Dems - Here's Your Answer

[whell]

I've often posted here that I no longer know what Dems stand for. I used to vote Dem, but in the last 20 years have come to regard the Dems as out of touch, too beholden to special interests while accusing their political opponents of the same, and no longer the "party of the working man".

Instead of constantly playing Trump's game and losing, the Dems might do well to listen to a bit of "wisdom from the Heartland".

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...indiana-216273

“The number of Democrats holding office across the nation is at its lowest point since the 1920s and the decline has been especially severe in rural America,” Bustos writes in the report. In 2009, the report notes, Democrats held 57 percent of the heartland’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now: 39 percent. In 2008, Barack Obama won seven of the eight heartland states. In 2012, he won six. In 2016? Trump won six. There are 737 counties in the Midwest—Trump won all but 63 of them. “We can’t keep bombing in the rural parts of these states,” Bustos told me.

Why?

In the report, he says the Democratic Party is “lazy,” “out of touch with mainstream America,” relying on “too much identity politics” where “winners and losers are picked by their labels.” The Democrats in his district, he laments, “feel abandoned.” Some of those folks who feel abandoned used to consistently vote Democrat, and now they are "independent" or don't identify with a political party.

In theory, it seems obvious the party would do what it must to secure the loyalty of additional voters; in practice, though, this sort of overture means peace-making with people like Burns, through the face-to-face pragmatism of people like Goodin, some of whose views bump up inconveniently against the agendas of interest groups and the platform and mores of the party as a whole. Is Burns worth wooing back? And is Goodin a walking relic—or a key cog in the future of the party?

That last question is critical, in my opinion. When the ideas or actions of Dems who don't align with current party dogma are discussed here, these folks are attacked and maligned. Their ideas are summarily dismissed.

The article, to me, is fascinating. If your ever want to really understand what folks mean when they say "we want to take our country back", it's this:

Intentional or not, what’s clear from the report is that many of these 72 rural Democratic lawmakers feel the national party is indifferent to the trouble it has caused them locally. And they’re angry about it. Their assessments are blunt, searing—and directed straight at Democrats on the coasts, in cities, in Washington.

There's also, within the ranks of the Republican party, plenty of this anger directed at the Repubs.