Will Democrats ever learn?

AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey

In 1982, I got my first job as a radio station general manager at KATT – Rock 100 The KATT in Oklahoma City. The station’s format was what was then called, “Album Oriented Rock,” or “AOR.” The playlist was anchored by bands like Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Journey, Metallica, and Van Halen. The core audience was 18–24-year-old males.

That core was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that those young guys listened in huge numbers, making the station a perennial ratings leader. But a curse in that among 18-24-year-old males there are a lot of what we called, “head bangers” – guys for whom beer, weed and rock ‘n roll tended to crowd out the education and employment that would make them top prospects for a broad range of advertisers.

So, we looked to expand our base on the margins. We curated our playlist with surgical precision to make the station as palatable as possible to older listeners and to female listeners.

But one day we took it too far. When Prince’s album “Purple Rain” was topping the charts, we decided to add to the playlist “When Doves Cry,” the number one single from that album.

The phones exploded!

Yes, Prince was huge. But not to committed rock ‘n rollers. They were furious. To those core hard rockers, we had broken faith.

I learned something that day. Yes, do whatever you can to expand the base, but always, always, always, respect the core.

Cracker Barrel just learned this lesson. (As did Bud Light and Gillette before them.)

Cracker Barrel’s core customer is mostly southern, mostly non-urban, mostly white, and mostly working class. They’re less likely than the population as a whole to have a college degree and more likely to work in a blue-collar job.

They’re also likely high-index MAGA voters.

When I look at Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino I can imagine that she’s quietly embarrassed by that fact. Likely none of her social circle votes MAGA. The same for her family. So, like Alissa Heinerscheid, the marketing genius at Anheuser who decried that Bud Light drinkers were too “fratty,” Ms. Masino sought to change Cracker Barrel’s image.

The irony here is rich. Working class, high school educated voters – the people who grow our food, fix our machines, pick up our trash and serve in our armed forces – were at one time the very backbone of the Democratic Party.

But elite, Ivy-educated coastal liberals – taking the core of their party for granted – began pushing transgenderism and globalization and open borders and no-cash bail and a long list of other lunacy.

And then along came Donald Trump to gobble up that taken-for-granted core, totally transform the Republican Party and crush Democratic Party dominance that had prevailed since the 1930s.

Cracker Barrel this week backed off amid massive backlash. They learned.

But Democrats at their national meeting in Minneapolis this week doubled down on bashing Donald Trump – and by extension their erstwhile core voters.

Democrats may never learn.

Fine. Let’s pray they don’t.