Dem Director: Rural White Americans 'Not Grateful Enough'
Many have argued that the modern Democratic Party has all but abandoned the white middle- and working-class voters that used to form the core of the party’s constituency in favor of minorities, young voters, and other demographics.
Though some on the left deny it, their own words and actions only confirm the reality that white voters in “flyover country” have been written off by the Democrats.
The Washington Free Beacon reported on yet another instance in which a Democratic operative has all but admitted that fact.
That political operative is David Atkins, a regional director for the California Democratic Party, who posted a nine-tweet thread on Thursday accusing “rural white Americans” of being “ungrateful” for what the federal government had done for them while charging the same group of voters with being “whiny” and “bigoted.”
You know who is not grateful enough? Rural white Americans.
They are heavily subsidized, drowning in federal largesse, blessed with political affirmative action & overrepresentation, have all their bills paid by cities and blue states, but they whine and yell constantly.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) July 19, 2019
“You know who is not grateful enough? Rural white Americans,” Atkins wrote to begin his diatribe.
“They are heavily subsidized, drowning in federal largesse, blessed with political affirmative action & overrepresentation, have all their bills paid by cities and blue states, but they whine and yell constantly.”
“People who watch the constant grating whinefest that is Fox News have a lot of gall telling anyone to love it or leave it,” he tweeted. “The Fox News cult hates the values of the vast majority of Americans who aren’t rural white evangelicals and want nothing to do with them.”
Atkins then asserted that he was “all about” reaching out to rural white voters for their support, even as he proceeded to slam those same voters for their “bigoted entitled stupidity” in the very same tweet.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all about reaching out & showing rural white America that it’s the plutocrats that are hurting them, not people of color. Rural white America really is hurting.
But i’ll be damned if the bigoted entitled stupidity doesn’t constantly try one’s patience.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) July 19, 2019
“Don’t get me wrong: I’m all about reaching out & showing rural white America that it’s the plutocrats that are hurting them, not people of color. Rural white America really is hurting,” he wrote. “But i’ll be damned if the bigoted entitled stupidity doesn’t constantly try one’s patience.”
Atkins noted that his thread had drawn negative attention from the socialist left portion of Twitter for supposedly erasing class concerns like an elitist, and he reaffirmed his support for the progressive socialist agenda of independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom he supported in 2016.
Then Atkins got right back to belittling rural whites, writing, “at a certain point, continuing to treat them like they’re just too ignorant to see what the plutocrats are doing, or continuing to blame the Dem Party for failing to engage with *just* the right message to unlock them? That’s also a form of paternalistic condescension.”
“At a certain point, you have to hold people accountable, statistically speaking, for the voting choices they make. You have to take them at their word, and when they tell you who they are, believe them,” he tweeted.
Atkins concluded his Twitter thread by noting that conservatives had been angered and insulted by it, and reiterated his initial message that while rural white Americans had been helped by the government and harmed by corporations, they were still racists who vote for racists.
Smearing a portion of the voting public that is crucial to electoral victory as ungrateful bigots and racists is not the best way to go about gaining the support of such voters.
Instead, the name-calling tactic only drives those voters further away, as the 2016 election so clearly showed.
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