Democrats Move Left --- Frankly, It's Just All Out in the Open Now

It's not like the Dems haven't been a far-left extremist party. It's now that they're not afraid to come out as the crypto-Marxists they truly are.

At LAT, "This is not your father’s Democratic Party: Debate shows how leftward it has moved":

The Democratic Party opened its 2020 presidential debates with a remarkably policy-focused exchange that illustrated how consistently to the left they have moved. For the night, at least, this was Elizabeth Warren’s party.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who entered the debate with momentum behind her campaign, set the tone and dominated the early part of the debate, which focused on economic policy.

“When you've got a government, when you've got an economy that does great for those with money and isn't doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple,” she said. “We need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country.”

Even those of her rivals who don’t fully share that assessment declined chances to put themselves at odds with Warren. Instead, they sang from the same hymnal of left-wing economic populism declaring the need for broad reforms of the political and economic system.

“It is time we have an economy that works for everybody,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, after minimizing his differences with Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies.

The shift in the party goes beyond economics. As the debate made clear, it includes gun control, abortion, climate change and immigration, among other issues. On each of those, candidates took positions to the left of those embraced by either of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who was barely mentioned by any of the candidates.

Rather than Clinton’s call for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” for example, the debate featured candidates stressing that the universal healthcare plans they backed would include public funds to pay for abortions for poor women.

On healthcare, only two candidates — Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — raised their hands when asked who would favor fully abolishing private health insurance plans in favor of instituting “Medicare for all.” But even those who favored a more moderate approach, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, for example, said they preferred a new government health insurance option for all — an idea that was considered too radical to pass when Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act less than a decade ago.

On immigration, former Obama Cabinet official Julián Castro pressed for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, making that a civil rather than a criminal offense. While Castro was correct in saying that the Trump administration had used the criminal law in a far more aggressive way than its predecessors, the law that makes unauthorized border crossings a criminal offense has been on the books for decades. Eliminating it is a move popular with some activists.

At least three of the candidates — Warren, Booker and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio — share Castro’s view. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke disagreed, and the clash between the two Texans over decriminalizing the border made for one of the night’s most intense moments, but it was notable that the disagreement came on a proposal that went far beyond anything that the Obama administration, in which Castro served, ever talked about.

And there was broad party consensus on gun control, an issue that Democrats for years shied from. Booker’s proposal to require gun licensing goes significantly further than what gun-safety advocates have dreamed of proposing.

The leftward tilt of the party did give some candidates pause.

“We have a perception problem with the Democratic Party that we are not connecting to the working class,” said Ryan, who represents the Youngstown, Ohio, area. “We have to change the center of gravity from being coastal elites and Ivy League.”

Klobuchar took a veiled swipe at Warren’s promises to enact broad changes in the political and economic system.

“I don’t make all the promises others up here make,” Klobuchar said. “I’m going to govern.”

But others argued for going further left, notably De Blasio, struggling for a breakout moment and calling the primary a “battle for the heart and soul of our party.”

“This Democratic Party has to be strong and bold and progressive,” he said.