Washington Post: The Opportunity For Democrats In The GOP Civil War

Greg Sargent makes some good points in this article.

The Washington Post:

“The rage-addled statement that Donald Trump has fired at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plunged the GOP into worsening infighting. But as Republicans reacted to the former president’s missive, it also revealed a glaring tension in the story they are telling about his legacy.It’s a tension that Democrats can exploit to their advantage.

Conservative populists are ceding that space on other fronts. When Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) rolled out a well-received plan for a tax credit of at least $3,000 per child to fight childhood poverty, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) attacked it as “welfare.” …

Rubio is also a champion of the new conservative populism. It’s supposed to offer a decisive break with plutocratic GOP economic orthodoxy while championing immigration restrictionism, suspicion of internationalist solutions to problems like climate change, and nationalist industrial policy to counter China. …

“What that means,” Hammond concluded, “is that Democrats have space to occupy that vacuum and in some ways be more authentically populist than Trump or Trumpism ever could be.”

I think he has a blinkered view though.

Are the Democrats really capable of populist progressivism? The $2,000 stimulus checks which were supposed to go out the door “immediately” have yet to materialize. The $15 minimum wage doesn’t appear to getting past Joe Manchin in the Senate. Neoliberal Joe made news last night by shooting down the idea of $50,000 in student loan debt relief.

Is anything realistically happening before the 2022 midterms on health care, infrastructure or the Trump tax cuts? Budget reconciliation is being used to pass the COVID relief bill.