Dear democratic party,
I am sure you are still in shock and disappointment at the results of this election. You are likely doing some soul searching and wondering what went wrong, or, in the best case scenario, you know exactly what went wrong. Since I don't trust in your ability to get it given how out of touch you guys have been all election, I figured I would tell you directly why you lost so you don't get any bad ideas and retreat more deeply into your echo chamber.
For reference, I'm a disaffected democrat who was part of the Bernie or Bust movement who pulled the lever for Jill Stein in a swing state you lost to Trump. Yes, I am what your propaganda has been fearing all of this time, since you've been running all of this crap about how a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump, and how Nader voters lost the election in 2000 for you guys. This time, I hope you actually LISTEN to your voters, rather than blaming them, because this seems to be a trend.
Long story, you screwed up royally. You ran one of the worst campaigns I've ever seen, and you've done everything possible to alienate me. As the saying goes, democrats fall in love, republicans fall in line. You made us fall in line, not in love, and that was a problem. Even worse, you crushed the candidate who would have made us fall in love and pushed an out of touch candidate no one wanted instead.
Bernie Sanders was a once in a lifetime candidate. He had no outstanding issues, he had a great platform, he galvanized the base, he gave people hope. We millennials have it rough these days. Our economy is broken on a fundamental and systemic level, and we need serious change from the Obama direction, not more of the same. Sanders understands our pain.
It appears, looking at history, that great changes in economic paradigms follow great periods of economic crisis. The great depression is what gave us FDR, and made your party dominate the government for 20 years, and your ideology for 40. Stagflation reversed the pendulum and gave us Reaganism and trickle down economics. The great recession has made it swing back again and there's a demand for left wing politics not seen in decades. I know you democrats have a tendency to play it safe and go for centrists, but that's how you lost. You guys are thinking along the lines of the old way of thinking. The thinking of the boomer generation, who saw the rise of Reagan and the destruction of Roosevelt's democratic party. Things are different now. There is a whole new generation of voters now, and they're angry, and they're very left leaning. They're unhappy with the status quo and need change.
Democrats have a morale problem. We've seen nothing come out of the Obama adminstration for 6 years now. He has done a lot in his presidency, sure, but it's time to move on and take the fight to the republicans. Sanders was exactly what we needed. He had a message that resounded with liberals and could have brought in a new economic paradigm to replace the trickle down paradigm of old, much like that paradigm replaced the new deal, and the new deal replaced the backwards gilded age policies of the distant past.
Even worse, you guys shot Sanders down. This not only made you not part of the solution, but you became the very essence of the problem. I don't know what back room deal you made with Clinton after 2008, but it seemed obvious that you had your fingers on the scales from the beginning and that the was only a formality. You guys never considered Sanders for the presidency, you went all in for Clinton because being a member of the good old boys and girls club was more important than being what the people need at the time. You put party patronage and nepotism over doing the right thing.
We told you what we wanted, we told you what solutions will fix our country. But while Obama said yes we can, Clinton said no we can't. She was the voice of “pragmatism”, which to us sounded like a whole bunch of “shut up and take what we give you.” You lectured us about the virtues of supporting down ticket candidates and how we need to support you and then, maybe, just maybe, at some distant point in time, you might give us what we want (even though you've controlled the presidency for 8 years already). Um...no. We give you our vote without appealing to us, and you have no incentive to listen to what we have to say. Which is actually part of the basis for me voting third party.
Anyway, you crushed our dreams, crushed our candidate, ignored us, stepped on our toes, lectured us, condescended to us, and replaced a positive inspiring message with one based on fear. Clinton was never the greater good, she was never what the country needed. She was the lesser evil. She was the person we had to support, in order to avoid getting the person we hate even worse. You shamed us, said we were privileged, that we were sexist. Your buddy David Brock tried to essentially take over whole websites and turn them into establishment approved echo chambers to spew your propaganda. You tried to beat us down and shut us up, told us we can't have what we want, that we have to take what you're willing to give us, and that we better support you or else we get Trump. You had no positive message. Your whole campaign was based around not Trump. You bullied us, you shamed us, you scared us, you talked down to us.
This didn't work. Republican turnout was no different than 2008 and 2012, but democratic turnout declined by 6 million votes, and these 6 million lost votes gave Donald Trump the White House. This is what happens when you screw your base. You can't strong arm us into showing up, you have to give us a reason to. You are not entitled to our votes, you have to earn them.
I don't like Donald Trump. I don't like the republican party. I think they're puppets of the 1%. But this election, you showed yourselves to be just as bad. That's why I voted third party. If I voted for Clinton this election, it would have shown you guys that you could screw us and treat us like crap, and we would still support you. It would validate all of the corruption and dirtiness and nastiness you showed us this election, and encourage more of this behavior in the future. As such, I regret nothing. While I hate Trump, I'm actually relieved he won and not Clinton. Not because he's a good candidate, but because this result appears to me to be what you deserve for alienating half of your own base. You reaped what you sowed. You lost everything the other night. And with that, you can rebuild. I hope you take this defeat as a wake up call that you are a party in serious need of change, and that politics as usual will not solve our problems.
This election year may remind you of 2000, but it reminds me of another election year: 1976. This year, the republicans lost everything under very similar circumstances. Watergate was a big thing for the republicans, and it hurt their credibility a lot. They had Reagan run in the primaries, but the people chose Ford, and Ford lost. We all know what happened next. Carter was unable to arise to the challenges of his time, and then Reagan came back and cast your party into the political wilderness in 1980. Remember, as bleak as it is now, there is hope. The republican party is on the decline. It's been on the decline since 2008. 2008 was the GOP's 1968. 2016 is the democrats' 1976. Spend the next 2-4 years cleaning house, removing the corruption from among you, and come back in 2018 and 2020 and do it right. 2020 can very well be the democrats' 1980 moment. We all know president Trump is going to be a failure, and we won't tolerate him as a country for long. Come back, run an inspiring vision for the future, one that promises to fix the challenges of our time. Take our country back, and do it right next time. Earn our votes. I want to vote democrat, but I can't as long as your party behaves as it does.
Sincerely,
A Jill Stein voter from Pennsylvania
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