{"id":1513,"date":"2019-02-02T10:42:37","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T15:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=1513"},"modified":"2019-02-02T10:42:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T15:42:44","slug":"democratic-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/02\/02\/democratic-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Differences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Democratic Differences<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s \u201cspring-time\u201d in the Democratic Party, and the Presidential candidates are peeking out of the fertile anti-Trump garden.\u00a0 Like the flowers of the spring, some will blossom, and others wither.\u00a0\u00a0Some are familiar; Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others are new to people: Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang.  At least one, Howard Schultz is an unwelcome \u201cweed\u201d threatening to take up resources.  Of course, there are still those bulbs waiting to appear:  Biden, Bloomberg, Holder, Klobuchar and \u201cBeto.\u201d  And finally there are those mystery seeds that we don\u2019t even know about yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservative commentators are excited:  they see the plethora of candidates as evidence of fractures in the Party, divisions from the left middle to the left to the far left; Bloomberg to Biden to Booker to Warren (aw, if only Buttigieg would fit) and far to the non-candidate, Ocasio-Cortez.  They see the Democratic Party being dragged so far to the left that the great \u201cpurple\u201d center of America is deserted, leaving it open to re-capture by a resurgent Trump saying \u201cI\u2019m all you have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s start with the \u201cweed\u201d in the garden, the independent candidacy of Starbucks\u2019 Chairman Emeritus Howard Schultz.  Schultz sees himself as an \u201cabandoned\u201d Democrat; left behind by the leftward lurch of the Party.  He disagrees with \u201cMedicare for all\u201d and other forms of national health insurance, seeing the Affordable Care Act as the end limit.   Schultz feels the same way about government financing of higher education and raising the national minimum wage, simply saying \u201cwe can\u2019t afford it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the Mitt Romney incarnation as governor of Massachusetts, Schultz really represents the old-school center-right Republicans, a breed now largely extinct.  And for those who raise Ohio\u2019s Governor Kasich as a surviving example, they have missed the shift; Kasich is really a Republican-Conservative of twenty years ago.  He hasn\u2019t gone anywhere, but his Party his gone so far-right, he\u2019s all that looks like it\u2019s in the center.  Even the Utah-incarnation of Romney has moved farther to the right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for those who claim that the Affordable Care Act is a \u201cleft-wing\u201d radical proposal foisted on the country, it is good to remember that the concepts originated in 1989 from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank financed in part by Joseph Coors, scion of the ultra-conservative Coors brewing family. The tenets of the Affordable Care Act were first put into law as \u201cRomney-care\u201d for the state of Massachusetts while Republican Romney was governor.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats agreed on the Affordable Care Act under President Obama as a compromise they hoped Republicans could join.  This was despite strong Democratic support for a \u201csingle payer\u201d system with a federal program displacing individual insurance companies, and health insurance not linked to employment.  Following Senator Mitch McConnell\u2019s lead, Republicans in Congress refused to vote for any compromise in order to prevent an Obama victory, so Democrats were left alone to pass the Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this shows that the Affordable Care Act type government health insurance denotes the right limit of the Democratic Party.  It should be no surprise that most mainstream Democratic Presidential candidates are looking at greater government involvement in paying for health care, the center of the Party is closer to \u201cMedicare for All\u201d (for a further dissection of health care proposals \u2013 see this earlier essay on Trump World – Health Insurance<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point then, is that the Democrats aren\u2019t a \u201cfractured\u201d party; dividing over the issues of health care, education costs, and minimum wages.\u00a0\u00a0All Democrats are in favor of some form of improvement in each of these areas, the differences are how much and how soon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This was, by the way, the situation in 2016 with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders; it wasn\u2019t a matter of policy disagreement, but rather one of policy degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If raising minimum wage and reducing income inequality, providing affordable health care, making our nation more inclusive and reducing the debt-burden of education is \u201cleft-wing,\u201d then the Democratic Party is left wing.  It will be the task of all the \u201cbudding flowers\u201d of the Party to explain why their solutions to these problems should appeal to all Americans, particularly those who are left out of the American dream.  They will have a thorough, and probably raucous debate.  Ultimately Democrats will pluck one to speak for the Party, and run against Trump or whoever is left after his collapse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our incredibly polarized nation, we will see whether labels, left, center or right, will prevail; or whether the needs and wants of the majority of Americans will overcome the divisive pressure to pick a side or a color.  It will be up to the Democrats to persuade the vast \u201ccenter\u201d of America that, regardless of right-wing evangelism, it is the Democrats that have their best interests at heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic Differences It\u2019s \u201cspring-time\u201d in the Democratic Party, and the Presidential candidates are peeking out of the fertile anti-Trump garden.\u00a0 Like the flowers of the spring, some will blossom, and others wither.\u00a0\u00a0Some are familiar; Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro.\u00a0\u00a0 Others are new to people: Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Marianne … Continue reading “Democratic Differences”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDemocratic Differences : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/02\/02\/democratic-differences\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Democratic Differences : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Democratic Differences It\u2019s \u201cspring-time\u201d in the Democratic Party, and the Presidential candidates are peeking out of the fertile anti-Trump garden.\u00a0 Like the flowers of the spring, some will blossom, and others wither.\u00a0\u00a0Some are familiar; Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro.\u00a0\u00a0 Others are new to people: Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Marianne … Continue reading "Democratic Differences"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/02\/02\/democratic-differences\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Our America - 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