It is not that better medical care and affordable college belong outside the perimeter of civilized political discourse. It is that some proffered answers to these challenges make sense, whereas others don't. It is that most Americans sense, at a glance, the deceptiveness of the promise to load their table with great gooey slices of pie in the sky: expecting voter gratitude in return. . . .
"One of the really cool things about democracy is that voters tend to get what they want -- which, um, can also turn out to be one of the really uncool things about democracy. A thing of real terror, if you want the truth.
"I tiptoe past the presidential election of 2016 on my way to look at the democratic socialist surge that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped produce, supposedly, with her surprise primary victory in June over U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley of Queens and the Bronx.
"So lavish, so gosh-durned ecstatic, are readings of the Ocasio-Cortez victory that, lo, last week the victorious candidate took to the trail with Bernie Sanders himself, hailing the new political dimension for which the two suppose Americans yearn.
"In Wichita, Kansas, where candidate Ocasio-Cortez took up the cudgels for two local progressives, she and her "unapologetically left-wing message" (in the words of a New York Times correspondent) received whoops and huzzahs. "Change takes guts," she said. "What you have shown me, and what we will show in the Bronx, is that working people in Kansas share the same values -- the same values -- as working people anywhere else."
" Well, we might want to keep certain things in mind, starting with the words "unapologetically leftwing message." American voters show a marked distaste for unapologetically left-wing messages, just as they do for unapologetically right-wing messages: however you define either one." . . .
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| Tony Branco |
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