See - you are much better informed than I am. I don't remember the details the way you do. I take hope from the fact that in this, Obama was able to bend the curve towards something better. Thank you for engaging, cousin.
That's why I love reading your blog (and listening to your podcast). You don't just throw ideas out there - you think deeply and do the legwork to get your facts right. I'm feeling like maybe I did the opposite and just sent an immediate reaction to what I was "feeling" from your blogpost. As always, you're making me think. And that's what I need to do. Thank you for taking my comment and giving me more context.
It's great to have opportunities though comments to clarify things! There is one other quick factoid I thought about adding in response to your comment about healthcare. I'll mention it now, and it's that Obama pushed for single payer healthcare (exactly along the lines of what progressives advocate for), and the House bill reflected this. The bill failed in the senate by one vote (Joe Lieberman), and the ACA (i.e. Obamacare) was the resulting compromise.
Hey, cousin. I'm struggling with this one. I agree with so much of what you say - I always do. I agree that so much is broken. I firmly agree that the economic policies that the Republican right will benefit me at the expense of those who are most disadvantaged by much of the current system. I agree that the privatization of the education system (like the prison system) would be an unmitigated disaster. What I don't agree with is the idea that the solution is to blow it all up. The right fringes of the Republican party seem to have been given free reign under the Trump administration. But for me, the solution is not to empower the left fringes of the Democratic party. I do think that people like Bernie and AOC have a host of great ideas but I also believe that they have some ideas that are as out of touch to the left as some of those currently on the power to the right. For better or for worse, I am part of the great middle. I resonate when you say that "most Americans want to rein in the worst impulses of corporations when it comes to healthcare, food systems, and other things that impact our wellbeing" but I don't think that the only solution is to bring in people who would change it all from the ground up. I guess I believe that we can’t "have it both ways" by which I mean - it's not a binary choice between going down the Trump road of no regulation, tax cuts, privatization of everything vs. a whole new system that addresses those problems by a complete dismantling of a system that has provided the US with so many successes. Maybe that makes me a milktoast who wants to "tweak" the system to improve it rather than blow it up but that's what I so admired about President Obama. He, it feels, agreed with so much that I don't like about the current system but his solution was, in fact, to work within that system to make it better. To fix the problems you and I have identified but capitalize on the features of the system that do work. The main job of the president, to me, is to set the direction and use his or her bully pulpit to direct what we're talking about. He chose, for example, healthcare and the fact that 40 million people didn't have any. He worked within the system to fix that. Some argue that what we need is state-run healthcare like Canada or England. I don't happen to be one of those people. There are certainly advantages to that system but there are also significant flaws. Obama saw that and worked to fix what we have rather than toss it out.
Perhaps I'm naïve and it's just not possible to elect someone who is not on the far right OR on the far left and is more like me - in the middle. But that's where I sit and that's what I want and, for me, the Democratic party with all of its faults and flaws is the closest I've found to representing me.
I love your blog and I'm SO GLAD that you're out there making us think.
Hey Owen, thanks for the comment. To be clear, I don't believe that anyone who thinks about these things very deeply wants to actually blow up the whole system, so the question is why did so many people effectively vote to do just that?
I'm trying to point to the mismatch between rhetoric about how, for example, the most powerful people in this country engineered a massive multi-generational wealth shift to the top 1%. You hear this not only from progressives like Bernie Sanders but from the likes of Mark Cuban and Scott Galloway. Similarly, we hear from scientists and climate journalists that we have [some frighteningly small number of years] to solve the carbon emissions problem.
But where we don't hear these kinds of problems acknowledged much is from the actual Democratic party candidates. It's this mismatch I'm pointing to. Maybe it is an impossible task for Democrats to speak to these things without alienating the great middle, but choosing to ignore what a lot of people are feeling is, I think, hurting them at the polls.
I don't think the Democrats need to promise revolution, but there's no question that a lot of people chose revolution (a decidedly unserious but still destructive one) over what they were hearing from the Democrats.
See - you are much better informed than I am. I don't remember the details the way you do. I take hope from the fact that in this, Obama was able to bend the curve towards something better. Thank you for engaging, cousin.
That's why I love reading your blog (and listening to your podcast). You don't just throw ideas out there - you think deeply and do the legwork to get your facts right. I'm feeling like maybe I did the opposite and just sent an immediate reaction to what I was "feeling" from your blogpost. As always, you're making me think. And that's what I need to do. Thank you for taking my comment and giving me more context.
It's great to have opportunities though comments to clarify things! There is one other quick factoid I thought about adding in response to your comment about healthcare. I'll mention it now, and it's that Obama pushed for single payer healthcare (exactly along the lines of what progressives advocate for), and the House bill reflected this. The bill failed in the senate by one vote (Joe Lieberman), and the ACA (i.e. Obamacare) was the resulting compromise.
Hey, cousin. I'm struggling with this one. I agree with so much of what you say - I always do. I agree that so much is broken. I firmly agree that the economic policies that the Republican right will benefit me at the expense of those who are most disadvantaged by much of the current system. I agree that the privatization of the education system (like the prison system) would be an unmitigated disaster. What I don't agree with is the idea that the solution is to blow it all up. The right fringes of the Republican party seem to have been given free reign under the Trump administration. But for me, the solution is not to empower the left fringes of the Democratic party. I do think that people like Bernie and AOC have a host of great ideas but I also believe that they have some ideas that are as out of touch to the left as some of those currently on the power to the right. For better or for worse, I am part of the great middle. I resonate when you say that "most Americans want to rein in the worst impulses of corporations when it comes to healthcare, food systems, and other things that impact our wellbeing" but I don't think that the only solution is to bring in people who would change it all from the ground up. I guess I believe that we can’t "have it both ways" by which I mean - it's not a binary choice between going down the Trump road of no regulation, tax cuts, privatization of everything vs. a whole new system that addresses those problems by a complete dismantling of a system that has provided the US with so many successes. Maybe that makes me a milktoast who wants to "tweak" the system to improve it rather than blow it up but that's what I so admired about President Obama. He, it feels, agreed with so much that I don't like about the current system but his solution was, in fact, to work within that system to make it better. To fix the problems you and I have identified but capitalize on the features of the system that do work. The main job of the president, to me, is to set the direction and use his or her bully pulpit to direct what we're talking about. He chose, for example, healthcare and the fact that 40 million people didn't have any. He worked within the system to fix that. Some argue that what we need is state-run healthcare like Canada or England. I don't happen to be one of those people. There are certainly advantages to that system but there are also significant flaws. Obama saw that and worked to fix what we have rather than toss it out.
Perhaps I'm naïve and it's just not possible to elect someone who is not on the far right OR on the far left and is more like me - in the middle. But that's where I sit and that's what I want and, for me, the Democratic party with all of its faults and flaws is the closest I've found to representing me.
I love your blog and I'm SO GLAD that you're out there making us think.
Hey Owen, thanks for the comment. To be clear, I don't believe that anyone who thinks about these things very deeply wants to actually blow up the whole system, so the question is why did so many people effectively vote to do just that?
I'm trying to point to the mismatch between rhetoric about how, for example, the most powerful people in this country engineered a massive multi-generational wealth shift to the top 1%. You hear this not only from progressives like Bernie Sanders but from the likes of Mark Cuban and Scott Galloway. Similarly, we hear from scientists and climate journalists that we have [some frighteningly small number of years] to solve the carbon emissions problem.
But where we don't hear these kinds of problems acknowledged much is from the actual Democratic party candidates. It's this mismatch I'm pointing to. Maybe it is an impossible task for Democrats to speak to these things without alienating the great middle, but choosing to ignore what a lot of people are feeling is, I think, hurting them at the polls.
I don't think the Democrats need to promise revolution, but there's no question that a lot of people chose revolution (a decidedly unserious but still destructive one) over what they were hearing from the Democrats.