Santander
Atlas Star
Posts: 28,075
Political Matrix
E: 4.00, S: 2.61
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« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2017, 02:28:33 PM » |
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« Edited: June 01, 2017, 02:31:46 PM by Santander »
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I can't speak for WV, but I don't think a "big gubmint librul" could win KY vs anyone with a R beside their name. Yes, being vaguely folksy, pro-life, and pro-gun is good in KY, but that means Joe Manchin or Steve Beshear type centrists - Democrats who are willing to cut government spending and reform social programs. I know it's convenient to believe that "ancestral Democrats" in KY and WV are looking for the next New Deal, but in reality, they just want to feel like they're being left alone. Or at least, it's closer to the latter than the former.
It's the same in the Rust Belt. It's convenient for Democrats to believe that these people love Obama for bailing out the auto industry and "saving their jobs", but the average person is outraged that the government bailed out big businesses. In some way, Mitt Romney was right - if the government "let Detroit go bankrupt", the average person in the Rust Belt would've laughed at GM and Chrysler executives and eventually moved on. There are no bailouts or handouts for people who work hard and never get ahead, while there is socialism for poor "lazy people" and socialism for big corporations. When they see politicians run around talking about college education for the "jobs of the future" or millennial fast food workers demanding $15 an hour, it makes them furious. Democrats grossly misunderstand the kind of "populism" that is necessary to win these people.
You can either embrace being an elitist party that drags the country into the "better future" you have in mind, or you can be a populist party that restores the country to what the people want. You can't be both.
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