I was inspired to write this blog by reading a New York Times interview with Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, who has the distinction of winning an election in a Republican state as a Hispanic democrat. He stated in that interview that he believes he won because he actually talked to voters and, much more importantly, he listened to voters, managed to convince them he was actually listening, and that he proposed to act on their concerns. What a novel idea!
It reminded me that we, in America, live in a country that is supposedly governed by the people, for the people. An equally quaint idea, it seems, in today’s political world.
I have often said, somewhat jokingly, that the last thing a politician, anywhere, wants, is an educated electorate, because they might start judging her/his actions and, worse, telling them what to do. Politicians in the U.S. currently seem to be taking this mantra to a whole new level.
Republicans don’t seem to care what the people think or want, as evidenced by the rapid decline in their current approval ratings, and typified by a White House communications director, when asked about the “No Kings” rallies across the country last Sunday, said, “Who cares”.
Democrats, apart from being in disarray, seem to be hanging onto the belief that they know what the voters should want, despite losing the last national elections mainly because they were wrong about that very subject. As Gallego “almost” said in his interview, the majority of people of all walks of life care about their bank accounts and their kids future, and they could “give-a-shit” about saving democracy or protecting extremely small, in terms of voter-population percentages, groups of people concerned about abortion, LGBTQ issues, Trans issues or even immigration, in most cases. To be blunt, what idiotic rationale believes that you can win a national election by emphasizing in your campaign, issues that concern less than 5% of the population. It is political lunacy, regardless of the “inherent or moral value” of those issues… and so it proved. The miracle was that the democratic defeat wasn’t even greater than it actually was – it was remarkably close, given the stupidity of the campaign strategy.
The people who were bamboozled by Trump, both on the left and the right, are now, very slowly, coming to the realization that America is rapidly heading in a direction which is the antithesis of what American democracy is all about. Flat-out dictatorship is hardly governance of the people by the people – and by most measures, we are actually already there.
How did that happen, apparently so easily and so quickly?
Ruben Gallego thinks it is a result of a dramatic shift in the way political campaigns are now waged (I use that word carefully) and how the two national parties have reacted to, and acted on, those changes. He believes, and I have to agree, it is the use of the ever-increasing information deluge we suffer from every day and from every angle. If you see nothing but Trump’s face every five minutes, most normal people turn off completely and become completely numb and non-reactive and, if you are the opposition, you have very little opening to state your ideas, even if you had any, which, admittedly, the Democratic Party seems remarkably short of. Meanwhile the country goes rapidly down the drain.
For the moment, at least, we are stuck with the Democratic Party as the only feasible voice of opposition to Trump’s takeover. So, what can they do about it?
In my not-so-humble opinion, they can change their emphasis from their intellectual and moral superiority platform to one that actually reflects what the people want. It’s actually quite simple: The people want a better chance at realizing the “American Dream” and a better future for their children. Everything else is window-dressing.
