Thursday, June 22, 2017

Why would that be a question?

 Vietnamese refugees being evacuated from Saigon in 1976.  This photo is closer in time to the Allied victory in World War Two and the Roosevelt/Truman administrations than it is to our current era. . .just like the formative years of the leadership of the Democratic Party.

Following the defeat of the Democrats in the election just held in Georgia, some are questioning whether Nancy Pelosi ought to be deposed from her position as a leader in the party.

Seriously?  They need to ask that?

She should have been deposed 20 years ago.

Now, I don't blame Pelosi for the Democratic loss in Georgia.  Any one state's election is, after all, a local election and Georgia has been in the GOP camp for some time.

But Pelosi bears about as much of a relationship to the average American voter now as . . . well. . . . Hillary Clinton.  Or Chuck Schumer.

Pelosi is 77 years old.

Schumer in comparison is practically a baby at 66.

Hillary Clinton is 69.

Pelosi, Clinton and Schumer have been in politics their entire lives. Their connection with the old blue collar base of the Democratic Party, in terms of actual work, is non existent.  She first held a position in California's Democratic Party in 1976.  In contrast Clinton has had much more in the way of "real work", but it's notable that she worked for Congress as part of the effort to impeach Richard Nixon.  Schumer became a member of the New York Assembly in 1975.  In short, these politicians formative years all have a lot to do with the ERA, Post Vietnam, Watergate era of Democratic politics.

A person may not be defined by their formative years, but then maybe they can be as well.

The ERA is not a consideration for current female voters.  Indeed, the rabid feminism of the that era, outside the leadership of certain current movements, has no relationship whatsoever to the views or concerns of young female voters today.   The Vietnam War is over and even the hand wringing over the results of the war are over.  Nixon is dead.

CH-54 landing in Saigon, April 30, 1975. At the time this photograph was taken, Hillary Clinton had already worked on the Nixon impeachment effort, Chuck Schumer was already in the New York Assembly, and Nancy Pelosi was already involved in California's Democratic Party.

It's time for the current leadership of the Democratic Party to move on too.

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