No More Neoliberals
This inane idea that the election in 2020 pivots on Democrats making concessions on their core principles as an appeal to disillusioned Republican/conservative voters has no merit.
To those Republicans who want a different option, too bad. Because your party has become the party of fascists and white supremacists, is not a reason for the democrats to attempt to appeal to you. It’s not a coincident that the Republican party has become a cesspool of conspiracy theories run by a fruaduent orange clown. That is the water you swim in when you ask for devotion to ideology over facts. The positions your party has taken inevitably appeal to such insanity.
These third-way, neoliberal Democrats have been trying to appeal to conservative voters since the Clinton-era and it has been a dismal failure that has eroded the working class faith in the democratic party. The Democrats have become the party of trade deals and multi-national corporations. We keep hearing that Democrats need these moderates and centrists to run the party as a way to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate, yet it was under the neo-liberal policies of Barack Obama that the Democrats lost 1000 government seats, and the DNC went broke. His presidency ended with both chambers of congress and the White House in the hands of Republicans. Are we to conclude that centrist, third-way, neoliberal incrementalism is going to be the winning ticket because it garners the support of independents and conservatives, when we have history to refer to? There’s no need to speculate, Obama and HRC were the centrist option and their policies have been disastrous for the future of the left.
These folks who say all the Democrats need to do is elect a centrist to peel off voters from Trump are not allies of the left. They are indubitably their opposition. They hope to transform the Democrats into a second Republican party, not save it. What happened when neoliberal Obama tried working with Republicans and passing middle of the road policies? He was called a socialist, he couldn’t get a single Republican vote and the base didn’t show up in full support in 2016, despite the looming threat of Trump.
Moreover, these putatively good-willed advisors seem to easily forget that we gave these fringe Republicans, unsupportive of Trump a centrist/neoliberal as an option, and they preferred the sexist, racist, misogynist.
Finally: has anyone ever noticed that this argument only goes one way? Republicans are never encouraged to move to the left to win elections. Republicans are never told if they’re serious about winning they need to nominate a candidate who preaches bipartisanship and appeals to Democratic voters. Did Trump win by talking nice about Democratic positions and suggesting he’d work with the other side and cross party lines? Is that how he’s governed? Yet, they always have the same message for the left despite the fact that a majority of the country leans left on the major issues.
I won’t pretend to know that a solid left candidate will beat Trump in 2020, but I can say that the centrists had their shot in 2016, and we all know how that ended. I don’t think the Democrats should run on, “we’re like the other guys,” because people who want the other guys aren’t going to vote for the watered down version of it and those who don’t want the other guy don’t want to vote for a watered down version either. It seems to be a losing strategy. However, the Democrats, in my opinion, do need to run like Republicans do. And by that I mean, Democrats need to own their position, be clear about where they stand and fight for it — that is, they need to go all in placating their base. Democrats adopting Republican economic policies has not grown or strengthened the party. It’s time to try something different. It’s time to be bold. It’s time to give the American people a true alternative. I am not attempting to persuade the politicians who contrived the situation we now find ourselves in, but the voters who are weighting the options in an attempt to be pragmatic.
Republicans don’t win by abandoning their base to win over Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. They win by digging in their heels and giving their base a reason to come out and vote. If Republicans were sincere in their advice, they wouldn’t encourage Democrats to do the opposite of what they do to win elections.
Having said that: if you truly care about left-wing policies, I encourage you to register to vote, vote in your state’s primary and come back out in November of 2020 to vote for whomever the Democratic nominee is, because any of the Democrats is infinitely better than Trump.