by WorldTribune Staff, January 15, 2019
The Democratic Party’s new progressives are not shy about pushing the envelope in their new hometown of Washington, DC, a columnist and author wrote.
“It is refreshing to see them being so open about promoting socialism in America,” James S. Robbins, author of “Erasing America: Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past”, wrote for USA Today on Jan. 15.
Robbins noted that the new progressives have wasted no time in pushing their radical proposals, including abolishing the Electoral College, raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent, or promising to “impeach the mother******” in the White House.
As first-term Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley said, “I was not sent to Washington to play nice.”
Robbins noted that “Respecting their elders is not part of the progressive game. When retired Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman said he hoped self-described radical New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not represent the future, she snarked back, ‘New party, who dis?’ ”
“The days of President Bill Clinton’s ‘New Democrats,’ who co-opted popular Republican issues and triangulated against their party’s left wing, are long gone. The new progressives, fired by their vision of an unbeatable ‘coalition of the ascendant’ among single women, minorities and young people, see no downside in pushing the party agenda to the left edge of sanity,” Robbins wrote.
“And because some of the newly elected progressives got on the ballot by sweeping out old-school liberal Democrats through primary challenges, they see the consensus model of government as an impediment to progress.”
Six-term Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader commented that Ocasio-Cortez “doesn’t understand how the place works yet,” but her perspective is (quoting a character in the comic book “Watchman”), “I’m not locked up in here with YOU. You’re locked up in here with ME.”
Meanwhile, Robbins noted, “foul-mouthed Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib envisions ‘a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits’ and promotes vastly expanding government power, providing Medicare and free college education for all, opening borders and raising taxes.”
The draft text for the proposed “Select Committee For A Green New Deal” promoted by Ocasio-Cortez “reads like a wish list for every progressive cause imaginable, including ‘social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public ownership,’ ” Robbins wrote.
With Republicans in control of the Senate and President Donald Trump’s veto power, the new progressives’ chances of having their initiatives become law are slim to none.
“If anything, their legislative impotence encourages the uncompromising progressives to keep pushing the Democrats leftward,” Robbins wrote. “They can afford to stand on principle because they won’t be expected to sit at the bargaining table. And critics who argue that these policies would destroy market economics and republican government are simply restating progressive objectives. Besides, as Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, facts aren’t especially important when you are convinced of your moral rightness.”
Robbins continued: “Moderate Democrats may think that it is bad politics to move so far to the margins with the 2020 election approaching, but the progressives see it as a winning strategy. It is quaint to see old white dude Joe Biden out there talking up a White House run when he epitomizes everything his party has turned against. In fact, progressives can legitimately ask how any white man – even a pseudo-Hispanic Irishman such as Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke – can be the standard bearer for a party that blames practically every social ill on either ‘toxic masculinity,’ ‘white supremacy’ or both.”
But, Robbins noted, “American elections are still decided in the center of the spectrum. Pushing the Democratic Party to the left seems counterintuitive when running against an incumbent president presiding over a surging economy with record employment and lower taxes. This is same type of thinking that led to President Ronald Reagan’s 49 state re-election blowout in 1984.
“And despite Ocasio-Cortez’s assertion that her flavor of socialism is more inspired by Sweden than Venezuela, mainstream Americans probably would rather not take the risk that electing radical progressives will inexorably lead to the sad day when they are forced to eat their pets.”
Check Out Geostrategy-Direct __________ Jump Start the U.S. Media
Leftward Ho! Democrats’ un-American coalition strategy reaps what it sowed added by World Tribune on
View all posts by World Tribune →