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Will the Increasing Insanity of Progressives Cost the Democratic Party Loyal Voters?
Imagine being a loyal Democrat voter today. Say, over 40 years old, fan of JFK, with kids, a job, and some financial responsibilities. The world must look awfully strange right now.
Just imagine. Global warming is proven by warm weather, cold weather, droughts, and flooding. Men are women, and women are men. Except when they’re not. You have a right to other people’s money, but not to your own. We can increase spending without increasing taxes. It’s ok for Elizabeth Warren to call herself a Native American, but it’s not ok for Candace Owens to call herself black. The Pope’s a Unitarian. The president is a lifelong Democrat who lives like a Vegas celebrity and governs like a conservative. Jeffery Epstein killed himself. The two leading nominees for the presidential nomination of “the party of youth, women, and minorities” are Biden and Sanders, two white guys who are 77, look like they’re 87, and sound like they’re 97.
I could go on, but I suspect a significant number of Democrat voters across the fruited plain are publicly supporting their party but privately wondering, “What the [redacted] is going on around here?” Add in Trump’s appeal to minorities, the booming economy, and the recent electoral disaster for the Socialists in the UK, and I’m beginning to understand why the Democrats keep trying to impeach Trump, despite lacking evidence of any crime.
Dems realize that some of their increased goofiness may cost them some of their traditional voters, and Trump is going to pick up some of the black vote. The good economy is a disaster for them. It’s possible that they could lose big next year. And the sillier their impeachment efforts become, the worse I suspect their internal polling must look. Maybe they’re not stupid or crazy. Maybe they’re just desperate. And maybe there’s a good reason for that.
I could be wrong about all this, of course. There may be no limit to the absurdities that Democrat voters will tolerate.
But what if there is?
I wonder what the Democrats’ internal polling looks like. I think I know. But it’s hard to say, I suppose.
But I wonder…
Published in General
I think many Dems are confusing their large victory margins, which are caused by The Great Sort, with general shift of the electorate. Part of that is a bias of disregarding the opinions of the deplorable people between the coasts. If it sounds popular in the faculty lounge, then it *should* be popular in America.
The far left side of the party decided in the run-up to 2016 that changing demographics and the progressive leanings of the millennial generation meant they had a virtual lock on the White House, and they know that Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016, had Hillary not stolen the nomination from him, and that Hillary lost because she wasn’t woke and progressive enough to excite voters.
Nothing that happened to Labour in Great Britain on Thursday is going to alter that mindset, but the other Dems have got to be having second thoughts about allowing the party to be framed the way it is right now. The question is with social media, cancel culture and much of the big media still on board for maximum wokeness, how do the Democrats who are fearful of a repeat of Thursday’s election in 2020 contain their angrier core voters?
As long as you have enough media outlets who also believe progressive demographics is destiny, and large media outlets like The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC who have decided to go all-in on niche marketing their news to those same hard-core progressives, even if Nancy Pelosi did want to lock The Squad in the Capitol basement until Thanksgiving of next year, she’s going to have a hard time getting the media to stop going full woke, because their business model now demands maximum wokeness. The only way the less dogmatic/hard-core progressives escape this is if enough of the voters see the same thing they saw in the British election results, and take it onto themselves not to set up a repeat of that in the U.S. next November.
“Will the increasing insanity of progressives cost the Democrat party loyal voters?”
I don’t know. My soothsayer record is only so-so.
They don’t get my vote, though.
I nominate the first paragraph for the Ricochet Hall of Fame!
This post is comedy gold. Elizabeth Warren can call herself an Indian, but Candace Owens can’t call herself black. Among other great lines, and edited as tight as a drum. Wow.
I think that you are pretty spot on. Many Democrats have told me that they view Trump as an existential threat to our country, and then some of them say that they intend to vote for Sanders or Warren. Um, I point out to them, that if they truly believe Trump to be an existential threat to the country, they would be best advised to nominate a moderate Democrat and not a flaming socialist, seeking to remind them of the 1972 election when the Democrats nominated George McGovern.
As of this moment, I am not going to vote for Trump, but I am also not going to vote for a flaming socialist like Sanders or Warren.
It really pisses off my Democratic friends when I suggest to them that a vote for Sanders or Warren in the primary is a vote for Trump.
Very, very pithy. Very well edited.
In other words, you are a middle aged heterosexual white guy. The Democratic Party made a strategic decision some time ago that it didn’t need you, and could do better by making you an all-purpose villain against which the coalition of the oppressed could unify. The problem is there are more of you than they thought, and the coalition of the oppressed hates each other about as much as they hate middle aged white guys. Blacks are not going to turn out for Elizabeth Warren or (especially) Pete Buttigieg, any more than they did for Hillary. Rock, Hard Place, between.
This is why Biden is still there. I can only imagine Gary’s Democrat friends.
Great post, again!
The only way these irreconcilables can exist is if they can live in an echo chamber and block-out alternative viewpoints.
Well, that’s what they got. They have their media, and they’ve made it impossible for Trump supporters to even self-identify much less give them another perspective.
They actually need a super-demon to maintain cohesion, hence the perpetual Trump hatred and investigations.
Wait, what? I thought he was a pagan pantheist, or something.
Well, it’s nice of you to give them sound advice.
No, they are on the side of good and their pocketbooks so voting Democrat is the only way. Would you vote for Hitler and his Nazi slave masters? Because that is what Trump and the GOP are.
I don’t think it’s a desperate strategy to save a sinking ship. Democrats have simply drifted from a focus on principles and authority to lies of opportunity and an insatiable lust for power. They are so similar to despotic regimes and self-destructive movements elsewhere in the world and in history because they are just our manifestations of those constant flaws and temptations in human nature.
We say of self-destructive individuals that they often must hit rock bottom to finally accept the need of reform, if they ever choose to (and many don’t). Together, as alone, people can spiral into ever wilder ideas and destruction. Together, the descent is easier because we are social animals who look to each other for confirmation — of truth or error, charity or sin and ruthlessness.
To some extent, many disagreements between voters can be traced back to different trusted sources. Many Democrats haven’t heard the damning evidence against Hillary Clinton, for example, or else were told that facts were actually Republican fictions. We are not making judgments and decisions from the same information.
But can one’s sources of news and critical feedback prevent one from noticing the brutal lockstep of the Left’s social claims? Can those sources blind people to plain realities like inherent differences between men and women?
I welcome any defector from the Left. But I don’t hesitate to consider all Democrat voters as dangerous enemies, however they have been manipulated. An abused dog merits sympathy, but will bite you regardless of your concern.
If you are not going to vote for Mr Trump, then you’re as much of the problem as any flaming socialist. The American nation is in the best straights it has ever experienced in my adult life, and ninnies continue to say “never Trump” because they don’t like his style. That’s insanity.
Elections are won by amassing votes, not by denying them.
A man with your experience should know better.
I think there is a limit, and as you allude, it’s among older Democrat voters. Younger voters don’t understand why it is not okay for a male to define himself as female, then get access to women’s locker rooms and rest rooms.
Older voters, particularly working-class white males, have seen the Dems intentionally abandon them in favor of a coalition of minorities (there was an article about this, forgot the name of the author). However, many in these minorities are seeing similar abandonment. Don’t tell me a black or Hispanic dad doesn’t care if his teenage daughter shares the locker room with a boy or two.
So take out-of-work whites, blacks, and Hispanics, and have them think about Obama’s economy (no jobs) compared to Trump’s (jobs, jobs, jobs). My guess is they can tell the difference, and hopefully vote accordingly.
Stad,
And there is the obvious flaw in your thinking: there just aren’t all that many out-of-work whites, blacks, or Hispanics anymore.
Damn.
H.
I think the lunacy of the far left is the inevitable result of the Democrats of 40 or 50 years ago having won most issues. When I looked at the GOP of 2000 to 2012, I saw 1960 to 1990 Democrats. Today’s Democrat party became, almost by default, the place for leftist crazies. They just took the name “Democrat”.
Say what? What makes you think it is edited at all? I think this stuff rises from the Bastiat font fully formed and unadulterated; that is, as is. This is what we call talent.
the answer is YES
radical Democrats never learn.
they are out of touch with at least 50% of the country especially in swing states and the pathetic part is they have no idea how out of touch they are.
It reminds me of pro-EU elitists such as one friend of mine who describes Brexit voters as ‘poor dumb f–ks’.
correct me if I’m wrong:
Elizabeth Warren was a registered Republican until 1996 when she changed her registration to independent or Democrat.
what changed?
In 1995 Harvard Law (whose dean was Elena Kagan at the time) hired Warren and listed her as ‘Native American’.
The population has become far more polarized then in the past. Note how far to the left the Democratic median has moved, at least a couple of standard deviations, while the Republican has barely moved right at all.
The Democrat pols are simply responding to their base. It’s extreme and it’s nuts. The current Democratic mean compared to the 90’s (let alone the 50’s or 60’s) would have been the fringe of the party.
The good news is it repels the independents who will gravitate to the GOP.
Liawatha was at it much earlier then that. 1986
The next election will likely solve that question, but I can tell you, based on the many Dems I know here in Seattle, that they truly believe they are on the side of the righteous. We are the bad guys consumed with greed. They truly care for all mankind instead of the almighty dollar, and they love everyone regardless of color. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.