms and hope they can make gains and stop the bleeding. That’s dubious. Zito noted that Trump supporters don’t really care if Trump walks back on some of his promises or has contradictory opinions. It’s not going to work. Moreover, these are people who already hold politicians in low standing. They’re not going to be shocked if Trump walks back or fails to do a few things. In fact, that goes for any politician. Remember Obama’s pledge to close Gitmo?
With a party apparatus in shambles, the Left has a lot of time to think about how to deal with their elitist problem since that’s what cost them one of the most winnable elections in history. Thanks to the infusion of political correctness, identity politics, and other nonsense, this could be a very long and entertaining debate in exile.