“Climate change is the most immediate example of that. If you’re going to bring the total innovation and ingenuity of this country to bear, our system as a country, our economy, is going to have to be part of that,” he said.
O’Rourke’s comments represented a break with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, which supports the idea of radically restructuring how markets work, especially energy markets.
More importantly, in terms of the primary, it signaled that O’Rourke intends to fashion himself as a sort of anti-Sanders – a champion for capitalism, albeit a much more tightly regulated version of it than the one espoused by the Trump administration.
It’s also important to hear what O’Rourke isn’t saying.
He doesn’t rail against the evils of Wall Street, a subject area in which Warren tops her rivals, both in expertise and in passion.
And he doesn’t vilify “billionaires” the same way that Sanders does when, for instance, the Vermont senator tells crowds that the “system is rigged” and “this country just does not belong to a handful of billionaires.”
It remains to be seen, though, how much farther O’Rourke intends to go in order to differentiate himself from rival Democrats. But already, he appears to be staking out economic ground so far unclaimed, and rejecting some of the party’s more polarizing rhetoric.
Asked at a December town hall in Texas if he considered himself to be a “progressive,” O’Rourke replied: “I don’t know.”
from Viral News Updates https://ift.tt/2XYL1JO
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