By David Sirota
John McCain is doing what no progressive political leader has been able to do in at least a generation, if not more: He's creating a New Deal mandate for the next president, should that next president be Barack Obama. Indeed, in tacking to the hard economic right and focusing the presidential debate on "socialism" and "wealth redistribution," McCain is creating a very clear decision for our country: Either we reject his neo-Reaganism and the regressive redistribution machine that I describe in my new newspaper column this week. Or, we vote to preserve the regressive redistribution machine that has created the most economically unequal America since the Great Depression.
What's so weird is that in this economic drama, McCain - not Barack Obama - is really in the starring role.
That's because while Obama has offered up a progressive-though-moderate agenda slightly to the left of Clinton-ish neoliberalism, McCain has gone totally ideological. In doing that, he has polarized the argument and turned the election into a referendum on the economic Darwinism of the conservative movement - a Darwinism that, as my column shows, has built a machine that confiscates middle-class wealth and sends it up the income ladder.
... get the rest of the story after the jump.
My comment: I'm struck by a cartoon image that's bouncing around in my mind. The scene is a lifeboat. At one end, the sinking end, sits a very wealthy man - his wealth represented by large bags of gold - and his end of the boat is sinking under the weight. Crowded together at the other end of the lifeboat - the end lifted high in the air by the weight at the other end of the lifeboat - is a group of emaciated people in tattered clothing - representing the poor and the middle class.
And the rich man says, "What do you mean you want to redistribute the weight?"
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