Nomadland Exposes the Middle-Class Rip-Off

[misanthrope]

34. Just the other day on this forum

Someone noted and took exception with Thomas Frank's observation to Bill Maher that President Bill Clinton pushed the Democratic Party rightward in the 1990s, that neoliberals took advantage of the zeitgeist for their own political survival instead of trying to stick with an older-style, progressive mindset. Posters in the thread called Frank to task, saying Clinton did what had to be done, or called Frank's portrayal erroneous.

But Clinton was riding the Reagan wave when he came up with easy phrases like "the era of Big Government is over." Regardless of the nuts and bolts of policy, it sounded as if the Democratic Party leadership was ready to move away from the New Deal and Great Society perspectives that had governed it for the last two-thirds of the 20th century.

That's what happens when tribalism supersedes ideals. It has haunted political parties for centuries. Threaten a coalition with political irrelevance and they will often sell their soul to guard against it.

President Biden, in some ways, is hewing closer to the Democratic Party as it was in his youth, when he first came into office. What he wants to do now would have been considered pretty normal in the 1970s. Not so much now, not in the wake of four decades of too much Democratic acquiescence to America's rightward drift.