And so, we begin the Roar­ing 2020s with war, assas­si­na­tion and firestorms on a burn­ing Earth. We know it will be a deci­sive decade. What remains to be seen is whether, here in the Unit­ed States, ​“We the Peo­ple” break with the rule of the cor­po­rate oli­garchy and take mea­sures to ensure a demo­c­ra­t­ic future on a hab­it­able plan­et. The win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to save the world has become a nar­row slit. Will we make it through?

Centrist Dems have weaponized “electability,” using it to limit the range of possible candidates, both in demographics and ideology.

That will be deter­mined in no small mea­sure by the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, which is shap­ing up to be a three-way race in a two-par­ty system.

First, we have the Repub­li­can Par­ty, its feal­ty ful­ly pledged to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. The Chris­t­ian Right loves that he is stack­ing the courts with cul­ture war­riors. The cor­po­rate Right likes that he cuts tax­es and guts envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. And white nation­al­ists like his racist the­atrics and the gra­tu­itous cru­el­ty of his immi­gra­tion policies.

Sec­ond, we have the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s pro­gres­sive wing and its stan­dard bear­ers Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Bernie Sanders. Their pop­ulist calls for a redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and an expan­sion of a social demo­c­ra­t­ic wel­fare state — tuition-free pub­lic col­lege, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal—res­onate with a grow­ing num­ber of vot­ers.

Third, we have the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment. It has hitched its wag­on to the con­cept of ​“elec­tabil­i­ty,” which nation­al polls reveal to be a top con­cern of Dems. In oth­er words: Who can beat Trump? These cen­trist Democ­rats and their allies in the cor­po­rate media vehe­ment­ly oppose any mean­ing­ful attempts to redis­trib­ute wealth and pow­er. Bereft of appeal­ing pol­i­cy pro­pos­als to inspire the base, they have weaponized ​“elec­tabil­i­ty,” using it to lim­it the range of pos­si­ble can­di­dates, both in demo­graph­ics and ide­ol­o­gy. It is also employed as a cud­gel against any trans­for­ma­tive pol­i­cy, the argu­ment being that Big Change will spook inde­pen­dent vot­ers — and there­by help reelect Trump — com­plete­ly ignor­ing the poten­tial of big ideas to turn out vot­ers oth­er­wise like­ly to sit out.

Their can­di­date is Joe ​“Elec­table” Biden. Their candidate’s main pol­i­cy expert is Bruce Reed, who accom­pa­nies Biden on the cam­paign trail. As archi­tect of Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s 1996 so-called wel­fare reform, Reed coined the ​“end wel­fare as we know it” slo­gan. A for­mer CEO of the now-defunct Demo­c­ra­t­ic Lead­er­ship Coun­cil, Reed left his post in 2010 to serve as exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s Nation­al Com­mis­sion on Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Reform, which unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to reduce the deficit by cut­ting cost-of-liv­ing increas­es for Social Secu­ri­ty recipients.

Why Biden is so elec­table — a 77-year-old can­di­date who stepped onto the nation­al stage in 1972 as the junior sen­a­tor from Delaware and has twice run (and lost bad­ly) for pres­i­dent — is nev­er explained. A 1995 video has sur­faced of Biden speak­ing in favor of a GOP-spon­sored bal­anced-bud­get amend­ment. ​“When I argued that we should freeze fed­er­al spend­ing, I meant Social Secu­ri­ty as well,” he bragged. ​“I meant Medicare and Med­ic­aid. I meant vet­er­ans’ ben­e­fits. I meant every sin­gle soli­tary thing in the gov­ern­ment. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” And his back­ing of the Iraq War has right­ly dogged him: As CNN report­ed, at a Jan­u­ary 4 event in Des Moines, Iowa, ​“Biden again dis­hon­est­ly sug­gests he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.”

Is it any won­der that young peo­ple are not flock­ing to the Biden cam­paign? In a Decem­ber 2019 poll of Iowa vot­ers, only 6% of like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus-goers between 18 and 34 sup­port­ed Biden, while 55% sup­port­ed War­ren or Sanders. For a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty estab­lish­ment tru­ly con­cerned with elec­tabil­i­ty — now and in the future — that is the poll to pay atten­tion to.