Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Are Democrats positioning for holding the middle or for losing again?

NOTE!
On April 15, 2020, I revisited the question I posed On April 30, 2019.

I can say, without equivocation, that I have NOT abandoned hope but I have changed my mind over the course of the last year regarding the candidacy of Joe Biden. 
Rather, I now believe that the "revolution" pursued by Sen. Bernie Sanders has pretty much been victorious. At least as Biden's campaign stands on the issues and approaches to addressing the needs of Americans. It is now time to eradicate the "Orange Menace" that has hijacked the American federal government. This can be done.

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This post is a follow up on the questions Bob Lord posed and on why unseen forces are pushing Biden on us so aggressively.

On The Damage Report earlier today, Emma Vigeland argued that positioning the Democratic presidential nominee to be a "moderate" rather than a Progressive populist is not a winning strategy.

"Electable" is a fuzzy concept. But Vigeland's view (she doesn't use that word here) makes more sense than nominating a moderate with nebulous notions of holding the center.

"The Washington speak is that, 'It has to be a moderate.' Well that didn't work out last time. It has to be a populist. It has to be someone who really convinces the American public that they are going to change their lives for the better... the middle is not moderate. The middle is populist and that's what these pollsters and these pundits have to get through their heads."




Have any of our readers per chance had the opportunity to read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy? Vance describes a family and a culture where it doesn't matter what the "leading economic indicators" might be for the American economy.

From Goodreads,
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class [note: this problem and this culture is not exclusive to poor whites] Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
I read the book shortly after Trump took office. Vance only tells the story of his family, not people of color. But can anyone say that poor white people are the only ones with the problems Vance described? MY point is that Joe Biden is not likely to address the urgent problems of poor white Americans. Or of anyone else. However, he might put nicer labels on the elites that exercise the power in our country.

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