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Should Democrats pursue progressivism or moderation? That’s a false choice | Michael Massing

“How the Democrats lost the working-class vote”, ran the headline on the New York Times’s front page on 6 January. According to the Times, the Democrats’ estrangement from the working class was decades in the making. The party’s enthusiastic embrace of trade and globalization led to the closure of factories across industrial America, eliminating jobs that had been a prime source of stability, identity and prestige.

While many Democrats attributed Trump’s success to the left’s embrace of “woke” language and causes like transgender rights, the Times observed, the economic seeds of his victories “were sown long ago”. A longtime AFL-CIO official was quoted as saying that “one of the things that has been frustrating about the narrative ‘the Democrats are losing the working class’ is that people are noticing it half a century after it happened”.

Given the long incubation of this development, one might say the Times itself was late in recognizing it. But the question remains: how can Democrats win back those working-class voters?

One key question has dominated: should the party move to the left or tack toward the center? Should it stress progressivism or moderation? In a way, though, it’s a false choice. The Democrats could combine both approaches in a policy of pragmatic populism, fusing the insurgent ideas and galvanizing fire of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the plainspoken bread-and-butter appeal of a Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-repair shop owner who represents a rural district in Washington state.

Pragmatic populism would offer sweeping solutions to the economic anxiety facing so many American families but without the polarizing rhetoric. It would avoid labels like “oligarch” and “tycoon”, drop references to socialism and redistribution and refrain from saying that billionaires should not exist (even though a strong case can be made for that proposition).

Instead, pragmatic populists would adopt a message of “let us join together to create a more perfect union”. They would promote the idea of a social contract, founded on the notion that those who have surged ahead economically have an obligation to help those who have been left behind. They would argue that the .01% have thrived thanks to an economic system built over decades of public investment in schools, roads, ports, communications, regulatory agencies, the police and the courts, and that the very wealthy need to “give back” (as super-rich philanthropists are fond of saying) so that ordinary working people can share fully in the fruits.

To consider how this would work, take the issue of childcare. A pragmatic populist would say: “The skyrocketing cost of childcare is crushing families across the country. In New York City, the typical family is spending a quarter of its income on such care, and many parents, especially mothers, have to quit the workforce to look after their kids. And childcare providers earn so little that many are leaving the industry. We need to provide parents more in tax credits and providers more in wage subsidies. The cost will not be negligible, but such a policy would not only ease the struggles of parents but also make them more productive workers. So we’re going to ask corporations and the very wealthy to contribute somewhat more in taxes to help make that happen.”

Or take dental care. While food deserts have gotten a lot of attention, dentistry deserts have not. According to the CDC, nearly 60 million Americans live in areas in which dental services are in short supply. Even where such services are available, the cost of root canals, implants and crowns can be prohibitive, especially for the working class. Two-thirds of the shortages are in rural America, and a program to expand the Affordable Care Act to include dental insurance could help the Democrats make inroads in a part of the US they have all but lost.

Small businesses offer another ripe constituency. Such enterprises (defined as having revenues of less than $40m and workforces of under 500) make up more than 99% of all firms in the country. Many of them are hampered by fines, fees and red tape. The Democrats have long been seen as indifferent or even hostile to this sector. In a promising sign of change, the New York mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, has proposed creating a “mom-and-pop czar” to help ease the regulatory burden on the city’s bodegas, pharmacies, barber shops and beauty salons.

These businesses also have a hard time getting credit. Most are too small to interest the mega banks that dominate the US financial system. The thousands of small banks in the country that do cater to this community are themselves under tremendous strain. The Democrats could propose ways of easing the availability of credit for small-business owners, especially Black and Latino ones, who often lack the necessary credit records and collateral.

The hemorrhaging of Black and Latino voters is among the most troubling developments for Democrats. Many complain that the party shows up every four years asking for their vote, then forgets about them. During the recent election, Trump’s surge among Latinos in Texas’s Rio Grande valley offered a stinging rebuke to a party that had long counted on their support. “I think Democrats have historically taken the Rio Grande valley for granted,” Beto O’Rourke, the former senatorial candidate, told the Guardian last summer. “Republicans saw an opportunity, they’re hungry, and they’ve gone after it, investing money and running strong candidates with resources behind them.” The Democrats have by contrast spent heavily on Washington-based consultants and lobbyists, starving local operations of funds and hollowing out the party’s infrastructure on the ground.

Where the Democrats are present, they have a reputation for being bad listeners given to lecturing people about what’s good for them. This has to change. Here are some recommendations for Democrats – politicians and otherwise:

Don’t ask what’s the matter with Kansas.
Don’t ask how Trump voters can vote against their interests.
Don’t ask evangelical Christians how they can support someone like Trump.
Don’t claim that the facts and science are on your side.
Don’t claim that Trump voters are victims of disinformation.
Don’t blame the Democrats’ unpopularity on Fox News and other rightwing outlets.
Don’t campaign with celebrities.
Don’t sermonize when discussing climate change.
Don’t call Trump supporters stupid.

That last suggestion might pose the greatest challenge of all. Even after the accumulation of so much evidence about the resentment that blue-collar Americans feel at the hands of white-collar liberals, condescension remains rampant. This was clear from the more than 2,000 reader comments posted on the Times article about the Democrats’ loss of the working class.

Some samples: “They’re just dumb, bitter jerks who were looking for permission to be as resentful and judgmental in public as they were in private.” “The working class has, by and large, left the 4th estate for the purveyors of disinformation.” “I have to live with trump as president the next 4 years and possibly the rest of my life because of these ‘working class’ idiots who vote against their own interests.” “Most working class people are not reading the NYT, or any conventional news sources—this goes double for the Trump supporters amongst them. They are ignorant.”

In the end, such an outlook is neither pragmatic nor populist.