Message to Progressives: Lily Ledbetter Is What Democrats Should Be All About

The kindergarten of spoiled, affluent children pretending to dabble in politics, otherwise known as Netroots Nation, hit a new low when the White House communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, was subjected to one of the most immature and unprofessional snark interviews ever given to a political operative who had been invited as a guest to this event.

Kaili Joy Gray, a Daily Kos front pager, during the interview and taking it upon herself to speak for all Progressives, smugly informed Pfeiffer that Progressives were "tired of hearing about Lily Ledbetter."

As a lifelong Democrat and a liberal, that makes me feel satisfied and vindicated.

It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt what I've been saying for donkey's (pun intended) years: That for the past 40 years, the Democratic Party, particularly its resurrected Leftwing, who eschewed the term liberal in favour of Progressive because they were incapable of remembering any history prior to the 1960s, totally abandoned, not only the unions, but the working class in general, in favour of idealogies spouted by well-educated, affluent professionals with no traditional or emotional ties to either the labour movement or the working class.

Prior to 1972, the Democratic party was all about the Lily Ledbetters of this world. The Democratic party was the party of the working class and the working poor, in the rural South, the rural Midwest and the Rust Belt states. These people were dismissed as herd followers, too unimportant to cultivate, too dumb and too racist. All assumptions pushed to such a point and to such a degree that many Progressives now believe them as absolute fact.

I would imagine Kaili Joy Gray is tired of hearing about Lily Ledbetter. To Kaili Joy, Lily's just a dumb hick Southern woman who's probably inbred, speaks atrociously and probably has cooties. She probably goes to a fundamentalist church on Sundays, plays with rattlesnakes and speaks in tongues. She's poor. She's country, and she bores the hell out of latte-sipping, designer-clad, Coastal-living Kaili Joy. Red states, red people.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond, FDR is shaking his head sadly. JFK and Bobby are biting their lips in anger. LBJ looks at Harry Truman and demands how the hell these people can call themselves Democrats, and Harry replies, "Never mind how the hell they can call themselves Democrats, who the fuck are these people?"

That's exactly what I'd like to know.