Does the Democratic Party want what Bernie wants?
or just want what Bernie Sanders has?
Think about the tenth commandment.
If you need to
Just a thought.
= new reply since forum marked as read
his supporters, his ideals, his enthusiasm but don't want what he wants
Article:
I’ve written before about how the Hillary Democrats are running against hope, and how the Sanders campaign have outed them as frank corporate shills and enemies of even mild social democracy. But now even nominal liberals, or progressives, or whatever we’re calling them these days, have gotten in on the act.
Not content with merely saying “No!” to new programs like single-payer health insurance and free college, they’re highlighting the worst aspects of the New Deal in an effort to . . . well, what exactly? Promote Hillary? Fight Trump? It’s hard to tell.
A few days ago, Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent for Slate Magazine and a political analyst for CBS News, tweeted this remarkable observation (since deleted):
Actually, that working-class movement had a lot to do with the Communist Party, which was an antiracist organization with a large black membership. Not only did it organize autoworkers in Flint, it organized black farmers in the South and black urbanites in Harlem. But saying nice things about the CPUSA is not the way to keep a job with CBS News.
Not long after Bouie’s ridiculous tweet came a longer instance of 1930s-bashing from Bryce Covert, economic policy editor at ThinkProgress and a contributor to the Nation. Covert identifies Donald Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” as appealing to whites, especially men, longing for the days before the Civil Rights Movement and feminism ruined things for them.
That’s not a controversial point; it may be incomplete, but it’s not untrue. Covert’s innovation is to locate much of that appeal in New Deal programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance, and postwar successors like the G.I. Bill.
This is rather odd, given the holy place that the New Deal once had in Democratic discourse. Covert’s beef is that to get the votes of racist Southern congressmen, FDR had to craft his programs to exclude black workers. This is both true and awful, though it’s not clear how they would have gotten through Congress otherwise.
But instead of saying that the New Deal was a good partial model, something that should be built upon — probably the only period in American history when a sense of the collective, and not competitive individualism, dominated our political thought — she emphasizes only the exclusions, and identifies them as the source of the nostalgias that Donald Trump, not previously known as a friend of social programs, has been basing his campaign on.
Neither Bouie’s tweet nor Covert’s op-ed makes any sense unless they’re trying to discredit an ambitious social agenda. That is precisely what the Hillary Democrats are doing to fight off the persistent Sanders threat that just won’t go away. (That despite the fact that, as Gallup recently reported, a majority of Americans support a single-payer system. The least popular option is Hillary’s position, keeping Obamacare largely as is.)
more;
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/democrats-hillary-clinton-new-deal-sanders/
I thought about asking my question after reading that article. So I know it was rhetorical in a way.
