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[quote=Anonymous]Where have the moderate Democrats gone?  Here’s my answer.  I’m 50. Sitting in the middle of Gen X. And for most of my life, I was socially pretty liberal, and fiscally pretty conservative.  Live and let live. Don’t discriminate.  Do unto others. Let women make reproductive choices, but somewhere in the second trimester, you need a good reason to abort, like health or mother, fetal anonomly, etc.  How does two gay men getting married hurt me? Isn’t letting people make commitments to each other good, especially if they chose to have kids? But: I feel like I pay a lot of taxes for what I make, and as a citizen, that’s my responsibility. But, if I’m shelling out that kind of money, I want a good cost benefit analysis for every federal program— defense and nondefense. No pork. No $1000 hammers, not big toys the military doesn’t need, no social programs that aren’t narrowly tailored to help people in real need while weeding out fraud.

I considered my self a moderate Democrat. I’d bet 80%+ of my policy position were in line with the majority of America.

Then three things happened.

One, I travelled and listened and talked and learned learned what other countries do.

And discovered that we really do need Medicare for all and to take profit out of healthcare. We will get better outcomes for less money. Which, BTW, I believe is fiscally conservative. If a lot of my money now comes out of my paycheck for health insurance, just so I can have a deductible and high copay, why no pay the same amount of money in taxes?  Every developed nation does it. All pay significant less per capita for medical care. Many have better outcomes.

Why do we not support families better?  As a practical matter, we need people to have kids on the economy collapses.  As a moral matter, don’t we owe kids and people who chose to have kids the supports to make them healthy product adults. Parental leave, investing in education, decent leave, a living wage.  Long term, it pays off.

Two, I had kids. And I realize I had it harder than my parents. It took two incomes to achieve the standard of living they had with one. And it was hard. Very hard, to raise kids while working FT starting 6 weeks after a C-section.   And, I realize I am handing my kids an even worse situation than I had. Climate disaster. Unaffordable college (I went to Wake Forest. Tutoring 12k in 1994. Tuition over 60k today. And don’t tell me incomes have increased 500% like tuition. So go instate.  Fine. My bill to send a kid to WM is over 40k).  Unaffordable healthcare. Unaffordable housing. Crappy childcare at expensive prices, if they can find it.  Incredible federal deficits.  How do we ever expect them to be able to have their own kids?

And three— the hypocrisy is gross. No abortion, but if you can’t afford the kid, it’s your fault for having it.  Worshiping capitalism without guardrails and worker protections. We have unlimited money to give billionaires tax breaks, but red states won’t fund programs to give parents living at the poverty $20-30 a month to feed their kids during the summer.  The same kids you are so much about when mom thought about abortion at 8 weeks because she knew she could afford to feed them.  Its gross.

And that’s how a moderate Democrat moves towards being progressive. Since you asked. [/quote]

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