https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...class-00078215
Examples:
Natalie Fertig: You’re part of a 200-plus person Democratic caucus. How do you see yourself creating an understanding of the middle class in that caucus and getting middle-class laws passed?
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez: It feels like the Democratic Party, especially wealthy leadership in the Democratic Party, has taken it upon themselves to be champions of the poorest of the poor. And I think that’s great, but I think that it has left a lot of people in the middle class feeling like people don’t understand the issues we’re facing. I think it’s left unaddressed a lot of really critical things that are not glamorous, lionized issues, but that beat the hell out of people’s will to persist. The indignity of supply chain problems. Catalytic converter theft. Bad infrastructure. Shit roads.
Fertig: So, we talk a lot about the great relocation of Democrats to cities and Republicans to rural areas, but you just flipped a district that is majority rural. Carolyn Long tried this twice [in 2018 and 2020] and failed. What was different this time around?
Gluesenkamp Perez: I think I look more like the district. I live like the district. [And] obviously not running against Jamie [Herrera Beutler] was a huge part of it, you know?
I don’t think that your traditional pedigreed Democrats are the solution to Trump extremism. I think that a lot of these traditional Democrats, the m.o. is to go into a community and start explaining shit. Nobody likes that. I’ve heard that so often: I’ll go to an urban community, and people will be like, “Oh, like this candidate was amazing. They are so smart.” And then I’ll go to a rural community and talk to them about the same candidate.
And they’ll say: “Yeah, they’re pedantic and they don’t understand. They didn’t listen to us.”
Gluesenkamp Perez: We need more and more normal people to run for Congress. We need more people that work in the trades.
When I was thinking about running, I interviewed some jackass, fancy consultant. I told him about myself, and he was like, “Well, I’ve worked with worse.” When I said I had a son, he chortled, and was like, “Hope you don’t want to see your kid again.”
He told me to talk to the governor and see if I could get appointed to some committee on aging and disability, or something like that, and build up a resume that would allow me to run successfully later on.
_______________________________
She's nailing it with every point. Today's Dems love to call any Repub an "extremist", but as an alternative to Trump all they off is their own "extremism". It keeps the rank and file Repubs and Dems fighting, so we're distracted by mundane issues and we miss the fact that Washington D.C. is nothing more than a money laundering operation where the rich get richer and the devil takes the hindmost.
MORE:
Fertig: I know that the DCCC didn’t give you any money. I know that the state party basically didn’t notice [you] until after the primary. What are they missing — besides normal candidates — what are they missing about those voters who are in those districts?
Gluesenkamp Perez: Frankly, I think there’s a lot of lip service to wanting people in the trades, rural Democrats. They say it because it sounds good, but I’m not sure that there is an actual commitment to it.
________________________________
No, there's no commitment to it because normal people who get into DC might be disgusted by what they find, if they're not corrupted by it first.
OK, so she goes a little bit "lefty hardcore" at a couple points during this piece. But you have to start somewhere. At least she gets the basics of the problem. Get some more of these folks inside the DC Beltway and we might just be able to turn this ship around.