So, this has been a topic I've been addressing on this blog from the get go in 2016 but given my more recent evolutions, I feel like I can take a more independent take on it. After all, I'm not really a demsoc or hardcore Bernie-stan. I just sided with them over the neoliberal wing of the party. I'm actually closest to the Yang gang, which is distinct from both branches of the democratic party. And I'm critical of both sides at this point.
The issues with the centrist wing
The centrist wing of the democratic party...is trash. As someone who witnessed the evolution of the Bernie wing over time, and has long sided with them, the centrist wing deserves all of the criticism it gets.
Here's the thing. These people are no longer the party of FDR. They haven't been since 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton. They have a long history of fighting the left, and undermining them at every turn, going back to at least the late 60s/early 70s. They are completely bought out by corporations and can't be trusted at anything. They seem to act as a buffer against change, and seem more interested in winning moderate suburbanites and appealing to minorities with identity politics to represent the economic changes we need. They remind me of a hybrid of the republican and democratic parties I grew up with on economics, along with the worst of the democrats on social issues. They're very unattractive, and while we might get a few compromises with them after trying to break their arm twisting it to pass progressive legislation, they seem to essentially be trying to stonewall change as much as humanly possible. As I said, they're essentially conservative, in the sense that they seem more focused on preserving institutions than changing them.
There seems to be an age divide in the democratic party and most of these guys are older, gen X or boomers. These guys' politics is represented by people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the idea of anything left of that is foreign and even scary. Part of the reason for this is because they're older and older people tend to benefit from the status quo. Part of this is because this generation of democrats was shellshocked by defeats when they were young and they just grew into a conservative environment and accepted it.
Still, this isn't an excuse. The democrats could bring in new energy into the party, but choose not to. They are actively choosing the moderate path. Parties, to some extent, choose what demographics to market to and appeal to, and they're actively choosing POC (in a vapid way) and suburban moderates. Here in PA, they said "for every working class voter we lose in the middle of the state we'll pick up to moderate republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia." They're choosing to abandon working class voters to Trump in order to appeal to the professional class. Because that's their brand. So while much of the rust belt sinks into MAGA country, they pick up the suburbs in addition to the urban cores they already own. It's a really cynical strategy that leads to an incoherent political ideology/identity, but it works on a pure electoral level. But it also means the left is locked out for a generation. I want to emphasize, these guys are choosing this. Because it is what they are comfortable with and it satisfies their corporate donors.
The issues with the Bernie wing
Enter Bernie Sanders. Bernie represented a much more organic, and less forced approach to progressive politics. America is facing huge economic challenges. A seemingly perpetual jobs crisis, a healthcare crisis, a climate crisis, a student debt crisis, a poverty crisis, and Bernie is a good faith attempt at solving those problems. I hitched my wagon to him in 2016, because, well, he was the option that best represented me at the time. He was the one who wanted to solve the problems, and while he didn't always do so in the ways I would do so, he was the guy who wanted to move the overton window in that direction. That said, I have nothing but respect for Bernie himself. Any disagreements are a respectful disagreement of philosophy.
However, as we know, the neoliberals screwed him in 2016, and the Bernie base has been bitter ever since. And since then, they've largely radicalized. Many well meaning progressives have turned into hardcore social democrats and even socialists over the past several years. And in 2020, they were willing to fight for their values.
Now, given the disposition of the neoliberal wing of the party, to some extent, I can't blame them. I can be just as brutally purity testy as they are. But, sometimes they go too far. The thing is, these guys have radicalized into a certain set of values since 2016, and are a lot more....strict in their adherence to them.
Take medicare for all. They want single payer healthcare, period. Until recently, I did too. The reasoning behind this is that anything less is an attempt by the centrist wing of the party to preserve the private system at the behest of the insurance industry. Given their purposes, I can't blame them for thinking this. Many candidates (see: Kamala Harris, for example), had a "hello fellow kids, I also support universal healthcare" approach to the issue, while their approaches were bait and switch. Now, Bernie has an excellent single payer system, but it IS expensive, and as demonstrated recently it may not be a universal positive. Depending on the rest of your platform, it might be good, but it might not. I made a conscious choice to reject it for cheaper alternatives due to my fixation on UBI. Either I support a full UBI with a public option, or a partial UBI with M4A.
But that's kind of where I would start to have issues with these guys. They consider anything less than supporting their specific platform as selling out, regardless of intentions. They act like they have a monopoly on all policy discussions and that any deviation from their approved platform is bad. My platform on healthcare is closest to the Buttigieg model currently, and while I understand some apprehension around it, and around Buttigieg, given the hacky right wing arguments he was making for that approach, honestly, it really is a "glide path to medicare for all" as he put it. It is a more incremental approach to accomplish that long term, and is far more progressive than most candidates' proposals now that I dug into the details to see how it works. Is it perfect? No. But given the budget I'm willing to spend on the issue, it's probably the best way to go about it.
But that wouldn't be enough for the Bernie supporters. Heck, being in the Yang lane of the party, which has a distinct ideology but is still arguably very progressive, my camp would consistently fail Bernie stan purity tests on a variety of issues.
On UBI, I've heard hacky and dishonest arguments about "destroying welfare" and "rent would spiral out of control" and even stuff about how it's a "right wing trojan horse". I even hear arguments about how it would stop us from achieving true socialism. That's the thing. The Bernie movement has evolved into socialism to some extent. Bernie himself is pushing social democracy, but his most hardcore supporters want literal socialism. While I've heard some claim they could be for UBI under the right circumstances, they make crazy, unrealistic demands about wanting $3000 a month or something like that, claiming a poverty line UBI isn't enough. As I demonstrated, that's a pipe dream. Heck, I basically established I can't even do $1k a month if we implement medicare for all. That's kind of the core flaw with the Bernie approach. Everything is expensive, with these crazy unrealistic solutions. Bernie himself doesn't have this issue as much, his policies are rock solid, but like me he makes specific policy choices given his own budgeting that I don't agree with (like a jobs guarantee over UBI). But his supporters are becoming unrealistic and rigid.
Being more in the Yang lane ideologically, I get these complaints all the time. Yang doesn't support a green new deal, therefore he's bad. He supports a flawed UBI plan, bad. Public option that isn't even outlined policy wise, bad. No minimum wage or free college, bad. Even if his platform is, on paper, as radical as Bernie's, as I've discussed before, because it isn't Bernie's, it's bad.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't real criticisms of Yang. I dunk on him too at times, and even voted for Bernie over him, in part because Yang's platform was so anemic on important issues at times. Some criticisms are legitimate. I wish Yang had more details to his public option plan and didn't push that article full of incremental fixes that read like a conservative healthcare plan. I wish his UBI plan made different choices at times. And I do think yang should support free college, etc. Yang isn't perfect. I might agree with Yang broadly on ideological issues, but his actual policies need work.
Still, I at least try to be charitable to Yang. I believe he's progressive and means well and wants to accomplish change. But his change isn't always Bernie's change. And that isn't always a bad thing. Bernie's ideas are stuck in the 20th century, and he sounds like FDR's second bill of rights in practice. Which is fine, that is a nice ideology to some extent. But it's not how I would always do things and I'm beginning to resent being crapped on simply over some legitimate differences. No I'm not a socialist. Yes, I do like UBI, yes, I prefer UBI over many of Bernie's specific goals. Bernie might do a lot of great things, but he's still a jobist social democrat who supports a forced participation economy, just a more just one. He's definitely an improvement over the neolibs but that doesn't mean I always agree.
Conclusion
That said, the democratic party's a mess. As I said after the election, I'm beginning to feel like I don't fit in any where. I have a deep dislike and a deep distrust of the centrist wing of the democratic party and believe they operate in bad faith. They aren't there to change things, but to preserve them. I believe the Bernie wing, however, has gotten too radical and my ideology just doesn't align with them.
The fact is, I established my belief system years before Bernie hit the scene. I simply liked Bernie pushing the overton window to make my goals more feasible. But at this point his movement is looking like the tea party in all the wrong ways where everything but their version of politics is bad and is a sell out. Bernie has a lot of good ideas. But I do have some philosophical differences. I do prefer a UBI over a higher minimum wage or expansive jobs program. In tandem with that, while I agree with the spirit of medicare for all, I am starting to believe a public option is better as it would be more affordable and accomplish similar goals while being more affordable and less disruptive.
Honestly, I'm becoming Andrew Yang, if Yang had a better grasp on policy. My top priorities are near identical to Yang. I just have more robust proposals. I'd consider running for office if I wasn't such an autist (and I do not mean this in a derogatory way, I'm literally autistic) with such low social stamina and such an unlikable personality. Or alternatively maybe I was Yang all along, before Yang was Yang. Maybe Yang is outofplatoscave2017 or something. But, being in that minority wing of the party, we tend to have an ideology outside of the purview of most democrats. While I tend to respect the Berniecrats more and am more charitable to them, I don't really jive with either at this point.
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