Robert Reich: The Establishment Strikes Back – OpEd

I’ve been around American politics more years than I care to (or can) remember, and it’s always the same when it comes to the response of the New York and Washington establishment: Any Democrat who veers too far from its definition of “moderate” is seen as “too far to the left.”

The New York Times’s Nate Cohn, for example, says Walz “doesn’t help compensate for what figures to be [Kamala Harris’s] core weakness with swing voters: her … staking out progressive positions.” 

Cohn goes on to assert that Walz.  “unexpectedly became the veepstakes favorite for many progressives, who were often outright opposed to Mr. Shapiro or Mr. Kelly” and that “the fight was sufficiently intense for Mr. Walz’s selection to be seen as a material win for progressives.” As a result it “won’t assuage concerns that she’s too far to the left.”

This is utter rubbish. Who is concerned that Kamala is too far to the left? Cohn imagines that the typical voter is somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. But there’s no longer a middle. When the Republican Party has adopted authoritarian fascism, what does it mean to be “too far to the left?” 

Walz is what we used to call a mainstream Democrat in the fashion of Hubert Humphrey. 

The Washington Post editorial board displays an even more retrograde view of American politics: 

Ms. Harris’s selection of Mr. Walz did not prove that she would resist pressure from the party’s left in the White House, a message she could have sent with a different pick. Tactically, the choice also gives her opponents a clearly defined target: a ticket that leans toward out-of-touch liberalism.”

I’ve watched with sadness as the Post has moved from its glory days of exposing and fighting Richard Nixon to its current Bezos days of fighting “out-of-touch liberalism.” 

Minnesota under Walz did many things the rest of America needs to do, such as enacting 12 weeks’ paid family and medical leave and the nation’s most generous children’s tax credit. 

These are pro-family policies — in contrast to Trump’s abortion bans and Vance’s taunts of women who decide not to have children. 

This morning, in a phone interview with “Fox & Friends,” Trump said that the Harris-Walz ticket “would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner,” adding that Walz is “very heavy into transgender. Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.”

Let’s be clear. Walz stands squarely in the mainstream of American values. 

He will help Kamala Harris attract American voters who are fed up with Trump’s authoritarian nonsense and fed up with the American establishment’s unwillingness to support what every other advanced nation has already done for its people.

• This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack