Yes, the "there is no difference" seems to me to be a quite sophomoric argument arrived at by a false dichotomy in which "agree with me" / "disagree with me" is the dimension, and the person making the argument hold a position nobody could hold and take power, so all serious rivals to take government are in the "disagree with my position" camp.

The fact that there is quite a range among the corporatists ranging from serious minded technocrats that labor under a false neoliberal theory of how the economy works and so do not pursue the best policies available, to corporatists that would at one time have been closest fascists, and increasingly in the US right wing are open fascists.

So the line of argument that runs, "the Republicans are corporatist, the Democrats are corporatist, therefore they are equal", or "the Republicans do not propose doing enough to substantially ameliorate climate change, the Democrats do not propose doing enough to substantially ameliorate climate change, therefore they are equal" are both saying, in essence, "the Republicans and Democrats are both members of the status quo establishment."

But both being, by and large, members of the status quo establishment does not thereby imply that they are identical, any more than the fact that a barn is full of horses mean that any particular horse is identically useful when harnessed to plow, or when entered into a horse race.

A lot of progressives in the US convinced themselves in 2008 that Obama was something that he was not, because they needed to pretend that he was a progressive in order to enthusiastically support him. And then when he proved to be who he always was, rather than who they imagined him to be, they felt a sense of betrayal.

Blaming that sense of betrayal on Obama's "broken promises" is perhaps natural, but in the final analysis, they were the author of most of the promises that they felt that Obama had broken. Matt Stoller is an example of that when he uses the "breaking of the promise" to renegotiate NAFTA. Coming from a supporter of corporate trade agreements, the promise to "renegotiate" one of those agreements is an evidently empty one, made to take off pressure for being a supporter of corporate trade agreements, since there is no reason to believe that the result of renegotiating would be a progressive outcome.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.