Radical Center USA

By Al Stephenson

During the eight long years of the Bill Clinton era when they were out of power ,conservative Republicans developed a cottage industry of anti-Clinton gags. Mostly junk dealing with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandals or “Clinton is a Commie” type variations. Occasionally something showing a little wit showed up for sale. One was a book of “The Accomplishments of the Clinton Administration.” Of course it was all of 100 blank white pages with nothing written, just showing Clinton’s face on the cover.

Clinton at least had stable prices to go along with his economic expansion in the late 1990s. This was the key to his success working with Al Gore and his re-election. Joe Biden has been plagued by inflation from the start of his administration. His response to merely work with the Fed in jacking up interest rates while touting his legislative accomplishments hasn’t worked too well, obviously. Most of the rhetoric simply makes no sense to average working people in the country. Their lot in life is is just not improving.

This leads to the usual problem plaguing modern era Democrats. Summed up in one long line it would be something like “they’re irrelevant politically correct liberals who can’t get anything done on the issues facing average working Americans.” The recent bills look like giveaways to green energy industries or cash strapped local governmental bodies usually run by Democrats. Probably, Biden would have been better off sending a final ten thousand dollar stimulus check to every household in America to help people pay off their credit cards and loans instead of pushing his bills. Too late now, the trillion has already been blown. Biden and his pals have thus achieved the amazing feat of creating “trickle-down government” to augment the “trickle- down economics ” associated with conservatives.

The problems of Joe Biden are those of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and all the other recent Democrats. This is a party that can’t pass a fifty cent minimum wage increase or a gun background check bill favored by ninety percent of the public. How in the world can they pass things like universal health care and free college tuition given these constant failures? It just doesn’t seem likely. Sure, they can pass a few a bills at the state and local level in highly liberal areas of the country. But their record at legislation at the federal level is pretty dismal overall.

Comparing the output of the earlier Democrats to the current group illustrates the point. A simple exercise listing column A as the earlier Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy-Johnson group and column B as the Carter-Clinton-Obama-Biden era can be used. Now list the major legislative accomplishments. All of the popular governmental programs would be in column A and zero in column B with the exception possibly of Obamacare. Though though even Obamacare is derided by moderates and liberals who support it due to high deductibles and other problems associated with it.

The earlier Democratic group created the “safety net” as we know it today including Social Security, Medicare, unemployment money, wage and hour legislation , the FDIC etcetera. They did this with a conservative wing in place and often with furious Republican opposition. By comparison today’s Democrats just seem to collect money from wealthy liberal donors, occupy the offices and spout off about MAGA Trump supporters wrecking everything. People are just getting tired of the charade and same old rhetoric.

Because they can’t get anything done on basics like “incomes and living standards” or “upward mobility” the choice for today’s Democrats is usually “politically correct causes.” This , the same as “woke” liberalism just involves pandering to special interest groups working on things like environmental causes, liberal immigration policies, LGBTQ agenda items, etcetera. The problem is there aren’t enough liberals concerned with these issues and causes to put together anything close to a national majority. Many people also support Republican arguments on these peripheral issues, though when they push to the extremes on abortion or guns for example they have the same problem on their end.

No, it isn’t all doom and gloom for Democrats. The unemployment rate remains low. Their opponents have incredibly high negatives. Not just Trump only. People don’t want a bunch of conspiracy theorists and nuts taking over the damn government. And the Republicans are as equally lousy at “pivoting to the middle” as the Democrats are. They have their own base elements they need to pander to. Sure, Biden may eke out a small electoral win. But there won’t be any enthusiasm or growth going forward. They’re topping out at about fifty percent even in the country and many of these people are just voting to contain the conservative extremist elements and stop Trump.

So overall, today’s Democrats simply have not made a difference in the lives of millions of working people coping with globalization, reduced incomes and inflation. The earlier group dealt with a similar problem with the rise of the industrial era, and this bunch of Democrats is supposed to work on the post-industrial high tech globalized variant of the “economic dislocation” problem They’re blowing it and time is running out for them if it hasn’t already. Grasping at straws, people will turn to Trump, Schrump, Frump or anybody else who comes along across the political spectrum to get away from the perceived useless PC/Woke flops in the Democratic party.

Advice to them? It won’t do any good! People have been yelling at them for years to skip the PC fluff, get back to basics and do a variation on the older Democratic formula. The bills and pay stub on the kitchen table , the local crime situation , the local crummy public schools and the local crummy infrastructure should be the top issues focused on each day. Additionally they need to run actual moderates in conservative areas of the country, not warmed-over liberals. They need a fifty state strategy not a fifteen state strategy centered on liberal major metro areas and college towns. This is all Political Science 101 type stuff the Democratic experts and handlers are supposed to be aware of but it doesn’t make any difference.

It probably wasn’t their objective to establish a new Gilded Age , this time split between wealthy liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans cashing in their Wall Street investments but that’s the end result here. The entire working class, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender is now looking to drop out or find a new political alternative or option. Great job, everybody.

So the “party of the people ” was transformed into the party of wealthy liberals working on their favorite trendy causes. They enjoy what they’re doing and will continue to “do their thing” into the indefinite future.

Average working Americans should be grateful for the enlightened leadership of the earlier Democratic group. They’re not likely to see anything like it again in their lifetimes. Expect more political dysfunction and gridlock. And try to save some extra money every month after the bills are paid- if there’s anything left.

As of this writing it looks like Joe Biden may not even be the Democratic nominee, due to his dismal debate performance. It won’t make any difference, as all the other party candidates will face the same underlying problems even if they’re totally coherent in speech and thought. Too many working class voters dropping out and avoiding them, without enough educated higher income liberals to replace them.