Learn by the Doing

Learn by the Doing.

The Ever-changing Experimental Art of Politics

From AP raw news feed an article by Lisa Lera bemoans the downfall of the Democrat Party from the grass roots up under the leadership or lack thereof from Barack Obama.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_LEGACY_POLITICS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-12-24-09-52-32

All well and good. All true about the Obama Administration which didn’t seem to give a hoot about the “Community” he was so famous for “Organizing” once he got elected. Why should they? They had conquered the Mountain, time to move on to bigger things. All the info. Is out there about how that “Moving on” affected the Democrat Party. The Republicans won the “trifecta” of Governor, State and Senate in 25 states. The Dems have fallen to just 5 States since Obama first took office, because of that condescending self-righteous attitude toward those who worked for a living, towards those very people they claimed to represent.

Their State parties are falling into disarray. They were the trumpeted party of the people from the bottom up and now have turned into the Party of the Top Down. Their rallying cry is still “we are the party of the working class”. Problem is they have not lived up to that slogan in a long time and the people know it. They have lost touch with the working class. By not joining the battle in the trenches they lost the ability to learn from their mistakes at the lower level and it has finally turned the tables on them in the recent elections. They have lost most of the Middle Class.

They have forgotten how to “learn by the doing”. All the old clichés are true. By disengaging from the local struggles they have put themselves beyond being able to learn how to adapt to the ever changing nature of politics. Their lack of a sense of humor comes from this. They forgot how to “enjoy the journey”, because it was the journey they have forsaken. The “enjoy”-ment comes from “earned success” as Arthur C. Brooks calls it in his new book “The Conservative Heart”.

https://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Heart-Happier-Prosperous-America/dp/0062319752

I just got a used copy through Amazon and with shipping it was under $10. Since I’m a “Just the Facts Mam” kind of guys, I love this guy’s writings. His other books, “The Road to Freedom”, “Who Really Cares”, and “The Battle” are books I really like and own. This guy knows how to make a Conservative case to the most liberal of Americans.

Joe Biden saw it coming as did some others in the Democrat party. Michael Memoli wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times about Joe Biden and how Joe had seen the Democrats defeat coming after watching a Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre Pa. close to his hometown. Memoli quoted VP Biden as saying. “Son of a gun. We may lose this election,”…… “They’re all the people I grew up with. They’re their kids. And they’re not racist. They’re not sexist. But we didn’t talk to them.”

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-biden-interview-20161222-story.html

“Uncle Joe” Biden was one of the working class, grew up in that world brought those morals and spirit to the Obama administration. He was quickly marginalized and became the laughing boy of the Dems under the highbrow Obama Team.

Now the Dems are paying the price. The Republicans are in high cotton, riding a wave. So to my paranoid brain I ask the question, how do we lose that momentum?

The obvious way is to not fall into the trap that power lures us into. If we lose touch with the people we will end up losing what we’ve gained. Once in power (and we see it starting already a month before Trump is inaugurated) we must demand of our leader to stay away from the idea of “Divide and get conquered”. We too must shun anyone who does the same. Circular firing squad anyone?

Remember politics is all about Candidates. The strongest one wins. Kind of an evolution of the Darwinian Theory, where money is used instead of bullets. But money isn’t everything, Strategy is still all important. Hillary while spending twice as much as Trump was playing a war of attrition. Trump played the strategy game. He Blitzkrieged her. He let her have California and concentrated on his new version of the Wilsonian “whistle stop tour” winning the hearts of Middle America. From standing room only stadiums where tickets were free, he was all across the heartland wherever he thought he had any chance. He was tireless. For a billionaire he found a way to connect to working Americans in a way Hillary never did.

That’s the trap. How do we avoid it? If Trump stays true we must back him up. We need to keep in contact with the base. We need to be the party of connection. We are the ones that need to give the BBQ’s, picnics and stay in touch with our base. We need to preach that dreaded word unity. That is the word Dems took from us to cloak their division of America through “diversity”.

The Dems have a chance in Michigan for a Governorship. If he decides to run and the Dems let him Mike Duggan the Mayor of Detroit would be a hard man to defeat. He is a man that our Republican Gov. can deal with and likes to deal with. Why? Because Duggan gets to the problems and comes up with solutions. He is a guy willing to make the necessary mistakes you make by trying and learning from them. He is a doer. He in Oct said he wouldn’t run but now that a Republican won the Presidency and 2018, a mid term is historically a bad time for the party in power who knows? I would rather see Whitmer or Kildee be the Democrat candidate. Problem is we don’t have anyone who I’m excited about. Attorney General Bill Schuette is our best bet so far. I do hate the idea that he said some nasty things about Trump.

We also need to find a great Candidate to run against Debbie Stabenow for US Senate.

Democrats need to

1. Find good candidates at all levels. So do we. Candidates who have the best interest of the people as their primary interest.

2. The Democrats need to change direction and have their big donors work on the state parties instead of buying into spending the night in the Lincoln Bedroom and getting millions for their pet projects like Solyndra. Like they did for the first Obama election.

They can do that the way the Republicans did by getting back in touch with the ordinary people. Our big donors were willing to do that. Hope they remain that way. AFP funded by Koch brothers was good at recruiting the base and getting them focused. The last month of the 2016 campaign they totally shifted to the ground game. [Koch network moving away from TV ads in final campaign month to double-down on ground game].

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/16/in-major-shift-koch-operation-consolidates-network-of-advocacy-groups-into-americans-for-prosperity/?utm_term=.a7740346629b

Remember however it wasn’t the “Party” that got the base fired up but the outliers which in our case were the conservatives. All groups played a part like the Tea Party, Ron Paul, and other more single issue groups. Right to Life, NRA and you name it. It was with the help of the Koch Brothers and other big donors that we were able to unite and form a real ground game. Bottom line is that while there were no real leaders to pull all these groups together we had a nemesis we could rally behind - Obama. It worked finally. Romney couldn’t pull it off, the average Joe couldn’t quite believe him, didn’t think he was tough enough to actually fight for them. Heck he had a hard time standing up for himself. Mr. Trump had no such qualms. People saw he was tough and willing to fight for himself. They trusted him, they saw he was tough enough to fight for them.

Now it is our turn to find, back and fund/volunteer for candidates who will back Trump and his policies. He connected with us. He is now in the Lion’s Den, we need to keep in touch with him all the more to give him back the strength he gave to us.



Regards, Bob Carr
Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
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