{"id":3658,"date":"2025-03-09T13:05:24","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T13:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=3658"},"modified":"2025-03-09T13:05:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T13:05:24","slug":"opinion-are-liberal-democrats-really-bewildered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=3658","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Are Liberal Democrats Really \u2018Bewildered\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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To the Editor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Re \u201cJoin My Bewildered Liberals Book Club<\/a>,\u201d by Nicholas Kristof (column, Feb. 23):<\/p>\n

I had previously read the books recommended by Mr. Kristof in his column. I take from them many of the same lessons he reiterates. I did find, though, his \u201cbewildered liberals\u201d characterization insulting. Many of us are frustrated, certainly, but not bewildered.<\/p>\n

As someone who graduated from college, but also worked for three different unions over a 40-year career, I have had firsthand experience with the travails of working men and women. But I part company with Mr. Kristof in laying so much of the blame for President Trump\u2019s rise on misguided, liberal \u201celites,\u201d who supposedly disdain or dismiss working people.<\/p>\n

Working men and women abandoned the labor movement in large numbers over the last four decades in part because their U.S.-based unions were ill equipped to deal with cheap, foreign competition that eliminated so many of their jobs.<\/p>\n

That competition was fostered by offshoring promoted by U.S. corporate and political elites from both sides of the aisle. But workers disarmed themselves politically and economically by too often blaming and abandoning unions in the face of that competition, instead of using the leverage that organizing provides to elect and influence more local, state and congressional allies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n