the term "corporate democrats" conjures up a disconnect between finance and populism, and that makes sense in the united states.

but, what if the corporate democrats were actually pretty liberal about it? i mean, the new deal wasn't charity for the sake of it - it was intended to promote a corporate agenda.

i've hit back at elizabeth warren pretty hard for being too right-wing, but that's in a spectrum where you only have two parties, and you consequently need to pull the democrats as far left as is potentially possible. in a three-party spectrum, you have that centrist path.

kathleen wynne is more like elizabeth warren than she is like hillary clinton. and, elizabeth warren is in truth a wall street democrat. they share the idea that finance doesn't need to be abolished, it can be regulated for the public good. and, they both think like corporate tax lawyers.

the ndp tend to be more fiscally conservative, because workers movements have always had that conservative strain. it's ultimately a religious thing, and there's a few different levels to it. but, it's rooted in some anachronistic worldviews about the source of wealth in the economy - anachronistic worldviews that are widespread amongst workers on both sides of the border of this continent. sanders also had that fiscally conservative streak, if you listened to him carefully, and he was just as wrong about it as the ndp broadly are.

i would have easily supported sanders over warren, but the context is dramatically different. the united states does not have a single-payer system, for example, and warren was flaky on that - as i actually expect wynne would be, if it didn't already exist. so, it's not as simple as just lining up positions.

but, this is the dynamic: the liberals are a corporatist party, and they think like a corporation does, but their perspective on the value of government is more like adam smith than it is like milton friedmann; the ndp are a populist worker's party, and that seems attractive at first glance, but what that means is that they don't always fully understand what they're talking about at the same level as the lawyers in the liberal party do.

i'm an educated lower class anarchist. i don't fully identify with either. but, my brain usually tells me that the liberals are a better idea, in the context of what already exists.