I never quite know who is most stuck in the past: The liberals who insist that conservatives and Republicans are all shills for rich folks and corporations, or the conservatives and Republicans who insist liberals and Democrats are all Marxist redistributionists.
It should be obvious to everyone with eyes that today’s Democratic Party is the party of the elite. All of the wealthiest congressional districts are represented by Democrats. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump mostly by outperforming in upper-middle-class white suburbs. The GOP’s strongest constituency is whites without a college degree. A quick glance at the early data suggest Republicans’ biggest gains are among non-whites without a college degree.
Yet many Republicans still love to argue that Democrats hate success, and many Democrats love to pretend that the other side is the party of the rich. It’s tough to sort out.
The bottom line is this: Many Democrats, including the most popular, are Marxist, but the party establishment is essentially corporatist. The Democratic Party broadly believes in Big Government in service of Big Business and the wealthy.
That’s why their legislative priorities are tax cuts and subsidies for the rich. That’s why their healthcare and environmental plans always end up being massive subsidies. That’s why Biden dominated in raising money from Wall Street.
Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review framed this very well, in discussing the real meaning of wokeness:
“If you are looking to find out who has the upper hand — the poseurs or the redistributors — at the dawn of the Biden administration, look to the policy debates. Is the energy gathering behind policies that disproportionately benefit the affluent, educated, and moralizing elite poseurs — policies such as student-debt forgiveness and the repeal of the SALT-deduction caps? Or is it gathering behind the expansion of universal benefits, which would be enjoyed relatively equally by the poseurs and the truly marginalized and underprivileged members of society?”
A Democratic White House and House of Representatives will show us this very soon.
