https://archive.is/4miLlDemocrats Are in Crisis.
Eat-the-Rich Populism
Is the Only Answer.
Only one sensitive that I saw about three trucking 20-30% ethic supremacists in the Democratic party but…
What could go wrong? The honest answer is: plenty.
A more populist Democratic coalition would be an uncomfortable place for the college-educated professionals who shifted left in the Trump years. It would be even less friendly to the megadonors who bankroll the party. Bringing populists and liberals together in a pincer movement will take enormous skill, and the alliance could be blown apart by cultural differences that both Republicans and establishment Democrats will be eager to exploit.
Although the gap between working-class and white-collar voters on economics has narrowed, it hasn’t disappeared. To name just two fault lines, working people tend to be more skeptical about raising taxes to pay for new government services and more concerned about keeping energy prices low than, say, tackling climate change.
Then there’s the not-so-little question of who’s supposed to lead this revolt. Mr. Osborn is almost certainly out of the running. Even if he wins next year, his social views are too out of step with the party to be able to make it through a Democratic presidential primary. Mr. Sanders would be a natural candidate, but he has aged out of the role.
His heir apparent, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, is more comfortable working within the Democratic establishment, but also more polarizing. Although MSNBC would be in her corner, a Joe Rogan endorsement probably isn’t in the cards. She remains untested in campaigns outside New York; after a strong showing in her 2018 debut, she has underperformed expectations at the ballot box. And it’s by no means obvious that she can do better with rank-and-file Democrats where Mr. Sanders came up short, starting with Black voters in South Carolina.
But charismatic politicians with shaky moderate credentials have gone far before, including the president who shaped so much of today’s forbidding economic landscape. “The time has come to start acting to bring about the great conservative majority party we know is waiting to be created,” Reagan told supporters still reeling from the implosion of Richard Nixon’s presidency. “This will mean compromise. But not a compromise of basic principle. What will emerge will be something new: something open and vital and dynamic.”
Half a century later, the moment for building a great progressive majority party has arrived, a coalition asserting itself against a sclerotic political elite, our economic overlords in Big Tech and Wall Street and a radical right crusading against its own country. Turning Democrats into the vehicle for this coalition will take a struggle — a bruising, messy contest to seize the reins from a party establishment that will be scrambling for its life. But working people fight much harder battles every day. It’s about time they had somebody in their corner