Open Letter To Democrats, part II

Hey y'all. It's me again. You got a minute? Of course you do. I mean you must, because during every moment of the past ten years I've been told that "it isn't the time" for this discussion. Emotions have been running high for so long, and although it's not like your emotions have been recently assuaged, maybe you can see now is a good time to tone down the conversation and not break Godwin's law in the first sentence.

"How could this have happened?" I see repeated all over the internet today. Well, I'm here to tell you. It all began when Obama took office and filled his cabinet directly from an email sent from Citigroup, and it just went downhill from there.

I write this from the perspective of a left-leaning DemExiter. While The Right agrees with me on a lot, my criticisms are borne from a leftist ideology. Bear in mind there are two ways to gauge Obama's successes and failures: 1) from the point of view of an ideological leftist who helped him get elected, and 2) from the POV of an American who did not vote for him. By the end of Obama's first four years, he had served the latter better than the former, that is he catered to oligarchs and big business and delivered scraps to the base. I did not vote to reelect him.

Clinton's 2016 campaign was predicated on goading the radicals out of the woodwork by using Bernie as a surrogate. But nobody told Bernie. Unsurprisingly, feelings were hurt and the 2016 Democratic convention did nothing to repair those relationships. There was a big argument about allowing independents and Sanders supporters onto the platform committee; the campaign's position was that this was a Democratic platform and they could vote for it or go pound sand. Surprise! Guess what they chose to do?

Clinton's loss was the left flexing. They were saying 'no' to rigged primaries where an ex president was allowed to electioneer inside polling locations. They were saying 'no' to neoliberal corruption. They were saying 'no' to being excluded from shaping the platform. The problem was that Hillary never took responsibility for her loss. There was no mea culpa, or apology, or recognition that she was a client of her own agency.

If you want to know "how this could have happened?" dear reader, this was the moment. Failure to recognize and relieve the pressures that decided the 2016 election was a fatal error. It was only due to 4 years of Trump fatigue that we were able to elect Joe Biden, but he quickly reminded us of Obama's shortcomings.

Now this brings us to the heart of the problem, which is Donald J. Trump. Before we go any further I'd like to ask you what he did in his first term that makes you think this is the end of the world right now? I suspect you can't put your finger on it. But you know it's bad. You know this because they tell you this 24/7 and they have been telling you this for nearly a decade.

I once worked for a company that could predict a brand's sales based on the number of mentions on the TV news. Ever since Trump won the nomination the first time, we've been getting hammered with the notion of "orange man bad." I first noticed it when CNN edited the video frame to make Trump look like a boor when he dumped his fish food into the koi pond. It has been going on incessantly all the way up until Tuesday.

The collective consciousness of the Democratic left has lost its mind, and I blame MSNBC and CNN. I wrote something about this back in June after Biden bombed the debate, when a majority of Democrats polled said they believed Biden should stay in the race. How could you? It makes me very uncomfortable to watch that debate, and to think that a majority of Democrats wanted him to continue. Their response to Biden being incapacitated was that he's still better than Trump, ha ha. Perhaps it was the recent memory of Morning Joe assuring them that this was the Best Biden Ever™ which solidified their opinions.

It was then that you showed your hand as not being serious or rational. Party leaders had ignored calls to replace Biden for years, then they just slipped Kamala into the position. Don't get me wrong: They didn't have a choice. Snubbing traditional presidential succession for the first black female candidate is unforgivable, and it would be an admission that she has spent the better part of 4 years being completely unqualified for the job. No, it had to be Kamala, but doing it without a pretense of public opinion revealed their ulterior roadmap.

When it's all said and done, it looks like 14 million fewer people voted in 2024 than in 2020 and I count myself among them. Before anyone starts to berate me, let me say that I am just one person. You are looking for 6-20 million votes. You are blaming me for the candidate's shortcomings.

So who suppressed the democrats' turnout? They did. They did this to themselves. The constant gaslighting liberated the observant while turning the faithful insane. After that it became a matter of self destruction.

There's spin, such as in the Tony Hinchcliffe incident, and then there's insanity, as when Trump was attacked over accusations that he suggested Liz Cheney face a firing squad. He did no such thing. Even Bill Maher couldn't side with that nonsense. Literal truths such as Trump praised Hitler's generals have been distorted beyond the definition of hyperbole.

Something has taken grip on the narrative to the point where such nonsense can be peddled without batting an eye. What should have been considered shameful and deceitful was absorbed as fact.

I think the bar was set to a new low when 60 minutes producers edited and spliced a CBS interview with Kamala Harris, changing one of the answers which had been previously aired on Face The Nation. Outrageously, CBS doubled down on their explanation, claiming both responses were part of a lengthy answer (they weren't, the answer used on 60 minutes was shown earlier in the FTN episode).

We were told that Trump intended to use the Justice Department to pursue his enemies, when he was the one convicted for conspiracies which the prosecutor could not prove an underlying crime. It was Trump who was summarily removed from the ballot without due process.

A 40 year old GOP playbook that gets rehashed every few years is suddenly a novel movement within the Trump campaign to reshape America.

I gotta ask, what were we supposed to think after all this? After all the lying, the hysteria, the hypocrisy, the manipulation, a.k.a. gaslighting?

It was bad enough that they ignored calls for a robust primary, and then installed a candidate who had never earned a vote. Or that she avoided the issues and ran an identity politics campaign. Or that the substance of her campaign is "Trump is a Fascist!"

We can forgive her for running a bad campaign. What the handlers couldn't change is that Kamala is just not a likeable person. Even my 10 year old niece knows that laughing at your own jokes is a fatal character flaw. What kind of support group of people does one hang out with in order to develop such an odious tick? Donald Trump's character flaw is that he adores himself. Kamala's character flaw is that she detests herself. I think that's the lens which you have to view her actions.

Those of you who have worked on a political campaign know it's a labor of love, even for those who are getting paid. The committment level of these people earns my respect, even if I think their intentions are a bit misguided. On election night Kamala Harris gave an Irish goodbye - left her celebration party and slunk out the back door. I think that is a perfect representation of her cowardly and ungrateful campaign.