Our future is center-left not far-left. The business community and DLC, not OWS

[Douglas Carpenter]

20. the current economic model is not sustainable and cannot possibly sustainably provide a western

Last edited Tue Dec 11, 2012, 02:33 AM - Edit history (1)

standard of living for the majority of a nation with a population of 300,000,000 + people. The DLC model is far closer to the Mitt Romney economic model than either the traditional New Deal model or even the George Romney liberal Republican model. It was a so-called center-left administration that pushed through the trade agreements that killed most of what of remained of America as an industrial exporter. It was a so-called center-left administration - working together graciously in a spirit of bipartisanship with their Republicans colleagues in Congress that signed into law much of the deregulation of the financial industry thus setting the stage for the greatest economic meltdown since the great depression. It was a so-called center-left administration that killed off much of what remained of the reforms of the New Deal and the Geat Society.

We are now in a political framing where being liberal or being labeled as a radical socialist by Fox News and the Republican party is simply declaring that we are going to essentially do the Republican policy - but we will be a bit more incremental about it. How can any progress be made when we approach an argument that way?

OWS for all of its failing framed the election to a large extent. People did NOT adopt a disliking for Mitt Romney because they thought he was a right-wing ideologue. Clearly very few people saw him that way. They acquired a disliking for Mtt Romney because he incarnates the new capitalism - where wealth is not acquired by making things, opening factories and providing jobs. Wealth is acquired by grand crap shoots where simple roles of the dices close down factories, destroys jobs and end futures. The Democrats very successfully and frankly quite hypocritically capitalized on this and successfully painted Mitt Romney with that brush. But truth be told for the last few decades the Mitt Romney capitalist model has been barely distinguishable from the centrist Democratic Party model. This may have worked for an election cycle - in fact a few election cycles. But you cannot fool the people forever. At some point that are going to want to see real differences and the real differences are not achievable by continuing down the same perfidious model of largely non-productive casino capitalism that has led to the unsustainable trap of unsustainable economic fluff that drives our current economy and makes a mess of the whole world ever widdening the gaps between the haves and the have-nots in an approach to capitalism that does not work because it cannot work. Let the professional class of politicians high-five each other for their politics of gimmicks and slogans while little of real change ever actually happens - Let those of who are interested in politics for reason "Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward and come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world,"