I am old enough to remember when Joe Biden was the Democrats’ great hope to beat Donald Trump because he was a moderate. Needing a moderate candidate, they circled the wagons around Joe Biden thinning their candidate pool to ensure open socialist Bernie Sanders would lose. I am about 18 months old.
Now they have a real problem. MoveOn, the organization formed to drag us past Bill Clinton, a blue dress, and shenanigans in the Oval Office has endorsed Joe Biden. While expected, the language they use gives up the game.
In 2016, Move On endorsed Bernie Sanders in the primary, with 78% of their members voting. They did not support a candidate during the primaries this year but the group is now announcing their endorsement of Joe Biden, with 82.4% of members voting to agree. Here’s the rub (Emphasis mine):
“MoveOn’s millions of members are ready to mobilize together in support of Joe Biden, working to turn out voters in key states and ensure that Donald Trump is a one-term president,” said MoveOn Political Action Executive Director Rahna Epting. “Donald Trump is racist, corrupt, immoral, and incompetent. He must be voted out. Joe Biden is a leader who listens, who is running on the most progressive platform in Democratic Party history, and whose election would create an opportunity for the big, structural changes this country needs. MoveOn members are proud to mobilize to support him.”
The most progressive platform in Democrat Party history. An opportunity for the big, structural changes this country needs. For the uninitiated, progressives are not your grandpa’s Democrats. They are not made in the mold of John F. Kennedy Jr. They are more like Franklin D. Roosevelt on steroids.
Commentator David Sirota put it this way:
I often get asked what the difference between a “liberal” and a “progressive” is. The questions from the media on this subject are always something like, “Isn’t ‘progressive’ just another name for ‘liberal’ that people want to use because ‘liberal’ has become a bad word?”
The answer, in my opinion, is no – there is a fundamental difference when it comes to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional “liberals” in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A “progressive” are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.
His answer is correct. Progressives want to use the power of government to make large institutions do what they want. You see their organized campaign to bring Facebook to heel. You’ve watched them bring city and state governments to their knees to ‘reimagine’ and defund police departments. They brought these institutions in line without government power. Do you want to imagine what they would accomplish with it?
I wrote yesterday about one policy that is on the table. The intention is to bring local governments into line with their vision of urbanization. Through the fiction of disparate impact, a Biden administration would force the local suburban government to eliminate zoning for single-family housing. This version is more radical than the Obama era policy.
This leverage is only possible because the federal government collects the majority of tax revenue and then doles it out to the states according to whatever whim they choose. The founding fathers would roll over in their graves.
Here, NPR takes a stab at the difference:
Progressivism has historically been associated with science, rationality and an approach to government and society reliant on knowledge and empirical methods. It has often been counterposed with populism, which is a movement among the common folk. Progressives tended to be people with education and some standing in the world.
NPR found a less offensive way of saying that progressives believe they are smarter than you. Their view is that a small group of experts is more qualified to make decisions about your life than you are. We have seen this in high relief during the pandemic. Sit back and reflect for a moment on how much the experts have gotten wrong since January. Then understand that you are just a deplorable, common folk and need to hush.
Because of Joe Biden’s lackluster cognitive performance, or so I thought, Barack Obama assured us that the best experts would surround Biden during his endorsement. Even Biden let the cat out of the bag. He looks forward to the opportunity to fundamentally transform the United States. His words:
You have to give MoveOn credit for telling the truth. A Biden administration will not be a moderate one. From housing to abortion, his stated positions are far left. His willingness to use the power of the office to mandate masks in public nationwide is telling. Even the public option in healthcare is just the first step to a nationalized healthcare plan.
If you need further proof, take a gander at the global initiative championed by Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry through the World Economic Forum. As bad as the U.N., its members are the very wealthy and global “experts.” If you think they aren’t serious, you’re miscalculating.
Their grand plan is called The Great Reset. Similar to Agenda 21, it is a scheme to redistribute income globally and weaken America by lowering our standard of living. Back to the horrid theory of managed decline. If you think for one minute a Biden administration would not conform American domestic policy to this agenda, you are mistaken because he won’t be making those decisions.
Like an excellent progressive, he will let the “experts” do that.
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