Growing up here, Chester County felt comfortably Republican. Sure, there were Democrats sprinkled here and there, but all the elected positions were held by Republicans, and for regional, statewide, and national elections, the county was consistently bright red. When I was 11, President Ronald Reagan won 49 states in his reelection bid. From here, it was easy to imagine that the whole country was Republican.
When people used to ask why I switched parties, I would say that as I grew older, I moved to the left while the GOP moved to the right. Truthfully, the world’s pundits could fill a library about what it means to be “to the right” without ever repeating a single thought. I used to think it meant lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, and more personal freedom.
But in my lifetime, while every GOP president has tried to cut taxes, not a single one has balanced the budget (only Bill Clinton managed that), with Reagan adding more debt than any other president (and in second place: President George W. Bush). As for personal freedom, being politically conservative is often also entwined with being socially conservative. George W. Bush backed a law banning gay marriage during his reelection campaign, Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court helped strike down a right that had stood for nearly 50 years, and now the solidly Republican states of Oklahoma and Louisiana require Christian doctrine in their public schools. I guess “personal freedom” is subjective.
In spite of all of this, I find myself incredibly disappointed in the Democratic party in this moment.
They have not started heading in a different direction from me. Or from America it seems. As Catherine Rampell pointed out in these pages just over a week ago, YouGov ran a blind test of 28 proposals from both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, and to no one’s surprise, while 27 of 28 Biden’s proposals enjoyed popular support, only nine of Trump’s 28 proposals mustered more support than opposition.
Anyone who has lived in Chester County over the last three decades has witnessed first-hand how the county has shifted from bright red to purple and is trending towards blue. There is a simple explanation: the Democrats are listening to the voters and crafting policies accordingly.
The Republicans? They bring us proposals like abolishing tenure for public school teachers, sending the U.S. military into Mexico to fight drug cartels, giving the president control over independent regulatory agencies, cutting taxes on corporations, none of which were even popular among Trump’s own supporters.
No, the Democrats’ problem is not policy. I believe that the Democrats have their finger on the pulse of the majority of Americans. What is disappointing about the Democrats is their inability to convince voters that their voices are being heard by someone because they are too busy dealing with unnecessary distractions.
Biden’s debate performance has crowded out all meaningful discussions about the policy differences between the two presumptive nominees. Yet this runs far deeper. Win or lose, in four years the party will have to find another standard bearer, but since Barack Obama’s time in the Senate, there has been no talent development within the party. No attempt to use the Vice Presidency to boost the prominence of Kamala Harris. No rising stars in the cabinet. No senators ready to be plucked for their soaring oratory. While I like Governor Josh Shapiro, he is pretty new to the job and from this distance, the other governors all appear like dim stars, just as Shapiro must to voters in other states.
The Republican party has built its whole brand on unpopular policy positions going all the way back to Reagan’s trickle-down economics (which his own vice president called, “voodoo economics”). That nine of Trump’s proposals found popular support is more shocking than that his 19 other proposals were whiffs. There probably hasn’t been a more anti-majoritarian leader in American politics since King George. On top of which, a jury of his peers convicted Trump as a felon, and that follows another jury finding him liable for sexual abuse.
But here we are talking about whether Biden is too old.
This election would be a slam-dunk wrapped in a homerun for almost any reasonable Democrat. The fact that it is not is the real disappointment of the Democratic Party.
Will Wood is a small business owner, veteran, and half-decent runner. He lives, works, and writes in West Chester.
Source: Berkshire mont
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