For a few years, it seemed like everyone I knew who has having a little girl was naming them after old presidents.

So many Kennedys and Reagans and Madisons…

My girlfriend at the time did really like “Madison”, but I told her if we were ever to have a little girl and we’re gonna name her after a former president, we’re gonna have a little Eisenhower running around.

She laughed (as was the intention) but agreed the trend was a little ridiculous.

It shouldn’t be concerning, it should be enlightening.

But it won’t be. Not for the party leadership.

Over the past 40 years they’ve gone from being the champion of blue collar and union workers nationwide, and being able to take those votes for granted…to having the rust belt become the biggest swing region in the country (which their opponent swept this month). Did they take this as a wake up call and do more for the blue collar voters to win their loyalty back?

Nah, they just blame them and talk down to them, and tell them they’re too stupid to know what’s best for them.

In that same time frame, they were seen as abandoning the blue collar worker to court the minority vote, talking their efforts at helping factory workers and turning them toward helping minorities in race and gender. While they were actually doing this they did indeed appear to gain that loyalty at the ballot box. Of course once they had it, they felt no need to keep up the good work for these people and have slowly become a party who does nothing for anyone, and runs on a platform of essentially admitting they do nothing, but that their inaction is better than the other side, so they should still be owed votes.

Once again, this isn’t working out for them, and once again, rather than take it as a rejection of what they’re doing, no…it’s the voters who are wrong.

I despise the GOP as much as any reasonable person, and I firmly believe that many of their voters won’t like what they voted for once they start to get it…but there’s no denying that the GOP has a message, goals, and demonstrable progress toward them. And to counter that…the Democrats have…“I think things are good and I wouldn’t change anything. You should vote for me because I’m not MAGA aligned, and if you don’t, it’s your fault not mine.”

Arrogance is off-putting, and it appears it’s going to take at least a half century for the Democrats to figure that out.

First, an explanation isn’t an excuse. It’s a reason. It doesn’t make it okay, it doesn’t place or shift blame, it just correctly points something out.

In this case, Trump broadly received the same number of votes as he did 4 years ago, while the Democrats got millions fewer.

There’s no assumption there, it’s just an observation.

It’s not pushing or assigning blame. Maybe they didn’t vote because they were lazy. Maybe they didn’t vote because they didn’t like Harris. Maybe they didn’t vote because they didn’t like the process by which she became the nominee. Maybe they didn’t vote because they’ve lost faith in the entire system.

Regardless of reason, and regardless of how any observer decides to interpret it or assign blame, the facts speak for themselves.