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But the American dream is about upward mobility. Ultimately, "The economy, Stupid" trumps identity politics. If the Democrats are not the champions of expanding jobs and incomes for the majority of voters who work for a living--whatever their gender, color, or sexual orientation--their claim to being the natural majority party will amount to little.
So it made political sense that Barack Obama began his 2013 State of the Union with this economic challenge:
"Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs, but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth: a rising, thriving middle-class."
He went on to outline a second-term agenda that most liberals welcomed as finally revealing the true, audacious Barack Obama. "Incredibly ambitious," enthused Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. If Obama's plans were enacted, Klein wrote, "America would be a markedly different country."
Would it? Even if Congress were to whisk the president's entire economic agenda into law, the impact such an improbable feat would have on "our generation's task" of reversing the decline of real wages and incomes is nearly nil.
The root causes of the long-term slide in real wages and incomes are: 1) inadequate demand both here and abroad for what American workers produce; 2) financial deregulation, which has diverted American capital away from domestic production and toward short-term speculation; 3) the 30-year corporate war against trade unions.
Barack Obama's agenda will not change any of these conditions.
Presidents' rhetorical reach often exceeds their realistic grasp. But the issue here is not that Washington politics might prevent this president from delivering on his agenda. It is that the agenda is not designed to deliver.
Obama's No. 1 priority is to reach a ten-year deal with Republicans to reduce the federal deficit. Imagine that the president prevails completely; i.e., that by the end of this year Congress accepts his proposal for a deficit reduction of roughly $4 trillion (some of which has already been agreed to) with a roughly 55 percent to 45 percent split between spending cuts and taxes. Because the economy is operating below capacity, the net effect of the president's proposal would be to reduce the domestic demand for jobs, certainly between now and the election of 2016 and probably throughout the next decade.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that on its current path the U.S. economy would reach full recovery, i.e., 5 percent unemployment, by 2017. It was, to say the least, optimistic, given that it assumed no budget sequestration and no further bipartisan deal cut budget deficits. Assuming the average rate of job growth since the recovery began, we will not reach 5-percent unemployment until 2022. The CBO's projections rely on a leap of faith that somehow, from somewhere, the private sector will deliver a burst of new growth.
In fact, the CBO's model has been forecasting a return to 5 percent unemployment in four years ever year since 2009. But let's say this time they luck out. Recovery by 2017 would still mean at least another four years of joblessness and lost income for millions of Americans. Moreover, even reaching and sustaining 5-percent unemployment would not be enough to reignite middle-class prosperity. We averaged 5 percent for the seven years prior to the financial crash of 2008, but globalization, deregulation, and the erosion of unions continued to drag down wages.
Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling.
The president has no intention of changing the trade policies that have been undercutting U.S. jobs and wages for more than 30 years. In fact, with the support of congressional Republicans, he wants yet another trade deal--this one with 11 Pacific Rim countries--that will once again bargain away the interests of American workers in favor of the interests of American corporate investors.
To make Americans more competitive, Obama says we need more investment in infrastructure, education, and technology. He's clearly right; such spending is an essential--although not sufficient--part of any competitiveness strategy. But just as clearly, the President's actual intentions do not rise to the level needed. In fact, they do not rise at all.
His prior commitment to deficit reduction would shrink the domestic discretionary budget, 50 percent of which is investment, from 3.1 percent to 1.7 percent of GDP. There is no conceivable reordering of priorities within that category that would keep the share of public investment untouched, much less increase it.
On the continued addiction of the country's capital markets to the destructive speculation that led us to the crash of 2008, Obama's agenda is silent. Meanwhile, the largest financial companies now have a bigger share of the markets than they had in 2008 and the administration's lax post-Dodd-Frank financial regulation is a national scandal. The Wall Street casinos are again open for business.
The president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would directly help many of the working poor put bread on the table and pay the rent. But history tells us that the major institutional support--both at the workplace and the ballot box--for assuring that all workers' wages rise with their productivity has been the labor movement, whose impact on the job market goes way beyond its members. Although he could not have been elected or re-elected without organized labor, Obama has no plan to resist the relentless gutting of collective bargaining by corporations and state legislatures alike.
There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party--which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
Barack Obama is not stupid. Neither are his economic advisers. They understand how a modern economy functions. They know that reducing government deficits in an anemic economy will increase unemployment. They know globalization, financial deregulation, and the corporate war on workers is eroding American living standards.
They also know that there are alternatives. There is by now wide agreement among independent, Democratic-leaning economists on the elements of a serious national recovery program of short-term stimulus, long-term investment, and other policies to increase the demand for and the wages of working Americans. (See, for starters, the "Back-to-work" budget of the House Progressive Caucus, the Prosperity Economics plan endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a wide variety of groups, and the writings of Nobel Laureates Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.) There is no dearth of ideas.
So what explains the unwillingness of this administration to present a plan that might actually "reignite" the middle-class prosperity the president needs for his legacy and his party needs for its future?
The most obvious answer is that Democratic leaders are afraid to threaten the economic power and ideological comfort of the country's corporate rich, who finance the Democrats' campaigns and careers, and whose hired help populates the upper reaches of the party's policymaking. To take them on, the president would have to launch and sustain a populist educational campaign to undo the myths about big government and deficit spending that have so confused the electorate. But that is too much heavy political lifting for a White House whose economic advisers will go back to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other financial firms, as well as the Washington lobbying groups that serve their interests. Easier to put his faith in the perennial happy-face projections of the CBO than tackle that crowd. Hope, it turns out, is a strategy--of sorts.
But do the decision-makers of the Democratic Party think that they can sustain a political majority with no serious strategy for dealing with the eroding living standards of a majority of the electorate?
Judging by their behavior, that is exactly what they think--and it's not irrational. If you assume their demographic advantage and that Republicans will remain deeply fractured by their lunatic fringe for some time, Democrats do not actually have to deliver on their promise to reignite middle-class living standards. They can win national elections just by being the socially liberal and economically conservative option.
The party's leaders have plenty of reason to think they have the loyalty of their activist base in their pocket. Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling. After the election, progressives vowed to hold the party's "feet to the fire." But on the very first test--the opportunity for the Senate Democrats to end the conservative abuses of the filibuster abuses--they let the party leadership slip comfortably off the hook.
For a variety of reasons, the Democratic left lacks the independence, strength and hard edge of the Republican right. There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party--which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
The message from the Democratic establishment to its base is: "Chill out--your turn will come." If you accept their rosy scenario, they make a plausible, if cynical, case to liberals for patience: Since time is now on the Democratic side, Obama's compromised improvements in government programs can be built on later. How much later? Who knows?
So far American voters certainly have been willing to wait--and in the meantime, suck it up. A few short years ago, it was unimaginable that a president could be re-elected after four years in which the unemployment rate averaged almost 9 percent. So if the people are OK with four years of rough times, why not six, or eight?
Disappointed and debt-ridden 20- and 30-somethings did not rally around Occupy Wall Street's call for active dissent; they have adjusted to hard times by working more hours, delaying marriage, and milking each other's networks in a desperate effort to find a career. Nor have the middle-aged breadwinners whose lives have been shattered by corporate brutality taken to the streets. Their elders, whose hopes for retirement have evaporated, seem resigned to working until they drop.
There are a few clouds in the Democratic leadership's happy, self-justifying scenario of how they capture the future. One is that in the absence of more stimulus, the economy might tank, with the Democrats taking the blame. Another is that the electorate's seeming passivity might mask a seething and volatile anger, which when it finally explodes will demand truly radical change. At that point, the Democratic Party, with an atrophied and co-opted left wing, could find itself unable to respond, while the far more organized right wing of the Republican Party, having developed a more sophisticated outreach to economically frustrated minorities, single women and immigrants, could fill the populist vacuum.
Democrats who dismiss these possibilities should keep in mind how quickly the political odds can change. Just two short years ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was the Republicans, triumphant from their Tea Party-driven victory in the 2010 election, who represented the majoritarian politics of tomorrow.
It's conceivable that the mainstream Democratic left could strike out on its own--building a political movement that is willing to take on centrists in primary fights, to refuse to support the party's grand bargains that undercut working people, and to take the risk of sitting out elections where there is little distinction between the candidates of different parties. In short, a strategy that forces the party to act in the interests of the majority it claims to represent.
But that requires that progressives abandon the hope that the future will fall into their laps if they are just patient and follow their leaders. If you believe that, you would have believed the sign that hung for years in the window of a tavern in the neighborhood where I grew up: "Free Beer, Tomorrow."
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
But the American dream is about upward mobility. Ultimately, "The economy, Stupid" trumps identity politics. If the Democrats are not the champions of expanding jobs and incomes for the majority of voters who work for a living--whatever their gender, color, or sexual orientation--their claim to being the natural majority party will amount to little.
So it made political sense that Barack Obama began his 2013 State of the Union with this economic challenge:
"Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs, but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth: a rising, thriving middle-class."
He went on to outline a second-term agenda that most liberals welcomed as finally revealing the true, audacious Barack Obama. "Incredibly ambitious," enthused Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. If Obama's plans were enacted, Klein wrote, "America would be a markedly different country."
Would it? Even if Congress were to whisk the president's entire economic agenda into law, the impact such an improbable feat would have on "our generation's task" of reversing the decline of real wages and incomes is nearly nil.
The root causes of the long-term slide in real wages and incomes are: 1) inadequate demand both here and abroad for what American workers produce; 2) financial deregulation, which has diverted American capital away from domestic production and toward short-term speculation; 3) the 30-year corporate war against trade unions.
Barack Obama's agenda will not change any of these conditions.
Presidents' rhetorical reach often exceeds their realistic grasp. But the issue here is not that Washington politics might prevent this president from delivering on his agenda. It is that the agenda is not designed to deliver.
Obama's No. 1 priority is to reach a ten-year deal with Republicans to reduce the federal deficit. Imagine that the president prevails completely; i.e., that by the end of this year Congress accepts his proposal for a deficit reduction of roughly $4 trillion (some of which has already been agreed to) with a roughly 55 percent to 45 percent split between spending cuts and taxes. Because the economy is operating below capacity, the net effect of the president's proposal would be to reduce the domestic demand for jobs, certainly between now and the election of 2016 and probably throughout the next decade.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that on its current path the U.S. economy would reach full recovery, i.e., 5 percent unemployment, by 2017. It was, to say the least, optimistic, given that it assumed no budget sequestration and no further bipartisan deal cut budget deficits. Assuming the average rate of job growth since the recovery began, we will not reach 5-percent unemployment until 2022. The CBO's projections rely on a leap of faith that somehow, from somewhere, the private sector will deliver a burst of new growth.
In fact, the CBO's model has been forecasting a return to 5 percent unemployment in four years ever year since 2009. But let's say this time they luck out. Recovery by 2017 would still mean at least another four years of joblessness and lost income for millions of Americans. Moreover, even reaching and sustaining 5-percent unemployment would not be enough to reignite middle-class prosperity. We averaged 5 percent for the seven years prior to the financial crash of 2008, but globalization, deregulation, and the erosion of unions continued to drag down wages.
Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling.
The president has no intention of changing the trade policies that have been undercutting U.S. jobs and wages for more than 30 years. In fact, with the support of congressional Republicans, he wants yet another trade deal--this one with 11 Pacific Rim countries--that will once again bargain away the interests of American workers in favor of the interests of American corporate investors.
To make Americans more competitive, Obama says we need more investment in infrastructure, education, and technology. He's clearly right; such spending is an essential--although not sufficient--part of any competitiveness strategy. But just as clearly, the President's actual intentions do not rise to the level needed. In fact, they do not rise at all.
His prior commitment to deficit reduction would shrink the domestic discretionary budget, 50 percent of which is investment, from 3.1 percent to 1.7 percent of GDP. There is no conceivable reordering of priorities within that category that would keep the share of public investment untouched, much less increase it.
On the continued addiction of the country's capital markets to the destructive speculation that led us to the crash of 2008, Obama's agenda is silent. Meanwhile, the largest financial companies now have a bigger share of the markets than they had in 2008 and the administration's lax post-Dodd-Frank financial regulation is a national scandal. The Wall Street casinos are again open for business.
The president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would directly help many of the working poor put bread on the table and pay the rent. But history tells us that the major institutional support--both at the workplace and the ballot box--for assuring that all workers' wages rise with their productivity has been the labor movement, whose impact on the job market goes way beyond its members. Although he could not have been elected or re-elected without organized labor, Obama has no plan to resist the relentless gutting of collective bargaining by corporations and state legislatures alike.
There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party--which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
Barack Obama is not stupid. Neither are his economic advisers. They understand how a modern economy functions. They know that reducing government deficits in an anemic economy will increase unemployment. They know globalization, financial deregulation, and the corporate war on workers is eroding American living standards.
They also know that there are alternatives. There is by now wide agreement among independent, Democratic-leaning economists on the elements of a serious national recovery program of short-term stimulus, long-term investment, and other policies to increase the demand for and the wages of working Americans. (See, for starters, the "Back-to-work" budget of the House Progressive Caucus, the Prosperity Economics plan endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a wide variety of groups, and the writings of Nobel Laureates Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.) There is no dearth of ideas.
So what explains the unwillingness of this administration to present a plan that might actually "reignite" the middle-class prosperity the president needs for his legacy and his party needs for its future?
The most obvious answer is that Democratic leaders are afraid to threaten the economic power and ideological comfort of the country's corporate rich, who finance the Democrats' campaigns and careers, and whose hired help populates the upper reaches of the party's policymaking. To take them on, the president would have to launch and sustain a populist educational campaign to undo the myths about big government and deficit spending that have so confused the electorate. But that is too much heavy political lifting for a White House whose economic advisers will go back to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other financial firms, as well as the Washington lobbying groups that serve their interests. Easier to put his faith in the perennial happy-face projections of the CBO than tackle that crowd. Hope, it turns out, is a strategy--of sorts.
But do the decision-makers of the Democratic Party think that they can sustain a political majority with no serious strategy for dealing with the eroding living standards of a majority of the electorate?
Judging by their behavior, that is exactly what they think--and it's not irrational. If you assume their demographic advantage and that Republicans will remain deeply fractured by their lunatic fringe for some time, Democrats do not actually have to deliver on their promise to reignite middle-class living standards. They can win national elections just by being the socially liberal and economically conservative option.
The party's leaders have plenty of reason to think they have the loyalty of their activist base in their pocket. Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling. After the election, progressives vowed to hold the party's "feet to the fire." But on the very first test--the opportunity for the Senate Democrats to end the conservative abuses of the filibuster abuses--they let the party leadership slip comfortably off the hook.
For a variety of reasons, the Democratic left lacks the independence, strength and hard edge of the Republican right. There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party--which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
The message from the Democratic establishment to its base is: "Chill out--your turn will come." If you accept their rosy scenario, they make a plausible, if cynical, case to liberals for patience: Since time is now on the Democratic side, Obama's compromised improvements in government programs can be built on later. How much later? Who knows?
So far American voters certainly have been willing to wait--and in the meantime, suck it up. A few short years ago, it was unimaginable that a president could be re-elected after four years in which the unemployment rate averaged almost 9 percent. So if the people are OK with four years of rough times, why not six, or eight?
Disappointed and debt-ridden 20- and 30-somethings did not rally around Occupy Wall Street's call for active dissent; they have adjusted to hard times by working more hours, delaying marriage, and milking each other's networks in a desperate effort to find a career. Nor have the middle-aged breadwinners whose lives have been shattered by corporate brutality taken to the streets. Their elders, whose hopes for retirement have evaporated, seem resigned to working until they drop.
There are a few clouds in the Democratic leadership's happy, self-justifying scenario of how they capture the future. One is that in the absence of more stimulus, the economy might tank, with the Democrats taking the blame. Another is that the electorate's seeming passivity might mask a seething and volatile anger, which when it finally explodes will demand truly radical change. At that point, the Democratic Party, with an atrophied and co-opted left wing, could find itself unable to respond, while the far more organized right wing of the Republican Party, having developed a more sophisticated outreach to economically frustrated minorities, single women and immigrants, could fill the populist vacuum.
Democrats who dismiss these possibilities should keep in mind how quickly the political odds can change. Just two short years ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was the Republicans, triumphant from their Tea Party-driven victory in the 2010 election, who represented the majoritarian politics of tomorrow.
It's conceivable that the mainstream Democratic left could strike out on its own--building a political movement that is willing to take on centrists in primary fights, to refuse to support the party's grand bargains that undercut working people, and to take the risk of sitting out elections where there is little distinction between the candidates of different parties. In short, a strategy that forces the party to act in the interests of the majority it claims to represent.
But that requires that progressives abandon the hope that the future will fall into their laps if they are just patient and follow their leaders. If you believe that, you would have believed the sign that hung for years in the window of a tavern in the neighborhood where I grew up: "Free Beer, Tomorrow."
But the American dream is about upward mobility. Ultimately, "The economy, Stupid" trumps identity politics. If the Democrats are not the champions of expanding jobs and incomes for the majority of voters who work for a living--whatever their gender, color, or sexual orientation--their claim to being the natural majority party will amount to little.
So it made political sense that Barack Obama began his 2013 State of the Union with this economic challenge:
"Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs, but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth: a rising, thriving middle-class."
He went on to outline a second-term agenda that most liberals welcomed as finally revealing the true, audacious Barack Obama. "Incredibly ambitious," enthused Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. If Obama's plans were enacted, Klein wrote, "America would be a markedly different country."
Would it? Even if Congress were to whisk the president's entire economic agenda into law, the impact such an improbable feat would have on "our generation's task" of reversing the decline of real wages and incomes is nearly nil.
The root causes of the long-term slide in real wages and incomes are: 1) inadequate demand both here and abroad for what American workers produce; 2) financial deregulation, which has diverted American capital away from domestic production and toward short-term speculation; 3) the 30-year corporate war against trade unions.
Barack Obama's agenda will not change any of these conditions.
Presidents' rhetorical reach often exceeds their realistic grasp. But the issue here is not that Washington politics might prevent this president from delivering on his agenda. It is that the agenda is not designed to deliver.
Obama's No. 1 priority is to reach a ten-year deal with Republicans to reduce the federal deficit. Imagine that the president prevails completely; i.e., that by the end of this year Congress accepts his proposal for a deficit reduction of roughly $4 trillion (some of which has already been agreed to) with a roughly 55 percent to 45 percent split between spending cuts and taxes. Because the economy is operating below capacity, the net effect of the president's proposal would be to reduce the domestic demand for jobs, certainly between now and the election of 2016 and probably throughout the next decade.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that on its current path the U.S. economy would reach full recovery, i.e., 5 percent unemployment, by 2017. It was, to say the least, optimistic, given that it assumed no budget sequestration and no further bipartisan deal cut budget deficits. Assuming the average rate of job growth since the recovery began, we will not reach 5-percent unemployment until 2022. The CBO's projections rely on a leap of faith that somehow, from somewhere, the private sector will deliver a burst of new growth.
In fact, the CBO's model has been forecasting a return to 5 percent unemployment in four years ever year since 2009. But let's say this time they luck out. Recovery by 2017 would still mean at least another four years of joblessness and lost income for millions of Americans. Moreover, even reaching and sustaining 5-percent unemployment would not be enough to reignite middle-class prosperity. We averaged 5 percent for the seven years prior to the financial crash of 2008, but globalization, deregulation, and the erosion of unions continued to drag down wages.
Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling.
The president has no intention of changing the trade policies that have been undercutting U.S. jobs and wages for more than 30 years. In fact, with the support of congressional Republicans, he wants yet another trade deal--this one with 11 Pacific Rim countries--that will once again bargain away the interests of American workers in favor of the interests of American corporate investors.
To make Americans more competitive, Obama says we need more investment in infrastructure, education, and technology. He's clearly right; such spending is an essential--although not sufficient--part of any competitiveness strategy. But just as clearly, the President's actual intentions do not rise to the level needed. In fact, they do not rise at all.
His prior commitment to deficit reduction would shrink the domestic discretionary budget, 50 percent of which is investment, from 3.1 percent to 1.7 percent of GDP. There is no conceivable reordering of priorities within that category that would keep the share of public investment untouched, much less increase it.
On the continued addiction of the country's capital markets to the destructive speculation that led us to the crash of 2008, Obama's agenda is silent. Meanwhile, the largest financial companies now have a bigger share of the markets than they had in 2008 and the administration's lax post-Dodd-Frank financial regulation is a national scandal. The Wall Street casinos are again open for business.
The president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would directly help many of the working poor put bread on the table and pay the rent. But history tells us that the major institutional support--both at the workplace and the ballot box--for assuring that all workers' wages rise with their productivity has been the labor movement, whose impact on the job market goes way beyond its members. Although he could not have been elected or re-elected without organized labor, Obama has no plan to resist the relentless gutting of collective bargaining by corporations and state legislatures alike.
There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party--which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
Barack Obama is not stupid. Neither are his economic advisers. They understand how a modern economy functions. They know that reducing government deficits in an anemic economy will increase unemployment. They know globalization, financial deregulation, and the corporate war on workers is eroding American living standards.
They also know that there are alternatives. There is by now wide agreement among independent, Democratic-leaning economists on the elements of a serious national recovery program of short-term stimulus, long-term investment, and other policies to increase the demand for and the wages of working Americans. (See, for starters, the "Back-to-work" budget of the House Progressive Caucus, the Prosperity Economics plan endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a wide variety of groups, and the writings of Nobel Laureates Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.) There is no dearth of ideas.
So what explains the unwillingness of this administration to present a plan that might actually "reignite" the middle-class prosperity the president needs for his legacy and his party needs for its future?
The most obvious answer is that Democratic leaders are afraid to threaten the economic power and ideological comfort of the country's corporate rich, who finance the Democrats' campaigns and careers, and whose hired help populates the upper reaches of the party's policymaking. To take them on, the president would have to launch and sustain a populist educational campaign to undo the myths about big government and deficit spending that have so confused the electorate. But that is too much heavy political lifting for a White House whose economic advisers will go back to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other financial firms, as well as the Washington lobbying groups that serve their interests. Easier to put his faith in the perennial happy-face projections of the CBO than tackle that crowd. Hope, it turns out, is a strategy--of sorts.
But do the decision-makers of the Democratic Party think that they can sustain a political majority with no serious strategy for dealing with the eroding living standards of a majority of the electorate?
Judging by their behavior, that is exactly what they think--and it's not irrational. If you assume their demographic advantage and that Republicans will remain deeply fractured by their lunatic fringe for some time, Democrats do not actually have to deliver on their promise to reignite middle-class living standards. They can win national elections just by being the socially liberal and economically conservative option.
The party's leaders have plenty of reason to think they have the loyalty of their activist base in their pocket. Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling. After the election, progressives vowed to hold the party's "feet to the fire." But on the very first test--the opportunity for the Senate Democrats to end the conservative abuses of the filibuster abuses--they let the party leadership slip comfortably off the hook.
For a variety of reasons, the Democratic left lacks the independence, strength and hard edge of the Republican right. There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party--which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
The message from the Democratic establishment to its base is: "Chill out--your turn will come." If you accept their rosy scenario, they make a plausible, if cynical, case to liberals for patience: Since time is now on the Democratic side, Obama's compromised improvements in government programs can be built on later. How much later? Who knows?
So far American voters certainly have been willing to wait--and in the meantime, suck it up. A few short years ago, it was unimaginable that a president could be re-elected after four years in which the unemployment rate averaged almost 9 percent. So if the people are OK with four years of rough times, why not six, or eight?
Disappointed and debt-ridden 20- and 30-somethings did not rally around Occupy Wall Street's call for active dissent; they have adjusted to hard times by working more hours, delaying marriage, and milking each other's networks in a desperate effort to find a career. Nor have the middle-aged breadwinners whose lives have been shattered by corporate brutality taken to the streets. Their elders, whose hopes for retirement have evaporated, seem resigned to working until they drop.
There are a few clouds in the Democratic leadership's happy, self-justifying scenario of how they capture the future. One is that in the absence of more stimulus, the economy might tank, with the Democrats taking the blame. Another is that the electorate's seeming passivity might mask a seething and volatile anger, which when it finally explodes will demand truly radical change. At that point, the Democratic Party, with an atrophied and co-opted left wing, could find itself unable to respond, while the far more organized right wing of the Republican Party, having developed a more sophisticated outreach to economically frustrated minorities, single women and immigrants, could fill the populist vacuum.
Democrats who dismiss these possibilities should keep in mind how quickly the political odds can change. Just two short years ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was the Republicans, triumphant from their Tea Party-driven victory in the 2010 election, who represented the majoritarian politics of tomorrow.
It's conceivable that the mainstream Democratic left could strike out on its own--building a political movement that is willing to take on centrists in primary fights, to refuse to support the party's grand bargains that undercut working people, and to take the risk of sitting out elections where there is little distinction between the candidates of different parties. In short, a strategy that forces the party to act in the interests of the majority it claims to represent.
But that requires that progressives abandon the hope that the future will fall into their laps if they are just patient and follow their leaders. If you believe that, you would have believed the sign that hung for years in the window of a tavern in the neighborhood where I grew up: "Free Beer, Tomorrow."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," said one mother whose daughter died after being denied care under Georgia's six-week ban.
Congresswoman Nikema Williams joined patients, healthcare providers, and activists—including the mother of a woman who died after being refused abortion care in Georgia—at a Tuesday press conference held a day before what would have been the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and amid fears of a national abortion ban during U.S. President Donald Trump's second term.
"I refuse to stand by while extremist politicians attack our freedoms, our health, and our future," Williams (D-Ga.) told attendees of the virtual press conference, which was hosted by the abortion rights group Free & Just. "Reproductive freedom is about healthcare, it's about dignity, it's about autonomy. It's about ensuring that everyone, every person, has the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their families without government interference."
Speakers at Tuesday's event included Shanette Williams, whose 28-year-old daughter Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022 after being forced to travel out of state to seek care due to a recently passed Georgia law banning almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a period during which many people don't even know they're pregnant.
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice."
Thurman, who was the single mother of a young son, is one of at least several U.S. women—most of them Black or brown—whose deaths have been attributed to draconian anti-abortion laws.
"She left a son, who every day is confused by why his mother is not here," Williams said of her daughter. "I'm here to be that voice, to fight, to push, to do whatever I need to do to help save another life. Because I never want a mother to feel what I feel today."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," Williams added. "In November, following reporting from ProPublica, officials in Georgia dismissed all members of the state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigates the deaths of pregnant women across the state."
Last September, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that made the procedure legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
Avery Davis Bell, a Savannah mother who had to travel out of Georgia for care after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition that threatened her own life as well, said during Tuesday's press conference: "I could have been Amber Nicole Thurman. It is important for me to continue sharing my story and advocating for us to be able to build the families we want, protect our lives, and be here for our living children."
Atlanta-area ultrasound technician and abortion care provider Suki O. said during the event that Georgia's ban "has been in place for three years now and it doesn't get any easier."
"To turn women away is the hardest thing for me to do," she added. "How many Black women will die, have died, and will continue to die due to these abortion bans?"
Davan'te Jennings, president of Young Democrats of Georgia and youth organizing director at Men4Choice, told the press conference that abortion "is not just a women's issue, this is a man's issue as well."
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice," Jennings added. "What would it look like for you to have to watch your mother go through this? To watch your sister go through this?"
While Trump has said he would veto any national abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, reproductive rights advocates have expressed doubt that the president—a well-documented liar—would actually do so, and warned that his administration could use a 151-year-old law known as the Comstock Act to outlaw the procedure without needing congressional approval.
Critics also note that Trump has repeatedly bragged about appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision that canceled nearly a half-century of federal abortion rights.
The Trump administration is also widely expected to revive the so-called Global Gag Rule, which bans foreign nongovernmental organizations from performing or promoting abortion care using funds from any source, if they receive funds from the U.S. government for family planning activities.
Conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation-led coalition behind Project 2025—a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government—have proposed policies including a national abortion ban, restricting access to birth control, defunding Planned Parenthood, monitoring and tracking pregnancy and abortion data, and eviscerating federal protections for lifesaving emergency abortion care.
While campaigning for president, Trump said he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 12 states currently have near-total abortion bans, and 29 states have enacted prohibitions based on gestational duration.
"Trump isn't king, but if Congress capitulates, he could be," warned the leaders of Popular Democracy.
Since U.S. President Trump's return to office on Monday—at an inauguration ceremony full of American oligarchs—as the Republican has issued a flurry of executive orders and other actions, progressive leaders and organizers have expressed alarm and vowed to fight against his "authoritarian" agenda.
On his first day back at the White House, Trump issued 26 executive orders, 12 memos, and four proclamations, plus withdrew 78 of former President Joe Biden's executive actions, according to a tally from The Hill. Those moves related to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the death penalty, federal workers, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, prescription drug prices, and more.
"In the last 24 hours, Trump has passed dozens of executive orders—many beyond his powers," said Popular Democracy co-director Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper in a Tuesday statement. "Yet, not one of them has lowered prices or made life better for Americans. Instead, he's focused on eroding democracy, attacking constitutional rights, and spreading fear, cruelty, and chaos.
"Trump has taken aim at the 14th Amendment's rights of equal protection and citizenship—the fundamental American right to live and participate in our democracy—with an executive order targeting birthright citizenship," they noted, referencing a policy that is already facing legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and state attorneys general.
Announcing one of the lawsuits, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said that "this order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans. We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged. The Trump administration's overreach is so egregious that we are confident we will ultimately prevail."
Mejia and Cooper said that "his ineffective and inhumane executive orders targeting immigrants misuse military power and double down on damaging our communities."
The group America's Voice similarly expressed concern over Trump's "authoritarian notions of deploying the military on U.S. streets," with the group's executive director, Vanessa Cárdenas, saying that "this is an attack on American families and our American values. Trump's framing of our nation being 'invaded' coupled with the attacks on birthright citizenship and policies that will throw our immigration system further into chaos show that this is a hateful campaign to justify a nativist agenda that seeks to redefine 'American' and move this nation backwards."
Popular Democracy's leaders also called out various other items from Trump's first day that are expected to face legal hurdles—though the Republican spent his first term working with GOP lawmakers to pack the federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court, with far-right appointees, so the effectiveness of such suits remains to be seen.
"Trump's rollbacks of critical climate policy sell out future generations to the profit of oil and gas polluters, and further endangers the poor, Black, brown, and Indigenous people who have been at the frontlines of climate disaster," they said. Trump not only repealed various Biden-era policies but also declared a "national energy emergency" to "drill, baby, drill" for fossil fuels.
Climate campaigners slammed Trump for invoking "authoritarian powers on Day 1 to gut environmental protections," in the words of the Center for Biological Diversity. The organization's executive director, Kierán Suckling, vowed that "no matter how extreme he becomes, we'll confront Trump with optimism and a fierce defense of our beloved wildlife and the planet's health."
"The United States has some of the strongest environmental laws in the world, and no matter how petulantly Trump behaves, these laws don't bend before the whims of a wannabe dictator," Suckling stressed. "The use of emergency powers doesn't allow a president to bypass our environmental safeguards just to enrich himself and his cronies."
The president's attacks on health are expansive. As Mejia and Cooper detailed: "Trump's sweeping changes to healthcare will rip away access for millions, line the pockets of Big Pharma, and undo strides in reproductive rights. They also single out trans Americans, denying them lifesaving healthcare and the right to live freely and authentically."
Imara Jones, a Black trans woman, CEO of TransLash Media, and an expert on the anti-trans political movement, said in a Tuesday statement that "Trump's recognition of only 'two genders' means a war on trans people, as well as any cis person with a gender expression outside of the gender binary."
"This is not political theater, this is the beginning of a potential authoritarian takeover of the United States, one that starts with targeting one of the smallest and most vulnerable groups: transgender people," Jones emphasized. "They seek to erase trans people from public life and want to see if they can get away with it, as a prelude to much more. This should worry all of us."
Another development that provoked intense worry—and even
led the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention to issue a "red flag alert for genocide in the United States"—was Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth and a key Trump ally, twice raising his arm in what was widely seen as a Nazi salute during a post-inauguration celebration.
Trump's Monday night decision to pardon over 1,500 people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, an insurrection incited by the president himself as he contested his 2020 electoral loss, elicited similar warnings.
"By granting clemency to these individuals, who sought to overturn the peaceful transfer of power, Trump is signaling that political violence and the rejection of democratic norms are acceptable tactics in service to his authoritarian agenda," said Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese. "This is a direct threat to the foundations of our democracy and the safety of our communities."
The leaders of Popular Democracy highlighted that "undergirding this extreme authoritarian agenda is a claim that Trump has a mandate to act like a despot—no such mandate exists, much less is acceptable to the American people."
"Trump isn't king, but if Congress capitulates, he could be," they warned, just weeks after Republicans took slim control of both chambers. "Popular Democracy is prepared to push back against Trump's assault on our communities. We will stand up against an unconstitutional power grab, and hold our representatives accountable in this fight."
"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away," said the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde.
The inaugural interfaith service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday proceeded with the usual prayers and music, but after delivering her sermon, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde appeared to go off-script and made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.
Recalling the Republican president's assertion on Monday that he was "saved by God" after a bullet hit his ear in an assassination attempt in July, Budde asked Trump, who was seated in the church, "in the name of our God... to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now."
"There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families," said Budde, "some who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals."
"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here," said Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C.
Budde's appeal followed Trump's signing of 26 executive orders in his first day in office, with dozens more expected in the first days of his second term. The president signed orders ending birthright citizenship—provoking legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and state attorneys general—and pausing refugee admissions, leading to devastation among people who had been waiting for asylum appointments at ports of entry. Official proclamations declared a national emergency at the southern border and asserted that the entry of migrants there is an "invasion."
Trump also took executive action to declare that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female.
"May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world," said Budde in her address to Trump.
The president kept his eyes on Budde for much of her speech, at one point looking annoyed and casting his eyes downward. Vice President JD Vance leaned over and spoke to his wife, Usha Vance, as Budde talked about undocumented immigrants, and raised his eyebrows when she said the majority of immigrants are not criminals.
Trump later told reporters that the service was "not too exciting."
"I didn't think it was a good service," he said. "They can do much better."
Democratic strategist Keith Edwards applauded Budde's decision to speak directly to the president, calling her "incredibly brave."
Budde "confronted Trump's fascism to his face," he said on the social media platform Bluesky.