Hiding The Contrast Between The Two Parties Is Foolish And Dysfunctional

Corporate media is always ready to set up a tragic dichotomy between the actual grassroots base of the Democratic Party on the one hand and the careerists and special interests and donors who prop them up on the other hand. Yesterday, James Oliphant, writing for Reuters, posited that while some of the presidential candidates are trying to give Democratic voters what they want-- Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, a livable minimum wage, fair taxation, free public college, etc-- the party parasites worry about the center.

You have Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Marianne Williamson, Tulsi Gabbard, Mayor Pete, Julian Castro all running on some version of a Bernie platform, while Status Quo Joe Biden leads a discredited army of corporate whores on the centrist, "no-can-do," Republican-lite, anti-Bernie track: Amy Klobuchar, Terry McAuliffe, Michael Bennet, John Delaney, Michael Bloomberg, John Frackenlooper. Beto is still trying to decide which side he's going to try to be on if he makes the colossal error of running for president instead of senator.

Oliphant warns that the Trumpists are eager to run against the Bernie agenda. Sure... isn't that what conservatives always do? Run against progressive ideas? The Status Quo Joe type Democrats-- who aren't sold on, have never been sold on, Democratic values-- would rather confound Republicans by running on a Republican-lite agenda. That usually goes badly for Democrats, although this cycle they're trying to claim Trump is so anathema to most Americans that they can lure conservative voters away from the GOP. Oliphant, naturally enough, wants to warn and warn and warn that the progressives will pay a price for running as progressives. That's what the corporate media does.

"Some Democrats," he wrote (not real ones, some), fear the argument against progressive ideas "has potency. They worry the primary may produce a nominee who will not appeal to centrist working and middle-class voters who voted for Trump in 2016 but whom Democrats believe they can win back."

Jeff Link is a professional Democratic strategist-for-hire in Iowa. He just got off running the catastrophically-run, failed Fred Hubbell for governor campaign, enough reason for anyone with a few brain cells to rub together to listen carefully to what Link says and then studiously do the exact opposite. He can always be counted on to be a fount of conventional wisdom that will always prove to be half wrong and half right.

"The big progressive programs are popular in a caucus or primary electorate, but probably don’t move the needle among voters who want to find someone who will change Washington by tilting the system to favor people in the middle-- not the very rich or the very poor," said Jeff Link, an Iowa Democrat who worked for former President Barack Obama’s campaign [in a very minor capacity].

Some non-Democrat Democrats and their media allies think the Democratic Party should decide who to run based on what Trump may or may not do. Strategy from people with no values or values antithetical to the Democratic Party, are always so utterly useless to listen to, but is, none-the-less, exactly what journalists like Oliphant always present. The give-away line in his foolish piece is "Democrats have already seen the risks of catering to progressives."

A person familiar with the president’s thinking told Reuters that Trump had been looking for a “big contrast issue” to help power his 2020 bid.

His last Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was widely known to the voting public before her campaign. This time, Trump may face someone new to the national stage, and he is looking to brand that candidate before she or he emerges as the nominee.

In recent speeches, including his State of the Union address and again this week in Florida, a key 2020 battleground, Trump used the crisis in Venezuela to equate Democrats with socialists.

“There’s no question this is a deliberate strategy on his part,” said Matt Bennett, a political analyst with Third Way, a Democratic centrist think-tank. “It is a bit scary to think about what it could do to us in a close, tough election next year.”

Not quite able to grapple with a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma , Oliphant asserts that the popular Green New Deal is poison and that Ocasio-Cortez "has enjoyed disproportionate influence for a first-term congresswoman because of her social media presence." He then tosses out a river of GOP talking points against her as though she is the opponent the Democratic Party is running against Trump. "Republicans," he propagandized, "also jumped on Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to hike the marginal tax rate to 70 percent as a way to finance her environmental initiative. Even so, Warren followed by suggesting a 'wealth tax' on Americans with large fortunes to help finance her child-care plan. Democrats are 'afraid to tell their base what is practical' and instead are offering policies that have little chance of being enacted, said Bryan Lanza, a former campaign aide to Trump who regularly defends the president on cable news."

Remember, the Democratic Party don't always have to sell itself as the lesser-of-two evils party. It was only when centrists and corporatists abandoned Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt progressivism that the Democrats have fallen into disrepute. "Recent Democratic presidential nominees such as Clinton, Obama and John Kerry," wrote Oliphant, "ran as centrists. This is the first election in the modern era, Lanza said, in which progressives 'are sucking up all the oxygen and energy.' Democrats as a whole, however, have been moving in a more leftward direction for years. According to Gallup polling, the number of Democrats who identify themselves as “liberal” has risen from 32 percent in 2001 to 46 percent as of 2018." Oliphant then asserts that "That shift has largely been among white, highly educated Democrats. African-American and Hispanic voters remain more moderate-- which could present a challenge as the party tries to mobilize those groups to vote in greater numbers.

So far, the moderate wing of the party is under-represented in the 2020 field. Some Democratic strategists are concerned the party did not heed the lesson from last year’s congressional elections, when it took power in the U.S. House of Representatives largely through moderate candidates who won over suburban voters by focusing on “kitchen-table” issues such as coverage for preexisting medical conditions.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is one of the few Democrats in the presidential field to push back at the progressive agenda. At a CNN town hall this week, she called the Green New Deal “aspirational” and suggested Medicare for all was only a potential long-term goal.

John Delaney, a former Maryland congressman and a centrist who has gotten little traction as a presidential contender, this week said the 2020 primary “is going to be a choice between socialism and a more just form of capitalism.”

Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in the early primary state of South Carolina, said candidates must soon balance sweeping agendas with more pragmatic proposals.

“It has to be a mixed bag of what makes sense and will not cause us long-term political damage,’ he said.

As for the Green New Deal, party elders-- elders as in geriatric cases, still fighting the battles of their hey-days in the '60s and '70s-- want to buy it. Did you watch the ugly Dianne Feinstein confrontation with California children on Friday? That could have as easily been her gated community neighbor Nancy Pelosi or Steny Hoyer or Status Quo Joe. Politico is also warning Democrats that they'd better take a Republican-lite approach to 2020. "Democrats’ embrace of sweeping progressive ideas like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal is about to get its first reality check on Capitol Hill — as both parties make huge bets about which message will sway voters in 2020," wrote Adam Cancryn. "For liberal Democrats, proposals to provide universal health care, combat climate change and create a fairer economy represent the kind of bold agenda they will need to unseat President Donald Trump, a candidate unafraid to make his own brash moves on trade and immigration. But Republicans are seizing on the same proposals to paint Democrats as socialist radicals, while trying to widen the ideological splits already emerging among Trump’s would-be challengers."

[S]ome progressives have invoked Trump’s upset 2016 win as an argument for taking a bold strategy into 2020-- evidence that Democrats should focus more on articulating popular core values and less on worrying about the practicalities. In the same way Trump fired up his base with pledges to build the wall and make America great again, progressives believe Democrats can piece together an even bigger coalition by branding themselves as the party of universal health care and economic equality.

“You could actually credit Donald Trump for this,” said Faiz Shakir, the new campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 run. “The kind of not giving a crap what others think, or what his critics think, and just plowing ahead with a vision has made progressives hungrier for a version of, well, what would that look like [on the left]?”

But top Republicans say they see Democrats veering off a socialist cliff-- citing the Green New Deal, H. Res. 109 (116), and S. Res. 59, co-authored by New York freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a prime example.

“It’s entirely fantasy, it’s unrealistic. These are just talking points designed to appeal to the fringe of their party,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). He added, “It’s ended up causing quite a headache for our colleagues across the aisle who’ve tried to explain exactly what they’re trying to do and how they’re trying to do it.”

The debate in Congress’ opening months follows more than two years of arguments by progressive activists that Democrats need to be more than just the anti-Trump party to succeed in 2020. They say transformative policies are also increasingly necessary to counter major crises like a changing climate and the growing power of the super-rich.

“The center of energy in the Democratic Party is with these kinds of bold, progressive, populist ideas around transforming our economy and democracy,” said Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats, a group inspired by Sanders’ 2016 run and crucial to the rise of Ocasio-Cortez. “We’re making change happen pretty fast.”

Yet it’s also generated unease among party moderates. And while progressives point to strong polling in support of Medicare for All and aggressive climate action, the GOP is eager to spend the next several months chipping away at it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s call for a vote on the Green New Deal is aimed purely at driving a wedge through the Democratic Party, forcing liberal senators and vulnerable centrists alike to weigh in on a proposal that envisions remaking the U.S. economy in just a decade. Already, moderate Democratic senators like Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have groused publicly about the plan as moving too far, too fast.

Republicans in the House, meanwhile, are pressing for a series of hearings on Medicare for All, certain that enthusiasm for single-payer health care will plummet as voters study the details and trade-offs.

“Democrats’ Medicare for All proposal would force over 150 million Americans to lose their employer or their union-sponsored insurance,” said Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “You want to talk about sabotage? That’s what we should be having a hearing on.”

Democrats’ liberal wing vows to meet that challenge head on. And they’re expecting the party’s growing list of presidential candidates to stand with them through the long, bruising 2020 campaign.

Already, all six Democratic senators running for president have co-sponsored the Green New Deal, and five signed on last year to Medicare for All legislation. Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have sought to further separate themselves from the pack-- Sanders is running as a democratic socialist in favor of free college and a break-up of the big banks, while Warren has rolled out plans for a wealth tax and universal child care.

In Congress, House progressives next week are rolling out a detailed road map to single-payer health care-- even as party leaders urge a focus on the more immediate, incremental health issues that sparked their midterm electoral wave just months ago.

“What we’re proposing is really a transformation of the health care system to get out the pieces that are so embedded in it that it continues to make health care costs equivalent to 19 percent of GDP,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a Congressional Progressive Caucus leader who’s penning the Medicare for All bill. “The majority of the American public believes we should have what almost every other industrialized country in the world has.”

...[S]ome moderate [meaning conservative] Democrats have privately pointed to House progressives’ difficulties securing 100 co-sponsors for their single-payer health care bill as evidence the party’s vocal left wing is overstating support for its policy ideas.

There are over 90 co-sponsors so far and by the time the bill is rolled out there will certainly be over 100, so the Blue Dogs' private pointing is pointless and the chances of Politico correcting their reporting error are non-existent. In fact, last time I looked, several New Dems and even a Blue Dog had already signed on as co-sponsors.