Moderate Democrats are in a panic as they see the energy of the Democratic Party is with Progressives. But when one asks them what exactly they would differently from Moderate Republicans they find it difficult to articulate a coherent narrative.
A few weeks ago I wrote the piece “No! Democrats not moving too far left. Here’s why they’re doing the right thing” where I pointed out a few realities.
The values that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stands for are not New York or Left Coast values. They are values that expressed appropriately in middle-America, rural-America, and Appalachia will resonate. It is the message for the forgotten ones. Cortez is clear. …
These Corporate Democrats are directly responsible for the faltering of the entire Democratic Party through the states and federally. Democrats lost governorships and state houses because many Americans did not feel they were on their side economically. So they did not vote. They felt Democrats took care of corporate interests first and then provide crumbs for the masses. Yes, they consider the masses from time to time, but their solutions inevitably hurt the middle-class and poor. We do not have to argue about any of the issues any longer as they are proving out by the data. Wealth can only continue to move upward independent of the parties if the parties are doing the same thing from an economic standpoint. …
If Democrats are to live up to their Democratic Platform, instead of trying to become false moderates or acquiesce to Republican Litism, they should go to where Americans are and start representing the wants of Americans. If one asks Americans about the policies they want, they are decidedly Progressive, not corporatists as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in this Netroots Nation speech.
Today I ran across another article that is an essential read to those concerned about the Democratic Party losing its way. The reality is that it is Democratic Moderates that must reassess their position. Their position is no longer tenable if we are ever to win back the narrative and the vast majority of Americans that should be Democrats given our values. The Salon article titled “Democratic moderates fear the “socialist left” will wreck the party: They want to keep that gig” is a must read as well. But the following snippet is probative.
The problem for Democratic moderates is precisely that they will not define or explain their positions clearly, except in wonky, granular, political-calculus terms, in large part because their ideas are widely discredited and massively unpopular.
Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois told reporters in Columbus that she stands for “a silent majority who just wants normalcy. Who wants to see that people are going out to Washington to fight for them in a civil way and get something done. … There’s a lot of people that just don’t really like protests and don’t like yelling and screaming.” As Seitz-Wald observes, Bustos sounded more like a Nixon-era Republican than a traditional Democrat, but in any case that’s a statement about messaging and style that deliberately avoids any discussion of ideology or specific policy proposals.
At the Democratic convention in 2016, I tried to find a single elected official or candidate who would tell me, straight up, that the financial deregulation and free-trade agreements and welfare cuts and mass incarceration policies of the Bill Clinton years had generally been good ideas, whatever bumps we might have encountered along the way. Nobody would do it — but I don’t think that was because none of them believed it. …
It’s tempting to say that a specter is haunting the Democratic Party and it’s the specter of socialism, blah blah blah. But that’s largely untrue: The specter is imaginary and so is the socialism, pretty much. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their loose array of allies across the country are a modest contingent within the party. Only a handful of them will win elections this year, and in any case they’re closer to being old-time left-wing populists, with a 21st-century overlay of multiculturalism and intersectionality, than, you know, to this:
Hubert Humphrey, the leading Democratic moderate of Hillary Clinton’s youth, would find little to object to in Ocasio-Cortez’s platform, beyond the labeling on the package. (Once the Happy Warrior figured out what ICE and super PACs were, and what they had done to America, he’d go out and ring doorbells in her district.) Then again, Humphrey had no fear of open and often heated ideological conflict, which was a staple of Democratic discourse for decades and is exactly what the “democratic socialist” insurrection has reintroduced since 2016.
Those who shut down such internal conflict and purged the activist left from the Democratic Party, on the premise that it was the only possible way to win elections in a “centrist,” anti-ideological nation, have never faced the consequences of their historic blunder. They have lost repeatedly and on a grand scale, insisting every time that they really should have won — or in some other, better world, did win — and that whatever went wrong was somebody else’s fault. They are the ones who appear committed to an inflexible, dogmatic ideology that is out of step with political reality. They are surprised and outraged to learn that if they want to continue their losing streak, they will have to fight for it.
So Democratic Moderates read Republican Lites, please realize that you are directly responsible for the decline of the Democratic Party as you allowed Clinton era DLC triangulation to continue policies that hurt millions of Americans. If the Democratic deterioration throughout the states wasn’t enough, Trump definite should be.
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I believe the Democrats need to forget about how they did things before and concentrate on going to the people and listening to what they want and expect of their representative and making sure they do their level best to try and pass legislation that protects these people in their base. They should also listen to strong candidates in their base who are extremely motivated and want to get into office not promote what the Democratic Party itself feels should be the best candidate! The newly elected Democrats need to listen to the people and do what they can pass legislation which helps their constituents not do what they used to do or what the Republicans are doing when they tell their base to vote for them because they are Republicans! If the Democrats listen to their base and do their best to help them, they should not have any problem winning elections!
We have seen how much Republcans listen to their base and no matter how much their base loves and appreciates health care, Republicans are bound and determined to take it away from them! They are nodding dogs who only listen to the leaders of their party like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and do their bidding even though what they are voting for goes against their conscious! They were elected to serve the people who voted them into office, not just the wealthy and big corporations! The Republicans complain about the money spent on government assistance for the poor but bend over backwards to give big corporations millions in Corporate Welfare! They also believe in taking from their constituents and giving to the upper 1% and big corporations even though they don’t need the huge tax breaks and never asked for them!