If journalism has produced an authentic American voice in the last decade, it is Salena Zito who writes for the Washington Examiner. She wanders the two lane highways and small towns, mostly in the Rust Belt, listens to the people others don’t notice, and tells their stories.
On this Election Day she writes an elegy for the Democratic Party, which for decades represented the people about whom she writes. She identifies four milestones in that party’s decline.
Zito begins with the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, which hurt so many working people directly and indirectly. Her second is the godawful mess that leaving Afghanistan became.
The third was Biden’s Leni Riefenstahl speech in Philly where he said half the country were racist extremists, echoing Hillary’s “deplorables.” And the fourth was a photo of a soot-covered coal miner watching a basketball game with his spotless young son, an image that captures for Zito the America that bicoastals have no concept of, one that works hard and enjoys small pleasures. See her conclusion.
The Democratic Party and the cultural curators in this country that run our institutions, academia, national media, corporations, Hollywood , and our sports entities have forgotten that these people vote — no matter how much pressure you place on them, no matter how much you look down on them or call them names or believe you know better than them or think they should just deal with high prices or accept dangerous crime in their communities.
The Democrats need a much better message to appeal to voters the next time a big election is held — one that is aspirational, nondivisive, and truly inclusive.
That wasn't their message this year.
’Nuff said.
