How to lose an election, Talarico edition
Because a restoration of very marginal tax rates, along with a strong tightening of the effective rate, single-payer Medicare for all, and an end to war, are too hard. Fuck that.
Texas DSA guy Talarico is gonna make sure he stirs the racial grievance pot instead, linking "white supremacy" to climate change and anything that riles up the people with brown skin. Linking shitty, overpriced, bankrupting healthcare to white people is not going to do anything to make it affordable. A politician who wants to do something positive will never drag race into it. He will just say, "Let's do Medicare for All!" If he starts in on genital mutilation v2.0 or "white supremacy is why your social entitlements are being destroyed!", you know he's working for the oligarchy. I know he's working for the oligarch. You have to reach that same conclusion on your own steam, however.
Nothing unites Texans like the natives of European descent being identified as "white supremacists." Because 70-80% of the electorate want single payer. But you can't have single payer because that wrecks the private insurance industry, and it's pointless to create jobs aimed at inflating the cost of health care. Corporate entourages would collapse, directors would lose their jobs, and executives would have to be paid billions to retire!
The other 20%? Oh, they're all white supremacists.
Sheesh.
I know, that's not a very refined take on it. But it's exactly what people hear on both sides, and its whole purpose is either to cause violent bloodshed or to guarantee that no reform ever happens because the candidates from the Blue Team are just so awful.
I'm so thankful that you asked this question and also thankful that young activists have really drawn the link between climate change and White supremacy and capitalism in our country ... And I think only ending the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together are we gonna be able to begin the process of dismantling them.
In the 1950s, the marginal rate was 91%. This didn't mean the rich paid anywhere near that, but their effective rate was still high, as much as 50%.
We don't have to dismantle capitalism. We just have to tax the shit out of every oligarch so that their socio-economic class ceases to exist.
