This article in The Week, a not liberal newsweekly publication, set me to thinking long on FB. Here it is reprinted here at MFBTS.
Seeing how corporate Dems are up in arms against the guy, I re-read this one. It is in fact worth reading. My only pet peeve with Ryan Cooper's article is that Harris, Booker and Patrick are not "centrists" when they either (a) refuse to prosecute miscreant bankers and financiers or (b) take their money, mute their economic populist rhetoric and policy proposals. These are not what the majority of Americans wanted or want on those issues. Unless we define what "centrist" means, it carries with it something deeply misleading, that somehow these three corporate Democrats speak for a majority of Americans on these matters being criticized and they are therefore more "electable."
If however we mean by the word "centrist" that they can raise money from big donors and cause people like me in the intellectual work world in a coastal or semi-blue place (like New Mexico, where I now live) to reluctantly vote for any of them over most any Republican, well, then that is fine, again if that is what we mean by "centrist."
But really, in American discourse, it is hard to find a more misapplied or misunderstood or poorly defined term than "centrist." I consider it an uppermost abuse of language that such folks get that label, when Bernie Sanders, under the first definition of "centrist," fits that label far more. For Bernie's positions resonate in particulars with a majority and sometimes high majority of Americans. Yet, nobody dares call him "centrist." And maybe he is. Isn't Bernie to the right of Hillary Clinton and her biggest supporters on gun control? Hmmm....Yet, it is laughable in our discourse (not in reality) to call him a "centrist." That, however, is corporate media propaganda at its worst over the past half century at least. And we all live in it and abide by it even when we proudly announce to ourselves we are not manipulated.
Oh and let's get to a substantive point that buttresses Cooper's article. From the 1980s forward, unions and progressives were told over and over that they can't get what they want on economics and have to support Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) candidates starting with Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas and the like. It was the mantra of "It's the Supreme Court! It's abortion!" When those folks got nominations for President, Senate and House and even Governors (I'm talking to you, Ed Rendell...), labor and most progressives shut up and went along. What is disgusting to me is that the reverse is not true of the corporate Dems and the elite or establishment Dems. They just want to play a game of heads they win, tails you lose when someone, anyone, says we are in a populist moment and we have to hear the voices in those states that should not have gone for Trump, but did.
And when Sanders-centrist types (yup, fun use of the term here) say, "Ya know, maybe we need to listen to this moment and coalesce around economic populist candidates, meaning candidates who run against Wall Street and financiers, bankers, elites in business, etc.," well, the fury is unleashed against Sanders types and progressives for starting a civil war. This makes at least progressive types such as me say to ourselves, "So we can't have a nominee...ever?" Well, we can't. Not when money talks and Harris, Booker and Patrick let money talk through them. And not when we have corporate media pundits (with Cooper and also Shaun King at the NY Daily News as near exceptions) and Democratic Party strategists tell us we have to accept and vote for Big Donor recipient candidates for the nomination of statewide and nationwide positions because that is "what's good for us." And, really, if we can't argue about this in an off or non-election year, then when is the proper time to argue? Oh wait, I know. Shut up. Abortion. Bernie Bro.
And the sad thing is that Sanders' votes on abortion are nearly perfect over 25 years and he was for gay rights well, well, well before the Clintons. It makes one wonder whether too many of the voices talking about abortion as a litmus test are really trying to ensure economic populism is not the topic for a Democratic Party statewide or nation wide nominee. And note too: when Bernie Sanders talks about these important cultural issues to people in rural, religiously-reactionary communities, he gets their respect because they respect his genuineness, and his recognition that we should argue these matters morally, except he tells them there is a moral position FOR abortion and FOR gay rights. For the three corporate Dems under consideration and discussed in Cooper's article, their language and policies are often a function of focus groups to allow them to play off those focus groups to take care of Big Donors first and foremost. And none of those three would know a labor union if it fell on them.
If we want to have Democratic Party candidates win elections, establishment, DC centric and strategist Dems had better recognize the moment, as well as the change arising from a social media world where an eclectic guy like me gets read and heard by others in the hoi polloi, and where the experts in marketing and strategizing are really not all that bright or competent, unlike the assumption inherent in the structure of cable news in America.
And another thing: Let's all stop trying to play pundit-safe. Let's just say what we think. Let's vote in a primary for the candidate we like best and stop this bullshit that makes us think, Oh, man, I don't want to support someone who corporate media says will lose. Enough with that shit already. You are not a pundit being paid to be on television. You are not a political party strategist paid to strategize. You are citizens. Act like a citizen, God damn it. That is what I am doing here. I have a view. I expressed it. I vote for the candidate I want in a primary of the Democratic Party. And I state why I do, publicly.
