How Democrats Got Completely Steamrolled By The Right

Both the Democratic and Republican par­ties have wedge issues in which they believe, On which they cam­paign and gen­er­al­ly gov­ern. For the Republicans, it was[is] small gov­ern­ment. Gun own­er­ship. States Rights. Against abor­tion. Strong mil­i­tary and reli­gion, to name a few. Except that Republicans are only fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive when there is a Democrat in the white house.
Democrats believed in social pro­grams. And expand­ed role of Government in help­ing to take care of those unable to take care of them­selves. Over the last few elec­tion cycles, Democrats have become cham­pi­ons for abor­tion rights. Gay rights, as a [civ­il right] and, have signed on to illic­it wars even though their vot­ers are gen­er­al­ly opposed to America’s mil­i­taris­tic for­ays into oth­er countries.

Republicans have had an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to for­mu­late poli­cies and stick to their talk­ing points. They exer­cise dis­ci­pline as they push those poli­cies even when they are proven to be destruc­tive. (See the Iraq war).
Republicans slav­ish­ly stick to the script when it comes to the tenets of the poli­cies which they believe in.
One exam­ple of that has been how they purged the par­ty of mod­er­ates as it lurched to the far right, through the process of pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to estab­lish­ment mod­er­ate. The right labeled mod­er­ate repub­li­cans (repub­li­cans in name only )[RINOS].

That process forced from its ranks mod­er­ates like the late Pennsylvania US Senator Arlen Specter, for­mer Secretary of state Colin Powell, for­mer Indiana US Senator Richard Lugar to name a few. In fact, the par­ty’s plat­form has been so rad­i­cal­ized that the hero of the for­mer right, Ronald Reagan, would poten­tial­ly be excom­mu­ni­cat­ed from what now obtains as the Republican Party.
Others like John McCain have either been side­lined or forced to adopt the tox­ic rabid­i­ty of the right, or risk expul­sion from the party.
Gone is the par­ty of George H W Bush or even George W Bush who was arguably more con­ser­v­a­tive than his dad, but who was a man who pro­posed Immigration reform, and talked about com­pas­sion­ate conservativism.

The Democratic par­ty in my esti­ma­tion nev­er seemed to have a polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty, except that it isn’t the Republican par­ty. Democrats are split into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories, mod­er­ates, con­ser­v­a­tive, blue dogs, and of course progressives.
The Democratic par­ty has been out-hus­tled by the right which has cul­ti­vat­ed a web of grass-roots orga­ni­za­tions which act as fac­to­ries for their brand of conservatism.
The gazil­lion dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions, think-tanks, and inter­est groups which drill home the con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da to the faith­ful are well fund­ed by wealthy Industrialist and Billionaires like Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Alderson, Foster Friess, Robert Mercer, The [JETS] Woody Johnson, to name a few.

The Democratic Party has no cred­i­ble grass-roots orga­ni­za­tion which press­es home at the local lev­el the val­ues of the par­ty. The Democrats which seem­ing­ly only care about Presidential elec­tions have com­plete­ly lost the war at the local level.
Even in deep blue states like New York, Connecticut, Massachutes and oth­ers local coun­ties and town pol­i­tics are dom­i­nat­ed by Republicans.
The lack of grass-roots orga­ni­za­tions and orga­niz­ing makes it hard­er for Democratic pres­i­dents to enact their agen­das because Republicans con­trol the foun­da­tions and can sim­ply say no.

Trade Unions which were once a bul­wark of sup­port for the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty have seen their influ­ence erod­ed through strate­gic assaults against them like that which was waged by Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker who has evis­cer­at­ed unions in his state. Other states have enact­ed right to work laws which have gut­ted the pow­er and strength of pub­lic sec­tor unions, knee-cap­ping an inte­gral sup­port struc­ture of the demo­c­ra­t­ic party.
The Supreme court’s most recent deci­sion which now pre­vents unions from col­lect­ing dues from non-mem­bers all but removes that slush of funds unions once had to donate to Democratic can­di­dates. Thanks to Anthony Kennedy’s part­ing gifts to his pal Donald Trump.

Additionally, the group which usu­al­ly made up the bulk of union membership[white males] have large­ly moved on to the Republican Party as a mat­ter of course.
Not that the unions have not been serv­ing their inter­ests but with the chang­ing face of America along racial lines, white men are wont to sup­port any oth­er par­ty oth­er than one whose pur­pose is the pro­tec­tion of white supremacy.

On the oth­er hand, the Democrats are old, out of ideas and con­fused about who they are and what the par­ty stands for.
The rise of Barack Obama out of nowhere to win their nom­i­na­tion 10 years ago against the estab­lish­ment nean­derthals, ought to have been a warn­ing to the par­ty that the pro­gres­sive vot­ers who are forced to sup­port the par­ty wants more focused leadership.
The les­son was star­ing the Dems in the face yet they failed to rec­og­nize that there was a fac­tion of the par­ty which was unhap­py with the Republican-lite approach the par­ty was invest­ed in.

That dis­qui­et among younger pro­gres­sive vot­ers was squan­dered by the Democrats, and so Ralph Nader was able to split the vote twice, even­tu­al­ly cost­ing them a President Al Gore.
Still not rec­og­niz­ing the sys­temic pro­gres­sive shift of it’s younger sup­port­ers the par­ty missed the mes­sage and so Bernie Sanders the Vermont Socialist was able to launch his left­ist-pop­ulist move­ment which ulti­mate­ly split the 2016 vote on the one hand and kept enough pro­gres­sive vot­ers at home to give rise to Trump.

For years Democrats fol­lowed the main­stream medi­a’s nar­ra­tive that younger vot­ers were not depend­able vot­ers. I have always believed that young peo­ple are far more focused than the left gave them cred­it for.
Younger vot­ers and lead­ers on the right are some of the most focused and ded­i­cat­ed to their cause, as a con­se­quence, I believed that Democratic lead­er­ship was woe­ful­ly myopic in adopt­ing the medi­a’s talk­ing points about apa­thy on the part of young voters.

Then came a young, bright, focused, and con­vinc­ing mes­sen­ger,“Yes we can” and to the dis­be­lief of the brack­ish Democratic estab­lish­ment Barack Obama was elect­ed with a large plu­ral­i­ty of younger vot­ers and an impres­sive coali­tion of inter­est groups, not once but twice.
The Republicans rec­og­nized the threat Obama posed through his mes­sage-deliv­er, coali­tion-build­ing and his stat­ed goal of trans­form­ing America into a coun­try where all peo­ple could com­pete equal­ly and live their best lives and so the embarked on a plan to obstruct what­ev­er he pro­posed even poli­cies they them­selves once supported.

Though many in the house and sen­ate owed their respec­tive wins to Obama’s coat-tails, rather than stand stead­fast with Obama they fought amongst them­selves about who were blue-dog democ­rats as against who was not.
By 2010 Republicans recap­tured con­trol of the House, increased their num­ber of seats in the Senate and gained a major­i­ty of gov­er­nor­ships to boot.
In 2012 Republicans lost 7 seats in the house but retained con­trol. By the 2014 midterms, Republicans took con­trol of the Senate, gain­ing 9 seats.
With a final total of 247 seats in the House and 54 seats in the Senate, Republicans accom­plished their largest major­i­ty in the Congress since1929.

In an opin­ion piece for the New York Times Thomas B. Edsall wrote Democratic loss­es among work­ing-class vot­ers were not lim­it­ed to whites; that cru­cial con­stituen­cies with­in the par­ty see its lead­ers as alien;A con­sis­tent theme is that the focus on white defec­tions from the Democratic Party masks an even more threat­en­ing trend: declin­ing turnout among key ele­ments of the so-called Rising American Electorate— minor­i­ty, young and sin­gle vot­ers. Turnout among African-Americans, for exam­ple, fell by 7 points, from 66.6 per­cent in 2012 to 59.6 per­cent in 2016.

Even as many Trump-fatigued Americans talk of a November blue wave Donald Trump is pre­dict­ing a red wave of his own.
Arguably he knows some­thing the rest of us does­n’t. After the débâ­cle of the polling in 2016, I dare not chal­lenge any­thing Trump predict.
The Democratic par­ty con­tin­ues to be out of touch direc­tion­al­ly as well as how it treats black women, it’s most loy­al base of support.
As part of the resis­tance against the Trump agen­da, many young females have stepped for­ward to mount chal­lenges to the old guard of demo­c­ra­t­ic wishy-washy repub­li­can-lite democ­rats. Many are African-American women, who like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have received zero fund­ing or sup­port from the nation­al Democratic party.
Say what you want about the Republican Party or Donald Trump for that mat­ter, they nev­er ever for­get that their most hard­core base of sup­port comes from white males.

In the mean­time, the (NewRepublic)reports that Democrats are los­ing their most loy­al vot­ers: black women. At a moment when so much atten­tion is focused on how Democrats can win white work­ing-class vot­ers who backed Donald Trump, new data shows sup­port for the par­ty is slip­ping among its most reli­able vot­ers—African-American women.
I am absolute­ly not mad that there is a lull in sup­port by black women for the Democratic par­ty, despite their loy­al sup­port and fideli­ty to the par­ty there is no Black-Women in the par­ty’s lead­er­ship or what pass­es for leadership.
Most impor­tant­ly, the par­ty is duplic­i­tous­ly silent when their sons are abused and mur­dered by police.

It was rather offen­sive to hear Nancy Pelosi chas­tize Senior Congresswoman Maxine Walters for telling sup­port­ers to push back against Administration offi­cials. It did not take long for Charles Schumer to jump on the anti-Maxine Walters train, after all, why not berate the black woman and cry tears about civil­i­ty to Republicans while nei­ther dinosaur had a sin­gle word of chas­tise­ment for the thin­ly veiled threat Trump made against Ms. Walters.

I don’t pre­tend to know what is going to hap­pen in November save to say that as far as we are told the Russians are still work­ing to med­dle in America’s elec­tions and the view of many of the nation’s intel­li­gence chiefs is that noth­ing is being done to stop them.
The Supreme court has all but gut­ted the vot­ing rights act for no rea­son except that the court had the pow­er to do it as so it did.
Trump is pack­ing the courts at all lev­els with white men, many of whom are white suprema­cists and the Democratic par­ty does­n’t even have a leader.
Though imper­fect, the Media is the only line of defense which stands between the American peo­ple and the right’s attempt at turn­ing this coun­try into a full-fledged white eth­nos­tate. Trump did say the media is the oppo­si­tion. His push-back against the fourth estate is emblem­at­ic of how one responds to an oppo­si­tion par­ty. Many Republicans are begin­ning to attack the media as well, Litt;e Marco Rubio being chief among them.
There is real­ly no Democratic par­ty of con­se­quence to speak of, Trump and his cult of fol­low­ers knows it quite well.