A storm may be building

LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson

Election 2016 wasn’t the worst shellacking in our political history, but it was bad enough Democrats need to pay attention if they want to have a future in a country being righted.

Hillary Clinton won 19 states plus part of Maine and D. C. in a respectable showing that resulted in a narrow popular vote margin.She took the carnival’s biggest prize, California, as well as New York and Illinois, but those are only three of the eight biggest states necessary to turn the electoral vote.

Donald Trump won 30 states that included the South, the Midwest, and the West as well as important tossups such as North Carolina. He also won Texas, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio to collect five of the big eight.

Missouri was so red it was called for Trump much earlier than I expected. This state is now more conservative than any time I can remember, and I believe it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. The left has offended many.

Scholar and political columnist Dick Polman identified post-election another illness infecting the party of the left: the decline of Democrats at the state level.

Says Polman concerning state legislatures: “… Democrats are getting their butts kicked in ways not seen since the 1920s … (next year) they’ll control a mere 30 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers. Their incessant losses at the grass-roots level have put the Republicans fully in charge of both legislative chambers in 32 states.”

That’s a lot of states. A record in fact.

Polman also pointed out 36 state legislatures draw the congressional boundaries for 336 of the 435 House districts. Because of the dominance of Republicans in states like Missouri, they can continue to draw voter boundaries in ways beneficial to their party. This is a part of winning.

Now, that may sound like an unfair practice, but the Democrats do it too when they have such an enviable advantage spelling opportunity.

The Democratic Party has been losing ground (again, look at an electoral map) steadily. “Democrats have lost roughly 900 state legislative seats and control of more than half the state chambers they ran at the dawn of 2009,” says Polman.

In this election, the Democrats targeted state legislatures for takeover in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, all big states, and failed in every one.

Thirty-three states will have Republican governors. Governors do much at the directional and organizational levels of politics, which speaks well for the possibilities for conservatives down the road.

Now, I am pointing out this significant evolution in American politics for a reason. I believe the Democratic Party has been taken over by a far-left faction so radical in its beliefs it has squeezed out all dissent and moderation within. This has contributed to cross over from Democrats less interested in political dominance and leftist philosophy than fairness and progress.

There are other reasons the Democrats were dumped.

Independents have turned their backs on liberals and are beginning to show justified contempt for the left’s greatest defender — big media. Polls designed to prop Clinton proved profoundly false for this reason.

Heading into this election, people felt their voice didn’t matter. In our democracy, that can only go on for so long because everyone knows there is more than one legitimate point-of-view. The electorate was assertive.

This election also vindicated something I had suspected for some time. There are two public responses to Barack Obama: one is a positive response to his appearance, charisma, and elocution; the other is a negative reaction to such policies as Obamacare, which fell heavily on those it was purported to assist. In the long run, policies beat out personality, as they should.

Barack Obama campaigned hard for Hillary Clinton in states like Pennsylvania but failed miserably. His tattered coattail trailed in the dust.

Also, I think folks are fed up with political correctness, the endless lectures on how awful America is, and the left-led assaults on honored traditions. The liberals got what they asked for.

The notion that liberals are somehow enlightened and progressive has become tarnished by an overworked social justice theme.

Now is the time to eject the old guard.

I urge Democrats to take back your party from the far left of Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Biden, Sanders, and the Clintons. America is healthier when it is run by broad representation instead of the narrow interests of socialism and radicalism presented as progress by a few.

If you are incapable of party reform, just understand a storm is building. A big one. We just saw the temperature drop.