The Distance From Here To Success: Taking Back Congress, And Beyond

The problem is that The Non-Republicans - except guys like Platner in Maine and Osborne in Nebraska, and Bernie Sanders and maybe AOC - don't have any real gut level belief that the system FDR implemented to prevent the US from descending into chaos needs massive triage and immediate enhancement.

The process of "taking back" starts with a vital skill: clearly stating the problem, instead of merely promulgating a list of complaints and grievances. 

Coupled with that problem definition skill needs to be the skill to break those problems down to short understandable, and true, statements. 

And, finally, that needs to be followed by the skill to present sensible, understandable and executable solutions.

Platner and Osborne seem to have those skills in abundance.

But they are not in office yet.

Bernie also has those skills in abundance; but he is way too old. 

AOC has them, but she is a woman - not a problem for me, but we've seen twice now what a problem voting for a woman is for most Americans.

And yet, the future of the Republic may rest upon those four people.

One would hope that there is time for others to emerge, but that's cutting it tight.

Aurthur Schlesinger Jr., in 1941, said 

"... since this is a capitalistic society, the class most interested in its security and prosperity is the capitalist class, which thus should have the most power.

The theory has survived every test but experience.

It simply has not worked. Since the Federalist party, the American business community appears to have lost its political capacity; it has not been, in the strict sense, a ruling class.

In placid days power naturally gravitates to it as the strongest group in the state; but through American history it has been unable to use that power very long for national purposes.

Moved typically by personal and class, rarely by public, considerations, the business community has invariably brought national affairs to a state of crisis and exasperated the rest of society into dissatisfaction bordering on revolt".

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What has actually happened since Schesinger said those words is that since 1980 most of us have sought hope in gradually giving power to "the capitalist class".

Kurt Andersen calls "the capitalist class" "evil geniuses" in a book by that name in which he documents how those evil geniuses - Old, Old Money, have proved Schlesinger wrong - they have designed and have implemented a decades long coup.

And, as the final throes of that coup settle to accepting its results as normal, we are approaching endgame: trillionaire feudalism.

That's the distance we are from the brink.

Not very far.