I can’t lie. I’m excited about a Trump presidency.
He will probably do some fun, interesting things. I’m hoping for more self-driving Teslas driving around, smashing into plate glass windows. I’m hoping for Amazon drones falling on old ladies walking to church. The deregulation that he’ll do for business should be entertaining and creative.
But he’s not going to help workers. They read into his words just like I read into Barrack Obama’s “Hope” message. I mistakenly believed it meant one thing. But it meant something completely different.
Trump is a carnival barker that sells what the people want. It’s a work of art. I love watching him work. It’s amazing.
Trump wears the mask of a populist who promises things that won’t actually come true. He’s just going to support big business like all the other Democrats and Republicans. The house always wins.
This is what he leaned into:
He understands what those lines mean to a majority of people.
Democrats are living in a bubble of pacified contentment that leads to moderate policies that do nothing to change those two lines.
The people who make up the Democratic core don’t know people who live the pain of those two lines.
Wanna play a quick game?
Write down five people in your circle of influence. Then, write down their gender, income, race, and age.
I can predict what that is going to look like for most of you. It’s going to look a lot like you are surrounded by a hall of mirrors. You live in an echo chamber. It’s just more comfortable that way. We all like to smell our own farts. And our core friends’ farts smell real similar.
This is me and Greg:
He and I put hinges and a latch on that fence behind us this past Friday.
He has a really severe speech impediment. It’s super hard to understand him. But I know one thing for certain: Greg can build shit. He knows how to use all kinds of tools and his strategy for doing this job was spot on.
Greg is an extreme example of a large swath of Americans. We need to ask why the hell is Greg homeless? Why is he living in the woods somewhere?
Democrats want to talk about electric cars, eliminating oil usage, free college, and GMO-free food.
Greg just wants a god damn job.
Do you see the disconnect?
According to Gallup, 7.6% of US adults identified as LGBTQ in 2023.
According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly half (49.7%) of American renter households spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs, meaning almost half of all renters are considered “cost-burdened.”.
Do you see how a shit ton of people are over it?
After homelessness, abortion and women’s rights are my second most important issues. It’s why I voted for Kamala Harris. But ask my wife, she and I both agreed the day of the election that it didn’t look good for her. I didn’t think she was going to win (for many reasons).
But the way Democrats are going about addressing this existential threat for them is a real good way to get American women back in the kitchen, pregnant. (Democrats aren’t going to push too hard against it either. Corporations (and consequently, both parties) want more Americans to fill out the labor pool. Sure, they’ll yell a lot. But they’ll let legislation pass that leads to more women getting pregnant and not working. Wait and see.)
It’s simple. If you want a friend be a friend.
If you want LGBTQ rights, help the blue-collar workers in your city make more money. They don’t want handouts. They want respectable work that pays the bills.
But man, Democrats are going to have to have a radical shift fast. It just came over that Donald Trump offered Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, the role of U.N. ambassador in his upcoming administration. This selection is only his second selection. His first was Susie Wiles to be his White House chief of staff. Some say that is the second most powerful position in America.
Two top positions. Two women.
Donald Trump is coming for women next. He’s pushing his populism message deeper and deeper into Democrat territory.
Again, I don’t think he’s going to actually help these people. But, like Obama, people read into the message what they want to hear. At least he’s saying it. I am literally hearing Democrats still saying, “But the economy IS good.” Holly shit. That’s some ignorant, tone-deaf bullshit.
My Communist friends hate my White Supremacist friends. My Democrat friends hate my Trump friends. My fundamentalist Christian friends hate my sex worker / drug-user friends. (“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is such crap.)
I’m watching on Reddit as people are actively cutting people out of their lives based on the fact that they voted for Trump. They are calling them stupid. They are calling them racists.
You can do what you want. But I’m here to tell you: That’s how you keep losing elections.
If you want people to support women’s rights, then you need to support coal mining jobs, fishing jobs, and oil jobs FIRST. And while you’re at it, why don’t you figure out how to bring our manufacturing jobs back to America. Oh, that doesn’t interest you? Ok. Well then your causes don’t interest them and there are more of them than there are of you. Conservative women are going to support their conservative husbands. There are WAY more people who can’t afford rent than there are who care about what bathroom people use. So, you are just going to keep losing.
I’m a leftist populist. A lot of my friends are dirty, bigoted, addicted, and straight-up insane. (they are also murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and every other criminal you can possibly imagine). That’s a very uncomfortable coalition for my moderate liberal friends.
I lost my city council seat here in Akron’s Ward 8 30% – 70%. I’d say Ward 8 is a pretty good demographic of what the Liberal Elite look like. It’s the wealthiest Ward in Akron. That election should tell you a lot. The Liberal Elite Democrats don’t like those gross poors mucking up their parks and shopping centers. They like things exactly the way they are.
Well, welcome to America!
It turns out the poors are a whole hell of a lot bigger group than we like to think they are. And they are uniting. (We’ve been “shocked” by this since George Bush Jr. kept winning.)
“But they’re voting against their interests, Sage.”
Bull-fucking shit! They can’t afford rent. My renter just called to tell me they can only afford half their rent this month. The mom is a teacher, and the dad is on disability from his manufacturing job. Who’s president right now, dumbass?
I’m telling you now… in a country of growing income inequality, if you want to win big elections, and not just all move to California, Democrats are going to have to get over their squeamishness of people who shop at Dollar General and like to fly the Confederate Flag (Don’t tell me you didn’t watch the Dukes of Hazard. I know you did. Your fabricated “outrage” of meaningless bullshit is also super annoying to us.)
I’m feeling compelled to bring this up now because I’ve been yelling it for the last decade.
GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T LOOK, ACT, WALK AND TALK JUST LIKE YOU.
You Democrat moderates have always been the problem. Just ask Martin Luther King Jr.