One of the things about the 2016 presidential election that most shocked the political elite and Democrats was the failure of the “blue wall.” “What happened?”, they wondered. How is it possible that people in states that Hillary didn’t bother even to fly over deserted her? How could decades of being told that they—as mostly white, mostly Christian, mostly middle class Americans—represented all that was wrong with America possibly have such a devastating effect on Democrats?
On Meet the Press, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews states that the Democrats have simply moved too far left on cultural issues, specifically on abortion.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
MSNBC host Chris Matthews said the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left on cultural issues during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
Host Chuck Todd spotlighted Washington Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti’s Friday column about the Democratic Party’s struggles in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Continetti’s piece discussed the party’s current weak governing position and lack of an agenda beyond opposition to President Trump.
In his assessment of the Democrats’ first 100 days, Continetti concluded:
That establishment is just as befuddled as its Republican counterpart at the current political scene. “I don’t know what’s happening in the country,” Hillary Clinton is said to have told a friend at some point during the recent campaign. This apprehension of distance between herself and the everyday lives of her co-nationals is one of the most perceptive observations Clinton has ever made.
Her problem was she never figured out the answer, never came to realize that the various guesses she and Obama and other professional Democrats have wagered about “what’s happening in the country”—racism, sexism, nativism, gerrymandering, Citizens United, Fox News Channel and talk radio, Russia—are insufficient. What the Democratic Party has yet to understand is that its social and cultural agenda is irrelevant or inimical to the material and spiritual well being of their former constituents. And until the Democrats recognize this fact, their next 100 days will be no better than their first. [my emphasis]
Meet the Press‘s Chuck Todd read the concluding two sentences and then turned to Matthews stating that he thought Matthews would agree with Continetti’s conclusion.
Matthews nodded in the affirmative and provided an example of Hillary’s position on late-term abortions and the Hyde Amendment as evidence that the Democrats had “moved too far left on cultural issues.”
Watch:
The Washington Free Beacon continues:
Todd said he felt Matthews, the longtime liberal host of “Hardball” and a former Democratic aide, would agree with Continetti’s sentiment. Matthews pointed to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s shift to the left on abortion rights as something that alienated more moderate voters in states like Pennsylvania.
“A lot of it’s cultural, not just economics,” Matthews said. “I think that the position Hillary Clinton, for example, took, on abortion, late-term abortions … get rid of the Hyde Amendment, pushed too far. I think a lot of the people [who] came out and voted in Pennsylvania, where I’m from, were pro-lifers. With all of Trump’s problems, morally, personally, whatever, they didn’t like Hillary’s position. I think the party moved too far to the left on cultural issues.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Ron Coleman
Comments
They’ve done a LOT to alienate the Heartland. It’s not only abortion. I think they have two main problems. One, when the Dems were the party of the New Deal, they had tremendous support of workers in the Heartland. They were happy to take union money for campaigns, and then workers believed elected Democrats had their interests at heart. But that has changed. The “knowledge” or information economy has been taking share away from manufacturing and the information economy is not unionized. So Democrats need a new money source. Very rich Silicon Valley oligarchs and hedge fund guys like Tom Steyer have filled the void.
But Silicon Valley’s job is to destroy jobs. Silicon Valley exists to replace human labor with technology. That is the exact opposite of being on the side of workers, which was the promise of the New Deal. So the “working man” part of the Democrat coalition is now the enemy of one of their largest donors.
The other master Democrats now have is the academic left. Dems seem to think that all the idiocy the academic left dreams up is what Americans care about. Transgenderism, climate change, white privilege and so on.
There was hardly a day that went by when you did not see the media – people fresh from academia and nearly all Democrat surrogates – signaling they effectively want to destroy the lives of people who work in the oil fields, natural gas fields, refineries, pipelines and coal mines. Heavily populated Democratic precincts like the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Puget Sound, Martha’s Vineyard, or wherever Silicon Valley billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg live don’t have any oil fields or coal mines. But there are lots of people in the Heartland who work in oil fields, coal mines, and pipelines.
The other thing they picked up from the academic left is demonizing white people and accusing tens of millions of poor white people struggling to get by that they benefit from imaginary white privilege. You think those folks don’t think Democrats hate them?
Until they can break free from the hold that the Silicon Valley oligarchs and the academic left have on them, it is going to be hard for Dems to connect with people who do not have graduate degrees, live on the coasts, or live in a city with a population less than 500,000.
Captain Obvious.
There is no difference between the left of the right. Both want to control people and tell us commoners how to live our lives.
Could be they had the worst possible candidate in the Presidential history.
She sucked and no one liked her.
I don’t think it was abortion. It was the gay issues and the transgender accommodation that the left is looking for was way too much for many. And the Democrats not only believe that you can choose your gender, but it appears there is a movement of choosing your race too. They even have a potential Democratic presidential candidate who claims to be part Indian because she has high cheekbones.
The Democrats seem to be determined to make laughing stocks of themselves.
Leave a Comment