“Old fashioned capitalism has broken down,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) during Monday remarks in Berryville, Virginia. “Adam Smith has lost his way amid these big corporations,” he added.
“The old Adam Smith idea of competition, it’s gone,” said Schumer to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a Sunday-aired interview for This Week. “Vulture capitalism” was now the order of the day, he said.
Schumer and other Democrats pushed for increasingly centralized economic planning under the banner: “A Better Deal,” framing the American Dream as served by a federally mandated $15 minimum wage and unspecified “paid family and sick leave.”
Schumer’s remarks largely drew from a Monday-published op-ed of his in The New York Times.
Neo-Marxist class warfare was a permanent theme, with Schumer deriding “corporate interests,” “the super wealthy,” “elites,” “special interests,” and “the powerful” while extolling “working people.”
“We are the party on the side of working people,” said Schumer, attempting co-option of Donald Trump’s ostensibly populist platform. “The Republican Party seemingly exists to work on behalf of the wealthy and the corporate interests,” he added.
Schumer promised economic prosperity through socialism:
[Democrats will] increase people’s pay … we’re gonna reduce their everyday expenses … we’re gonna provide workers the tools they need for the 21st century economy. Simple put — what do Democrats stand for? A better deal for working people, higher wages, lower costs, and the tools for a 21st century economy.
“Too many Americans don’t know what we stand for,” said Schumer, suggesting that Americans were unaware of what Hillary Clinton would have brought to bear had she been elected president.
Neither Schumer nor any other Democrat called for reducing taxation or regulatory/licensing burdens on Americans. Not a word was said about governmental and bureaucratic parasitism.
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