If I wanted to be cliché I would write something along the lines of “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party… the Democratic Party left me.” So instead of being cliché and writing that, I will simply acknowledge that that is something I would have said if I wanted to be cliché.
The truth is, as left-leaning as this blog happens to be, I have never been a Democrat. Even as an 18 year-old in 2008, when I voted for Barack Obama, I was a registered Republican. And a registered Republican is where I stayed until the summer of 2016 when I re-registered as a Democrat simply so I could vote for Bernie Sanders in the California primary. But that still didn’t make me a Democrat, because the guy I was voting for wasn’t even a Democrat.
I’ve written that the Democratic Party is hopeless. I’ve written that the Democratic Party is stupid. In some way — like many other things I have said on this blog that turned out to be wrong — I was hoping there would be a time I could look back at those articles and be glad that I was wrong. Like maybe the DNC would come to grips with reality and prove me to be an ignorant jackoff.
Unfortunately, I’m still right. That is all there is to it. I’m right.
A few days ago Kansas held a special election for a seat in the House between Republican Ron Estes and Democrat James Thompson. Estes, a Donald Trump-backed Republican, won the vote by a count of 52.5% to 45.7%. But that is hardly the story.
The district in Wichita that held the election is deep red. President Trump carried it by 27 points over Hillary Clinton in the general election last November, a reminder of an area of the country that the Democratic Party doesn’t even attempt to make inroads. It’s red, it’s been red, it’s always going to be red. That must be how the DNC think of places like Kansas, otherwise known as middle America or flyover states.
So how did the Democratic candidate, James Thompson, perform so well? Common media outlets and national Democrats cheered the loss. They spun it as some sort of victory that the candidate outperformed the expectation by about 20 points. They also used it as some sort of vindication that all of their anti-Trump rhetoric has penetrated.
But a loss is still a loss. So how did he perform so well?
The answer is simple, and it has nothing to do with the message-less Democratic Party who did as close to nothing to help Thompson as they could. It had to do with the fact that James Thompson isn’t really a Democrat; he’s a Progressive. He ran on Bernie’s platform.
In the last few days before the election, when the race was beginning to look like a coin-flip, the national Democrats donated a whole $3,000 to their candidate. That was it. They didn’t promote him during the campaign, didn’t push any major voices into Kansas to campaign on his behalf. And still he made it to within 6.5 points of the GOP candidate in a deep red district.
Republicans, to their credit, know how to win elections. They sent Ted Cruz to the Wichita district to campaign. Donald Trump himself made a robocall on Estes’s behalf. Even with their efforts they won by a margin a little too close for comfort.
But a win is a win, and they did it.
I’m not the first to say it, but I’m still looking for evidence to the contrary: The Democratic Party would rather lose to the Republicans than win with a Progressive. It just makes too much logical sense. The DNC and GOP share one thing in common, and that’s that they both work for the corporations. The Progressives are on the side of the people, so regardless of which major party owns the White House it’s still good for business. Redistributing wealth to the middle class and working class is less good for business. That’s what people are starting to realize: the two parties aren’t that different. Neither have their back.
Unfortunately for the wealthy corporations, the people are awake now. When you talk to people about single-payer healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, ending wars and reinvesting in America, they seem to really like that shit. I guarantee you if the Democratic Party ran on any one of those issues — let’s take universal healthcare as the example — they would take back the House and the Senate in 2018.
I’m also pretty confident in guaranteeing you that the Democrats will not do that, which is why they are going to lose again in 2018. They have no message beyond We Are Not Trump, and that doesn’t inspire people to come out and vote. It didn’t inspire them in Wichita, Kansas last Tuesday.
They voted for the Bernie Sanders platform, which is the only way the race was as close as it turned out. Had the national Democrats supported Thompson like they would have an establishment candidate, they would have gotten destroyed just like they got destroyed by Donald Trump in November. Yet they are slimy enough to take credit for the size of the loss, which is the quintessential Democrat thing to do.
I will keep writing this same article, about how dumb the Democrats are, on repeat until something changes. So it’s my expectation that I will keep writing this same article, about how dumb the Democrats are, on repeat until som…
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