The 'insurgent left' and path dependency - The Washington Post - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...rgent-left-and-path-dependency
Democratic party strategy reform path dependency Politics
shared by Javier E on 24 Jul 18
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the insertion of the insurgents into the Democratic Party is allegedly creating anxiety among mainstream Democrats who worry that it provides the hard right with just the angle they need right now to hold onto power.
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their goals are ambitious. But are they extreme and dangerous? Not at all, and in fact, the insurgents’ goals are directionally shared by moderates. The questions are how far to go and how best to get from here to there
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Ocasio-Cortez ran on, among other things: Medicare for all, free public college and trade school, a job guarantee, ending private prisons and abolishing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Consider the motivation for these ideas:
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Look at the policy agenda of moderate Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb, who won a congressional district that went for Trump by almost 20 points. He’s for jobs through infrastructure investment, increasing health coverage through building on the Affordable Care Act, raising wages through strengthening unions and reducing student debt through refinancing at lower rates and partial debt forgiveness in exchange for public service.
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It’s also an agenda that points in the same broad direction as that of the so-called insurgents. The difference between moderate and socialist Democrats is less about policy goals and more about path dependency.
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Path dependency is the concept that where you end up is a function of where you start out. In this context, it means you can only get from the current policy regime to a more progressive one through incremental change. Medicare for More must proceed Medicare for All. Smaller, more customized job creation programs must proceed the guarantee of a good job for everyone who wants one
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In practice, that means you can’t assume away the power of the health insurance industry in blocking single payer. You can’t assume the federal government can handily employ tens of millions of people in what are now private-sector functions. Instead, you build a public option into the health-care exchanges and you extend Medicare eligibility to slightly younger people. You subsidize private employers to hire targeted workers.
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At least, that’s where you start. It’s not where you end. Under path dependency, the efficiency of the public option, if it is properly supported, will start to claw back excess profits from the current health-care system.
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The logic of social justice and the policy agenda it implies is deep and persuasive, especially in a society as diverse as our own
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The problem is that the intersection of wealth concentration and pay-to-play politics is undermining representative democracy, thereby blocking the electorate from a chance to see real, progressive change in action.
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The solution is for path-dependent moderates to coexist and work closely with those who would leapfrog the path to more quickly achieve their goals.
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Neither I nor anyone else can tell you who’s right, i.e., how binding the path is. That is an empirical question to be answered by a very different politics than we have today. To find that answer, we need to get to that new politics, and fast.