My Dad was born in Georgia in 1932. He passed away about a year and a half ago. The last few years of his life he suffered from dementia. But there was one thing Dad never forgot—that he was a Democrat. The poor man suffered the misfortune of siring three Republicans. Indeed, in the family in which I was raised, we passionately discussed religion and politics. We still do.
Dad was Democrat to the core. No, it wasn’t about Jim Crow. Oh, he would be considered racist by today’s standards, but that wasn’t why he voted Democrat in the 1950s or any other time. Dad was a working man. He retired from General Motors and was a big union supporter. For Dad, politics was easy. It boiled down to one thing: the Democrat was for the working man; the Republican was for the rich man. Dad considered this a law of the universe. So did other working-class people in those days. Millions from the 1930s to the 1980s voted precisely in the same manner. The top of the ticket didn’t even matter. Dad voted straight-line Democrat. Indeed, in those days, no one could get elected in the South if he had an “R” by his name. What infuriated Dad most were conservatives who ran on the Democratic ticket because they couldn’t win on the Republican. US House Representative from Georgia, Larry McDonald, was just such a Democrat—who also chaired the John Birch Society!
There were many things about the Democrat Party Dad overlooked. He didn’t support feminism by any means. He wasn’t opposed to legal abortion but neither did he champion the cause. Of course, Dad knew that a man went with a woman, but if others disagreed and voted Democrat, then all the better. For Dad, it was all about economics. He thought that in a nation such as ours, the working man should be able to enjoy the advantages of owning his own home, a decent car, and taking pleasure in a few luxuries, perhaps a vacation to the beach if one so desired. As far as Dad was concerned, the rich man was the enemy—the one who gobbled up everything for himself and begrudged the working man his due. Dad might personally oppose the interests of others in his party, but as long as the party served the interests of the working man, then that was all that really mattered to him.
And why am I writing my Dad’s political biography? BECAUSE I DECLARE HERE AND NOW THAT THE DEMOCRAT PARTY CAN IN NO WAY CONTINUE TO CALL ITSELF THE PARTY OF THE WORKING MAN! For one thing, Dad would not have recognized a party as Democrat that embraced a policy of open borders. Dad thought that the reason government did nothing to stop people coming over the border was because rich Republican businessmen wanted cheap labor. He understood that people entering the country illegally either took jobs away or drove wages down for working-class Americans. I personally understand people who want to leave a failed country run by gangs and warlords, but I also recognize that a nation without borders is no nation at all.
But more than anything else at the present time—and what “triggered” this essay—is the fact that in the face of soaring gas prices, the President and congressional Democrats have done everything they can to thwart energy derived from our own fossil fuel industries and have instead reduced us to begging the same from other countries, choosing energy dependence over independence—and it is the working class that is suffering the most from this senseless, misbegotten policy. Wealthy Democrat politicians can afford to pay at the pump; working-class families cannot. Elite, snobbish, holier-than-thou Progressives can afford to terrorize school-age children prophesying the end of the world—who happen to be the same children that working-class parents are struggling to feed and clothe. The only answer this party has to offer is pumping trillions more into an economy already suffering the worst inflation in forty years. And it’s so vexing listening to young people, whose minds have long since been washed clean by apocalyptic climate-change soothsayers, tell us in self-righteous tones how happy they are to pay more at the pump when Ukrainians are suffering so much at home. Everyone feels horrible about Ukraine, and working class families are sending money and doing whatever they can through their churches and other agencies to help. Just think how much more they could give if gas prices had not risen one-hundred per cent since the inauguration! And though the war has exacerbated the problem at the pump, the problem had already been thrust upon us by Democrat policies. And until the Democrat party can establish an AFFORDABLE and CONVENIENT way to bypass fossil fuels, it is completely unjust to enact energy policies that rob the working man of his hard-earned money. Working-class families cannot be expected to sacrifice their livelihoods for that far-off day when clean energy is supposed to save us from ourselves.
Where’s all that Democrat concern for economic justice? Democrats once believed “people don’t eat in the long run.” So much for nostalgia!
If I had told Dad a couple of years ago that we had a President who wanted to seal the border while the other party wanted to open it, and that that same President was bringing energy independence while that other party was fighting him tooth and nail—and THEN told him that the President was a Republican and that the party who opposed these policies was Democrat—well, I don’t know if he would have believed me. I think he would have said, “No son. The one who is for stemming illegal immigration is the Democrat so to protect jobs for working-class Americans, and the one who wants higher prices at the pump is the Republican businessman.” I really don’t know if I could have convinced him. But that’s where matters stand today.
RIP Dad. I’m glad you’re not here to see your beloved Democrat Party.