I have been reading pages and pages about the DNC and the DLC and I want to tell you why I am so opposed to the direction the DLC has taken the Party in the last 20 years.
I have been advocating, writing letters, talking locally within the Democratic Party for 25 frickin' years now. To no avail.
My message is simple: talk about workers' rights. Unionizing, outsourcing (especially outsourcing!), management cheating (we have ALL been cheated out of portions of our wages by innumerable statistical tricks). SPEAK OF THEM and blue-collar men go absolutely NUTS with recognition of the problems! Followed 5 minutes later with the most intense hunger to do something about it all that you have ever witnessed.
I speak of them to my blue-collar friends all the time! All. By. Myself.
Millions of white, male blue-collar workers go around in right-wing talk radio induced ignorance. Each and every one of them thinks that the problems they have with their employer is unique, puzzling and sure to get better after a change of management ...or something.
What I do: I simply point up how these "puzzling anomalies" are actually well-known and ancient un-fair labor practices. With NAMES!
Speed-ups. Wage stagnation policies. Two-tiered wage systems. Worker isolation. These are some of the names of the classic Unfair Labor Practices that my friends experience everyday. But they don't even know that there are such things as Unfair Labor Practices!
Watch 'em go off like rockets when you give them a NAME for what they suffer everyday -- just a name for Christ's sake. They go ballistic and are ready for anything.
We are not dumb asses down here on the loading docks of America! Everyone can recognize when they are being ripped off. But what is long gone down here -- LOOOOONNGGGG gone -- is a Democratic Party that helps us know our rights -- or even WANTS us. And what IS here is a Republican Party that DOES want us.
Can't you morons in the DLC see that blue-collar America clings to the Repubs. because the Repubs. WANT us. And they PROVE it by consistently addressing just 1 or 2 wedge issues that concern blue collar America. Nevermind that these issues don't even relate to our work life; it still trumps the absolute NOTHING that Democrats offer!
And traditional Democratic values offer the blue-collar worker nothing less than actual salvation from what ails him at work. But these working-man values -- even the mere NAMING of these ailments we are plagued with -- have been WITHHELD for 20 years! Not a peep. Not a sound. No one comes. No one speaks. No one gives a diagnosis.
So, clearly, we have been thrown away. Disposed of. And there still are MILLIONS of us. Millions who could be voting Democratic by 2006 if the Party would actually come and talk to us, beginning with the NAMES of the Unfair Labor Practices used against us everyday. Posing for pictures with John Sweeney once every 4 years is not even in the ballpark of what is needed!
Do you want us? Really?
Then show us. Come down to the loading dock.