My high school football team wasn’t very good.
I’m talking a winless-season-being-outscored-by-a-mile-every-game-my-senior-year not very good.
One bright spot was the halftime speeches of our coach. He left our hapless squad with a lifetime of stories about an up-and-coming gridiron general who couldn’t believe he was saddled with such a bunch of losers.
One halftime, after giving up about 30 points to the opposition and scoring none ourselves, this Master of Motivation entered the silent locker room beneath the bleachers and informed us, “They’re laughing at you!”
Sadly, though his observation was right on the mark, we then went back on the field and gave up another three or four touchdowns on that endless, rainy night.
I’ve been thinking about that long-ago locker room speech a lot lately, imagining that our Republican opponents gather in their subterranean lair and just before they hail the King of Darkness, share a good laugh at the inept Democrats before burning a cross or whatever the heck they do under their own bleachers.
Because seriously? We have to be told that most Hispanics don’t use the term “Latinx”?
That we shouldn’t frame our agenda in graduate-school jargon?
That you don’t have to choose between helping men and women get ahead?
That we shouldn’t have a donor retreat at the most expensive resort in the free world if we want to represent “working families”? (Cringiest term ever)
I don’t know when all this happened.
I got into this business because I thought that somebody had to stand up for all those parents sitting in the bleachers.
The parents without a college education, who had good jobs at the plant, owned a truck with a boat hitch, and saved up for the annual trip to Disneyland.
A few decades later, college grads can’t find jobs, trucks cost $70 grand, and Disneyland is fast becoming a haven for the ultra-wealthy just like everything else in America.
And what do us Democrats have to say about it?
You got me. I was there and I still couldn’t tell you what our plan is to help people who don’t read Daily Kos.
And still the cool kids keep rearranging the deck chairs.
“Let’s find the liberal Joe Rogan!”
“Let’s drop a few f-bombs!”
“Seriously, the liberal Joe Rogan!!”
As the connected consultants keep fleecing the declining number of wealthy people with a conscience, the other side just keeps running up the score.
Yeah, they’re definitely laughing at us.
I would.
In coming posts, I’ll try to identify some of the many things that are holding back Democrats from averting our slide into your favorite dystopian movie and maybe even offer a few solutions.
Yeah, I’m at the point where I’m so frustrated that I put my name on this.
How about you?
2,763 is designed to encourage candid discussions about how we let that dumbass win twice and how we can prevent similarly terrible things from happening in the future. I’d love to know what you think, if you disagree, and if there are other hard questions that you think should be on the table. Everything is fair game, because, well, it needs to be at this point.