Arriving in yesterday’s mail, a fundraising letter from Steve Bullock, the envelope emblazoned with this stirring message:
I’m the only candidate who’s won a Trump state.
I can beat Trump all across America!
If you’ve heard of Bullock at all, you no doubt know of him as the man who should be running for the Senate from Montana instead of wasting his time and supporters’ (if there are any) money running for President. We can only hope that he follows Hickenlooper into the sunset.
Bullock is one of many Democratic candidates running as Republicans-lite; one of those Warren so effectively put down when she remarked that she couldn’t quite understand why anyone would run for president talking about what they can’t do.
The declaration on Bullock’s envelope got me thinking.
Let’s step back a bit and remind ourselves of the Republican formula for success. The Republicans agendais simple: it is to further the interests of the plutocrats. Every day, as Trump distracts, they advance this agenda. For instance,we learned yesterday that they are going to endanger us all by allowing sleepy truck drivers on the road. Good for trucking companies (who cares if a couple of truckers get killed), but not so good for the rest of us. Climate change? It can be safely ignored, as the plutocrats want, so long as you keep the rubes scared of the [insert racial, ethnic or religious slur here].
The actual Republican agenda is deeply unpopular, whereas even the “radical” ideas (Medicare for all! Just like in every other advanced nation!) of progressive Democrats poll well. How do the Republicans win? By distracting, with the help of Fox News, from their real agenda by playing to, and inciting, racism and other base and despicable forms of bigotry.There is no disputing this fact, it is out in plain sight. Only Washington based pundits are unable to see it.
So, in the face of this, what do Democratic “moderates” propose? They propose to eschew the racism that sells and embrace a lite version of the deeply unpopular Republican plutocratic agenda that the Republicans take such pains to hide. Not for them popular “socialistic” programs like Medicare for All or free college (why isn’t free high school socialism?). Better to assure those corporate donors that they have nothing to fear and in fact much to anticipate from a government administered by Mr. or Ms. Moderate Democrat.And by all means, continue to ignore climate change, while not going full denier when asked. Comfort the comfortable, while afflicting the afflicted slightly less than the Republicans.
To the extent Trump voters can be converted, this is not the message that will get them. If it were, the Republicans would not have had to go full on racist to begin with. What it can do is turn off Democratic leaning voters, who are looking for a government that will do something about wealth inequality, climate change, and the rise of the radical right. It is also worth remembering that Trump ran to the left of his opponents on economic issues. He was going to protect social security and give us great medical coverage, much better than Obamacare. Of course he was lying, but he was telling his deplorables what they wanted to hear.
None of the Bullocks have taken off. One can argue that Biden is of that ilk, and he is, and he is leading the pack. (Well, he was leading the pack) But he is the choice of the folks whose first priority is beating Trump, who have, at least for the moment, been successfully propagandized into believing a real Democrat can’t win. It looks more and more like the more people see of him the less they want him, though they still haven’t quite ditched the Beltway wisdom with which they’ve been vaccinated.
Properly packaged, our message sells. We have some good salespeople; what we need is for the establishment party to back them up and we need for the party to push back against the both siderism that compels the media to treat ideas like Medicare for All as if they were what Republicans claim they are.
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