There’s a lot of discussion in a whole bunch of P&R threads of how the Dems are shifting to the left, and younger Americans are more on the left than older, etc., along with a bunch of discussion of “how far is too far” versus “your radical is my centro-fascist”.
Pushing aside all the complexities of policy and all the infinite horse race and media spin cycle stuff, I think at a core thing that is going on is that the center and right in the US for way too long have cried wolf way too hard on way too many ideas/issues, leaving a chunk of the population permanently sick and F’ing tired of hearing “No, we can’t do that…”
For decades we have heard, “We can’t reform health care b/c it costs too much or (insert reason of the day)”
For decades we have heard, “We can’t raise the minimum wage b/c JOBS@!QJOBS!! JOBS!!!”
For decades we have heard, “We can’t spend money b/c the deficit!!! (Oh and look the other way at defense spending, corporate welfare, and unbalanced tax cuts)”
“We can’t reform policing b/c BLUE LIVES MATTER!”
“We can’t help the poor b/c (insert racist or Calvinist reason of the minute)”
“We can can’t help ‘those people’ b/c ditto-see above”
“We can’t fix student loan debt.”
“We can’t reduce pollution.”
“We can’t improve the environment.”
“Can’t.” – “No.” – “Too costly!” – etc. etc. etc. ad fucking nauseum.
And that IMO has led us to the current situation. There are plenty of prudent, intelligent, policy-wonk, utilitarian, and empiric reasons to be at least semi-skeptical of some of the more lefty ideas in the current milieu and yet I think I’ve personally reached a point where I’m just done with that shit.
What specifically prompted this post was this Kevin Drum post but I feel this way about a bunch of stuff, not just student loans: deficit concern, MMT-anxiety, wealth-tax-phobia, and on and on and on. I’ve read Drum for years, mostly favorably and he’s only a few years older than me, but when I read that post, my response was mentally “OK Boomer.”
In fact, I think “OK Boomer” kind of epitomizes a chunk of the population that has been cried wolf to for decades and is just done with that shit. “OK, say-no-people”. “OK We Can’t Afford That people” “OK How Are You Going to Pay For That people”. (For values of “OK” that really mean “Fuck You I’m ignoring your bullshit”)
It’s like this: saying “No we can’t do that” can be just as foolish, dangerous and wasteful as saying “Yeah, let’s go for it” but for a bunch of reasons we seem to have a built in No-bias (at least in recent decades). And I’m personally pretty much done with that.
On that note, if my preferred candidate Warren falls out of contention, I’m going to switch to Bernie even though he’s old cranky, and has issues. F’ em if they can’t take a joke.
Edit: Mods please move this to P&R. I intended it to be in P&R and made a mistake. I apologize profusely for an inconvenience my spontaneous posting spree has caused.