About Cisneros, a rebuttal to doom and gloom

I’m motivated to gently disagree with my friend William on Henry Cuellar winning his primary against Jessica Cisneros so I’m moving my comment up to this post.

I haven’t been following this race very carefully but from what I gather, Cisneros was promoted by Bernie Sanders, who William may have a voodoo doll with a striking resemblance to Sanders that he regularly sticks pins into.

Anyway, number one child is a Sanders fan and as a frustrated millennial who probably has voodoo dolls bearing a striking resemblance to members of older generations of Democrats that she not only sticks pins into but likely sets fire to on occasion, I feel that I have to defend the potential Cisneros fans.

Sanders isn’t completely wrong about who the party tends to support. It plays it too safe in many instances. I’m not a lefty lefty but we’ve taken in way too many conservative refugees since the Trump era began that we’re in danger of spinning our wheels. Here in PA, the party backed my congressman, Conor Lamb, who’s a little bit of a cross between a Boy Scout and a high school student body president. He kisses up to the old white dudes at the VFW and completely ignores his eastern suburbs where the voters are bluer than blue and diverse. Lamb went on a scorched earth campaign against Fetterman and lost badly. He isn’t feeling the zeitgeist.

What I think is happening here is Democrats have been told to sit and wait and keep their powder dry for a very long time. But it’s not in our nature to not push forward and try new things and try to get ahead of changes we see coming that might affect the working class and we keep getting stuck with the cautious, clean cut guys who cannot relate.
Sanders doesn’t speak for me. He’s good in some areas and not others and his f#%^ing ego probably cost Hillary the election more than putin, trump or Comey. But we definitely do need to get more in touch with our liberal roots and Four Freedoms.

We need new blood. That may make more conservative Democrats uncomfortable. But think what it has been like for moderate or liberal Democrats who look way lefter than they actually are but are actually lefter than the rightward creep of the party after Obama. People like Cuellar don’t represent us and it’s time to pass the torch to others with newer, younger, fresher ideas even if they are supported by Bernie sanders. That’s why it’s kind of a tragedy that Cisneros lost. I get it that Nancy is trying to hold on to her majority and Cuellar was the safer bet. But the fact that Cisneros came this close to beating him indicates a impatience by the younger progressives in her party to just get on with it. You never know who they’re going to pull along with them and voting for a socially conservative, cautious, plodding, slightly patriarchical male Democrat just isn’t cutting it anymore.

If you are a Gen X, Millenial or Gen Z Democrat, seemingly carrying the weight of all your responsibilities AND 401Ks AND healthcare AND student loans AND social security AND high housing costs AND climate change AND constantly fighting for your reproductive rights and freedom from religion, if you’re in that cohort and you’ve been to other countries in Europe where people have a real work-life balance and aren’t on the verge of being broken by the stress of overwhelming debt and not being able to fullfill basic needs when other countries have figured it out and the US considers you as little more than a crop in its relentless exploitative profit mining of your life and talents, then it must be maddening to see that you have to postpone much of your own hopes, desires, simple regular human expectations in the service of the people who routinely vote for people like Henry Cuellar, Joe Manchin and Conor Lamb.

They represent the weight on your shoulders and not the spring in your step.

One more thing: After the USSC posts its decision on Roe any day now stripping women of a constitutional right they have had for 50 years, Nancy may find she has a real problem on her hands in this district. What incentive is there for Democratic women, and particularly progressive women, to turn out to vote for Henry Cuellar? I’m not sure I would. The idea of voting for a anti-choice man, even if he is in my party, would make me throw up a little in my mouth. I sure as f]}# wouldn’t campaign for him. I’d be sick with so much anger I might swear off the party altogether. I think Democrats seriously underestimate the fury women are going to feel about the upcoming decision. Cuellar will have to rely on his incumbency to get him re-elected. There is zero incentive for young women to vote for Cuellar. And it would be beyond stupid to expect any Texas Republican to cross over and vote for him in the general. We know where their heads are at. So, Henry Cuellar may be the weaker candidate in the general. Who knows, maybe the GOP helped set it up this way.

If that’s the case, this may have been one of the party’s dumbest moves.

Seriously stupid.

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