Democrats Become What They Once Opposed

From Builder to Wall Street's Best Friend

The Democratic Party has abandoned its role as the builder of American prosperity. I know because I lived it — from my family's working-class roots in East Tennessee to watching my own business collapse under policies that Democrats once opposed but now champion.

I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains here in East Tennessee, surrounded by Democratic values. My grandfather was a union organizer who also worked his 40-acre farm growing tobacco and raising cattle. He and my Mamaw met while working at American Knitting Mill in Knoxville. Later, my Mamaw worked as a factory worker at Magnavox and Papaw at American Enka. These weren't just jobs—they were the backbone of communities, the foundation of middle-class lives built by people with eighth-grade educations.

What's easy to forget is how remarkable that middle-class life was, given where they started. My grandfather grew up one of 13 children in a sharecropping family—essentially trapped in a system of economic servitude that was as close as poor whites got to slavery. Yet one generation later, he owned that 40-acre farm, multiple houses, and achieved financial security. That transformation wasn't just personal grit—it was made possible by an America that actually built things, that created systems and infrastructure allowing working people to rise.

I've watched firsthand as those opportunities disappeared. At 19, I inherited my grandfather's manufacturing businesses, only to see them gutted by NAFTA and CAFTA. I tried everything – modernizing with CNC equipment, developing new techniques – but our whole region was being hollowed out. The furniture industry was collapsing as companies turned to cheap imports. Eventually, we went under too.

What happened? How did a party that once built middle-class prosperity become its destroyer? Want to hear something that sounds impossible in today's political landscape?

For decades, the Democratic Party held massive majorities in the House and Senate, at times holding more than 70 seats in the Senate and over 300 in the House. They also completely controlled around 30 state governments. This wasn’t just winning elections—this was total political dominance that shaped America.

You didn't hear FDR or Truman saying "we need a strong Republican party." Hell no. Democrats believed fully in their ideology. They believed in their solutions. They were convinced their vision for America was superior, and they fought like hell to implement it.

Six years ago, I warned about exactly what we're seeing today. When discussing the fear-driven approach of Democratic leadership with The Washington Post in 2019, I put it bluntly: "Leadership is driven by fear. They seem unable to lead." Even then, the greatest danger was clear: Democratic cowardice. Today, that cowardice has created a void where real leadership should be.

Look, here's what I believe at my core: the government should be a representation of the people. It should be working for us. Whether it's our land, our seas, our airwaves, our airspace, our corporations, our companies, or any of the stuff that makes up America—it's supposed to be ours. It's supposed to be we, the peoples'. And when corporations or the government or any elements of this nation stop functioning for those people, then we have to have the capacity to come together to change it.

FDR and the Democrats of that era understood this. They had a clear vision: government should be a competitor in the marketplace, not just a regulator. They created Social Security, built massive infrastructure, regulated banks, and gave people jobs when the market failed them. And Americans rewarded them with unprecedented political power.

The Party of Big Business

Now look at today's Democratic Party. Chuck Schumer - Senate leader for the past decade - sits around sipping wine, hoping Republicans will "expel the turd of Trump" and go back to being the "old Republican party." Meanwhile, his party keeps losing ground as Americans watch their standard of living collapse.

Democrats once stood for working people against corporate power. Now? They champion free market capitalism, deregulation, and globalization - the very policies that have hollowed out American manufacturing, crushed the middle class, and transferred wealth to the top 1%.

Too many people think of the government being involved as the opposite of competition, when really preventing monopolies and preventing the over-empowerment of corporations is one of the functions that government should be fulfilling. The Democratic Party used to understand this. They didn't just think government should be a regulator and an ATM writing checks—they believed it should be actually pushing for change in markets when they fail by competing, by starting new industries.

From Clinton's NAFTA to Obama bailing out Wall Street instead of homeowners, Democrats abandoned their roots as the party that built things. I've seen it with my own eyes. My woodworking company made furniture components for Lazy Boy, Berkline, Universal, and Vaughn Furniture before NAFTA and CAFTA just gutted us. It wasn't just my business—it was our whole region being hollowed out. The furniture industry in High Point, North Carolina was collapsing, and companies were turning to cheap imports.

Democrats have ignored all the warning signs that globalization and free trade have failed the American worker. They've watched our capacity to manufacture, to build infrastructure, to care for our sick collapse - and their response has been more market-based solutions.

Their brand is broken because their party is broken. Their ideology is dead.

The Results Speak for Themselves

Let's be real: if Democrats still represented what they did under FDR, they'd still have those supermajorities. But they don't, because they abandoned the working class for coastal professionals and corporate donors.

When Democrats had power, they built the Hoover Dam, the TVA, the Interstate Highway System. What have they built recently? A healthcare website that didn't work on launch day.

We've got a two-fold process ahead of us. First, we need to reform government in such a way that we trust it to work for us. And second, we need to use that reformed government to reform our economy in a way that it works for us.

Here's the thing that too many have forgotten: we allow corporations to exist, we allow businesses to exist, we license them, we give them corporate charters—they exist at our pleasure. This is our shit. They get to use it. Sure, they get to sell it back to us at a markup, right? But they don't get to rob us blind like they have been for the last 60 years.

What's Really Needed

The core promise of democracy—that America's land, air, corporations, government, and institutions exist to serve "we, the people"—has been forgotten. Democrats refuse to empower the public through bold government action, instead choosing timid regulatory tweaks and market worship.

And let's be clear: this idea that America is just naturally polarized is bullshit. Polarization happens from a lack of leadership and a lack of unity. When you don't stand for anything meaningful, people retreat to their tribes. When you don't offer real solutions to people's problems, they get angry and look for someone to blame.

America needs a party that will actually compete with corporations when they fail us. A party that will build public housing when developers make homes unaffordable. A party that will manufacture vaccines when pharmaceutical companies price-gouge. A party that will create public broadband when telecom monopolies fail to deliver.

I've been in the halls of Congress as AOC's communications director. I've seen how the political class operates up close. I found myself in an environment dominated by graduates from Yale, Harvard, Brown, and Howard. Here I was, a guy from Appalachia with a GED and a culinary degree, surrounded by people with master's degrees and PhDs. Despite all the talk about diversity and inclusion, working-class voices without college credentials were virtually nonexistent.

I know some well-meaning folks believed these market-based approaches would raise all boats. Many still do. But after decades of watching this experiment play out, we have to be honest about the results: a shrinking middle class, crumbling infrastructure, and a generation that can't afford what their parents had.

We're looking at 10 years since I first jumped into politics after hearing Bernie Sanders on Tom Hartman's radio program, and we're worse off than when we started. The factories are still gone. Working people are still struggling. And the so-called experts with fancy degrees are still failing to deliver solutions.

Until Democrats rediscover that democracy means the public reclaiming ownership over our economy, our resources, and our future, they'll continue to disappear—right when America needs them most. The path forward isn't complicated: either rebuild the Democratic Party as a force that actually builds things, or watch it continue its slide into irrelevance.

I'm still swinging hammers as a general contractor in Tennessee, but I'm picking up the political sledgehammer too. Because we need voices that understand what it's like to lose your factory job to NAFTA, to build a business with nothing but grit, to walk the halls of power with a GED while Ivy Leaguers second-guess your expertise.

And as Trump dismantles what remains, who can blame Americans for losing faith in a government that has long ceased working for them?