Fred Snowflack is a wise old owl. A career journalist of the old school, card carrier of the Society of Professional Journalists, an exceptional editor, and the type of old-fashioned liberal that every small community once benefitted from -- be it town or neighborhood. His traditional liberalism, long out of fashion today, was tuned to Professor Karl Polanyi's warning that... "Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed."
We are fortunate that Mr. Snowflack still has a venue for his writing. The balanced opinions he once offered in the pages of Gannett publications like the Daily Record are now available on InsiderNJ.com. Yesterday's column by Snowflack, was evidence (if any was needed) that he has lost none of his abilities to get to the heart of something and touch it with a needle. Writing about the Women's March rally in Morristown over the weekend, he offered this insight:
" Are we seeing a Democratic version of the Tea Party?
Perhaps.
That thought crossed my mind last weekend as I covered the Women’s March in Morristown and read about similar marches all over the country.
I came across one quote in particular from a Bergen County woman who attended the march in Manhattan. She said that until the election of Donald Trump as president, she and her circle of friends spent much of their TV time watching “reality shows.” Now, they watch news programs, or if you prefer, “real reality shows.”
This is important for politics now and going forward.
Follow politics for a while and you quickly realize that a key to winning elections is not convincing those who disagree with you to come over to your side. That’s unlikely to happen, especially in these very polarizing times.
The key is to somehow get those who agree with you to actually vote.
This is critical at a time when voter turnout is considered good if it reaches 50 percent. The more “non-voters” you can energize, the better it is for you.
His full column is here: https://www.insidernj.com/anti-trump-political-movement-search-name-catchy-tea-party/
Wow! Now there is a man who gets it!
The key to winning elections is to motivate people who generally don't vote, but who would consider voting for your party.
That's contrary to the mantra coming from some GOP types -- like defeated gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno. They claim that only a "moderate" can win statewide. This is, of course, simply an opinion and an opinion that ignores the fact that the only Republican who has won statewide in the last twenty years has been Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and opposed to Same-Sex Marriage.
This unreason is widespread and it gets even worse. Indeed, in the case of the Bergen County Republican Organization (BCRO), the claim is made that only a "moderate" can win in a congressional district that voted for Donald Trump.
In these very partisan times, merely having an "R" next to your name -- leave out supporting Donald Trump or Chris Christie -- is enough to preclude any significant support from voters who self-identify as Pro-Choice on Abortion, Pro-Gun Control, and Pro-LGBT. If these are your first tier issues, what floats your boat, you are not voting Republican in 2018. Period.
Despite this, there is a full court press to mint Republican candidates who intentionally suppress key parts of the GOP base. Like the BCRO's Pro-Abortion John McCann. In elections that increasingly depend on identifying and turning out anyone who will even consider voting Republican, this is a disastrous trend.
Of course, these left-of-center Republicans tend to be popular with the dregs of the GOP's Whitman-era glitterati -- cocktail-party liberals and crony capitalists who still think they run the NJGOP -- and who are increasingly uncomfortable in the knowledge that they make up just a thimbleful of actual Republican voters.
Unfortunately for them, most voters are not looking to transfer more wealth and power to the one-percent, while infantilizing various "groups" deemed worthy of protection.
Working class Republican voters and working class Democrat voters are really not that different. They care about being able to have the means to life. They want jobs, the opportunity to start a small business; to be free from the worry of foreclosure; an education system that balances costs with results; a safety net that hasn't all been spent before they need it, and a justice system that looks on them a free citizens and that keeps safe the places where they live, work, and shop.
The needs of working people are pretty straightforward. If it were an ice cream shop it would be plain vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Of course, the oligarchs of the Democrat Party can't provide that -- so they advertise a dozen flavors other than vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry -- while the "My Party Too" Whitman Republicans have placed out a sign that says, "Closed for business, we've run out of ideas."
Why this is so was the subject of a study conducted by Princeton University. Take the time to listen to this video. It could be an eye-opener: