Republicans, when they get power, are balls to the wall: tax breaks for billionaires, nominating the hell out of conservative judges, ripping up any progress made previous in healthcare, the environment.
Democrats, when they get power, reach out to the other side.
Except that, they don’t really reach out to the other side.
Which is to say, they don’t reach out to core Republican voters – the tens of millions of working class and lower middle class whites in exurbs and rural areas who don’t actually benefit from tax breaks for billionaires, conservatives in the judiciary, what’s done in their name in healthcare, the environment, and yet line up in droves to vote for Republicans for cultural reasons and lack of a perceived better alternative.
No, Democrats satisfy their bipartisan itches by scratching the center-right Republicans who never bought in to Donald Trump’s faux populism anyway, and made no secret of their desire to use the Democratic presidential nomination process to get their party back.
This is how it is that we’ve ended up replacing a president opposed to public healthcare and the Green New Deal with a president-elect opposed to public healthcare and the Green New Deal.
It’s one old out-of-touch white guy replacing another old out-of-touch white guy.
But, hey, the new old white guy at least doesn’t know how to use Twitter.
Joke’s on you, progressives, who thought you were getting the return of the Obama years, only to wake up to find that … yep, you’re getting the return of the Obama years.
Which were squandered, as were the Clinton years, with a half-hearted effort at healthcare reform in the first two years – at least the Obama years got us ObamaCare, which was better than the nothingburger that we got from the Clinton healthcare failure of 1994-1994.
Both led to Democrats losing the House, and six years of, ahem, bipartisanship – which for Clinton included impeachment over oral sex, for Obama nonsense over him wearing a tan suit that one time, and endless cries of Benghazi!
Credit due to Republicans, they don’t pussy-foot around.
When they get power, they start never-ending wars, stack the Supreme Court, rack up national debt increasing spending on the military and infrastructure while giving themselves massive tax breaks.
They’re like the contestants on those old game-show segments involving a tube, money flying around, and you get to keep what you can grab and shove into your pockets before the buzzer sounds.
Democrats, when they get power, hold endless committee meetings, commission blue-ribbon panels, have think tanks produce in-depth studies, and then it’s time to run for re-election.
This is the ebb and flow of American politics.
Democrats get power because enough working and middle class folks get tired of Republicans fleecing the hell out of them, and they assume, this time, that Democrats will finally get it, and fix healthcare, keep the economy on track, the air clean.
Then when Democrats fail to live up to those modest expectations, because they’re too busy playing footsy with establishment Republicans, enough working and middle class folks get tired of them, and go the other way.
The misread prevalent in our punditry is that we have left and right parties in our binary political system.
We have center-right and right.
Both of which want to take your money and give it to someone else.
The only difference is the make of the suit that someone else is wearing.
Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
