Democrats Try to Recapture Paradise Lost
Article by Richard Fernandez in "PJMedia":
The New York Times
argues that Elizabeth Warren "the populist" is rattling the towers of
Wall Street. "With a populist message that promises to rein in corporate
excess, Ms. Warren has been facing more hostility from the finance
industry than any other candidate."
Ms. Warren has made battling corporate greed and corruption a central theme of her fiercely populist campaign, mixing anti-elitist oratory with policy plans calling for sweeping new regulations. On Friday morning she released an ambitious proposal to pay for her “Medicare for all” program, with provisions directly affecting Wall Street: aggressive new taxes on billionaires, an additional tax on financial transactions like stock trades and annual investment gains taxes for the wealthiest households.
It's not
just Trump who's a populist, but the potential frontrunner of the other
party. Apart from Biden, there is no champion for the Restoration in
the Democratic Party, unless Hillary comes back in. The old world, even
the old future Barack Obama
promised to usher in, seems to be receding into the past. Politics is
now veering into the post-something era. "Change has come to America"
but it is not the one Obama anticipated.
Because the Democratic Party's run to the populist left makes building a coalition with the establishment against Trump harder, The Guardian
thinks a Clinton candidacy may be forced or at least hard to rule out.
"The candidate who lost to Trump is making all the right moves as some
fear a primary gone too far left. It’s a tantalizing notion, but most
observers counsel caution – and a dose of realism."
The sense that something strange is going on began a few weeks ago. A book is a traditional vehicle for a candidate. The former secretary of state launched The Book of Gutsy Women, co-written with daughter Chelsea, and embarked on a tour that included events, speeches and late-night TV appearances.Clinton, 72, whose narrow, devastating defeat by Trump was one of the greatest upsets in political history, has also become more prolific and pugnacious on Twitter. On 25 September, after revelations about Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine, she wrote: “The president of the United States has betrayed our country … He is a clear and present danger to the things that keep us strong and free. I support impeachment.” ...All this could be dismissed as no more than a smart way to promote a book, were it not coinciding with mild panic in Democratic ranks. The primary has attracted a record number of candidates and record diversity yet, many argue, failed to produce a John F Kennedy, a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama, in terms of natural political gifts or charisma.
What the
primary did produce, or so the NYT article implies, is a populist
candidate from the Left. This has left the Big Tent in tatters. As an
earlier issue of the Times
rhetorically asked: “Anxious Democratic Establishment Asks, ‘Is There
Anybody Else?’” No one else but you-know-who? Not if the goal is a
restoration of the world lost in November 2016.
It
is Washington's inability to retrace its steps that makes the
impeachment and counter-impeachment battle so perilous. It won't bring
things back to the way things used to be. Rather, it will drive events
deeper into terra incognita.
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