Friday, July 12, 2019

Hard data: A centrist Dem is a loser

This article discusses Picketty's book Capital in the 21st Century. While Repugs ignore science, centrist Dems ignore the social science behind their losing strategy. And they are going to lose yet again if they continue to thwart Sanders and Warren with their self-serving, corporate fellatio. A few excerpts:

"It is now the Democratic Party that is wantonly ignoring mounds of social science data that suggests that promoting centrist candidates is a bad, losing strategy when it comes to winning elections. As the Democratic establishment and its pundit class starts to line up behind the centrist nominees for president — mainly, Joe Biden, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris — the party's head-in-the-sand attitude is especially troubling."

They need "the kind of political platform that articulates a shared, global struggle among all of the poor and working-class people around the world — in other words, a class-conscience platform that recognizes that rich people are not on the same side as the rest of us, and have different interests and are eager to exploit us. And egalitarian means the opposite of nationalistic or xenophobic — united in a common class struggle, you might say, towards a mutual goal of universal civil rights." 

"Democratic presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren, Mike Gravel and Bernie Sanders fulfill this kind of platform to some degree. When Sanders uses terms like "99%" and "1%", or talks of universalizing abortion rights or healthcare or housing rights, he is articulating that […] platform. Warren is interesting, in that she advocates for heavy regulation and taxation of the rich, though she is hesitant to disparage their right to actually be rich — and she is quick to identify as a capitalist. Still, her policies infuriate rich centrists like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, so one could definitely count her as among […] or at least adjacent."

"Yet the Democratic Party and their mouthpieces at major newspapers are clearly not heeding Piketty's prophecy. Rather, TV pundits and op-ed writers of every major newspaper epitomize how the Democratic establishment has already reached a consensus: the 2020 nominee must be a centrist, a Joe Biden, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris–type, preferably."


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