I just read an article someone wrote essentially saying that a Clinton loss and a Trump win is enabling a right wing extremist administration to move the overton window, that is, the window of acceptable debate in this country, to the right. That because Clinton lost, the country is doomed, and progressivism is doomed.
I'm not sure I agree with this analysis. I mean, looking at it via the lens of party realignments, I think that Trump is the GOP's last hurrah, after which the country will push back against the GOP and right wing politics and we will see an era of moving back to the left.
But let's say this is correct, that Trump is going to doom progressivism by moving the spectrum of debate out of reach. Whose fault is that? What has the democratic party done to move the overton window back to the left? Over the last 6 years, the democrats have been dealing with an extremist, ideologue force on the right known as the tea party. Their goal was to sabotage Obama and the democrats wherever possible, and to obstruct Obama on EVERYTHING. And they did. Every year, we would have another standoff over the budget. Our country's credit got downgraded to AA from AAA because of these guys. Whenever Obama would propose anything that would make life better for people, the GOP shut him down. He proposed a moderate supreme court justice to replace Scalia this year, and they stonewalled him and are now going to appoint their own person after Trump assumes office.
Now, being reasonable and gracious is a good way to go about dealing with such manchildren at first, but eventually, you need to give up the facade of civility when these people calm down and say, "ok, I've had enough, let's fight." Obama didn't do that. The democrats didn't do that. The dems ran to the center to try to compromise with these people, and the GOP would just pile on more insane demands to get their way. We Berners said we need to be serious about fighting the GOP here, but the democrats didn't listen. Obama said a democratic tea party is not a good idea, and the democrats told us to be reasonable and stuff. They said we can't push any left wing measures or anything because the republicans will just shut it down. So they would try to argue from the center, and be "reasonable", and once again, the GOP would just move to the right.
This is why Clinton's liberalism is loser liberalism. Putting aside the blatant appealing to elite financial interests, when one side is doing everything they can to stop you, and your side is trying to accomodate them and be "reasonable", what happens? The democrats lose, they move to the center, and the GOP keeps moving to the right. And then, like we saw with this election, just like we saw with MY vote, for reference, the democrats will abandon their own party to stay home and vote green. So now, after 6 years of sabotaging the democrats and the democrats just being okay with it, now the GOP is back in power again. And now they can move to the right all they want, and the democrats can't stop them. Not that they would anyway.
The GOP keeps moving to the right because the left isn't an adequate counter balance to them. If the overton window is a tug of war, the GOP is pulling as hard as they can, while the democrats are just like...here, you take it. They're defeatists. The modern, Clintonian democrats are a bunch of wishy washy defeatists who won't so what they need to do to stop a radical GOP insurgency. And then they whine about how they lost it all and how the GOP is going to go so much to the right now. Um...yeah, because where have you guys been on trying to stop them?
At this point, with the democrats in the state they're in, and the GOP in the state they're in, the best that can happen is that the GOP overdoes it this election cycle and causes a massive rejection of right wing values after they make peoples' lives worse. Trump isn't going to make america great again. We need left wing ideals to do that. And what we need from the democrats is for them to throw the Clintonite centrists overboard and let the real progressives in this country do their job.
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