“Losing by a little” doesn’t protected my healthcare coverage.
City Council to Congress, democrats continue to reflect the stereotype cast upon them by the republican marketing machine: spend millions of “city values” dollars, get really excited and chirpy… lose the election… and whine all the way home.
A note to the Democratic Party: campaigns that rely on hate of the opposition only win elections for republicans. Democrats never win that way. Even if Trump’s approval rating were to dive into the 20’s, democrats still wouldn’t win back Congress with anti-Trump sentiment alone. Swing voters need something more (and simpler) than that: they need a candidate who can communicate without talking points.
In 2015 as local and national elections began to envelope everyday American life, POLITUSIC assessed how republicans and democrats communicate with voters:
“To earn a vote from its base the GOP will kill their own grandmother (death panels in the anti-Obamacare campaigns), eliminate abortion state-wide (trap laws throughout the South), and make climate change against the law (House Bill 819 in North Carolina, Gov. Rick Scott in Florida) – yet 95% of democrats don’t even know how to talk to theirs… Most suburban democrats I know treat politics more like a wine tasting club during which their noses are only not upturned in times of sniffing a new pour. Yes, they care, but who doesn’t? Local liberal politics is more a social event than it is a vehicle of action to move policy – and the people who could benefit from that policy into a better zip code.”
And yet, after one of the most embarrassing presidential losses in American history, what does the Democratic Party do? They continue to stick to their white-washed, talking-point candidates while running different variations of Hillary Clinton: candidates who only show voters what their consultants tell them, rather than who they really are. As a result, democrats in the Trump era have won nothing: not a single confirmation battle, not a single policy vote, and not a single special election. “Losing by a little” doesn’t protect my healthcare coverage.
Jon Ossoff, the great white hope for democrats in the Georgia 6th, lost handily because he’s nothing more than a young, male version of Hillary Clinton. The only difference between the two: Hillary was actually ready and qualified to do the job. In districts democrats hope to flip, they can’t run candidates like Jon Ossoff – and in the 2020 or 2024 presidential elections they cannot run Kamila Harris (or lords help us, not Gavin Newsom). They need to settle down and get back in touch with reality in America.
The Democratic Party is effective at one thing: losing elections.
Lots and lots of lost elections. For years to come, GOP policy and court decisions by republican appointed judges will hurt millions of Americans – all as a result of democratic politicians’ inability to be American, rather than preach from their idealistic ivory towers about what they think America should be. You can’t change the future until you first understand the present, and it’s clear democratic leadership hasn’t a clue.
Americans cannot – and will not – be forced to vote for a candidate. Democrats must stop telling voters who they should be and start understanding who voters are. Trump understands that – republicans understand that – and that’s why they keep shellacking democrats when it matters: on election day.
Democrats need to give voters real people who when on the stump or in front of the camera don’t parrot everything their over-priced political consultants coach. They need to run candidates who know how to speak to voters, not at them.
Democrats cannot win with candidates who sympathize with poor folk. Democrats cannot win with candidates who sympathize with rural communities who struggle everyday because the bulk of government resources go to cities. And democrats cannot win with candidates who preach more than they worship.
Democrats can only win with candidates who empathize. Democrats can only win with candidates who tell their own stories of struggle, not stories of other people who once wrote them a letter. Democrats can only win with candidates who have enough applicable life experience to sing the blues, not folk songs.
Our pain is not Trump’s fault. Our pain is not Paul Ryan’s or Mitch McConnell’s fault. Our pain is the Democratic Party’s fault, because it can’t get over its own ego and self-righteousness long enough to do its job and win an election.
Democratic Party: it’s time to get real – otherwise, stop wasting our time.
