Cozying up to the Right
Democrats, stop it!
One reason our democracy is collapsing so easily is that liberals are not doing as great a job of defending democratic principles as they are of cozying up to the Right. Examples are everywhere.
We've got the machine Democratic Party leadership in Massachusetts trying to keep everybody in the dark:
We've got Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's labor secretary, now a chastened Capitalist, canonizing the late John McCain for nothing better than not being Trump:
Speaking of war-mongers, we have centrist Democrats transferring cluster munitions to Ukraine, opposed only by an odd mix of progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans:
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/14/ukraine-cluster-bombs-us-transfer/
We have Roy Teixeira, a "patriotic" Democrat, defending Oliver Anthony's racist anthem because, well, he’s trying a little too hard to sidle up to the white Right:
We've got another "centrist" Democrat, Liam Kerr, who is annoyed with No Labels because they're competition for his own "Welcome Party" and Welcome PAC, both of which are intended to appeal to Flyover Country;
None of these people have paid any attention to Steve Phillips’s appeals to Democrats to stop treating Black and other minority voters like chopped liver. Instead, they think they can somehow appeal to significant numbers of white right voters. How stupid is that? And why should the Democratic Party try to position itself as a second white people’s party?
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-white-voter-turnout/
If you need an example of just how stupid cozying up to the Right is, and how dangerous, here's one from Germany. The Christian Democratic Union party (think Blue Dog Democrats or Romney Republicans) just sliced their palms to make a pact with the Devil. For all the denials that the CDU would never, ever work with the neo-Nazis in the Alternative für Deutschland party, they just did. The Rubicon was just crossed.
And if anyone thinks that Cornel West's presidential campaign is simply an ego project, please reflect calmly. Dr. West, like his predecessors in past elections, appeals to those disgusted by liberals betraying liberal values. West’s campaign wouldn't even exist if Democrats were doing a better job of supporting the principles and policies he's advocating.
Must all centrist democrats be put on a leash to keep them from veering to the Right?