Democrats’ embrace of Socialism reflects the desperation of a party losing control of the judiciary and regulatory state
Stripped of these institutional power bases, Democrats’ preference for creeping Socialism will no longer be an option. Impatient, they will demand the real thing.
The energy among Democrats is fueled by anti-Trump Resistance and the embrace of Socialism.
The anti-Trump energy will get Democrats only so far — there already is evidence it will not be enough. Democrats feel the need to be FOR something, not just AGAINST Trump.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the poster children for Democratic Socialism, which as Ocasio-Cortez has amply demonstrated recently in interviews, is really just Socialism.
Socialism as a party platform has Democrat politicians and insiders worried, because they fear it will undermine attempts to retake the House and Senate in 2018, and defeat Trump in 2020. NBC News reports, Sanders’ wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems. Here’s how they plan to stop it:
If Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading a leftist political revolt, then a summit here of moderate Democrats might be the start of a counterrevolution.
While the energy and momentum is with progressives these days — the victory of rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, buzz about Democratic Socialism and the spread of the “Abolish ICE!” movement are a few recent examples — moderates are warning that ignoring them will lead the party to disaster in the midterm elections and the 2020 presidential contest.
That anxiety has largely been kept to a whisper among the party’s moderates and big donors, with some of the major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop Sanders, I-Vt., if he runs for the White House again.
But the first-ever “Opportunity 2020” convention, organized here last week by Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank, gave middle-of-the-road party members a safe space to come together and voice their concerns.
“The only narrative that has been articulated in the Democratic Party over the past two years is the one from the left,” former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell told NBC News.
The Miami Herald reports that this counter-revolution within the Democrat Party has even the counter-revolutionaries doubting the socialists can be held back:
“Once again, the time has come to mend, but not end, capitalism for a new era,” said Jonathan Cowan, Third Way’s president, in a sweeping speech outlining his group’s study.
The group’s recommendations will be met with skepticism — if not outright derision — by many Democrats and liberals, who argue the party has been ill-served by a more modest, incrementalist approach. (Third Way officials counter that although their platform is different than a Sanders-style agenda, ideas like a proposed employer-funded pension system would be radical changes in their own right.)
And indeed, even many of those on hand in Columbus — a few hundred congressmen, Democratic officials, and local politicians — needed convincing that the rest of their party was interested in this approach.
Even James Comey (yes, THAT James Comey) is getting in on the act, warning the Democrats not to embrace the new Socialist movement within the party:
Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left. This president and his Republican Party are counting on you to do exactly that. America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.
The turn to Socialism as a party should not be viewed as primarily ideological, but practical. Democrats may have no other choice to achieve their agenda, as the election of Trump threatens to strip Democrats of the two key institutions they have relied upon: The federal courts (particularly the Supreme Court) and the regulatory state.
An article in The Wall Street Journal, talking about how the conservative legal group the Federalist Society created a conservative legal infrastructure, made a point I think is applicable to where the Democrat Party is going. The article by Jason Willick focuses on the work of political scientist Steven Teles. Faced with the loss of the Supreme Court and the scaling back of the administrative state, Democrats logically may go straight to socialism, How Conservatives Won the Law: (emphasis added):
Mr. Teles believes that one of the most salient projects for the newly conservative Roberts Court will be to roll back administrative-state prerogatives. That could revitalize Congress and restore the constitutional structure, vindicating two longtime goals of the conservative legal movement. But he thinks this could also end up serving certain policy ends of progressives.
For the past several decades, Mr. Teles says, many progressive victories in the economic realm have been achieved through “administrative jujitsu”—difficult-to-understand maneuvers involving taxes, fees, mandates, regulations, and administrative directives. If courts start to block technocratic liberal plans for social reform because they violate the separation of powers, the left may find it easier to mobilize for pure redistribution as an alternative. Think of postal banking instead of CFPB regulation, or a carbon tax instead of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, or a reduction in the Medicare eligibility age instead of ObamaCare subsidies and exchanges.
That might be good for democratic discourse, Mr. Teles suggests. “In some ways liberalism has been deformed” by relying on administrative agencies, “as opposed to making big arguments for big, encompassing social programs.” In the short term, though, conservative courts will probably prove “radicalizing for the left.” Democrats may fully jettison Clintonism and say: “We’re going straight for socialism.” Steeply redistributive programs enacted by legislatures would be “easier to defend in court,” even a conservative court, than unaccountable bureaucratic diktats.
This certainly makes sense as to why in this moment in time the Democrats’ embrace of Socialism provides the energy within the party. Conservatives are likely, before the end of Trump’s first term (and certainly if there is a second term), to remake the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. If that happens, the regulatory state will shrink and no longer be a source of liberal power.
Stripped of these institutional power bases, Democrats’ preference for creeping Socialism will no longer be an option. Impatient, they will demand the real thing. And in so doing, may guarantee they don’t get what they want.
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Comments
What I find most interesting is how stupid and ill educated these Democrats are. Hillary Clinrin, Sanders, this Cortez woman. All are dolts. No wonder Warren has gone bat crap crazy. Her attempts to become a major Corruptocrat on the order of Reid or Dodd is being thwarted by elements of her party too stupid to be out alone.
True true true.
Two true?
Three true.
Correct spelling of the Democrat slogan.
Fork the People
Vote for Bernie Sanders, and you, too, can be a Socialist with three luxury homes.
The sad thing though…..too many young people think Socialism is a good thing. They don’t realize what a pack of lies, what a soiled bill of goods they have been given, shoved down their throats from at least K-12, and on overdrive at uni.
How to un-indoctrinate? Prove them liars. Expose their deceit, their agitprop. Don’t quit, even when you’re tired…… Never. Give. In. NEVER.GIVE.IN. NEVER.NEVER.NEVER.
Because…..they won’t.
the most pathetic thing is that they don’t have any idea what socialism actually is, and they don’t care to even try to find out. They think that socialism is guaranteed income every month – and no one pays. Free health care for life – and no one pays. Free School until they’re ready for social security checks, or something – and no one pays. That’s what they want, and they’re angry that the world doesn’t work that way.
Socialism is the economic theory of stalled adolescents, people who want the benefits of adult autonomy but are unwilling to accept the responsibilities. It has the appearance of plausibility to them because their entire lives have been a socialist cocoon built and maintained by their parents.
As pathetic as public education is/has been, there are enough Americans out there who recognize socialism for the disaster it has been throughout history. And we don’t have to reach far back into history to see countless examples. The Caribbean area has its fair share right now, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela. Another huge, basically insurmountable barrier that the left has in this regard is the constitutional structure. Yep, it’s been badly bruised, but that structure will nevertheless have to be changed to accommodate socialism. And changing the Constitution is a real heavy lift, something the left has long realized, explaining why the left has used the courts and the administrative/regulatory state to foster their aims. Americans may not fully appreciate the genius of their Constitution, but they are very, very wary of seeing it changed.
Clarity. The medicine we need. The masks all dropped in 2016. The Democrats actually vocalize what they want. That’s a good thing. They are about purity of thought and vision now; redistribution and socialism/communism. They will force normal folks to pick a side. Most folks just want to be left alone, and will be told they are impure. The Democrat party will cease being a functioning party. Realizing this, the activists will react the only way they know how. Riot, coercion and protest. It’s gonna be a tough decade or two I think.
You are way too optimistic.
We have way too many Republicans like these:
“Government SAVE us. We are being attacked by plants.”
Amazing how when the extortionist loses the ability to threaten somebody, they quit getting paid.
Nice little business you have here. It’d be too bad if we found a rare endangered hopping toad on your property.
This is one of the consequences of the right’s acquiescence in the left’s take-over of the education system, pre-K through grad school.
I’m seeing the same future as Subtoi. The Left is growing desperate enough to attempt the assassination of Trump.
Witness the Bernie shooter, allegedly ginned up by his Congressman. Witness Maxine Waters calling on democrats to hound members of his administration. And the actual stalking and hounding of those members (Red Hen). And the public assault of Trump supporters (Whataburger attack).
Add to that the Apocalypse Rhetoric: Trump is Hitler. Immigrant families ripped apart. Poisoning our water. Coathanger abortions. Gays rounded up for concentration camps. Blacks executed in the streets. White supremacists rising. Treason in service to Russia. Words are literal violence. Ignoring Climate Change Doom. Worse than 9-11. Punch a Nazi.
Yes, it’s all delusional. But I’ve witnessed liberals froth themselves up like this on a smaller issue. They distort and exaggerate and dial hyperbole up to 11, for the sole purpose of CRAFTING an alternate reality. It’s why they are deaf to logic and reason – they aren’t interested in proving any of this to you. You are merely interrupting them as they chant “Trump is Hitler Trump is Hitler Trump is Hitler” to THEMSELVES. They are creating an alternate reality to justify to morning mirror what they “must” bring themselves to do.
Yes, the more we see of their self-delusional masturbations, the more obvious it becomes that many of them should be institutionalized.
But ignore that for a moment, put yourself (gingerly) into this fantasy realm they have imagined. It’s January 30th 1933. Hitler has just been appointed Chancellor and his motorcade is passing you on his way to give his acceptance speech. Actual Hitler, the real one. How many of you would ram your car into his or fall upon him in a suicide attack? I know I would.
These are very dangerous times. If this level of “lone wolf” rhetoric coupled with desperation continues, Trump may not survive 8 years in office. And if one of their nutjobs assassinates him, this Cold War will turn hot and go viral before his body is cold.
If, for instance, something were to Happen to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, creating a vacancy for her seat on the court while Trump is in office, I fully expect that and other violence.
If I’m right, I think we’ll see it after the midterms if the GOP keeps House and Senate AND once the Mueller investigation reveals they have no impeachable offenses. That’s the last two options in their hand, then they are out of spades.
Back to the profile – it’s why the Left gets so angry when you counter their Apocalypse Rhetoric with facts and reality. See, they don’t care if it’s true or false. They grow angry because you are attempting to dispel an illusion they are spending ba great deal of time and energy casting and maintaining.
I expect Mueller’s Merry Band to continue their “investigation” until July (if Trump is not the GOP Nominee) or late October 2020, whichever comes first.
False flag Pelican Brief. I think we are seeing the same mindset as the 60’s….anything is better than what is present….a destroyed USA would a better place in their minds. This is a very dangerous time….so sad and so unnecessary.
Socialism, just another name for Communism.
No it isn’t. They’re virtually the exact opposites.
That was very funny.
Too bad so many don’t get the joke.
It’s actually very sad that so many people have such a knee-jerk reaction to a comment that can be verified or refuted by a quick look in a dictionary. I usually make such comments to provoke thought and maybe a little research. Obviously in this instance I failed.
If you’re claiming that the distinction between socialism and communism is that private property is allowed under socialism, let a famous socialist leader clear that up for you:
Care to guess who the author was?
Speaking of the regulatory stayed, Trump has made no moves to abolish any of the unnecessary federal agencies. What comes to mind is the federal education department, and agency created by Jimmy Carter which serves no purpose other than to employ a band of obscurantist, otherwise unemployable leftists, and push and agenda of degradation of education in this country.
Abolish the federal education department. That’s a start.
You haven’t been paying attention. he’s doing just that. OMB director annouced their working plan a month or so ago. Move Education into Labor, and more. Do some checking. They have plans to do a major reshuffling of the Federal Government. Hell, Interior just announced this last week they want HQ moved out of DC out west to Denver or Salt Lake City. All of this is being eclipsed but they have made plans and have announced them. Waiting for midterms now.
https://govmatters.tv/breaking-omb-publishes-major-government-reorganization-proposal/
https://govmatters.tv/breaking-omb-publishes-major-government-reorganization-proposal/
Here you go. Their proposal.
Not to mention his campaign promise to eliminate two regulations for each new one. Instead, according to Trump, they’re actually eliminating 22 old regulations for every new one. That, as much as the tax cuts, is what is spurring the economy.
Congress will have to do that. Which is why the midterms are crucial.
I focused on the desperation mentioned in the OP. But the rest of it is interesting analysis.
The Democrats focused so hard on standing against Trump that they forgot to stand FOR something. An in the void they left open, in walked Socialism.
But no longer in the guise if a crotchety old geezer with his 3 houses. No, it was Little Miss Socialism, wide-eyed vibrant and youthful twirling her dainty skirt as she fumbles how unemployment stats are calculated.
They are in big trouble. And they did it to themselves.
“They are in big trouble.” We can but hope that John Q. and Jane M. Public are paying attention instead of worrying about whether their favorite reality TV show will return in the new TV year.
The Left seems to be betting all in now. We do not know the master plans being readied to create chaos at election time. I would guess a loss would be blamed on Russian collusion with the word going out to take back the country. The Left is setting the stage.
The philosophy the left has been spreading has been mentally preparing people for decades now and all it will take is an economic collapse to have them demanding full socialism.
Fun Fact: she is not alleged to have been a “spy”.
Why repeat the MSM’s lies??
There are no charges against her, no evidence whatsoever, that she is a “spy”.
Merely, that she is a foreign national lobbying without a license to do so. Which is, in fact, a trivial charge that tens of thousands of people are known to be guilty of but never get charged.
The only interesting thing in this case is: why her?
Why charge her, alone, when for decades (at least) tens if thousands of foreign lobbyists -each year – have failed to register and have nit been charged.
Exactly. The charge is that she represented a foreign government without informing the AG. She made absolutely no secret of it, so the most logical explanation is that she had no idea she was supposed to file a form. She’s not from here, so if nobody told her how should she have known?
This “law” is known in D.C. as the one that almost every lobbyist ever breaks. Podesta, I believe, when it was found he had been doing this for years, was told to simply fill out the form, backdate it, and everything would be forgiven. That’s how this kind of paperwork violation is usually handled.
And those are professional lobbyists, who do know about the law. Butina was not a lobbyist, just a sort of unofficial contact person, who was traveling anyway for her own purposes so she agreed to act for the government while she was here. She had no reason to know we had such a law.
I think you’re on the wrong thread.
Completely wrong article. Had to be a computer glitch, as obnoxious as Milhouse often is he would have figured that out and isn’t dumb enough to post in the wrong article.
Can’t you follow a thread? My comment is a reply to Arradin’s. Why he commented on this post is a question for him, not for me.
So, on the heels of rigging the “Democratic” primary against Bernie Sanders and pissing off his Socialist supporters, the Democratic Party must now:
a) sabotage/undermine Bernie’s successor
b) who happens to be Latino and female
C) in the middle of a #WalkAway movement
CHANCE: Popcorn futures have tripled. Advance to Boardwalk.
It’s going to be interesting. Under DWIdiot, the Democrat establishment fixed the presidential election for itself. Perez, OTOH, isn’t at all establishment. I wonder who the midterms will be fixed for?
I’m not so convinced that moving to a lot rapid and pure socialsm won’t work. It’s consistent with teachings in the educational system. And it conveniently becomes a solution for many of the real and especially imagined inequities and grievances the left promotes. I would expect for people under 30 or so, it might catch on. As long as you throw in lots freebies for the working middle aged middle class, it might just win elections outside of NY and CA. 30 hour work weeks and retire at 55 baby!!
Your first sentence is incoherent. The rest is gibberish.
Actually, there was a time when a 30 hour work week was suggested. I routinely worked 55 hours a week, for years. And after work I remodeled a fixer upper home. Sweat equity is how I was completely clear of debt by 35.
We need to dispense with the false notion the democrats are socialists.
They are communists. Period.
We need to dispense with the false notion that Democrats are communists. They’re socialists. Period.
That period is especially difficult this month.
What percentage of the Right is armed and carrying these days, compared to the 60’s when the loony left turned violent?
May not be a deterrent to civil war, though. The lefties are getting desparate.
Everyone wants to sue until they have to pay the first legal bill. Similarly, everyone wants to riot until someone gets shot. Trust me, the beat-down that antifa finally took in PDX sent a strong message. And, the police union just called the mayor to the carpet for turning PDX into a cesspool. The days of reindeer games are starting to come to an end here in the people’s republic. Crime is way up because the antifa antics keep draining the po po budget, and people are starting to get PO’d about it.
At risk of tedium, I’ll make another pitch to stop playing the Left’s “relabeling” game.
It’s not about “capitalism”.
Capital is a tool civilization uses to do useful things; a tool like oil, cattle, or steel. The “capitalist” is of no great significance, even if “capital” is. The “capitalist” is a convenient boogyman, a mustache-twirling villian Marx popularized in order to turn the merely political into a personal enemy the rabble could feel motivated to hate.
What the socialists—and their even more evil twins, the communists—consider anathema is not capitalism, but the free market. Their bizarre doctrine is that the free market is a tool of exploitation; in any market transaction, one party “exploits” the other. The only solution to this dismal state is to eliminate the market, kill the exploiters (as per the communists) or just put them out of business (as per the socialists), and, in the free market’s place, substitute government control of everything.
This idea has great appeal to intellectuals (i.e., thoughtful people who have never actually tried to actually do anything), and to parasites (who love the idea of free stuff, or at least stuff somebody else paid for).
</end_tedious_lecture>
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”
“Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Hoffer, back in the 1950’s, knew these modern leftists.
Socialists and Communists may be evil twins (because in the Soviet Union, the socialists called themselves Communists; they weren’t), but socialism and communism have in common only that they’re both economic models, albeit inferior ones; they’re both terms that 90% of the people who use them don’t understand or can’t define; and neither one can succeed over the long term because they both ignore (or try to change) human nature. If socialism has any close relative, it would be feudalism. Capitalism, of course, is nothing but a (rather derogatory) term for private ownership of the means of production either by individuals or groups.
socialism: An economic model in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. This implies a large government, because it needs to control essentially everything. There is virtually no socialism in the US.
communism: An economic model in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the people in common (think “commune”). This implies a very limited government and essentially a subsistence society, since there isn’t a whole lot to fight over. Likewise, there have been few instances of communes in the US, and of course none have survived for any extended period (well, maybe excepting Oneida Community, but it eventually went capitalist too).
There have been in history a few instances where societies based on one of these two models survived for a limited period, but in the end they collapse or move toward a capitalist model for obvious reasons.
The two terms are mutually exclusive, as I noted above.
“Vote for me and I’ll give you the keys to the treasury” never fails to garner support from those who have little to lose and everything to gain from the governments largess.
Buraq Hussein Obama sent former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano out as early as 2009 to troll the world’s slums looking for welfare recipients to bring to America.
Its those recent arrivals the Democrats are pitching their appeal to.
What we are seeing here, sadly enough, is the start of a new (un)civil war. The left has already fired the first shots.
America will survive, albeit it will not be united as today. The country will split among ideological lines and 2 or more countries will emerge.
Prepare yourselves accordingly.
Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left. This president and his Republican Party are counting on you to do exactly that. America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.
This .. just burned all the goodwill he got by saying vote for Democrats.
Do all of these “social justice” wizards realize who were the first to be purged under Stalin, Mao, et al? It was the intelligentsia, folks. All of you SJW college and think tank smarter-than-thou types will be the first to go to the gulag. Useful idiots.
The Democrat Party has been the party of oligarchical socialism for the last 100 years. It has pushed collectivism and social welfare and has now managed to enslave nearly half of the population of the greatest capitalist nation in history. So, socialism, within the Democrat Party is nothing new.
What has happened is that the members of the Democrat party, who are not enamoured of, or actively against, socialism, have left the Party. Many of them actually voted for Trump, in 2016. The Democrat Party has nothing to offer them. This leaves the active party rank and file composed of socialists. And, as the Republicans have found out over the last 30 years, why vote for socialist lite when you can vote for a real socialist? Or at least someone who adamantly declares themselves to be a socialist [though how a man who makes a million dollars a year can realistically claim to be a socialist boggles the mind].
We will see real progress once all of Obamacare is dismantled, and the way to do that is to defund it at the state level. The best part of the Left at the moment is their failure to truly recognize what is going on (they are starting to believe their own lies) and the only move is to double down by promising even more of what they can no longer deliver. The second that buying an approved health care plan is no longer mandatory, people will flee and a free market force will kick back in.