Yes, the Democratic debate last night was certainly a food fight and the candidates had nothing new to say for themselves. The candidates are also getting a little testy out there. But the debate was illuminating nonetheless and pointed a way forwards. Joe Biden gave a very solid performance. He clearly laid out a tax package that made sense, more so than any of the others, and even though no one bothers to mention that Warren's wealth tax is unconstitutional. Biden has to do well in South Carolina and then the media, who are very fickle, and are at the moment conceding the race to Bernie, who they found to have a lot of integrity until it seemed possible he might actually triumph as the nominee and surely to be beaten by Trump, may will come to recoil from Bernie and reconsider the Veep. Mayor Mike had a worse night than was even expected and did not come up with answers to questions he knew he would face. When Elizabeth asked him to release women from their NDA's, he should have said NDAs are not a bad thing and that the #metoo movement had in fact thought women should get training in negotiating them. So where did Elizabeth stand on that? Bloomberg should also have said that Stop and Frisk was a policy supported by many Black politicians because it was a way of protecting little Black girls from being killed by random or drive-by shooters. For some reason or other, New York City Mayors, like Lindsay and Guiliani, never make it in national politics. Mayor LaGuardia became Mayor after serving as an influential Congressman in Washington.
Bloomberg is too conservative for my tastes, too willing to allow Wall Street to proceed as it does when it needs more regulation, but he is quite good on social issues. He is a kind of Rockefeller Republican, and Mayor Pete got off the best line of the night when he said that he doesn't want a Republican as the Democratic nominee nor does he want a Democratic Socialist; he wants a Democrat as the Democratic nominee. Amen-- though that, to my mind, means Biden, not Buttigieg. Amy and Pete sparred with one another over nothing, such as a memory lapse over the name of the Mexican President, and so neither one of them came across as being serious. So let us not give up hope because politicians are for a moment being politicians rather than rising to the stature of statesmen, which is what going against Trump will bring out. That applies to all of them, that is, with the exception of Bernie, who cannot give up his being a Sixties activist, where it is charming to note his grumpy consistency over the years, but is a bit scary in a Presidential candidate. Bernie says, after all, that he doesn't believe that there should even be billionaires. That is consistent with his way of thinking and he doesn't intend to execute anyone, but it is not the direction in which the country wants to move, which is just away from Trump. Still plenty of time, which means until Super Tuesday. Democrats have that time to come to their senses and I don’t know what will happen to the country if they don’t.
What with the Bernie surge, it might be useful to revisit the question of what it means to be a Democratic Socialist, lest that topic be pursued only by Conservatives who, knowingly or unknowingly, confuse it with Communism or authoritarianism. Democratic Socialism comes in two varieties, both of which believe in free elections and a full complement of civil liberties, and so a government restricted in what it can do. One version supports the nationalization of the means of production, and that happened in Great Britain under the labor government of Clement Atleee, who nationalized the coal mines and the railroads and created the National Health Service. Some of his initiatives were undone by Margaret Thatcher, but the nationalization of health and education remains, which suggests that the the heart of Democratic Socialism is not the nationalization of production but of key services which have come to be considered the birthright of every citizen. A second version of Democratic Socialism is simply the institution of very high taxes on all segments of the population so that key services, from day care to old age homes, are provided by the government. That happens in most Scandanavian countries.
Which of these is Bernie’s route? He doesn’t say, focussing instead on a national health insurance plan, perhaps because that is the easiest socialist program to sell, even if it has not turned out that easy to do that. Bernie does not say which industries should be nationalized, though one might think that a good candidate would be the social media industry, which is full of abuses and in need of regulation and which has become ubiquitous in everyday life in the past twenty years. It should be like a public utility, and so available to everyone and regulated in a way so that it is unobtrusive, though how to do that without violating principles of free speech is a very difficult question. Or if Bernie simply means that democratic socialism will mean cradle to grave social services, he doesn’t even speculate about how high taxes will have to go so as to pay for that, and how such taxes will be distributed. A progressive system with a relatively low income still subject to taxation? A very high tax rate on the wealthy so that the fortunes of billionaires are indeed confiscated, as might happen with a steep death tax? The term Democratic Socialist is not benign, though it also need not be malevolent, but we are entitled to know what Bernie means when he says he is in favor of a revolution, lest we vote for one we do not want.
And then there is Elizabeth Warren, whose plans for everything garnered only very brief review before the primary debates moved beyond that. Her wealth tax is still unconstitutional and she has hedged on how she will roll out her health care plan. But her reputation as the one with a plan for everything has prevailed as her image. Now, her supporters, such as Caroline Fraser, in the New York Review of Books, move on to other matters. She quotes all the evidence that shows women and not just men are reluctant to vote for a woman and then suggests dismissing all that because that would be to indulge in a self-fulfilling prophecy, making it come true, when the point is that misogyny is real and out there and so not to be dismissed at all. Moreover, Fraser suggests that Warren has indeed been beaten down by misogyny and so is less forthright than she might otherwise be. That is a big confession, suggesting that she is not presidential material. A President has to be beyond such character problems, though any of the candidates have more character than the present President.
So, in my view, the two Progressives spell disaster and the party should settle on one of the centrist men if they want to beat Trump and, let’s face it, that is the real issue. I would vote for a two-headed chicken if it got the Democratic nomination, but most of the country doesn’t feel that way. They need a reason other than how awful Trump is to vote for his opponent, and so give them someone they can at least minimally find acceptable in his own right. That’s politics.