A front-page diary by Egberto Willies, piggy-backing on an article by Robert Reich, describes the differences between Democratic factions as follows:
- Establishment Democrats – corporate and Wall Street executives and upper-middle-class professionals. They’d also like a tax cut, but they believe in equal rights.
- Anti-establishment Democrats – younger, grassroots movement types, and progressives who still call themselves Democrats. Their biggest issues are widening inequality, racism, sexism, and climate change. They also want to get Big Money out of politics and they reject crony capitalism.
According to the diarist, “establishment Democrats” are corporate executives who want a tax cut. In that case, they should be delighted right now, right? Trump has proposed a massive tax cut for corporate executives and Wall Street types, and they should be jumping on it with both feet. Here’s a list of the Democratic Senators and Representatives who’ve signed on:
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Wait a minute here. Something’s wrong. There aren’t any. What gives?
The answer is pretty simple: there are policy differences within the Democratic Party. They are important, and worthy of discussion and criticism. But we have to understand what the differences actually are first, and Mr. Willies is simply incorrect about what they actually are. He completely misreads the views of the group he calls “establishment Democrats”, recognizing correctly that they are to his right but lacking the depth perception to realize that they’re not the same as Republicans.
Specifically: there are essentially zero Democrats, “establishment” or otherwise, who support tax cuts for the rich. There are essentially zero Democrats who support repealing the ACA and its associated Medicare expansion. That already renders the following piece of Willies’ so-called ‘analysis’ absolutely risible:
The differences between establishment Democratic Party (absent progressives) and the Republican Party are almost inconsequential based on their actions.
This is frankly irresponsible coming from a front-page writer at Daily Kos, peddling Naderite both-sides-are-the-same nonsense.
Look. There are real differences between Democrats referred to as “establishment” and Democrats that are not, including plenty of policy differences. But many of them center more on tactics rather than strategy — pragmatism vs. purism, more than anything else. The debate on health care within the party isn’t whether to move in a more universal direction, it’s how. Do we adopt the Kaine-Bennet supercharged public option, or Sanders’ single-payer bill with a transition period? These are the real debates within the party. They’re good debates to have and we should welcome them.
But you’re not going to get far if you’ve convinced yourself that your intra-party opponents hold views they don’t actually hold. We should argue with each others’ actual positions rather than inflammatory straw men. If we did that, we’d realize that we have far more in common than the voices trying to divide us want to pretend.
And GOTV for Northam, Fairfax, and Herring. That’s all.