I just sent an email to the Democratic National Committee telling them that when they can figure out how to win an election against a bigoted, sociopathic miscreant, to let me know, and I’d send them some money. I’ve been thinking very seriously about how this happened, and I have some ideas. But they don’t tell the whole story. If anybody has any ideas, let me know.
First, it would probably be a good thing not to nominate a person that half the country already hates. I know it’s irrational and that most of the reasons people hated her were untrue. Nevertheless, it was a fact. People hated her.
Secondly, it appears a lot of folks think the Democratic party is made up of ONLY intellectual elites, Hispanics and African Americans, and people on “welfare.” There are several problems with this. The most vocal Democrats, including those in powerful positions, are mostly intellectual elites. They are seen as “fancy people” as my friend in Virginia used to say. They’re well educated, upper or upper middle class professionals who are seen to have nothing in common with “regular people.” The fact that many democrats are regular people is barely visible, except for those who are not white. The white middle class apparently views democrats as either snooty,”colored,” or on “welfare.” They also see democrats as being weak, molly-coddling do-gooders rather than as people with a social conscience who stand up for those who are marginalized. They are able to recognize, it seems, when someone is actually standing up for the marginalized, at least at the movies. They cheer William Wallace in Braveheart, and George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. They cheer for the Native Americans in Dances With Wolves. They applaud Erin Brokavich. It seems, though, that they are unable to translate that to real life.
What do we do about that? I don’t have all the answers, but one idea might be to have actual regular working people as the face of the party, rather than politicians, attorneys, and MBAs. I’m not saying they need to run for office necessarily, but let’s let others know that the vast majority of democrats live and work and are the same as everybody else. And we aren’t rich. Being rich didn’t seem to hurt Trump, though, which brings me to my next point.
Expecting undereducated/low information voters to look at Donald Trump and see him as he really is turned out to be incredibly naive. His behavior was, I guess, irrelevant to his supporters. They only cared that he told them what they wanted to hear. The fact is, people don’t want to hear the truth; what they want is to have their already established prejudices validated. And that’s exactly what Trump did. Never mind that the vast majority of the things he said were lies and and/or unconstitutional. What one does about that, I don’t know.
And I don’t know what to do about the idea that facts are things that can be believed or not. If you don’t like them, you can just ignore them. When and why did that become an option? If anybody can figure that out, please explain it to me.
Therapeutic Whining 