Do You Think Chris Christie Is Mainstream, A Centrist? He Wants You To. How About AOC?

In the video above, Morning Joe regular, Mike Barnicle, asked Chris Christie how he felt about the neo-fascist CPAC convention giving the announcement of Senator John McCain's death a standing ovation. Barnicle's soft ball: "Is that your political party?" Watch Christie's pivot into an attack on the figure the right-of-center establishment fears most in the whole country. "No, that's not people I would agree with," establishes a rapport with the audience who would also not agree with Nazis cheering the death of John McCain either. "You know, Mike, there's always been elements of my party that I haven't agreed with." Oh, he's such a bipartisan centrist (just like me... my kinda guy). Now that he's got your attention and sympathy... the pivot:

I think that's normal for any political party. I'm sure there are folks who have heard some of the things that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is saying that are mainstream Democrats who say 'no, that's not the party that I belong to, even though that may be where the energy is right now in the Democratic Party.'... Both parties...

Which "things that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is saying" are comparable to a bunch neo-Nazi Trump supporters cheering the death of John McCain? A 70% margin tax rate on annual income over $10,000,000? The Green New Deal? Medicare for All? Replacing ICE? What does she say that is so offensive to self-labeled "centrists?" That "people who are taking money from pharmaceutical companies shouldn't be drafting health care legislation and that people who are taking money from oil and gas companies shouldn't be drafting climate legislation?" I understand exactly why that enrages congressional criminals like Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD). I can see how it drove that worthless slug Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who was kicked out of office by voters in Missouri in part because she took $1,671,164 from the healthcare sector, denounce a reformer like AOC. She doesn't make establishment career criminals comfortable. Nor does she want to. And they want her DEAD.

Yesterday Mehdi Hasan's Intercept essay, AOC, Sanders And Warren Are The Real Centrists Because They Speak For Most Americans, made a lot more sense that the garbage you normally hear fromBeltway media sellouts using the word "moderate" to describe conservatives. Hasan is as angry about this as I am. He asks his readers-- one of whom you should be-- to "Google the words 'moderate' or 'centrist' and a small group of names will instantly appear: Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, and, yes, Howard Schultz. Bloomberg is considered a 'centrist thought leader' (Vanity Fair). Klobuchar is the 'straight-shooting pragmatist' (Time). Biden is the 'quintessential centrist' (CNN) and the 'last hurrah for moderate Democrats (New York Magazine), Shultz is gifted with high-profile interview slots to make his 'centrist independent' pitch to voters." Blood boiling yet? Hasan:

Now Google the freshman House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s been dubbed a member of the “loony left” (Washington Post), a “progressive firebrand” (Reuters), and a “liberal bomb thrower” (New York Times).

Got that? Biden, Schultz and Co., we are told, sit firmly in the middle of American politics; Ocasio-Cortez stands far out on its fringes.

This is a brazen distortion of reality, a shameless and demonstrable lie that is repeated day after day in newspaper op-eds and cable news headlines.

“It’s easy to call what AOC is doing as far-lefty, but nothing could be farther from the truth,” Nick Hanauer, the venture capitalist and progressive activist, told MSNBC in January. “When you advocate for economic policies that benefit the broad majority of citizens, that’s true centrism. What Howard Schultz represents, the centrism that he represents, is really just trickle-down economics.”

“He is not the centrist,” continued Hanauer. “AOC is the centrist.”



Hanauer is right. And Bernie Sanders is centrist too-- smeared as an “ideologue” (The Economist) and “dangerously far left” (Chicago Tribune). So too is Elizabeth Warren-- dismissed as a “radical extremist” (Las Vegas Review-Journal) and a “class warrior” (Fox News).

The inconvenient truth that our lazy media elites do so much to ignore is that Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Warren are much closer in their views to the vast majority of ordinary Americans than the Bloombergs or the Bidens. They are the true centrists, the real moderates; they represent the actual political middle.

Don't believe me? Take Ocasio-Cortez’s signature issue: the Green New Deal. Former George W. Bush speechwriter-- and torture advocate-- Marc Thiessen claims that the Green New Deal will “make the Democrats unelectable in 2020.” The Economist agrees: “The bold plan could make the party unelectable in conservative-leaning states.” The Green New Deal “will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here and tell them,” a testy Diane Feinstein, the senior and supposedly “moderate” Democratic senator from California, told a bunch of kids in a viral video.

But here is the reality: The Green New Deal is extremely popular and has massive bipartisan support. A recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University found that a whopping 81 percent of voters said they either “strongly support” (40 percent) or “somewhat support” (41 percent) the Green New Deal, including 64 percent of Republicans (and even 57 percent of conservative Republicans).

What else do Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, and Sanders have in common with each other-- and with the voters? They want to soak the rich. Ocasio-Cortez suggested a 70 percent marginal tax rate on incomes above $10 million-- condemned by “centrist” Schultz as “un-American” but backed by a majority (51 percent) of Americans. Warren proposed a 2 percent wealth tax on assets above $50 million-- slammed by “moderate” Bloomberg as Venezuelan-style socialism, but supported by 61 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Republicans. (As my colleague Jon Schwarz has demonstrated, “Americans have never, in living memory, been averse to higher taxes on the rich.”)

How about health care? The vast majority (70 percent) of voters, including a majority (52 percent) of Republicans, support a single-payer universal health care system, or Medicare for All. Six in 10 say it is “the responsibility of the federal government” to ensure that all Americans have access to health care coverage.

Debt-free and tuition-free college? A clear majority (60 percent) of the public, including a significant minority (41 percent) of Republicans, support free college “for those who meet income levels.”

A higher minimum wage? According to Pew, almost 6 in 10 (58 percent) Americans support increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to (the Sanders-recommended) $15 an hour.

Gun control? About six out of 10 (61 percent) Americans back stricter laws on gun control, according to Gallup, “the highest percentage to favor tougher firearms laws in two or more decades.” Almost all Americans (94 percent) back universal background checks on all gun sales-- including almost three-quarters of National Rifle Association members.

Abortion? Support for a legal right to abortion, according to a June 2018 poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, is at an “all-time high.” Seven out of 10 Americans said they believed Roe v. Wade “should not be overturned,” including a majority (52 percent) of Republicans.

Legalizing marijuana? Two out of three Americans think marijuana should be made legal. According to a Gallup survey from October 2018, this marks “another new high in Gallup’s trend over nearly half a century.” And here’s the kicker: A majority (53 percent) of Republicans support legal marijuana too!

Mass incarceration? About nine out of 10 (91 percent) Americans say that the criminal justice system “has problems that need fixing.” About seven out of 10 (71 percent) say it is important “to reduce the prison population in America,” including a majority (52 percent) of Trump voters.

Immigration? “A record-high 75 percent of Americans,” including 65 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, told Gallup in 2018 that immigration is a “good thing for the U.S.” Six in 10 Americans oppose the construction of a wall on the southern border, while a massive 8 in 10 (81 percent) support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

How much of this polling, however, is reflected in the daily news coverage of the Democrats, which seeks to pit “leftist” activists against “centrist” voters, and “liberals” against “moderates”?

How is it that labels like “centrist” and “moderate,” which common sense tells us should reflect the views of a majority of Americans, have come to be applied to those who represent minority interests and opinions?

How many political reporters are willing to tell their readers or viewers what Stanford political scientist David Broockman told Vox’s Ezra Klein in 2014: “When we say moderate what we really mean is what corporations want. Within both parties there is this tension between what the politicians who get more corporate money and tend to be part of the establishment want-- that’s what we tend to call moderate-- versus what the Tea Party and more liberal members want”?

The center ground-- if it even exists-- cannot be found on a map; it is not a fixed geographical location. You cannot get in your car, type the address in your navigation, and then drive to it.

It moves, it shifts, it reacts to events. The center of 2019 is not the center of 1999 or even 2009. You want to know where it is right now? You want to find the moderate middle? Then ignore the right-wing hacks, the conventional wisdom-mongers, and the donor class. Go check out the policy platforms of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

You may not recall Brad DeLong, the subject of an interesting piece by Zach Beauchamp for Vox yesterday. He's a UC-Berkeley economist, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy in the Clinton administration and is widely considered "one of the market-friendly, neoliberal Democrats who have dominated the party for the last 20 years. The term he uses for himself is 'Rubin Democrat'-- referring to followers of finance industry-friendly Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin." Zach reports that "DeLong believes that the time of people like him running the Democratic Party has passed. “The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left,” DeLong wrote. “We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.” Good; I hope that's one less vote for Status Quo Joe.

The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They’re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were.

“Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”

The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. Market-friendly neoliberals, rather than pushing their own ideology, should work to improve ideas on the left. This, he believes, is the most effective and sustainable basis for Democratic politics and policy for the foreseeable future.