Progressives Seeing Public Support Instead Of Public Backlash
Take a look at the polling numbers at the Populist Majority website. The polls show that the public supports the progressive position on many, many issues. Money in politics, education, trade, inequality, Social Security and Medicare, taking on the big banks -- you name it, across the board the public sees things the way progressives, not conservatives and their corporate/billionaire funders do.
Peter Beinart writes about the country's leftward shift at The Atlantic, in Why America Is Moving Left. He writes that in the 60s and 70s "leftist" ideas faced a popular backlash, but now the country is embracing the ideas of a new progressive movement.
Beinart cites the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement compared to the country's reaction to the militancy of the 60s and 70s, how the inequality situation dominates economic discussion, how LGBT rights are now mainstream, and writes about the differences between today's Democrats and those of the previous decade, "In the Senate, Bush's 2001 tax cut passed with 12 Democratic votes; the Iraq War was authorized with 29. As the calamitous consequences of these votes became clear, the revolt against them destroyed the Democratic Party's centrist wing."
As Beinart sees it, Howard Dean began the revolt of the "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party," the blogger movement grew and Daily Kos emerged as a leading Democratic voice, Huffington Post came along, MSNBC hired a few liberals, and George W. Bush made conservatives look like idiots. (That has only gotten worse.)
And then Obama and his Wall Street tilt led to Occupy, which "injected economic inequality into the American political debate"...
"Given the militant opposition Obama faced from Republicans in Congress, it's unclear whether he could have used the financial crisis to dramatically curtail Wall Street's power. What is clear is that he did not. ... 40 percent of the Occupy activists had worked on the 2008 presidential campaign, mostly for Obama. Many of them had hoped that, as president, he would bring fundamental change. Now the collapse of that hope had led them to challenge Wall Street directly."
Occupy led to Elizabeth Warren's election, Warren's voice helped propel the Sanders candidacy. And Sanders has pushed Clinton left...
"All of this has shaped the Clinton campaign's response to Sanders. At the first Democratic debate, she noted that, unlike him, she favors 'rein[ing] in the excesses of capitalism' rather than abandoning it altogether. But the only specific policy difference she highlighted was gun control, on which she attacked him from the left."
Blake Fleetwood, writing at the Huffington Post, echoes this view, in The Democratic Debate Steals Occupy Wall Street Rhetoric...
"Today, all of the three democratic candidates are singing the same song: That economic inequality, the 30-year downward spiral of the middle class and the corruption of the campaign finance laws -- OWS's main themes -- are the most important domestic threats to the American way of life.
"At the Saturday night debate, the same key OWS words, were repeated over and over by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley -- 'rigged political system,' 'super-wealthy,' 'tax on Wall Street.'
"[...] Indeed, these tax-the-rich ideas and the decline of middle class prosperity have recently come to influence the presidential political debate in even the Republican party."
But Republican/Corporate/Billionaire Money Brings Power
There's a "but." But money has pushed Republicans into power in the states, and the resulting GOP state gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement has locked them in in the House. So even though Democrats got more votes for Congress than Republicans, Republicans dominate the House and can prevent votes on things that would pass. Beinart again...
"Congressional redistricting, felon disenfranchisement, and the obliteration of campaign-finance laws all help insulate politicians from the views of ordinary people, and generally empower the right."
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