If Democrats don't embrace
progressive policies, the future is a predictable mess
Hillary Clinton’s new book,
entitled What
Happened, has been raising quite a brouhaha among Democrats. The
general consensus is that most wish she’d just go away, with many saying she’s
sapping energy and attention at a time when the party should be forging unity
and looking forward.
Actually, the title would be
more accurate if it were What Happened? Because it’s obvious from reading it
she hasn’t a clue.
But the book could serve a
useful purpose, albeit not the one Clinton intended.
Her attack on Sanders could
finally force a reckoning between the "centrist" corporate wing of
the party and the progressives that the mainstream neoliberals who run the
party have desperately tried to avoid.
Clinton’s book—besides teeing
up a self-serving list of excuses and blame—is a spirited defense of the
centrist strategy that has been causing Democrats to lose for decades now, and
an implicit warning to the party against following Sanders’ progressive agenda.
Let’s examine some of her
assumptions because they are representative of the centrist’s world view, and
they’re being used to keep progressives on the back bench.
Assumption # 1: Americans are
centrists, and titling too far left will hurt the Party
This particular shibboleth
just won’t die and it’s been one of the reasons Democrats have been losing
ground at all levels of government for decades now.
Here’s the reality: in study
after study, Americans
overwhelmingly poll left-of-center on an issue-by-issue basis.
But as a result of a well-funded
campaign by corporations and several rich families beginning in the late
1970’s, the word “liberal” has become so toxic that even people who hold
liberal views on an issue-by-issue basis are loath to identify themselves as
liberal.
As a result of the oligarchs’
campaign, when you ask Americans to self-identify as liberal, moderate, or
conservative, most will call themselves conservative. For example, a
recent poll Gallup found that 36 percent of Americans self-identified as
conservative; 34 percent called themselves moderates; and only 25 percent
considered themselves to be liberal. Earlier polls showed even higher numbers
of conservatives, but the disparity persists.
This disconnect between the
voters’ strong preference for specific progressive policies and how they
identify themselves politically has been used by neoliberals to justify keeping
the party and its nominees in the political center or to the right of center,
Ms. Clinton among them. Indeed, with the exception of social issues and
climate, there’s little separating neoliberal Democrats from Republicans. Both
favor free markets, free trade, small government, austerity, and policies which
support corporations, Wall Street and big banks. In Ms. Clinton’s case,
she also shared the conservative’s hawkish defense policies and the bloated
budgets they demand.
By 2016, the fallout from
these policies – extreme income inequality and jobs that were increasingly
exploitative – was being felt by the vast majority of Americans. They were wise
to the “trickle-down - job-creator” con that Republicans were running, but they
also recognized that Democrats were offering a better brand of rhetoric, but
little else.
In short, they were
essentially saying “a pox on both their houses.” They were looking for a
champion for change, and Democrats offered the most status quo candidate and
platform possible.
What Sanders did, was to
package the individual progressive issues people supported into a coherent and
values-based whole, that enabled people to go beyond the labels defined by the
Oligarch’s branding. It helped that the left adopted a new label that hadn’t
been smeared – progressive.
Sanders integrity and clarity
on the issues and his willingness to be a passionate champion of progressive
policies captured the voters’ attention and it contrasted with Hillary’s same
old have-it-both-ways
approach to politics and that’s what hurt her in the general election. Trump,
for all his idiocy, knew enough to run as an outsider and a populist, even if
he now governs like a traditional trickle down Republican.
Assumption #2 – Sander’s
proposals were “unrealistic” and unaffordable.
Clinton likened Sanders
proposals to the hitchhiker in the movie Something About Mary who revealed his
brainstorm for getting rich – a video called “Seven-minute abs” that outdid the
then popular “Eight-minute abs” video. Stiller responds, why not
six-minute abs. Hillary says:
We would propose a bold
infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for
young people, and then Bernie would announce the same thing only bigger. On
issue after issue he kept proposing four-minute abs or even no-minute
abs. Magic abs.
There’s so much wrong with
this analogy it’s hard to know where to begin, but for starters, Sanders wasn’t
responding to Clinton’s proposals. In fact, he’d been consistently to the left
of Hillary for decades. It was Hillary who cynically veered to the left when
she saw it was playing well. In a sense, the opponent who hurt her the most
wasn’t Sanders – it was the Hillary who’d cultivated a moderate image for
decades and who even boasted that
she was a centrist. Voters were fed up with this kind of patently
transparent maneuvering.
She goes on to recite a
Facebook post someone sent her, to show how unrealistic and unaffordable
Sanders’ policies were. Here’s the first few lines:
BERNIE: I think America should
get a pony.
HILLARY: How will you pay for
the pony? Where will the pony come from? How will you get Congress to agree to
the pony?
BERNIE: Hillary thinks America
doesn’t deserve a pony.
Again, this analogy fails any
test of reality or relevance. In reality, Clinton was issuing gratuitous
assaults on Sanders and his policies, something her many surrogates in
the Democratic Party and the elite media buttressed.
In fact, Sanders had detailed
(and quite realistic) plans outlining how he would pay for his proposals on
his website, and they were extremely popular with the majority of voters.
He proposed a financial transactions tax on securities (supported by more than 60%
of Americans); eliminating various tax loopholes for the rich and
corporations (supported
by an overwhelming majority of Americans); eliminating the cap on the
payroll tax so that the rich don’t get the majority of their income sheltered
from the tax (supported
by more than 60% of Americans and by 80% if phased in); and sponsoring a
modest increase in payroll taxes (it would add about $1.61 a week to the
average household) to help pay for his expansive social programs.
The most controversial
proposal in Sanders’ platform involved his plan to pay for universal single
payer health care. He proposed a 2.2 percent increase on payroll taxes for
households, and a 6.2 percent match by employers. This would have raised
taxes, but it would have also substantially reduced the net amount Americans
paid for health care, saving American families thousands of dollars. The
average family of four paid $24,671 on health care in 2015.
The bottom line is that
Sanders’ had a viable plan to pay for his pony and the elements of the plan
were extremely popular with the majority of Americans. No doubt he would
have had a hard time selling Congress, but he never intended to do that – he
was going to sell it to their boss -- the American people. That, by the way, is
called leadership.
What really happened was the
American people got wise to the same old game being run by the Oligarchs and
both Parties, and Hillary was caught still playing the game.
What Hillary, the elite media,
the neoliberals and the traditional Republican candidates never figured out was
just how disgusted people were by politics as usual.
A study called the
Smith Project, released on July 4, 2014 summarized people’s dim view of
both political parties. Here’s one of their findings:
Americans overwhelmingly agree
(78%–15%) that both political parties are too beholden to special interests to create any
meaningful change.
Here’s another observation
revealed by the Smith Project:
American voters strongly
believe that corruption and crony capitalism are among the most important
issues facing our nation—almost equal to jobs and the economy. Political
alienation has existed for decades, but it now envelops over three-fifths of
all voters. These are the numbers that precede a political upheaval. (emphasis
added)
The results of the study were
confirmed in the 2014 midterms which had the lowest voter turnout in 70 years,
and voters in 1942 had an excuse—many were overseas fighting a war. It
was confirmed again in 2016, when voters in 14 states voted for down ballot
candidates but left the choice for President blank. In Nevada, which allows
for “none-of-the-above,” 29,000 voters rejected the choices offered for
President.
Hillary Clinton was a classic split-the-difference-Democrat,
who tried to thread the needle between retaining the support of the oligarchs,
Wall Street, and corporations and appealing to the people. Her husband
even had a name for the game—triangulation.
In 2016, the people wanted
none of that. What really happened was that people were fed up with
needle threaders and triangulators.
If the Democratic Party
doesn’t realize this and act on it, they will not gain control of the House or
Senate in 2018, and they will lose even more ground at the state level.
The lame “Better Deal” initiative shows they may be aware of it, but it also
shows they are unlikely to act on it and run a campaign based on values that
levels the playing field for the average American, frees the party from the
oligarchy's hold, and restores faith in government.
The best thing that can be
said about Clinton’s book is that it provides a window into what the party has
been doing wrong for over three decades now.
