The time for caution is over. It has cost the Progressive movement dearly as the Democratic Party bought into triangulation and the adage that “Republican Lite” is the answer. A lot of this started with the Reagan win. How could a Conservative actor win such a landslide election? Did America move too far to the left? Hell no. Like now, Americans were voting for a change because they felt they were in dire straights.
With the aid of misinformation and unchecked lies, Reagan’s tenet of trickle-down economics took hold. Had Democrats and Progressives actively challenged Reagan’s poor policies then instead of appeasing his and the Plutocrats who showed the first significant success of the effecting of the Powell Manifesto, America would be a different place today.
With George Herbert Walker Bush’s subsequent win after eight years of the country giving Reagan an economic pass, Bill Clinton, and the DLC decided that the Democratic Party must be complicit in a Rightward move that would ultimately decimate the middle-class. Bill Clinton won, and he has been considered the dean of the Democratic Party since.
Here is the reality. Bill Clinton never won 50% of the popular vote with his center-right shift. President Obama with his left turn won over 50% in each run even with the headwinds of racism and a determined plutocracy.
When one asks Americans the policies they want without specifying if they are Progressive Policies, it always turns out that they want them. So what is the Democratic Party’s problem with embracing them, with running the appropriate candidates?
The answer is simple. Many in the leadership have been bought out by the plutocracy. Sects within the Democratic Party are just the boundary, the left rail of train tracks moving in the same direction, the direction those that control the economy wants it to go. The result of this reality is that there is not much distinction in the many, not all, of the policies out of Washington,
You see, the Democratic and Republican establishments play the good cop/bad cop game. Why is that important for the Plutocracy? The Democratic Party has become the pacifier for the masses. The Republicans propose policies so bad, that terrible Democratic compromises seem like a good deal. It is all a game and once understood, it is something we can do something about now,
The 2018 election must be instrumental in breaking that paradigm. And there must be no compromising. Only real Progressive candidates must make it through the primaries. We can worry about district-specific narratives after the primaries. Americans must not be distracted by fallacies that state one must elect candidates that are right of center because their district is right of center. Economically no poor or middle-class area is right of center.