Hey Everyone!!
I'm back with another long rant that the tl/dr is: Centrism gave us Trump; more centrism will give us more Trumps. If you'd like to know what I'm talking about, read on. ;-)
I debated whether or not to post this because I know it will hurt some feelings, but I really think it needs to be said. There is a deep schism in the Democratic Party, and pretending it isn't there won't make it go away. The divide is between progressives and centrists/moderates and is the result of 40+ years of voting for the "lesser of two evils." Yeah, I know, thems fightin' words! Don't worry, I'm about to step on even more toes, so hold tight before you blast me.
Constantly voting for bad candidates whose only accomplishment is being slightly better than the opposition has created two camps in the Democratic Party. Progressives who actually want to solve the problems real Americans are facing on a day-to-day basis, and centrists/moderates who range from being comfortable enough and not caring about anyone else to actively working to undermine policies that would help regular people. Yep, there it is. Go ahead and yell at me; it won't change anything.
Yeah, I know, I know it isn't "fair" to say centrists/moderates don't care about anyone but themselves. But you know what else isn't "fair?" Telling millions of Americans who have to choose between keeping a roof over their heads or getting their prescription medications that they have to wait for solutions. It's not "fair" to tell people whose kids are dying of treatable illnesses that they should be patient because we have to talk a while longer about whether or not their kids deserve to live before we can decide that they should have healthcare coverage. It's wildly "unfair" to tell people that it's okay they're having to work 100 hours a week at three different jobs for slave wages just to put food on their family's table because at least the people we elected don't want to commit genocide against gay people or force everyone to live under the rule of the Christian Taliban.
I mean, yes, of course we should expect that our elected representatives support policies that protect civil rights for all Americans and not vote for legislation that codifies discrimination against large swaths of the population, but that's a low, low, low bar you're talking about. Somehow, I think we can do better. And the fact that change makes some people uncomfortable isn't a good enough reason not to vote for those candidates who are better and who will work to fix the problems we're facing.
"But we've got to defeat the orange toddler who's holding our country hostage!" comes the establishment chorus. Yeah, I know, we absolutely do have to defeat our current Disaster in Chief. But he didn't spring from a vacuum. For all the calls for unity I keep seeing -- and isn't it funny how those calls always seem to come from people who want progressives to unite behind their do-nothing candidates, but who scoff at the idea that they should unite behind progressive candidates? -- if we don't put people in office who will actually work to make the lives of regular Americans better then we can expect more Trumps in the future, even if we manage through some miracle to snooker enough people into voting for another centrist catastrophe now.
Because the political climate that fostered the rise of our tangerine study in moral turpitude won't change under anyone who's hell-bent on maintaining the status quo. Why did people vote for Trump? Because they're racist, xenophobic, misogynistic bigots, sure. Some of them are definitely that. But some people voted for him because they're desperate for change. They're drowning and he promised to throw them a life-line. He was lying, but they hoped he was telling the truth. Hillary promised to stand on the shore and do nothing more than offer some advice while they went under, and they believed her too.
The current crop of centrist candidates are at least a little smarter than Hillary was. Some of them, anyway. They're promising to change things; their past records suggest that they're lying, but they have the sense to at least ape progressive rhetoric. Unfortunately, Obama talked a good game, too, but when it came to action he was a dud. And 8 years of his failure to enact actual progressive policies is what gave us Trump.
OMG! She just had the gall to criticize Saint Obama! Yep, I sure did. I know the man dealt with a lot of racist attacks, but there are plenty of reasons to disapprove of his performance as president that have nothing to do with his skin color or the fact that he was born in Hawaii.
He had two years of having a super majority in Congress and he squandered it on a right-wing, heritage foundation scheme that was introduced by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts years before it became Obamacare. It left millions of Americans without health coverage and millions more with such lousy coverage that they might as well have no coverage...and paying through the nose for the privilege. And we're supposed to applaud him for this? Yeah, I'll grant you that it's better than the anarcho-capitalist system that existed before, but that ain't sayin' much. He had the opportunity to do so much more and he squandered it. Hell, he didn't even fight for a public option, but instead he threatened progressive Democrats who did fight for it.
Obama also refused to prosecute the Wall Street fraudsters who crashed the economy for their fraud; instead he put them in his cabinet. He increased the number of interventionist wars we're involved in, and the money we're wasting on them, failed to do anything to address the infrastructure collapse that's causing problems like what's happening in Flint, MI, allowed fossil fuel companies to run roughshod over citizens' rights, like what happened in Standing Rock, tried to make a deal with Republicans to cut Social Security, celebrated low unemployment numbers while ignoring the fact that the wages those jobs pay are often slave wages, and generally served the rich donors while largely ignoring the needs of regular Americans.
Yes, Obama inherited a mess from W. An economy in free-fall isn't an easy thing to deal with, but he knew what he was getting into when he ran for POTUS. And while he did a bang-up job of making things better for the wealthy and for corporations, he left the majority of Americans in economic despair. And that's what gave a con artist like Trump the opportunity to fool people into voting for him. Because people who are drowning often don't have the wherewithal to thoroughly analyze the hand that's being offered to them. They tend to just take it and don't find out about the venomous serpent that hides behind it until they're bitten.
I apologize for the long post, if anyone has actually bothered to read this far, but I felt that this was something that had to be said. If we force people into another Scylla or Charybdis choice, then we're fostering an environment that will inevitably lead us back to another Trump. And the next Trump might actually be intelligent enough to compose an agenda and implement it in a systematic manner. This Trump has caused enough damage through blind blundering and empty bluster. I'd hate to see what kind of destruction a competent Trump could manage.
So, no, I will not stop pointing out the flaws of candidates who I don't think will fight for the interests of regular Americans. I will continue to promote actual progressives and to discuss the relative merits and failings of the policies supported by the different candidates. I'm sorry if this makes anyone uncomfortable, but keeping a select, privileged group of people comfortable isn't my priority. Helping to effect change so that everyone can be at least comfortable is what I hope to do.
Peace!
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