 Politico released a new article that is Infuriating because this article is about Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to Neoliberal goals that I wish would just go away forever don't want to hear anything about what they have to say But you know this article stood out to me because they're going to very Patronizing Lee and condescending Lee offer advice to leftists in the UK and America because obviously we failed Corbett's movement failed Bernie's movement failed We don't have power we're out of power so from two individuals to former leaders who had power They're gonna tell us lefties what we need to do to stop losing as John F. Harris writes Bill Clinton and Tony Blair no longer have power, but they still have advice They perceive plenty of people in need of it The needy include progressives in the United Kingdom where the Labor Party has not had power in a long while and The United States where the Democratic Party has power for now But looks likely to lose lots of it in midterm elections this fall Together they offered a fitness program of sorts for members of their own parties that they fear are getting badly out of shape Clinton urges progressives to rebuild atrophied muscles of persuasion I think one of the ways you win elections is by talking straight with people and giving them permission to vote against you He explains in the most recent edition of his podcast in other words Don't hector and moralize as though the merits of your position should be self-evident to any decent person Assume a position of modesty that argues if you really disagree with this then you will go out and take another choice But here's why I think it's better for you Blair urges progressives to rebuild atrophied muscles of self-discipline for much of the left of Blair said on Clinton's program It's not clear that their main goal is really to win power or wield it It's primary purpose is to make itself feel good about itself, right to convince itself that it's principled, right? But that is in the end something that leads you to self-indulgence unless progressives commit to reclaiming the center in culture wars Blair added they'll remain vulnerable to some loose remark by someone being exploited by the right and will be hammered Day in and day out. That's just not competent politics. Okay So when it comes to Bill Clinton's advice, it's hollow and vapid because progressives have already won I can't speak for the UK, but here in the United States. We've already persuaded Americans Most of them support Medicare for all tuition free public colleges and universities $15 an hour minimum wage Student debt cancellation. The problem is that party leadership won't get the fuck out of the way When we start to actually build real power individuals From the Democratic Party former leaders step in and they crush it Obama in 2020 decided to make some phone calls to centrist Democrats to get them to drop out in order to endorse Joe Biden so that way they're no longer splitting the votes and Bernie wouldn't win in 2016 Bill Clinton, you know, he was fighting for Hillary Clinton who had the DNC working on her behalf To destroy Bernie Sanders. I mean just watch this 2018 clip from C-SPAN where there's a little bit of a message at the end That Bill Clinton had for Tom Perez when he became the new DNC chair in 2017 The DNC is unpopular with its own base There half of the Democratic Party or roughly half the Democratic Party felt like the DNC was unfairly tipping the scales in the last Presidential election trying to get Hillary Clinton nominated trying to hurt Bernie Sanders So you start with that bad blood and really there's just been a clash between these two sides that has resumed the hostilities that had Been put aside at the Democratic Convention in 2016 resumed the minute that Donald Trump was elected this huge battle for the soul of the Democratic Party between the Clinton type folks and the Sanders folks and Tom Perez is in the middle of that and he's gotten very explicit instructions from President Clinton as we write in the in the paperback extension of the original book He's gotten instructions for Bill Clinton not to let the party go to the Bernie Sanders folks Interesting so the DNC uses its institutional advantages to crush progressives and then Bill Clinton says You should just persuade people better How do we persuade people specifically politicians in power when they're bought and paid for by the industries who we want to go after? How do you convince a corporate Democrat? That Medicare for all is the way to go when they've been bought and paid for by the health insurance industry back in 2019 there was a Vox article that explained how the health insurance industry was betting on Joe Biden as their savior because Bernie Sanders Was gaining too much momentum and he wanted Medicare for all how do you compete with this much money now as vapid as Bill Clinton's So-called advice was Tony Blair was much more patronizing and sure It's true that you could find some lefties on Twitter who you know They try to purify themselves into oblivion and say well, I'm the real leftist You're not lefty enough, but I mean that's really a small minority of even the online left I think that most lefties don't really care about that they want to Build coalitions. They want to make sure that they expand the number of people who support them But really if you read the subtext there what Tony Blair is saying especially when he talks about how you know The left is getting clowned on because of culture war issues. He's basically saying you should become terfs I mean, he's from Turf Island. So he wants you to abandon trans people Just ignore LGBTQ plus issues basically become not even a class reductionist But just appeal to the right more and that's how you win But yet he says this while also we learned that the Labor Party was trying to crush People who supported Jeremy Corbyn when Jeremy Corbyn was party leader We learned that internally they're trying to sabotage him at every step of the way So it's just it's astonishing to me that you have these former leaders who they try to crush progressives And then they pretend as if you know, oh, well You just haven't persuaded them enough and you're not marketing yourself enough Meanwhile, they work against progressives at the behest of conservatives and really this whole Radical centrism that they're proposing is why we're in this current state, right? Let me remind you that Bill Clinton Decided to bring up third-way politics, which means Democrats embraced neoliberalism now Neoliberalism was basically a Republican thing mostly, right? There were some neoliberal Democrats before the the Clinton era, but Ronald Reagan made free market politics Hyper capitalism neoliberalism so popular that the only way the Democrats felt that they could win elections again Was if they just appealed to the right now they marketed themselves as centrists But in actuality when they governed Bill Clinton, he just did what the right wing wanted He signed the defense of marriage act into law which banned gay marriages federally And that was the compromise because the right wanted a constitutional amendment to marriage equality to ban it to be clear And Clinton was like, well, what if we just ban it federally? Oh, well, what a great compromise throwing gay people under the bus He signed don't ask don't tell him to law. He signed welfare reform into law that Fucked over people who were poor my family at the time needed that and we were fucked over because of bill Clinton I remember my parents complaining about this new law and them hating bill Clinton at that point after previously supporting him Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law. So this whole third-way politics Has led to the situation where neoliberalism is the default position of both parties where instead of offering public solutions To public problems. Well, we offer private solutions rather than just increasing funding for education Well, why don't we outsource that to corporations? Let them make the money off of education let the you know Healthcare insurance companies make money off of us instead of offering health care to people So this politics has destroyed the uk and the us And so, you know, they pretended to be solutions to the problems of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan But all they did was expand Those problems and turned their entire party into many Reagan machines So There why we're in this predicament currently and they have the audacity to say, oh, well, you're just not being centrist enough Well, you're being too fucking right wing. Okay, you're being too right wing And sure it is the case that labor Has shifted to the right over the years like the democratic party in some respects But the democratic party compared to the conservative party in canada australia New zealand the uk even I mean, they're kind of ideologically similar to them We don't really have a left-wing party in the united states And that's because tony blair and bill clinton crushed the left so they can gain power and They didn't govern from the center. They govern from the right And they don't want the democratic party and the labor party to govern from the left Which is why their parties fight to the nail to crush these movements So, um, we don't need your advice save your advice shove it up your asses Just fuck off and for tony blair. I should ask why haven't you turned yourself in yet for crimes against humanity? Of course, he's sorry for the iraq war, but sorry isn't going to bring back those lives So I don't want to hear from these fucking neoliberal dipshits. We don't want your advice save it Honestly, if you want to help the left if you're genuinely concerned about the left not succeeding which they're not but if you were You can step the fuck aside and let us take power But you won't do that you'll fight us tooth and nail and when we build movements You try to crush those movements and you know that this helps the right But you don't care because you're more of a right-winger In both parties tony blair and bill clinton. They're both right-wingers more than they are centrists