A Post Election Message To Democrats From A GA DNC Bernie Delegate
The following was posted to Facebook by Rick Day. He’s a long time commenter here, and was a delegate to Philadelphia for Bernie Sanders. I’ll likely follow up next week with some thoughts from a Republican perspective, but it’s probably best you guys hear from a Democrat on this first.
I just want to type something here to my Hillary and Bernie fam, and help you understand why this all happened. From the perspective of someone who fits the demographic of a typical Trump supporter (White/male/boomer/doin’ OK$) I can perhaps translate what has happened.
This is really no one’s fault, other than it being the result of not talking to each other for the past 16 years. Before, we all bickered. Now, we carry sidearms.
We seemed to be going on a path of progress; the old white base making some room at the table (through attrition or demise, whatever), albeit slowly. But it beat 1970.
Around 2006, a new consciousness began to arise, mainly about being tooled on Iraq and other tomfooleries, where we watched relatives and loved ones come back from war, ah, ‘altered’. This hit a peak in ’08 when BHO came on the scene.
Yes, there was race wank, but it was limited to commentary on news feeds by bottom dwellers. Then something happened.
White people not only began to be left out of the national dialogue, but vilified and personified as everything wrong with America, freedom and tolerance.
For 8 years, white people endured comments about their lifestyle, their spirituality, the music they liked and the core values they have had for, oh, two hundred years.
I felt it at the DNC. There was nothing for average everydaymen. Nothing for the middle class. White men were lumped into one big Trump class, whether they deserved it or not. I wandered around kind of lost, wondering what the message was to the majority of American voters who looked-like-me?
Everyone else said, “move over, die and let us take over.” (or that was the body language, like it or not). Being hetro became something called ‘cis’. Being white or male meant it was fair game to bully online what they got in school.
And we would be like…”what?” White Americans tend to be clueless about inequality because they don’t experience it. They hear about it, and either express concerns, or apathetically dismiss it as ‘not their fight’.
They have their own fights. Jobs. Health. Raising Grandchildren. You know, the same as every other American.
So what happened? Simple enough, White Americans said “HEY! WE AIN’T DEAD YET!” After years of listening how awful they were, their response was, “Ok f#*&ers, who is REALLY in charge?”
Yup, that is it. That is the backlash. When you don’t include everyone, in decisions that affect everyone, sometimes things get messy.
Now 90% of White America goes back to their struggles, disgusted they had to blow up the community barn to get their neighbor’s attention. 10% think it’s a bully field day, some will get hurt and many will be put in prison for doing stupid things.
That’s it, really. Nothing else much to it. We all got to sit down and work things out together, not most of us pointing at some of us.
Freedom doesn’t work that way.
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
If birtherism is/was race wank from bottom feeders, a plurality of the GOP rank and file, and a couple dozen GOP Congressmen, are/were bottomfeeders.
I have a hard time drawing grand narratives from an election that went 47.41% to 47.72%, and the winner garnered fewer votes than the challenger, and fewer than the challenger in 2012.
This is an election where a generic republican beat a generic democrat, largely because a democrat held the executive office for the two preceding terms.
We live in a weird world where Obama’s victory over McCain is considered a shellacking at 53%-46%, and Trump being able to peel off white rural people with limited education is considered some incredible coup.
Please stop selling out our party and progressive values. Forestalling a trump victory by giving ground that’s taken decades to gain for democratic constituents is no way to run a progressive party.
Commendable honesty, Rick — particularly in that you had to know fellow dems and libs would probably jump on you. As Matthew Henry said 250 years ago, “They know not because they will not understand. None so blind as those that will not see. They have baffled their own consciences, and so they walk on in darkness.”
Some reflection: The number of Democratic counties which voted for a black man four years ago and rejected a white woman this year is striking. Not only did the Dems lose the White House and Repubs retain the US House and Senate, they lost over 1,000 seats nationwide in governor’s offices, legislatures, county and down-ballot elections. The Democratic Party now has the fewest seats top to bottom in modern history. And that stuff about educated white women? Over 10% more voted for Trump. He got 29% of Hispanics, and a record 9% blacks for a Republican presidential candidate. The Democrats’ controlling far-left has lost touch with the pulse of America.
As an old friend said, the deeper chords of this election could be heard in Europe two years ago. Their/our wave of elections all reflect a visceral reaction to the blurring of national and ethnic lines, growing opposition to free trade, and a deepening distrust of the establishment, whether located in Brussels, London or Washington.
The election map of the United Kingdom after the Brexit vote was remarkably like that of the United States Tuesday night. The thriving urban centers, with their generally younger beneficiaries of an open market, voted to stay in the European Union. Rural areas and factory towns and their generally more mature voters chose to leave. No wonder that Trump openly identified himself with the Brexit movement.
Throughout this campaign it seemed the wave Trump was riding would break apart the Republican Party. Instead it has dealt a devastating blow to the Democratic Party, which now finds itself in charge of the statehouses in California and New York, and from there little else.
Long term, this election seems to foreshadow a new US political order similar to Europe: a left-of-center party moving further left, and a conservative nationalist right wing. We aren’t so different from the rest of the world as we thought, and the young idiots rioting in our streets are only pushing more people to the right.
I’m sorry but what exactly do you mean by the blurring of ethnic lines? Interracial marriage? Taco Tuesday?
Zed, two-part phrase, “national and ethnic lines.” Global migration has brought ethnic dislocation from historic geographical locations or nations. In many cases, instead of assimilating into a new nation, migrants retain fealty to their original country and its social structure, mores. In simple terms, the melting pot doesn’t melt, and instead disrupts the lives of native folks who were just minding their own business. (The word “blurring” was easier to say.)
Now have a nice weekend!
Trump did the best (we’re talking winning 90-10) in counties where whites are more than 90 percent of the population. So what exactly is being disrupted?
Oops! Words matter, and I left out an important one (thinking and typing kills me). Since I cannot go back and edit now, please mentally insert ” Repubs” before the word “retain” on line 3 of the second paragraph. Or maybe Charlie can correct that for me?
Another touchpoint to your comment about Dem losses at the state level ….. Kentucky’s House is now in Republican control for the first time since 1921.
Corrected.
Thanks, Mike. And Mike S, good point — that once again completes the Solid South, except it’s now Republican instead of Democratic.
Thanks, Sally.
tbh, I have not gotten jumped on for this because my Bernie people (read: a coalition of mostly Bernie Delegates from GA) understand that when I speak, it is from experience. And also at 6’7″ 240# not many people care to jump that high because that is too a far distance to risk a fall to the floor.
The last Wed. in July, in a hotel breakfast room in Philly, was the day I went through the emotional wringing, the D’s experienced last Tuesday. Months ago, I accepted HRC would lose.
There is a quiet fight going on within the political left, locally, statewide and nationally. And the right will not be pleased with what force will emerge. At best, the right has old people. And that is a commodity of diminishing returns.
You can buy ads but you can’t buy people’s hearts. Lesson learned, right there.
You’re welcome, big guy! Good insight that you saw the writing on the wall back in July, and too bad that other folks there acted like you were invisible. There’s a slim possibility they could have turned the train around, had they only listened.
Your comment re the current quiet fight is intriguing. I’ve been watching that too, wondering what will happen. What do you expect to emerge?
Hmmm…. I think the quiet fighting just got louder with Schumer’s announcements today.
Mr. Day this is the best postmortem about this year election I’ve seen and I believe you have a good read on the future. The good thing about the future is you have time to change it or possibly advert a disaster if you have the foresight to see what’s coming. I’m afraid I don’t have much confidence in the right to have much in the way of foresight. Time will tell.