Michael Brenner - Seven Sins of the Democrats

The Democrats are in a shambles. Progressives, ne liberals, are in particularly dire straits. They have been marginalized and their influence on public policy wanes even as events reconfirm their values, their philosophy and their historic cause. They face an election that pits extreme rightists against an incumbent president who fits comfortably into the national establishment’s moderate wing. They have no standard bearer. Their core constituencies are being ignored or patronized. The terms of debate on the great issues of the times have been set without reference to them or their ideas.

They have themselves to blame since they have committed the Seven Sins of politics.

SLOTH 

Democrats are slow on the uptake. Their reaction time – whether to events, shifts in public mood, or Republican actions – is lethargic compared to the quick response of the latter. This goes along with a tendency to drift lethargically with the tides rather to make their own waves and to ride them resolutely. Exhibit number one is the swelling anger in the country after the financial breakdown of 2008.  This was a natural for the Democrats. The discrediting of Republican dogma and their business underwriters, the abuse of financial power, exposure of the fatal flaws in the snake oil of market fundamentalism, a spotlighting of the huge gap between the fortunes generated by casino capitalism while mean earnings for salaried people stagnated. Yet it was the crackpot right through the subsidized Tea Party movement that channeled all that passion to the reactionary end of the political spectrum? Democrats, liberal Democrats anyway, still can’t figure it out. Nor can they accept the glaring truth that they were sold out by the Obama administration in the name of the White House’s own self-serving commitment not to rock the boat by doing anything that challenged seriously the status quo. The same scenario developed with the 2010 volte-face in the direction of ‘austerity’ and subverting Social Security and Medicare in the name of budgetary discipline.

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