Remembering What it Means to be a Democrat

My introduction to Democrats, as a boy, came in reading the Machinist Union’s newspaper that my dad brought home from the shipyard in Bellingham. It championed medical care for the aged under Social Security, and fervently opposed right-to-work laws.

The local Democratic Party bought radio time just before the noon news. The down-home drawl of Sen. Estes Kefauver, a Yale-educated lawyer (“Ah pity the poor family farmer!”) would be followed by local lawyer Marshall Forest: “Vote Democratic, the party for you, not just the few.”

After a tectonic shift in American politics, the Dems are now the party of upper middle class educated elites, while less educated blue-collar voters are a pillar of the Republicans’ MAGA movement.

Hardly a day goes by without a Democrats-in-Trouble piece in The New York Times.  It’s an unceasing theme for four successive nightly Fox News pundits as they promote ersatz populism. They don’t just kill time: They torture it.

Here in this Washington, the national trend can be traced in county and legislative votes. Suburban and exurban King County have sent Democrats to Olympia, and been a bedrock of Dems’ half-million vote margins in statewide races. Timber-rich Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties, once carried by George McGovern, have now twice gone for Trump.

How come? He may have dodged the draft, and gone to the Wharton School while poor boys were going to Vietnam, but Donald Trump projects as a tough guy. And the Christian right has hijacked the message of Jesus, and given folk targets among immigrants, feminists, and the LGBTQ community.

The two key factors, however, are income and message. The technology economy has accelerated income inequity, but also cleaved America’s middle class. Some have kept up; others have fallen behind and gotten baffled and resentful. What has become of the American dream?

I see it among my acquaintances. Mike was a 50-year friend, deceased last year. The Young Democrat of long ago had morphed into a Trump enthusiast when we lunched in San Diego. He was into  “alternative facts.” Mike had a son who was always successful selling cars and time-share condominiums. Mike was stressed at the cost of living in California, angry that Latinos were “taking” American jobs, and reborn as a conservative Catholic. The country was “weak” and “going to the dogs” under Obama and needing to be “saved.”

At a high school reunion beneath Chuckanut Mountain on rare end-of-July rainy day, I chatted with ex-Bellingham Mayor Kelli Linville. A onetime class tough guy walked up and declared, “You’re just a couple of big liberals.” I hadn’t seen the guy in years, but here he was, mad at me.

I stood by banks of the Wind River in Wyoming, sharing a drink with visiting oilfield workers. A wedding reception was ongoing next door to the place I was staying. They were mad at environmentalists and the “myth” of global warming. Never mind that these guys were fishermen, and that the river is fed by melting glaciers in the Wind River Range.

The Democrats’ New Deal message was lost on my San Diego friend and much of the country. In 2016 and 2024, it was largely that Trump was a narcissist, a lout and liar. A lot of people believed that and still voted for the guy who promised revenge on liberal excesses.

Lost has been the Machinists’ message, the optimistic program to make things better in daily lives, with specifics.  And the specifics were there. President Biden came to Green River College to take up the cost of drugs and specifically insulin for diabetes patients. He shared the stage with patients and with U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, who is a diabetic. Biden was in quiet-voice mode but spoke forcefully.

The Dems in Congress delivered, Biden declared, capping insulin costs for seniors. But Republicans blocked extending the cap to everyone, including those on stage at Green River. Now, there’s an issue. But did we hear about it in last year’s campaign?

Lyndon Johnson had an adage, that any dumb fool can burn down a barn but it takes talent to build one. The right-wing misinformation machine excels at barn burning. With aid of polls and billionaires, it has created such bogus “issues” as transgender athletes competing on women’s’ athletic competition and using girls’ restrooms.

The over-emphasis on Trump from the left gave sometime voters no alluring cause to vote for something.  When positive, its promises have been pie-in-the-sky, such as the Green New Deal, rather than immediately possible as was Medicare. Voters in Seattle may find the messaging attractive — not so much the great swaths of the rest of America.

I get two, at times three fundraising emails a day from Washington State Democrats. They emit a relentless samenes as they center on two themes. One is fear, resisting Trump depredations.  The other theme is identity politics, defining each of us by race, sexuality, and country of ancestry. State Chair Shasti Conrad is apparently a talented organizer, but must we relentlessly hear that she is the first South Asian woman to chair the state party and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee?

But nobody out trumps our 47th President when it comes to stoking fear, cruelty, and manipulating social media. “They are a spin machine, and they are out-spinning us,” Tom Campion, conservationist and Democratic donor, told me last week.

Of course, it is necessary to point out that Donald Trump is a wolf at democracy’s door and seeks to be an authoritarian ruler. He is corrupt and driven by vengeance. But a more effective, upbeat opposition message is urgently needed.

I have this friend, Pavan Vangipuram, who recently completed a Route 66 bicycle trip and came back from Trump Country (Oklahoma, Missouri) sounding like Walt Whitman, singing praises of those who “never failed to treat me with kindness and hospitality,” and adding: “They were proud of their little towns and eager to show their best faces. They delighted in their generosity.”

The Democrats must attract and harness that optimistic spirit. Justifiable fear of an unstable, out-of-control President, yes. We need to point out, too, that the country is split not so much right vs. left as top vs bottom. But there must also be an appeal to our better Angels.

Listen to Pavan: “It would be good for us to start at the position that this is a good country full of good people who may have some funny ideas but are nonetheless human, and are capable of human fellow-feeling.”

As did my dad’s union paper.