CENTRISM KILLS

Regardless of the final result, the Democratic Party establishment have messed up yet another presidential campaign.  Its cautiously centrist politics may of handed Donald Trump another four years in the White House.

I WROTE SEVERAL weeks ago that the Democratic Party would have to win the presidential election despite of Joe Biden, and not because of him.  And so it has proved - although, at the time of writing, its still unclear whether Biden has been able  to squeeze  out a less than glorious victory with votes still being counted in several states. The picture has been further muddied by  Donald Trump turning to the courts in an attempt to prevent any further votes being counted.

But, regardless of the final result, the Democratic Party should have never have got itself into the position where it has to rely on winning a handful of states to get Biden over the line. In the midst of a raging pandemic that has already killed over 220,000 Americans and an economy that is in a downwards spiral,  this should have been a comfortable win for the Democratic Party

It should of been. It could of been.

But, once again, the Democratic Party's corporate establishment have messed it up. Comprehensively failing to learn anything from Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016, they pushed into position a centrist candidate cut from the same cloth as Clinton. Biden may not have been as unpopular as Clinton but he was just as uninspiring and, unsurprisingly, he's delivered almost exactly the same election result as Clinton. And its all because the Democratic Party establishment remains more scared of the left wing politics of someone like Bernie Sanders than it is of the authoritarianism of Donald Trump.

Once again we have been reminded of how just how gutless and incompetent the Democratic Party establishment are.

The good news - there is some - is that while the Democratic Party establishment, beholden to corporate interests, will not campaign for real change, the four congresswoman known as 'The Squad' were all re-elected campaigning on a platform of real change. They will be joined by four new recruits: Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones of New York, Marie Newman of Illinois and Cori Bush of Missouri.

Their unofficial leader, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has spoken of the hostility she has faced within the Democratic Party but the woman often derided for her socialist politics cruised to an overwhelming victory against a Republican challenger who spent some $10 million on his campaign, making it the second most expensive House contest in the country. So much for her 'unrealistic' politics.

If the Democratic Party is to have any kind of  future, then it rests with AOC and her contemporaries. If there is any justice at all, this presidential election should finally lay to rest the Democratic Party's hopeless centrism. Unfortunately though,  there's no guarantee that the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer  won't find a way to muck things up again.