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jg10003

(974 posts)
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 02:08 PM Mar 2016

Robert Reich; How the Peoples Party Prevailed in 2020

http://robertreich.org/post/141437490885

Third parties have rarely posed much of a threat to the dominant two parties in America. So how did the People’s Party win the U.S. presidency and a majority of both houses of Congress in 2020?

It started four years before, with the election of 2016.

As you remember, Donald Trump didn’t have enough delegates to become the Republican candidate, so the GOP convention that summer was “brokered” – which meant the Party establishment took control, and nominated the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Trump tried to incite riots but his “I deserve to be president because I’m the best person in the world!” speech incited universal scorn instead, and he slunk off the national stage (his last words, shouted as he got into his stretch limousine, were “Fu*ck you, America!”)

On the Democratic side, despite a large surge of votes for Bernie Sanders in the final months of the primaries, Hillary Clinton’s stable of wealthy donors and superdelegates put her over the top.

Both Republican and Democratic political establishments breathed palpable sighs of relief, and congratulated themselves on remaining in control of the nation’s politics.

They attributed Trump’s rise to his fanning of bigotry and xenophobia, and Sanders’s popularity to his fueling of left-wing extremism.

They conveniently ignored the deeper anger in both camps about the arbitrariness and unfairness of the economy, and about a political system rigged in favor of the rich and privileged.

And they shut their eyes to the anti-establishment fury that had welled up among independents, young people, poor and middle-class Democrats, and white working-class Republicans.

So they went back to doing what they had been doing before. Establishment Republicans reverted to their old blather about the virtues of the “free market,” and establishment Democrats returned to their perennial call for “incremental reform.”

And Wall Street, big corporations, and a handful of billionaires resumed pulling the strings of both parties to make sure regulatory agencies didn’t have enough staff to enforce rules, and to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Establishment politicians also arranged to reduce taxes on big corporations and simultaneously increase federal subsidies to them, expand tax loopholes for the wealthy, and cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for it all. (“Sadly, we have no choice,” said the new President, who had staffed the White House and Treasury with Wall Streeters and corporate lobbyists, and filled boards and commissions with corporate executives).

Meanwhile, most Americans continued to lose ground.

Even before the recession of 2018, most families were earning less than they’d earned in 2000, adjusted for inflation. Businesses continued to shift most employees off their payrolls and into “on demand” contracts so workers had no idea what they’d be earning from week to week. And the ranks of the working poor continued to swell.

At the same time, CEO pay packages grew even larger, Wall Street bonus pools got fatter, and a record number of billionaires were becoming multi-billionaires.

Then, of course, came the recession, along with bank losses requiring another round of bailouts. The Treasury Secretary, a former managing director of Morgan Stanley, expressed shock and outrage, explaining the nation had no choice and vowing to “get tough” on the banks once the crisis was over.

Politics abhors a vacuum. In 2019, the People’s Party filled it.

Its platform called for getting big money out of politics, ending “crony capitalism,” abolishing corporate welfare, stopping the revolving door between government and the private sector, and busting up the big Wall Street banks and corporate monopolies.

The People’s Party also pledged to revoke the Trans Pacific Partnership, hike taxes on the rich to pay for a wage subsidy (a vastly expanded Earned Income Tax Credit) for everyone earning below the median, and raise taxes on corporations that outsource jobs abroad or pay their executives more than 100 times the pay of typical Americans.

Americans rallied to the cause. Millions who called themselves conservatives and Tea Partiers joined with millions who called themselves liberals and progressives against a political establishment that had shown itself incapable of hearing what they had been demanding for years.

The rest, as they say, is history.

18 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Robert Reich; How the Peoples Party Prevailed in 2020 (Original Post) jg10003 Mar 2016 OP
The Democratic party has me until the convention Viva_La_Revolution Mar 2016 #1
+1 daleanime Mar 2016 #2
That makes two of us. Bubzer Mar 2016 #3
WFP in NY is on my radar tk2kewl Mar 2016 #18
Hand in Glove with this article. TalkingDog Mar 2016 #4
Thanks for the link! Here's another glove to complete the pair: drokhole Mar 2016 #7
I'm amazed that so many here don't seem to have a clue and instead bbgrunt Mar 2016 #5
People get what they vote for. Maedhros Mar 2016 #13
It's the old, "He may be an asshole but his OUR asshole" excuse. Spitfire of ATJ Mar 2016 #15
Hmm davidthegnome Mar 2016 #6
You're wrong. Chan790 Mar 2016 #16
Robert Reich should probably stick to whatever it is that he does and leave the fiction to others. yellowcanine Mar 2016 #8
And the candidates would be??????????????????????????????????????? nikto Mar 2016 #9
It doesn't matter passiveporcupine Mar 2016 #10
This inevitably comes to mind: forest444 Mar 2016 #11
We Can Always Dream colsohlibgal Mar 2016 #12
As more and more people wake up and realize that they have been played, Maedhros Mar 2016 #14
Thank you. I think he is correct about a third party in 2020. jwirr Mar 2016 #17

Viva_La_Revolution

(28,791 posts)
1. The Democratic party has me until the convention
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 02:32 PM
Mar 2016

It will be then that I decide to stay or leave for the People's party.

TalkingDog

(9,001 posts)
4. Hand in Glove with this article.
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 03:11 PM
Mar 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-the-democratic-party-helped-create-donald-trump_us_56f17969e4b084c672219f8a

I posted it, but it is being pointedly ignored on par with a dead mouse in the crystal punch bowl.

The most comforting rationale for Democratic true believers is that these voters are racist and ignorant and hostile to Democratic policies on social issues. That’s part of the explanation. But the full truth is a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow. Thomas Frank’s new book Listen, Liberal Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of People? documents a half-century of work by the Democratic elite to belittle working people and exile their concerns to the fringes of the party’s platform. If the prevailing ideology of the Republican establishment is that of a sneering aristocracy, Democratic elites are all too often the purveyors of a smirking meritocracy that offers working people very little.

drokhole

(1,230 posts)
7. Thanks for the link! Here's another glove to complete the pair:
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 03:39 PM
Mar 2016

Hadn't caught that one yet, but posted a recent NPR On Point interview with the author earlier (along with a few other articles):

"They have no problem with the growing inequality...that's who the Democrats are today."

bbgrunt

(5,281 posts)
5. I'm amazed that so many here don't seem to have a clue and instead
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 03:29 PM
Mar 2016

insist on traveling down the same path of third way in the false hope that a "strong" leader who knows how to counter the dirty tricks of the republicans with their own brand of nasty infighting will help lead us out of this morass.

My only hope is that we survive as a nation to reach that idealized people's party of 2020--but being a Cassandra is not my favorite role.

davidthegnome

(2,983 posts)
6. Hmm
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 03:32 PM
Mar 2016

I enjoyed the story, but it reads as more of a fairy tale, honestly. The idea that conservatives and tea partiers would ever work with liberals and progressives... even against the establishment, is highly, highly unlikely. There is a difference in basic ideology that is very extreme. Core principles... that are so extremely different that the things being discussed here are unlikely to happen. With the Tea Party and Conservatives, you're talking about people who generally:

Support tax cuts for the wealthy
Believe in trickle down economics
Deny climate change and don't care about the environment
Think all non-Christians are going to hell
Support severe right wing (armed) militia groups
Support policies that promote racism, xenophobia and ignorance
Deliberately shut down the government out of political extremism and contempt for the public
Are voting for lunatics like Cruz and Trump...

The list goes on and on. An interesting idea, an interesting narrative... but no. The differences between the right and the left are so great that I do not believe we can even begin to unite against an establishment we both may despise.

The violence, ignorance, bigotry and hate coming from the right currently is, I fear, a sign of things to come.

 

Chan790

(20,176 posts)
16. You're wrong.
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 04:46 PM
Mar 2016

Those of us on the activist-edge are already seeing it.

I was having a conversation last night with one of the more-radical anti-establishment conservative Republicans I know from college about how much he respects Sanders more than Clinton (agrees with him on nothing, but respects the consistency and purity of his beliefs), how much he despises Trump but despises the establishment of his own party more...how they're out of touch with the ideals that attracted him to the (Reagan) Revolution in the first place.

He said it last night...if progressives were willing to meet the dispossessed base of the GOP somewhere in the vicinity of Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose, he thinks we'd find more common ground than differences between discarded progressives and discarded movement conservatives.

If it occurs to more of them, the establishment of the Democratic party is in deep shit and so is the entirety of the GOP.

 

nikto

(3,284 posts)
9. And the candidates would be???????????????????????????????????????
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 03:48 PM
Mar 2016

Pure fantasy.

Americans are divided on what is reality.
That's pretty darn basic.

Until that changes, there will be no unity between left and right, just as elites have planned it.

passiveporcupine

(8,175 posts)
10. It doesn't matter
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 03:48 PM
Mar 2016

How brightly we are adorned, nor how much noise we make.

They will never see or hear us coming. They are blind and deaf to anyone but themselves.

If it can't happen in 2016, it probably can't happen in 2020 either, unless and until there is violence in the streets. As a friend of mine often says, "Marie Antoinette didn't see it coming either".

 

Maedhros

(10,007 posts)
14. As more and more people wake up and realize that they have been played,
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 04:21 PM
Mar 2016

they will see that they are not alone.

You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire
Watch the flame begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher.


- Peter Gabriel "Biko"

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
17. Thank you. I think he is correct about a third party in 2020.
Wed Mar 23, 2016, 05:44 PM
Mar 2016

And I think if the corporatists win in 2016 this party will start forming this year. I like the name the People's Party. As to how it forms and who will gravitate to it. The two parties may or may not unite but some of the people in both parties will unite against what is left of the R and D party.

If the corporatists win things are going to get a lot worse and they will also ignore the other problems we have facing us (ME war, climate change, wealth inequality, etc.).

I am 74 years old and I hope to still be around to see this play out. I know one thing I will not be following after any DLC/Third Way circus. My eyes are totally open. Thanks to Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders, a host of young people who have stood up and my memory of FDR.

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