Tear down existing border wall. Voting rights for sixteen year-olds. End private insurance. Universal basic income (including those who will not work). Live birth abortion. Abolish Electoral College. Expand the Supreme Court.
If you were to hand this list to a sampling of Americans who vote, but who may or may not pay attention to political affairs daily, what might they say about it?
Perhaps the replies would be, “these sound crazy” or “pipe dream” or “who supports this stuff?” Well, the list is just the beginning of the Democratic party’s 2020 platform, if you listen to the candidates in their own words.
The hard-left lurch of the Democratic party defies logic to those of us who follow politics. For example, which of the policies on the list is “Joe and Jane Blue Collar worker” from Ohio, Michigan, or Pennsylvania going to get so excited about that he/she would change their vote for President Trump in 2016 for a Kamala Harris, a Cory Booker, or an Elizabeth Warren type in 2020?
Even casual observers of politics would be inclined to note the Democrats learned nothing from the last election. Hillary Clinton failed to speak to the concerns of working-class Americans in The Rust Belt and paid the price for that ignorance. In other words, Clinton didn’t lose because she wasn’t liberal or socialist enough. She lost because she wasn’t mainstream enough. Clinton failed traditional, long-time “lunch bucket” Democrats. Unphased by this evidence in plain view, the current gang of 20 declared Democratic candidates appear to believe socialism is the key to victory in 2020.
Interestingly, President Trump performed well in 2016 across all demographic groups and all regions except the coasts. But it is widely accepted that support from blue collar workers in the upper Midwest put him over the top. Thus, “Joe and Jane Blue Collar worker” must now be wondering, “when did a screaming, Millennial progressive’s voice on a college campus become so loud that it has supplanted mine? Democrats would be wise to draft a new list of initiatives more in line with the free market and their traditional coalitions of Catholics, working people, and unions. Adherence to and insistence on the policies on the current pipe dream list is entirely at their own peril.
The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) is a senior benefits organization with 1.8 million members. Jeff Szymanski works in AMAC Political Communications.