Pirate's Cove

An interesting take on the Democrat Party as a whole

(Washington Post) Back in May, the longtime chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party sent a private memo to leaders in Hillary Clinton’s campaign warning that she was in grave danger of losing not just Ohio but also Pennsylvania and Michigan unless she quickly re-tooled her message on trade. His advice went unheeded.

“I don’t have to make the case that blue collar voters are, to put it mildly, less than enthusiastic about HRC’s positions on trade and the economy,” David Betras wrote in his 1,300 word missive, citing her struggles in recent primaries.

The local chairman feels very strongly now that Clinton could have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan if she had just kept her eye on economic issues and not gotten distracted by the culture wars.

“Look, I’m as progressive as anybody, okay? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job,” he complained. “‘Stronger together’ doesn’t get anyone a job.”

While it’s certainly not the only reason, it certainly resonates. These are the things Democrats worry about, being good little Social Justice Warriors (from their high toned and fancy mansions) and thinking every Democrat voter is the same. No. They worry about jobs.

This mentality is what has motivated Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents Youngstown, to challenge Nancy Pelosi for minority leader. “No Democrat in my area feels like Nancy Pelosi represents them,” Betras said. “She’s like a distant cousin where you really don’t know her. Yeah, we’re related, but… The coastal elites don’t understand the struggle. It’s like we’re foreign to them, and as a result the people here feel like the Democratic Party is now foreign to them.”

“The messages can’t be about ‘job retraining.’ These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bulls**t,” he continued. “Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure … The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers; they want to run back hoes, dig ditches (and) sling concrete block. … Somewhere along the line we forgot that not everyone wants to be white collar.”

It’s been shown time and again in poll after poll after poll that the economy and jobs, the bread and butter issues, are always tops. All the other things came way after, but, these are the ones Democrats focus on, and, even when they do focus on jobs, they do it in a pandering fashion, while also talking about retraining for people who’ve lost their jobs due to Democratic Party policies.

The question is, does the Dem Party change? They’ve become so uber-leftist that the fringe are not people like Pelosi. They’re people like Joe Manchin, who is much more moderate. This has lost them vast swaths of elections at not just the federal level, but the state, county, and local levels too boot. Their unhinged Progressive base is what drives them, though, and they care more about things like forcing people to accept the gender confused in the showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms with Other People’s daughters.