I just read a comment in a debate diary that really got me thinking. Here it is:
“A strong Progressive?” Only on another planet where cotton candy is a delicacy.
Tonight’s ringer was that she wanted to be president “for the struggling and the successful.” Sounds good, wins applause, but yet again is just another hollow platitude and outright fallacious.
You can’t be for the poor and the rich at the same time. It’s impossible.
That, in a nutshell, is Bernie Sanders’ problem, and why he can’t get elected as the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. Sanders, and many of his followers, see only a single issue in this election, income inequality, and for them, that statement rings true. For others, though, it is his greatest weakness, and patently false.
You can’t be for the rich and the poor at the same time if your only goal is to equalize income. If you ask only a single question, “who gets the money,” every other question is answered. It answers why rich people give to a candidate — to keep their money. It answers why corporations give to a candidate — to keep wages low. It explains why white people give to a candidate — to keep the bigger piece of the pie. It explains why men give to a candidate — to keep the glass ceiling in place.
But it doesn’t explain anything in the real world, where there are many issues.
Rich people want clean air, too.
Corporations want fair trade and the ability to compete while paying American workers a decent wage.
White people want black people to be able to walk the streets without fear of being shot, to be able to get jobs based on their skills, not their skin color or name, and so much more.
Men want their wives, their daughters, and just plain other people to have the same opportunities they do.
You see, there are so very many questions in a presidential election.
If Republicans take over the Supreme Court, we return to Lochner, with no overtime, no OSHA, no minimum wage, no child labor laws, no unions, a nightmare of serfdom for all. There are a whole lot of people who care about that for a whole lot of reasons, unless you’re blind to it because you ask only one question, and when you answer it you do so with a cartoon-character “oligarch” in your head, instead of real people with full lives and many concerns.
If Republicans take over all three branches we don’t just lose abortion. We lose contraception as well. Perhaps not outright, but combine “conscience” clauses with active protests against any pharmacy dispensing, along with individual States having the ability to outlaw it, and we have a recipe for a return to the pre-pill days of women trapped by their biology. The fat-cat robber baron cartoon from the turn of the 19th century might not care, but the real-life person, even if he has money, has a wife, a daughter, a valuable co-worker, with two X chromosomes, has made family planning decisions himself, and knows that would turn us back by a century or more.
If Republicans take over, black people know the war on drugs will ramp back up again, affirmative action will gasp its last, Brown v. Board will he a historical footnote, and voting will be a crime. Income inequality is certainly important, but staying alive long enough to earn an income, getting enough of an education to earn an income, those have to come first.
There are people in the LGBT community with money. Some, Dog forbid, even work in banks, or on Wall Street. When you claim, while twirling your mustache in an evil manner, that “Clinton is owned by Wall Street,” based upon contributions from people who work there, you ignore the fact that those contributions come from people. Some might even be LGBT people who know that they will be violently forced back into the closet if Republicans win in 2016. If your only lens is income inequality, you don’t think about that. But if you realize the world is a big, complicated place, you do.
And about those “rich” people you can’t be for if you care about the poor. Warren Buffet is rich, and he knows that income inequality is a terrible problem that must be fixed. George Soros is rich, and he knows that Democrats will create a more fair economy than Republicans. There are quite a lot of rich people who know that opportunity must be created for all. The cartoon in your head of “rich” isn’t rich people. It’s a cartoon. Do some fit it? Sure. For every caricature there is somebody who is the archetype. But that doesn’t mean everybody is. There are rich people who care about income inequality, just as there are poor people who DON’T care about racial inequality. Can you say “you can’t be for the poor and the LGBT at the same time — it’s impossible,” because there are a lot of poor bigots? Of course not. People are people, some good, some bad.
You can be for the rich and the poor at the same time.
Rich and poor care about income inequality.
Rich and poor care about clean air.
Rich and poor care about worker safety.
Rich and poor care about workers’ rights.
Rich and poor care about LGBT equality.
Rich and poor care about racial equality.
Rich and poor care about gender equality.
Rich and poor care about the climate.
Rich and poor care about education.
Rich and poor care about national security.
Rich and poor care about, well people.
If you make income inequality not just the only issue, but also the only question, you fall into the same trap Republicans fall into when they talk tax policy. In a vacuum, with just the single question — tax more or less — answers are always easy. More regulations equal less profit. Higher minimum wage equals less profit. Etc. But the world is complicated. Higher minimum wage means more money in the economy and more profit. More regulations mean greater customer confidence in your product, leading to more sales, leading to greater profit. They don’t think that way because it doesn’t fit their agenda.
We, as Democrats, have always worked to see the world in a more meaningful way. Until now. Now, I see people saying things like
You can’t be for the poor and the rich at the same time. It’s impossible.
And I wonder where we went wrong.