General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How many DUers are old enough to have experienced our bad losses? [View all]Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)It's hard to find an ordinary person, conservative or liberal, who doesn't believe that the deck is stacked against the little person.
I used to live in an apartment complex in Portland that was home to a lot of wealthy and elderly Republicans. They were big donors to the R's, and in 1999, they told me that George W. Bush was going to be the nominee. All I knew of him was what Molly Ivins had written, so I asked, "Don't you have anyone better than that?"
"No," one woman insisted, "they had a breakfast meeting where they told us that Bush is going to be the nominee."
OK, so these were no fuzzy independents. In fact, one of them refused to speak to me after I wrote a letter to the paper supporting a Democratic candidate.
But even these Republicans were disturbed at the increasing corporatism in everyday life. They didn't like jobs being shipped overseas. They didn't like to see local businesses bought out by outside investors. They didn't like the way customer service had deteriorated.
Republicans appeal to the red states through SOCIAL conservatism. Democrats try to win on the basis of SOCIAL liberalism. Nobody but nobody appeals to ordinary people in terms of ECONOMIC liberalism.