(10-21-2018 05:42 PM)bullet Wrote:  http://www.atimes.com/the-democrats-glob...n-dilemma/

Interesting read on the Democrats internal struggles with globalization.

"...On trade displacement, the Republicans have by and large fallen into line with “Lighthizerism,” named after Trump’s chief trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, who “scorns the multilateral approach in favor of bilateralism, or deals between two nations to lower barriers,” aggressively deploying tariffs ostensibly to level the playing field and re-domicile supply chains back to the United States. It may not work, but it plays well in the US Rust Belt, states the Democrats have to reclaim if they are to become a majority party again.

For Democrats, that means taking on some of their own donor constituencies, such as Silicon Valley or Wall Street. It means confronting globalization in a manner focused on the impact of the American worker’s displacement (rather than simply accommodating employers who insist that domestic workers lack requisite skills for the jobs they offer)...."



The major challenge facing Democrats is that race, gender, identity politics, and religion appear to trump economics, at least as far as politically engaged primary-election voters go. The old-line Democrats were an economic liberal party with socially conservative and socially liberal wings (the social liberals, in fact, were in a minority). The new Democrats are a socially liberal party with an economic conservative wing (neoliberals) and a progressive economic wing.

They all agree on social issues. They are loath to compromise on open borders (which is what the existing immigration dysfunction de facto gives us), transgender bathrooms, making room for pro-life members, or gay married couples’ wedding cakes because those are the only issues that hold their economic right and economic left together.

The electoral challenge is that social liberals, particularly the avant-garde ones, remain a minority in the US. The polls obviously lie. Lots of voters tell pollsters what they are expected to say about various social issues in which the liberal position is the only respectable one and then vote for Republicans (which helps to explain why polls consistently understated the popularity of Trump in 2016 and likely do so today as well)...."

I wouldn't sell bilateralism short between neighbors and friends. Multilateralism has not been kind to the U.S. long term economic position. It has however provided political cover for dealing with potential enemies.

I don't evidence of any kind of moderate economic position within the current Democratic party and think that most of those may not call themselves Republican but vote like Republicans.

I even think that the sympathies of Libertarians shun the totalitarian views of the agrieved cult of victimization crowd that now runs the Democratic party.

And don't sell short the number of our countrymen who have now eschewed telling the truth to any pollsters, because when tagged to a phone number their replies are hardly confidential. And those who work within corporations with CEO's that back the radicals politically will never publicly speak truthfully of how they vote. It has already been shown how vindictive some of those S.O.B.'s are.

Voting is a private matter and Americans in vast numbers are now simply responding to polls to either mess with them, or outright just tell them what they want to hear. I happen to think this is a fantastic rebellion against corporate attempts to manipulate public opinion and therefore public policy.