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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I don't know who these "moderate" democrats you speak of are. One of the realities of the Congress today is that it is very polarized, and Democrats are more liberal and Republicans are more conservative than ever before. I suspect if we win back the house there will be more moderate democrats in it, but right now there just really aren't. Our last Presidential candidate, Hillary, was certainly not a centrist by any objective measure.

What policies are you focused on? The last time the Dems were able, they raised the minimum wage; when the Rs took back the house, it stagnated. Dems have been tremendously pro-union. ACA turned out to be one of the best job-creators around, pushed through at great political cost. Likewise, we put in place in Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. The last time Dems could effectively legislate, we did a lot, but we had a lot of repair work to do. And we spent the political capital that had won the majority doing it, especially healthcare.

However, we're fighting a losing battle on unionization. Anti-trade stuff is a convenient rallying cry for many, but probably does more to undermine working class incomes than help them. There is broad political consensus within the democratic party for raising the minimum wage, protecting unions, implementing financial reform, expanding health care, building infrastructure, and making public higher education more affordable or free. The debate within Democratic party circles is not whether or not to do this things but how much of them to do (e.g., $12 versus $15 minimum wage, a minimum wage that is tiered by market or consistent across the country, single payor, expanded medicare or fuller ACA). The only serious proposal I've seen to address the biggest problem in working incomes, automation, came from Bill Gates.

So what proposals do you think centrist dems are thwarting? What specific horrible things are they doing?

There's nothing wrong with any of those policies, but they don't hold a lot of promise for many people. (If you earn minimum wage, are going to go to college, or can get an infrastructure job, you're an exception.) I think we would be better off with much stronger unions, but I don't believe that Democrats are actually going to do things that will move the needle there.

I'm not saying that Democrats are blocking great proposals or doing horrible things. They're certainly better than the Republicans. They just lack a program that will make a difference in the economic lives of most people. I wish I had better solutions.