We Need The Democrats

As I’ve mentioned, I voted for Obama the first time. As a result, I still get the appeals for donations from the Democratic National Committee. Today I got this, complete with mug shots of the indicated villains:

Pitch in $3 to help Democrats fight back against Trump and the Republican Party

DONATE

STEVEN MNUCHIN—BILLIONAIRE
BETSY DEVOS—BILLIONAIRE
WILBUR ROSS—BILLIONAIRE
TODD RICKETTS—BILLIONAIRE

With a Cabinet
FULL OF BILLIONAIRES

WE CAN’T TRUST

DONALD TRUMP

to stand up for the middle class

PITCH IN $3 OR MORE NOW
to help Democrats keep fighting
for all hardworking Americans

Let me start by stating a few facts.

• A good chunk of what they call the “middle class” just elected a billionaire to be our next President. I think we can safely assume that they don’t have anything against billionaires.

• The working poor and working middle class do NOT hate the rich, as the Democrats are foolishly assuming. They like the rich, and they want to BE rich.

• Democrats keep thinking that “Drain The Swamp” means “Get Rid Of The Rich”, and gleefully point out the Donald’s appointees’ wealth, expecting people to be disgusted. They are not. Perhaps “Drain The Swamp”  means that in rarefied Democratic circles. Every Trump supporter I know thinks it means “Get Rid of Corruption, Waste, and Useless Government Employees”.

That kind of assumption, that the poor hate the rich, is two things. First, it’s what I call by “tone-deaf”. They are convinced it’s singing a lovely tune …

Second, it’s a clear indication that nobody who wrote that piece actually knows any poor people.

I was thinking today about how the climate alarmists and the Democrats have each put forward the exact same excuse for the people not following their lead. I suppose that’s not surprising, both groups are Democrats. In both cases, they think that the issue is a communications problem.

The climate alarmists think that people don’t believe what the scientists are telling them because it’s not phrased in the right way, or framed in the proper manner, or there are too many facts, or too few facts.

And in much the same way, the Democrats think that people don’t believe what Hillary was telling them because it’s not phrased in the right way, or aimed at the right demographic, or framed in a fitting manner, or it’s on the wrong media. For example, President Obama’s explanation for the Democratic losses across the board was along the lines that “in much of the country Fox News is on in every bar” … the mind boggles.

To clarify the situation, here’s what Obama thinks guys in bars watching Fox News look like …

And here’s what guys in bars watching Fox News actually look like.

Setting aside the huge problem that I’ve never seen anyone in a bar watch anything on TV but sports, Obama’s explanation is that the Democrats just didn’t have the right channel to pass their wonderful message on to the proletariat. In other words, it’s a communications problem.

The difficulty with these explanations is that they are focusing on the wrong thing. The reason people don’t believe climate scientists is because people think the scientists’ endless claims of impending doom and sequentially-failed predictions of disaster are bogus, not because the scientists didn’t present the message of Impending Thermageddon™ in the right way.

And similarly, people didn’t believe the Democrats, not because the message channels weren’t clear, but because Hillary had no message. Near as I can tell, she spent 86.1% of her campaign time complaining about the Donald and grumping about the attention the media gave him, 10.2% of her time getting suckered once again into raging about  his tweets, 2.7% whining about Jim Comey, and the other 1% was spent on whatever her message was … the problem was not in communicating the message. The problem was the message itself—who can tell me today what she stood for, other than everyone should get along and her opponents were wrong, wrong, wrong? All I ever heard from her as a message was “I am a woman, I’ve paid my political dues, it’s my turn NOW, and I deserve the Presidency! Why am I not up 50 points”?

Hillary was a disaster as a candidate, stiff, out of touch, and dogged by accusations of corruption that unfortunately for her and the party were true … like her secretly being fed the debate questions in advance so she could appear smarter than Trump … read the emails, folks, it’s all in there. Are the emails true? True enough that Donna Brazile had to quit her job as head of the DNC because she was part of secretly feeding the questions to Hillary. The head of the DNC corruptly feeding debate questions to Hillary … YIKES!

==============

With all that said, here’s the oddest part to me. I had expected that after that debacle of an election where basically the Republicans swept everything from the Presidency to the Senate to the House to the State Governorships to the State Houses and for all I know on down to Republican dog-catchers in every hamlet … after such a stunning success for the Democrats, I’d expected that they would get together and reflect on their message, have a post-mortem on the election, redefine and clarify what the party stands for, and go out refreshed and ready for battle.

For example, the American people just stood up and delivered a clear message. They do not trust the Democratic party to stand up for the middle class. That’s why Trump took the rust belt.

And the Democratic response? Their new direction, their message of hope for the Democratic faithful is “We can’t trust Donald Trump to stand up for the middle class.” Now, that may be the case, although I doubt it … but that hardly inspires trust that the Democratic Party has learned its lesson. They need a message of “Here’s exactly what the Democrats will do for the middle class“, not “The Donald is a big poopy head.”

But noooo … the Democrats message is “Look, we know the Donald said he’d help you, and he laid out a bunch of ways he said he’d do it, taxes and jobs and protection from foreign competition, and we know he already saved jobs at Carrier and Ford … but he has nominated billionaires so he must be lying and we can’t trust him to help the middle class”.

Heck, let’s look at the statement from Nancy Pelosi, the 76-year-old House Minority Leader, regarding what was wrong with the Democratic Party’s message and about the need for changes so the Democrats can win future elections. Remember, just about every pundit has said that the one common thread to this election is that people on both sides (particularly Trump and Bernie supporters) were fed up with the status quo, and wanted change, they wanted something different.

On the other hand, here’s how Nancy sees it.

“I don’t think that people want a new direction,” Pelosi said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Our values are supporting working families. What we want is a better connection of our message to working families.”

Riiiiight …

I begin to suspect that she’s a deep-cover mole working for the Republicans … and note her explanation of the failure—they had a little communications problem, but all they need is a “better connection of their message to working families” and everything will be peachy-keen. Right, that’s the ticket, that’ll bring’em around …

My own theory is that these days, when the Democrats say “working families” or “the middle class”, they mean union members. It’s the only explanation I can think of that fits their idea that the poor hate the rich. Because the union guys, far too often they definitely hate the “fat cats”, the “rich bastards” who are supposed to be grinding down the common man.

Or maybe it’s that the Democrats read too much Marx and they think it’s class warfare … the only “class warfare” that the working class knows about is their attempt to fight their way to the top and be upper class and rich themselves.

That’s the only way I can make sense of their strange pitch for money. It’s the only way I can explain their bizarre and obviously firmly held belief that working class people would be upset that the Donald is (gasp!) appointing billionaires! The mind reels in shock! I mean, who would have guessed that he’d appoint billionaires to some of the positions in the Cabinet?

Well, I mean who would have guessed other than 99.23% of the folks who voted for the Donald, including myself, who all fully expected that a successful (and rich) businessman like Trump would appoint other successful (and rich) business people to his Administration.

Now, I have to emphasize that I cannot rejoice in this total failure of the Democrats to deal with their total failure. Democracy is like capitalism. It works best when there is competition. But man, if the pitch above for donations and their lack of self-examination to date are indicative of the Democrats’ future path, they won’t be competing for much in the next decade …

… and that’s a bad thing, regardless of your party affiliation. Just as we need Republicans to keep Democrats honest, we need Democrats to keep Republicans honest. I don’t want a Trump Administration without a counterbalance any more than I want a Democratic Administration without someone to hold their feet to the fire.

Here’s the difficulty factor: given the Democrats current wave of impulsive auto-defenestration and spontaneous human combustion, I’m not sure that they are hearing anything anyone says. We may have to wait until the five stages of grief have run their course.

Sadly, many Democrats are still in “Denial”, the first stage, with calls to recount and attempts to get the Electoral College to elect Hillary. The ones that are past “Denial” have moved into “Anger”, the next stage, with virulent attacks on anyone and anything vaguely Trumpish, riots in the streets, unfriending people for having different ideas, and the like.

Curiously, “Bargaining” doesn’t seem to feature heavily in this incarnation of the five stages of election grief… not sure why. May be because Trump is highly unlikely to bargain after his win, may be because the Democrats have nothing much to bargain with. Me … I wouldn’t like to have to bargain with the Donald, he’s good at it.

That leads to “Depression”. Like what Hillary did. Depression is when all you want to do after you’ve gone through the anger stage by screaming and raging at Podesta and throwing the furnishings around on Election Night, is to curl up under a warm blanket and not leave the house. Classic depression.

Gotta say, I feel great compassion for Hillary. Yes, I know she’s as chueco as a corkscrew, but can you imagine what it would be like to wake up on the magic morning after thirty years of clawing your way upwards in your endless quest for power, knowing that on that very night you were going to be crowned, finally crowned, as the Grand Gorgonzola, drinking the champagne, measuring the drapes … and then to go to bed that same night knowing that the last thirty years of your endless raging quest for the top spot were fruitless, the game was lost once and for all, and the crown was now and forever out of your reach.

It is hard for me to even imagine what that magnitude of a loss would feel like … but not good, that’s for sure, double-plus ungood like the book said. I wouldn’t wish that twenty-four hours on anyone.

So yeah, I can easily see that if I suffered such a crushing defeat, I’d be a big fan of depression, I’d want to curl up and sleep for a few years myself. On the other hand, I can’t quite fathom the kind of depression suffered by the college students who needed comfort puppies and chocolate to help them through the slough of despond on Election Night… but yeah, lots of Democratic depression around these days.

And finally, that will bring us to “Acceptance” … someday. Not today. Not tomorrow. Likely not until Trump is sworn in.

Once the Democratic Party finally gets to “Acceptance”, they will need to do what they should be doing already. They desperately need to understand what THEY did wrong. So far all of the fingers are pointing outwards. All I have heard to date is, it wuz Fox News what lost them the election, it was James Comey who done it, it was the email scandal, it was the media always covering the Donald, it was the Millennials, it was communication, it was the ground game on Election Day, it was San Andreas’s fault … the list of excuses seems endless. I keep wanting to go up to these Democratic leaders and say “You want me to point out the person who is responsible for this  loss?”, and when they say “Yes”, hand them a mirror …

While some Trump voters are happy to see the Democratic Party in the worst position since the 1920s, and while I must shamefully confess to some schadenfreude, I’m not happy to see the Democrats fall apart. Our country runs best when both parties are strong.

And that’s why I wrote this, to encourage my Democratic friends, at least those that haven’t unfriended me, to speak to your leadership. Nancy might not think people want change, but that’s political suicide. You guys desperately need to stop blaming people and investigate what YOU did to lose the election … like say unfriending people over their political views … putting up the Queen of Corruption as your candidate … boxing Bernie out of the primaries … calling your opponent’s supporters “a basket of deplorables” and “racist” and “sexist” … having the head of the DNC involved in cheating on the debates … assuming that your candidate being a woman is sufficient to attract women voters … alienating the working class … you know, a real post-mortem and not a finger-pointing exercise.

That’s my wish, in any case, that you heal your party so that we can continue the party …

Best to everyone,

w.