We Are Tired...

Working Class & Centrist democrat voters shift right and it is obvious why

Full disclosure: I am a libertarian. I came over from the Democratic party about thirty years ago. In the 2024 General Election, I voted for a grand total of one (1) Democratic/Republican candidate on my ballot. One. I tend to vote based on principle, not the lesser of two evils. 

My analysis is coming from the perspective of a libertarian-independent, and from a position of living overseas watching foreign news sources who have no skin in the game. I compare and contrast these foreign outlets to the US based media outlets, which mostly spent their news cycles marginalizing each other & their preferred candidates.  I’ve also always had a soft spot for the Democratic Party.

The Big Takeaway: Trump didn’t win this election, Harris lost it. And, it isn’t hard to figure out why. 

25 TIRING WAYS HARRIS LOST

1. We are tired of the lack of communication. Harris didn’t host a single press conference. Trump hosted at least six. She mostly avoided the media, not completing a sit down interview for the first 38 days of the campaign.. She didn’t go on Joe Rogan, she didn’t go on Dave Ramsey, she didn’t go to the Al Smith Dinner. She only was interviewed by friendly media outlets, who pitched her softballs. She mostly did rallies and never sat down for an interview with any member of the media that would challenge her. Heck, Joe Rogan offered her three hours of time to his 30 million subscribers. He just wanted to get to know her. 

2. We are tired of celebrities and the elite. Harris touted celebrity endorsements, paying millions to have JLo, Beyonce, etc., to endorse her. Put yourselves in the shoes of someone working paycheck to paycheck. The working class sees Hollywood fat cats endorsing Harris while they struggle to make ends meet. The optics are horrible. 

3. We are tired of politicians not challenging the machine. Harris said, when asked on The View, what she would do differently than Joe Biden. She said “Nothing comes to mind”. Inflation? Border? Identity politics? What? I don’t know about you but I felt a palpable shift in the polls after she said that. 

4. We are tired of the same old ideas. Harris’s platform was the same old crap-- more regulations, more big government, and cash payments.  Go and look yourself, it was still up when I last checked. Working Americans are fatigued from these programs that just pile up more debt, create inflation, and perpetuate wars. 

5. We are tired of “politically strategic” decisions that cost elections. Why in the hell did she pick Walz, a governor from a deep blue state, and not Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania? If she would have picked the governor of PA, she very well may have won the election.  

6. We are tired of the condescension. Harris would change her tone and/or accent depending on the crowd. If that wasn’t insulting enough, her word salads baffled audiences. It baffled me. Other than her pitching price controls, price gouging legislation, and cash payments for home buyers (refer to #2 above) I could not interpret what in the hell she was trying to say. 

7. We are tired of politicians faking it. It was laughable that Harris was promoting freedom; now, I’m all in on that one, but, it clearly was limited to abortion, voting rights, and civil rights. I’m all in on body autonomy, but, what she and the Democrats seemed to forget (or ignore or deny) is body autonomy also applies to whether or not someone gets the Covid jab, takes ivermectin, or wants to drink raw milk. I can buy dope legally but I cannot buy raw milk. Democrats used to be the party of freedom. Today, the party of freedom is most definitely the Libertarian Party. Promoting freedom was a cover for all the authoritarian shenanigans the Democrats have participated in the past ten years. 

WE ARE TIRED OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BEING DISCONNECTED FROM THEIR BASE

Harris’s loss is a manifestation of the DNC’s mismanagement, which is completely disconnected from reality when it comes to is base, the working class.

There are many Democratic talking points that voters are frankly getting tired of. Many centrist democrats also shifted to the right because of them. Micheal Shellenbarger, a lifelong democrat journalist now claiming to be an independent, laid out nine points. Nine points those on the left side of the democratic party should take to heart. Nine points their central base would say were ignored. From Shellenbarger (my comments in bold): 

8) We are tired of your lack of understanding working-class economics. Economic self-interest for the working class includes robust economic growth. Democrats continue to misunderstand voter’s priorities: jobs and the economy. Not identity politics or climate change. 

9) We are tired of hearing climate change will end the world next week. Climate change is a reality to manage not a hard limit to obey

10) We are tired of not enforcing basic societal laws. The government should prioritize the interests of normal people over those of people engaging in antisocial conduct. Case in point, progressive prosecutors lost in droves. 

11) We are are tired of race identity politics. We should, in fact, judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Read that again. Slowly. 

12) We are tired of gender identity politics.  While race is a social construct, biological sex is not. 

13) We are tired of others thinking they know better than us. Academics and nonprofit staffers do not occupy a unique position of virtue (intellectual class) relative to private sector workers. (working class)

14) We are tired of figuring out which pronouns to use. Politeness is a virtue but obsessive language policing alienates normal people and degrades the quality of thinking

15) We are tired of seeing our tax dollars spent on non-citizens, foreign aid, and wars. We are equal in the eyes of God, but the American government can and should prioritize the interests of American Citizens FIRST. Case in point: half a billion dollars of Chicago city’s budget went to housing, feeding, and funding undocumented immigrants. The working class community is pissed off because of this. They say, “What about us? We’ve been here for generations, pay taxes, and need a bit of help.” I’d be pissed, too. 

16) We are tired of government not doing their job and treating us like shit. Public services must be run in the interests of their users, not their providers. Just go on YouTube and watch citizens record their interactions with government employees. It’s painful to watch how public servants treat the people who pay their salaries as second-class citizens or even criminals. 

A FEW MORE THOUGHTS

17) We are tired of hearing the word “democracy” when the DNC doesn’t even practice it. For a party that blathers on and on about “democracy”, we didn’t even get the benefit of a primary, a choice between candidates. Instead, the party elite…now let’s all admit it…performed a coup de tat removing Joe Biden and installing Harris. The Democrats didn’t even have a convention of candidates. We all saw right through this. Don’t be telling us about “democracy” when you don’t even use it yourself to choose your leader. 

18) We are tired of supporting a party that does not support us. Democrats lost the working class vote and are now seen as the party of the Intellectuals & Elite. Those working paycheck to paycheck don’t care who George Cloney is voting for as they roam the aisles of Walmart or pump gas that is 20% or more expensive than four years ago. 

19) Again, we are tired of being abandoned. Bernie Sanders said it best, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well”. The consulting class did not listen to the needs of the people and instead blew their money on concerts and courting Hollywood elite. You need to listen to the grassroots. The grassroots must revolt. 

20) We are tired of the criminal charges, lawsuits, impeachments, and indictments.  If you want to go after a president, go after Bush for war crimes and Obama for dropping bombs on brown children & hospitals. 

21) We are tired of Covid. The government most likely funded, had a part in creating, and releasing the Covid Virus into the wild. Then they have spent the past five years lying about it, covering it up, punishing, shaming, and locking up those who question their authority. They gave billions to the pharmaceutical industrial complex, and gave them immunity, all the while Democratic governors locked up seniors sending them to the grave & firing employees for not getting the jab.  And no one has been held accountable. Fauci has several criminal referrals sent to the DC prosecutor but has not been charged. That will all change when Trump replaces the AG. Fauci better get a good attorney. 

22) We are tired of the same old shit. The Democratic Platform hasn’t changed much in 60 years, which can be seen in Harris’s platform. That old mentality that has been the path to Democrats’ hearts is the transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to others, whether or not they need/deserve it or not. Americans are waking up to what causes inflation, and the most recent incarnation is from all this crazy stimulus spending. “The Opportunity Economy” to the tax-paying, working class means something completely different. The only thing the American Rescue Plan & the Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act did for the working class was increase inflation. Otherwise, you would have seen at least one “Build Back Better” hat. The inflation & price increases it created eroded any wage gains made in the past 4-8 years. 

23) We are tired of big problems being ignored. Harris’s lack of attention to the border crisis allowed ten million people (that we know of) in without any checks or balances. Humans- they need to be housed, fed, and they need jobs. This has become a math problem that she would not acknowledge. We are a country with a 5-10 million home deficit, and her solution was a check to new home buyers. Where are all these immigrants going to live? 

24) We are tired of the lying media. Voters are finally seeing through the media lies, the government lies, the party lies.  They are tired. I’m tired of it. Elon Musk buying Twitter and exposing the media lies & the government corruption tells me we need a reset.

“We must be accurate, and, we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement,” -- Jeff Bezos, Owner of the WAPO

25. We are tired of the censorship complex. Elon Musk, exposing the government collusion between federal agencies and social media platforms, was a big eye-opener for many Americans.

THE CONSEQUENCES

Republicans, although you elected a flawed man for president, are the beneficiaries of a political realignment. Gone (thank God) is the Moral Majority. The big tent is back as it drew in higher percentages of blacks, Latinos, the working class, and even the 18-25-year-old crowd. Do they relate to Trump’s cut in the corporate tax rate? No, but they do see a man who comes from the private sector, who talks straight, unapologetic, who didn’t become rich from being a politician. Remember, Bernie Sanders has never held a private sector or even a government job. Fewer people are taking that crazy old socialist seriously anymore. 

SOLUTIONS

My solution for Democrats is this: You need to have a grassroots movement…no…an uprising…and fire every single employee of the DNC. Hit the freaking reset button. That organization is a trainwreck, disconnected from its base (because it is moving over to the red tent). You also need to come back towards the center. You are losing the moderate democrat, especially with this focus on identity politics, authoritarianism, censorship, & decriminalizing the wrong things. .  

I am not worried about what a Trump Presidency is going to look like. We all survived the first presidency. The sun came up this morning, there were no mushroom clouds. That will be the case for the next four years as well. What I am sincerely worried about is the mental health of my friends and family that are struggling with this change in leadership. 

Please understand Trump has been trolling us for years. He knows exactly what he is doing, And now he has free rent in many heads. Is he living in yours? He says a lot of hurtful, untruthful things. But, for me, actions speak much louder than his rhetoric. I won’t let him live in my head. What helps me is knowing that the federal government has very little impact on my day-to-day life. It’s my local and state government that is a daily pain in my ass. 

If you are struggling mentally, please, find someone to talk to, and please work things out. Get in a better place. When you do, get involved in your local, grassroots politics. In my local elections, not a single Democrat ran for office. I can’t vote for one if they don’t run. 

Get out there and make a difference. It’s going to be ok.