JIM WEBB – THE OLD TIME DEMOCRAT
The old Democrat Party was a motley collection of selected plutocrats, labor bosses, Southern segregationists, smaller farmers, urban liberals and, as early as the 1930s, racial minorities. It was no doubt a clunky coalition but delivered big time: winning World War II, pushing back the Soviet Union and making it to the moon while aiding tens of millions of Americans to ascend into the middle class.
Only one Democrat candidate in the 2016 presidential race, James Webb, represents this old coalition. A decorated combat veteran, onetime Reagan Navy secretary and former U.S. senator from Virginia, Webb, 69, combines patriotism with a call for expansive economic policies to help the middle class.
He speaks most directly to white working-class voters, particularly in places like Appalachia, the South and in rural hamlets and exurbs across the country, precisely where Democrats are now regularly thrashed in elections.
So far, his candidacy is attracting little to no mention, because he identifies with an America – white, rural or suburban – disdained or ignored by the official press. Many current Democrats not only dislike these constituencies, but don’t even want to deal with them, counting, instead, on their lock-step support of minorities, rich liberals, single women and prefamily millennial voters.
Today’s “Post-American” Democrat Party is heading where Barack Obama has pushed it – a full-throated program of statist gentry leftism. Jim Webb wants to reverse that direction.
