With this essay, we welcome to our ranks first-time contributor Rick Swim, who has graciously allowed The Not Fake News to use his answer to my gripe.  I set him off with the following:

“My problem with the Democrats right now is, I’m hearing a lot of ‘Over The Rainbow‘, when what I want to hear is ‘The Mary Ellen Carter‘ or ‘Breakfast In Hell‘.  Anyone understand what I’m trying to say?”

I think I understand; I’m crying in my beer.  Democrats aren’t speaking in the world of doing.  They’re preaching fantasy futures to those already well-off.  Not to those of us who live by the crash of a press and the smells of oil and welding torches — both literal and figurative.

Our Federal government does a lot of things poorly, and every last one of them [the candidates] is talking about how we make the government do more and NO ONE is talking about how we make the government actually do, and do well, all the things that right now it’s just barely doing.

And the things they want to fix have little to do with us.  More handouts for the welfare class, more handouts for the managerial class, but nothing for those of us that make things.  For fuck’s sake, damned nearly everyone I work with votes Republican, even though we’re United Steelworkers and the GOP is anti-union.  Because we think the Democrats hate us more for being blue collar in Indiana than the GOP hates us for being Union.

Make everyone pay higher taxes for “free college” while pretending the cost isn’t skyrocketing; no ideas to fix that.  Medicare For All, even though Medicare can’t even pay the bills of the doctor’s office today; no ideas to fix that either.  Practical governing isn’t something that comes up in the debates from what I’ve seen.

…And none of them are a Sandy Gray.  America wants a Sandy Gray, and the closest we get is Donald Fucking Trump.  It’s heartbreaking.

The Not Fake News is run on donations, and we can’t pay poor Rick for his thoughts.  I wish we could, but everyone does this for love of what we do.  If you can’t donate, do your part and Share it if this reaches you where you live.