Who will it be? This is the one candidate missing from the 2020 Democratic Party primary for the Presidency of the United States. Dozens of candidates are said to be considering running or are already running for the 2020 Democratic primary, but none to the left of Bernie Sanders, who must be considered the prohibitive favorite, for many reasons.
Why are there are no candidates currently known to be considering running to Bernie Sanders’ left in the primary, when this is a publicity supernova, in which critical marginalized progressive positions can gain illumination and subsequent life? This was the effect of Bernie Sanders’ candidacy in the primary two years ago, to help bring progressive ideas, however modest, from the margins to the mainstream.
Where is the candidate (let alone candidates) who will add policy planks farther left than Bernie Sanders, such as college debt forgiveness, and a universal debt jubilee up to a certain significant amount? What candidate will call for the badly needed implementation of a national VAT (value added tax) on corporate activities? What candidate will call for universal public banking? What candidate will call for a global drawdown of US military activity and installations and budgets to a fraction of existing levels?
What candidate will call for a much Greener Green New Deal? A guaranteed subsidy for green jobs to full employment? And a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly? For families with children? For individuals?
One could go on and on about the additional monies that need to be pledged to education, to the environment, to organic food systems, let alone to housing, to the homeless, and to abolishing the bulk of the prison system…
Where is even a single, crucial candidate who will run to the left of the prohibitive favorite, Bernie Sanders, in the 2020 Democratic primary? The socio-political conversation and the chances for the people of the world will be a vastly poorer, more ignorant, meaner, and more dangerous and cruel place in that lack.