Ed Rendell is the prototypical New Democrat. Or as I like to think of him: an Old Republican. He is a good example of what I’m talking about when I say that any Republican of 40 years ago who really believed in what his party stood for would now be a Democrat. Any person still a Republican is either evil or just not that bright. But it goes further than this.
More and more, what it means to be a Democrat is to be socially liberal and economically conservative. And this is not a deal that I’m willing to make. I just don’t care so much about reproductive rights and gay marriage to abandon economic equality for them. But Ed Rendell, like most supposed liberals, depends upon these issues for his reputation. And I will grant him all of this: he is on the right side of all the really vile social issues that the medieval crowd make us fight over.
But the big issue is economic. We have ridiculous levels of inequality. This has led to far less tax revenues and thus deficits and debt. A big part of this is under-funding Social Security and Medicare—programs that the rich pay almost nothing into. And the solution for people like “liberal” Ed Rendell is simple: fuck the poorer classes!
Jonathan Valania writes about this in The Philly Post, Ed Rendell Is on the Wrong Side of the Class War. He starts by noting that he likes Rendell. I alway hate this kind of thing. So what? Andrew Breitbart seems to have been a personable guy, but the world is a much better place since he died. I care about Rendell only as much as he makes the world better, and it just doesn’t matter how many minor issues the man is right on. When it comes to the big issues, he is wrong.
Valania points out that in addition to being a corporate cheerleader for an investment bank (which somehow is never worth disclosing during any of his endless appearances on MSNBC), he a chairman of the steering committee of Fix the Debt. So the next time you see Rendell on the TV machine, ask yourself, do all of his nice words about marriage equality really make up for the fact that he wants to fuck the poorer classes with cuts to Social Security and Medicare?
