Montana Gov. Steve Bullock likes to brag that he is the “only Democrat in the country to get re-elected in a state where Donald Trump won” in the 2016 election.
“… 20 to 30% of my voters, also voted for Donald Trump,” Bullock said in a speech at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 16, Montana Public Radio reports.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock
Asked how he managed to win the governor’s race while Trump was taking Big Sky Country by 20 percentage points, Bullock explained:
“[F]irst of all, I showed up in places where there just wasn’t Democrats. I engaged and I listened.”
And that right there is a huge part of the Democratic Party’s problems today.
Wholly incapable of challenging President Trump’s connection with working class America, Dems have instead disengaged and retreated into a comfortable world filled with fantasies about female-led blue waves, crazy tirades on the usual racial identity politics, and Lenin-esque moves to establish a monolithic party line on gun control.
Reaching Out
While seeming to deny his party’s startling lurch to the left, Bullock admits Democrats have boxed themselves into an urbanite political ghetto.
“The Democratic Party didn’t necessarily change, we just haven’t been able to figure out the ways to be speaking to people off of the coasts,” he told Iowans.
“And if we can’t speak the language of Iowa or Michigan or Wisconsin or others; even if you get an electoral majority you’re never going to have a governing majority.”
Bullock is trying to be a voice of reason among Democrats. But this is a party so far out of touch with everyday Americans that even stated attempts to build bridges wind up revealing a hardcore hostility toward those who do not share progressive political beliefs.
Smug Disconnect
Andrew Levison, writing for Washington Monthly, attempted to buttress Bullock’s ideas in an article bluntly titled “What Democrats Still Don’t Get About Winning Back the White Working Class.”
Unfortunately for his thesis, Levison’s arrogant disregard for the intellectual capacities of these working-class voters showcases the classic pretentious liberal’s Achilles Heel that will keep insufferable Democrats stuffed in their narrow urban-enclave shoeboxes until humility and sanity can overcome conceit and self-righteousness.
How’s this for obnoxious:
The basic problem is that both progressives and the Democratic establishment are using the same conventional model of “political choice” that is presented in civics textbooks and academic political science—that voters basically make up their minds by comparing the platforms of different candidates and choosing the one with which they most closely agree. Of course, anyone who follows politics knows that’s not the whole story; poor and working-class Republican voters in particular routinely support candidates whose policies are not in their actual economic self-interest.
You see, only Democrats can intelligently weigh the issues and reach the proper conclusions. You poor conservative slobs just can’t figure out what’s good for you.
And this is the guy arguing for reaching out to working-class Republicans!
Marooning Themselves
Further showing how isolated Gov. Bullock remains in his own party is the decision by Missouri Democrats to quickly pull back the hand of friendship that it had just extended to pro-lifers.
“In July, the Missouri Democratic Party voted to add an amendment to its platform welcoming ‘a diversity of views on abortion,’ the RiverFront Times reports.
“But it didn’t leave the welcome mat out for long: On [Aug. 11], the state committee reversed course, voting overwhelmingly to delete the controversial addition.”
In fact, the vote was unanimous.
Missouri Democratic Party chairman Stephen Webber
Missouri Democratic Party chairman Stephen Webber found alienating anti-abortion voters to be a winning strategy for the party.
“We got it right, and the final product is something that can unify the whole party,” he told the Kansas City Star.
Great, another batch of voters they can throw out the window.
“I think that a good chunk of [Trump] voters, they might have had to overlook things that they didn’t necessarily like about me, but they know that I would be fighting to try to make their lives better,” Bullock said in Iowa.
America’s working-class voters can’t overlook the fact that the Democratic Party despises their values and concerns and sees their continued existence as a problem to be overcome instead of a constituency that needs to be embraced.
