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.

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