E.J. Dionne says “To create a real center, you need a real left,” by which he means senators like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders who will push back on the idea that we have to reduce people’s retirement security and instead must increase it. Of course, the same reasoning would apply to a host of other policy issues.
The reemergence of a Democratic left will be one of the major stories of 2014. Moderates, don’t be alarmed. The return of a viable, vocal left will actually be good news for the political center.
For a long time, the American conversation has been terribly distorted because an active, uncompromising political right has not had to face a comparably influential left. As a result, our entire debate has been dragged in a conservative direction, meaning that the center has been pulled that way, too.
The way Mr. Dionne frames this argument, it appears that the goal is meant to serve the center. I guess this would be a center that moderate Democrats both could live with and would find more to their liking than the current center. Of course, I think that progressives will find that outcome to be minimally acceptable, if it is acceptable at all.
For one thing, the status quo, or anything closely resembling the status quo, is not working right now. Undergraduates are emerging from college with record-setting personal debt (now at an average of $29,000) with poor employment opportunities. People who don’t have college degrees have never been in such a hopeless position before. We’re living in an age every bit as gilded at the roaring 20’s, and we’re getting set up for the same kind of fall. And we’re still not getting remotely serious about doing what we need to be doing to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The way things have been set up over the last thirty-three years, since the Reagan Revolution began, the vast majority of people simply work for a bank. We are entering the work force as peon labor, or bankcroppers, who pay for the privilege of working, and whose labor serves mainly to finance our debt.
The government struggles simply to remain open and pay its bills on time, and our political discourse is so stupid that it is a global embarrassment. With regard to educational attainment and health outcomes, our country is slipping to the back of the pack among advanced economies.
And all of this is in spite of having a president who is committed to protecting the middle class, improving education, and expanding access to health care. But, he can’t do a thing with this Congress, and what he has been able to do so far has been inadequate to the challenges we face. Obama has shown both bold strokes of genius and tactical blunders, yet, he is not the problem.
The problem is that, on any subject you might choose to consider, the right wing in this country is wrong, and they have enough power to keep us paddling in place at best, and, more often, moving in the wrong direction.
That a portion of the left is waking up to the problem is a good thing. But, nothing will come of it if it does nothing more than reinvigorate the center.
