Third Way: The Road to 2020 Should Run Through Michigan

[brooklynite]

Medium

Since Michigan primary voters don’t get the national attention lavished on those in early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, why should contenders for the nomination take special note of this state and its rookie governor?

Because she is running the state as she campaigned: as a pragmatic progressive. Whitmer easily dispatched two far-left candidates in her 2018 primary and went on to beat a Trump-supporting Republican to win a governorship that Democrats had not held for almost a decade. She ran on the urgency of providing opportunity now and tackling kitchen-table concerns like clean water and fixing “the damn roads.”

By contrast, some of the loudest buzz in the early Democratic presidential primary jockeying centers on much more distant ideals: Medicare for All. Free college. A guaranteed federal job.

Well, here’s a bet that the candidate who sounds more like Gretchen Whitmer — one who shapes their identity as an “Opportunity Democrat” (and puts real ideas behind it) — will be best-positioned to end Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency in 2020.

[melman]

1. Third Way?

But I keep hearing they don't exist. Strange.

[Power 2 the People]

5. +1

[SharonClark]

2. A guaranteed federal job?

Has any candidate campaigned on that?

[RandySF]

3. She's no moderate a la the Clintons

Her main primary opponent was a DSA candidate who made her look moderate by comparison.

[Moostache]

4. I am tired of enhanced education and tuition cost reduction being derisively labeled "free"

Beginning of unhinged rant...

Dismissal of a central issue - the unattainable cost of a 4-year private or out-of-state education, and the rising cost curve of state universities as well - is madness.

Yes, pragmatism has its place in "getting things done"...but without a vision, there is no hope and no future worth getting people excited over. I graduated college 26 years ago and my father graduated 27 years before that...but over the course of 50+ years, the costs of in-state tuition and room and board have risen from my father being able to do it on money earned from a summer job and help from my grandfather to me needing state scholarships and tuition abatements and help from my father to now...when my daughter applied to my alma mater 3 years ago, was accepted and lavished with many $1,000's of scholarship money and would STILL have faced a 6-figure student loan debt upon graduation if I had let her go.

In 3 generations of solidly upper middle-class, college-educated family members college costs have accelerated by orders of magnitude each generation. From several hundred dollars a semester to several thousand to several tens of thousands in 53 years. If left unchecked, my grandchildren would need several HUNDREDS of thousands per semester in about 18 years...

A society that denies access to its citizens to the collected wisdom and benefits of that society's success is doomed to fail. Paying for education should NOT be denigrated as "free college" when it is truly the best potential investment society could make in its own interests - and NOT just college either. Trade schools and skills training for non-college degree holders are just as vital to the nation's interests. But a high school only level of education (and in many cases truly far LESS than even that standard) are totally unacceptable to a stable and growing society....yet we abide it.

We have become a nation infested with incurious idiots, running around led by social media and advertisers and social envy of more followers, more possessions, more 'likes' and have lost sight of how a society grows and prospers and how it divides and splinters. We are careening towards a cliff and hitting the gas instead of the brakes in too many ways...dedication to better informed, trained and educated populace should not be allowed to persist.

End of rant...