Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, July 18, 2019

More Of This

There's a compelling argument (I don't know if it's right, but it's compelling) that the Reagan Era Democrats who control the Democratic Caucus (Pelosi, Hoyer, Schumer) are too quick to retreat to a reflexive crouch against charges they are too far left.  There's an equally compelling case that the country as a whole might be moving to the left, but those areas that are moving that way  - cities mostly - don't provide a road map to 270 electoral votes, 218 House seats and certainly 60 Senate seats.

A lot of this debate is centered on the recent outrages that Trump and his Deplorables have waged on the citizenship of people of color. (Trump lied, again, and said he wasn't happy with the chants that erupted at his rally.  He certainly seemed fine with it last night.)

Democrats as a whole will need at some point to re-center their message on economic issues.  This will be easier once there is a nominee, but the basic outlines are already there.

The House voting to raise the minimum wage to $15 a hour by 2025 is a great first step in that direction.  Yes, it won't even get a vote in the Senate, but the strategy must be to point out which party is trying to help working Americans and which party is looking out for Wall Street and billionaires.  Tie that into the corruption of the Trump years and you have you campaign message.

Economic populism must rise to meet racial demagogic populism.

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