Sometimes, shifting the Overton Window from on high is more important than legislative victories. Many right-wing people know this. Most white nationalist “Western civilization” types like Steve King know this. Supporters of seemingly-eternal right-wing memes like “term limits” and “Balanced Budget Amendments” know this, no matter how long they’ve been trying to make them a reality.
Ideas don’t die easily, and the elected left in this country has historically a hard time pushing the ideas marketplace leftward, only gaining traction during certain moments in history.
This is precisely why I voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. He is one of the few elected legislators who actively sought at the time to shift the Overton Window left on acceptable economics. Now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is aggressively, relentlessly pushing leftward while taking control of her self-image in ways that even Sanders had trouble doing.
The beauty in this is that Democratic leadership doesn’t have to be at that forefront, at least not right now. It will build to a slow boil from backbenchers like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders, until it becomes the common wisdom of tomorrow. The leadership simply has to move where the puck is going to be.
It feels good to not give a shit what conservatives – be they Republican or Democrat – think. Conservatives sure as hell haven’t – for decades – and have framed the rhetoric on economics so that their opponents – from Obama and Clinton to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez – are anywhere between mere “idiots” to “treasonous cretins who should be lynched from a tree”.
Now, as the contradictions are heightened and sharpened, we are in the process of reframing the debate. The Soviets and the countries which fell under their sway – authoritarians one and all – made it patently unsafe for nearly a century to call oneself a socialist in public in the United States. Venezuela adopted the same authoritarian tact on the shifty grounds of oil, and Latin Americans as a whole are paying for the human rights sins of Venezuela and Cuba. To adopt the same authoritarian communist style of governance or politics which flourished and mostly dissipated by the turn of the century would be terrible, so it is wise for American socialists and progressives to look more toward Western European labor-socialists.
And increasingly, it is appealing to Americans who are more partial to a strong social safety net as that same safety net is further eviscerated by economic liberals and libertarians. Just as it is becoming safer for many to call themselves “nationalists” in public, it is becoming safer for many to call themselves “socialists” in public as well.
So it is OK to make conservatives crazier than usual. It’s OK to rubbish the conservative economic and fiscal hegemony. It’s OK to aggressively push the Overton Window to the left.
