Been Democrats for all of our lives--voting that way in every election except this year.
We wonder if it really matters whether a Democratic Party survives. Maybe the best thing to do is for all of us former Democrats to join the Republican party, leave Progressives to feel superior about themselves, and get on board with helping blue-collar workers and the middle class do better through the Republican party.
After all, the Democratic Party is an absolute mess. After getting stomped in the last election the two things that stand out about what Democrats have done since is Biden pardoning his son and the Biden administration going after Tennessee's laws (that are actually consistent with the science) on medical treatments for trans youth.
It just keeps getting worse. Let's all join the Republican Party, have our votes counted there, mold that party to be more toward the center, and WIN!
I am sure you would be welcome. Your notion of molding the party toward the center, though will help the Country Club Republicans whom the Democrats have (rightly) learned to hate since the New Deal. You should try to help the populist faction in their struggle against the Establishment. I recommend Sasha Stone's substack which is largely a group of former Democrats who have gotten disgusted but have joined MAGA rather than the GOPe.
The establishment Republicans are self-styled elites, and they are at this point kind of progressive-light in their attitudes. Like the progs, they believe that they are ordained to lead the masses, whom they despise just as much as the elite Dems do (though they don't say so as loudly), and are just as angry that the masses aren't all that interested in following their enlightened leadership. They believe in globalism that has destroyed the US manufacturing base, endless wars to defend "democracy", big government as the solution to all problems (though they want it to do somewhat different things than the progs). At the same time, they profess to worry about deficits and the welfare state, which in practice means taking away the safety net from the working class that needs it. They value "purity" of their ideals, whatever those are, to actually winning elections. That attitude has destroyed California by allowing the hard left Dems to take over most of the state, while the elite Republicans congratulate each other in their powerless obscurity that they at least have remained true to their principles. To h*** with them! They need to go as much as the hard left Dems do. Look at Liz Cheney, poster child for this type of Republican.
Having been fairly active a couple of decades ago in the Republican Party, I can say that the party has already been transformed by defecting Democrats -- namely Southern Dixiecrats. With the sort of centrist views that Ruy advocates, anybody attempting to affiliate with Republicans in all but a few Northeast states will be dissed as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by the RHINOS (Rational Humans In Name Only) who dominate the party.
I look to the formation of a centrist third party by moderate Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as being the last best hope of combating the extremism of the two major parties.
As to "economic populism," I think that a key element should be a progressive tax system. That pretty well exists at the level of federal income taxes, including the earned income tax credit. But I would support making it more progressive if I weren't concerned about big spending progressive Democrats wanting to use additional revenues for more boondoggle projects like the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act" as well as some of the infrastructure programs that Ruy mentions.
Nah. I don't think there is much of anything I agree with the Republican Party.
What do you agree with the Democratic Party, if anything? Are you even a gettable voter at this point or are you just a Republican who just doesn't like Trump? Nothing wrong with the latter, but I think there is a difference between those that sincerely want to reform the Democratic Party and those that are just tourists because the Republican Party is Trump-dominated.
I think the Democratic Party is hopeless. I can't even tell you what it stands for. Can you?
Voted for Democrats for 50 straight years. Now the main features seem to be blaming boomers, white people, males, and police. Between my wife and I we are all four.
Can our beloved Democratic party be "reformed?" I very much doubt it. It has become infested with progressives who gave us Trump in two elections. Trump/Republicans at least represented working class voters, and 40% of people of color voted for Trump.
We are homeless. And see now reason to invest energy in reforming the Democratic Party. My wife and I have been saying, in every forum we had access to, that Democrats were going to lose because they had been infested by progressives. It happened despite our best efforts. And currently progressives don't want to admit they were wrong.
So, why try? It's hopeless. Maybe it's better to join the Republicans who at least have some semblance of normality and make them even more normal.
That is a policy prescription: Stop being in the victim sweepstakes, which is now about all Democrats are seen as standing up for.
Support unions, support blue collar people, support women, stand up to racism, be in control of borders......in other words, what Republicans ran and won on and what Democrats used to run on.
Great points, Ruy! I’ve noticed a related tendency on MSNBC-type panel discussions where the panelists interpret Democrats’ problems with men as a mere “messaging” problem that needs to be fine-tuned somehow, when the real problem is that for at least several decades the party has been the party of female-advocacy with a barely disguised contempt for men and maleness (especially working-class male culture), which males understand to be true and which no amount of “messaging” can fix.
Hard to argue with this assessment. I will quibble about economic populism since the Democratic version of it is hard to distinguish from that Country Club Republicans. All Wall Street all the time. MAGA at least has the potential to be different.
That aside, solving the cultural leftism and governance problems is going to involve taking on big elements of the Democrats activist base. In the case of cultural leftism, it is educational institutions, especially elite universities. In the case of governance, it is the public sector unions. These intersect in the public schools. Terrible schools in cities are the #1 or #2 reason why urban dwellers have been decamping for the suburbs or beyond for 3 generations now. You are going to have the same problem that establishment Republicans have of failing to deliver for the constituents.
I am sure you are aware that opinion on the Right believes that the reduction in turnout for the Democrats is the product of the dead not voting at 2020 levels. Democrats really need to get on board regarding election integrity. Every failure to do so increases suspicion and makes those Democrats who do win election seem illegitimate.
I hate to say this Ruy, but dead on and as a Republican I hope no Democrats take this to heart.
A couple of other points, though: "Economic populism" ignores the Democrat obsession with Ukraine. This is a major issue for many Americans, and why RFK, for example, was able to join with Trump. No foreign wars. Rs are in the process of booting the neocons like Liz "Clusterbomb" Cheney and Nikki (Nick Knack Paddywhack Give a Uke a Bomb) Haley. Can Ds say the same?
Second--and I know this is a lightning bolt issue---but MANY of the numbers you cite as defections from Biden . . . well, they never existed. They were part of the great steal using Covid-era ballot creation. The election of 2020 should have an asterisk like the home run record of Barry Bonds. None of that data is reliable. But again, I know many will freak out over such claims. However, if you apply the decline from 2020 to 2024, almost all of it could be attributable to fraud.
You neglected covid authoritarianism which intersects ( !) with other forms of Dem authoritarianism. I just listened to Marc Andreesen on Joe Rogan about Debanking. HIs parter David Horowitz, and thousands of others, were debanked by the Biden Admin for wrongthink.
Arguments about populism miss the major factor hindering the Democratic Party: climate change. Specifically, it's the fight against climate change. Because right now the Democrats solution to the climate is poverty: less energy consumption across the board. But given the choice between climate change and poverty, Voters Want Climate Change. That's not confined to the Democrats in the US. European governments have faced protests against climate policies in France (Yellow Vests), Holland (farmers), and Germany. The reason voters are voting out incumbents is due to climate policy. Notably, a large-ish democracy, India, has specifically stated that it will not sacrifice development in order to address the climate. I believe you've argued in these pages that the Democrats must adopt an abundance agenda. That begins by abandoning the fight on the climate.
(Note: my preferred solution is more nuclear powered electricity. It's interesting that when one of the tech companies proposed re-activating Three Mile Island, of all places, there was nary a peep from the environmentalists.)
I think the Supreme Court case yesterday on the Tennessee law banning sexual transitioning medical procedures for children says it all for the gulf between where the Democrats are versus the general population. The Biden administration arguing this law is sexual discrimination is the most tortured argument I have ever heard and combine this with one of the liberal justices unable to define a women yet somehow saying this Tennessee law was sexual discrimination and as bad as the laws that forbid interracial marriage days just how far the cultural gulf is
"Speaking of regulations, economic populism has nothing to say about the radical reform we need in the country’s regulatory and permitting structure so that, well, stuff could actually get done."
It's going to be 10x easier for the Dems to drop the cultural stuff than it will be to address the above situation. Most of the cultural issues the Dems have latched onto have only become relevant within the last decade. Meanwhile, the segment of the Democratic coalition that is invested in maintaining the status quo for cumbersome regulations has had control of the party for longer than most of us have been alive. You can have a charismatic Democratic candidate who runs sincerely on regulatory reform, but they would have to fracture their coalition to such a degree that it forms a distinct party.
Excellent analysis. The failure of government, in many Blue States, across the board, is mind boggling. The City Journal just issued a report on NYC crime. It showed, in NYC, it is nearly impossible, to be incarcerated, pretrial, unless the alleged crime includes a dead body. This is teaching a generation of both Americans and new arrivals, crime is a professional option, with virtually no risk, of incarceration. Ditto for Chicago and many other Blue sates and cities
At the same time, NY and FL have similar state populations, but State governance in FL, costs half the cost of NY State. Care to venture a guess, which citizens are more happy with their State political leaders?
All over the country, places where regulation artificially restricts housing production, median priced homes, are massively out of reach, even, for median wage earners. Texas continues its' population growth, but after a dramatic increase in home prices and rents, the market is correcting. Supply has been allowed to meet demand. Why do Dems, the party of the working class, seem to have no interest in abating housing prices, with supply?
It is cliche, but Dems need a Reformation. Reformations cannot occur without leaders who recognize failure and confession. Winning the Dem Presidential Primary would be a cake walk, for a candidate willing to admit the obvious.
Crime hits the working class hardest. It can be stopped, but it requires the will to do so.
Mass migration of low skilled workers, drives down wages and increases the cost of affordable housing, while negatively affecting the schools, of working class kids.
Inflation hits the working class hardest. It is caused by government over spending and needless restrictions.
There is a compassionate way for trans kids to attend school and participate in sports, without invading formally, exclusive female spaces. Build them their own bathrooms/ locker rooms. Form multi school trans teams, who play other trans teams. Give trans kids a 3rd category in individual sports.
A Dem party who simply proclaimed those policies, and then actively supported the changes, would be instantly viable nationally, and in every US State.
You keep using this term "economic populism." I do not think it means what you think it means - at least, not in the context of the "economic populist" wing of the Democratic Party.
Trump pitched economic populism successfully in the 2024 election: helping working people with policies that will let them keep more of their money, have more spending power with it, and earn more of it by revitalizing industry with lower regulation and better trade policy. Working people saw that as a path to moving up the economic ladder.
What Bernie, AOC, et al are pitching is something completely different. When Bernie tells an interviewer that America doesn't need 25 brands of deodorant and AOC decides that her constituents are better off having no jobs at all rather than good paying non-union jobs with Amazon, it's clear that they aren't pitching economic populism as you understand it. They are pitching centralized, planned economy, capital-S Socialism.
And you probably won't be able to stop them from taking over the Democratic Party. The Party's moderates forced Bernie to stand down in 2016, 2020, and 2024 in favor of moderates. Hillary lost, Biden had a presidency that ended in disaster for the Party, and he and Kamala lost. The "economic populist" wing of the party has a very convincing, if not outright compelling, argument that you've tried moderation, you've failed, and it's their turn to try things their way. With all of the current party leadership discredited, who's going to stop them?
Hold on chief: Trump pitched economic populism successfully in the 2024 election: helping working people with policies that will let them keep more of their money
Yes if you define working people as billionaires and friends than yes people are indeed keeping their hard stolen money. MAGA is just trickle down economics with a slick TV host to make it go down...😜
Yep. All of this. Moderating on culture and getting rid of racial politics, including taxing everyone and handing out tax dollars to only some will have to go 💯. It will take a very, very long time to forget what certain groups of Democrats have done with their power. You can't shame and marginalize entire groups and think there will be no blowback if you are taking their money.
Excellent summation of why so many voted for Trump and (perhaps more importantly) against the Democrats. Plenty to chew on here, but I doubt that most Democrats will move away from their firmly entrenched “social justice” positions. Let them enjoy their decaying cities and corrupt governance until they’re ready to acknowledge reality and start cleaning things up.
Excellent article. In addition to better-governed cities, the Dems also need to begin drawing more from labor to staff their leadership positions. Hard to be effective in appealing to the working class when your leaders are all plucked right from the PMC, and don't really have much sense of what the former's needs are.
Perhaps the most powerful contributing cause of the left flank's capture of the party, though, is something with no clear policy fix--namely, social media's tendency to amplify the most extreme, obnoxious voices in politics over more grounded and moderate voices. The GOP is suffering from the same problem and the same form of capture, in its own way, driven by the same technological forces. How to bring back reasoned moderation to our political parties when abrasive extremism nets people more retweets, upvotes, YouTube views, etc. could easily prove to be the great challenge of our time.
"In today’s America, they are the Establishment even if in their imaginations they are sticking it to the Man and fighting nobly for social justice. The failure to understand that they themselves are central targets of populist anger ..."
This is so spot on and summarizes a huge amount of what many others are writing about. Demographically, I could be part of that Democrat elite by education, profession, and net worth, but I have no liking or respect for most upper middle-class wealthy people. Too many of the ones I've met are entitled, selfish, often narcissistic, manipulative, and disrespectful of anyone they deem to be lower class than themselves. They believe that they deserve their lives and that claiming to be "kind" and "compassionate" to Others is enough, how they actually treat real human members of outcast classes is unimportant. One of my neighbors didn't have much use for me until we sold our business and built a bigger house, then he thought we were in his class and became much more friendly. I was not fooled by his attitude. He also treats his workers with no respect, and the ones that have also worked for us are very good people, much better human beings than he is.
What Teixeira doesn't say, but what is the logical conclusion from his commentary, is that the ideological premise of the Democratic party no longer has broad support today. The theory of the Democratic party is that government can and should be the primary force to achieve a more prosperous, more just, and more tolerant society. That was never the view of the Founders. In fact, the Founders were so wary of governmental power that, notwithstanding their recognition that a federal government was necessary for certain functions, the states expressly delegated to it limited, enumerated powers. On top of that, the states adopted a Bill of Rights expressly designed to protect individuals from the power of the federal government. Americans historical distrust of government power remains part of our culture. Over the past decades that distrust has grown as the federal government asserted greater and greater authority. As Teixeira notes, Democrat's over-regulation of the economy has lessened the quality of community life. Democrat's attempts to commandeer national industrial policy to promote its favored political agenda have proven inefficient, ineffective, and ill-considered. Democrats use of government to meditate and regulate every perceived social injustice has resulted in more division, greater intolerance, and less personal liberty. Democrat's promotion of expansive social welfare programs and expenditures has created more and more dependency on government. And the government's efforts to suppress public criticism and discredit and destroy its opponents has hardened Americans' belief that power corrupts. Teixeira's remedy for the party continues to endorse governmental solutions and programs, albeit less grandiose and directed toward the working class. I don't belittle the historical achievements of Democrats to moderate the ill-effects of the free market and ensure the civil rights of disempowered groups. But the question is this: does a political ideology centered around the proposition that the federal government is the best vehicle to promote prosperity and improve the quality of life of most Americans have broad support today? Is there convincing evidence that giving more power to the government is best for the American people? If not, no amount of recalibration can overcome the Democratic party's basic ideological problem.
I have a difficult time thinking of policies of economic populism from the current Democratic Party. The policies on their platform somehow never get done.
Immigration though I've always considered an economic issue. Twelve million in four years sure put the kibosh on inflation but it also put a massive hurt on working class wages.
Been Democrats for all of our lives--voting that way in every election except this year.
We wonder if it really matters whether a Democratic Party survives. Maybe the best thing to do is for all of us former Democrats to join the Republican party, leave Progressives to feel superior about themselves, and get on board with helping blue-collar workers and the middle class do better through the Republican party.
After all, the Democratic Party is an absolute mess. After getting stomped in the last election the two things that stand out about what Democrats have done since is Biden pardoning his son and the Biden administration going after Tennessee's laws (that are actually consistent with the science) on medical treatments for trans youth.
It just keeps getting worse. Let's all join the Republican Party, have our votes counted there, mold that party to be more toward the center, and WIN!
I am sure you would be welcome. Your notion of molding the party toward the center, though will help the Country Club Republicans whom the Democrats have (rightly) learned to hate since the New Deal. You should try to help the populist faction in their struggle against the Establishment. I recommend Sasha Stone's substack which is largely a group of former Democrats who have gotten disgusted but have joined MAGA rather than the GOPe.
Yes! EVERYONE should stay away from the establishment Republicans. As soon as is possible, they have to go, too.
why should everyone stay away from "establishment Republicans?"
Seriously, I don't understand why.
The establishment Republicans are self-styled elites, and they are at this point kind of progressive-light in their attitudes. Like the progs, they believe that they are ordained to lead the masses, whom they despise just as much as the elite Dems do (though they don't say so as loudly), and are just as angry that the masses aren't all that interested in following their enlightened leadership. They believe in globalism that has destroyed the US manufacturing base, endless wars to defend "democracy", big government as the solution to all problems (though they want it to do somewhat different things than the progs). At the same time, they profess to worry about deficits and the welfare state, which in practice means taking away the safety net from the working class that needs it. They value "purity" of their ideals, whatever those are, to actually winning elections. That attitude has destroyed California by allowing the hard left Dems to take over most of the state, while the elite Republicans congratulate each other in their powerless obscurity that they at least have remained true to their principles. To h*** with them! They need to go as much as the hard left Dems do. Look at Liz Cheney, poster child for this type of Republican.
And also they are the same sort of war mongers as most Democrts.
Having been fairly active a couple of decades ago in the Republican Party, I can say that the party has already been transformed by defecting Democrats -- namely Southern Dixiecrats. With the sort of centrist views that Ruy advocates, anybody attempting to affiliate with Republicans in all but a few Northeast states will be dissed as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by the RHINOS (Rational Humans In Name Only) who dominate the party.
I look to the formation of a centrist third party by moderate Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as being the last best hope of combating the extremism of the two major parties.
As to "economic populism," I think that a key element should be a progressive tax system. That pretty well exists at the level of federal income taxes, including the earned income tax credit. But I would support making it more progressive if I weren't concerned about big spending progressive Democrats wanting to use additional revenues for more boondoggle projects like the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act" as well as some of the infrastructure programs that Ruy mentions.
Nah. I don't think there is much of anything I agree with the Republican Party.
What do you agree with the Democratic Party, if anything? Are you even a gettable voter at this point or are you just a Republican who just doesn't like Trump? Nothing wrong with the latter, but I think there is a difference between those that sincerely want to reform the Democratic Party and those that are just tourists because the Republican Party is Trump-dominated.
I think the Democratic Party is hopeless. I can't even tell you what it stands for. Can you?
Voted for Democrats for 50 straight years. Now the main features seem to be blaming boomers, white people, males, and police. Between my wife and I we are all four.
Can our beloved Democratic party be "reformed?" I very much doubt it. It has become infested with progressives who gave us Trump in two elections. Trump/Republicans at least represented working class voters, and 40% of people of color voted for Trump.
We are homeless. And see now reason to invest energy in reforming the Democratic Party. My wife and I have been saying, in every forum we had access to, that Democrats were going to lose because they had been infested by progressives. It happened despite our best efforts. And currently progressives don't want to admit they were wrong.
So, why try? It's hopeless. Maybe it's better to join the Republicans who at least have some semblance of normality and make them even more normal.
What do you want to see a Democratic Party be for?
To write it in one sentence: advocate for the ordinary person to have a fair shake and stop being ringmaster at the victim sweepstakes.
I mean in policy preferences. What do you want to see a party be FOR?
That is a policy prescription: Stop being in the victim sweepstakes, which is now about all Democrats are seen as standing up for.
Support unions, support blue collar people, support women, stand up to racism, be in control of borders......in other words, what Republicans ran and won on and what Democrats used to run on.
Great points, Ruy! I’ve noticed a related tendency on MSNBC-type panel discussions where the panelists interpret Democrats’ problems with men as a mere “messaging” problem that needs to be fine-tuned somehow, when the real problem is that for at least several decades the party has been the party of female-advocacy with a barely disguised contempt for men and maleness (especially working-class male culture), which males understand to be true and which no amount of “messaging” can fix.
Hard to argue with this assessment. I will quibble about economic populism since the Democratic version of it is hard to distinguish from that Country Club Republicans. All Wall Street all the time. MAGA at least has the potential to be different.
That aside, solving the cultural leftism and governance problems is going to involve taking on big elements of the Democrats activist base. In the case of cultural leftism, it is educational institutions, especially elite universities. In the case of governance, it is the public sector unions. These intersect in the public schools. Terrible schools in cities are the #1 or #2 reason why urban dwellers have been decamping for the suburbs or beyond for 3 generations now. You are going to have the same problem that establishment Republicans have of failing to deliver for the constituents.
I am sure you are aware that opinion on the Right believes that the reduction in turnout for the Democrats is the product of the dead not voting at 2020 levels. Democrats really need to get on board regarding election integrity. Every failure to do so increases suspicion and makes those Democrats who do win election seem illegitimate.
Terrible schools in cities are the #1 or #2 reason why urban dwellers have been decamping for the suburbs or beyond for 3 generations now.
Where of course they are Dems these days...😎
Or at least RINOs. But the exurbs call
I hate to say this Ruy, but dead on and as a Republican I hope no Democrats take this to heart.
A couple of other points, though: "Economic populism" ignores the Democrat obsession with Ukraine. This is a major issue for many Americans, and why RFK, for example, was able to join with Trump. No foreign wars. Rs are in the process of booting the neocons like Liz "Clusterbomb" Cheney and Nikki (Nick Knack Paddywhack Give a Uke a Bomb) Haley. Can Ds say the same?
Second--and I know this is a lightning bolt issue---but MANY of the numbers you cite as defections from Biden . . . well, they never existed. They were part of the great steal using Covid-era ballot creation. The election of 2020 should have an asterisk like the home run record of Barry Bonds. None of that data is reliable. But again, I know many will freak out over such claims. However, if you apply the decline from 2020 to 2024, almost all of it could be attributable to fraud.
On Jan 6 we need to STOP THE STEAL
You neglected covid authoritarianism which intersects ( !) with other forms of Dem authoritarianism. I just listened to Marc Andreesen on Joe Rogan about Debanking. HIs parter David Horowitz, and thousands of others, were debanked by the Biden Admin for wrongthink.
Arguments about populism miss the major factor hindering the Democratic Party: climate change. Specifically, it's the fight against climate change. Because right now the Democrats solution to the climate is poverty: less energy consumption across the board. But given the choice between climate change and poverty, Voters Want Climate Change. That's not confined to the Democrats in the US. European governments have faced protests against climate policies in France (Yellow Vests), Holland (farmers), and Germany. The reason voters are voting out incumbents is due to climate policy. Notably, a large-ish democracy, India, has specifically stated that it will not sacrifice development in order to address the climate. I believe you've argued in these pages that the Democrats must adopt an abundance agenda. That begins by abandoning the fight on the climate.
(Note: my preferred solution is more nuclear powered electricity. It's interesting that when one of the tech companies proposed re-activating Three Mile Island, of all places, there was nary a peep from the environmentalists.)
Real environmentalists are fine with nuclear power, who knew 40 years ago that innocent CO2 would be the villain, not long lived nuclear waste!
I think the Supreme Court case yesterday on the Tennessee law banning sexual transitioning medical procedures for children says it all for the gulf between where the Democrats are versus the general population. The Biden administration arguing this law is sexual discrimination is the most tortured argument I have ever heard and combine this with one of the liberal justices unable to define a women yet somehow saying this Tennessee law was sexual discrimination and as bad as the laws that forbid interracial marriage days just how far the cultural gulf is
"Speaking of regulations, economic populism has nothing to say about the radical reform we need in the country’s regulatory and permitting structure so that, well, stuff could actually get done."
It's going to be 10x easier for the Dems to drop the cultural stuff than it will be to address the above situation. Most of the cultural issues the Dems have latched onto have only become relevant within the last decade. Meanwhile, the segment of the Democratic coalition that is invested in maintaining the status quo for cumbersome regulations has had control of the party for longer than most of us have been alive. You can have a charismatic Democratic candidate who runs sincerely on regulatory reform, but they would have to fracture their coalition to such a degree that it forms a distinct party.
Excellent analysis. The failure of government, in many Blue States, across the board, is mind boggling. The City Journal just issued a report on NYC crime. It showed, in NYC, it is nearly impossible, to be incarcerated, pretrial, unless the alleged crime includes a dead body. This is teaching a generation of both Americans and new arrivals, crime is a professional option, with virtually no risk, of incarceration. Ditto for Chicago and many other Blue sates and cities
At the same time, NY and FL have similar state populations, but State governance in FL, costs half the cost of NY State. Care to venture a guess, which citizens are more happy with their State political leaders?
All over the country, places where regulation artificially restricts housing production, median priced homes, are massively out of reach, even, for median wage earners. Texas continues its' population growth, but after a dramatic increase in home prices and rents, the market is correcting. Supply has been allowed to meet demand. Why do Dems, the party of the working class, seem to have no interest in abating housing prices, with supply?
It is cliche, but Dems need a Reformation. Reformations cannot occur without leaders who recognize failure and confession. Winning the Dem Presidential Primary would be a cake walk, for a candidate willing to admit the obvious.
Crime hits the working class hardest. It can be stopped, but it requires the will to do so.
Mass migration of low skilled workers, drives down wages and increases the cost of affordable housing, while negatively affecting the schools, of working class kids.
Inflation hits the working class hardest. It is caused by government over spending and needless restrictions.
There is a compassionate way for trans kids to attend school and participate in sports, without invading formally, exclusive female spaces. Build them their own bathrooms/ locker rooms. Form multi school trans teams, who play other trans teams. Give trans kids a 3rd category in individual sports.
A Dem party who simply proclaimed those policies, and then actively supported the changes, would be instantly viable nationally, and in every US State.
You keep using this term "economic populism." I do not think it means what you think it means - at least, not in the context of the "economic populist" wing of the Democratic Party.
Trump pitched economic populism successfully in the 2024 election: helping working people with policies that will let them keep more of their money, have more spending power with it, and earn more of it by revitalizing industry with lower regulation and better trade policy. Working people saw that as a path to moving up the economic ladder.
What Bernie, AOC, et al are pitching is something completely different. When Bernie tells an interviewer that America doesn't need 25 brands of deodorant and AOC decides that her constituents are better off having no jobs at all rather than good paying non-union jobs with Amazon, it's clear that they aren't pitching economic populism as you understand it. They are pitching centralized, planned economy, capital-S Socialism.
And you probably won't be able to stop them from taking over the Democratic Party. The Party's moderates forced Bernie to stand down in 2016, 2020, and 2024 in favor of moderates. Hillary lost, Biden had a presidency that ended in disaster for the Party, and he and Kamala lost. The "economic populist" wing of the party has a very convincing, if not outright compelling, argument that you've tried moderation, you've failed, and it's their turn to try things their way. With all of the current party leadership discredited, who's going to stop them?
Hold on chief: Trump pitched economic populism successfully in the 2024 election: helping working people with policies that will let them keep more of their money
Yes if you define working people as billionaires and friends than yes people are indeed keeping their hard stolen money. MAGA is just trickle down economics with a slick TV host to make it go down...😜
I know of no billionaires who rely on tip income, or worry about taxes on Social Security.
Yep. All of this. Moderating on culture and getting rid of racial politics, including taxing everyone and handing out tax dollars to only some will have to go 💯. It will take a very, very long time to forget what certain groups of Democrats have done with their power. You can't shame and marginalize entire groups and think there will be no blowback if you are taking their money.
Excellent summation of why so many voted for Trump and (perhaps more importantly) against the Democrats. Plenty to chew on here, but I doubt that most Democrats will move away from their firmly entrenched “social justice” positions. Let them enjoy their decaying cities and corrupt governance until they’re ready to acknowledge reality and start cleaning things up.
Excellent article. In addition to better-governed cities, the Dems also need to begin drawing more from labor to staff their leadership positions. Hard to be effective in appealing to the working class when your leaders are all plucked right from the PMC, and don't really have much sense of what the former's needs are.
Perhaps the most powerful contributing cause of the left flank's capture of the party, though, is something with no clear policy fix--namely, social media's tendency to amplify the most extreme, obnoxious voices in politics over more grounded and moderate voices. The GOP is suffering from the same problem and the same form of capture, in its own way, driven by the same technological forces. How to bring back reasoned moderation to our political parties when abrasive extremism nets people more retweets, upvotes, YouTube views, etc. could easily prove to be the great challenge of our time.
"In today’s America, they are the Establishment even if in their imaginations they are sticking it to the Man and fighting nobly for social justice. The failure to understand that they themselves are central targets of populist anger ..."
This is so spot on and summarizes a huge amount of what many others are writing about. Demographically, I could be part of that Democrat elite by education, profession, and net worth, but I have no liking or respect for most upper middle-class wealthy people. Too many of the ones I've met are entitled, selfish, often narcissistic, manipulative, and disrespectful of anyone they deem to be lower class than themselves. They believe that they deserve their lives and that claiming to be "kind" and "compassionate" to Others is enough, how they actually treat real human members of outcast classes is unimportant. One of my neighbors didn't have much use for me until we sold our business and built a bigger house, then he thought we were in his class and became much more friendly. I was not fooled by his attitude. He also treats his workers with no respect, and the ones that have also worked for us are very good people, much better human beings than he is.
What Teixeira doesn't say, but what is the logical conclusion from his commentary, is that the ideological premise of the Democratic party no longer has broad support today. The theory of the Democratic party is that government can and should be the primary force to achieve a more prosperous, more just, and more tolerant society. That was never the view of the Founders. In fact, the Founders were so wary of governmental power that, notwithstanding their recognition that a federal government was necessary for certain functions, the states expressly delegated to it limited, enumerated powers. On top of that, the states adopted a Bill of Rights expressly designed to protect individuals from the power of the federal government. Americans historical distrust of government power remains part of our culture. Over the past decades that distrust has grown as the federal government asserted greater and greater authority. As Teixeira notes, Democrat's over-regulation of the economy has lessened the quality of community life. Democrat's attempts to commandeer national industrial policy to promote its favored political agenda have proven inefficient, ineffective, and ill-considered. Democrats use of government to meditate and regulate every perceived social injustice has resulted in more division, greater intolerance, and less personal liberty. Democrat's promotion of expansive social welfare programs and expenditures has created more and more dependency on government. And the government's efforts to suppress public criticism and discredit and destroy its opponents has hardened Americans' belief that power corrupts. Teixeira's remedy for the party continues to endorse governmental solutions and programs, albeit less grandiose and directed toward the working class. I don't belittle the historical achievements of Democrats to moderate the ill-effects of the free market and ensure the civil rights of disempowered groups. But the question is this: does a political ideology centered around the proposition that the federal government is the best vehicle to promote prosperity and improve the quality of life of most Americans have broad support today? Is there convincing evidence that giving more power to the government is best for the American people? If not, no amount of recalibration can overcome the Democratic party's basic ideological problem.
I have a difficult time thinking of policies of economic populism from the current Democratic Party. The policies on their platform somehow never get done.
Immigration though I've always considered an economic issue. Twelve million in four years sure put the kibosh on inflation but it also put a massive hurt on working class wages.