Far left(?) meets center left

Socialist Bhaskar Sunkara has chosen to back Joe Biden, although grudgingly and with a dram of paranoia and a dollop of a persecution-complex: "'After the Nevada Blowout, It’s Bernie’s Party Now,' read a headline I wrote for Jacobin, the magazine I edit, after he won that state’s caucus in February. We all know what happened next. Centrist leaders within the Democratic Party, along with millions of ordinary voters, rallied behind Joe Biden."

No, what happened next had been predictable since Iowa and New Hampshire. The primaries moved to the Palmetto state, where the African-American vote put Biden back on top; where Sanders' deadly weakness among the party's chief minority base was strongly revealed; and whereafter Sanders' electoral weaknesses and Biden's strengths could no longer be denied by a majority of the Democratic rank and file. No "centrist leadership" coup was either present or implied.

Continues Mr. Sunkara, straining for an accommodation acceptable to his socialist readers:

"Like center-left liberals and progressives, during the coming presidential election and beyond we aim to defeat right-wing populism. The difference is that we refuse to do so on the centrist terms that we believe helped create it in the first place….

"[So] we are campaigning for core demands like Medicare for All, saving the U.S. Postal Service from bipartisan destruction, organizing essential workers to fight for better pay and conditions throughout the coronavirus crisis and backing downballot candidates, mostly running on the Democratic ballot line."

How far socialism has fallen. Or should I say, how high the Democracy has risen? Biden and Democrats are virtually all in favor of some form of Medicare for All — a public option, Biden's option, is essentially the same thing; the U.S. Postal Service would be secure under a Democratic administration; and just who from the center to center-left to progressivism — from even the center-right, for heaven's sake — opposes better pay and conditions for workers? All that worries are the potentially wacko downballot extremists supported by Mr. Sunkara et al.

But again, look at the policy priorities of America's socialists. They are largely mainstream. And yet organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America pride themselves on ideological virtues either unknown or unacceptable to rank-and-file Democrats. Something tells me most of the virtuous have never met one the pragmatic.

Comments

[Peter G]

The Jacobin is always a fun read. Often very very loony but still fun because of that. My favorite questions to ask the sort of people for whom it is gospel are pretty straightforward. Beginning with ‘which is it?’. Of the operating theories they use which applies, that the majority of Democrats are sheeple waiting for the bat signal to know when or who to support, or the everybody who disagrees with us are evil corporate whores? It can’t really be both can it? Evil corporate sheeple is just too much of a stretch even for the Jacobin crowd.

I also like to ask them why these nefarious wizards of the Democratic Party weren’t filling Joe’s coffers or otherwise slitting the political throats of the other candidates when the whole shindig started? Seems like a strange strategy to pursue when they had already decided, apparently in a graveyard at midnight, that Joe was the man. It’s almost like they were willing to let Joe sink or swim on the strength of his sheeple support.

I love asking them shit like this. There is no better way to get the unthinking mad than to ask them a question that goes to the heart of their unquestioned beliefs. It’s like dropping Mentos into their cola filled heads.

[Jason]

This has been the great success of the Democratic establishment. Over the last 30 years they co-opted and fused together the best of both conservatism and liberalism, leaving the zealots, who are always in search of a new crusade to give them a sense of identity and purpose, to go scrambling for ever more extreme and bizarre positions. Since genuine conservatism now belongs to the Democrats, the GOP have surrenderEd logic and morals and have become thoroughly Trumpified. The left flank, whose views a few decade ago are now mainstream, is likewise consumed with cultivating a sense of persecution, because what else have they got?

[Max]

Great piece and nailed it. "No 'centrist leadership' coup was either present or implied." - but that's their narrative. It absolutely kills them that the overwhelming party "ordinary" voters rejected their politics. (And was this guy pushing Jeremy Corbyn last year, like so many of his pack?) The whole "Centrist leaders within the Democratic Party, along with millions of ordinary voters, rallied behind Joe Biden," What a steaming pile of odorous excrement. Yeah Bhaskar, "millions" of voters, all right. The dude with a tenth of Bernie's budget utterly crushed him in three weeks. They simply won't contemplate that.

"The difference is that we refuse to do so on the centrist terms that we believe helped create it in the first place." - with your help, Bhaskar. Thank you thank you thank you for 1968, 2000 and 2016. But who am I kidding? These narcissists will accept zero responsibility. And they are so pure.

Thank you, Black America, for Saving America. Again. Saved us from the Clueless Left With a Death Wish.