Before they decided to stick with the same leadership that got them into the smallest minority in Legislative representation in 60-years and a loss in the race for President for the first time in 32-years, Wisconsin Democrats talked a lot about “listening to people” in the run up to their state convention over the weekend. Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy was the most vocal of the Chairperson candidates saying that party members had to actually go out to areas where the Democrats have suffered the greatest losses and talk to those people about what has turned them off to voting Democrat. That strategy was rejected by delegates–who decided to keep Martha Lanning as Chair–and her strategy of “blame everyone else for our problems”.
While Mayor Kennedy may have had good intentions in trying outreach to disaffected voters across the state–and not just serving up platitudes for the hard-core liberals of Dane and Milwaukee counties–nobody in his party is interested in hearing what the majority of Wisconsin residents elsewhere have to say. And I know that by the efforts that have been put in by liberals to discredit the beliefs and opinions of anyone not involved in their groupthink.
One of the main strategies of the Left in recent years has been to control the language of all debates on issues. “Debates” may actually be an exaggeration of common political discourse today–as liberals have developed one- or two-word ‘shut downs” of any opposing views. Personally, I speak from a position of “white privilege” in the discussion of any and all social matters. My thoughts on gender issues are discredited by “male privilege”. My believe in enforcement of immigration laws is “racism”. My desire to fight terrorism is “Islamophobia”. Questioning tax increases, student loan forgiveness, using health insurance as a subsidy program and myriad other economic issues is just plain “greed”.
So why would the party that his built its entire platform on discrediting all beliefs other than those held by its most hard-core members want to actually come out and talk to people like me? Especially when it feels so much better to just lecture us on our “ignorance and intolerance”. I’d love to have a good old-fashioned conversation about topics–instead of being “shut down” after two sentences. I really enjoy watching our recent college graduates struggle to tell me what they consider to be the ideal global mean temperature to maintain as part of our “climate change prevention efforts”. Or to have people that work in education fumble to come up with the spending per pupil level that would “fix our schools”. Or to help a “concerned citizen” realize that the taxes that they raised to pay for “health care for all” they had already spent on “free college education for all” just a few sentences ago.
But alas, the idea of “listen to the people” was rejected in Madison over the weekend. I guess they are just going to try “it’s the white guy’s fault” for another election cycle.
