Press "Enter" to skip to content

Why The Dems Lost

Trip Gabriel, the New York Times reporter, found many Trump signs in the front yards of loyal union members who had been Democrats.

Don’t waste your time worrying about Russian hacks or FBI sabotage or ‘fake stories’ about Moscow whores.

The reason we lost is in plain view:

“You stopped talking my language; you don’t care about jobs.”

I felt the same way watching Democratic election rallies. So much of the language — about ‘diversity’, LGBT, gun control, abortion, immigrant rights — missed me by a mile. Painfully, so did some of Bernie’s rote-like speeches about “revolution” that thrilled the young and swayed older voters but not by a significant much.

The nail in the coffin was Hillary’s “we’re going to put a lot of (you) coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?”

Way out west in Iowa steelworking union members heard us all too clearly.

The Democratic Party top brass couldn’t have cared less about working people because economically and psychologically they’re in the same mind-class as Trump and his swamp gang. They’ve all been to the same good schools.

So it’s not the language that’s at fault but what Trump’s propaganda mistress, Kellyanne Conway, urges us to pay attention to, not what’s on his lips but in his heart.

Our heart was in “cultural issues” not jobs.

A positive step back from the Trump abyss is to exchange our tin ears used to dead language for a pair sensitive to the situation of what the English call “JAM”. Just about managing. Just about keeping our heads above water.

That’s us, surely.

(Clancy Sigal is a screenwriter and novelist. His latest book is Black Sunset. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

2 Comments

  1. Rick Weddle February 6, 2017

    Thanks again, Mr. Sigal, for another one right on the mark. The single ‘demographic’ that the DNC/HRC machinery disregarded systematically, and scorned in public, bit the Dems’ chances of winning squarely in the ass. Yes, and a good and timely riddance, I say. There were actually other fields of voters repelled by Clinton’s history, bearing, and irritating voice, you could see it where Media blared in public; Democrats sidling away from her and the sound of her. This to say little of the quasi-democratic electoral college. I’d let that be a firm warning. Now,…about this Second-Most-Repugnant Candidate to which we just handed the keys to the treasury, the armory, the nursery, the farm, and most of the mics and cameras…This dude and his circling carrion crows need a quick civics lesson or two.

    • Harvey Reading February 7, 2017

      Who was the first most repugnant candidate to which we handed the keys … Obama, perhaps? the Bushes? W.J. Clinton? Ronald Reagan? They were all scum. This is nothing new.

Leave a Reply to Rick Weddle Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

-