A child in Flint is drinking lead-poisoned water right now, BUT HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT STORMY DANIELS?

Put yourself in the shoes of a single parent trying to earn enough money on minimum wage to feed themselves, pay rent, and take care of their kid(s).

Did you see Trump’s latest tweet where he was kind of a dick?

Put yourself in the shoes of a recent college graduate struggling to make student loan payments, with no option to refinance.

Today the DNC made sure that Independents can’t run in its primaries.

Put yourself in the shoes of a veteran who is now battling mental illness, and homelessness as a result, because we sent him to a war for no adequate reason.

Have you heard of the latest little detail (which will probably amount to nothing), in the Mueller probe?

For what it’s worth, some of these issues do matter, but the Democratic Party is doing a terrible job connecting them to issues that Americans truly care about. In the worst cases, the sheer amount of disunited messages coming from Democrats may actually distract from stronger arguments we have. Take the Mueller probe for example, which has seen numerous subpoenas and guilty pleas, but which many Americans don’t know about because we seize on every little supposed “big development” that actually is just a rumor that somebody *might* do something that *might* have some kind of impact that *might go back to Trump...eventually. Maybe. On that note here is one of the most embarrassing and journalistically dishonest things I’ve ever seen.

I’m sure that means a whole lot to people drinking lead-laced water and struggling to feed their families. Anybody can see that such tweets and “reporting” are not only irrelevant to issues most people face, but also a baseless product of partisanship. Treat people with more respect than to believe they would fall for this. Nobody is convinced to change their mind or who they support by such things.

The Democratic Party is perceived as out-of-touch because it largely is. A majority of Americans believe the Democratic Party is out-of-touch, but fewer believe that of Trump or the Republicans. I think the Democratic Party needs to acknowledge the party is doing something very wrong when a multi-billionaire and a party whose top priority seems to be cutting taxes for the richest 1% is viewed as more in-touch with average Americans. If that isn’t a huge red flag, I don’t know what is.

A big part of the issue is horrible media reporting that largely ignores major issues that actually impact Americans. Take for example MSNBC, which is an outlet that openly leans toward Democrats, reporting 455 times on Stormy Daniels, but *never* on the current US attacks in Yemen. This may seem to be the media’s fault entirely, but lets not forget how often Democratic elected officials get to go on TV and other forms of media. They all have the opportunity to bring it up. The DNC would put out a press release tomorrow on the attacks in Yemen and it would be covered.

https://www.alternet.org/msnbc-has-done-455-stormy-daniels-segments-last-year-none-us-war-yemen

I think a whole other issue is the focus of the DNC, and many Democrats, on intervening in primaries to use the party infrastructure to help candidates the establishment likes. Ironically, I believe this tends to be a counter-productive, and even electorally fatal, mistake. Hillary Clinton would very likely be President of the United States right now if the DNC had not irritated so many progressives with their bias. Whether by voting third party, staying home, or just not volunteering as much, depressing the Progressive vote was a horrible mistake, and Hillary would have almost certainly won the primary anyway. This problem extended to numerous levels of leadership, from the DCCC to local organizations. I fear continuing actions to bias primaries amount to simply continuing to rip off the scab that has formed as the party tries to heal from the 2016 primary. Why is biasing primaries a priority of the DNC while the party struggles to connect with working-class voters?

It just seems like the Democratic Party has its priorities all backward. Democrats, please try to put yourselves in the shoes of our nations’ most vulnerable, those who Democrats should be trying to help the most. Imagine how your arguments would sound to those people. Nobody in dire need of help wants to see the Democratic Party talking about Stormy Daniels and how to exclude independents from the party. At the very least think about how to connect talking points to everyday people. Stormy Daniels, a pee tape, and probably even Russia really can’t be connected to economic concerns. But elitism, trade policy that hurts the middle class, opposing an increased minimum wage, attempting to repeal Obamacare, and starting pointless wars that waste money that could be going to schools, environmental protection etc all can. We just have to be sure to make that connection explicit and direct our focus towards those issues. Put simply: We need a progressive platform that connects policy to the needs of everyday people. Liberals have always had a real issue with being out of touch, and things will never be better if that is not acknowledged and addressed by the Democratic Party and activists. Polling has shown the Democratic Generic Congressional Vote advantage potentially closing rapidly, let’s not lose it all together.

This article was inspired partly by the following video from Secular Talk, check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mueM4ijgZI