Our traditional Democratic constituency has been ignored and all but forgotten. We have instead concentrated on vying for the same people the Republicans are wooing. We have become obsessed with a single prey and concentrated on hunting the same big game everyone else is hunting. They are the wealthy, well to do, politically correct people that traditionally are Republicans in the first place. 

Our party has taken traditional democrats for granted assuming that they will be there on election day. Well they are not! Some such as labor, ethnic groups, retired factory workers and rural organized democratic clubs are still strong but are their children? Democrats failing to realize their children are better educated, have better opportunities than they had. They are becoming professionals, earning salaries unimagined by their parents or grandparents. They are no longer factory workers, union members, or working class. They now can afford to be Republicans if they wish. They have evolved into republicans because we have not imparted to them what a traditional democrat is, and what that means. That democrats are for the most part, the reason they have what they have.

What is a traditional Democrat? Average, every day working people. What is an average every day working person? One that works every day on his job for wages and pays taxes through withholding from his pay, a really small business man that works and pays estimated taxes every quarter, a self employed person that pays taxes either quarterly by estimate or April 15th each year. A tradesman represented by their labor union. An Employee who negotiates wages themselves. A small business owner juggling his product, sales, inventory, help, and overhead. A self-employed person that toils every day to earn what they can. A senior citizen that watches his dreams of retirement fade away from prescription drugs, hospital costs, energy costs, groceries, rent, insurance, utilities, telephone, taxes, etc. A single parent trying to work and survive whose childcare takes half their income. A homeless person with no hopes at all.

In 1988 we ran a commercial that said this “A Democrat (or poor man) voting for Ronald Reagan is like a chicken voting for Kernel Sanders”. Well they did and he was elected. 

Bad times beget dissatisfaction and discontent, and that makes people change their way of thinking. It has been the same throughout history. Dynasties fail when the masses become discontent, disillusioned, and rise up to overthrow them, and so it is with politics.  No matter which party is in control the other makes gains and takes over. It’s a time proven fact!

Over the past thirty years or so America has witnessed an unusual shift in what was considered as normal trends. We have experienced a drastic change in the social structure of our society. There are still the filthy rich and many more rich people but the former middle class has moved up. We now see a third upper class in America, the almost wealthy former middle class. Of course there still are the working class and poor and very little has changed in those areas. But in 1980 when Ronald Reagan put 390,000 disabled off social security disability and they were thrown out of nursing homes and institutions, a new class appeared, the homeless people.

Identifying our constituency is no longer an easy task. It still exists, but it does not vote. Many of our children have evolved into the republican party and it may be all but impossible to get them back. Our base is aging and we have failed miserably in recruiting young people into our party.

The republicans have, on the other hand gained in numbers through our successes. Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants, REA, everything that has allowed our children and elderly to have a better life is because of Democrats like Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. 

Republicans are consistently against taxes, spending on infrastructure, funding education, highways, anything that does not directly benefit them personally, as they see it. Unfortunately they do not understand that government buildings, schools, highways, and streets, wear out eventually. Even their oil their will disappear some time.

The only logical way to revive the Democratic Party is to awaken our traditional constituency. 

Number One! We must organize the fifty six million people in America that do not have health insurance! They are all Democrats, but some just do not know they are.

We must educate the new class in America, the almost wealthy middle class on where they came from, how they got here, and what must happen if their children are to be as lucky as they were. They are Democrats, but they do not know it.

We must activate and assist our unions organize people once more, not only work for a better future for themselves, but insure it by electing people who share their beliefs. 

We must educate small business people to the fact that republican tax cuts and refunds mean nothing. If their customers have no money they will not spend it. If the economy goes down the tubs as it has, they will too. If they cannot afford, or cannot get health insurance for themselves, let alone their employees, they must be suffering from a failed republican plan.

We must talk to the self employed and make them understand that for the most part they live on other people’s expendable income. They cannot afford health care either and though independence is something they can be proud of, it cannot survive in a trickle-down economy.

We must educate the poor, the single parent, and even the homeless that their entire existence is dependent on people (republicans) who begrudgingly give them meager sustenance. Their own indifference and apathy is why they cannot rise up and grow with the rest of our society. These people are traditionally democrats but they are not voting because they have given up. 

Volumes could be written on this but the answer will remain the same. The party that gets out their voters on election day wins.

The republican party has honed their get out the vote process to a fine edge. Their constituents know why they go to the polls, money and control of it. Our people are discouraged, disillusioned and apathetic. They believe their vote does not count and no one even bothers to ask them to vote most of the time.

In 2004, Democrats will have an opportunity once more to take control of their destiny. We will have eight or more candidates running for president including Dick Gephardt from Missouri.  Most of these candidates are true blue democrats (Gephardt is a Yellow Dog Democrat) and they will represent us well.

The Republicans will be strapped with the worst economy in history, the largest national debt, the highest unemployment in history, a health care system broke and unworkable, uprisings all over the world and failed ideas to numerous to mention. Voo Doo Economics and International hate for America will undo this administration. It has happened before and it will again.

We must turn our efforts to organizing now, 2004 is too late. We must ask out party leaders to take heed and respond to the problems in urban and out-state Missouri and to help our party revive itself. The pattern is there for us to follow. Jesse Jackson’s collation registered five million voters in 2002. If every faction of our party did the same in 2003 we would once more become 
the majority party in Missouri and America.
 

THAT'S HOW I FEEL - BOB JONES  2/20/03