Robert Reich wrote an important thought piece in The Guardian that was well picked up by crepescule here on DK yesterday.
I sympathize with my fellow Northern Californian Reich’s point of view, as well as his frustration and passion. A political party that aligned itself cleanly with the aspirations of the solid sensible middle fed up with the status quo, including both blue and white collars, would likely enjoy an FDR-like decade+ of success.
The madness, though, is in imagining that the landscape is as simple as two different flavors of populism, somehow magically amalgamable. As if AOC fans and Steve Bannon fans would happily coexist under one big blue tent of solidarity.
“Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism”
Uh … ever hear of democratic republicanism? You know, the political system of the USA.
Reich is completely misjudging the electoral landscape.
The image at the top of this diary is a reminder of how finely balanced the 2020 election was. When you factor in the dem-rep compromise that is the Electoral College, it was only roughly 65,000 votes (4.2 basis points of the 158 million cast) striped across AZ, GA, WI and NEB2 that made the difference.
Listen to Carville and Axelrod, the only two living human beings who have strategized a two term POTUS flip from red to blue. The 2022 election will be decided by the purples (… and 2024 will only get harder if we lose the Congress this year).
By the Youngkin swing voters. Stay away from policies we may like to think of as “progressive” here on DK, but that are viewed by the majority of still sensible voters as radical.
Stick to the Moms Platform: Roe, guns, Trump/Jan6, Russia, infrastructure. Pray inflation and gas prices come down by October, and that HIMARS helps Ukraine push Trump’s puppet master back to the pre-2014 border.
Avoid walking into the culture war traps. Stop talking about stupid NewSpeak, identity and immigration issues that normals don’t care about or actually disagree with, and economic policies that play into the “socialism” label.
(Yes, yes, I know we’d like to have a serious debate in this country about policies free of labels. Just talk about education and health care, opportunity and income and wealth distribution curves. How to make more of the USA and the world like the Nordics. But that’s naïve, and the s-word is mostly a political winner for the reds in the here and now.)
I think I finally understand my lifelong registered Democrat, liberal’s liberal, Mass. Bay Area friend who has been gnashing her teeth since 2016 over her beloved party’s habit of incessant self-inflicted wounds. Like “Defund the Police”.
Robert Reich may be a great voice for a kind of 20th century Labor-centric political ideology. His chops as a political strategist/analyst, though, leave a lot to be desired. Those non-college educated $100-199K/year voters who swung to Trump (white, black and brown) can absolutely be brought back into the blue fold.
Not by fussing over pronouns or otherwise sounding like a 60s Marxist radical.
