CT Blue

Riffing slightly on a few recent posts.

I can’t help but comment on the rapidity with which the “center”, as defined by our media, moves ineluctably to the right. This post at Hullabaloo, in which it is noted that the Times characterized the George Bush administration as from the “comparatively moderate” wing of the Republican Party got me thinking about the subject once again. The wording is not completely indefensible, for it’s quite true that the current crop of Republican candidates is largely a competition among a group of men (is Carly still in it?), each of whom is striving, in his own way, to prove that George Bush is not the worst we can do. Still, the use of the word “moderate” is peculiarly inapt. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say that Cruz is simply even more extreme than Bush? Using the term “moderate”, even limited by the adjective “comparative” is yet another brick in the wall, so to speak. As the Republican Party moves ever rightward, the media obediently redefines the center, even though there is no evidence that the actual center in this country has moved much at all. On the issues, the American people are pretty much where they have been, and that would show up in the various state legislatures and in Congress, had not the majority’s will been gerrymandered into irrelevance. A corollary of this type of thinking is the following: the media will not acknowledge that it is defining the center to the right. It is also an axiom that both sides do it. Therefore, If the extreme on one end is ever more extreme, it follows as the night the day that the extreme on the other end is also ever more extreme, and to the same degree, massive evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Therefore, we can expect, if Sanders takes off, that he will be endlessly described as the left-wing version of Trump or Cruz, even though, despite his self description as a socialist, the policies he’s advocating are no different than were commonly supported by mainstream liberals in the 60s. As one small example, when JFK (and then LBJ) proposed Medicare, they went right for a single payer system. I may be wrong, but I don’t think there was ever any discussion of handing the system over to rent seeking insurance companies, as happened with Obamacare. That only happened later, when the Democrats caved to Republican demands for the money wasting “Medicare Advantage”.

On another framing issue, it appears that Elizabeth Warren has shut the door to a Clinton endorsement, at least while Sanders is still in the race. She gave a speech in the Senate and concluded with these words:

A new presidential election is upon us. The first votes will be cast in Iowa in just eleven days. Anyone who shrugs and claims that change is just too hard has crawled into bed with the billionaires who want to run this country like some private club.“

I think that aligns with the point I tried to make recently, that you can’t achieve progressive goals by pushing for incremental changes that inevitably bring you no closer to what you actually want. You might accept incremental change if that’s all you can get (and you won’t get much of that, if tiny change is your opening demand, see Obama, B, first 6 years in office), but you should never stop demanding the real thing. In the current context, Clinton is defining success as achieving minor adjustments to the status quo; Bernie is defining it far more broadly. I can understand the argument some make that we have to go with Clinton, because Bernie is a sure loser. I don’t agree, particularly if his opponent is Cruz, but I understand how someone can come to that conclusion. The unfortunate fact, in my opinion, is that we have no choice but to roll the dice. Give the billionaires four more years of country club living, and we may have lost the last opportunity to turn that club into a public course.