John Delaney (a finance friendly millionaire) wants to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, and he thinks he knows how to win: “Medicare for all may sound good but it’s actually not good policy nor is it good politics.” It’s an idea so unpopular with California Democrats that it attracted a full minute of heartfelt boos when he assayed it last weekend.
Then there’s John Hickenlooper, whose big line, “socialism is not the answer” (as a way of explaining why the Green New Deal should not be promoted) also attracted a sustained chorus of boos.
Hickenlooper later explained that while he might personally not be so down on the Green New Deal and other policies put forward by the Democratic Socialist wing of the party, he was worried that “Republicans will make it seem like socialism.”
Because apparently Hickenlooper thinks that the job of Democrats is to make Republicans comfortable.
It’s another example of the true polarization in America: policies with broad popular support that undo corruption, save the planet and unwind wealth concentration; versus political “leaders” who share a bipartisan consensus that none of these are possible and the best we can hope for is that our government will act as a kind of aristocratic House of Lords that tugs gently at the golden chains that our eternal monarchs deign to submit to in a post-climate-change wasteland where most of us are valued only as organ donors for our social betters.