[rad-green] OK Obama... Time to Cancel Radical Centrism

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/21/ok-obama-time-cancel-radical-centrism
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/21/ok-obama-time-cancel-radical-centrism>Truthdig
        November 21, 2019*





*OK Obama... Time to Cancel Radical CentrismSo-called "centrists" are
terrified that if the Democratic nominee is far to the left of Biden and
Obama, they will be forced to coalesce around a candidate who represents a
threat to the establishment of which they are a part.by Sonali Kolhatkar*

[image: U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and U.S. Vice President Joseph
Biden sit during a meeting with Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew, Secretary
of Labor Thomas Perez, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of
the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, Secretary of Commerce Penny
Pritzker, and Trade Representative Michael Froman in the Oval Office of the
White House December 16, 2013 in Washington, DC. According to the White
House, Obama was meeting about trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP). (P]

*U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden sit
during a meeting with Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew, Secretary of Labor
Thomas Perez, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of the
National Economic Council Gene Sperling, Secretary of Commerce Penny
Pritzker, and Trade Representative Michael Froman in the Oval Office of the
White House December 16, 2013 in Washington, DC. According to the White
House, Obama was meeting about trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP). (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)*

As we gear up for next year’s presidential race, the only political class
in the United States that may be as terrified of losing power as the
Republican Party is that of centrist Democrats. Former President Barack
Obama
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/16/20968290/obama-2020-democratic-presidential-primary>
embodied
this fear in his recent remarks at an event for wealthy liberal donors when
he said, “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear
down the system and remake it.” It was a not-so-veiled reference to the
rising chorus of demands for a “Medicare for All” health care system, a
climate action plan like the Green New Deal or taxes on billionaires that
redistribute some of their obscene wealth.

Obama’s statements prompted a backlash on Twitter under the hashtag “
#TooFarLeft
<https://www.foxnews.com/politics/left-turns-on-obama-for-challenging-calls-to-tear-down-the-system>,”
with people asserting that if their demands for drastic solutions to solve
our many serious problems are seen as too far left, then so be it. It was
the second time in the last few weeks that the former president, who still
enjoys a great deal of popularity, admonished leftist activists. At an
event in late October, he said
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html>,
“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always
politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff … you should get over that quickly.”
He was referring to what an older and more conservative generation of
Americans have denounced as “cancel culture
<https://www.insidehook.com/article/internet/youthsplaining-everything-you-need-to-know-about-cancel-culture>”
on the left.

Presumably, Obama feels threatened by not just the vocal left flank of his
party’s base, but also by the two most popular presidential candidates who
generally embody leftist politics: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who consistently draw more cumulative
support in polls
<https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/471074-poll-biden-holds-12-point-lead-over-sanders>
than
the centrist front-runner, Joe Biden, Obama’s former second-in-command.
Obama’s view is the reason millennials have adopted scathing retorts like “OK
Boomer
<https://www.vox.com/2019/11/19/20963757/what-is-ok-boomer-meme-about-meaning-gen-z-millennials>.”
They are tired of being told to shut up about injustice.

Centrists are terrified that if the Democratic nominee is far to the left
of Biden and Obama, they will be forced to coalesce around a candidate who
represents a threat to the establishment of which they are a part. The
unflappable Sanders brushed aside Obama’s criticism in an interview
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/obama-left-democrats-2020.html> with
The New York Times, saying, “When I talk about raising the minimum wage to
a living wage, I’m not tearing down the system. We’re fighting for
justice.” On the health care front, he added, “When I talk about … ending
the embarrassment of America being the only major country on earth that
does not guarantee health care for every man, woman and child, that’s not
tearing down the system. That’s doing what we should have done 30 years
ago.” His words resonate with the millions of Americans who are struggling
every day, but they grate on the nerves of those who have thrived in our
unequal society.

In a nutshell, American politics have tilted our economic system so far in
favor of wealthy elites—and this has been by and large a bipartisan
project—that establishment lawmakers are really the ones guilty of “tearing
down” a modest (if flawed) system that once upon a time distributed riches
more fairly
<https://rooseveltinstitute.org/effective-progressive-tax-rates-1950s/>.
When Americans—the vast majority of whom are not millionaires—read reports
like this one
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/08/first-time-history-us-billionaires-paid-lower-tax-rate-than-working-class-last-year/>
showing
that “[f]or the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax
rate than the working class last year,” for Obama to ask us to not tear
down the system is deeply insulting. The system has already been
destroyed—by billionaires and their backers in Congress and the White
House, including Obama.

In realizing that Sanders’ and Warren’s popularity is indicative of a
widespread anger at the status quo, wealthy elites are understandably
worried. In their clumsy attempts to defend their unimaginable riches (what
actual difference does it make to someone’s lifestyle if he or she has $100
million versus $1 billion?), some are attempting to equate their plight
with ours. The billionaire Wall Street executive Leon Cooperman
<https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/23/elizabeth-warren-corporate-america-055142>
has
complained bitterly about his pariah status, saying, “What is wrong with
billionaires? You can become a billionaire by developing products and
services that people will pay for,” as if that’s all it took for him to
gather his disgustingly large fortune. Cooperman conveniently left out the
unfair tax rates, offshore tax havens, taxpayer subsidies and all the other
ways in which the government rigs the system to favor people like him at
our expense. He denounced Warren’s wealth tax, saying, “I believe in a
progressive income tax and the rich paying more. But this is the fucking
American dream she is shitting on.”

Others have gone as far as to label candidates like Warren and Sanders the
left-wing equivalents of Donald Trump. One person, identified as a
“prominent Wall Street hedge fund manager and Democratic bundler who is
raising money for a Warren rival,” said about the Massachusetts senator,
“It’s the same thing Republicans went through with Trump. You look at her
and think what she is going to do is going to be horrible for the country.
But if you say anything about it, you just make her stronger.”

So flustered are the superrich that they have taken to running their own
candidates at a relatively late stage in the game. Former New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently joined the race, has so much personal
wealth at his command that he doesn’t even need to raise campaign funds and
plans to spend $100 million on anti-Trump ads
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-2020-ads.html>.
Thrilled Wall Street executives are lining up to back him
<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/19/wall-street-executives-line-up-behind-possible-mike-bloomberg-2020-run.html>
.

Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick—another newcomer to a
hugely crowded field—has said he will not turn down donations made through
super PACs, at a time when other candidates are eschewing
<https://campaignlegal.org/update/no-pac-money-pledges-are-doesnt-mean-big-money-out-understanding-no-pac-pledges>
what
they see as tainted money. Patrick also has centered his candidacy around
defending corporations and capitalism, saying, in an interview with The
Associated Press <https://apnews.com/0e2787296dee47ba9b32d86e3edf5d99>,
“There’s a lot of good that gets done by private interests investing in the
country.” The AP story reminded us that Patrick “served as counsel to an
oil and gas company, on the board of a subprime lending company and most
recently worked for Bain Capital, the private equity company that became an
albatross around Republican Mitt Romney’s neck during his presidential
campaign in 2012 after President Barack Obama painted the company as
ruthless toward middle-class workers.”

The top two centrists among Democratic candidates—Biden and South Bend,
Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg—have been working vainly to rise to the top of
the crowded field of candidates. Biden’s star may be fading
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-faces-the-trump-fusillade-are-he-and-his-campaign-up-to-it/2019/09/28/3c30dfaa-e164-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html>
as
the unethical (if not illegal) position that his son Hunter
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hunter-biden-says-role-with-ukraine-firm-was-poor-judgment-but-not-improper/2019/10/15/2aca7ade-eef0-11e9-8693-f487e46784aa_story.html>
assumed
on the board of a Ukrainian oil and gas company continues to make
headlines. The former vice president also just can’t help putting his foot
in his mouth, as his most recent out-of-touch comments about marijuana
being a “gateway drug” illustrated
<https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa75mg/joe-biden-thinks-weed-is-a-gateway-drug>
.

While Buttigieg’s star may be rising, he is facing a struggle with black
voters, whose support is critical to the Democratic Party. Beyond the
simplistic
and racist claim
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/08/ugly-lie-about-black-voters-pete-buttigieg/>
that
black voters are uncomfortable with an openly gay candidate, he has had trouble
with criminal justice issues
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-south-bend-police.html>
in
South Bend and now faces scrutiny
<https://theintercept.com/2019/11/15/pete-buttigieg-campaign-black-voters/>
over
falsifying support from black voters in South Carolina.

In the coming months, we will hear a lot from centrist forces in the
Democratic Party about unifying behind a single candidate in order to beat
Trump. But we will be told that such a candidate can only be a moderate
centrist who will compromise with Republicans and essentially maintain a
less racist status quo, or a pre-Trump status quo. Centrists will blame
voters for being reckless and will themselves refuse to unify around a
Sanders or Warren candidacy.

At the event where Obama chastised the left, he also claimed, “It turns out
people are cautious, because they don’t have a margin for error.” It is as
if Obama entirely missed the 2016 election triumph of the least cautious
presidential candidate in recent memory. “People” are not cautious; those
who want to preserve inequality are the cautious ones, and no amount of
wishful thinking on their part will change the reality that their time is
over.

Sonali Kolhatkar <http://www.commondreams.org/author/sonali-kolhatkar> is a
columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and executive
producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs
on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV, Roku) and Pacifica stations KPFK,
KPFA, and affiliates. She is the former founder, host and producer of KPFK
Pacifica’s popular morning drive-time program “Uprising." She is also the
co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission
<http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/>, a U.S.-based non-profit solidarity
organization that funds the social, political, and humanitarian projects of
RAWA. She is the author, with James Ingalls, of "*Bleeding Afghanistan:
Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583227318?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1583227318>*"
(2006).

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