Oh, lord save us, not these people again.

I have admitted that I have problems with Bernie Sanders wandering into Democratic primaries generally, since he’s not a Democrat, and that I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ought not to be gratuitously involving herself in primary races in Kansas. But these are small-change complaints, and they certainly are not an appeal for this undead agenda to come staggering out of the crypt. From NBC News:

"The only narrative that has been articulated in the Democratic Party over the past two years is the one from the left," former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell told NBC News."I think we need a debate within the party," he added. "Frankly, it would have been better to start the conversation earlier."

No offense to the good people of Delaware, but who the hell is this guy when he’s at home, and why should I give a damn about anything he says?

Pragmatism may be a tougher sell in the Donald Trump era, but with the 2020 presidential race just around the corner, moderate Democrats know they are running out of time to reassert themselves.

If we’re going to do this, it’s incumbent upon us to get our terms right. These are not moderate Democrats. These are conservative Democrats. You know who’s a moderate Democrat these days? It’s a Democrat who wants to get to universal healthcare by degrees, and someone who wants to get to free college a couple of years at a time.

It’s certainly not a person who thinks it impolite to point out that the creeping oligarchy in this country is a threat to its most basic values.

The gathering here was just that — an effort to offer an attractive alternative to the rising Sanders-style populist left in the upcoming presidential race. Where progressives see a rare opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to win over Republicans turned off by Trump. The fact that a billionaire real estate developer, Winston Fisher, co-hosted the event and addressed attendees twice underscored that this group is not interested in the class warfare vilifying the "millionaires and billionaires" found in Sanders' stump speech.

Fisher announced that his conference was dedicated to “big, bold ideas” suited to the 21st century. What might those be, you ask?



Some of the key initiatives are a massive apprenticeship program to train workers, a privatized employer-funded universal pension that would supplement Social Security and an overhaul of unemployment insurance to include skills training. Other proposals included a "small business bill of rights" and the creation of a "BoomerCorps" — like the volunteer AmericaCorps for seniors.

Big. Bold. Warmed-over Clintonism with a touch of delicately spiced Kempism, a lovely little time trip back to 1990, and almost perfectly designed political chickenshit at a time of national crisis. And absolutely nothing that will do anything about massive income inequality and the concomitant control that the corporate class has assumed over every institution of government.



Meanwhile, they say the progressive agenda is out of date. They dismiss, for instance, a federal jobs guarantee as a rehash of the New Deal. "Our ideas must be bold, but they must also fit the age we are in," Cowan said. "Big isn't enough. If it's bold and old — it’s simply old.

I realize that as long as there are wealthy people who are not the Koch Brothers, and as long as there are television green rooms and newspaper editorial boards, this kind of don’t-disturb-the-horses politics always will have a constituency. But, while it may have had a place 20 years ago, it is utterly inadequate to the political circumstances of the day. There are no small-scale solutions to the gigantic structural problems that have grown in our economics and in our politics.

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And, if there are answers to these, they won’t be found in yet another paean to the imaginary heartland voters who are just dying to join the BoomerCorps.

Notably, the proposed moderate agenda does not take issue with the party's broad consensus in favor of abortion rights, LGBT equality, stricter gun control and support for immigrants and a path to citizenship for the undocumented. In a twist, the agenda is based largely on geography, rather than class or race, which are more popular on the left. It focuses on trying to address the fact that cities are thriving as rural areas fall behind. Clinton was pilloried earlier this year for bragging that she "won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward," but Democratic losses in the rest of America have been politically disastrous for the party.

The problem, of course, is that much of the dreaded progressive agenda is as popular in the rural areas as it is in the cities. But there’s that undertone of all those issues—race, class, The Other—that this particular group of Democrats would rather not believe drive voters. Even “Abolish ICE”, while more problematic as an issue, is only problematic as an issue because rural voters in Iowa have been convinced that MS-13 is going to murder them in their beds. Nothing in these proposals addresses that serious problem in the electorate, except to tell those same voters not to think about why they perseverate on those dark fantasies.

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The way you know this, and the way these people apparently don’t, is that even the unremarkable and sensible position that ICE should be reformed so that it doesn’t brutalize children and old women anymore is cast as opening the floodgates to an invasion of South Dakota by Central American prison gangs.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the chair of the New Democrat Coalition, said members of his side are not "naturally arbiters of emotion and anger." "How we tell our story and put forward our polices in a way that makes people want to mount the barricades is one of the biggest challenges we have," said Himes, a former Goldman Sachs banker who represents Fairfield, Connecticut. He pointed to calls to "Abolish ICE," for instance, which he characterized as emotionally understandable but politically illogical. "It hurts us in areas where we need to win," Himes warned of "Abolish ICE" in the midterms. "You have now made life harder for the 60 or 70 Democrats fighting in districts where we need to win if we ever want to be in the majority."

Yes, because when I look for Democratic solutions to the nation’s rural problems, I look for leadership to a guy from a luxurious Connecticut zip code who used to work at Goldman Sachs. Yes, it’s a big tent, but somebody has to sit in the back. It’s these people’s turn now.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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