Debunking the Spin: Voters Want Change, Not “Centrism”

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/05-4

***SNIP


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Unless something surprising happens, Terry McAuliffe will win Virginia’s governor’s race, Bill De Blasio will become New York City’s mayor, and Governor Chris Christie will win an easy reelection in New Jersey.

Here’s another prediction: De Blasio’s victory will be dismissed by most pundits, while Christie’s and especially McAuliffe’s will be touted as a vindication of “centrist” politics. We’ll hear new calls for something called “bipartisanship,” a term applied to policies which are opposed by most of the electorate but have the support of corporate-backed officials from both parties. “Bipartisan” policies include unpopular cuts to Medicare and Social Security, a reluctance to invest in jobs and growth, and unseemly and harmful tax breaks for corporations.

Once again we’ll hear that Democrats must return to the “third way” Clinton-style corporate centrism of years gone by. We’ll be told that voters have rejected progressive and populist politics, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is “living in the past.”

Actually, it’s the third way-ers who are living in the past. The old triangulating Democratic Party won its victories in the 1990s, when our economy, our society, and our prospects for the future were very different.

Let’s look at those races without the distorting filter of an insular insider’s bias.

[gopiscrap]

1. Exactly

[uponit7771]

2. Voters need to vote in FDRs 83% democratic congress, we'll get change faster than one can blink

[xchrom]

3. kick