Defining what has been driving the transformation of the Democratic Party in the current election cycle hasn’t been easy.
Not only is this important to our politics on a national scale, but perhaps in no other place in the country is more emblematic of the challenge than our own Nassau County.
But Time Magazine editor and author Anand Giridharadas just summed it up perfectly:
“Democrats wanted to tell people that they could fight for those at the bottom without making those at the top less powerful. But that has changed, and it’s a significant moment that deserves attention. The great myth of the age of capital was that the people down there were “left behind” by those above them.
Whereas the truth was that those down below were there because people were standing on them. The emerging new consensus recognizes the link between those below and those above. Recognizes that the people down below are there because of those above and that the people above are up there because of how they lock others down. The emerging consensus of the Democrats now rests in a realism about the urgency of fighting plutocracy. “
And the Clinton/Obama/Biden wing of the Democratic Party supported this social and economic construct. From this, the Warren/Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez wing grew, out of revulsion over the results. And the old guard doesn’t seem to be grasping what the implications are, nor will they take responsibility for the outcome.
As an example, the Clinton Foundation may indeed perform good works. But its support depends on a network of a rarefied class of moneyed interests that must be placated and fed to keep it going.
Joe Biden’s first money-raising event was held at a Comcast executive’s home. During his campaign, he seems tone-deaf to the real issues people are facing and thinks his branding as a soft moderate will carry him through.
But lately, his numbers have been slipping as it becomes apparent he doesn’t intend to do anything transformative. To the old guard, that brings a sigh of relief. To the new, “Obama 2.0” isn’t a policy choice, no matter how bizarre the current administration is.
Local Democrats mirror this dynamic with perfect symmetry. Without any sense of the obvious irony, the Nassau Democratic Party created an astroturf “grass roots” organization, and named it “Route 25,” not even realizing how self-incriminating the very name is.
Not only is Route 25 the home of Fendi, Prada, an Aston Martin dealership, a dozen upscale restaurants, then leading into Old Brookville, but the road itself is also the dividing line between the local plutocracy and the rest of the county. Politically speaking, if you don’t live north of 495, you’re roadkill.
And who could blame them? The system has been great for them. Thanks to our property tax system, which would be considered too regressive even for Leona Helmsley’s tastes, they’re living on the backs of the people they claim to be fighting for. Or, if you will, “standing on them.” Without a hint of self-awareness, these people actually flatter themselves as “progressives.”
One of the grandees who formed this organization even boasted to me that he was a “job creator,” parroting Mitt Romney. That’s not even how the economics works, but the attitude is implicit, in that these people are “progressive” solely by reserving for themselves what specific issues they alone choose to support that makes them so, and can’t imagine the level of economic dysfunction and hardship they’re enabling. In fact, they’re completely blind to it.
People still haven’t grasped the meaning of the past 19 years, and how the transformation of the economy begs for a new policy template to deal with it. This next election isn’t about Republican vs. Democrat. It’s going to be what kind of Democrat gets elected, and if they have the will to make the changes to the American social contract we desperately need. It’s no small thing.
Donald Davret
Roslyn
