By Clark Bailey

Contributing Writer

When I was younger, I can remember the Democratic Party was always said to be the party of the working man, of the little guy, of Americans and the interests of those everyday Americans. The party was always said to be pro-worker, pro-labor, pro-manufacturing and pro Main Street America.

Even as recent as Barack Obama’s campaign Democrats touted themselves as tough on immigration and putting our citizens first. In fact, you can listen to speeches of then-candidate Bill Clinton in the early 1990s and you’ll find a man tough on illegal immigration, tough on crime, and someone who supported entitlement, in particular, welfare reform.

Less than 30 years later, one can barely recognize the Democrat Party as it was in the 1990s and even in many ways as it was the last time they occupied the White House. This year’s field of presidential candidates seems to be preoccupied with one-upping the others on how out of touch with normal Americans they can be. Even Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang, the only two candidates who, I believe, have any substance to their campaigns, are mired deep int he mud of the outrage culture and cultural Marxism disguised as progressivism.

Take, for instance, the words of President Bill Clinton in 1995: “All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.

The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use to impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace… We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”

(Bill Clinton, Remarks At State Of The Union, Washington, D.C., 1/24/95)

It would be hard to imagine a tougher stance on immigration coming from the lips of President Trump, who in battles with progressives in congress and cuckservatives from his own party has accomplished less than Clinton was able to in the passing of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996. The mainstream legacy media of the time lauded President Clinton and now largely harangues President Trump. People that were considered normal a little over 20 years ago are now called hateful, xenophobic and racist. The rate at which the Democrats have gone from center-left to quasi communists is alarming, and in many ways saddening.

The current crop of candidates contains a group that almost without exception support not only full-scale illegal immigration but many openly state they are more concerned with representing illegal aliens in this country than their own citizens. As a group, almost all proposed laws and regulations to dismantle the 2nd Amendment. All Democratic Presidential candidates without exception, support abortion up until the moment of birth. This while feigning concern for children separated from their parents at the border. While laughably and hypocritically supporting separating families from their children prior to birth.

The current crop of Democratic candidates seems to be at a race with each other to see who can be the biggest advocate of socialism and failed economic policies of the past — the winners so far being Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. All without exception support the proxy war on law enforcement and in turn law and order. All candidates laughably cite “climate change” and “white supremacy” along with “Russiagate” as the primary concerns of our nation. All the while playing down the dangers China and Islamic terrorism propose.

All of the Democrat candidates are immersed in the insanity of preferred pronouns, of speech codes, limiting the rights of Christians, and the lies of “hands up don’t shoot.” Tulsi Gabbard is right on when it comes to intervention and foreign entanglements, and most Republicans, even the president, could learn something from her on that. Yang speaks to looming problems with mechanization, technology and the workforce, and how those things will affect society and our quality of life. Republicans, including the president, could stand to listen to some of what he has to say on that. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either however due to how out of touch they are on everything else.

All of these factors illustrate why the Democratic Party is almost completely gone in rural American, the heartland, the South. Even in places, where for years, the Democratic Party was seen as the bastion for everyday Americans. That is partly because they have completely abandoned everyday Americans.