To introduce this link, I’ll once again defer to the junior editor, Jeff Gillenwater.
Number of times Joe and Josephine have voted for Democrats because the two of them believe the U.S. should implement a universal healthcare system: 23
Number of times any of the Democrats for whom they’ve repeatedly voted have actually supported the implementation of a universal healthcare system: 0
Number of times Joe and Josephine have insisted that the real problem with the country is a bunch of rubes elsewhere who are too dumb to vote in their own interest: 257
Is the chairman woke yet?
ON THE AVENUES: Dear Mr. Dizznee: Can you hear me now?
The hypocrisy keeps getting deeper, the metaphorical sewage is rising, and pretty soon coffee break will be over, and it’ll be back to standing on your head, counting the recent catastrophes.
As the young folks like to say, that Thomas Frank — he’s just killing it.
I can’t help noticing that while the local Democratic Party hierarchy has kept me blockaded for more than three years, numerous “rank and file” Democrats continue to engage in conversation (rather like all those Catholics in Italy ignoring the Vatican’s edicts on birth control), and many of them can’t seem to come up with rejoinders to Frank’s points.
Until they do, doubling down on failed comprehension seems unlikely to bear electoral fruit, but what does this apostate know, anyway?
The Democrats’ Davos ideology won’t win back the midwest (The Guardian)
And what I am here to say is that the midwest is not an exotic place. It isn’t a benighted region of unknowable people and mysterious urges. It isn’t backward or hopelessly superstitious or hostile to learning. It is solid, familiar, ordinary America, and Democrats can have no excuse for not seeing the wave of heartland rage that swamped them last November.
Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at the economic disasters that have befallen the midwestern cities and states that they used to represent.
The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic party’s neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had “nowhere else to go,” they were making what happened last November a little more likely.
