I&I Editotial
In an attempt to bolster his campaign, Joe Biden keeps insisting that Democrats aren’t leftist enough to nominate Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Is he really that out of touch with his own party?
Biden recently scolded a reporter from Axios for suggesting that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders – both avowed socialists – are more representative of the Democratic Party today than Biden.
His response: “You guys got it all wrong,” he said. “You all thought that what happened was the party moved extremely to the left after Hillary. AOC was a new party. She’s a bright, wonderful person. But where’s the party? Come on, man.”
In the last Democratic debate, Biden tried to make the same claim when it came to Medicare for All.
“The fact is that right now,” he claimed, “the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for All.”
The truth is, it’s Biden who’s got it all wrong.
His party has been drifting leftward for many years, to the point where it now fully embraces socialist policies that it never would have considered when, say, Biden first ran for president.
Take a look at his claim that most Democrats don’t support Medicare for All. This is demonstrably false.
A November poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 52% of Democrats “strongly favor” Medicare for All, while another 25% “somewhat favors.”
True, a third of Democrats “strongly oppose” Medicare for All. Last time we checked, one-third did not constitute a “vast majority.”
Other polls have come to similar findings. A September NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, for example, showed that 67% of Democrats supported Medicare for All.
Now, it’s true that in previous polls, many Democrats didn’t know what Medicare for All means. Many, for example, thought that they would be able to keep their own private insurance plan under Medicare for All.
But – after months of public debate about the proposed program – what Democrat can claim to be ignorant about the fact that Medicare for All means outlawing private insurance and massive new taxes?
The Democrats’ leftward shift is not new – and it certainly didn’t suddenly occur after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump.
As early as 2013, the Investor’s Business Daily editorial page (the demise of which brought forth Issues & Insights), had been pointing out how extremist Democrats were becoming.
Remember, we’re not talking about party leaders here, we are talking about people who self-identify as Democrats.
A 2017 Pew Research Center report showed that, while Republicans had moved slightly to the right from 1994 and 2017, Democrats had moved wildly to the left. (See the nearby chart.)
A Gallup poll from 2018 showed that, while only slightly more than a third of Americans (37%) had a positive view of socialism, 57% of Democrats did.
When Gallup asked the same question this year, the share of Democrats saying they have a positive view of socialism had climbed to 65%.
Let that sink in for a moment. Two-thirds of Democrats like socialism.
Biden might not think that his party isn’t the party of AOC, but to those who call themselves Democrats today, AOC is their standard-bearer.
So why isn’t this bigger news? Why are Republicans routinely depicted as the party of extremists, and not Democrats?
For the simple reason that the press, the entertainment industry, and academia – the forces that shape and direct the national conversation – are far more leftist than they once were. To them, talk of a government takeover of health care, free college, $40 trillion spending plans, is mainstream.
The more Joe Biden tries to pretend that his party isn’t comprised mainly of radical leftists today, the more out of touch he appears. Not to us. But to those who identify as Democrats.
— Written by John Merline
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And that is why , no matter who the Democrats nominate , a so called moderate or a Socialist, the end result will be the same. A totalitarian government will be what we end up with along with more taxes …
Should the party change its name? “The hostile bartenders” is my suggestion.
Good band name
all the old demons in the rat party are out of touch
they all live in echo chambers
and they all are parasites,that have lived off the taxpayer for many many years
i pray that biden is the nominee
trump will tear him up
and hopefully that will end the demon rat party
imho
“It’s AOC’s Party Now”
Gee, ya’think?
The Hill – Jul 3, 2018
“DNC Chair Tom Perez: [Socialist] Ocasio-Cortez Is “The Future Of Our Party”.
“Sorry Joe”
Biden spoke to reporters in Washington, DC, after addressing the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers: Joe Biden: “I’m Not a ‘Moderate,’ It’s Just That ‘Progressive’ Became ‘Socialist’”
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The most unnoticed aspect of the Democratic Party’s embrace of Socialism is the fact that it is a tacit admission that Liberalism has failed. Otherwise why embrace Socialism? There are very few Liberals remaining in the Democratic Party. First Democrat Liberals got rid of Moderates.
Now the Left is purging Liberals so all that will remain are Hard-Left Socialists.
Don’t dismiss Joe lightly. He’s finger-lickin’ good!
AOC has not a clue as to what she’s doing. Her “Cute Bebooping” down the halls of Capital speaks to her utter ignorance of what her position demands ! Go back to tending bar and leave “Responsible Governing” to the adults and not those who indulge in anti Semetic tropes ! Yet they complain when Trump makes his hateful comments ! Really ? How hypocritical !
The 1994 Contract With America changed the democrat party forever. After the massive electoral victory many conservative democrats switched to Republican. The parties were more defined after that. The democrat party had lost most of the center right members. The media tried to cover it up. Peter Jennings said “America had a temper tantrum”. Pelosi fooled the public in 2006 after a long hate, investigate, repeat campaign that put conservative dems against the hated Republicans. It worked. Then she made them vote for Obamacare and they promptly lost their seats in the nest mid term. She’s trying it again with the most recent hate, investigate, repeat campaign. Hopefully potential and existing dem candidates are remembering history and won’t fall on the sword for Pelosi again. But the dem party has changed forever.
Propaganda, first you should read Marx and find out what a socialist is you have no clue. Second there is no redial left in America. The last radical leftists were the Weathermen and Weather Underground and the SDS. Progressives want what other countries have had for years, medical for all, a living wage and corporate money out of politics. You should also read The Federalistbt Papers, Jefferson and John Lovke because you seem to be confused about what democracy is also. In the Federalist Papers they warned about the power of faction and money subverting democracy. Progressives embody the ideas of the founding fathers and FDR. Everybody and everything obviously including this author for sale is not democracy. This is just anoter propaganda hit peice, nothing more that spews disinformation.
You think the people in Weather Underground, etc, just disappeared suddenly at some point? Or suddenly all realized their ideas were wrong? No, they simply realized that terrorism and violent revolution were not going to work, so they changed their tactics. They began their covert “slow march through the institutions”, the results of which we are seeing today.
It is true that most mistake socialism for social welfare, the latter funded by capitalism. But you cannot deny that today’s democrats (or, “progressives”, if you prefer), have crossed the statist rubicon, and are currently purging the civil libertarians from the democrat party.
Further, you cannot deny that many “progressives” are actively hostile to capitalism: this is and always has been the dogma of the radical left. They may not be pushing for expropriation of the means of production yet, but any thinking person can see where the trend is headed, and it isn’t America’s friend.
Huh. So Alinsky wasn’t one of Obama’s mentors? And the idea that FDR was on the same page as the founders is risable- hell, he wasn’t even in the same library!
Why it’s almost as if the party underwent a fundamental transformation.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other activists can crow now that Amazon has moved to NYC without all of the “incentives” that would have cost the city billions. That how to make a real deal, not Trump bs deal.
You are kidding yourself – this is a small operation that Amazon is bringing in and was always planned. The deal AOC can crow about blocking was 10X this size and would have been a major benefit to the greater area. She is a facade with less know how than a barista.
Things are likely to get worse. Soon graduates will spread from liberal schools, and things will change.
Ha, AOC’s party – that’s a good one! Issues and Insights – clearly you had to pay someone to use this moniker! The Kardashian’s make more of their own decisions than AOC and are apparently more plausible.
If your headline is true then this country is doomed to become Venezuela. This is a woman who graduated with a degree in Economics. A Latino woman and the best job she can find is bar tending?
AOC is economically illiterate, the economics degree that she got must have been for showing up not for any competence in economics.
Did I read that her economics degree has now been rescinded?