Spinsters, biddies and old bags.
I woke up around 5 this morning.
The thought on my mind was Carol Williams running for the legislature again in 2018.
I dunno – maybe I had a nightmare or something.
Either way, I lay in bed for an hour or more, tossing and turning, the wheels of politics turning in my head.
I thought a lot on all those Hillary supporters, a big one in Montana having been Carol Williams.
What will these people do?
A whole lot of ‘em are old, white women.
Spinsters, biddies and old bags.
Hillary won the overall women’s vote by 12 points, but she lost white women to Trump.
Trump whooped her when it comes to white women without college degrees, however, and by a whopping 10 points.
When it comes to white women with college degrees, Hillary took the vote by 6 points.
Still, just 32% of Americans have a college degree. When it comes to men with a college degree, they went to Trump by 15 points.
So it was really only the college-educated women that couldn’t stand Trump.
Everyone else voted for him by wide margins.
I’m sure that doesn’t sit well with Carol Williams, who was the real leader of the Hillary movement here in Missoula.
Still, Williams is only 67-years-old.
That’s about the age the Montana Democrats like their candidates to be.
It’s a good age, one where you don’t worry about college costs or having to make end’s meat (there’s Social Security for that).
It means you’re retired (or should be), and thus have the free time necessary for all the government work and political happenings that are out there.
Most of all, however, it means you won’t have any new tricks or ideas, and will therefore fall into line and do as you’re told.
The Party loves this.
“Criticizing the mechanisms of the party are unfair,” Williams said in May when it was clear to millions around the country how the Hillary machine was rigging the election against Bernie Sanders.
So Williams is a good Party hack. She knows her place and is eager to stay in it.
I fully expect she’ll be running for HD 90 or 91 in 2018, hell, maybe even SD 50.
I think that’s a real pity.
The thought on my mind was Carol Williams running for the legislature again in 2018.
I dunno – maybe I had a nightmare or something.
Either way, I lay in bed for an hour or more, tossing and turning, the wheels of politics turning in my head.
I thought a lot on all those Hillary supporters, a big one in Montana having been Carol Williams.
What will these people do?
A whole lot of ‘em are old, white women.
Spinsters, biddies and old bags.
Hillary won the overall women’s vote by 12 points, but she lost white women to Trump.
Trump whooped her when it comes to white women without college degrees, however, and by a whopping 10 points.
When it comes to white women with college degrees, Hillary took the vote by 6 points.
Still, just 32% of Americans have a college degree. When it comes to men with a college degree, they went to Trump by 15 points.
So it was really only the college-educated women that couldn’t stand Trump.
Everyone else voted for him by wide margins.
I’m sure that doesn’t sit well with Carol Williams, who was the real leader of the Hillary movement here in Missoula.
Still, Williams is only 67-years-old.
That’s about the age the Montana Democrats like their candidates to be.
It’s a good age, one where you don’t worry about college costs or having to make end’s meat (there’s Social Security for that).
It means you’re retired (or should be), and thus have the free time necessary for all the government work and political happenings that are out there.
Most of all, however, it means you won’t have any new tricks or ideas, and will therefore fall into line and do as you’re told.
The Party loves this.
“Criticizing the mechanisms of the party are unfair,” Williams said in May when it was clear to millions around the country how the Hillary machine was rigging the election against Bernie Sanders.
So Williams is a good Party hack. She knows her place and is eager to stay in it.
I fully expect she’ll be running for HD 90 or 91 in 2018, hell, maybe even SD 50.
I think that’s a real pity.
For one thing…we never hear from Carol Williams anymore.
We don’t much hear from her husband anymore, despite all his years in Washington.
- I haven’t heard a thing from John Lewis, the guy that ran for the U.S. House in 2014.
- I haven’t heard anything from Ron Catlett, the guy that was writing the pro-GOP blog for Gianforte.
- I haven’t heard anything from Gianforte, a guy that really wanted to help Montana just about everyday…when there was an election going on.
- I haven’t heard anything from Juneau, another person that wanted to help the state each day.
Now that there’s no election, however, the desire to help Montana has flown from those people’s minds.
All of them had platforms to get their message out – websites, social media, even advertising.
Now those platforms are silent.
You see, the desire to help the state is only there if there’s a payoff in the end.
When it’s clear you’ve lost an election, that payoff is no longer there.
The voters have spoken – you and your ideas aren’t wanted.
So those people go to the hills and disappear, their ideas soon forgotten.
In time many citizens will have difficulty even remembering their names.
People like Kim Gillan, Dennis McDonald, Tracy Valazquez, among others.
Ask 9 out of 10 people on the street who those people are and they won’t have a clue.
It’s because those people stopped caring when the election was over.
I wonder if they ever cared at all.
The first time I went down to a Missoula County Democrats meeting I was shocked that there were no elected officials there.
No legislative reps or senators, no county commissioners, and hardly any city council members at all.
If we can’t even expect those that’ve won an election to stay up on the process, how can we expect those thav’ve lost an election?
Democrats need help and they need it bad. They need to look in every nook and cranny for that help.
A month ago I put up a post called, As the Election Draws Near.
In it I offered suggestions on what the Montana Democrats could do to improve their chances of winning in the state.
It went like this:
- A special convention of Democrats to discuss our inability to win
- Secret ballots to elect new Democratic leadership
- Fact-finding missions to all 56 counties to learn of problems/concerns
- Geography lessons so Democrats know the state
- Shortened government report reading/talking sessions so upcoming Democrats know how the state agencies operate
- Combination 10- to 20-year budget reports so upcoming Democrats now where the money is, where it comes from, and where it goes
- A 50- to 100-person list of former elected Democratic officials that upcoming Democrats can mentor with
- A 50- to 100-point guide to Montana’s most pressing problems, complete with three possible solutions for each issue, so that upcoming Democrats can expand their range of ideas
Those are some ideas.
I put them up a month ago, back when Dems still thought they’d do alright in the elections.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Now, weeks after the election and I still don’t hear a lot of talk on what we should do going forward.
So I’ll put those ideas out once again.
Maybe somebody’s listening. Maybe one of those winners, or even one of those losers.
I’ve lost two elections but I continue to press on each day, getting my ideas out there.
I simply will not believe that my actions have no effect.
People are listening. They’re hearing ideas they share. They’re beginning to think that they’re not alone, that these ideas might be possible.
One of the reasons I feel it’s so important to have those older Democrats mentoring younger Democrats is because we need that experience.
We need people that remember who the hell Kim Gillan, Dennis McDonald, and Tracy Valazquez were and more importantly, why they lost their races.
We need them on the sidelines, however.
You can’t keep playing your old players forever. They might be fan favorites, but do they still have what it takes?
Did they ever?
Just because you’re on the field doesn’t mean you’re winning the game.
And how are you going to win the next game, or next season’s game?
Democrats have such a problem with pay-to-play and insider-only politics that they have no bench to speak of, either in Montana or nationally.
Spinsters, biddies and old bags.
Codgers, fogies, and old goats.
That’s who the Democrats like, and when you look at the national stage you see it’s true.
- Nancy Pelosi is 76-years-old
- Steny Hoyer is 77
- James Clyburn is 76
- Patrick Leahy is 76
- Bernie Sanders is 75
- Dick Durbin is 72
- Elizabeth Warren is 67
- Chuck Schumer will be 66 tomorrow
- Jon Tester is 60
Those are the top Democrats in the country.
All were born between 1939 and 1956.
Some of them were 10-years-old when the Cold War was just getting started. Others turned 10 when the Summer of Love was about to begin.
These folks went to college in the 50s when Ike was president, or maybe in the 70s when Nixon or Ford was.
I really don’t know how any of them can identify with me, my life, or my problems.
Why would they want to?
When you’re that age you just want to be done with it all. You don’t want to be bothered. You want to sit back and let everything that’s set to come to you to just hurry up and come already.
You’ve earned it, after all.
You’re entitled.
And that’s the mindset we get from the leading Democrats in the country – it’s my time, I’ve earned it, now leave me alone and let me enjoy it.
These are the people that are ‘running’ the country for the Democratic Party.
They’re time is almost done. Maybe 10 years and some of them will start to kick the bucket, probably sooner in some of their cases.
Many around the country view the Democratic Party in the exact same light.
Yet still, 3 weeks after the election now, and we continue to shy away from talking about this.
We won’t talk about anything that requires a good hard look at ourselves, what went wrong, and how it can be remedied.
That might hurt some feelings.
And that’s why I can’t help but think we’ll continue down the road of crazy, trying the same thing and expecting different results.
I dunno – maybe thinking or talking about it seems like too much of a nightmare or something.
That’s why we’ll probably see Carol Williams running for the legislature again in 2018.
And I and countless others like me will keep waking up at 5 in the morning, wondering...worrying.
