Democrat’s Failure to Legislate Stated Values is Same Approach That Gave Us Trump
It’s not six degrees from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, it’s a straight line
For anyone not aware, there has been a bit of an online food-fight the past few days over a suggestion by comedian & blogger, Jimmy Dore, that progressives in the House should withhold their votes to reconfirm Nancy Pelosi as Speaker unless there is first a floor vote on Medicare for All.
The rationale is, even if the motion fails, it forces those who like to give lip-service to the idea of M4A to show their hand.
Everyone would have to reveal whether they actually support this particular reform, or whether they are just telling their constituents they do because it helps them get elected.
Congressional progressives have mostly said they do not support this strategy (or have remained silent). Meanwhile, Democratic Party supporters have pushed back, saying that this could lead to Republican Kevin McCarthy becoming Speaker (not true unless the dissenters vote for him…which they won’t) or that Medicare for All is unlikely to pass in the House, and even if it did, it would almost certainly die in the Senate.
While this second argument is true, it also completely misses the point of the exercise. Casual voters aren’t on Twitter and have no way of knowing who the frauds are unless the media talks about it on TV/radio. This gets it there.
The picture above is from a speech Nancy Pelosi gave over twenty-seven years ago, explaining why a single-payer proposal for health care wasn’t achievable.
Now here we are, in the midst of the worst pandemic in generations, and we’re still being told pretty much the same thing.
If not now, when??!!!???
By now, we’ve all heard how many billionaires have significantly increased their wealth during the pandemic as ordinary Americans are struggling to pay bills. Big-money special interests received loans and bailouts, while the rest of us have to figure out how to make a $1,200 check last nine months as jobs evaporate in a haze of Covid lockdowns and anxiety.
And yet, the Democratic Party can’t even hold a vote on a proposal to fix the hot mess otherwise known as our health care system?
Obamacare put a band-aid on a broken system designed to maximize profit at the expense of delivering quality, affordable health care. He crawled into bed with the same special interests he derided during his campaign to deliver the most low-hanging fruit in exchange for entrenching a deeply flawed system.
At the same time, Democrats in Congress, deep in industry’s pocket, managed to kill a public option which would have brought market forces to bear on behalf of patients and consumers.
What happened in 2009–10 was a failure of leadership and we continue to pay the price for that today.
People who understood this, and thus uncomfortable with voting for a Democrat in 2020, were told to vote Biden to stave off another four years of Donald Trump, which would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. Once in office, people could then push him left.
The backlash against Dore proves that the push him left argument was disingenuous…at best.
It is pretty much impossible to push a political party anywhere when supporters keep defending their every move.
Unfortunately, we already have plenty of proof how Democrats selling out stated values turns out.
It is child’s play to trace a line from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump. Not a six degrees of Kevin Bacon path, but a direct freaking line!
~ It was trade agreements like NAFTA, which have been mostly championed by Democrats, that allowed multinationals to ship American jobs overseas at record rates, and subsequently hollow out American manufacturing. Trump exploited this brilliantly in 2016.
~ It was the repeal of Glass-Steagall during the Clinton years which blurred the line between investment & traditional banks, leading a decade later to the housing crisis and subsequent recession. When Obama bailed out Wall Street, while leaving average Americans to sink or swim on their own, the field was clear for the sharkiest shark on Wall Street to claim he had the well-being of average Americans at heart and somehow be credible in doing so.
~ It was the failure of health care reform under Clinton which so spooked Obama that he felt it necessary to climb in bed with industry and deliver a wholly inadequate measure which Republicans like Trump have used to such great advantage ever since.
~ It was welfare reform under Clinton that prevented states from expanding their welfare rolls when recessions hit in 2001 and 2008, and again this year, by turning a countercyclical system designed to add more people when the need was greatest, into one that couldn’t do so without explicit action by a gridlocked Congress. Again, when Trump came along in 2016, this ‘reform’ played right into the narrative he was crafting for poor people who felt like government had abandoned them.
Worst of all, many of the people still running the Democratic Party emerged during this era and continue to propagate the worst instincts of the Clinton presidency.
Democrats might be slightly better than Republicans under Trump, but the difference between the two is a lot like getting kicked in the face by a horse vs. getting hit in the face with a tennis racket.
Both hurt like hell and neither is something one should seek out, and yet, in our binary two-party system, these two lousy options are the choices we are ever given.
Despite this, partisans on both sides are extremely loyal to their tribe and vigorously excuse all manner of betrayals of the ideals each espouses. They shout down anyone questioning the wisdom of politicians in their party, even as they attack the other party for doing much the same.
It’s not good enough that Democrats want to slow the car down as we approach a cliff. At some point, we’ve got to turn the wheel before it’s too late.
Blind faith in either tribe isn’t going to get that done.
Fights like the one over compelling a floor vote for Medicare for All are exactly what needs to be done to force the Democratic Party to defend their stated values, rather than simply allowing them to continue to never try and push past difficult politics.
We need political leaders willing to fight to move public opinion, rather than just forever coasting to shore on the most expedient wave at hand.
Likewise, we need those who support Democrats to start voting for candidates who are willing to uphold the values the party claims to stand for, rather than those who just keep offering weak justifications for why they never do.
Originally published at https://www.equalityofopportunity.com.
