A couple weeks ago, Taibbi had an article out that outlined the problems for the corporate democrats, showing just how disconnected they are:
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" ... Atlantic senior editor David Frum tweeted in despair:
"I think we need a word to describe people broadly satisfied with the status quo & skeptical of radical changes based on wild promises."
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"I mean, there have to be a few of us, right? Maybe we could form a movement of some kind or form a political party with that word in it?"
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Frum's clarion call spoke to the almost total cluelessness of the D.C./punditoid class to which he belongs. (To be clear, though I'm a New Yorker, I also belong to this miserable group.)
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The idea that people who want expanded health care, reduced income inequality, fewer wars and more public services are "unrealistic" springs from an old deception in our politics.
For decades pundits and pols have been telling progressive voters they don't have the juice to make real demands, and must make alliances with more "moderate" and presumably more numerous "centrists" in order to avoid becoming the subjects of right-wing monsters like Reagan/Bush/Bush/Trump.
Voters for decades were conned into thinking they were noisome minorities whose best path to influence is to make peace with the mightier "center," which inevitably turns out to support military interventionism, fewer taxes for the rich, corporate deregulation and a ban on unrealistic "giveaway" proposals like free higher education. Those are the realistic, moderate, popular ideas, we're told.
But it's a Wizard of Oz trick, just like American politics in general. There is no numerically massive center behind the curtain. What there is instead is a tiny island of wealthy donors, surrounded by a protective ring of for-sale major-party politicians (read: employees) whose job it is to castigate too-demanding voters and preach realism.
Those pols do so with the aid of a bund of dependably alarmist sycophants in the commercial media, most of whom, whether they know it or not, technically inhabit the low end of the 1 percent and tend to be amazed that people out there are pissed off about stuff.
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If 80 percent of Americans ever realized their shared economic situation, they could and probably should take over government. Of course, they wouldn't just be taking power for themselves, they'd be taking it from the big-dollar donors who own such a disproportionately huge share of wealth in our society.
Such people of course have many very good reasons to embrace the status quo. The problem is, they're not terribly numerous as a group, which unfortunately for them still matters in a democracy. It's one of the unpleasant paradoxes of exclusive wealth. If you live in a democracy, you're continually forced to manufacture the appearance of broad support for the regressive policies underpinning your awesome lifestyle.
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Read the whole thing:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-centrism-w487628sidd