How Democrats Lose

Those of us on the Center and Left side of the Political Spectrum are sitting here and keep wondering why, with a pretty good plan to make American lives better, and an opponent who can only offer a vision of a Dystopian Nightmare to anyone who is paying attention, never mind all of the Criminal and Seditious activities, Democrats keep losing elections.

And there have been a lot of different idea put forward as to why. And some, probably most, of them actually do have some truth to them. And none of them are ideas that I think should not have attention paid to them.

And I think that most of them miss the mark to some degree or another.

So let us look at how we got here to start.

In the 1964 Republican Primary a man named Barry Goldwater won the nomination to run for President. He was the one who finished the marriage of extremism with the Republican party. Among other things he was a fan of the John Birch Society.

Lyndon Baines Johnson handed him his ass in the 1964 election winning 486 Electoral Collage votes.

And the ideas of Goldwater lived on in the Republican party.

In 1968 the Democratic Party bosses started their divorce from the Labor Unions. That divorce was finalized in 1972.

Notice that in both of those elections the Democrats lost, in 1968 by a narrow margin and in 1972 by a good sized margin, the Presidential elections. And, while the Democrats retained their majority in the House and Senate the majority was narrowed.

Meanwhile Nixon, in 1968, unveiled his Southern Swing Strategy which invited Racist Southerners who had been solidly Democratic since the end of Reconstruction in 1872 and who were really pissed at the Democratic Party for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1964, to align itself with the Republican Party. And he did that again in 1972.

And it worked really well. The formerly Solid South of the Democratic Party became the Solid South of the Republican Party.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party finished cutting itself off from the biggest part of it's base and also the biggest source of it's organizational ground troops. They decided to be the Intellectual Techno Party instead of the Labor Party.

And then Reagan allied the Republican Party with the very Activist Religious Right. He also got rid of The Fairness Doctrine for the Broadcast Media and pushed thru the Naturalization as a Citizen of Rupert Murdoch, after not even a year in the U.S., which resulted in Right Wing Talk Radio and Fox "News".

The Republican Party had found it's center, the ready made story that it has been telling itself, and the electorate, ever since. And had found their Voice which has been poisoning our Electorate ever since in Talk Radio and Fox "News". Their Propaganda vehicles.

And with that the Republican Party solidified itself as the party of Racism and Christian Nationalism, it had finished it's transformation into the American Nazi Party, and the Democratic Party completely lost it's center and became the party that kept reinventing itself because it had lost it's identity and had nothing to replace it.

It was hard to see this however. Because at that time the News Industry, AKA the Fourth Estate, was also undergoing a transformation. And not, in my opinion, for the better.

It was during this time that the news industry began reporting Political Campaigns in the manner of a Horse Race involving Personalities and Stories instead of Policy and Procedure. So no longer were they doing their Job and telling us where they stood. Instead that talked about their likability and odds of winning.

And this was, in part, another result of another Reagan policy, the weakening of Anti Trust Laws thru Congress and a Right Wing Activist series of Supreme Court appointments. And what that allowed was the consolidation of all information networks into a very small and like minded set of hands. News reporting went from a multitude of different organizations owned by a lot of different people with many differing opinions on things to conglomerations of five organizations with owners who are very like minded on things.

Many other industries also become Multi National Conglomerates as well. The amount of industries owned by other industries got to be more and more. And the result is almost every industry became a Multi National Conglomerate owned by Fewer and Fewer people. Thus reducing, and in some cases eliminating, competition.

And so began the total and complete failure on the part of what should be, and used to be, a part of the job of Reporters and News Organizations to tell us the most important stuff instead of, as they do now, the least important stuff.

I do not care if someone is a person I may or may not want to have a beer with. I want to know what are the policies and procedures they have pushed for and what they want to do moving forward. I don't care if they are "relatable". I care if they are a person of their word or not. Are they authentically who they say they are or do they obfuscate a lot. Who do they surround themselves with? What policies and procedures have those people pushed for in the past? What are they committed to? Those are the things that I want from the formerly honorable 4th Estate.

And another reason that it has been hard to see that the Democratic Party has lost their way is that they have had some successes along the way. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. And, at times, a majority in the House of Representatives and/or the Senate.

When these times have happened the one constant has been that the leading candidate for the Presidency has had the ability to tell a story, both personal and political, that resonates with people. They went after the people who resonated with that story.

And, in the House and Senate, when those things happened it was quite often on the coattails of the Presidential candidate or when the Republicans shot themselves in the foot.

And the Democratic Establishment fought them along the way. They wanted to be in control of the narrative at all times. Eve though they did not have a narrative of their own. Control was the thing that they understood.

Think about it, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, none of them were Democratic favorites. They were not the chosen ones of the primaries in the first year they ran. Each one of them had a story that resonated with the electorate that was at odds in many ways with the Democratic machine.

And all of this to come down to the main point, the Democratic Party has lost the power to listen to and talk to People. They talk to Groups, the address Dynamics, they really try to do the right thing for the most part, and they cannot listen to people or tell you and I about it effectively.

They have created their own bubble and cannot hear those of us outside that bubble. And this election was a perfect example of that.

And that is because they do not believe in anything really. They believe that they can do better and have no real vision for what that is and how to get there.

They also have no effective tools of communication. The Republican Party has a series of Think Tanks that pump out stuff, they have Talk Radio that fires up their base, they have Fox "News" that spreads more Horse Shit per minute that helps keep their base angry, and they use all this to effectively blame Democrats and liberals for all the problems in the world.

And they get active and passive help from the rest of the media who no longer present the truth. They present what sells. Personality over Policy.

The Democratic party has no way to combat any of this. Although, to give them credit, they do try.

So there we have it. On one side a Propaganda Machine that is well financed and well coordinated against a bunch of well meaning people who have lost their center.

So here is my prescription for the Democratic party:

Create the DNA of what the party should be

• Stand for the American Worker and support the Right of all workers to Unionize if they choose
• Stand for Health Care for All through Taxes instead of For Profit
• Stand for Every Vote Counts and Every Vote Gets Counted
• Break the Two Party Monopoly on our Political system.
• Eliminate the Electoral Collage
• Pass a Constitutional Amendment that Money is not Speech
• Pass a Constitutional Amendment that Corporations and other such Legal Constructs are not People
• Stand for Education as Teaching How to think instead of What to think. No more teaching to Test
• Human Rights for All regardless of Age, Race, Gender, Sexual Identity, Creed, Religion or Lack of Religion
• An Unbreakable Firewall between Church and State
• An Unbreakable Firewall between Banks that people use for checking etc and Banks that Gamble, IE Investment Banking

Then, take the following actions:

• Liberals, take over the Democratic Party by getting yourself into position in every single Precinct. Whatever the smallest voting district is, GET INVOLVED!!!
• Liberals, run for every single open position in your district there is. Dog catcher, school board, election commissioner, anything. Put up qualified Liberal candidates for everything that there is.
• Start a private Facebook page, or WhatsApp chat, or some other form of instant communication, with the groups in the communities around you and share what is working and what is not. Ask for help and advice. Communicate.
• Go Door to Door and listen to people, even those whom you do not like and do not agree with, find the areas of common ground where they exist, and then share your vision with them.
• Make sure that the people running for office in your Towns/Cities, Counties, States, and National Elections agree with at least Seventy Five percent of the things that you support.
• Have the list of deal breakers that if they do not get on board with then you will not support them.
• Recognize that if a candidate agrees with you one hundred percent they are probably lying. There is no Perfect Candidate. Stop looking for them.
• We must get the Democratic Party to adopt the Inverted Pyramid model of running instead of the Top Down model.

The Inverted Pyramid is from the world of 12 Step Recovery. And what that means is each individual Group is at the top. And then is the District/Area (Depending on the Fellowship). And it continues on down to the Fellowship World Service Office at the Bottom.

So for us it would be the District Office, then the County Office below them. Then the State Office below them. And finally, the national Office (The DNC) at the bottom.

The Inverted Pyramid.

If you think about it this is exactly how the Co-Opted Tea Party ended up taking over the Republican Party. Although they just traded one top down leader for another.

I suggest an Inverted Pyramid so that the smallest unit, The Precinct, runs things. Which means we force the Democratic Party back to what Tip O'Neil knew so well, "All politics is local".

Or, maybe, we need to found a New party. A Liberal Party. A Party that can be Unapologetically to the Left of the Political Spectrum. A Party that does not answer to a Governing Board, that only answers to it's members.

So there we have it folks. this is a Call To Action for those of us who are the Center Left and Left side of the Political spectrum. What has been going on no longer works. It is long past the time that we get the Old Guard out of the way and get some mew blood, younger blood, with new ideas in there.

Or we are all doomed.