Some Thoughts on the Psychology of Committed Democratic Voters

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately: Democratic voter culture pre-Trump and how it’s hard to adapt quickly to the new threat. I’m going to use my dad (95) as an example, but you pick whoever is in your life that is a committed Democrat.

Dad put in the work. When he was busy in his day job, he still made time to go to party meetings, distribute signs, and do other advocacy. After he retired, he did a lot of canvassing, especially during Obama’s first run when our state was briefly in play.

But Dad really doesn’t care that much about the candidate — he thinks most of them are good. His mailbox is full of solicitations from candidates from all over, and he gives a lot of them small donations. He likes watching Ari Melber, and he’ll comment positively on most of the guests. We mostly talk about the horrible things Trump is doing.

In other words, he’s generally a fan of Democrats. He likes their policies, he wishes they could get more things done, but he accepts their explanations for not getting stuff done, generally. He also likes rules, order and has a lot of respect for the law. He was as happy to support Bill and Hilary Clinton as he was George McGovern and Barack Obama.

So, he’s the dream Democratic voter as far as leadership is concerned — strong supporter of Democrats as well as their policies. And he gives them money.

There are a lot of people like Dad, who realize that everything good that’s come from government in their lives basically came from Democrats, and all the bad things were from Republicans. They don’t get involved in the messy details of how Democrats govern when they have power. They generally accept leadership’s explanations for whatever happens.

So, when confronted with a party that has been coopted by donors, that has a core of Senators committed to doing nothing, a lifelong committed Democrat has a hard time changing gears from pretty much unquestioning support to skepticism about leadership’s ability. This is something that you can see frequently in commenting sections and posts in old school Democratic blogs, and that includes not only Balloon-Juice, but pretty much all of them. There’s a group of Democrats who have close allegiance to the Democratic Party who aren’t ready to accept that the Party needs some serious change. They can’t accept that people who they’ve worked for and donated to might not have the best interests of the party at heart.

So, we see a lot of cope (we can still stop the cave! call your Senator!), a lot of anger at upstarts from the left who have the temerity to criticize leadership, and a lot of denial. I have some hope that these people will come around, because in the end they will all realize that Chuck Schumer doesn’t give the tiniest of shits about them. They should be allies in the fight to clean house. Someday, perhaps, they will be.