Last week I wrote a thing about Chuck Schumer and the Baileys, that imaginary Massapequa couple with so totemic a pull on centrist politicians and their well-paid consultant class that their politics becomes virtually indistinguishable from conservatives.

This phenomenon, however, this outsourcing of decision and policy making to a box-checked, artificially engineered segment of the electorate—It’s what the Baileys would want!—isn’t simply a plague on the feckless centre or unmoored-to-principle moderates. There’s been a knock-on effect. So-called progressive and left-wing parties have concocted their own versions of Joe and Eileen Bailey who, increasingly, in no way resemble actual living, breathing progressive and left-wing voters.

Let us call these progressive avatars, Joe and Marleen Novak. Married for nearly 30 years now, Joe’s a salt-of-the-earth autoworker. Yeah, autoworker. Been hard at it for longer than he’s known his wife. Still a good paying union job but precarious given the state of free trade these days and the radical environmentalist push for EVs. Marleen’s a former nurse practitioner but Covid burnt her out. All the death and dying. Mask and vaccine mandates. She’s since taken her healthcare expertise to freelance in the wellness industry.

Joe and Marleen have three kids, two who are still living at home. Joe Jr.’s an on-and-off again autoworker, subject to the vagaries of the industry, not yet able to get a solid foothold on the seniority ladder. He drives an Uber when he’s off the board. Janice, the youngest, she’s an esthetician, trying to open her own shop up. She and Marleen collaborate on their wellness business. Their middle child, John, is an entrepreneur with his own cannabis shop that he lives above in a nice little apartment with his girlfriend Renee. Renee, right? Renee? Rebecca?

The Novaks want their politicians to concentrate on the kitchen table issues. “Pocket book issues,” Marleen adds. Inflation. Keeping taxes low and the streets safe. “I want the fat cats in those corporate towers to pay their fair share,” Joe says. “But not so much that they pack up their businesses and move to the States.”

And enough with the ‘woke’ already, OK? The Novaks are as open-minded as the next guy but people just take it too far. They’re all in favour of immigration. Just not too much. Not so much that they’re threatening to take all the good jobs from people who were born in this country. Marleen points out that Joe Jr. had that East Indian girlfriend for a while there, remember? Nice girl. Her parents were a little snooty, she feels. Gave the impression they never approved of the relationship. Marleen thinks they thought their daughter was too good for Joe Jr., what with her pursuing that university degree and all. And my god! was the food spicy. It’s what caused Joe Jr.’s stomach problems. Marleen’s sure of it.

“And all this LGBT… Q stuff?” Janice wonders. “That’s fine. People should be allowed to live their authentic selves. But +!? What’s the + even mean?” she asks, genuinely. It’s just too much sometimes, Joe insists. He just wants his kids to be able to afford their own homes someday. Homes just like this one, the house they grew up in. “Maybe with a few more hundred square-feet,” Janice offers with a laugh. That, and a comfortable retirement for Joe and Marleen. Maybe buy a little place in Florida for the winter. That’s all they really want.

Kitchen table issues. Pocket book issues.

Sound familiar?

All very middle-class and moderate sounding. Reasonable people. Everything to a point, is the Novaks’ point. Edges smoothed. Opinions flattened. Just like the Baileys, really. Almost exactly like the Baileys. Concocted and refined through extensive polling and targeted research that somehow seamlessly merges with the political views of the researchers, strategists and consultants whose overarching aim is to figure out how to attract conservative-leaning voters to their candidates’ side.

This may make some political sense to centrist parties and their functionaries. Historically, they fished in the same electoral pool as what we like to think of the Red Torys, let’s call them. Red Torys who largely kept their far-right prone members out on the fringes, isolated enough to have little impact on policies and direction. While these types of Red Torys & their Liberal counterparts diverged on some social issues, they walked largely in lockstep on matters of economic policy. Those kitchen table and pocket book issues.

No matter that such conservatives have ceased to exist, at least as properly operational parties. They’ve been swallowed up and remade by their fringes. That’s a matter for liberals and centrists to work out for themselves. Why progressive and truly left-leaning parties ever tried casting a net in those waters remains a mystery. But as centrists and moderates mirrored conservatives in their move right, it rendered their left flank exposed and vulnerable. Open season for true progressives to pounce and stake their claim to that side of the political spectrum.

And yet… And yet?

Establishment Democrats in the U.S. desperately cling to The Baileys and, worse still, wage more vigorous war on its own left wing than they do the President’s power mad authoritarianism. After a landslide victory in the U.K., the Labour party has totally abandoned any notion of progressive, seemingly intent to morph into a Conservative government it had ousted. In Canada’s April federal election, the New Democratic was wiped off the map with an anemic campaign that made it impossible for even supporters to pin down what it actually stood for. Despite new leadership, the Ontario NDP made no ground, in fact last support in the popular vote, in an election earlier this year, running against a corrupt and bumbling Conservative government that was able to secure a strong 3^rd straight majority.

Yes, yes.

There were colossal external forces at work. Most apparently, hurricane level headwinds in the form of a global anti-democratic movement blowing in from Russia, Europe and, vitally for Canada, the United States of America. Voters were unsurprisingly nervous and clung to what they deemed to be certainties. No overturning the apple cart in the face of increasing hostility from our closest neighbour and ally.

Our progressive parties had no response to these troubled times. Nothing more than, Just like them but… less. Or, Nothing like them but close. Even in the face of issues that should’ve been right in their wheelhouse, growing income inequality, a housing crisis, environmental crisis, progressive leadership came up empty, devoid of ideas and courage.

If there was ever a time to let fly, to go for broke and embrace their inner… fill in the blank here… Tommy Douglas, David Lewis, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, Rosa Luxemburg, MLK, RFK Sr. not RFK Jr., Eugene V. Fucking Debs… this was the time. Now is the time.

And yet.

Maybe after nearly 50 years of flinching and wincing in the face of specious yelps of ‘Socialist!’ and ‘Communist!’ from reactionary voices whose sole intent is to destabilize the underpinnings of effective democracy, the left’s lost the muscle memory needed to fight back, to stake its claim to the hearts and minds of voters. To make outrageous and challenging demands for the improvement of everyone’s lives, not just the select few. To wage class warfare. To denounce malignant bigotry in all its forms: race, ethnicity, religious, misogyny, sexuality, gender. Embrace diversity, not join the pile on. To punch Nazis in all their living forms.

Without championing any of that, so-called kitchen table issues are rendered meaningless because there’s no such thing as a good job or proper meal in a society actively undermining the lives and well-being of so many of its members.