An Open Letter to Democrats: Saturday Political Soap Box 146

Dear Democrats and Democratic Leaning Voters:

Please understand this, if you understand nothing else.

The Age of the Corporate Democrat is over.

I know, I know.  You want to blame Comey. You want to rail against the turnout from millennials or this group or that group.  The media gave too much time and free press to Trump. She won the popular vote.  There was bias because she was a woman.  There was voter suppression.

Some or all this may be true, but it doesn't matter.

One of the most qualified candidates in our life time lost the electoral college to the worst candidate in our life time.  A con artist, a self-confessed sexual predator, a liar, a bigot,  a Russian sleeper agent, a man with a disqualifying temperament.  All of this is true.  And she lost to him anyways.

Why?

Because she was a corporatist.  She couldn't remove herself from the obvious connections to the wealthy that she had.  Her speeches to Wall Street, their perceived getting rich off corporate connections, her campaign being funded by corporate and wealthy donors.  She was not bold in an election that required bold change.  Her rhetoric was truthful but guarded, more like Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick in the movie Election, than Amy Poehler as Leslie Knopes in Parks and Recreation.

An early warning sign for me is virtually any conversation I had with anyone who was not a Hillary primary voter, particularly the Republicans.  They would rail about Trump, but then when I asked them if they could vote for Hillary over Trump, they would either outright say no, or they would go deer headlight blank.

I wasn't voting for Bernie in the primaries because I hated Hillary.  I think she is a genuinely competent person who cares deeply about this country.  I voted for Bernie because I wanted to win.  I wanted a change candidate in a change year.

Rightly or wrongly, despite what objective economic measures show, people feel adrift as they watch more and more of our resources concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.  Populism in some form was going to win, and Trump's sick, twisted version was the only one offered.

I don't want to argue about whether Hillary is a true Progressive or not.  In some ways she was, in others she was not.  And I don't want some complicated litmus or purity test as to who is in the needed new generation of leadership of the Democratic Party.

Except one thing.

They  cannot accept corporate or Super PAC donations ever again.  They have to follow the Bernie model of raising money.  That gives you an individual donor base that is fired up and ready to support you.  And you have to present a message that the working class (of all ethnic groups and backgrounds) can identify with.

So I repeat.  Know this one thing is true.

The Age of the Corporate Democrat is finished.