Eventually, this was going to happen:
At Columbia University in New York this weekend the Progressive Policy Institute, which helped Bill Clinton and Tony Blair pioneer so-called third way politics in the 1990s, held a closed-door strategy session for congressional staffers that was designed to find ways of promoting growth.
Once again, it’s the us who’s go it wrong:
“There is no question that the prevailing temper of the Democratic party is populist: strongly sceptical (sic) of what we like to call capitalism and angry about the perceived power of the monied elite in politics,” says PPI president and founder Will Marshall. “But inequality is not the biggest problem we face: it is symptomatic of the biggest problem we face, which is slow growth.”
Two big problems here. First, the notion of “perceived power?” They hold too much of the power. For example, in Chicago we just elected a Republican mayor (running has a Democrat) who’s top 8 donors were Republican; who outspent his progressive opponent 20-1 by way of a SuperPAC. There’s lots of other examples. Ahh, yes, the “monied elites” hold the power.
Two, “slow growth” is not the “biggest problem we face.” The biggest problem we face is a society (and economy) based on massive “growth” in the first place. In case we haven’t learned it, the world is a sphere. It’s circular, and all connected. It’s also heating up. Basing our existence on growth will only drive our children to work (cough...cough...charters), and ensure an uninhabitable planet for future generations. We need to get off the “growth” addiction. It only serves billionaires anyway. Oh yeah, they’re the ones pushing this bullshit:
The Wisconsin congressman Ron Kind, who chairs the New Democrat Coalition in Congress, even compares some progressives in the House of Representatives to the Tea Party movement among Republicans: a sign that redistricting of once tightly-contested seats has left American politics “way too polarised, way too partisan, and way too much about playing to niche interests”.
In a post-CitizensDivided world, it’s this thinking that kills the middle class. Why try to fight back against the inevitable? But what’s the point of “growth” if it all goes to the .01%? Thank goodness there’s hope:
But despite PPI’s Columbia summit and a burst of recent policy papers from another centrist group, Third Way, the influence of the New Democrat Coalition and a similar grouping of moderate southern Democrats known as the Blue Dogs is widely seen as in terminal decline.
All three moderates who spoke to the Guardian ahead of the South Carolina forum acknowledge that the US has changed dramatically since the 1990s, when the New Democrat movement was born as an answer to three heavy defeats to Republicans under Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.
This is my fear of another Clinton presidency. Maybe Hillary will be different, but she doesn’t seem different...until lately. I’m concerned the gains we’ve made on the left (unions, middle class, healthcare) will be forgotten by a desire to always find profits...err...”growth.”
There’s no question most of us couldn’t afford to meet Hillary Clinton. I just hope she doesn’t forget us, because Third Way certainly has.