It’s interesting how the neconservative/neoliberal political establishment is being challenged by the neo-Nixonian Trumpians from the right, and by the neo-Roosevetlians like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez from the left. If these insurgencies continue, the power elite will mostly certainly move to coopt them, which they have already done in the case of the Trumpians. It is likely that many within the power elite have come to understand that the neoconservative approach to foreign policy has created too much international instability, and seek to move toward a more realist perspective via Trumpism. It is also possible that many elites are recognizing that neoliberal economics have created too much domestic instability, and are seeking to move toward a more conventional New Deal-era liberalism in response. If so, politicians like Sanders and Ocasia-Cortez would be an effective means of advancing such a perspective.
If the neo-Nixonians were to eventually displace the neocons on the right, and the neo-Rooseveltians were to displace the neoliberals on the left, the US would largely return to the paradigm that existed during the 1970s before the ascendancy of Reaganism and Clintonism, both of which involved sharp turns to the right on a wide range of issues. Essentially, it would be a return to an American politics dominated by Rockefeller Republicans and New Deal Democrats.
By Alex Roarty
McClatchydc.Com
Columbus, Ohio
Leading moderate Democrats forcefully argued this week that the party can embrace a robust agenda of change while still praising capitalism and downplaying income inequality.
In other words, everything the empowered liberal base has spent a year and a half mobilizing against.
Democrats gathered here in Ohio’s capital city on Thursday and Friday in what was an opening salvo of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, part of a conference organized by the center-left think tank Third Way.
The longtime Washington-based group was unveiling the findings of a year-long assessment launched after the 2016 election, hoping to convince potential presidential contenders that they don’t have to adopt the hard-left agenda and style of a Bernie Sanders progressive.
