Thursday, March 5, 2020

If you are Waiting for the Revolution, Please Pay Cash

You say you want a revolution?  Apparently it does not look like young people are ready for it yet.
Nor are others.  It will also not be televised or lived streamed on Youtube.
In two presidential campaigns Bernie Sanders has called for a revolution, yet not enough people, especially young, have shown up for it.  Legitimately Sanders is speaking to economic concerns that they and other feel–expensive college, gross economic inequality, flat wages, and high housing and medical costs.  Capitalism has not delivered for them and democratic socialism looks good.  Yet the hope for a revolution, with revolutionary consciousness brought to the masses from the outside via the revolutionary guard of Vladimir Lenin, spontaneously arising via Mikhail Bakunin, or built via an electoral movement via Eduard Bernstein, is not happening yet.
Overtime the moderate politics of the Baby Boomer era will end.  Already this is the first election in nearly 30 years where Boomers are not the largest generational voting cohort, the Millennials now are.  Perhaps, as some think, demographics are destiny and power will eventually shift along with the agenda.  That time has not yet arrived.  It is time for B.
Demographics are not destiny.  Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are learning that the hard way.  You do not get people’s vote simply because you have the right demographics–you still need the right message, right candidate, and strategy to win.  Clinton’s mistake in party was thinking she had the votes of the Midwest and did not have to campaign or ask for them, that is why she lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and almost Minnesota.  Conversely, Sanders’ has hoped that a new narrative appealing to the 45% of the electorate that feel disenfranchised would engage them to vote.  It too has failed so far to work, necessitating a plan B for him.
One of the first rules of politics is that you have to take power in order to govern and make policy.  If Democrats want to win they need to form a grand coalition to do that.  So far while Joe Biden and the moderate Democrats are putting together a coalition that includes suburbanites, women, and older African-American voters, they have done little to reach out to younger and more liberal voters.  They need them.  Without them it is a pipedream think there are many moderate Republicans for disaffected Trump voters who will vote for Biden.  Conversely, Sanders has done little to expand his base and get his agenda enacted.  A grand coalition is needed.
Consider France in 2002.  Jean-Marie Le Pen was the candidate of the far right National Front Party, a reactionary ultra-nationalist xenophobic party.  He was challenging Jacques Chirac,  President, and candidate of the Rally for the Republic Party.  Socialists detested Chirac.  But the prospect of staying home and electing Le Pen was too great and they threw their support to Chirac  who then won.
It is time for Democrats and Sanders supporters to reach their rapprochement if their goal is to win an election.  Moderates need to give on some issues such as free college or health care and Sanders needs to give up on his  absolutes too.  Both sides are playing intra-party winner take all politics that will do nothing more than make 2020 a repeat of 2016.  If they want to win, both sides need to work together to build the electoral college coalition to defeat Trump. Otherwise, while waiting for the revolution it might be better if both sides pay cash.

1 comment:

  1. Agreed. I voted for Biden in the MN primary because I could not see how Bernie could get his program enacted if he were to become president. He would lack sufficient congressional support, assuming that he remained as uncompromising as he has been. Get me wrong not. Bernie's platform I like. But given the likely scenario that he would lack the congressional support to enact it, how would he govern? He'd have to be a Trump of the left, constantly campaigning and tweeting in order to ultimately get the congressional votes to pass his programs. But given the horrible possibility of Trump being reelected, I go with the candidate who shows the greatest likelihood of assembling a winning coalition. Biden has demonstrated the greatest ability to do that. We should not remake the mistakes of the 1932 German centrists and communists.

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