Quote of the Day

Many in the corporate media claimed that flailing candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar did well in the [fourth Democratic presidential] debate, mostly because such pundits have been pushing the whole fallacy that the way to win isn’t by appealing to the progressive majority; rather it’s by trying to peel off a few people from the minuscule so-called “center” of the party.

There are two things wrong with this. The first was addressed by Sanders when he noted that polling clearly showed that most of the electorate favored progressive issues, so running on them wasn’t only the right thing to do, it was the smart thing to do. But the second problem is deeper, and reveals that the centrist/corporatists have a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why Trump won.

. . . Since Bill Clinton, centrists have been increasingly dependent upon the ultra-rich and corporations, and they’ve drifted to the right, and as a result, voters drifted away from them.

That’s why we have Trump; that’s why until 2018 Democrats had been losing ground at all levels of government for decades.

And once again, the corporate centrists are trying to sell the idea that progressive ideas are just too far out there.

And the usual suspects – the pols, pundits and mainstream media who told Democrats that Trump couldn’t win, and who told them to run a centrist in 2016 – are telling the Party that if they want to beat Trump, they need to . . . well . . . run a centrist.

The scary thing is, since they control much of the media, and most of the Party, they just might convince folks to commit the same mistake they made in 2016.

– John Atcheson
Excerpted from "Reminder: Trump Didn't Win, Democrats Lost"
Common Dreams
October 17, 2019

Related Off-site Links:
Dear Centrist Democrats: There Are No Moderate Republicans to Work With – Charles P. Pierce (Esquire, October 16, 2019).
Centrist Democrats Want You to Think They're the Big Boys on the Stage – Elie Mystal (The Nation, October 17, 2019).
Pete Buttigieg Is the Past – Paul Blest (TruthDig, October 16, 2019).
The Centrists Are Alive and Kicking – and Ready for 2020 – Jennifer Rubin (Chicago Tribune, December 11, 2018).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quote of the Day – April 24, 2019
• Quote of the Day – March 10, 2019
• Quote(s) of the Day – February 26, 2019
• Beto, Biden and Buttigieg: “Empty Suits and Poll-Tested Brands”
• Pete Buttigieg, White Privilege, and Identity Politics
• Quote of the Day – September 7, 2017
• Hope, History, and Bernie Sanders

Image: “Reeds” by Kristen Solberg.