The great shift.
Speaking broadly, the American workforce is roughly divided into two cohorts – those who shower before they go to work and those who shower after work.
Again speaking broadly, those who shower before work, work in offices. They are the doctors, salesmen, office managers, bookkeepers, bankers, small business owners and other white-collar workers whose daily efforts add value to society.
But the shower-before-work crowd also includes DEI-obsessed HR managers, untethered-from-reality college professors, unaccountable government bureaucrats, bottom-feeding lawyers, “journalists,” and rent seeking climate change activists who deplete societal marrow.
This latter group, along with the approximately 42 million Americans who receive welfare benefits, constitute the core of the 21stcentury Democratic Party.
That’s a dramatic shift.
At one time – not that long ago – the Democratic Party was seen, with some justification, as the party of the shower after work crowd. Those who shower after work do so because they get hot and dirty doing the sweaty work that must be done if the country is to function. These workers are busy all day building houses, working on cars, repairing downed power lines, answering calls to put out fires, and climbing into sweltering hot attics to fix air conditioners.
And for decades they voted for Democrats.
But against the background of a Democratic Party that was already morphing into a coalition of celebrities, the ultra-rich, über-educated white coastal liberals and those who depend on government benefits for daily living, Donald Trump came down the escalator.
Donald Trump is a multibillionaire who built his fortune on the labor of those who shower after work. The respect that Trump has for that worker is authentic to the point that it need not be spoken. Trump never has to put on a hard hat and go to a jobsite for a photo op. He has been to plenty of jobsites when no one in the media was looking. The workers on that jobsite get Trump because he exudes the fact that he gets them.
Trump’s empathy for the common man arrived concurrently with a gnawing fear in the pits of the stomachs of working and middle-class Americans that the country is about to pay a terrible price for having exported its muscular work to third world countries. It’s not hard to imagine how China having more shipbuilding yards than the United States could one day come back to bite in a most unpleasant way.
As to the timing of shower-taking, Democrats like Kamala Harris look condescendingly upon the late shower-takers. They have disdain for people who get dirty at work and who don’t know Pinot Noir from Pinot Grigio. In the past 30-odd years, and with the acquiescence of squishy Republicans, they have allowed the United States to devolve from the Arsenal of Democracy to the Nation of Zoom Meetings.
The Democratic Party of Kamala Harris is by no stretch any longer the party of the working man.
The irony of ironies is that the Republican Party, led by a New York born & bred billionaire, now is.
To get anywhere in todays Democrat party , you need to be a hard core communist
I reality, I would not want to go back to the LBJ era but in so called modern times, this is where most of our problems began. If TRUTH be told this is where a lot of our problems took root and really started to grow. Oh, old LBJ was for the working man alright enough as long as they were working for HIM and his party. So he devised a plan to keep a segment of voters voting democrat for at least 200 years. That plan was to make the people depend on the government. Give them welfare instead of jobs. AND for the most part, this has worked until a man we all know rode down an escalator and announced he was running for President. This man upset the apple cart by removing the scales from peoples eyes.
Through the years some people have tried to open peoples eyes to the fact that LBJ’s way was not best for this Country or the people. There was a lady named Starr Parker who wrote a book about getting off the plantation and start thinking for yourself. She was ahead of her time because people refused to listen. Now, IF you could find her book is the time for reading it. Because this man who gave us four productive years in a way backs up her words.
If memory serves me correctly, Clinton removed AMERICAN JOBS and sent them over seas. American MADE didn’t mean much compared to money saved is what we were told. When in reality what we got was vastly inferior products. The jobs lost due to this would put millions of people on welfare and back in democrat hands. That is until that man who became President proved that if you gave people JOBS, gave them PURPOSE. And that man, President Donald J. Trump won me over when he didn’t lie about anything! He didn’t have to lie because people could see for themselves that HIS policies WORKED. His policies helped the WORKING MAN/WOMAN which in turn made America prosper!
I know voters on both sides of the aisle. What I want to know is where do you put the seniors on Social Security. Do we not shower at all? I’ve volunteered with both parties. Best welfare program ever was Bill Canton’s welfare to work program. As a rape survivor I probably won’t vote this year, or write in another person. Trump may believe 6 weeks not enough, but J.D. Vance does…..Breaks this 79year old’s heart that she has no one to vote for. I live on Social Security and live in a group home , where these are not regulated or registered in Texas. Violence common in them.
A NO vote is a vote for Kamala; doesn’t matter now anyone spins it. Not to vote is avoiding your duty as a citizen. The “Right to Vote” is the core of our Republic. Remember we are a Republic, not a Democracy. North Korea is a Democracy. If you love our American Way of Live, vote. To do otherwise is to turn your back on freedom and all we have fought to preserve; a Republic. We have two choices; Kamala and subjugation and destruction of our way of life…………..A New Way Forward. What is THAT new way forward? Subjugation of the population. Or Trump and freedom and the Constitution; traditions you and I grew up with. Freedom is very fragile; not voting endangers the very concept of the right to choose. Unless YOU choose to negate that right. I hope you can understand what I am referring to.
The unique and wonderful perspective you bring to various issues is so much appreciated! Paul, your column this week is yet another example. Contrasting “those who shower-before-work” with “those who shower-after-work” makes the point beautifully.
The former are what I call “the takers”, the latter what I call “the makers”. The takers consume far more than they contribute. The makers make the things we need and want and render services that a genuinely need.
The takers are dangerous because they, aided by big government, consume more than they contribute. And it is the productive makers who are expected to hand over more and more of what they earn to the takers
My concern is that we are approaching a tipping point where the takers will outnumber the makers,as has been the case in Venezuela.