She also needs to be a little more solid on foreign policy plans but unfortunately outside of the really dedicated left I don't think a lot of people voting democrat will be looking a lot at that, at least outside of China tariffs.
I think what Bernie can do is expand the conversation on China beyond trade. I know he's been talking to Richard Wolff-- he should step in harder into the conversation on China because this is one of these weird gateways to breaking orthodoxy. I tried this on my Mom and Uncle, who are C-level executives at different mid-large enterprises, and I could see afterwords that it really had an impact-- noticeably impacted the way they see capitalism and the way they think about Bernie Sanders. Because they know clear as day, how intimidating China is economically.
Just do what Richard Wolff does-- point out the clear fact that China's slowest years see double the GDP growth of our best years, that on average they've had 3-5 times us. Point out that the average real wage of their workers has quadrupled in 20 years, while ours has been flat since the 1970's. Point out that while we're debating if a Green New Deal is too much, they're leading green energy investment, massively expanding infrastructure at home-- hell they're working on a silk road all the way to Europe. Point out that whether it's China or us, we don't dig our treasure out of the ground like the Saudi's... the future prosperity of the country depends on how smart and fit your labor force is, how connected they are by infrastructure, and how deep their basic research goes that will fuel future innovation-- and that China has quadrupled its labor wages, is massively scaling infrastructure, and is investing tremendously in basic research and green energy.
Then say-- the Chinese have a plan, they believe in government planning...
because they're Communists.
Clearly point out, look-- I don't like authoritarian governments. I don't like human rights abuses. What they're doing to the Muslims? Atrocious. What they're doing in Hong Kong? Unacceptable. But that doesn’t change the fact that the USSR and the People's Republic of China are the two biggest growth stories in modern history, and it is because of the Marxism... they plan, and therefore they have more productivity. The question is not about trade-- China just has a more powerful theory of production than we do.
What did capitalism do? Capitalism chased profit motif-- our business leaders sold China their technology and opened their delivery infrastructure and capital in order to gain access to China's cheap labor and big markets. MASSIVE profits made. But the capitalists sold the goose-- the tech, the plants, the labor-- in order to get a whole lot of eggs for the 1%. And now we're going to have the reckoning.
Trade is not the center of this debate-- trade is a distraction. What's really the issue is growth. What's really the issue is capitalism's failure to compete. America can go along with capitalism, and we can wait for capitalism to sell Authoritarian Communists dominance in the world-- which is about to ACCELERATE, not decelerate. OR we can at least give ourselves a fighting chance by creating a new American Democratic Socialism. A democratic form of socialism that at least has a plan to revamp infrastructure, give the people healthcare and education, and put them all to work on a jobs program. At least start to put up a fight by getting our ducks in a row (or should I see geese?).
The world's going to be dominated by socialists one way or the other. Do you want it to be the Authoritarian Chinese Communists? Or would you like it to be American Democratic Socialists? I choose the democratic kind.
And if we succeed in creating a better, fairer version of socialism that is both successful at lifting the people up, but also protects and celebrates their political freedoms and lifts up an example-- well eventually even the Communist Party of China may have to deal with 1 billion people standing up to say-- "We don't just want economic growth. We also want political rights. We want democracy in our society and work places."
Bernie needs to step into this message because it is one that flips minds. The fact that the Chinese, the fastest growing economy, are Marxists, is the elephant in the room.
