Lightning Rods
Let's go back to the 2016 election.
Trump only got 30% of the vote in most of the primaries. Many Republicans couldn't stand him, in fact there was a very strong anti Trump movement in the Republican Party itself. Many Republicans would have voted for any Democratic candidate but Hillary Clinton.
It's very well known that a candidate with very high negative perceptions has a very hard time winning an election and that's why Hillary Clinton's people reached out to the media and said they wanted the media to build up Donald Trump because they knew what a weak candidate Hillary Clinton was and they wanted to run against the weakest possible Republican candidate. Hillary built Trump up as the boogeyman and he was more than willing to play the part.
so Hillary called a lot of Republican voters deplorables. meanwhile the Democrats told the Bernie wing of the party to go f*** themselves and Hillary lost. Almost any other Democrat would have beaten DT handily, but the Democrats chose the only candidate who could lose.
The DNC, Hilary Clinton and Democratic Partydecided they didn't need disgruntled working class voters, didn't need the Bernie supporters, and so they gave us Donald Trump.
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After the election, rather than doing self-reflection and honestly admitting their mistakes and correcting them the Democrats Doubled Down, labeling everyone who voted for Trump a racist and bigoted. Not exactly a good way to get people to vote for you in the next election.
unfortunately this reflects the tendency of many Democrats and many of those on the left who are so obsessed with Donald Trump that they can't understand that many people who vote Republican are not bad people, not racists, not bigots, not morally repugnant, not haters they are simply people with a different world view- political view who are voting for the Republican candidate.
Politically I agree with much of what the left says but the smugness, the dismissiveness they show towards many people, the moral righteousness reminds me so much of a Christian preacher saying we the saved people, these other people are a bunch of miserable sinners- in short I find it very difficult to listen to and I agree with their politics, so what about a republican voter who disagrees with the politics and is doubly put off by the tone.
progressives, and I use the word very loosely, need to come down off their high horse and actually realize that people who vote Republican and voted for Trump have reasons other than being bigots or racists. At that point they might consider, for example using some of the work of George Lakoff, talking to people on the Right In terms they could understand, not simply dismissing them out of hand. Right now the Democratic party has no chance with conservatives or Republicans and it has told the whole Bernie Sanders wing of the party get f***** and so who's going to vote for you other than your base.
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My view was that if either the Democrats or the Republicans won the midterm elections that was a huge problem for the country.
This country has serious structural problems. The very nature of work is changed. Between automation, jobs going overseas and the work that does exist much of it doesn't really pay a living wage. Democrats talk a good game but ultimately they're just corporate shills as much as the Republicans are.
The logic of business is to reduce labor costs by automation, outsourcing jobs, hiring as few American workers as possible and paying them as little as possible.
And the biggest issue:
we have an economy founded on the rape, pollution and destruction of nature
and that's the truth for pretty much the whole world economy.
The only financial value nature has is as something to destroy to turn into stuff.
That can't last. It's not just a case of passing a regulation here or regulation there. The fundamental structure that our economics is based on has to change, or sooner or later it all crashes ecologically.
Remember, the first three letters of Economy are
ECO.
The Election process itself has a bunch of structural problems:
Hackable elections, Gerrymandering, money and politics, lack of real choice;
Election day on a work day
That right there tells you the fix is in.
And the widespread effects of corporate personhood
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if I can use the analogy of a house, it is if we are living in a house with a rotten foundation, termite eaten boards, broken windows and people are arguing about whether to paint the trim blue or red.
That is not the change that is needed
