Patronize someone else!

Democrats still pursue identity politics — aka racism.

As we were saying about phonies, and the spotting thereof, Democrats are determined to dress up their grievance studies graduates in Carhartt and Dickies, the better to gull Dick Loudon’s rustic backwoodsmen — Larry, brother Daryl, and the other brother Daryl — into voting for microwavable socialism and nondenominational drag queen story hour. 

A few thrilling episodes ago, we observed that Rebecca Cooke can trudge through all the low-ceiling, red barns she wants, but the challenger to incumbent U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in western Wisconsin is still a professional Democrat; a paid political gun for hire in four states; endorsed by that New York elitist Zohran Mamdani; frontman for George Soros; rally partner with socialist Bernie Sanders; and pet project of John Nichols of The Nation.

Which rightly frustrates the dwindling number of blue dog Democrats still driving their father’s Oldsmobile. The Liberal Patriot, that cohort’s avatar, outs the current crop’s most visible candidates as “Democrats’ return to Walz-ism.”

False advertising

Since installing tampon dispensers in the boys room, Governor Walz gave away the taxpayers’ store to an immigrant voting bloc scamming as hallowed victims, then urged citizen resistance to the nation’s immigration laws. (An insurrection of a kind.) Kamala Harris’ choice of a running mate, the Liberal Patriot’s Michael Baharaeen writes: 

was predicated on little more than identity politics: the idea that white working-class voters will be reassured by having someone who looks like them. … that most voters need to identify with a candidate’s race or gender to consider voting for them.

That, the author writes, “comes off as quite patronizing.” Quite!

The nation’s two highest-profile phonies, The Liberal Patriot posits, are James Talarico in Texas and Graham Platner in Maine, both running against Republican senators. Platner “looks on the surface like he was designed in a lab to win over working-class voters. He is a burly, blue-collar figure from a small Maine town whose résumé includes military service and a career as an oyster farmer.” Never mind that the candidate’s grandfather was a celebrated Manhattan architect, his father a lawyer, and the candidate himself the graduate of a toney private boarding school. An Oliver Wendell Douglas on Green Acres.

Talarico and Platner engage in what The Liberal Patriot calls “cultural denialism — dismissing cultural issues — and thus voters’ concerns about them — for not being ‘real issues.’ Platner, for example, dismisses cultural issues saying ‘Every single breath we take discussing culture war stuff is a breath we are not talking about universal healthcare.’”

Take your guilt and …

We interrupt this diatribe for this news bulletin: middle America is not pining for universal health care, broad band, or subsidized daycare — just fill the potholes. They don’t hate the rich — they’d like to become so, themselves. Their ancestors filled out all the immigration forms. When a neighbor goes down, they help with his harvest. They pick up after themselves and stop at the stop sign when no one is around. Policing does not need to be “re-imagined.” Flyover country has enough pronouns, pays too much tax, works for what they’ve got, held no slaves, are sorry about the Indians and wish them well.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Many of our candidates for local office here in Madison and Dane County are wearing their Carhartt and Dickies fresh off the rack, hoping you won’t notice the price tag.

Can you tell the difference?