This is the accompanying article to go with last weeks Critique of the modern Republican Party.

The Bad

The Democrats are a party that is still profoundly out of touch with much of Middle America, tens of millions of Americans in the so-called “flyover states” are largely either forgotten or ignored by a Democratic Party drunk on its own anti-Trump hype.

The forgotten Americans still remember how Barack Obama had 8 years in the White House and more or less completely failed to deliver any of the “Change we can believe in” to people like them.

While the forgotten America struggles with things like unemployment and access to basic necessities, there are Democrats like Kamala Harris are touting her ‘Rent Relief Act’ which would use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the rent of Americans who earn up to $100,000 per year.

When there are millions of Americans who are struggling to put food on the table or find a good job, the idea of helping those on nearly six-figure incomes should be a complete nonstarter.

Instead, the party including many prominent potential candidates for President in 2020, are pressing ahead with this display of exactly how out of touch the Democratic party is with anything resembling those in middle America.

The idea that a working single mother with two jobs in St Louis, Missouri should be subsidizing the lifestyle of someone in management in upstate New York on nearly $100,000 a year not only sounds wrong, but its also a great betrayal of the ideology of the ‘New Deal’ Democrats who genuinely stood up for the little guy.

The Good

In the lead up to the Mid Term elections, the Democratic Party has increasingly coalesced largely around the Democratic Socialist agenda of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren.

Aside from a few notable exceptions, the Democrats are displaying an enviable amount of political cohesion that is sorely lacking on the other side of the aisle.

The embracing of the Democratic Socialist agenda has reinvigorated a party that was reeling from its shock election defeat at the hands of Donald Trump and the Republican Party less than two short years ago.

Democrats at all levels are getting behind the message hoping to bring about the much talked about “Blue wave” to tip the balance of power on Capitol Hill in their favour.

Many of those in the Democrat old guard is slowly being either converted to the new ways or is falling by the wayside.

The most recent expression of this was the loss of 10 term congressman Michael Capuano to challenger Ayanna Pressley, a Boston city councillor, who is also campaigning on a strong Democratic Socialist message.

As a whole, the pollsters currently predict that it is indeed likely that the Democrats will retake the House if the election campaign continues on its current course. Polls suggest that the Senate will remain under Republican control, but potentially with a reduced majority.

On the face of it, for a party that had the DNC leadership and its political message decimated as a result of the 2016 election, the Democratic Party seems on course for what one might consider a miraculous recovery.

Conclusion

The Democratic Party has made an impressive comeback from their crushing defeat less than two short years ago, assisted handsomely by a heavily anti-Trump media and an injection of new ideas in the form of Democratic Socialism.

With a White House seemingly in almost constant chaos, the Democrats are displaying an enviable amount of political cohesion, lending serious credence to their message of being an alternative government in waiting.

However, despite all of these positive developments for the Democratic Party, they appear to remain painfully unaware of the struggles of many of the forgotten Americans.

Their continued embrace of policies like the ‘Rent Relief Act’ is only going to further alienate voters who may have chosen to give the Democratic party another chance.

By continuing to concentrate on the issues of those in Democrat strongholds on the coasts, they risk yet another backlash in the long term. The forgotten Americans, who arguably helped to propel the Republicans to their big win in the 2016 election cycle, may once again choose to make their voices heard at the ballot box.