Many years ago, I voted for Bill Clinton. I thought I could trust him. He seemed honest, fair and a champion of the middle class. In 1994 he signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, against the warnings of every labor union in the country. I realized then that we had been betrayed.

The same Wall Street companies, asking us to invest our savings and retirements in their stocks, would now be sending our jobs to Canada and Mexico. Those countries’ governments would help protect their citizens’ jobs, but our government would no longer protect our jobs.

American workers had been betrayed! I, as a longtime Democrat, have since wondered how we could harbor the Clintons and still be true to our beliefs of protecting the middle class.

In the 2016 elections, it looked like we had a real champion in Bernie Sanders, but the Hillary Clinton-Wall Street machine squashed him like a bug. People like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile helped make sure the Sanders campaign met an early demise. He was doomed before he ever started.

The Democrats acted like we were ganged up on or that the election was rigged. The truth is we’ve lost our way. We allowed people who didn’t really share our values to take over our party. The only Democrats I’ve personally known to approve NAFTA were the Clintons.

I once heard a minister in Bangor give this advice in a sermon: “Remember who you are.” That was probably the best advice I could ever give to my fellow Democrats.

Curt Fordyce

South Portland