Republicans have always been able to put aside their differences — and their factions have significant cultural differences — to unite to destroy everything we hold dear. They have lied over and over to get what they want, and it’s worked. We Democrats, on the other hand, promote policy that truly helps people, which, polls show, most people everywhere in the country would support. But we have been unable to unite among ourselves and it’s cost us election after election nationally, and statewide and local elections everywhere.
The cultural and political divides among Democrats must be bridged, and this story in Wednesday’s Washington Post makes the point: We need to attend to the concerns of Democrats in the Rust Belt and other under-served areas or we will continue to lose. You may not like what these Democratic leaders in Ohio say about protesters and bathroom bills — I don’t — but I urge all Democrats to listen beyond the words and understand the meanings behind them: People are suffering and they need us.
Here is what some Democratic party leaders in Ohio said at a recent strategy dinner:
One by one, members of the Mahoning County Democratic Party poured out their frustrations: Just months after the presidential election, they felt folks like them were being forgotten — again. The party’s comeback strategy was being steered by protesters, consultants and elitists from New York and California who have no idea what voters in middle America care about.
But worst of all, they said, the party hadn’t learned from what they saw as the biggest message from November’s election: Democrats have fallen completely out of touch with America’s blue-collar voters.
“It doesn’t matter how much we scream and holler about jobs and the economy at the local level. Our national leaders still don’t get it,” said David Betras, the county’s party chair. [...]
The party’s national leaders have focused on decrying Trump, opposing his Supreme Court pick and tying his administration to Russia. That approach — trying to defeat Trump solely by attacking him and his policies — already has failed once, many at the dinner said.
The people at this table didn’t vote for Trump, I presume, but 18 Democratic precinct captains in the county did. Feeling abandoned by the Democratic party, not voting for Hillary because the anti-Hillary propaganda worked, and hoping beyond hope that the carnival barker in the fuzzy yellow toupe might really help them, many Rust Belt Democrats overlooked all the nastiness that we couldn’t, believed the lies, and voted for Trump anyway. That’s some desperation.
Forget about their calling us “elitists”— we know that’s not about ordinary Democratic voters in blue states. I’m a working class Democrat in California who grew up in a middle class home. (My fortunes have fallen as well.) I care deeply about people everywhere in this country because if some of us are suffering, all of us are. But do they know this about me and millions of Democrats like me? Is the national Democratic leadership trying to help these people and they just don’t know about it about it yet? Party leaders in Ohio don’t think so.
We can and must continue to talk about Trump, Russia, protests, bathroom bills, and every issue that speaks to the needs of the non-privileged, including women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. We’ll continue to push our Democratic leadership in Congress to do the right thing and resist, and we’ll keep protesting and attending town halls. We can do all of that and support Democrats in the Rust Belt and rural areas at the same time. We must do both, because caring about ordinary people is what Democrats are all about.
The Daily Kos could be a source of information and discussion about the efforts of the national Democratic party to help the ravaged Rust Belt and rural areas of the country. I’d like to see a regular feature here about that. If the party isn’t doing enough, we’ll know about it and find ways to correct it. Our coalition needs every Democrat on board so we can grow more Democrats.
But our party is only as good as we are. If recent diaries and comment sections are any indication, there continues to be a huge divide between Democratic (Bernie) supporters and Democratic (Hillary) supporters. This is folly. If, for example, some Democrats are so suspicious of “socialism” that they refuse to heed the Bernie-inspired warning of the primaries, and if some Democrats continue to push the notion that Hillary was a terrible candidate who was barely better than a Republican, we’ll be fighting each other on a sinking ship. What we agree on is a lot more important that what we don’t agree on.
A lot of people don’t give a damn about our internal debate or the national Democratic party’s current focus:
“Every time Trump so much as sneezes, we as a party are setting our hair on fire and running around like it’s the end of the world,” Betras said as the dinner wound down. “Most people around here don’t care. They are living paycheck to paycheck, just trying to hold on. After everything that’s happened, if we as a party still aren’t speaking to them, then we are never getting them back.”
Photo link: nypost.com/…