Many of us–see Paul Rosenberg’s wonderful article right here in Salon–have long argued that the old categories are defunct and that much of what the old order calls radical has long since gone mainstream. Soon everyone will see it. For now, let me suggest a rule: any policy enjoying majority support in every poll must henceforth be called centrist, not “radical” or “left wing.” If you aren’t sure, look it up.
The issue of the day is “trade.” I’m amazed when economists invoke the theories of David Ricardo as if nothing’s changed in the 200 years since his passing. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage asserted that free trade always results in a net benefit to the trading partners since each sells goods on which it enjoys a natural advantage: climate, raw materials, labor supply, etc. But when jobs cross borders in nanoseconds the advantages everyone seeks are low wages and weak governments. Somebody must tell the neoliberals this is no longer about who has the best weather to grow bananas in. In fact, it is no longer about trade. It is about whether democracy rules commerce–or commerce rules democracy. It’s a subject Sanders knows well. Clinton appears clueless.
This is the debate we need: how best to turn back the impersonal tide of globalization and begin conscious creation of a new, intentional economy. This isn’t the debate Clinton or the media is prepared to have. But it’s the one the country urgently desires, and one progressives can win. Like the polls, the throngs flowing to Sanders’ events and the small-dollar donations to his campaign attest to the ripeness of the moment. The real proof’s in the power of ideas. (Source)
Curry and Rosenberg seem like a good guys, but they're wrong if they think that mainstream opinion still matters. That's a defunct idea that they have yet to understand. The real question is not what most sensible people think is the right thing to do, but who has the power to get it done. We voters are given a choice between A and B, but we really want C. It isn't on the menu because the people who have power don't want it on the menu. And nobody, especially someone like Bernie Sanders, has the power to put it on the menu.
The mainstream media narratives understand who has the power and how power in Washington works--they are themselves part of the power ecology.That's why they disregard polling on various issues. They know public opinion is irrelevant when it comes to making or shaping policy. And so does Hillary. She's a paradigmatic insider, and, yes, that hurts her in retail politics where public opinion does matter.
And it might hurt her this cycle as it did in 2008, but even if by some miracle Bernie Sanders was swept into the presidency, he would be paralyzed because he would have close to zero insider support. Sanders is the paradigmatic outsider from a quirky state with a little over 600K people--until a few months ago he didn't even belong to either of the two main parties. Maverick outsiders don't change large, dysfunctional systems; maverick insiders sometimes can: Gorbachev and Pope Francis, for instance. Hillary isn't a maverick anything, and she could never be. She will always play by the insider rules. She thinks she can win by playing by insider rules, and she probably will.
Small-government Conservatives, Libertarians, and Neoliberal Democrats dominate the insider political class, and the system works well for them. They understand and are comfortable with the insider power game and its rules. They play it well, and they see no reason to change it. They have no motivation whatsoever to support a maverick outsider like Sanders if he were to be elected. What the voters think, even if it's 95 percent of the American electorate, doesn't matter, because they have no insider power. Look at the polling on gun control--it's overwhelmingly for it. And voter opinions will continue not to matter as long as the system is set up in such a way that members of the insider political class are essentially employees of large corporations and other moneyed interests.
Way too much attention is focused on the presidential race. If you're serious about change, it has to happen in building strong local organizations who send smart, progressives to city, county, and state legislatures where they develop the skills and a constituency base that holds them accountable. And from the best of these, you send somebody to D.C.
What? You say local politics is boring? Yes it is. And that's why real change is so difficult to effect. What goes on locally is crushingly tedious. And since nobody pays attention because it's so boring, the hacks get elected, and it's the hacks that get sent eventually to D.C.
And that's why we're screwed. The whole system is so massively complicated that nobody--even honest non-hacks--really understands what's going on, so elected officials listen to charming, reasonable sounding lobbyists who, because they know more than you about their issue, can talk you into supporting things that you would never have supported as a first-time candidate. Because then you were an outsider and you naively believed that you were mainly accountable to the voters. But once you get elected, you become an insider, and then you understand that your day-to-day life is dominated by insiders, i.e., lobbyists and senior elected officials in your party, most of whom are hacks.
Pretty soon you see that your bread gets buttered not by the voters but by other insiders, and that these insiders have a vertically integrated system from Washington down to the local school board positions. If you want a career in politics, you quickly come to understand who your real constituency is, whose interests you really must serve, and that constituency is not the voters. You find a way to do just enough for the voters to get you elected again, but most of your energy is deployed in doing what you can for your more important constituency, now your colleagues in insider hackery because now you, too, have become a hack, even if at the outset it was never your intention to become one. You don't think of yourself as a hack; rather you see yourself as a realist and a professional. This is pretty much Obama's political arc in hackery.
You have to be very smart and very strong not to be coopted. And the few who don't get coopted get marginalized and made irrelevant. That's the Bernie Sanders' arc.