The Democrats nationwide – including here in Minnesota – are as split along rural-urban lines as, well, the rest of the US is. And that fault line is shaking the endorsement challenge in the Governor’s race in Virginia, where the “progressive”, Northern-Virginia, government-worker set has pretty directly set out to alienate the rural Democrats that used to dominate the party and the state. The state party “Uninvited” one “Mudcat” Saunders – a Virginia democrat operative and activist who’s served as a go-between among rural and urban Democrat interests – from a lmeeting on…
…well, patching up the rural/urban split:
In short Democrats believe that because of their populous numbers in the urban suburbs in Northern Virginia they don’t need rural voters, nor are they showing any willingness to petition, engage or win them over.
Their beef with him was his unwillingness to vote for Hillary Clinton last year; it doesn’t help that he was pretty outspoken about it.
“They don’t have to. And this is why we are the minority party,” said Dane Strother, a Washington-based Democratic strategist with deep Southern roots, “If we remain uninterested in the rural vote we will remain the minority party.”
Virginia Democrats are in the midst of a civil war that is only getting worse rather than better since the election of Donald J. Trump. Virginia did not go for Trump, but its rural voters, a decent amount of them Democrats, voted decisively for Trump over their party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton.
It’s not just Virginia. When Collin Peterson finally retires, the 7th CD will not elect another Democrat to Congress for several generations; if Rick Nolan and/or Tim Walz leave office to run for Governor, its entirely possible those districts will go GOP.
And yet the MNDFL – as shown with last week’s teapot-tempest with Rep. Hortman scolding the GOP’s “white males” for sitting out Rena Moran’s speech along with a whole bunch of DFLers – is obsessed with the same social justice fripperies that have led to the slow eradication of the DFL in most of greater Minnesota.
I blame Obama.
Seriously, I do.
Obama brought the Social Justice movement to the front when he was elected and in how he governed. The irony is that only the true-believers in the Social Justice movement survived the backlash that continues to decimate Democrats in the country and especially in the hinterlands, so the leadership is dominated by hardliners who will not compromise.
Ironically, that was the situation of the GOP right up until Obama came in and made the masses realize that as blinkered as the GOP was, Obama was enabling something they detested more.
Northern Virginia is the swamp Trump is trying to drain. Here in Hampton Roads, the climate isn’t nearly as liberal as near DC. In Northern Virginia, you’ve got the highest per-capita income in the nation. Few of the government class actually live in DC, but they do all extract large salaries and benefits packages while avoiding teh urban blight of DC. Minnesota was a smaller version of it. You want to see your future, Minnesota? Look at Virginia.
Is this some kind of false-flag operation?
https://taxmarch.org/
Can the anti-Trump American Left be so tone deaf that they will march on April 15th in support of the IRS?
MP, I’m convinced that the tax structure gives advantage to those that can avoid payments of taxes more than those that can do less so. Would some order of flat tax be in order, or maybe a consumption tax? There’s even some suggestion of a tax on wealth. Could we get Hollywood and Silicon Valley on board with that?
I make pretty good money, Scott Hughes. I pay a little less than 10% of what we make in fed income tax. That’s just wife & self, standard deduction. Is that too much? Too little? I don’t know. I figure that much probably keeps a military helicopter in the air for an hour or so. Or pays a year’s worth of college for a kid.
All forms of taxation except consumption taxes are a bad idea.
You can look at the raw IRS data and it’s obvious the ONLY place you can get more tax money is the middle class and we are stuck on ***2%***GDP.
ANY time anyone talks about ANY form of wealth taxation a) you are doing something very wrong and b) it won’t raise jack.