Democrats fall flat with 'Latinx' language

[betsuni]

98. Yes, used to put liberals/Democrats in the "Them" category, not progressive, both sides.

People keep insisting the word still means what it used to. It's not used that way anymore.

It has a new meaning same as "progressive" (anti-establishment/righteous/moral) "establishment" (the Democratic Party/corrupt/immoral) "status quo" (money in politics, the Democratic Party is beholden to wealthy donors/corporations, has same economic politics as Republicans). "FDR Democrat" relabels the New Deal as democratic socialism, the true legacy the Democratic Party which the progressives will take back ("transform" ) from the establishment neoliberal capitalist elites. The populist revolution has its own special vocabulary and its own fantasy history.

"Corporate Dems" is the new "neoliberal" insult, but it's still around. Saw it yesterday here.

"The ubiquitous epithet is intended to separate its target -- liberals -- from the values they claim to espouse. By relabeling self-identified liberals as 'neoliberals,' their critics on the left accuse them of betraying the historic liberal cause. Its basic claim is that, from the New Deal through the Great Society, the Democratic Party espoused a set of values defined by, or at the very least consistent with social democracy or socialism. Then, starting in the 1970s, a coterie of neoliberals, hijacked the party and redirected its course toward a brand of social liberalism targeted to elites and hostile to the interests of the poor and the working class."

But it isn't true, the party hasn't move right for the last forty years. A radicalized Republican Party has shifted right. Both siding it presents socialism as the only progressive choice.

"This chart indicates that Democrats have not moved right since the New Deal at all. Indeed, the party has moved somewhat to the left, largely because its conservative Southern wing has disappeared. ... The cause of liberalizing international trade, which left-wing critics have treated as a corporate-friendly Clinton innovation, is one Roosevelt not only supported consistently, but basically invented."

A radicalized Republican Party put both presidents Clinton and Obama in a defensive position, bipartisanship now impossible unlike what both FDR and LBJ had: "It is seductive to attribute these frustrations to tactical mistakes or devious betrayals of party leaders. But it is the political climate that has grown more hostile to Democratic Party economic liberalism. The party's ideological orientation has barely changed. ... The uselessness of 'neoliberalism' as an analytic tool is the very thing that makes it useful as a factional messaging device for the left."

From "How 'Neoliberal' Became the Left's Favorite Insult of Liberals" New York Magazine