Reality

I rather hoped that once the inauguration was over the liberal freakout and media hysteria would begin to abate, but apparently that isn’t going to happen. Nor is there any evidence that the mainstream media has learned anything from this election.

The Democratic Party is in shambles. Democrats in Congress are almost completely impotent, in part because of their own shortsighted action in exercising the “nuclear option” and changing Senate rules before they lost their Senate majority. At the state level Democrats continued to lose heavily in this election. And the Clinton steamroller has ensured that the Democrat’s bench of upcoming party stars who might plausibly run for the presidency in 2020 is very thin indeed.

In the face of these facts, a reasonable Democrat would sit back and try to figure out why they are in such bad shape, not only in this recent election but in the decade that preceded it. A reasonable Democrat would be dismayed that the party had been abandoned by its traditional working class base, and might do a little sober reflection on this problem.  A reasonable Democrat would face the fact that a fair proportion of the American public don’t agree with some of the more extreme left-wing positions that have dominated the party in recent years. A reasonable Democrat would be trying to figure out how to talk to those ex-supporters and bring them back into the party (and calling them dumb, deluded, sexist, racist “deplorables” isn’t the way to do it). A reasonable Democrat, if not blinded by the relentless media hysteria, might face the fact that many of the things Trump is doing have a great deal of support in the country – oh, not in the coastal urban centers perhaps, and certainly not in the liberal media – but in the other 85% of the country.

Democrats (and Republicans as well, for that matter) might finally learn that many people care far more about the security of their jobs, the safety of their streets and their financial situation than about the trendy social and cultural issues that preoccupy the media and the well-off coastal urban liberals. And, if they went and actually listened to these folks instead of endlessly lecturing them, they might learn how important religion and some traditional values are to these people. There is a saying I have always liked: “You can get to people through religion; their religion, not yours.” 

And the mainstream media might learn just why it is that more and more people don’t trust them, are turning to alternative sources like the internet, and are increasingly tuning them out. I am hard pressed these days to find media sources that aren’t, not just biased, but blatant propaganda outlets for liberal or conservative positions. Or as one writer recently put it, too many of the purported journalists, even on the major news outlets like the New York Times, are really political operatives with a byline.

The reality is that the Democrats have lost touch with much of their base, and they had better get back in touch with them soon or they will become as extinct as the Bull Moose Party. The noisy daily media hysteria may mislead them into thinking their opinions always reflect the majority will, but they often don’t. They seem to be hoping that Trump’s character flaws alone – and there are many – will eventually put them back in power. But in the long run it won’t be Trump’s narcissism that matters in upcoming elections, but whether the policies his team put in place make things better for the average voter, and they may well do that.

It’s time for Democrats to sober up and face reality.