The Party of FDR and JFK has become the Party of LOL and WTF. – Bill Maher
All the howling, shrieking, and rending of garments over what had become the inevitable overturning of Roe v. Wade brings me back to those St. Nick’s nuns and those seventh-grade defense mechanism lessons, principally the one on scapegoating.
This is somehow the Republican’s fault? Really? They’ve been blatantly steadfast in their decades-long effort to pass ultra-restrictive abortion laws and stack the Supreme Court with conservatives who would re-criminalize abortion. It’s not as if this was some sort of backroom conspiracy that was rarely discussed.
No! It’s the Democrats, and particularly their progressive wing, who are responsible for this massive reversal. The consequences of their horrible messaging, rampant nanny-stateism, and pursuit of an absurdly artificial “wokeness” to the exclusion of everything else have finally come home to roost. How many times have I used the phrase “hoist by their own petard?”
Here’s what I mean:
1. The Bernie Bros
After Bernie Sanders came in a close second to Hilary Clinton in the 2016 primaries, it was their immature pouting that opened the door to a lunatic like the Cheeto Supreme. Having been seduced by participation trophies, teachers who couldn’t criticize them, and gradeless homework, the Bernie Bros couldn’t handle not getting what they wanted exactly when they wanted it.
They didn’t understand that’s not how American politics works, they refused to see Hilary Clinton as a necessary step towards a candidate like Sanders, and they closed their minds to the concept that choose the lesser of two evils often fends off far more dire consequences.
So, Trump lost the popular vote, but managed to win the election, and he stacked the Supreme Court with the conservatives that dispensed with decades of settled law. Had Sanders supporters bothered to vote in the 2016 general, Trump would be nothing more than a distant and distasteful memory by now.
2. The Democrats abandoned their base
Barack Obama was the last Democrat who understood where his political bread was buttered and his team built the kind of ground game that won nine out of nine battleground states. But Hillary Clinton took the blue-collar voters who made the Democratic Party for granted, and now the Party of the jackass has completely abandoned them.
Everyone laughed when Trump visited those formerly Rust Belt Democratic bastions until he won most of those states because Clinton failed to show up in any of them.
Then the absurd Democratic COVID mitigations may well have put the irretrievable nail in that coffin. Not only were the lockdowns an abject failure, but they wreaked the kind of economic havoc that has disproportionally affected their traditional minority and working-class base. Not to mention a generation of their children have been destroyed by needless remote learning.
So, how do you think they’re gonna vote in November and 2024? And the Supreme Court will move further to the right.
2. The Democrats abandoned black, Hispanic, and Asian voters
As Bill Maher noted on “Real Time,” an 85 percent Hispanic Texas Congressional district bordering Mexico that had reliably voted Democratic for decades just flipped to the Red side because those constituents were tired of illegal immigrants flooding their counties.
In a push led by reliably Democratic Asian voters, and heavily supported by black and Hispanic voters, San Francisco progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who essentially legalized crime, was recalled by an almost two-thirds vote. And San Francisco may well be the most liberal city in the country.
Sixty-eight percent of residents in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods don’t want to defund the police, they want more of them on their streets. But Cook County state’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s cashless bail “reforms” are only making the situation far worse and Mayor Lightfoot and the CPD just banned police foot chases.
When the Democrats aren’t ignoring their former minority base, they go out of their way to annoy them. Just 2 percent of Latino’s describe themselves as “Latinx,” and 40 percent of them find the word offensive, but Democrats can’t let go of it.
If your average Republican can somehow get over their fear of brown people, the Democrat Part s will shortly go the way of the Whigs.
3. Democrats pursue “wokeness” to the exclusion of everything else
Unless you’re a handicapped transgendered black woman, the Democratic Party no longer cares about you. This constant deference to the wackiest wing of their party will continue to doom their electoral aspirations, if not destroy the Party outright.
When Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren told Iowans she was going to have a nine-year-old trans person vet her secretary of education, and that nominee would only advance if they approved them, it was the end of her candidacy.
When the intolerant Aurora Pride organization had the unmitigated gall to ban uniformed gay police officers from marching in their parade, it only serves to turn those middle-of-the-road voters into Republicans for life.
When a Wisconsin school district charges eighth graders with Title IX crimes for failing to refer to a classmate by their “preferred pronouns,” even when that classmate wasn’t involved in the conversation, how do you think those parents will vote going forward?
Everyone deserves to be happy, but repeatedly pandering to a trans community that’s just 0.58 percent of population isn’t a political strategy, it’s a roadmap to defeat.
So, rather than blame Republicans, the “male patriarchy,” or even the Supreme Court for the Roe v. Wade reversal, Democrats, and particularly the progressive variety, need to take a long hard look in the bathroom mirror. Because by abandoning your roots and doing everything in your power to alienate those critical centrist voters, you have no one to blame but yourself for creating this stark new reality.
A minimally functioning Democratic Party would’ve sent Donald Trump packing and Roe v. Wade would still be intact. Unless the Democrats right themselves, and they do it soon, this is only the beginning.
