I’m into Bernie Sanders’ and AOC’s Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It is the one thing that genuinely gets me excited in a good way about modern politics.
Because, and I know I’m not alone in saying this, enough is enough. It’s time for the next version of Occupy. Things have gotten way WAY worse, and not better at all, in terms of the the power of the very rich dictating to the rest of society since the original Occupy.
And when I see media coverage of them speaking in places like Montana and Utah and Idaho, I’m thinking to myself, about fucking TIME some folks on the left talk to the people of these states about the way things are actually working against the working person.
So it came as a big surprise when I heard some folks on MSNBC talking about this. One of them was a TV journalist who just interviews people all the time about politics, and the other represented the Democratic party. I don’t remember their names and so I can’t find the clip, but it went something like this:
Journalist: why are Bernie and AOC in Utah? Isn’t that a super red state? They have no chance to help elect a Dem! There’s not even a viable candidate nor an election!
DNC rep: Well, my theory is that they are there to get media coverage, and after all we are talking about them.
Journo: Oh, that makes sense.
This, to me, is a great illustration of one of the many things that the Democrats have really really wrong. At some point in the distant past, they stopped thinking about voters. Instead they started looking at numbers, and polls, and focusing very narrowly on incremental elections and surgical strikes into purple states.
In other words, I don’t think it occured to either of these people that Bernie and AOC are actually there to talk to actual people with actual problems, and trying to persuade those folks by paying actual attention to them and their problems, even though they are not going to be living in a blue state tomorrow.
This blindness to how people actually are makes the poll-watchers super blind to what really matters in terms of changing people’s minds. And it’s a widespread illness for so many folks you see on TV. They literally don’t see the point of talking to people who live in red states. And that’s why the red states get deeper red and will continue to if those folks are in charge. Yeesh.
