Stop Calling Conservatives "Moderates." They're Not

Unless you're new here, you know the misuse of the word "moderate" to describe conservatives is a pet peeve of this blog's. I was happy to see someone else tackle the topic this week-- Norman Solomon for Common Dreams: There’s Nothing Moderate About "Moderates." A Primary Example Is Joe Biden. "Biden’s record of words and deeds is 'moderate,'" wrote Solomon, "only if we ignore the extreme harm that he has done on matters ranging from civil rights and mass incarceration to student debt and the credit card industry to militarism and war." I was delighted-- am delighted--to see someone as pissed off as I am by the media cabal's expropriation, some consciously, others unconsciously, of a positive-sounding word like "moderate" to use as a weapon against progressives.

As a practical matter, in the routine lexicon of U.S. mass media, "moderate" actually means pro-corporate and reliably unwilling to disrupt the dominant power structures. "Moderate" is a term of endearment in elite circles, a label conferred on politicians who won't rock establishment boats.

"Moderate" sounds so much nicer than, say, "enmeshed with Wall Street" or "supportive of the military-industrial complex."

In the corporate media environment, we're accustomed to pretty euphemisms that fog up unpretty realities-- and the haze of familiarity brings the opposite of clarity. As George Orwell wrote, language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

If Joe Biden is a "moderate," the soothing adjective obscures grim realities. The framing was routine hours after the debate Wednesday night when the front page of the New York Times began its lead story by reporting that Biden "delivered a steadfast defense of his moderate policies in the Democratic primary debate."

But, how are policies really "moderate" when they perpetuate and increase extreme suffering due to vast income inequality? Or when they support U.S. wars causing so much death and incalculable anguish? Or when they refuse to challenge the fossil-fuel industry and only sign onto woefully inadequate measures in response to catastrophic climate change?

Biden's record of words and deeds is "moderate" only if we ignore the extreme harm that he has done on matters ranging from civil rights and mass incarceration to student debt and the credit card industry to militarism and war.

Although Biden again tangled with Kamala Harris during the latest debate, she is ill-positioned to provide a clear critique of his so-called "moderate" policies. Harris has scarcely done more than he has to challenge the systemic injustice of corporate domination. So, she can't get far in trying to provide a sharp contrast to Biden's corporate happy talk on the crucial issue of healthcare.

Harris began this week by releasing what she called "My Plan for Medicare for All." It was promptly eviscerated by single-payer activist Tim Higginbotham, who wrote for Jacobin that her proposal would "further privatize Medicare. . . keep the waste and inefficiency of our current multi-payer system. . . cost families more than Medicare for All. . . continue to deny patients necessary care" and "fall apart before it's implemented."

In keeping with timeworn rhetoric from corporate Democrats, Harris repeatedly said during the debate that she wants to guarantee "access" to healthcare-- using a standard corporate-friendly buzzword that detours around truly guaranteeing healthcare as a human right.

No matter whether journalists call Harris "moderate" or "progressive" (a term elastic enough to be the name of a huge insurance company), her unwillingness to confront the dominance of huge corporations over the economic and political life of the USA is a giveaway.

Whatever their discreet virtues, 18 of the 20 candidates who debated this week have offered no consistent, thoroughgoing challenge to corporate power. Among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, only Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are providing a coherent analysis and actual challenge to the realities of corporate power and oligarchy that are crushing democracy in the United States.

And let's not leave out the other faux-moderate in the race, Mayo Pete. Wall Street certainly isn't. The guiding hand of Big Money has opened the coffers to the 3 conservative candidates in the primary they judge as possible nominees: Status Quo Joe, Mnuchin's pal Kamala Harris and Mayo, formerly known as McKinsey Pete, McKinsey as in the elitist cult he used to work for and was completely molded by, molded so he knows exactly how to legitimize mass layoffs with an innocent, sympathetic smile on his face. Like Status Quo Joe and Kamala, Mayo will never challenge the status quo. Biden was the only one stupid enough to admit it out loud, but all 3 candidacies are a backup against any kind of fundamental change.

After graduating Oxford, any career path in the world was open to him, and Buttigieg chose McKinsey & Company, the cult-like management consulting firm. Buttigieg writes in his memoir, Shortest Way Home, that he became a consultant because he “wanted to get an education in the real world.” The real world exists in many places on this planet; McKinsey & Company is not one of them. People seek to join the world’s number one consulting behemoth to secure a place in the ranks of the American elite.

In 1993, Fortune magazine put it this way: “These fellows from McKinsey sincerely do believe they are better than everybody else. Like several less purposeful organizations-- Mensa, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, the Banquet of the Golden Plate-- McKinsey is elitist by design.”

The firm has produced at least 70 Fortune 500 CEOs. Buttigieg’s three-year stint is par for the course at an organization that takes pride in “counseling out” 4 in 5 hires before they become partner. They then proudly join what McKinsey calls its “alumni network,” and what Duff McDonald, author of The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, calls “the McKinsey Mafia.” As they fan out among the world’s C-suites and B-suites, they remain McKinsey loyalists. “There is no McKinsey boneyard, in other words; you’re still McKinsey after you’ve left,” McDonald writes. “Perhaps the only alumni network with more reach and life.

McKinsey’s internal churn fits perfectly with the company’s consulting philosophy. McKinsey, which in 2003 advised 100 of the world’s top 150 firms, “may be the single greatest legitimizer of mass layoffs,” writes McDonald. “Its advice: Identify your bottom 10 percent or 25 percent or 33 percent, and get rid of them as soon as possible.”

McKinsey is also an infamous mercenary for the world’s most unethical corporations and authoritarian governments, from China to Saudi Arabia. McKinsey allegedly advised Purdue Pharma, the progenitor of today’s opioid crisis, on how to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales and keep users hooked.

“We are now living with the consequences of the world McKinsey created,” writes a former McKinsey consultant in an exposé for Current Affairs. “Market fundamentalism is the default mode for businesses and governments the world over.”

So what kind of presidency would the McKinsey mindset produce? Former McKinsey consultant Anand Giridharadas observes, in Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, business consultants ignore how political and economic power actually works. “These elites believe and promote the idea that social change should be pursued principally through the free market and voluntary action,” Giridharadas writes. “And that the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quo’s reform.”

As McKinsey comes under heavier scrutiny for its role in the crimes of governments and powerful corporations, any “progressive” who worked there and wants to be taken seriously should have a rather critical perspective. Buttigieg has shown no such reflection. Instead, he calls his time at McKinsey his most “intellectually informing experience”; he left only because it “could not furnish that deep level of purpose that I craved.” Buttigieg has said he didn’t follow the story of McKinsey’s OxyContin push. On McKinsey’s Saudi and South African government ties, he said: “I think you have a lot of smart, well-intentioned people who sometimes view the world in a very innocent way. I wrote my thesis on Graham Greene, who said that innocence is like a dumb leper that has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

This excuse is remarkable. Buttigieg suggests that the savvy Harvard grads who populate McKinsey are childlike innocents who simply don’t notice they’re working for Mohammed bin Salman.

It is not terribly surprising that Wall Street has embraced Buttigieg, a product of their world. But anyone who hopes to be president should have a better-tuned moral sense. They should have no doubt where they stand on that old labor question, “Which side are you on?” Buttigieg’s roots in elite consulting suggest, at best, he doesn’t know; at worst, that he’s chosen poorly.