The American electorate is deeply divided. Bipartisanship and compromise are essential to bringing the country together, but the dramatic leftward shift of the Democratic Party is making this more difficult. Voters are anxious to vote for an independent moderate who occupies the political space between the two parties.
Horseshit.
Yes, the actions of our government should reflect the desires of the majority of our citizens. And you can make the case that much of the progress the United States has made has been the result of 250 years of middle-ground compromises between conservative and liberal constituencies.
Today, however, those constituencies and the parties that have historically represented them are no longer roughly equal in size or representative of traditional conservatism and liberalism. Most Americans don’t hold political beliefs that occupy a space halfway between the policies of the GOP and the Democratic parties.
We only have to look at the recent examples of Howard Schultz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes to understand this.
Howard Schultz, a billionaire businessman, steams his imperial yacht into Presidential waters on behalf of the 40 percent of American voters who self-identify as independents, who he claims are desperately looking for a national savior in the form of a billionaire coffee executive and failed sports-team owner who opposes the “extremes” of both parties.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Congressional rookie, has proposed to tax the rich at a 70-percent rate after their first $10 million—an idea that has been greeted by Republicans as a “leftist fantasy program.”
If Schultz is to be believed, these developments serve as good examples of the difference between the moderate “silent majority” and the “extreme” wing of the Democratic Party.
How have American received these proposals from a classic moderate and an “extreme” democratic socialist?
Polls show a scant 7.7% of voters supporting Howard Schultz’s Presidential aspirations. The only major political figure who applauded Schultz’s flirtation with throwing his hat in the ring was Donald Trump—polls show that Schultz would draw most of his scant support from Democrats. A “major policy speech” by Schultz at Purdue University this week drew a tiny crowd and on online audience that peaked at 200.
A Hill/HarrisX poll taken last month, on the other hand, shows AOC’s “tax the rich” proposal supported by 59% of Americans—in fact, by the majority of women and men in all regions of the country. Even 45% of Republicans say they like the idea.
This should not be surprising, given that polls taken over the past year show that the majority of Americans also support:
Medicare for all (70%)
Free public college (63%)
Stricter gun control laws (68%)
Legal abortion (57%)
Taking action to reduce global warming (66%)
Overturning Citzens United (87% of Democrats, 82% of independents, and 60% of Republicans)
Recent polls also make clear what the majority of Americans are AGAINST:
Building a wall on our southern border (60% oppose)
Donald Trump (56% oppose)
Partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts (71% oppose)
The deportation of illegal immigrants (84% oppose)
Polls are not scientific or infallable, but these large majorities clearly show that the politicians who best represent the majority of Americans are not Howard Schultz or Donald Trump but AOC, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Obviously, the balance of power in Washington does not reflect the desires of the majority of Americans. There are three primary reasons for this—the extreme rightward shift of the GOP, the Republicans’ success in establishing a tyranny of the minority, and the corrupting influence of money on every level of politics and in both parties.
Donald Trump’s GOP is not the party of conservatism. The traditional conservative principles of conservatism—a small federal government, fear of deficits, support for free trade, and respect for the social hierarchy and social institutions—have no place in Trump’s GOP, which is a proudly fascist, white-supremacist party that has openly declared war on the rule of law in America.
The Republican Party has brilliantly managed their core problem—that their voter base represents a minority of Americans and is shrinking every year. Rather than respond to this reality by increasing the party’s appeal, the GOP has worked tirelessly—and successfully—to establish a tyranny of the minority for by suppressing voting, taking over governorships and state legislatures to gerrymander as many safe Republican districts as possible across the country, leveraging the undemocratic institutions in our Constitutional framework (e.g., the Senate and the Electoral College), and attempting an end-around against future populist legislation by packing the federal judiciary and stealing a seat on the Supreme Court. And the GOP has cunningly used racism and wedge issues like abortion to convince Americans vote against their own economic best interest.
Money has completely corrupted our political system. It is an existential threat to our politics equivalent to the threat of global warming to our planet. AOC did a brilliant job of explaining of demonstrating this during a recent Congressional hearing. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have participated in the disastrous reduction of the corporate tax rate from 90% in the 1950s to the 21% rate we have today.
Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg are classic examples of the rich, socially liberal donors who have typically supported the Democratic Party—until that organization starts talking about helping unions, making the ultra-rich shoulder a fair tax burden, providing universal health care or offering free higher education.
When Democratic-leaning billionaires like Schultz and Bloomberg accept their tax windfalls and then explain that we have to focus on the deficit and that we can’t afford anything for the middle class, they reveal themselves not as moderates but as rich people who are just as disinterested in the success of the majority of Americans as anyone in the Flying Monkeys Party.
Bipartisan “compromises” between the Democratic progressivism represented by AOC, Warren, and Sanders on the one hand and the fascist GOP would not reduce political polarization by moving this country to the political center. AOC, Warren, and Sanders ARE that center, or at least very close to it. Bipartisanship today is just another con by the Trumpists who want to move the country to the right and by rich Democrats who want to protect their wealth. The tension and polarization in this country is the result of the failure of both parties up til now to stand for the 99% of Americans.
Don’t be confused by the GOP’s constantly moving the political goal posts as it becomes more extreme and more criminal, by the false notion that Creature From the Past Lagoon Joe Biden is the only candidate who can beat Trump, or the claim by Howard Schultz that he represents the “silent majority.”
We can all take heart that the only fan of Schultz’s weak brew is Donald Trump, that the Democratic Party has universally condemned him, and that AOC and Warren and Sanders and the voters who have been inspired by them are guiding that party not to an “extreme leftward shift” but to the real political center of this country.
