Today, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower Would Be Bernie Sanders

Just to put that title into perspective, consider this: even though he is usually identified on television as "Bernie Sanders (I., Vermont)" he is actually a socialist, the real deal, not that fake Obama kind, the farthest to the left elected official in the federal government these days.

Let's see what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has to say about this. From AlterNet:

Listen to the way he goes after the right here. "Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible and"--and the president says--"their number is negligible and they are stupid."

That is not what Barack Obama said last night. That is way to the left of any national Democrat at this point. That was all Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower. That was all the stuff he said when he was president.

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, president when the top tax bracket for the richest people in this country was 92 percent. President Eisenhower defended that tax bracket. He said we cannot afford to reduce taxes until, quote, "the factors of income and outgo will be balanced." Eisenhower insisting there must be a balanced budget and that taxes on the rich are the way to balance it. Dwight Eisenhower, you know, noted leftist.

And

Historically, the process of a Democrat trying to find the center in politics has seen Democrats chasing the center as it moves to the right. The thing that's different about the left and the right in this country is that there isn't an equal and opposite force on the left that's anything like the conservative movement on the right. The conservative movement exists outside the Republican Party, and it serves to constantly pull the Republican Party further to the right.

So, when you have a president like Bill Clinton who found popular centrist decisions by splitting the difference between where the Republicans were and where the Republican--where the Democrats were and where the Republicans were, and the Republicans kept moving further to the right because they're being pulled there by the conservative movement, when you have a president who triangulates like that, what you end up with is a president who as a Democrat moves the country further to the right, because he shifts to the right every time he takes another centrist position.

More here.

I've been making similar statements along these lines since pretty much the beginning of this blog back in '02. Probably the most common iteration is something like this: today "liberal" means "moderate," "moderate" means "conservative," "conservative" means "far-right reactionary," and "far right" means "psychopathic Nazi." Note that there is no term to denote real liberals because they don't exist in the public dialogue. Or in politics, for that matter, excepting, of course, the above mentioned Senator from Vermont, who can't really do that much all by himself, facing political hostility toward his ideas from not only the Republicans, but also the Democrats, with whom he caucuses.

I would say that the country has moved to the right, except that it would be untrue. What has happened is that the political establishment has moved to the right, leaving the country in its wake, confused and frightened. And really, I think the country continues to be as liberal as the establishment was back in the 1950s: polls of the general population continue to show strong support for social services, universal health care, an equitable distribution of income, and high taxes for the rich. That is, the country isn't "liberal;" rather, these "liberal" ideas are, in fact, moderate, in spite of what the politicians, from both parties, and the mass media elite tell us over and over again.

Last Christmas, as I sat around the dinner table with my far-right conservative family, one of them casually asserted that President Obama is a big liberal. They seemed a bit shocked when I strongly asserted that the President is not a liberal. "Sure he is, Ron" my older brother said. "No, he's not." I shot back. I was wearing a Noam Chomsky t-shirt my girlfriend gave me for my birthday last year, and, in an attempt to change the subject, my sister-in-law asked me who's face was on my chest: "a liberal," I answered.

Liberals don't give private banks and brokerage houses trillions of dollars in free money. Liberals don't sell out to Big Pharma and the HMOs and call it health care "reform." Liberals don't suck the oil industry's big huge cock and call it good for the nation. And on and on. But conservatives and the establishment think that's what liberals do.

So what do real liberals do? What do real liberals want? Well, for my answer to that question, just read this blog, or any of the other political blogs listed, appropriately, on the left side of the page--I mean, you're certainly not going to find any liberal ideas in the mainstream media; well, okay, there's Rachel Maddow, to be sure, but her fate now is dripping with uncertainty after Olbermann's hasty departure from the network in the wake of the Comcast merger.

But that's really the problem with this continual establishment push to the right: lots of good and reasonable ideas are completely excluded from the grand debate because they are no longer considered to be within the accepted American political spectrum. I mean, if Obama is as far to the left as you can get, then what the hell am I? Answer: a non-entity.

And that's a total drag. By mid twentieth century standards, I'm not even particularly liberal. I'm more of a moderate. Even by today's standards, if you look at what most Americans actually think about the issues, I'm fairly moderate. But by today's establishment standards, I don't exist. Or I'm so fucking crazy, my views don't matter. Whatever.

The bottom line is that, by cutting ourselves off from a whole host of political ideas and points of view, this country has totally crippled itself. Actually, we may very well be destroying ourselves.

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