It has nearly been forgotten now, but last fall, Democrats ridiculed and chased one of their primary candidates out of the race. In retrospect, it was a significant event. Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency on the back of a strong performance among low-income and rural white voters, it is worth pondering whether the same left-wing attitude toward Jim Webb is what has driven the white working class out of their party.
As we noted at the time, Webb had been comfortably within the bounds of the liberal Democratic mainstream when he ran for his only Senate term in 2006. He had opposed the Iraq War before it was launched, and also the Gulf War before that. As a senator, he opposed policies barring homosexuals from military service. He supported legalized abortion. He voted for Obamacare. He supported expanding Medicare. He opposed anything resembling privatization of Social Security.
But as a candidate who held too many politically incorrect beliefs, and who seemed culturally “retro” by the standards of coastal elites, Webb seemed out of place on the debate stage with candidates who were prepared to declare their affinity for socialism and gun control. Thus, liberals subjected him to intense ridicule.
In the only debate in which he participated, Webb was attacked for his writings in opposition to affirmative action. He defended those writings, pointing out that such programs are most harmful to down-scale white Americans who lack the family connections to succeed.
“When we create diversity programs that include everyone, quote, ‘of color,’ other than whites, struggling whites like the families in the Appalachian mountains, we’re not being true to the Democratic Party principle of elevating the level of consciousness among our people about the hardships that a lot of people … happen to have,” he said.
Webb was also the only candidate willing to agree with the statement that “all lives matter,” which was posed in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.
When asked about his “A” rating from the NRA during his time in the Senate, Webb said he supports universal background checks, but added: “There are people at high levels in this government who have bodyguards 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The average American does not have that, and deserves the right to be able to protect their family.”
To a very, very large number of people, Webb’s comments were simple common sense. To liberals who watch Democratic primaries and chronicle them for major news organizations, they seemed out of place and kooky. These same liberals did not find it kooky when Bernie Sanders held up Denmark as the socialist model to which America should aspire (it isn’t socialist, by the way), nor flinch at Clinton’s baggage, nor question Clinton’s and Sanders’ promises to end all deportations.
But Webb was unacceptable, and he dropped out when he saw no path to victory.
Now that Trump has won the presidency, Webb’s common sense should seem relevant once again among Democrats, if they want to regain the support of blue-collar voters. Over the years, the same left-wing attitude that pushed Webb out of the primaries may have pushed millions of others who identify with Webb’s life and down-to-earth demeanor out of the Democratic Party. This attitude, which has been especially strong during Obama’s lamentable presidency, probably prompted many of them to vote for Trump.
Before Tuesday, Democrats had convinced themselves that they had settled all the important issues, save perhaps how people should pronounce the gender-neutral pronouns (“xe”) that they would be forcing everyone to use once they had finished enacting their policy agenda.
But on the way to the White House, they shunned and then shed a large group of voters to whom they had earnestly appealed in past times, and whose votes it turned out they needed.
That’s food for thought for a party that now finds itself at rock bottom, out of power and out of prospects.
