I have always believed that the radical left was noisy, but marginal.

I don't see any evidence that they have progressed. As I see it the radical left has no real issue beyond being radical. They have no real agenda beyond that and if you look at their stated issues there is nothing particular striking about them. They just kind of hang issue onto their radicalness as a pretext for being radical.

To understand this, simply understand that if they ever got what they wanted they would have to stop being radical. Can you picture that?

I can't.

If not, then I highly recommend that you do.

Did you read what I wrote?

you really should read the article linked in the OP on which you're commenting
it's quite interesting, actually
happy to K&R

as the hallmark of a radical left platform:

15 minimum wage, a restored overtime threshold, affordable public college, Medicare for All, paid family leave, crucial infrastructure investments, modern labor laws, and substantially higher taxes on wealthy corporations and individuals would be a good start.

who wage personal wars against "centrist" or "establishment" Democrats are actually railing against the Bill Clinton administration. I dearly wish they would catch up with what the rest of us have been up to for the last 20 years.

Most of those who cling to that, plus others too young for Clinton, are just wired to oppose whatever the majority wants. What's unacceptable and must be opposed is defined by who supports it, not for itself.

The first casualty is truth, of course, since it doesn't serve this nonsense and the first tactic is to claim lifelong strong liberals like me are centrist.

Then there are the others, who are their majority. Most who get fooled by all the propaganda disguising unstated goals don't realize it until they find themselves among people who are cheering Democratic losses to anti-progressive Republicans as potential victories for their "movement," or "revolution."

I really don't give a rat's ass about "Clinton" or "centrist." The 1990s were great, but over 18 years ago. The past is prologue.

I want substance, not patronizing rhetoric.

It discusses the corollary between the movement away from unions and the middle class and towards the investment class and the rise of political struggles of the democratic party. It is about how "centrist" has moved from the ideological center, towards the economic center. That's how the democratic party finds itself in the worst shape today since reconstruction (which, yeah, was a REALLY long time ago).

I didn't buy into that nonsense the first 100,000 times .

We have a Nazi in the White House. I will leave the smug, self-righteous tail chasing to others. I am too busy fending off Nazi cult followers.

It's history with regards to organized labor & what happened in the 80s and 90s.

Let's not rewrite history books, we're not Republicans and we are able to talk about things rationally

Every policy he names as an illustration of "radical left" is already espoused by the Democratic Party.

They are subversive. They bash Democrats.

To do anyrhing else means giving up radicalism, and that will never happen.

But the division is frankly all in their heads. In terms of policy, there is no space between the party and those who consider themselves the radical left.

It turns out it is simply some weird ego identification that makes them feel superior. It is, frankly, batshit!

That makes my day Squinch.

Human behavior is curious, indeed. It's a bit harsh to call raducalism batshit. We are not objective beings. Everything about us is subjective. Our brains make up most of what we believe we see with our own eyes because at best we can only process a mere one megapixel. Brain function burns lots of energy so we have evolved processing shortcuts.

Radicalism is emotional. It is also a processing shortcut. Indeed we have little policy difference with radicals but we cannot expect them to give up their radicalism.

I have been trying to figure out ways to use that knowledge. In the meantime, I still believe the radicals aee marginal. Noisy, but marginal.

Which is why it gets posted here for people to discuss.

He makes some good historical references showing correlation. Yes, correlation is not causation. So the question is the issues he presents leading or lagging indicators. The party is in the worst shape since reconstruction. Surely we've been doing SOMETHING wrong. And it ain't all the Russians and Comey. It's been going on a long time.

If not, then I highly recommend that you do...

...before reflexively initiating discussion based on your own definitions of terms that the article may define differently.

helpfully,
Bright

It's the center as defined by big donors.

So positions that are incredibly popular with across the political spectrum of VOTERS are not taken seriously.

As Obama said himself in his book:

There is no there there for the current brand of so called centrism. it has nothing to do with the center of any damn thing. There's a reason nobody likes it. It's hogwash. Lukewarm, used hogwash at that.

The nerve of me to not buy into your rhetoric.

<rolling eyeballs>

So, maybe you should read the article and see why.

It's the same schtick.

Look I have a degree in economics. It's no big deal but I subscribe to modern mainstream neoclassical synthesis salt water. Even after the all out assault waged by the "libertarians" and the know nothings that paradigm has the best and sometimes only real models. Spare me the ideological blather. Money talks. It always has and I just don't see that ending in the short run.

And my ideology is enlightened self interest. Note that's not rational selfishness.

If you aren't talking in those terms then you have no future.

in this country.

I'd like you to define what this so called "radical left" is exactly that seemingly is a boogieman to some people who think there's some sort of mythical creature that has all sorts of political power.

If you're referring to Bernie, and you're calling him "the radical left", I'd say your POV is that of one from the center. A majority of American's agree with things like weed legalization, tuition free college, living wages. People want both a government and a party that works for them to make their lives better.

...insinuating that the Democratic Party is on the ideological right?

if they speak out against any NDA they have with Trump?

imagine how helpful that would be, to attack TRUMP and not the Democrats...sheesh

the Democrats far less so, but the Republicans very much so, so that the center has shifted. People have forgotten what their options are.

"Democrats have not moved right since the New Deal era at all. Indeed, the party has moved somewhat to the left, largely because its conservative Southern wing has disappeared."

I find few faults in this column: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/how-neoliberalism-became-the-lefts-favorite-insult.html

Both Clinton and Obama may have seen to be "centrists" by some but they each had difficult political realities which hamstrung their ability to get progressive legislation passed. Gay marriage, the ACA and a ton load of other legislation contradict the "dems have moved to the right" theorizing.

And let's be real, the idea that there ever was a center to speak of leans towards the Overton Window theory ( which I once placed stock in but I no longer do, and I'd suggest we all abandon it because it's a gross simplification of politics)

What we have are two groups of voters and a large number of apathetic voters - some are apathetic by choice, some are apathetic because they don't know any better and some have been disenfranchised by other means. And some are frankly lazy. It takes approx 30 mins to inform oneself of where a political party stands on the issues.

when many of our party leaders were cowed into giving Bush authority to invade Iraq, when party activists and knowledgeable weapons inspectors were ignored. Two of our later presidential candidates essentially voted to give Bush the green light. There was a shift back toward our ideals when Pelosi became speaker in 2007, raising the minimum wage. And I will concede we are listening more to our base now.

But few in our party have the stomach to advocate the only solution left for our deficit problem: raising taxes on the rich. It’s as though we’ve forgotten where the top marginal rates were in the 50s and 60s. Or for the Social Security funding problem, lifting the cap. These solutions are seen by many as outside the mainstream, which is why I think the center has moved to the right, whether or not our party moved much: the Republicans have moved to the extreme right.

Deception meaning the Bush Administration's lies to the American people about the Iraq invasion.

And yes, the business of taxation is a vexing problem which could tank the party. Which would fall under "political realities" .

I think Clinton had taxes at 40% on top earners ( could be wrong) .. Obama dropped it to 34%. Still many saw that as too high.

And social security has been expanded did FDR. There really is little solid evidence of this dramatic shift to the right people are talking about.

I mean FDR was no peacenik.

in our own party, who were aware of the weapons inspectors’ reports, who knew Cheney had cherry-picked the intel, who knew Bush would take the green light and invade Iraq, yet voted to give him authority anyway. To pretend that didn’t happen is disingenuous.

Anyway, I said the right has shifted farther to the right and that that moved the center of public discourse. I also said our party hasn’t shifted much, and I stand by that. But to say it has not shifted at all is inaccurate.

I mean I could explain what the different votes at the time meant ( it wasn't some greenlight for Bush to do whatever, there's a point to be made that some Democrats were naive and placed too much faith in the Bush administration and blahblah...) but if that's your only reference for some massive rightward shift , you're on some weaksauce.

It's Republicans for the most part who are responsible for the rightward shift because of the legislative power they've had over the years. See my original response to you. And I'd really suggest you read the Chait article carefully.

Please reread my posts.

there hasn't even been a "gradual" shift to the right. I'm truly mystified here.

But to argue that the Democratic party has leaned more to the right is to suggest that there was ever a strong leftward tilt in the past that is no longer there - this is simply not true.

The first major leftward tilt (If you can really call it that since even fascist states have had social welfare programs) was with the implementation of Social Security. This still wasn't really liberal or leftist because of discriminatory laws which were still in place ( tangentially, this is also why the politics of nostalgia is dangerous. Looking at the past through rose colored glasses blinds you to a ton load of injustice. It's like people who think everyone was living Leave it to Beaver lifestyles in the 60's) When LBJ took office with his Great Society, the Democratic party moved more liberal.

JFK dropped the tax rate on the rich but also took leadership on Civil Rights - did he turn the Dem party to the right because he dropped the tax rate?

Your premise is based on an offhand comment which was Obama's obvious dig at recalcitrant Republicans and how they've lost sense. It disproves nothing I've said or anything in Chait's piece.

Did Obama implement cautious, incremental policies? Yes. Because he understood the politcal ecosystem at the time. He could not even go further left towards single payer because in 2009 single payer was still a controversial issue for most Americans according to polling done at the time - even Sanders agreed it wouldn't have been wise to implement it then.

The ACA was wrongly viewed as a right-wing plan by socialist/leftist circles where it was disingenuously described as the heritage plan dressed up in new clothes. The only similarity was the insurance mandate otherwise there is nothing similar between the heritage plan and the ACA. The heritage plan called for both Medicaid and Medicare to be scrapped while the ACA functions best with an expansion of those programs. How this could be seen as anything remotely Republican or rightward is... as I said.. mystifying.

The Democratic Party has increasingly evolved into being the Party about the social contract, the Republicans have evolved into the party with an ideology rooted in competition between individuals in the marketplace. The difference couldn't be starker today.

This "rightward shift" meme is rooted, again, in politics of nostalgia where the 30's and 40's are lionized as some golden age of the Democratic party when it wasn't.

It may be hard to understand today, just what a huge deal it was that the party forcibly desegregated the party in the late '50s and early '60s. That happened because of the serious leftward shift of the party starting with FDR (and almost to a greater degree, his wife). It is a shift that continued all the way through to around the time of McGovern. The New Deal was roughly the beginning and probably the pinnacle was the Great Society programs. Strong union support roughly spans the same time. Much of what we now call EEOC was created over that time. So was the minimum wage, the clean water act, and the EPA. You also saw a shift away from war back towards the peace stance that this country had leading up to WWII. Truman had to avoid calling Korea a war. And of course the Vietnam war culminated in the protests of the late '60s and the end to the draft along with the rejection of LBJ.

The point of the article is starting somewhere after Carter, leading into the Clinton period, you begin to have this decline in party support for expanded social programs, advancing the minimum wage, union protections, and gay rights. You also have a return of the use of the military for advancing foreign policy. All of this has happened DESPITE the fact that the majority view of the population does not track with these attitudes. America was still supportive of labor laws. It was still suspicious of Wall Street, it continued to build acceptance of gay rights and expand its concern about the need for social safety nets.

The majority view of the population, but NOT of the donor class (of both parties). Furthermore, as the GOP drifted ever further right, the Democratic party accepted into the party the old "Rockefeller Republicans" and as such began to expand their policies to accomodate them. And the point of the article is you can virtually track the success and failures of the party to those declines. We are now in the worst shape since reconstruction and we can't really ignore that or wish it away. We could get some good gains in 2018, but they won't be sustained going forward solely upon objection/rejection of the current president.

Unions have been weakened yes, but again Republican legislative power accounted for that - the "something" which happened was Reagan. And Republicans took full advantage of the backlash against civil rights by retaining power to such a degree they believed the Presidency was their divine right.

But let's go back down memory lane: the lionizing of FDR ignores that northern more liberal democrats were annihilated in the '38 midterms, resulting in FDR having to triangulate with Dixiecrats who had a loose coalition with Republicans and were obstructionist. There was also backlash against the New Deal after the recession in '37, evident by polling done at the time. The New Deal did help African Americans in some ways but it also worsened existing conditions in others:

The segregation that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration inherited reflected preexisting institutions, of which restrictive racial covenants may have been the most important. They were still relatively new, however. FDR might well have used his unprecedented leverage over housing finance to undo them.

Instead, the New Deal did the opposite. The FHA promoted racial covenants and other instruments of segregation through underwriting standards discouraging home loans in areas “infiltrat[ed]” by “inharmonious racial or nationality groups.” The rationale was the government’s need to protect its investment, and those of white homeowners, against the threat African American neighbors would pose to property values.

No data supported this ostensible concern, as Rothstein notes. The FHA’s pro-segregation policy reflected racist assumptions that pervaded even progressive circles in the 1930s — plus FDR’s need to appease his Southern Democratic supporters.

When World War II began, the federal government constructed dwellings for workers who flocked to defense-related factories. This housing, too, was allocated by race. In some affected localities, there was no housing segregation, nor even any particular history of Jim Crow, until the feds created it

The assertion and original point of contention is that the party hasn't shifted to the right over the decades with respect to majority voting population. But the history clearly demonstrates that it did. At the very BEST one might describe it as putting on the brakes. But in reality we went backwards on many issues. Yes, it began to some extent with Reagan (with respect to unions and some social issues). But it was well after Carter that we (the democrats) really started the shift to the right away from unions and towards free trade. The final purge of the GOP of the Rockefeller republicans was with Newt Gingrich.

The problem is that much of the party leadership, including the donor class DOES come from the Clinton years. Much of Obama's staff had Clinton experience on their resume's (Why wouldn't they, you don't hire all rookies). It was loaded with the DLC graduates (again, they were the ones with experience). 8 years of Obama was a huge continuation of that legacy (and influence their approach to the ACA). And then we nominated another Clinton after that. You can't really say that somehow those days were "over" 16 years ago. We are probably seeing the beginning of a generational shift now. We saw one when Clinton first ran. We are definitely seeing a gender shift. We're also going to be seeing a ethnicity shift as well. The question will be what they rebuild the party into. Many of the ethnic shifts socially may not be all that "liberal". The gender shifts may bring back a focus on middle class. We'll just have to wait and see.

But the point of the article is that these new people shouldn't be afraid of focusing on the majority voting positions instead of the majority DONOR positions. It's the old joke about the guy that shows up and says "Where are they going, I need to know, I'm their leader!" We've been watching a fair amount of grass roots activity lately on the left. Not everyone around here has liked what they've seen. But it does seem to be where the "action" is.

It was part of the "Liberal Order", just look at United Fruit.

Dominance through Trade was very much a liberal position, embraced by FDR and Democrats. It was Republicans who were protectionist, only seeing the value of Free Trade Policy under Eisenhower. Free trade policy further expanded by following Presidents who felt that trade agreements were a pathway to diplomacy..

And the critique of free trade ( which i accept is not always "free" but based on the prejudicial whims of those with greater leverage) is conflated with corporate greed - which got its impetus under Reagan and domestic policy which ignores the value of "the commons" . These again are republican ideals which boils down everything to competition between individuals, not the social contract.

was Clinton shortsighted on derivatives? Yes. But again, he did not have success implementing more progressive policies during his tenure because he faced well-heeled, well-funded opposition. That was the political reality of having to govern in less than ideal circumstances. In some ways it was the same for Obama except Obama had greater success - at least where the ACA was concerned.

I repeat: to assume there was a rightward shift suggests there was some leftist golden age Dems moved away from. This is simply not true or a gross simplication. And anyone looking at what Obama managed to do , despite Republican obstruction, and still claim it is in any way rightward - from establishing a Consumer Protection Board, to the ACA, to wanting increases in wages and other progressive policies which died because of filibustering by Republicans, is just choosing to ignore bits of history.

"The assertion and original point of contention is that the party hasn't shifted to the right over the decades with respect to majority voting population"

the only way policy gets voted on is if a party has the legislative power to do it which is given to them by voters. We can only look at what the voting tells us and polling. The rest is sophistry - like people assuming that non-voters would be liberal or leftist if only we crafted a special message to them. Voters are often irrational and don't know what they don't know.

Chris Hayes wrote about this, referencing his experience canvassing for John Kerry in 2004:

That's called compromise.

Dems moved right on economics.

The party of the New Deal became the party of low minim wages, no major social safety net inprovesments, and and deregulation of Wall St under Rubin.

That’s Hanauer’s point, and I think he is right and Chait is wrong.


I also think Hanauer’s ruler metaphor is really good. If you pile up the dollars of every American, the center is way over to the right- 98% of the way to the end.

for African Americans.

I think politics of nostalgia has us imagining a halcyon age which never really existed in that era. And it was a completely different period with different challenges.

Wage stagnation is a real challenge but there are multiple factors responsible for that, and "dems moving to the right" would not be on that list. Some Democrats did like a few of Hayek type policies, mostly on the heel of Reaganism ( I also address this in follow up replies) but the motivation wasn't the same as Republicans. There were Democrats who sincerely believed that freeing up of the flow of capital would generate wealth for Americans in lower income brackets.

Chait is able to back up his points with data, Hanauer does not because he conflates politics of pragmatism with obstinacy. He raises the point about the 15 dollar minimum wage as if Democrats think wage stagnation isn't a real problem. Maybe he should take the time to go through bills submitted by Democrats over the past decade which got killed or never even reached the floor or how efforts to address wage stagnation have been repeatedly thwarted by people who are not Democrats.

Over the last decade Dems have mostly gotten it.
It was 1980-2004 or so that were a problem.
There are still some today making that mistake (Third Way) but they are relatively few.

Bob Rubin was perhaps the best example of having a poor Democratic economic plan. (But note even during that time Robert Reich was saying the right things.)

and they admitted to it , especially Summers in recent times.

There was the belief that some ideas would help spread prosperity to working-class Americans, there are legitimate criticisms to be made about their assumptions there but the point I'm making is that there never was a halcyon moment for Democrats where you could find nothing problematic. Democrats, post civil rights, had to deal with backlash against Civil Rights and trying to hold on to white voters for the most part.

Any claim that there was some perfect moment in the past, under FDR for example, is to ignore a lot of history. Even Johnson with his Great Society and healthcare reforms pushed for increased Vietnam intervention, something Martin Luther King criticized him for. This doesn't deny Johnson's greatness but it's a lesson in the dangers of idealizing any politician. We should honestly assess the challenges our Leaders have faced, note the flaws, understand the political realities.

This is why the current trend of some progressives to lionize FDR in order to shame modern democrats is so shameless and disingenuous. They always conveniently forget facts which challenge their claims.

Yes the Great Man theory of history is flawed. And perhaps no Dem was more flawed than LBJ.

But I do think the central issue of our time is wealth inequality (closely related: a fair shake for all regardless of family or race or creed). And Republicans are on the wrong side of that argument and Dems largely on the correct side, at least in last decade.

Throughout the last 50 years, after LBJ flipped Dems on civil rights, despite Dems having some problems, they have largely been on the side of average people and the vulnerable.

Hard for me to get worked up about Dem problems when GOP are literally putting our democracy at risk.

" when GOP are literally putting our democracy at risk." -- Aint that the truth.

normalizing our rightward shift..

are very capitalist. They had brief experiments with socialism. Their entire welfare model was conceptualized by Bismarck who was very anti-socialist. They had the wherewithal to start their welfare models from scratch - USA's history is different so requires a different approach and different methods to get us where we would all like to be.

I and others on this forum are tired explaining that the ACA is not at all like the national heritage foundation plan except in ONE respect, yet the misinformation persists.

Is it that you don't remember how the ACA was passed?

What is the difference between the Heritage Plan and the ACA? I want you to tell me what you think it is because it's obvious that no matter how the myths are corrected the myths persist because folks are determined to cling to talking points.

democrats only?

as to the difference between the ACA and the heritage foundation plan, I'll stand corrected on that point. As to the Massachusetts plan under Romney versus the ACA, well that makes the ACA pretty damn moderate.


As to what is and isn't capitalist, these nations and ours are mixed economies. Not everything is done by private industry and not everything is done by the public sector. There is nothg purely capitalist about them or us.

There was also fallout from the "Cornhusker kickback" which tarnished the ACA in the eyes of many, but the main reason is that Democrats didn't have a filibuster-proof majority to pass it through the Senate unobstructed because Republicans decided to be assholes.

We needed the vote of independents like Lieberman - who refused to vote on it with the Public Option attached and refused to drop the age for Medicare entry to 55. So the ACA was gutted. If Democrats won in the midterms in 2010, they could have fixed it but people decided their hissy fit against Obama was more important and gave Republicans control of Congress in a census year. Bills which aimed at fixing the ACA were killed in committee because those committees came under the control of Republicans.

The only similarity it has with the heritage plan is the insurance mandate. The ACA functions best with an expansion of both Medicare and Medicaid, and the heritage plan calls for the scrapping of both those programs.

And yes Scandinavian countries are VERY capitalist. There is nothing really socialist about their economies - Liberalism is regulation of capitalism, where you see efforts to "Transfer wealth" which is not to be confused with the neo-liberalism of Thatcher and Reagan, which calls for deregulation of capitalist endeavor. Socialism, on the other hand, is transfer of ownership .

You can have collectivist policies in capitalist states.

independent you're speaking of was only recently a dem, and I'll add, a dem that prominent members of the establishment went to bat for in the primary. As if he would have been a different lieberman than we know and loathe with a d next to his name. We should have buried him in the GE. Tjhe campaign should have been ruthless. He used the party and then jumped ship to run against it when he lost. But we were pretty damn soft-spoken about it.

Again, some industries in our nations are socialized. Policing is socialized. Military is socialized. Fire is socialized. No corporations own these, those all are entirely possible. There have been private firefighters, there are privae prisons, etc. So again, we, and they, aren't purely capitalist, and very capitalist means what exactly?

nor the last to betray the interests of a party he was once part of.

It doesn't prove the premise of the OP. To somehow blame Democrats for Lieberman being an ass when it came to the ACA, after he chose to become an independent, is really a ridiculous stretch.

And do not water down the meaning of socialism. Every human civilization has had some form of taxation, infrastructure from the basic to the complex, and some form of law enforcement or basic laws/structure. Socialism didn't invent the concept of taxation, and the welfare model in Scandinavian countries is still based on the bismarck model which was never socialist in the first place. I won't get into how the modern Police Force in the States came into being. My point to you is that it is possible to have wonderful collectivist policies within a capitalist state- and the Scandinavian economies are very capitalist. This is not a matter of opinion or me making stuff up, it's fact.

Why water socialism down to mean something it isn't? Socialism has always been about the transfer of ownership - it is why socialist literature talks about workers "taking over the means of production". Sure there are hybridized models, because "pure" socialism hasn't really worked out that well - it can work within a capitalist model because capitalism is versatile and adaptable. On the other hand, a socialist model would see the nationalization of industries. Just look to Venezuela to see how that didn't stop corruption or kleptocrats from completely taking over and ruining things. But American leftists still pushed the delusion that socialist economies could work, despite reality staring them in the face proving otherwise. Scandinavian countries, after their experiments with socialism, are only seen as hybridized because they retained their social welfare programs ( I should specify that this was really the Norwegian experience). Scandinavian economies are currently very capitalist with a particular focus on generating revenue via free trade. Please look up "Nordic Model" and read all about it.

And I do know how taxation works and government revenue works and how that funds schools, build roads, etc etc etc. Having those funded doesn't mean something is socialism. I explained that in my previous reply to you.

And once more, how anyone thought Lieberman would or would not have voted doesn't change the fact that Democrats did not have a filibuster-proof majority so had to reach out to independents. If Lieberman had been a Republican, the damn thing would not have been passed in the first place. And sliding in a criticism of Boxer and Biden because you want to find a way to still blame dems doesn't change anything either.

You are determined to stick to a particular narrative because of confirmation bias.

I can't help that.

but I cannot relate to those who want it to be an Olympic event.

I've been very clear in my replies to you. What you do with that information is up to you.

I used to think Scandivanian countries were socialist economies as well until I read more and realized I was wrong. There's nothing wrong in being wrong about something. If we care about trying to find solutions to improve the way things are in the world, we should want to see the world as clearly as we can. New information is an opportunity to broaden our perspectives and come up with better solutions.

P.S

This post is not semantics.

Last edited Sat Aug 18, 2018, 05:43 PM - Edit history (1)

don't think its as important to hold onto this as you do, and I maintain that words are constructs, not that objective reality that you purport them to be. They are representations of phenomena, both man-made and natural. They are containers of ideas. What IS important, I'll agree with you on this, is that we both have the same reference point for words. But you or I don't get to individually redefine them any more than we get to individually dig in our heals about what they will mean for all of perpetuity.

If you disagree with that I don't know what to tell you, but we can agree to move on and talk about actual issues and policies we want, verses what label they should be filed under.

illustration of "radical left" is already in the platform.

the Democrats have been squabbling with Republicans over the "ideological center" which has been yanked pretty hard right over the last 40 years and supports policies that mainly benefit the rich.

however, there's a large majority of people in this country who support policies the media associates with the "radical left", like a livable minimum wage and readily accessible -- and affordable -- health care.

Hanauer advocates embracing the majoritarian center as a way to win elections. he could be wrong, but the concepts he's presenting deserve to be addressed in a serious way once all the knees stop twitching.

Few things seem to be done out of pure ideology, and there seems to be only a handful of ideology driven politicians in either major party in Congress.

If all you read were the 2 paragraphs posted by the OP, you have missed the point of both the post and the article.

Nice find!

you jump to conclusions.

agenda. ALL of those policies are already in the Democratic platform.

So his point is pretty moot.

Please read the whole essay.

Worth the read.

Thank you. Thoughtful post.

I guess he hasn't followed politics in awhile, or he'd realize the Dem platform has included a $15 minimum wage for a long time. Of course, he doesn't actually name a Dem who doesn't support it. The whole thing is nothing but both parties are the same garbage.

why isn't this position, along with many other majority-supported Democratic platform planks, common knowledge? this flavor of out-of-touchness indicates a huge messaging problem. meanwhile, the Republicans are able to swoop in, call "center", and claim their heartless policies are benefiting their victims.

i did not get a "both parties are the same" vibe from the article.

That's why he's out of touch. But that might be why you missed his both parties schtick. Here:

This isn’t to say that the Affordable Care Act and EITC expansion weren’t worthwhile programs. I’m a Democrat for a reason. But “we suck less than the Republicans” just doesn’t cut it, politically or economically. Reagan’s class war left the economic center in ruins. Restoring shared prosperity required nothing less than a Marshall Plan for the middle class. Instead, centrist Democrats let them eat charter schools.

Some of my fellow filthy-rich capitalists would like you to believe the middle class has actually benefited from having us gobbling up more and more of America’s annual income gains. After all, they claim, we “job creators” know best how to productively invest wealth: The more capital we get to control, the more economic growth we’ll be able to produce—and the benefits will trickle down!

When did he start doing that?

I'm not surprised in the least. Still don't see any minimizing of the ACA or EIRC anywhere in that. Or denying that Dems support the 15 minimum wage or denial of increased support of medicaire for all. Or any blame of Dems as the reason unions were busted.

Does that magically make the talking points appear?

Let alone helped kids?

On some issues, Obama at least had the fig leaf of saying he needed to get Republican support to get something done, but no Republicans had to twist his arm to get him to appoint a hardcore privatizer as Secretary of Education.

Still doesn't make this billionaire venture capitalist right on any of this.

which is why you probably didn't link to any of it. Not sure what polling data would show that both parties are the same when they've actually moved even farther apart anyway, but there you go.

There are some conservatives I agree with on a few issues even though I find other of their positions morally repugnant.

And the leaders of our party have no problem listening to people like this guy.

This article is soooooo fantastic..

already in the Democratic platform.

I wish people would find out today's Democratic party supports before they castigate Democrats for not supporting things they already support. The author is fighting against Bill Clinton's administration. A lot has changed in the party since then.

hasn't asked him to talk more about how he got so rich. See, that tells me everything I need to know. I'll be more impressed with this guy when he's honest about how he and his rich friends get that way. But all he does is brag about his billionaire credentials thinking that lends his POV more validity. That, itself, is bad enough. It also shows he doesn't understand the first thing about what really creates income inequality. He thinks it's about parroting cynical Dem bashing talking points made popular in 2016 to show how cool he is. He's not like his billionaire pals. He's a cool billionaire!

Republicans have a set of policies that they pursue in power or out, narrow or supermajority.

Everything centrists propose is premised on Republicans blocking more progressive policies as if the party will always be in their way and can't be shrunk to their impotent numbers they had before DLC put them on life support.

Just because he's a mega-rich venture capitalist doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about. Not only do they pursue those policies, they're codified.

destroying smaller companies and thousands and thousands of jobs and bust unions like the guy in the OP did.

I'll wait.

See "The Pitchforks Are Coming..." from 2014.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014

I guess it's nice that he's aware of it. But, it seems he's chosen to ride it out while it lasts, because,

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist