It seems that some people these days are beginning to interpret the Republican party as though it is an actual "underdog" party.This is not at all the truth. God almighty, not at all!
The Republicans, especially once you look at the recent history of them (like, say, the last 60 years or so) seem, to me, to be anything but an underdog party. Alas, many people still seem to think this, and a lot of the ideas are perhaps (I speculate) coming from the fact that, in terms of the so-called "culture wars", the Republicans do indeed seem to be "underdogs". After all, it is rather rare, when one looks towards television, movies, and especially music, to see a conservative Republican viewpoint represented.Almost all of the artists in this country -myself included, I would like to believe - are unabashedly not Republican. Conservatism is, after all, a bit antithetical when it comes to art, which is about doing new things and being different...
At any rate, like I said, people look at the culture wars that are happening on the streets, on the specific TV show they watch, or in their own homes, and they mistakenly think that the world they are seeing represented in those place is the one that is also represented in the political realms. This is where the big error happens. For example, I wrote before of how, growing up as a boy , I seriously believed that blacks were half the country, because they were half my own city and my own school. I also cetainly believed that blacks were fairly "powerful" when it came to industries like music and dance, and even fashion, because evey time I was hanging around in those places,blacks were not just present, but they were also even sort of dominant. When I walk to my local mall, it was "filled with blacks" shopping at stores that we often wouldn't go into ....because they were "black stores" selling clothes and sneakers that were "for blacks".
As a reuslt of this, you walk away thinking that this must be everywhere. This is a mistake of course, because it certainly is not the case. In fact, once you hit the Senate floor, for example, you would perhaps not even know that blacks were as much a part of this country as they are at all. And this point is one that I make in order to display how people see one thing represented in the reality right in front of them, and mistakenly believe that it is also represented in every sphere of society. It's not. At all. It certainly is not in the American politics. In fact, the real truth about American politics is that it is exactly the opposite of what many people seem to think it is: Liberalism is not at all the dominant philosophy in the United States political game, and it has, arguably, never been. Conservatism is the dominant philosophy. Rich, white boy, Christian themed conservatism. WASP conservatism. Even Roman Catholics, in fact, become a pretty rare sight to see, so it seems, once one starts perusing the United States political tale. It is a tale dominated by very specific people....
Hence the truth is that the liberals, and the Democrats who represent them, are and have been the real underdogs in the US story for some time, but they unfortunately don't get the chance to be properly "read" as underdogs, since all this confusion is happening with the culture wars. In fact, I would so far as to say that, not only are the Democrats serious political underdogs when it comes to all of this, but they are actually, to a degree, a "reviled" party that, once you're inside Washington, you start to see, very quickly, is totally denigrated and ignored.
It is also a party, I feel, that has suffered far worse blows than the Republicans have ever suffered in recent time. The biggest blow of all ,in my mind, was John Kennedys actual assassination. I am of the firm opinion that Kennedys assasination was not just a bullet that killed a specific man, like many peple interpret it as, but it was also a bullet that shot an entire party of underdogs. A party of underdogs and poor folks that, b ack then, in Kennedys time, was actually beginning to show its teeth and get seriously organized, for the first time. So what happened? They shot it to death, and after this shot went off, many people scattered, presumably in fear, and the party never really recovered completely after the shot. It got considerably weaker, in fact. It became even more of an underdog tale....
Look back, for instance, at just how few Democrats have been in office since Kennedy was assassinated in 1963: There was Lyndon B. Johnson, who was Kennedys Vice-President (and thus arguably not even a real win), then there was Jimmy Carter in the late 70's, Bill Clinton all the way in the 90s, and after Clinton, Barack Obama. After noticing this, you also must notice the next thing, in my opinion: For starters, Carter was only in office for a single term, Clinton was completely humiliated over the Monica Lewinsky thing (a scandal arguably begun by Republicans), and as for Barack, he was basically what they call a 'gridlocked" president...which means, in short, that he was unable to get anything done. Why? Because Republicans almost always seem to control the entire House of Representatives, Congress, and the Senate--thats why! So basically, you see, even the presidents that are Democratic and manage to get in, they often don't seem to be able to get anything that the Democrats want done, because they always have to "bow and scrape" at the heels of a bunch of Republicans who will not cooperate with them, often at all. For instance, when a Republican gets into office, like Trump now or Bush in the past, they basically get to run wild -- like a dog without a leash -- doing whatever they want.
They do not need to pay any mind to the Democratic politicans nor to the desires of the Democratic voter base. However, whenever someone like Carter, Clinton, or Obama gets in, you'll find that they always have to tow the line very carefully with the GOP. In a way, they always have to be "sort of conservative". Many conservatives might think, because of FOX news, that Obama was completely belligerent, for example, that he was as Democratic and as liberal as could be. It isn't true. Obama was actually one of the most bipartisan presidents ever in office: He was obsessed with trying to work with both parties, together. No Republicans ever do this. None of them. Ever. They are dogs without a leash, every single time. If Obama had boots and pants that were drenched in Republican oil, the Republican, you can be sure, doesn't have even have a scuff mark to be seen, of Democratic dirt....
And again...as I said before...don't forget what happened to the one Democrat who seemed like he would get that leash off and start being a "total liberal" in America's highest office: He was shot to death in the Deep South. Biographically speaking, Kennedy was very different, and much more liberal, than the other Democrats we've seen since. For example, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer in Georgia before taking office and Bill Clinton was from Arkansas. Two southerners, two quasi conservative stereotypes. Kennedy, on the other hand, was a northerner from Massachusetts. An Irishman with teeth and some grit, and a connection not to the farm world that Republicans obsesso ver, but rather to the grim industrial city. In my opinion, he was therefore considerably more of a "no holds barred" liberal than those other two Democrats we saw years later. Which is why, again, I personally speculate he was shot.....
From todays angle, however, it is a bit hard, for some, to read Kennedy as such a dastardly liberal, because he comes from the black and white past, and it's hard for many people in the modern day, to see liberalism in that past. But Kennedy was, at that point in time, arguably even more controversial than Obama was, in some respects. He also had far more power -- or could have had far more power--than Obama ever seemed like he was going to get. One needs to understand the legions that Kennedy had behind him, in order to understand the manner in which the Republican establishment was threatened by him enough to have him executed: Kennedy, in a very real sense, literally had next to all the Italians, all the Polish, all the Irish, all the workers, all the celebrities, all the blacks, and all the college boys and hippies, etc. This guy had the entire north behind him in a way we just don't see now.He also had a shocking number of southernes, too. It is not an exaggeration what I am saying here...people of all types, poor people of all colors, really came out en masse to support John Kennedy. The cities and even many suburbs then were on fire with love for this man..
As my reader can imagine, this was a serious coalition that he had behind him,and it's nothing like the fractured, mangled thing that is now the new Democratic alliance, which is really just made up of half the people I just listed...if that. In our own time, many celebrities support the Democrats, but many have also lost total interest in voicing any opinion. The South is radically--and I mean radically--anti Democrat. As for the college boys and the hippies, well, the hippies are all gone ...the Republicans slaughtered them and burned them out very fast, mostly during the Nixon administrations, and though the college boys are still there, it seems they've also been considerably fractured. As for the Italians, the Polish, and the Irish, those groups melted off, for the most part, into white suburbia (aka "Staten Island"), quickly went Republican. and completely (and very unwisely, I should add) betrayed their own best interests. (Much of the melting, it could be argued, happened as a direct result of Kennedys assassination, I sometimes feel). Hence, one quickly sees, the new Democratic alliance is basically just composed of blacks, Latinos, some collegiates, some celebrities, and some feminist women. Also LGBT. It is an entirely minority gathering now. As you might be able to guess, since the Democrats keep losing now, it's simply not enough. It's really an underdog thing now. More so than ever before. They have lost their fighter. They are showing up to heavyweight matches with a guy who weighs 95 pounds now. It's seriously a one hit knock out at this point.
The solution to all of this is and should be obvious: The people that have been lost to the Republican party, like the people in white suburbia, need to be brought back to the Democratic side. If they are not brought back, at least in part, then the Democrats can never hope to win. They'll keep losing, and losing, and losing, and we will keep getting trapped with these horrifically conservative folks like Trump and Bush and Mike Pence and so on. One good way to bring these people back, in my opinion, would be to remind them, as I wrote in the beginning of this piece, that the Democrats are still an underdog party, and not a dominant party. Working class people, in my experience, generally respect underdogs, and they'll root for them. It's the main reason they went for Kennedy (rather aggressively, I again add) all those years ago: They knew he was an underdog, and they couldn't wait to vote him in ,and see someone "like them" succeed. Legends abound about how a big Italian "greaseball" star like Frank Sinatra "...threw all the star power and weight he had behind Kennedy to win". He did this because he knew Kennedy was an underdog. There was a total awareness at that point in time, just like I feel there was total awareness that Obama was an underdog. It was obvious, and that's why won two terms, from 2008-2016...
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, even though she was a woman, just did not feel like an underdog, and she didn't talk like one, either. Hillary felt more like some sort of royal aristocrat who came from some very posh place and background, and she always seemed very tense, as well as vey distant, from the people. Clinton does not seem warm, she seems cold and aloof, and she always acted like she "knew" Washington very well. This was weird. Many people have written in detail about this already of course, about how Clinton felt like too much of a "Washington insider" to connect with the People, and Trump himself most cetainly took complete advantage of this. In fact, I sometimes think that Trump would have never run for the Oval Office at all, if he had not been fully aware that Clinton was going to wind up ultimately being the person he would face off against. Bernie Sanders was essentially not even a real contender from the get-go (and Sanders was also another one, who just seems far too aloof to connect with the People, in my opinion).
Everyone knew Clinton would be the Democratic contestant for 2016, Trump included, and so he ran, knowing full well how easy she would be to beat. The Clinton name has been tarnished since the 90s. These people were sabotaged by the Repiblicans in the 90s. Bill Clinton was made an absolute fool of -- turned into a clown -- just like many underdog Democrats often are. How on Earth did anyone think his wife would fare any better? Every time I think of it, it's just the most preposterous story I can think of. The moment I saw that the Democratic contest was between Sanders and Clinton, I knew the Democrats would not be ino ffice from 2016-2020. But the new Democrat alliance.... it just keeps choosing the worst people to represent itself... perhaps because it has been so pummeled into the ground and destroyed...and humiliated...after literally decades of losing key fights. The Democratic party is a bit like some old boxer now who just took so many hits to the head he can't help but stumble. He has suffered many concussions. He is not well. He slurs his speech. He picks horrible horses. Losers...
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