Change isn’t radical

For any serious socialist, the current dustup is laughable. The left wing of the Democratic Party is a watered-down version of European-style social democracy. And European social democracy is a watered-down version of what many thought socialism ought to be.

Still, The New York Times, the bastion of the right-wing of the Democratic Party (the so-called “moderates”), calls the Democrats’ left wing the “far left.” It of course knows better; it is just trying to scare people. The policies of the party’s left wing, we are told, will turn us into Venezuela. Boo! What we need, say the moderates, is more of the careful, incremental change that lost the last election.

All of the Democratic Party’s left-wing issues — “Medicare for All,” taxing the rich, a Green New Deal, free college tuition, universal child care — are supported by landslide majorities. This should not surprise. The Reagan Revolution stopped the clock for 30 years. People increasingly wanted change. This led to Donald Trump, who promised change and then began turning the clock even further backward with a vengeance. The desire for change remains.

So for the next two years, we can expect a new campaign of bamboozlement by the Republicans and conservative Democrats: getting the electorate to vote, still one more time, against its own best interests.

In France, if you get sick at home at 3 a.m., a doctor comes. At 3 a.m. To your home. To those who think Medicare for All is socialism, that must look like communism run wild.

ROBERT SUPANSIC

McKeesport