Name Calling Democrats

Regarding "WILL THE DEMOCRATS EVER WIN AGAIN?" (Sunday Outlook Pg A27), in addressing what ails his party, Kevin Nix starts out strong, stating "We keep losing elections because voters aren’t buying what we’re selling.....Our nation has had enough of 'us vs. them'."

Unfortunately, after that Nix contradicts himself by declaring that the problem is that "Progressives tend to be obsessed — obsessed — with making logical, fact-driven, even haughty, arguments around five-point policy proposals. But that isn’t the stuff of winning an election. Big-brand concepts and simple storytelling do."

History does not support this argument, because for 40 years, the Democrat Party has progressively redefined every policy issue as "us vs. them", and their simple storytelling is to simply describe people who disagree with them in the most pejorative of terms. It started in the 60s, when they called Republicans "racists" and "bigots."  In the 70s, Democrats added "homophobe", "sexist" and "ageist" to their arsenal.  More recently, Republicans are now "transphobic" and "Islamophobic."  The list is ever-growing and never-ending.

Nix is right that Democrats have a messaging problem, but it's not because they have failed to communicate to the electorate how awesome they are with their logical, fact-driven policy proposals.  Democrats have a messaging problem because they have largely abandoned arguing issues on their merits, and replaced it with vile name calling.

The hate speech is what voters aren't buying, and until Democrats come to that realization, they may in fact never win again.


Pete Smith
Cypress, TX

LTE: Skepticism

Regarding "Amazon to buy Whole Foods for $13.7B" (Page A1, Saturday), I'm surprised that this deal was announced without a word of protest from the federal government. Conventional brick and mortar stores of all descriptions have been decimated by Amazon in the past 20 years, and as the article documents, major grocery chains across the country stand to be similarly decimated by Amazon's foray into store-front retail.

The anti-trust implications are clear: the definition of a vertical monopoly is a company that dominates a particular sector, much as Amazon dominates online commerce. The definition of a horizontal monopoly is a company that dominates various sectors, such as distribution and retail, which Amazon is now attempting to do, leveraging their monopoly in online commerce.

Consumers are inevitably the victims when monopolies are allowed to flourish unchecked. It's time for the federal government to do its job, and investigate this acquisition.

Pete Smith, Cypress