Waynesboro, the Rust Belt, effectively, was thisclose to giving a majority to an unknown who made Medicare for All, College for All and a jobs guarantee the focal points of her campaign.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, angling toward 2020, says: whatevs.
“Voters are now looking for a more realistic alternative. Leading up to 2020, Democrats must maintain our credibility with a pledge of results that are honest and achievable,” McAuliffe wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post today, in which he shat upon pretty much everything that Democrats ran on in the 2018 midterms.
The federal jobs guarantee, an idea that dates back to the 1940s: “sounds too good to be true.”
Universal free college: “has an appealing ring, but it’s not a progressive prioritization of the educational needs of struggling families.”
“We need to provide access to higher education, job training and student debt relief to families who need it.”
Hmmm, OK.
Universal healthcare: “We can expand the Affordable Care Act and take on pharmaceutical companies’ cartel pricing.”
In other words, take a Republican proposal that even the Republicans have abandoned and double-down, triple-down, whatever-down we’re on now, and roll with it.
Gotcha.
“When the stakes are another four years of Trump degrading our country, do we really want to use the 2020 campaign as a first-time experiment on idealistic but unrealistic policies?”
The progressive ideas on jobs, college and healthcare are idealistic, but unrealistic?
European democracies seem to have figured out how to make them work.
The reason we haven’t here in the States is because of people like Terry McAuliffe.
More McAuliffe: “I believe the only way that Trump will win reelection is if Democrats give up their credibility as serious and focused on results that impact people’s lives.”
The way Trump and Republicans continue to get votes in places they shouldn’t is because they’re the only ones focused on issues that affect people’s lives.
Their proposals are unrealistic, but they’re at least paying attention.
If you live in a place like Waynesboro, which has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs in the last 30 years, you’re not living as well as you did 30 years ago, your kids don’t have the same quality of life you expected them to have, your schools, starved from the erosion of the local tax base, aren’t what they were, your healthcare, which used to be a benefit of your good job at the plant, isn’t there anymore.
McAuliffe wants to protect the status quo in terms of working within a broken system of higher education, a broken system of healthcare delivery, a broken economy that rewards those who have already have and punishes those who have not.
Hey, that’s where the campaign dollars come from. We all get that.
It’s never about doing the right thing. It’s about being in the right place at the right time.
“While I haven’t decided whether to be a candidate myself, I will be closely watching our side and working to ensure that the Democratic message is realistic, optimistic and focused on helping all Americans.”
God for-fucking-bid that Terry McAuliffe is in a position in 2020 to ensure anything.
Column by Chris Graham
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