Tag: left-right

Moving Rightwards in America

W.J. Astore

Ratcheting Up America’s Problems

On Twitter/X, I stumbled across this useful image that visually captures the U.S. political scene:

The modification I’d make to this illustration is with the caption. It’s not only Republicans who turn everything rightwards—Democrats help too. Consider Kamala Harris’ embrace of Dick and Liz Cheney during her campaign of ill-fortune. Or her embrace of military lethality and her celebration of Israel’s “right” to “defend” itself as it wages genocide in Gaza.

It’s Republicans and Democrats who are turning this country rightwards even as Democrats block any appreciable movement in progressive or “leftist” directions.

Mainstream Democrats will always say they need to do this as allegedly it’s the only way they can win, which is pure BS, as Harris’ defeat recently shows. It’s the old “fake left, run right” tactic, and corporate-friendly Democrats keep using it, if only to keep the money flowing.

No matter. Liberal magazines like The Nation are telling me that Harris lost because of “bigotry,” not because she embraced the Cheneys and left workers behind. I guess President Obama won two terms because of bigotry?

Given this “ratchet effect,” America desperately needs a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders in 2016 was wont to say, as rightist Hillary Clinton ran against Trumpist Donald Trump. (Trump makes populist noises, but his guiding light is self-aggrandizement.) 

As Democrats offer rightist candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, Republicans give us a plutocratic “man of the people” (never mind the contradiction here) like Trump. Facing that grim “choice,” sensing that Clinton and Harris and Democrats like them are not what they say are, many Americans opt for the scrutable plutocrat and his friends. Elon Musk, anyone?

And thus America’s problems are ratcheted up.

P.S. A hearty “Happy New Years!” to all my readers wherever you are!

Too Far Left?

buffett

W.J. Astore

Boris Johnson’s victory in Britain is generating predictable headlines in the USA.  Scanning the New York Times this morning, I saw a headline suggesting the Democratic Party is drifting too far to the left to win in 2020.  What arrant nonsense.

In the mainstream media, political issues in America are almost exclusively presented in terms of left and right.  Again, this is nonsense, because America has no leftist party.  We have two rightist ones: the Republicans and the moderate Republicans, otherwise known as Democrats.

In America, the true political divide isn’t about left-right; it’s about top-down, as in the richest Americans and corporations against the rest of America.  When Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos are worth as much as the bottom 50% of Americans (that’s 160 million people), do you think top-down disparities in wealth and power might just be a bit more important than left–right issues?

At least Warren Buffett is honest about this.  “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”  The only candidate who’s willing to tackle this issue consistently, Bernie Sanders, is the one who’s either ignored or vilified as extreme by the mainstream media.

Sanders is right.  America needs a political revolution, one in which workers’ concerns would finally take first rather than last place.  And that has nothing to do with being a leftist or rightist.