What Are We Gonna Clutch When They Take Away Our Pearls?
by tristero
Back in the late 70’s, the NY Times ran a front-page article with the lede:
The sharp right turn in the Republican Party and the rise of hard-right presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Republicans who increasingly fear that the party could fritter away its chances of beating President Carter in 1980 by careening over a conservative cliff.
Ok, I lied. The NY Times never wrote a lede warning Republicans they were going over a cliff by becoming too conservatives. It’s inconceivable that they ever did, or will. Despite the fact that Americans are far more liberal than the mainstream press seems to think we are.
But here is what the Times actually published on the front page today:
The sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats who increasingly fear that the party could fritter away its chances of beating President Trump in 2020 by careening over a liberal cliff.
Recently, I read a wonderful book, Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin (actually I listened to it, great readers including Goodwin herself). The number of progressive policies FDR passed in the first 100 days of his administration was astounding. The positive impact on American society of all this unleashed progressivism — cultural impact, economic impact, moral impact, and so on — was simply breathtaking.
So I have a question for the “moderates” setting editorial policy at the Times: does the American economy have to crash again, do we have to see breadlines and economic suicides again, before this country and its presses will come to its senses and stop belittling liberalism and progressivism?
I hope not.