Come back and give 'em hell, Harry

DFLers serve up good food and no bologna

I had lunch with a bunch of Democrats today.

Getting me there wasn’t a hard sell. I’m generally fond of both lunch and Democrats. Generally fond of… there’s a big difference between sitting down to a prime rib hero and beer cheese soup and snarfing cheap bologna on stale Wonderbread over the kitchen sink.

Same goes for Democrats…

Let’s understand, I inherited a preference for the old DFL – FDR kept our family on the farm and Grandpa’s face would beam with pride tempered by a bit of a hang dog look when he’d declare he’d only voted for one Republican in his entire life … Richard Nixon in ’72 … “and that sure turned out to be a mistake…”

For the most part we weren’t the precinct organizing, convention attending, door knocking kind of Democrats. Our politics had more of a back-pew Lutheran flavor…quietly speaking up if somebody was carrying on and carrying on about something just plain stupid, but otherwise letting a small lapel button or discreet bumper sticker give testimony to our allegiance. For years we were friendly with Republicans … sort of like Lutherans are friendly with Catholics – we had some differences of opinion on a few points, but pretty much agreed when it came to the really big questions.

I fear that, lately, that’s changed.

I grew up in Minnesota where the Democrats went by the hybrid moniker “DFL” – that stood for – and at least in theory still stands for – Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party. Being mostly farmers and blue-collar folks, the Farmer-Labor part of that identity was pretty important with the folks I grew up around – and y’know, around those folks, they still are.

Lately, that’s posed a real problem for Democrats come election time.

For the last goodly number of years, Democrats have been more inclined to talk about abortion rights, gay rights, right pronouns, and all the things white people did wrong years and years ago for which white working folks today ought to feel they’re still to blame. Meanwhile small farmers were losing their farms. Small towns were losing their businesses, people, and futures. Blue collar families were losing their ability to buy homes, get health care, and plan for a future. The F-L of D-F-L were scared, ignored, and angry.

And out in the country, DFLers were losing elections.

Republicans were at least talking about farms, jobs, and being proud of who you are and what your family and friends believed and accomplished. They may have been talking nonsense, but they were talking about what folks really cared about. The only ones.

That may be changing.

And that’s why I had a good lunch today.

For the first time in I don’t know how many years, nobody – and I literally mean nobody – was talking about what people did in their bedrooms and with who, who ought to be using what bathroom, who was living here before Columbus set sail, or when life begins and when and how it ought to end. DFLers – A.K.A. Democrats – talked about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They talked about farmers going broke, people not able to afford a place to live, the price of groceries, the price we’re all paying to have Donald Trump and his co-defendants in charge of the country and what it’s going to cost us all in time, energy, and willingness to take a stand and take a risk. They talked about hard issues without easy answers; about problems that need real solutions. They talked like adults talked when I was still a boy.

It gave me a bit of hope that Harry Truman might be coming back to give ‘em hell…

We’re needing that…and they deserve it.

Oh, and the food was good, too … no bologna anywhere.