Oklahoma cowboy philosopher Will Rogers said it best a century ago: "I belong to no organized political party; I am a Democrat."
That's as true today as it was then.
A few short weeks ago, it was the Republican Party in disarray. It still is, but there is nothing like winning to paper over fault lines between the tea party, evangelicals, Trumpites and the traditional Republican establishment, at least for a while. For now, they are enjoying their honeymoon, gloating over an illusory mandate to rid the nation of the last vestiges of FDR's New Deal and the imaginary horrors of the Obama Administration.
The responsibility of governing should bring them back to earth.
Meanwhile, as the Republicans gloat, it's Democrats who are milling around, casting about for a way forward.
The answer to "what went wrong?" is easy. Everything that could have gone wrong did. And for those of us card-carrying Democrats, we have long been fed up with our Democratic politicians' lack of spine and inability to so much as convince the Tin Man to come in out of the rain. This, especially since Democrats have traditionally been champions of the middle class.
Democrats are responsible for Social Security on which so many retirees, especially those of lower income, depend. Democrats championed the right of labor to have a seat at the table and have fueled the rise of the middle class after WWII. Democrats are responsible for Medicare that not only benefits senior citizens, but takes younger people off the hook for having to cover huge medical expenses of their parents and grandparents.
Not all was peaches and cream during the post-WWII era, especially for African Americans. But it was a white southern Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, who is responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making inroads into the Jim Crow era that kept many Americans from fully participating in the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship.
The Democratic Clinton Administration produced the first federal budget surpluses in decades. Never mind that conservative columnist George Will asserted that Bill Clinton was "just lucky." Or that then-congressman John Kasich claims full responsibility for those budget surpluses. Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan.
President Obama inherited the Bush Recession, the most dangerous financial debacle since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was President Obama who, with the aid of a mild stimulus plan, and saving General Motors, saved the economy and the financial system from total collapse.
And it was Democrats who, over total opposition of Republicans, made health care available to over 20 million Americans who previously were left in the cold. Instead of praise, and receiving cooperation from Republicans to fix the inevitable glitches of the plan, he has been ruthlessly beat up and blamed by Republicans and the media for rising health care costs.
Political campaigns are not economics classes where logical questions would include, "What would be the situation without Obamacare, in terms of numbers of uninsured, use of emergency rooms, and insurance premiums?" In politics, correlation becomes causation. The rooster crows and the sun rises; ergo, the rooster caused the sun to rise. When the train approaches, our dog barks, and the train goes away; ergo ... well you get the idea.
While the Democrats are not pure as the driven snow, they have accomplished much to improve American lives. But in politics, memories are short. "Good enough, Democrats, but what have you done for us lately? And, what are you going to do for us in the future, especially, for those of us left behind?"
Enter Donald Trump. He had a message, however disingenuous, that resonated with enough Americans to win the Electoral College.
Forget the alibis. The Clinton campaign knew the rules - majority vote doesn't get you there if you don't win the Electoral College. That Clinton majority vote simply means that the Republicans don't have the popular mandate they think they have.
The Clinton campaign totally miscalculated. Nobody imagined that Wisconsin would play a pivotal role in this campaign. But the handwriting was on the wall. While Wisconsin voted Democratic in recent presidential elections, it was by the thinnest of margins in 2012. Sending Mrs. Clinton's daughter to preach to the choir in Madison doesn't cut it. How about visiting the union shops in Milwaukee and reaching out to those rural Wisconsin counties that went for Obama in 2008 and 2012? You surely cannot attribute to racism those votes switching from Obama to Trump.
Vice President Biden nailed it early on. He reminded anyone who was listening that missing in those Clinton rallies were people that looked like his father, men and women with hard hats, coming off the shop floor and construction sites.
Secretary Clinton had the money, the demographics, the organization, the experience and the talent going for her. But Trump, however disingenuously, had the message.
Constructively addressing issues of lost manufacturing jobs in a changing, technologically advancing economy is a tough call. Trump's blatant bribe, with the aid of Governor Pence, to keep some jobs for Carrier in Indiana, while more of them go to Mexico without the promised penalty, puts the lie to Trump's solemn vows and reminds us of media reluctance to hold him to account.
Have Democrats learned anything from this total fiasco? The short answer is "no." House Democrats have just reelected San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader, over Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan of the Akron/Youngstown district, heart of the Rust Belt.
Pelosi served well. But complementing Senate Minority Leader, New York's Chuck Schumer, with a House Minority Leader from San Francisco sends the wrong message to working class Middle America. Without speaking to working class and rural America with credibility, Democrats will continue to flounder.
Gloating pompous Republican politicians inevitably overreach. Democrats, indeed, the nation, can't afford to wait for that.
- John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
That's as true today as it was then.
A few short weeks ago, it was the Republican Party in disarray. It still is, but there is nothing like winning to paper over fault lines between the tea party, evangelicals, Trumpites and the traditional Republican establishment, at least for a while. For now, they are enjoying their honeymoon, gloating over an illusory mandate to rid the nation of the last vestiges of FDR's New Deal and the imaginary horrors of the Obama Administration.
The responsibility of governing should bring them back to earth.
Meanwhile, as the Republicans gloat, it's Democrats who are milling around, casting about for a way forward.
The answer to "what went wrong?" is easy. Everything that could have gone wrong did. And for those of us card-carrying Democrats, we have long been fed up with our Democratic politicians' lack of spine and inability to so much as convince the Tin Man to come in out of the rain. This, especially since Democrats have traditionally been champions of the middle class.
Democrats are responsible for Social Security on which so many retirees, especially those of lower income, depend. Democrats championed the right of labor to have a seat at the table and have fueled the rise of the middle class after WWII. Democrats are responsible for Medicare that not only benefits senior citizens, but takes younger people off the hook for having to cover huge medical expenses of their parents and grandparents.
Not all was peaches and cream during the post-WWII era, especially for African Americans. But it was a white southern Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, who is responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making inroads into the Jim Crow era that kept many Americans from fully participating in the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship.
The Democratic Clinton Administration produced the first federal budget surpluses in decades. Never mind that conservative columnist George Will asserted that Bill Clinton was "just lucky." Or that then-congressman John Kasich claims full responsibility for those budget surpluses. Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan.
President Obama inherited the Bush Recession, the most dangerous financial debacle since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was President Obama who, with the aid of a mild stimulus plan, and saving General Motors, saved the economy and the financial system from total collapse.
And it was Democrats who, over total opposition of Republicans, made health care available to over 20 million Americans who previously were left in the cold. Instead of praise, and receiving cooperation from Republicans to fix the inevitable glitches of the plan, he has been ruthlessly beat up and blamed by Republicans and the media for rising health care costs.
Political campaigns are not economics classes where logical questions would include, "What would be the situation without Obamacare, in terms of numbers of uninsured, use of emergency rooms, and insurance premiums?" In politics, correlation becomes causation. The rooster crows and the sun rises; ergo, the rooster caused the sun to rise. When the train approaches, our dog barks, and the train goes away; ergo ... well you get the idea.
While the Democrats are not pure as the driven snow, they have accomplished much to improve American lives. But in politics, memories are short. "Good enough, Democrats, but what have you done for us lately? And, what are you going to do for us in the future, especially, for those of us left behind?"
Enter Donald Trump. He had a message, however disingenuous, that resonated with enough Americans to win the Electoral College.
Forget the alibis. The Clinton campaign knew the rules - majority vote doesn't get you there if you don't win the Electoral College. That Clinton majority vote simply means that the Republicans don't have the popular mandate they think they have.
The Clinton campaign totally miscalculated. Nobody imagined that Wisconsin would play a pivotal role in this campaign. But the handwriting was on the wall. While Wisconsin voted Democratic in recent presidential elections, it was by the thinnest of margins in 2012. Sending Mrs. Clinton's daughter to preach to the choir in Madison doesn't cut it. How about visiting the union shops in Milwaukee and reaching out to those rural Wisconsin counties that went for Obama in 2008 and 2012? You surely cannot attribute to racism those votes switching from Obama to Trump.
Vice President Biden nailed it early on. He reminded anyone who was listening that missing in those Clinton rallies were people that looked like his father, men and women with hard hats, coming off the shop floor and construction sites.
Secretary Clinton had the money, the demographics, the organization, the experience and the talent going for her. But Trump, however disingenuously, had the message.
Constructively addressing issues of lost manufacturing jobs in a changing, technologically advancing economy is a tough call. Trump's blatant bribe, with the aid of Governor Pence, to keep some jobs for Carrier in Indiana, while more of them go to Mexico without the promised penalty, puts the lie to Trump's solemn vows and reminds us of media reluctance to hold him to account.
Have Democrats learned anything from this total fiasco? The short answer is "no." House Democrats have just reelected San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader, over Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan of the Akron/Youngstown district, heart of the Rust Belt.
Pelosi served well. But complementing Senate Minority Leader, New York's Chuck Schumer, with a House Minority Leader from San Francisco sends the wrong message to working class Middle America. Without speaking to working class and rural America with credibility, Democrats will continue to flounder.
Gloating pompous Republican politicians inevitably overreach. Democrats, indeed, the nation, can't afford to wait for that.
- John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
