From crazy back to Progressive

I am sure some of my conservative friends will say that 'Progressive is crazy no matter how much or little.' That is, of course, their opinion.

Slate wrote an article that summed up how our own despair over the results of the election have created the same sort of vacuum in our movement as that which allowed the rise of Alex Jones and his right-wing nutjobs. Their fear laced conspiracy theories allowed us all to lose focus while a dangerous demagogue with little actual remaining intelligence ascended to the most powerful position in the free world.

And we are on track to let him become a fascist with our own left-wing conspiracy theories. It is time to tell ourselves a harsh truth. It is our fault Trump is President. Not because we were fractured in the election, but because we 'poo-pooed' his base constituency.

And we are doing so yet again.

As we sit here and peddle in crazy conspiracies about the entire Republican party being investigated for being money launderers for the Russians, what are we doing to regain control of our senses? Nothing is the short answer.

We are still unfocused and undisciplined. We are demanding our representatives train their thoughts on investigations and yet at no point have we come together to discuss a strategy for moving forward. It is not enough to prove Trump was a Russian dupe or surrogate because the roots into which he tapped still exist. We are a country with festering racism, festering sores of animosity which have yet to heal.

What is the Democratic Party doing to put some salve on this sucking chest wound that fractured our nation? Right now, nothing. We have not yet demanded our party get to the bottom of how we let identity politics govern our plans and campaigns rather than focusing on our core: the workign man and woman.

All throughout the last two elections, we took for granted that reeling in more diversity, a constituency that encompassed men and women of color - the largest growing demographic in our nation - would be enough to continue winning elections.

Then we discovered just how wrong we were. We must get back to becoming an issue based party. We must heal ourselves, but we must do so quickly. We must mend those broken fences between the centrist Democrats and the Progressive Democrats. We must, and this is important, work to regain the trust of our lost voters.

Donald Trump is not President of the United States because he cared about the disenfranchised people of this nation. We spent so much time, myself included, on his temperament and character flaws and not enough time on his policy flaws.

Trump is no different than any other Republican; he may be a caricature of their agenda, but he is the same. Tax breaks for the wealthy and taking away vital social programs that keep our nation the best in the world. That's it, all of his other campaign slogans were just bombastic statements to tap into why some of the disenfranchised feel as if the nation has let them down. In his first 120+ days in office, not a single policy idea has come from the White House which will help those very people who elected him.

So what have we done about that growing disparity between his rhetoric and actions? Nothing. We have allowed Trump's 'look over there' deflection technique to dominate our conversation.

It's not the wall. it's not the Muslim Ban. It's not the Russia interference which will win the next election; it's still about those people who feel left behind. It is time to recapture our passion for the average person.