A lot of progressive voters also indulgently think the increasing inequality is an unfortunate result the Democrats are forced into producing for "their" people--because somebody's got to do something about the deficit. What they don't notice is that it's an inevitable result of precisely that "deficit" concern.
The Democrats, and many of their leftish progressive supporters, continue to think that shaming the Republicans for their fiscal hypocrisy and promising to enforce fiscal discipline will be the political bomb that will win over the voters. But, they're the only party that's actually done anything to reduce the deficit, and their political position has still weakened. Why, oh why, they wonder, are "their" people not voting for them?
You'd think somebody might notice that what's important here, what really matters for the people and the country, is the growing inequality of wealth, not the deficit.
And, indeed, there is a slew of sincere progressives--like the ones cited above--who have noticed this dynamic, know all about and reject the Clintonite Republicanization of the Democratic Party, and do want to change the game. At the leading edge of this, activists and insurgent Bernie-inspired candidates have turned Medicare-for-all from a "never, ever" to a great "new idea" that's de rigueur for Democratic politicians. People are at the end of disgust with the for-profit health-insurance "market" and the half-assed attempts to patch it up (the ACA). Healthcare as a right--universal single-payer coverage under the rubric of Medicare-for-all--is a significant progressive advance, and it does seem its time has come.
Thus, Bernie Sanders has introduced a Medicare-for-all bill that's been co-sponsored by more than a third of Democratic senators (I've warned about the duplicity of those Democrats here), and John Conyers has one in the House that has over 120 co-sponsors and is considered the "gold standard" by the single-payer movement. These are the kinds of plans most lefties--from New-Deal-"socialist" Democrats through harder left socialists and marxists--are counting on to bring us the social program we want and need.
But both of these plans, just like Nancy Pelosi's PAYGO, rely on and reproduce the fundamental Thatcherite capitalist principle that public spending derives from and depends on private wealth, more blandly stated as "taxes fund government spending." Both think it is necessary to define the new taxes that are needed to pay for Medicare-for-all.
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