These issues are breaking these coalitions apart because inside each of them there's disagreement
about repression, about guns, about you name it. It's falling apart. The center cannot hold.
That's why Mr Trump is as powerful on his side. That's why it's possible to have Marjorie Green
and people like that. And on the democratic side, that's what fuels Bernie Sanders and AOC and the
rising number of people challenging the whole idea of the monopoly of the two big parties,
even as they work inside one of them. I'm talking of course about the socialists active
within the democratic party calling themselves progressives, which is fine that's what they are.
But these parties are not in a position to resolve this. The tensions inside each party, the acrimony
between the parties. Let me give you just a couple of examples having set the frame. A few weeks ago,
Mitch McConnell, the head of the republican party publicly, denounces big business,
CEOs. He's furious that they are upset about what republicans are
doing to limit voting across the country and particularly in the state of Georgia.
"You shouldn't be meddling in politics" says Mr McConnell, who has been courting
them and their money his entire political career. What's going on? It's very dangerous
for the leader of a party to denounce big business and CEOs. They are the leaders of
his party. They are the donors. And what are those companies doing meddling? Why aren't they quiet?
The answer is they're afraid now too. As capitalism goes down they are still American.
companies. They still have big investments in this country. They still count on the market
in this country. They don't want social conflict. They don't want mass repression, or the resistance
to it, because it disrupts their workforce, it disrupts their markets, it disrupts business.
They don't want it. And if they think, as they clearly now do, that the republicans are pushing
the envelope, or provoking or going in the direction of a dangerous kind of repression
(as in stopping black people and poor people from voting), that this is going to blow up. They don't
want it and they told the republicans, and the republicans aren't listening because if they
can't go in that direction they fear losing the election. So they're in an impossible situation.
But impossible situations are symptoms and signs of the situation spinning out of control.
Biden is trying, for his part, to mollify the progressives. He does have some progressive tax
proposals. They're modest as I've tried to explain, but they're real. They're
much better than trump's. But he's terrified because how is he going to get them through?
The republicans are going to block them and at least some democrats may go with the republicans
from Arizona with West Virginia and so on. What's he going to do? There is only one solution. He can
go to the mass of people and say "Hey, help me. Put pressure." But to mobilize the mass of people,
if Mr Biden were to dare go in that direction, hands the party over to the people best
positioned to mobilize, and that's the progressives because they had to do that
to get in to the Democratic Party apparatus. They know how to do it. They're experts at it
that's too dangerous for the establishment, so they can't go there, so that's their dead end.
And meanwhile the whole society is grappling. Police shootings, Black Lives Matter,
all of it are signs of the cracks. I can't predict any better than anyone else whether
the parties will come up with some way to paper over their differences. They may.
It's possible. Right now, it doesn't look real good. And again, I haven't factored
in the growing competition from China, which is having its effects left, right and center.