July 13, 2015
And her speech Monday was only the latest in a series of recent statements by Democratic centrists expressing ideas or supporting policies that would have been dismissed as fringe leftism a decade or two ago. A recent report on inclusive capitalism by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and British Labour Party thinker Ed Balls proclaims that modern democracies “need new social and political institutions to make twenty-first century capitalism work for the many and not the few.” Last January Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md), ranking member on the House Budget Committee, and other House Democrats proposed a middle-class tax plan that included a financial transaction tax—an idea previously identified with the left wing of their party. These are not just a few straws in the wind; they are a veritable bale of hay in a hurricane.