Haunted by the Reagan era
Past defeats still scare older Democratic leaders — but not the younger generationThe new insurgent class of Democrats put the fight in sharp moral terms. “A vote for Mitch McConnell’s border bill is a vote to keep kids in cages and terrorize immigrant communities,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.). “If you see the Senate bill as an option, then you don’t believe in basic human rights,” declared Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.). “Hell no. That’s an abdication of power,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.).
Frustration with the refusal to stand up for principle is boiling over among younger Democrats. On issue after issue — impeachment, Medicare-for-all, a $15 minimum wage, free public college, a Green New Deal — the answer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other Democratic leaders is consistent: Now is not the time; the country isn’t ready. Push too fast or too far, and there’ll be a backlash. For newer members of the party’s caucus, the older generation’s fear of a backlash is befuddling. “Leadership is driven by fear. They seem to be unable to lead,” said Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez and a co-founder of Justice Democrats, the insurgent political organization that powered her rise, while also backing Omar and Tlaib. “I’m not sure what caused it.”
The answer, in short: the Gipper.
The way the older and younger House members think about and engage with the Republican Party may be the starkest divide between them. Democratic leaders like Pelosi, Joe Biden, Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer were shaped by their traumatic political coming-of-age during the breakup of the New Deal coalition and the rise of Ronald Reagan — and the backlash that swept Democrats so thoroughly from power nearly 40 years ago. They’ve spent the rest of their lives flinching at the sight of voters. When these leaders plead for their party to stay in the middle, they’re crouching into the defensive posture they’ve been used to since November 1980, afraid that if they come across as harebrained liberals, voters will turn them out again.
The Ocasio-Cortezes of the world have witnessed the opposite: The way they see it, Democratic attempts to moderate and compromise have led to nothing but ruin...
More at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/07/05/feature/haunted-by-the-reagan-era/?utm_term=.c334ee3f229b&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
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In Reagan's time it wasn't that easy to find out how people lived in other countries and the GOP did all it could to stoke xenophobia, etc., to keep their idiots from finding out.
Today Bernie Sanders can say "every other major country on Earth has achieved universal health care" and anybody can easily fact-check it on their own with Google or whatever and realize that universal coverage is not some unrealistic pipe dream that would cost way too much and kill the economy, that the U.S. is actually the outlier and it doesn't have to be that way. Many younger folks get it. Same goes for some of the other Democratic proposals.
Unlike in the U.S., governments in some other countries have often been more responsive to their electorates because their politics hasn't always been driven to a great extent by big money and deeply rooted racism--and one of two major parties suffering from incurable malignant greed.
