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| For the Post, Pennsylvania lieutenant governor candidate John Fetterman (seen here with Bernie Sanders) is “far left” because he “campaigned on universal healthcare and legalizing marijuana.” |
Supposedly radical ideals are actually embraced
by large swaths of the American public.
by
So what counts as “far left” to the Washington
Post, the newspaper owned by the world’s richest human?
Here are the positions cited by the Post‘s
James Hohmann to characterize the “unelectable activists” who are “thwarting”
Democratic hopes to take back the House, or are otherwise part of a “leftward
lurch”:
Kara Eastman of Nebraska “advocated for universal background
checks to buy guns, raising taxes and decriminalizing marijuana.”
John Fetterman in Pennsylvania “campaigned on universal
healthcare and legalizing marijuana.” Running for governor in Idaho, Paulette
Jordan based her platform on “protecting more public lands, as well as
promising to expand Medicaid, relax marijuana laws, reduce incarceration and
limit corporate tax loopholes.”
There were a couple of other candidates who were categorized as
“far left” by affiliation. In the Pittsburgh area, Summer Lee and an unnamed
Sara Innamorato were described as “card-carrying members of the Democratic
Socialists of America”—using a phrase popularized by Sen. Joe McCarthy’s claim that he had the names of “57
card-carrying members of the Communist Party.”
Scott Wallace in Pennsylvania was described as “the grandson of
Henry Wallace, who was Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president for a term, and then
ran against Harry Truman, who FDR dumped him for, from the far left in 1948.”
Aside from Scott Wallace’s self-description as a “proud progressive” and his
promise to “make America sane again,” genealogy was all the Post presented to
tie him to the “far left.”
There were also some candidates who were implicitly placed in
the “far left” by the fact that they successfully challenged “Democratic
moderates,” thus “causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists.” For
example, Pennsylvania congressional candidate Susan Wild was worrisome because
she defeated John Morganelli who “opposes abortion rights and ‘sanctuary
cities,’” and whom she criticized for “for speaking positively about Trump and
tweeting that he was open to taking a job in the administration during the
transition.” You know, like “moderates” do.
But what about those “far left” issues? Well, raising taxes on
corporations and the wealthy—which is, of course, what Kara Eastman proposed—is a quite popular position. The latest polling on
this was a CBS News poll from last year
(10/27–30/17) which found 56 percent in favor of raising taxes on large
corporations, and 58 percent wanting higher taxes for “wealthy Americans.” This
was, of course, before the massive tax breaks given to corporations and the
wealthy by the Republican Congress.
Please continue this article here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/19/surprising-popularity-far-left-policies
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