WE NEED ANOTHER FDR; DEMOCRATS MUST REGAIN THEIR NEW DEAL LEGACY

Don’t let some of the media pundits and so-called “moderates” fool you. In the wake of the defeat of Democrats in a number of races around the country, there has been a stream of lament that they have gone “too far to the left,” (whatever that means!). Example: Virginia Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger remarked last week, “Nobody elected him (Biden) to be FDR. They elected him to be normal and stop the chaos”

But what is normal? A return to an economy that saw 40 years of decline in the quality of life of American working people, with factories closing as billion dollar corporations took their capital and fled to other countries where wages were a fraction of where they are here? Where billionaires and their corporations got away with paying taxes at a lower rate than most middle class Americans? Where government consistently sided with these corporations to bust unions, denying workers the benefits of collective bargaining? Where, despite the Affordable Care Act, some 28 million Americans still don’t have affordable health insurance, the social safety net has been shredded, and millions of Americans have to work at two or three jobs to keep their families afloat? This is precisely the kind 0f “normal” that led a large portion of workers – mostly white workers -to leave the Democratic Party and fall for the racist line the Republicans have been dishing out since Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy.” That’s exactly the formula for a resurgence of another dose of  Trump or another Republican like him.

Two recent articles are highly relevant here. One by John Nichols in The Nation magazine, titled If Biden Doesn’t Govern Like FDR, Democrats Are Doomed.

The other is a New York Times online article, titled The Shadow of Ronald Reagan is Costing us Dearly.