Every week I spend several hours with someone whose politics are almost diametrically opposed to mine.\u00a0 And I mean that literally.\u00a0 Left, right.\u00a0 Up, down.\u00a0 You name it.\u00a0 And interestingly we get along fine.\u00a0 Now, we never talk politics, never.\u00a0 Because we know that all we could possibly do is disagree.\u00a0 So, we stick to business and to things that are universally human.\u00a0 We love our families and we want our town to win the soccer games against the neighboring towns.\u00a0 Nothing more controversial than that.<\/p>\n
But even when all we are talking about is work, other things creep in.\u00a0 And even when we are avoiding \u201ccurrent events\u201d it\u2019s hard not to let anxiety about the state of things surface.\u00a0 Neither of us want to say much because we\u2019re both avoiding putting a spin on what is fueling this anxiety.\u00a0 But I think there was an \u201cunspoken agreement\u201d that we both feel that things are very, very not good.\u00a0 And then she said something kind of odd, \u201cDo you think that we\u2019re reaching the end of one or both of the major parties?\u201d\u00a0 I tried to finish off this almost non-conversation by saying, \u201cWell, maybe it\u2019s not as bad as it seems.\u00a0 Maybe every generation is like this and it\u2019s not as bad as we think and things will just muddle along as they are now.\u201d\u00a0 And that was the end of the talk.\u00a0 We moved onto Dunwich trivia.<\/p>\n
But this got me thinking.\u00a0 I think I see signs that things are very not good in the Blue States.\u00a0 When the true believers start to wonder if things can go on the way they\u2019re going without a change of party there is something very, very wrong.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to blow this out of proportion or start putting money on some collapse theory.\u00a0 But I get the definite feeling that all is far from well within the Democrat Party.\u00a0 If I were to guess I think the socialists and the populists on the Left are eroding the \u201ccenter\u201d of the Democrat party to such an extent that a lot of the old guard don\u2019t recognize what their party has become and are very worried by this change.<\/p>\n
Maybe a good example is what is happening in the Democrat Senate race in Maine.\u00a0 Governor Janet Mills was the establishment favorite to be the Democrat candidate to run against the Republican incumbent Susan Collins.\u00a0 Graham Platner who is an oyster farmer, a Marine veteran and Harbor Master of the town of Sullivan is the Bernie Sanders candidate.\u00a0 Mills attacked him based on his comments on Reddit about rape and violence and because he has a tattoo on his chest that resembles a nazi symbol (a Totenkopf).\u00a0 But just last week she dropped out of the race and Platner is now the leading Democrat candidate.\u00a0 Platner is a socialist and a populist and typifies the new Democrat direction.\u00a0 Now someone like Platner would frighten a lot of old Democrats, especially the women.\u00a0 The violent rhetoric, the adoption of a pro-Gaza, anti-Semitic stance, the pro-gun talk are frightening and confusing to a lot of these Democrats.\u00a0 So, I think the question I heard was an honest one and means there is a lot of fear about what is going on in their party.<\/p>\n
Of course, that\u2019s not that different from what is going on with the Republicans.\u00a0 Populist candidates are primarying establishment hacks like John Cornyn in Texas.\u00a0 So maybe this is all just part of the increasing polarization of the country.\u00a0 But maybe saying \u201cjust\u201d the polarization is minimizing just how dire the situation really is.<\/p>\n
Let me end this by saying there is fear and confusion throughout our country and we\u2019re going to have to let it all play out before we know just how bad the crack-up will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every week I spend several hours with someone whose politics are almost diametrically opposed to mine.\u00a0 And I mean that literally.\u00a0 Left, right.\u00a0 Up, down.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2230,39,1437],"class_list":["post-36787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-populism","tag-socialism"],"yoast_head":"\n