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.
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Thank you. Please consider sending this message to Democrats and their leadership (I use that word cautiously) in this state, Congress and their so-called ‘Committees to elect . . .’ this that and the other. My recycle bin receives those trite and useless letters.
I fear that the state Democratic party has morphed soley into a fundraising organization supporting a clique of like-minded political professionals and their small satellite cadre of political consultants.
And nothing raises money from graying Dem boomers like Trump rage.
Beautiful piece, Joel. Like you, I am utterly disgusted with the State Democratic Party in general, and its Chair, Shasti Conrad, in particular. Ever since she became Chair of King County Democrats several years ago, she has managed to weaponize the Party, removing long-time Democratic activists and PCOs. She went after former King County Chair Bailey Stober with a vengeance — as if she was following Trump’s playbook. It doesn’t take much to scratch the surface and reveal that Shasti, like far too many, if not most, of the current crop of LD and County Chairs in our immediate area got involved in 2015 as followers of Bernie Sanders. The same time Trump descended his golden escalator. It’s not a coincidence but the other end of the horseshoe.
Like Stagger Lee told Billy, I can’t let you go with that. Of all the bizarre comments I have read with your name on them for years now, a defense of Bailey Stober is way over the line even for you. He was a cancer on the Democratic Party, our own bush-league version of George Santos, in it for himself only. I guess financial irregularities, drunken and disorderly conduct, sexual harassment, all documented, and a long, also documented record of self-serving lies are all defensible, but supporting Bernie Sanders isn’t. The horror!
You seem to equate calling out my merely naming one example of Shasti’s weaponization as a defense of Bailey. There is no evidence presented of that defense. But yet another example of your ad hominem over-reaching. But I guess bullies gotta bully to prove their relevance.
Your comments about Shasti, and any other Democrat to the “left” of you, are a perfect example of the bullying you accuse me of. Your comment about “proving your relevance” is a joke, Your entire comment history, here and elsewhere, is nothing more than your personal grievance against the vast majority of local active Democrats, who have been tuning you out for years, and will continue to do. You’re the one trying to prove his relevance..
Joel.
Sorry to say you are part of the problem why Dem Party is weak:
You sneer at concern about “gender” where you write
‘…such bogus “issues” as transgender athletes competing on women’s’ athletic competition and using girls’ restrooms.’
It’s not a bogus issue.
Dems won’t return in force until they handle the issue differently.
Also, Scoop Jackson’s saying – that real Democrats go bowling on Thursday nights
Yes.
Mr. Connelly makes his consistently cogent and good arguments. The problem is many problems none of which are being addressed by a D party controlled by what has become “the establishment”; men and women raised in a political time and atmosphere that no longer applies. The young men Mr. Connelly refers to who got Trump elected the last time around have nothing to do with anything the D party is about. This is the era of perception not reality. If you can find the right sales force you can get today’s voters to believe anything.
Yes, figure out a message or a very few messages that you can sell. Messages are not promises. Anything close to what you think you can deliver will do. Find the right candidates to sell them, and make believe it’s a TV or streaming show; because that is what it is. The numbers that take you to the top are the number of voters you need: its called ratings, and Ds are in the tank.
Yesterday died some time ago, and trying to figure out what went wrong will not get you far. Hold your nose, take whatever you have to endure the pain, the oath to victory has become uglier than it ever was.
Joel, I have followed you over the years and as any good journalist does, you offer up the ability to both stimulate and challenge ones thinking. So here goes.
I understand yelling at the Democrats is the order of the day given their losses. I do a bit of it myself.
However, I won’t give a second thought to voting for democracy and against a wannabe dictator. See where I am going.
The messaging of the D’s has been less that sterling at times and so have been a few of their candidates. However, it beats the hell out of checking the box for the most divisive president in history. And to that point, his confirmed cabinet is one of heel clicking toe suckers.
The record of Democrats has been at times resplendent with mistakes but Dear God, look at the mess before us.
I grew up dirt poor. Didn’t know what I wanted but knew what I didn’t want to be stuck in poverty.
Left home, joined a construction union and while working full time, I put myself through college.
A member of the middle class, hardly an elitist yet a Democrat because the middle is and was a tenant of the party.
Oh, Dear God, the inference now is I must be one of those elitist Democrats everyone is talking about.
Those marginal Democrats who voted for the thug thinking the Democrats became elitists, no message didn’t care about them, etc. Well, I hope they’re satisfied.
As an old socialist labor leader once said, if bottom can pay and the top won’t pay, the middle pays it all. Well, no middle now. The self-centered crook and his ilk have driven the middle to the bottom by but not limited to, their hate for unions which made the middle class etc.
Fault the D’s for their failure in the recent election, and I’m with you. But this elitist stuff is bullshit.
Working to get out of the bottom and becoming successful is never elitist just as giving bottom a hand up, socialism. Both are value based.
Joe should not have attempted to run again. Yet under him, the nation was one of pride, pride on the world stage rather than that of Russia and the KGB thug, stability and an economic ladder to all who reach for it. Oops! There I go again, being an elitist.
I’m no shill for the Democrats nor will I make excuses for them when they legislate so open-minded their brains fall out. Rather, I will fight like hell when they are right, and I will call them out when I disagree.
They may be going through an identity crisis at this time but their values are sound. They are not lacking the ability to choose leaders who will uphold the Constitution and the values promotes-justice for all.
The wonderful thing about a democracy is folks have the freedom to pee in their nest and sit in it, as uncomfortable as it may be.
If those who abandoned the Democrats for a myriad of reasons, buckle up, you’re going to need reinforcements your reasoning.
Good article. My Washington State Democrat party – and I am a PCO – left me a long time ago. There are so many reasons. We are kind and generous with tax dollars for those struggling BUT where is the accountability?
Sadly, often missing in action with the real time failure of our vaunted “non-profits” leading to ore funding as they politically “capture” elected leaders who hand out the grants.
We as Democrats have abandoned the people I knew while working at Alcoa and driving pea truck in eastern Washington farms.
Instead we have become a party of identity politics, defining each of us by race, sexuality, and country of ancestry.
I know this too shall pass and hopefully before the authority cult of Trump has further decimated what was once known as “the peoples party.”
As a PCO, I hope you know it’s the DEMOCRATIC Party. The attempt to change the name to the Democrat Party by right-wing Republicans is having a lot of success. Let’s not let them.