By Michael Bielawski
The Executive Director of the Vermont Democrat Party Jim Dandeneau didn’t pull punches when expressing his disdain for the growing MAGA sect of the GOP establishment. This was on WVMT’s Monday, Oct 14’s Morning Drive talk radio show.
“This feels to me like the same deal that the Republican Party made in 2016 when Donald Trump became the nominee, [which] is that they kind of handed the reigns over to these social conservative firebrands and they ended up with an open fascist running the government for four years,” Dandeneau said.
112,704 Vermonters voted for Trump in the 2020 election. Throughout the show which typically draws a conservative audience, Dandeneau was at the mercy of skeptical callers and hosts.
Dandeneau argued that despite hard economic times brought on during his party’s majority and now supermajority status in Montpelier, he says voters must stay the course.
“Vermont is having a tough time right now but I think folks are – Vermont voters are nuanced,” he said. “Vermont voters are smart and they pay attention. And they have nuanced understanding of the complicated ways that things are tough right now and I think they want nuanced, complicated solutions to those problems.”
Dandeneau also said Republican Governor Phil Scott “sold his soul” regarding recent GOP candidate endorsements of “MAGA extremists”.
“Going all in on your party means that you are getting in bed with some of these extremists that they are supporting,” he said. He added that the governor would “gain more in a compromise with Democrats in the legislature.” Then he said, “He chose to get in bed with his own party.”
Some GOP members he considers extremists include Vermont’s GOP candidate for U.S. House Mark Coester and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently switched parties from Democrat to GOP.
Fact-checked with polling
Dandeneau started questioning the notion that Americans were better off during the Trump presidency. One of the hosts, former state legislator Kurt Wright, had some new polling data from NBC News to put questioning that notion to rest.
When asked about the policies of the Biden/Harris administration, the poll indicates 25% said they were helped. Nearly twice as many – 45% – said the policies hurt them.
Those numbers largely flip around when asked the same question about Trump’s time in office. They are 44% said Trump’s presidency helped them and only 31% said they were hurt.
Wright says, “How do you make sense of that poll and it’s being verified in other polls as well, people are saying ‘we were better off under Trump.’ They may not like him, but they felt they were better off.”
Dandeneau disputes the polling.
“That’s not reflected in the reality that we are hearing from folks on the ground,” he said. “I’m not a big unskew the polls guy but I will say that polling has pretty consistently underestimated Democratic support over the last 6 years with the exception of a couple of swing states at the presidential level.”
Upset callers
GOP callers of the program accused him of being offensive. The callers didn’t give names.
“I’m just listening to this gentleman here belittling Republicans and all that,” he said. “We are voters, we are Americans, we are Americans first. We don’t look at things like you look at it. We care about America. I know when Donald Trump was in office, I was very better off than today.”
Another caller shared a similar sentiment.
“If I had any hair on my head left I would have pulled it out by now listening to this. You guys talk about when we call we should be respectful and everything, all I’ve heard is all these hyperbole descriptions of the Republican Party from this man.
“The Democrats have had power, and they actually stunk the whole place up with their power that they’ve had. The high inflation, high taxes, the high prices of gas, all because of the Democrats.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle