From the OP article (thanks ND-Dem!)~
...Championing the 99 percent at the expense of the 1 percent, by contrast, is not a battle that Democrats have been waging—at least not since Franklin Roosevelt’s time.
The economic arrangements put in place by the New Deal created a broadly shared prosperity that enabled Democrats to focus on extending civil and economic rights to those left out of the New Deal’s social contract. That was their mission, their default mode, throughout the second half of the 20th century, and into the 21st. It assumed no need to rework the fundamentals of American capitalism. The system worked reasonably well, at least for most Americans. The Democrats’ task was to help the minority of Americans whom the system failed.
...The Beltway wisdom is that those who favor such an assault constitute a discrete liberal minority of the larger public. The Beltway wisdom is wrong. The exit poll of November’s midterm voters—36 percent of whom identified as Republicans, while just 35 percent said they were Democrats—included a question as to whether the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy or is fair to most Americans. Fully 63 percent said it generally favored the wealthy, while just 32 percent said it was fair. Even 46 percent of Republicans said it favored the rich....
And from a
Daily Kos poster, a good point is made that this aligning with Wall Street (neoliberals) has demonstrably hurt Democratic party numbers in Congress~
__________
"If we're going to be a reality-based community, let's look at how many Dems there were in Congress in 1977 and how many fewer there were by 1981. Let's look at how many Dems there were in Congress in 1993 and how many fewer there were in 1995 (and through the rest of WJC's presidency). Let's look at how many Dems there were Congress in 2009, how the House was lost in 2 years, and how the Senate was decisively lost 4 years later.
From 1933-80, Dems pretty well owned Congress. GOP never controlled either house for consecutive Congresses. Dems held 61 Senate seats and 292 House seats in 1977, they lost a net of 15 Senate seats and 49 House seats in next 2 cycles. Since then, GOP has held both houses for 18 of 36 years.
I see no reason for this established historic trend to change if Dems elect a 4th neoliberal president."
__________
= new reply since forum marked as read
