88

After watching MSM coverage the last few weeks what’s clear is the (not so) smart set finds the idea that the Dems are in civil war absolutely fascinating and can’t do enough empty navel gazing over it.

 

I mean was the only reason to take down Hitler because you didn’t like his tax and healthcare policies? To be clear I despise Trump’s tax and healthcare policies.

I know Bernie Sanders loves to gloat that everyone now agrees with him-the Democrats were so clueless in 2016 but now they totally agree with him-the Great Old White Male Socialist  Hope.

He always cites polls that show that Americans want Medicare for All. But do they? It’s a little more nuanced than that-Bernie does many things but he doesn’t do nuance.

I admit that on the level of a slogan-Medicare for All is pithy and glib. One critique of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 platform that she herself now seems to at least partly agree with is that the Democrats should use simply slogans-this is the advice she’s been given to 2020 hopefuls-all who have sought her out to seek her wise advice and counsel except for-yep, Bernie and Gillibrand.

To be sure, Gillibrand is begging for forgiveness and endeavoring to make herself worthy of receiving Hillary’s wise advice and counsel.

But Americans may find themselves agreeing with Medicare for All until the GOP rushes in all redfaced declaring that this is at the price of everyone in the country losing their current insurance overnight.

Remember how much hell Obama caught for ‘if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor’-and just a few people-mostly with garbage plans that covered nothing-nominally ‘lost’ their plans?

How about when the 160 million Americans who receive and are happy to receive insurance with their employer are ordered off of it by the government?

Yes, I get it, the Single Payer purists lecture about all the savings in administrative costs. There are some virtues to single payer, it’s true, though as Clinton points out France and Germany have a very effective universal healthcare system with multipayers-she argues that this might be the model for universal healthcare in American and she’s right-as usual.

And a public option would be so much easier-and less controversial to implement. Sherrod Brown’s Medicare 55 bill already got us a lot of the way there. While the idea that private insurance is abolished overnight will rub many Americans the wrong way-people have an inherent preference for the status quo; unless you’re someone who has no meaningful health insurance at all which is why we should do Medicare for All(Who Want it).

If people are reasonably satisified with the status quo they don’t like change. My guess is to the extent that people in polls like Medicare for All it’s because they presume it’s Medicare for All(Who Want it).

Again, why make it something people need to think about?

With all the talk about the centrists and if the Dems are moving too left I would say no-I like Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to take on Big Tech though as I write about in in Chapter A-the devil is very much in the details. Again the lesson Hillary learned from the failure of HillaryCare in 1994-never take away anything people already have-is crucial regarding Warren’s plans to take on Big Tech.

Big Tech needs to be reformed-not abolished-and it needs to become more socially responsible-it’s complicated as many of the firms are actually liberals who think they are socially responsible and in some ways they are-but the Democrats’ reforms shouldn’t do anything that takes away the benefits Americans as workers, consumers, or citizens already do in fact gain from Facebook-Amazon-Twitter-Google.

 

But it’s also about packaging . I think in 2020 we want it to be a referendum on Trump. In a way by making so much noise about what Democrats themselves want to do-big, radical change-you make it a choice. The majority of the country already despises Trump and wants him gone. They see that he’s a clear and present threat-beyond which is very prescence in the Oval Office sullies it as he didn’t ‘win’ the job legitimately.

For the Centrists and Recovering Republicans of the world-a la Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, etc-why make this a choice? They are won over to the idea of the clear and present illegitimate threat that Trump’s xenophobic authoritarianism actually is. But I have to admit, while I don’t think it will work-as nothing will save Trump in the end-it’s pretty decent strategy to focus on the idea that the Dems are also scary-they are socialists who can’t even say they’re capitalists-a la Hickenlooper on Friday on Morning Joe.

FN. Not that I necessarily think the Colorado Governor’s response was wrong. Interestingly, Elizabeth Warren has no problem saying she’s a capitalist. But maybe because Hickenlooper has a rep as a ‘Centrist’ he can’t get away with admitting he’s a capitalist-while no one doubts Warren’s progressive credentials.

Jennifer Rubin has a very interesting column on Warren’s ‘defense of capitalism’ this morning-March 10-almost exactly 15 months since I started But What About Your Emails Secretary Clinton?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/11/warren-can-teach-democrats-something-about-defending-capitalism/?utm_term=.64c87f09abd4

 

No, it’s not that ‘Ok so you’re not a progressive you’re a corporate shill.’ I’m personally as ‘progressive’-though I prefer liberal, but ‘progressive’ is the current fad-as the next guy or girl ‘even’ St. Bernie Mr. True Progressive himself.

As I documented in Chapter A I actually ran in the 2018 NY2 Dem primary and my economic agenda was:

1. A Job Guarantee (JG).

2. A Universal Basic Income (UBI).

3. An expanded and increased Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Indeed, that’s more progressive than anything Bernie His Royal Magnificent Progressiveness ran on in either 2016 or in this cycle up to now. He mostly talks about single payer-though the public option might be the better course-and a $15 minimum wage-we already have that in NY though it’s coming so slowly by the time it does it won’t be worth all that much.

Despite my clearly progressive platform-Hillary receals in her best selling book she also considered running on a UBI in 2016, if only, that’d have made her more progressive than His Royal Progressiveness by a factor of 20. As it stands her critique of the economy was better than Bernie’s-‘bad trade deals’-I consider myself on the Center Left not the Far Left like Bernie.

But not the Center Left that Delong talked about in his  recent very interesting Vox interview.

Bernie’s Royal Progressive Eminence.

There’s just no history of progressive legilsation getting passed by ‘working with Republicans’

So I’m a member of the Center Left who eschews working with Republicans-as the record shows they are never part of the solution always THE problem.

Even though I’m on the Center Left, then I believe are only legitimate conversational partners’-Rorty-is the Left. A meeting of minds between the Left , Center Left and the Recovering Republicans a la Jennifer Rubin.

Interesting thought:

 

Put this in Bernie chapter

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