Headline: Democrats in a fever over universal healthcare pledges
Sub-headline: ‘Medicare for All’ proposal risks alienating moderates ahead of 2020 election
The ramble through the thickets of the political schizophrenia, that describes the New Democrats, on the long overdue Medicare for all question: the reception here at the Financial Times, for even the notion of Universal Health Care, betrays the core religion of the editors and writers of the collapsed Free Marketism. The Market, and its profit motive, as being the sine qua non of the human endeavor, has been the proven to be utterly bankrupt. The editors and writes of this publication never let the empirical interfere with the imperative of self-apologetic propaganda.
But the patience of the reader is rewarded with the comments of Mark Bennett:
Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, called Medicare for All an “incredibly toxic . . . political killer” that would alienate many voters not only in the Democratic primaries, but also in competitive congressional districts in next year’s general election, where many voters are likely to prefer to keep their private insurance.
“The minute you start poking holes in Medicare for all, support collapses,” he said.
The ‘Third Way’ is subject of a revelatory Slate essay of July 25, 2018 by Osita Nwanevu. The last paragraph of this essay is instructive of where the Neo-Liberals, who believe in Schlesinger’s ‘Vital Center’ will lead the New Democrats.
Headline: Centrism Is Dead
Sub-headline:The left has already won the debate over which ideas should animate the Democratic Party.
…
The question of what direction the Democratic Party should go in as a matter of political strategy is, of course, different from the question of what proposals the party should advance as a matter of policy. Even if one believes that moderation is a safer path to victory for the party than a drive leftward, centrist policy ideas are very obviously inadequate to the task of actually solving many of the largest challenges facing American society and the world this century. There is no moderate, centrist framework for uprooting and transforming the energy economy in the amount of time that science tells us we must to address climate change, no easy and potentially bipartisan way to close the racial wealth gap. Between now and 2020, the Democratic Party is going to have to decide whether it is more quixotic and unserious to back left-wing candidates and policy minds who actually speak as though they understand the scale of these and other problems, or a cadre of old hands who believe, religiously, that there is nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by the policy approach Democrats have taken for more than a quarter century. Centrists may well hold on and win that battle for the soul of the party, but they’ve already lost the plot
Old Socialist
https://www.ft.com/content/3e5bcc84-d964-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17
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