New Democrats, The DLC and the Third Way

[djean111]

15. This is what Democrats right here at DU have been taken in by:

The term Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.

This is how a Third Way politician can rope in those who point to social issues like gay marriage and women's rights as excuses for slashing the safety net and increasing the money to the MIC and cutting taxes for corporations and dreadful "trade agreements" like the TPP - the social policies they support do not cost them anything, while tax breaks and subsidies and deregulation of banks and Wall Street and corporate practices strangle the economy.

Even right now - proposed "changes" to student debt - nothing is being done about the amount of the debt, the interest on the debt, the draconian and crushing cost of college - just giving us band-aids. That free community college rhetoric - that is going to pass Congress? Ha! What we are seeing is EU-style austerity being slipped in without the fanfare. Obama has proposed partially privatizing the infrastructure we need so badly to be rebuilt. We KNOW what privatizing does for the public commons. And yet some of us say hey, how fabulous! When Bernie Sanders proposes a lucid way to rebuild infrastructure, give people jobs, invest in America - he is patronizingly dismissed. The austerity beat goes on, and the Third Way Democrats are complicit - no, they are driving it, while the GOP has become a pack of insane Nero's, fiddling while hoping for the flames of war and the total collapse of the safety net. Health insurance has replaced health care. Other countries champion solar energy - here in the good old USA, corporations are trying to strangle it, until, of course, they can make the same profits off of it that they make from using fossil fuels and nuclear plants.

The Clinton supporters have pretty much gone the Third Way - policies have no importance, a few social policies that were advocated are offered as the most important thing, and SCOTUS and lesser evil are actually seen as a reasonable reason for support. Pathetic.

The TPP is being pushed using China as a boogeyman. Hell, China is not going to be stopped by some trade agreements, the only thing that happens with the new trade agreements is global corporatism.

We do not need a "Fourth Way" to accomplish this, all we need is a return to the fundamentals of Keynesianism, a strong commitment to labor, increased spending on social programs (rather than cuts), progressive taxation, and an end to the cancer of privatization that would reduce the commons and the basic needs of the populace (such as health care and drinking water etc.) into the cash cows of profiteers of human suffering

Time to dump the "Third Way" for the unquestionably effective "Democratic way" made successful by the New Deal, The Great Society, and civil liberties. Our party can not serve two masters, the choice is clear, they must serve the financial elite, or the economically struggling populace.

Right now, our party is serving the financial elite.