Archive for the ‘Reagan Democrats’ Category

Glenn Reynolds’ USA Today article highlights some points of peril that elitists haven’t paid attention to.

In the opening paragraph to his article, Reynolds writes “So the post-Brexit number-crunching is over and it turns out that the decisive support for Britain’s leaving the EU came not from right-wing nationalists but from working-class Labour voters. This offers some lessons for British and European politicians — and for us in America, too.”

This is potentially significant if you’re Hillary Clinton. The American equivalent to Labour voters are what used to be called Reagan Democrats. Eventually, they stopped being Democrats because the Democratic Party stopped being the party of the little guy. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were the first unabashed friends of ‘Too Big To Fail’ banks. Later, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama caught on and started cashing in with Wall Street.

Meanwhile, it’s impossible to highlight this part of Dr. Reynolds’ article too much:

The result, Mandler writes, is that “For the rest of the country has felt more and more excluded, not only from participation in the creativity and prosperity of London, but more crucially from power. . . . A majority of people around the United Kingdom are feeling like non-people, un-citizens, their lives jerked about like marionettes by wire-pullers far away. In those circumstances, very bad things indeed can be expected.”

Given a chance, these people seized an opportunity to give the wires a yank of their own. A lot of people felt powerless, and the political system not only didn’t address that, but seemed to glory in it.

These Brits’ votes were their way of saying this:

It was their opportunity to tell their country’s elites that they weren’t going to get talked down to anymore. Think of it as the British people’s visceral reaction to the elitists’ control over their lives.

America, of course, faces the same kind of division, as Dana Loesch writes in her new book, Flyover Nation: You Can’t Run A Country You’ve Never Been To. Every once in a while, she notes, a publisher or a newspaper from a coastal city will send a reporter, like an intrepid African explorer of the 19th century, to report on the odd beliefs and doings of the inhabitants of the interior. But even the politicians who represent Flyover Country tend to spend most of their time, and, crucially, their post-elective careers, in Washington, DC.

Simply put, DC and New York have viewed Heartlanders like aliens from outer space. They’re insulated from reality. While he was a presidential candidate, Gov. Walker had it right when he called Washington, DC “68 square miles surrounded by reality.”

Whether Heartlanders experience their own version of Brexit remains to be seen. Is it possible? Without question. Will it happen? I’m hoping.

Technorati: Donald Trump, Brexit, Great Britain, Elites, Labour Party, Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, Washington, DC, Heartland, Flyover Country

Salena Zito’s column highlights blue collar America’s crisis perfectly:

A tugboat pushing nine loaded coal barges chugged up the Ohio River, toward the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It eventually passed the McConway & Torley steel foundry along the Allegheny, likely headed for one of the few coal-fired power plants left in America.

That was what Democrats believed in then when they cared about America. The Democratic Party was built in manufacturing cities like Pittsburgh. Isn’t it symbolic that Pittsburgh’s steel-producing decline coincides with the Democratic Party’s decline as the party of the middle class?

Workers in the coal industry and at McConway & Torley are in the cross hairs of the progressive left. The left rails against McDonald’s for not paying a salary that sustains a family of four, as it simultaneously tries to snuff out the manufacturing base that provides well-paid middle-class jobs.

McConway & Torley has been in Pittsburgh for nearly 150 years. It is one of the few places in the city where laborers can earn enough to stay out of poverty, own a home and provide security for their families’ futures.

The Totalitarian Left worships at the altar of controlling people’s lives. They’ll do anything that forces their religion down blue collar America’s throat. If you think religion isn’t the right word for that situation, think again. Here’s the definition of religion:

the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices

The Totalitarian Left worships uniformity and a one-size-fits-all worldview. Meanwhile, Americans are demanding an iPhone-iPad world. The EPA’s proposed new rule to the Clean Water Act won’t make America more productive. The EPA’s proposed new rule will attempt to tell a free people what they can’t do. That’s totalitarianism by any definition. It certainly fits this definition:

the character or quality of an autocratic or authoritarian individual, group, or government

When I started paying attention to politics, liberals used the judiciary to get their way when they couldn’t pass the legislation they wanted. That changed when President Reagan started appointing more Constitution-minded judges. The Totalitarian Left found that they couldn’t rely on the judiciary for their victories like they had in the past.

That wasn’t acceptable to the Activist Left. Their policies weren’t popular, which meant they couldn’t pass their extremist agenda. With more Constitution-minded judges, they weren’t winning legal victories, either. Which leads us to today. The Totalitarian Left has now opted for ruling through regulators. It’s really their only option at this point.

You see, on the same night that the city hosted a conference with Nordic countries about “social sustainability” (talking to each other), “urban fabric” (city living) and “carbon footprint transference” (walking), the health department held a public hearing in the once working-class, now upwardly-mobile neighborhood where the foundry sits.

That hearing was about a plan to reduce the foundry’s steel production by 77 percent. And that would take away the one thing everyone says they want to create through manufacturing — middle-class jobs.

The plant’s opponents basically want the foundry out of Pittsburgh, a city once known for a skilled labor force that “made stuff.”

It is an aggressive effort by GASP (Group Against Smog and Pollution), funded by the Heinz Endowments to the tune of $350,000 in 2014, the same foundation funding the city’s conference with Nordic countries that local Democrat leaders hailed as the direction the region should go.

I’d love seeing a populist uprising against the Totalitarian Left. The Democratic Party of the 1950s had a strong libertarian streak to it. That Democratic Party loved building things. They, along with astute Republicans, built the interstate highway system.

Today’s Democratic Party worships at the altar of light rail, Cap and Trade and partial regulatory takings. That isn’t Americanism. That’s warmed over Europeanism, which is an unsavory broth.

It’s time for the Reagan Democrats to join the Republican Party, not because the GOP is a fantastic party without flaws, but because the Totalitarian Left isn’t, shouldn’t be their home. Reagan Democrats have as much in common with the Totalitarian Left as oil has with water.

Those ingredients don’t fit together.

Technorati: Pittsburgh, Allegheny River, Ohio River, Monongahela River, Coal-Fired Power Plants, Steel Mills, Blue Collar Jobs, Manufacturing, Totalitarian Left, Heinz Endowments, EPA, Minimum Wage, Democratic Party, Ronald Reagan, Reagan Democrats, Populist Uprising, TEA Party Awakening, Republican Party, Election 2016