Summary: The Left can dominate US politics for the next generation. They have built the coalition. Obama showed them how to rule. They only need a leader.
The Left has assembled a cohesive bloc of voters: people of color, immigrants, gays, hard-core leftists, radical feminists, single mothers, and fragments of their long-ago core (e.g., union workers and their families). These people have passion about their politics, giving them power greater than the other elements of the Democratic Party’s coalition of voters. Social trends mean that their numbers will grow each year. That, plus the Left’s funding from rich supporters and foundations, puts them close to controlling the Democratic Party – and dominating US politics.
But the Democratic Party’s opportunity comes courtesy of the Republican Party. In their ten years of rule in Washington, they have run their standard playbook. They have ballooned the deficit by tax cuts for the rich and corporations, deregulated corporations – reducing protections for workers, allowing more pollution, waving through mergers, crushing unions – and boosting spending on the military far beyond anything required to defend America.
As Team Trump has shown in the past two years, they have little interest in fighting the Left on popular issues. No reforms to Obamacare – making it better. No border wall. No throttling back of our mad foreign wars. Just a stream of entertaining tweets, combining ignorance and lies.
The GOP has not made themselves a broadly attractive alternative party. All the Democrats need to win is a reasonably plausible president, one that their dominance of the news media can transform into a Great Leader in the public’s eyes. They failed to do this in 2016. The large roster of candidates for 2020 looks even weaker.
Obama shows the Democrats how to rule
Obamacare shows the Democrat’s path to victory. Our health care system delivers similar results to those of our peers, with narrower coverage – at 2x to 3x the cost. A rational government would copy the best aspects of our peers’ systems, and use the savings to extend coverage. But this is America, and our sclerotic politics has proven incapable of reform.
Truman proposed universal health care in 1945. Others have attempted it with the same results. Coverage was expanded with Medicare and Medicaid. But universal coverage without reforming its wasteful ways was considered impossible.
The health care sector has grown fat. Hospitals and clinics are temples among the rundown infrastructure of America’s cities. Healthcare executives and senior doctors are princes in our cities. Efforts to rationalize the sector fell before its immense political power.
Obama’s solution demonstrated that America is a decaying state. He just extended coverage and ignored the cost. After all, a cost-be-damned policy made the Department of Defense supreme among government agencies. Combined with the GOP’s tax cuts for the rich, the fiscal deficits in the next generation will be mind-blowing (driven by the Boomers’ retiring).
Now the Left plans to run this play again
They have announced an initiative to follow ObamaCare: the Green New Deal, Leftist dreams given form. It would be a geyser of money, to be distributed to their supporters (old and new) from sea to sea. They are preparing to push this through by purging centrists among the Democrat’s elected officials, so that they can move more boldly than in the Obama era. It could be the capstone to a new political coalition to run America.
Little stands in the Left’s way if they run this play again – except that many on the Left are quite bonkers. Time will tell if that prevents them from gaining office.
This is a follow-up to the key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
Patrick Buchanan asks if 2020 Will Be the Beginning of a Socialist America?
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about the left-wing of US politics, about ObamaCare, about reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these …
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The Democrats will open the borders & make a New America.
- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- The Left pushes America down a slippery slope – about reckless social engineering.
Useful books explaining what happened to America
I have not found a good book explaining what happened to the Left, causing its hatred of America. These are the best I have found, looking at our politics.
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
