Montana Democrats must clean the house or go extinct

If “democracy was at stake” in the election, I guess we can conclude that democracy is toast, saddle pals.

While there will be no shortage of whining and finger-pointing coming up in the foreseeable future, the grim fact is that the Democrats’ sorry “centrist” strategy has failed again — and the first convicted felon in the nation’s history and self-described “dictator on day one” will re-ascend to the presidency.

Closer to home, here in Montana the befuddled and dysfunctional Democratic Party has almost finished the job of marching itself to political extirpation. There’s no Endangered Species Act for political parties, but if there were, Montana’s Democrats would definitely be on the list.

One good thing about being a politically independent columnist is having a more objective view of the two major political parties without wearing the blinders of unquestioning party loyalty. And that view of the disintegrating Democrats surely suggests if they don’t want to go extinct they’d best be cleaning house, tossing the old and obviously ineffective staff, consultants and strategists and starting over. After all, there’s really very little left to lose.

While there are many, the first of their failed campaign “strategies” was dealing with our outrageous property taxes. Claiming they would provide a simple “fix” if the Republican governor would call a special legislative session, it was a safe ruse because they knew there was no chance that would happen. 

Even then, their “fix” would only have affected the state portion of property taxes when the vast majority of Montana’s property taxes are local, not state, as anyone looking at their property tax bill can plainly see.   

But that didn’t stop them from making it their primary message, despite their long-standing record as the party of “tax and spend” rather than reducing taxes. Yet, while they hurled accusations and hypothetical solutions, what voters actually got were $675 checks from the Republican administration. You know, hard cash on the barrel head. No need to guess which was more effective, eh?

Or how about running Ryan Busse for governor, a guy with no experience in governing and whose main message seemed to be a scare campaign about access to public lands and waters. Moreover, Busse was a Republican before he ran as a chameleon Democrat — and the same is true of the Demo’s losing congressional candidate for the western district.  

And then there was Jon Tester, a Democrat who decided to try to be more Republican by ditching his party’s candidate for president and emulating West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s support for more dirty fossil fuels, pipelines, and desecration of public lands to produce those antiquated, climate-killing fuels.  

But guess that didn’t work out so well either. As the old saying goes, if people want to vote for a Republican, they’ll vote for a real one, not a Democrat talking like one.

The list of the Democrat party electoral strategy failures goes on and on, including attacking the personal wealth of Republican candidates — which is generally looked upon as a measure of success in this society.

When you stack up the failed messages, themes and misdirected priorities Montana’s Democrats threw at voters, there’s really not much mystery of why they don’t hold even one statewide office.  

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is commonly defined as insanity. After last election’s wipe-out, and now this one, that’s a harsh reality the Dems have to face.  As another political Independent, Bernie Sanders, recently put it: “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?  Probably not.” 

George Ochenski writes from Helena.