The real villains are not just Republicans. The song they sing now is the same as before. Nothing there has changed--and the song was never sung in earnest to begin with. All the evidence you need is in Monica Prasad's 2018 Starving the Beast (https://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19986). She notes that tax cuts and deficits in combination never represented a true theory of economics, just a Republican talking points playbook strategy.
With that out of the way, we can now recognize that the real enemy is not Republicans. It's fiscal hawks in the Democratic Party, who are among the worst-informed of political operators, from the Russia-destroying Larry Summers, to the Goldman Saks-friendly Tim Geithner to the utterly self-serving corporate raider Pete Peterson. These are not friends of the party, and Biden's decision (for now) to stand on the side of American workers (both the poor and working middle class) is a good one morally, economically, and finally it seems politically.
What's helped enormously is how effectively small money donors have begun to crowd out (or successfully outcompete) big money donors. Bloomberg was no Ross Perot in the end. Nor was Tom Steyer or Howard Schulz. (I don't think even Trump spent much of his own money, to be honest).
In the end, this is a good thing for Democrats (and, yes, even potentially Republicans) since this circumstance returns competition for money into competition for individual voters' attention instead of the usual a-- kissing of the $50,000/plate dinner.
The real villains are not just Republicans. The song they sing now is the same as before. Nothing there has changed--and the song was never sung in earnest to begin with. All the evidence you need is in Monica Prasad's 2018 Starving the Beast (https://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19986). She notes that tax cuts and deficits in combination never represented a true theory of economics, just a Republican talking points playbook strategy.
With that out of the way, we can now recognize that the real enemy is not Republicans. It's fiscal hawks in the Democratic Party, who are among the worst-informed of political operators, from the Russia-destroying Larry Summers, to the Goldman Saks-friendly Tim Geithner to the utterly self-serving corporate raider Pete Peterson. These are not friends of the party, and Biden's decision (for now) to stand on the side of American workers (both the poor and working middle class) is a good one morally, economically, and finally it seems politically.
What's helped enormously is how effectively small money donors have begun to crowd out (or successfully outcompete) big money donors. Bloomberg was no Ross Perot in the end. Nor was Tom Steyer or Howard Schulz. (I don't think even Trump spent much of his own money, to be honest).
In the end, this is a good thing for Democrats (and, yes, even potentially Republicans) since this circumstance returns competition for money into competition for individual voters' attention instead of the usual a-- kissing of the $50,000/plate dinner.
Pretty radical, indeed, I'd say.