Thomas Friedman, the confused billionaire, told us decades ago that "free trade" is what made the Lexus a successful product when, in fact, it was decades of Japanese government subsidies and explicit tariffs that did so. He then rather pathetically told us the Iraq war would be over within six months so many times that six months came to be known as a "Friedman unit." Now he thinks he's figured out what's going to get Democrats and swing voters so excited they'll kick out Trump in 2020.

He says we need to keep giving our for-profit insurance corporations and big pharma nearly twice as much money as citizens of any other developed country pay for their healthcare and drugs. He thinks that if people in the US have a contagious disease, we should check their citizenship before giving them treatment - something only a billionaire like Trump or Friedman could afford because they live in such bubbles - while the rest of us would rather not catch their illness. Finally, he says that Democrats will only be brought together by fear of Trump, because Americans really don't want a return to the values of FDR's New Deal or LBJ's Great Society.

Friedman quotes a Democratic politician who complains that her "critics" say she's "too close to business," suggesting politicians should stay in bed with the fat cats. In fact, the vast majority of Americans want what he calls "radical" change. We want money out of politics. We want leeches like insurance companies peeled off of us. We want the big banks broken up and re-regulated. We want everybody to be able to go to college or trade school without going into debt. And we want workers to be decently paid and have the right to unionize. There are three Friedman Units before the election.

If Democrats try to run on Friedman's "moderate" platform, a continuation of Friedman's "free trade" Clintonism that took over the Party in 1992 and rejected FDR, we'll get the result we deserve: 4 more years of Trump and his corporatist buddies.

-Thom