So, Kyle Kulinski is someone I follow a lot if you can't tell, but he's also someone I find myself disagreeing with more and more lately as I trend toward Yang gang and he maintains his Bernie support. He's also been covering a lot of the same kinds of topics as me, such as the fall of the modern democratic party and how it's imploding under Biden.
However, today, he put out a video arguing that if Bernie were in charge, the democratic party would be in a different more positive place, i would argue to the contrary, and I feel like I should give my reasonings why.
The fact is, it's because 2020 was like 1976 all over again. It was a desperate attempt of an unpopular democratic party to save itself after ousting a rather corrupt, but popular, republican president. It was also a time where the democrats were handed every problem under the sun, that the republicans were dealing with unsuccessfully. Except, now they can blame the democrats for everything, and it doesn't matter what the democrats do, if they can't solve the problems, then they are screwed. That's what happened with Carter, got handed tons of problems and an uncooperative congress, and he ended up losing control of the country and lost to Reagan in 1980. And I feel like we're seeing the same patterns today.
Here's the thing, Bernie would want to do tons of stuff. And as Kulinski would point out, maybe he would do some stuff. At least the executive order stuff. And it would be very popular among some segments of the population. I myself would probably feel more positive from student loan forgiveness in and of itself, which he could do via executive order.
BUT, here's the thing, if Bernie won NOW, it would be the WRONG time. Much like 1976. If Bernie were in the hot seat, he would be responsible for the overall health of the economy and the whole country, and he would still get flak. He would still be dealing with the same structural issues Biden was handed, and I doubt that he would handle them better.
First of all, we can just take Afghanistan. Trump set that up, and when the deadline came around during Biden's first year, they weren't ready, because let's face it, there's NEVER a good time to pull out of Afghanistan, and just like Biden got backlash, Bernie would do.
And don't get me wrong, I supported that move. I wanted out. I think it's one of the best things Biden did. But it was a logistical clusterfudge that lost him a lot of support among more normie audiences, and that's what I'm looking at here.
As we know from the dem primaries, progressives are a minority of the democratic party. And while they can arguably win a lot of normies in the center, who long for something different but don't know what it is, winning support permanently relies on improving those peoples' lives.
But would Bernie be able to pass a lot of his proposals? No. He would still have to deal with buttholes like Manchin and Sinema, who would make their careers out of owning the more radical democrats and derailing their agendas. Assuming a 50/50 split, those guys would still hold the party hostage and stop stuff from getting done. He would be "Cartered" just like Carter was by his own party. Except instead of Ted Kennedy, you'd have Joe Manchin. And even if we had a different senate composition, given we won say North Carolina and Maine, two races we should've won statistically if I wecall but we didn't, we still might have some other "moderate" looking to make a name for themselves blocking Bernie.
And then there would be constant harping from the media and the centrist faction about compromise and bipartisanship and working together, and how Bernie is too rigid and principled and won't just cave to corporate interests, and normies will eat that crap up and get turned off.
The problem with America is we have a really dumb populace, many of which have no real principles or are so entrenched in one camp nothing will change their minds, where those who are often swayed tend to have the memory of a goldfish. And while I believe we could, under the right conditions, activate them to be leftists, in trying times like this, it's do or die, sink or swim. Either you fix the economy post covid or you don't. And if you don't, you're gonna get Cartered. Period.
And this would put Bernie in a darned if you do darned if you don't scenario. If Bernie compromises, he gets nothing done since corporate interests eat him alive. And if he doesn't, the media will destroy him for it and he will be labelled a horridly ineffective president.
And then you got inflation. What did Carter in on the economy? Supply shortages and inflation, sound familiar? This is the guy who dealt with an oil crisis and did the good thing by telling Americans to conserve energy and put their sweaters on. But Americans don't like the government telling them to make minor sacrifices for the common good. They want it all and they want it now.
We're having that kind of crisis RIGHT NOW. We are still reeling from COVID, and Americans refuse to take their medicine, LITERALLY. They won't take a vaccine to protect themselves from the virus, and they seem to just demand the entire economy be open now. They don't care about the minimum wage workers, and if they're exposed to COVID and die. Americans are selfish. They just want theirs, screw you. They want their amusement parks and restaurants and movie theaters and nail salons, and they want them NOW.
So worker shortage? They don't want to hear it. While some are sympathetic to the worker shortage, many people are pushing "no one wants to work any more" narratives to shame workers pushing for better conditions. They're literally fighting against decency. And while many workers struggle and reel from COVID, and Bernie's policies would help them, people would claim the ensuing inflation from reopening the economy too fast with supply chains screwed up and too many jobs for the amount of workers actually available is due to Bernie's policies. They're already doing it with Biden. They think $1400 checks and unemployment expansions are stopping people from working, despite Trump implementing similar policies, and despite there being no evidence that's the case. So, the republicans are going to weaponize malaise over the economy and lay the blame squarely on democrats. We shouldn't have shut down, they'll say. We need to cut social services to force people back to work, they'll say. They'll run on returning to the good old days and point to the democrats being unable to work through this crisis as it is, to sabotage and undermine the left.
And you know what? I bet a lot of corporate democrats would too. The reason Bernie is popular still is because he is a different ideology and still has distance from the administration in office. If he were in the hot seat, the reverse would be true, and corporate dems would use the failures of the Bernie administration, even if it's not functionally different from the Biden administration, to say "see? we told you Bernie can't get things done, if we were in charge blah blah blah". And it would work. it doesn't have to be true, but it would work. They would be able to scream too far left, and force everyone back to a right wing consensus. And left wing ideas would be unviable for the country going forward. Again, they're already claiming this with Biden to some extent, although centrist dems still are largely owning the situation right now and it's the left saying "see I told you so."
Again, if you're in office in a time like this, it's sink or swim. Someone like Bernie or Yang might be good if the timing is right, and he comes in at just the right time, and saves the day. Post 2008, we needed someone expansionist economically like Bernie or Yang. The problem was wages were too low, unemployment was too high (and even if the unemployment rate is low it's not really low because drop outs), people can't get a fair shake, and oh great now we had to shut down half the economy because a virus is ripping through us, so we need these massive spending plans now.
But as the economy shifts to low unemployment and inflation, the counter is true. Now, the real solution is, IMO, for the fed to increase interest rates to reduce "job creation" to match the supply of labor as it exists, which COULD cause another recession, but that's how we solved stagflation under Reagan, so yeah. The point is, Reagan was able to lay the blame on taxes and spending and government. And the GOP can do that again now. it doesn't matter if it's true. It's largely not true. But it's the conventional wisdom and conventional knowledge and the public is quite frankly too dumb to know the difference.
Even if we had Yang. Say we implemented UBI in 2021. Okay, the republicans and probably a lot of moderate dems, assuming Yang was able to pass such ideas, would turn against them. They would claim that we're spending too much, and it's too much stimulus, and it's too inflationary, and because of UBI no one wants to work,a nd that's why we have inflation and job openings and blah blah blah. It would be a PR disaster for UBI. Not because UBI is a bad policy mind you, but because the narrative can shift that fast given the conditions we're dealing with.
The fact is, you don't want to be that guy proposing massive expansionary policies during a time of high inflation. Because the inflation will be blamed on those policies. Even if those policies are good.
That said, I'm kind of glad Bernie or Yang aren't in office right now. If anything, I almost kind of sort of wish Trump won. The GOP would still deflect blame, and blame democrats shutting down state governments as the reason for all of this, but the country would sour hard on Trump and the republicans ideally. Maybe not. And then again the centrists would push for more centrism or something and not learn a thing. So maybe it's good for Biden to win. It discredits neoliberal politics as unpopular among the left AND the right. Either way, I'm just trying to keep things real.
Look, I might not be AS huge on bernie as I used to be, as my politics are more pronounced toward the Yang Gang and the anti work movement these days, but I still think that his vision of America is better than what the two parties offer. But if he governed right now, it would be the worst possible time. Sometimes certain time periods are like hot potato and sometimes its a blessing in disguise to lose elections at times. If Ford won in 1976, I wonder how the country would be different today. It's tempting to wonder what would happen if the dems won in 2016, or the GOP last year. Or what would happen had Bernie won. But the time for Bernie to win was 2016. Going into 2020, I think Bernie getting handed the current mess would've been a disaster. The fact was, despite executive orders, he wouldn't be able to get anything through congress, and the entire political establishment would be pointing out how everything he does is bad and if they were in charge things would be different, and it would just be bad for the left. All it would do is set back the actual left by years if not decades, and guarantee that the same status quo parties that we hate would maintain their iron grips on power.
And despite Bernie bros calling Yang a right winger, no, yang is in the same camp as Bernie on this one, ebcause like Bernie Yang's platform would introduce large amounts of stimulus to the US economy that could potentially be blamed for the current crisis we're in. You just dont want to be the UBI or new deal guy during rampant inflation. That's just a recipe for conservatives winning and then blaming democrats for everything.
With that said, yeah, bernie would be better, but he probably wouldn't be meaningfully more popular. Even if he had higher approval rating, it still wouldn't be higher than the low 40s right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment