I’ve been reading a lot lately about the election of the next DNC chair and what the party has to do and it’s a funny thing to watch. The loudest voices at these things, the people who are the most adamant continue to want to move the party further to the left.
You can see the way people are talking, they look at Bernie Sanders and they look at Hillary Clinton and they try to figure out which orbit they should arrive at but they’re missing a bigger picture overall.
The dirty secret about the Obama years is that the disparity between the rich and the poor only grew over those eight years. Richard Gephardt said during the 2004 campaign a truth that is even more relevant today than it was at the time he said it:
We like to think everyone, everywhere views the world the way we do here at home but that is simply not the case and its very naive for us to believe that.
Under the guise of good intentions though, the DNC has left many Americans behind. Americans whose votes they need and whose votes they counted on.
People in the Middle Class don’t look at the social safety net the Democrats support as something that helps them because when the shit hits the fan, they are not likely to be in a position to qualify for those benefits. They instead look at them as a drain. When the economy is doing well, people have less of a hard time with these things but as the income gap has grown and people are struggling more and more, that magnanimous attitude falls by the wayside.
The Democratic Party needs to return to the center – it needs to find people without the baggage that Hillary Clinton carried but center is where it’s at. Tim Kaine for whatever faults he may have, reads as a very good candidate for 2020 if the Democrats are smart enough to draft him.Thing is there is a push to go further and further to the left and it’s likely a push that will end up backfiring.
We are genuinely a nation of centrists no matter what you may believe and look at the election numbers and you can see that vote totals are split close to down the middle in national elections, there’s a reason for that. The DNC fails to recognize that only at their own peril.
You can see the way people are talking, they look at Bernie Sanders and they look at Hillary Clinton and they try to figure out which orbit they should arrive at but they’re missing a bigger picture overall.
The dirty secret about the Obama years is that the disparity between the rich and the poor only grew over those eight years. Richard Gephardt said during the 2004 campaign a truth that is even more relevant today than it was at the time he said it:
I think we're in danger because of the opening up of free trade — which we all support — of having a race to the bottom, what I call a race to the bottom for wage levels. Companies everywhere, not just American companies, are really being forced to go to the cheapest-wage countries to do their manufacturing or to deliver their services. I think we have to bring about international standards, both for workers and the environment, in our trading relationships.Gephardt got it and this was 12 YEARS AGO! Unfortunately we have not enforced those standards in trade at all and currently any organizations responsible for enforcement of International Standards are mere Paper Tigers. This applies to other essential planks in the DNC platform including agreements on Climate Change. These are lofty goals to be sure but other countries will not readily sign away their capacity to achieve the same standard of living and economic growth that the United States takes for granted.
We like to think everyone, everywhere views the world the way we do here at home but that is simply not the case and its very naive for us to believe that.
Under the guise of good intentions though, the DNC has left many Americans behind. Americans whose votes they need and whose votes they counted on.
People in the Middle Class don’t look at the social safety net the Democrats support as something that helps them because when the shit hits the fan, they are not likely to be in a position to qualify for those benefits. They instead look at them as a drain. When the economy is doing well, people have less of a hard time with these things but as the income gap has grown and people are struggling more and more, that magnanimous attitude falls by the wayside.
The Democratic Party needs to return to the center – it needs to find people without the baggage that Hillary Clinton carried but center is where it’s at. Tim Kaine for whatever faults he may have, reads as a very good candidate for 2020 if the Democrats are smart enough to draft him.Thing is there is a push to go further and further to the left and it’s likely a push that will end up backfiring.
We are genuinely a nation of centrists no matter what you may believe and look at the election numbers and you can see that vote totals are split close to down the middle in national elections, there’s a reason for that. The DNC fails to recognize that only at their own peril.
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