Progressives should go bold to break gridlock and expand their power

Conventional wisdom was wrong about the midterms, but in a deeper way than most observers have yet realized. It's not just that Democrats did better than expected, and the Dobbs decision and Trump-backed election deniers weren't the only reasons. A lot of things went into those results, which were more complicated than most narratives allow. Through the haze of conflicting post-election narratives, the possibility for a long-term progressive realignment can be seen, combining the government activism of Joe Biden's major legislation (the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act) with the growing power of diverse social movements advancing racial, gender and climate justice, gun safety and more. As the younger voters who overwhelmingly support Democrats grow in strength, there's a path out of current gridlock and polarization based on a progressive agenda. But conventional wisdom can't even see it.

As I've noted previously — here, here, here, here and here, among others — as far back as 1967, Hadley Cantril and Lloyd Free's landmark book "The Political Beliefs of Americans identified a "schizoid" asymmetry in American politics: On the one hand, there's a plurality preference for conservatism, on an ideological or symbolic level, while on the other hand there's supermajority support for what the authors called "operational liberalism," meaning big government spending to solve specific problems. That's essentially what the Biden administration has delivered, as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently summarized: "The most significant economic recovery package since Roosevelt ... the largest infrastructure plan since Eisenhower ... the most sweeping gun reform bill since Clinton ... Landmark China competitiveness legislation that's already bringing manufacturing jobs back from overseas ... the largest climate change bill in history."

The internal division that hobbled Democrats over the past two years was often presented as progressives versus centrists, but was really about good-faith actors (whatever their supposed ideology) versus bad-faith ones, most notably Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. As a result, many "Dems in disarray" articles clouded the public's understanding, making it difficult to see how much got done despite that obstructionism. As Way to Win reported in its Battleground State Poll Readout, 78% of all voters couldn't name anything Biden had done that directly helped them. All those people had received $1,400 stimulus checks, so the problem was much less that Biden and the Democrats hadn't done enough than how little voters knew about what they'd done.

Democrats are in a good place politically, if they can get past that problem. Progressive economics are popular — including Social Security and Medicare, family leave, the expanded child tax credit and student loan debt forgiveness — as are progressive positions in the culture wars, where the Dobbs decision in particular exposed Republican weakness. On criminal justice reform, the phrase "defund the police" became a liability, but the actual policy it describes — reallocating funding to social workers, mental health and other social services — is highly popular. In one survey of Los Angeles voters, 75% of people in households with a police officer supported that policy.

So it's not extremism that threatens Democrats' prospects, but the opposite: lacking the boldness to secure the allegiance of young voters. My argument stands in direct conflict with New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall's "What Really Saved the Democrats This Year?" which ludicrously ignores the Dobbs effect, quotes only male commentators and frames everything in terms of a battle between "moderates" and "progressives."

An overlooked popular foundation

My argument is founded on three key facts: First, Biden's agenda — most notably the trifecta of the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — was grounded in the Biden-Sanders Joint Task Force Recommendations, which NPR described as the "Blueprint for a Progressive Presidency" and enjoyed almost universal Democratic support. Second, that the Dobbs decisionand Trump-backed attacks on democracy fueled a backlash that reflects a historical turning of the tides in America's culture wars. Third, that voters under 30 — whose share of the electorate will only grow with each election cycle — favored Democrats by almost 30 points. Those are the voters who most clearly see the failures of neoliberal politics as usual over the past 40-plus years, particularly on issues like gun violence, climate change, mass incarceration, reproductive freedom and economic inequality.

While Republican control of the House will certainly stall things in the short run, the next two years could be crucial in laying the groundwork for a generation or more of progressive Democratic dominance on a scale not seen since the New Deal or the Great Society. The potential pieces are there — they just need to be put together, and the process of doing so has already begun.

"This cycle and election made clear that milquetoast, centrist approaches are ineffective and losing strategies — they just don't excite new base voters and hold the middle," Way to Win president Tory Gavito told Salon:

Candidates that ran on persuasive progressive platforms won up and down the ballot across the country from the Senate to state legislatures. The way to win is through offering voters — especially our Democratic base — bold agendas, ideas and solutions that will make tangible impacts to improve their lives and communities, and making an argument for these solutions to independents. We must remind voters that MAGA has nothing to offer but trumped-up culture wars, through the vision we promote on air to the talking points we share on the doors.

Gavito reiterated that Way to Win polling showed that a large majority of voters couldn't name a single accomplishment that Biden or the Democratic Congress had achieved. That was a "wake-up call," she said, but "also a massive opportunity heading into 2023 and 2024. ... Democrats have a unique opportunity to tell and show voters how their actions and policies are making real-world impacts that are improving our economy."

The best economic policy in 40 years

The main headwind Democrats faced this year was the inflation issue, which, as I wrote earlier this month, was both a worldwide problem for which Biden and Democrats were not responsible and also part of a complicated story that showed lower-income workers doing much better overall, with more jobs, faster wage growth, rising home ownership and refinancing of existing homes. In other words, the U.S. economy was recovering well from the COVID shock and generally doing so in a healthier, more equitable manner.

This was a shared objective of the Biden-Sanders Task Force, reflected first in the American Rescue Plan, which economist Claudia Sahm called "the best economic policy in 40 years." She wrote: "Yes, inflation's been higher and for longer than expected by proponents of more relief like myself," then adding further context: "If you look broadly at what's happening in the U.S. economy — inflation-adjusted consumer spending, jobs, business investment and household balance sheets — it's clear that Americans are winning," which was not the case after the Great Recession.

When the ARP was passed, the U.S. economy was "still in a bad place," Sahm told Salon. "We were just coming out of the omicron wave, the winter had been bad. There was no guarantee we were going to have the recovery or that it was going to be strong." But in fact, she said, "we've had the first job-full recovery in decades," in stark contrast to the "crushingly slow" recovery from the Great Recession of 2008.

After the Obama administration's inadequate response, Sahm said, "Republicans came in and did austerity" which suited their donors just fine. "Wealthy people came back quickly. The stock market came back quickly. House prices, for those who did not lose their homes, came back. But the jobs did not come back, and long-term unemployment has disastrous effects on people's careers — not just bad while you're out of work, but bad for years," If Biden's plan accomplished nothing else, she said, the "job-full recovery makes it the best policy that we've had to fight a recession" in decades.

Slashing child poverty

Unfortunately, the expanded Child Tax Credit in Biden's plan — which cut child poverty by 30% — was only temporary, and later allowed to lapse thanks to Joe Manchin's opposition, As I wrote in 2015, based on papers from the LIS Data Center, America has a terrible record in fighting child poverty, but it could easily afford to cut child poverty almost in half by enacting a $4,000-a-year child allowance. That would cost about $160 billion every year, but would produce a net benefit of about $90 billion, since childhood poverty costs the country even more, with "lost productivity and increased crime and health care costs as primary factors."

The extended CTC would have made us somewhat competitive with other rich nations, at a net annual savings of more than $50 billion. That's what Joe Manchin blocked, based on shifting rationales that didn't hold up to scrutiny in terms of either the experiences of other countries our America's trial run under the ARP. Sahm told Congress in October 2021 that the CTC "would be the 'biggest bang for the buck,' supporting families now and investing in our next generation."

The Child Tax Credit was allowed to lapse, Sahm said, because "Larry Summers convinced Joe Manchin that the child tax credit was inflationary," a view she calls "absolutely absurd." In an analysis last July, she explained: "Unlike stimulus checks that came out in a burst, accounting for 16% of disposable personal income in March 2021, the new Child Tax Credit was monthly to families and was 0.5% of income from July through December." In short, it wasn't a contributor to inflation, and was a crucial investment in the next generation.

The question here is not whether this example of "operational liberalism" works. The evidence is clear enough. The only real question is whether, or when, we can gather the political will to get it done.

Taking Trumpers seriously

But there's another, more immediate barrier: The often ill-informed Republican base, which despite its affection for Donald Trump is nonetheless right about something. That's the argument Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, makes in "The Case for the Trumpers' Anger."

"There is no justification for the racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry that Trump has cultivated since he entered politics," Baker wrote. "But there is a reason why it suddenly has so much appeal," that being the basic reality of how badly the non-college-educated majority of Americans have fared over the last 50 years or so.

Consider this: If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since its peak real value in 1968, the national minimum wage would be over $12 an hour today, rather than $7.25. But if it had kept pace with productivity growth, as it did for three decades prior to 1968, it would be almost twice that, or $23 an hour. That would mean a couple working full-time minimum-wage jobs would earn about $92,000 a year — a very different world than the one we live in today.

Since only about 40% of adults have college degrees, Baker writes, "This means a large majority of the population has grounds to be unhappy about their economic circumstances in recent decades. Given this reality, suppose that the poor prospects for non-college educated workers was the result of deliberate policies pushed by the people who control debates on economic policy, as in people with college and advanced degrees."

In fact, that's exactly what has happened, he argues. "The winners really did screw them and they have concocted nonsense stories to conceal that fact. ... Of course, that doesn't mean that every university professor or librarian was in on the scheme, but as a class these people have in fact put in place economic structures that redistribute from the less-educated to those with college and advanced degrees."

That analysis may be skewed, in that the prime movers weren't upper-middle-class professionals but a handful of extremely wealthy elites, and the neoliberal worldview they promoted was surrounded by so much propaganda that it was difficult to see what absolute nonsense it was. But still, as a class educated professionals did go along with it, accepting much of that nonsensical propaganda along the way. So what can be done to remedy that now?

"Democrats need to actively push policies that will reverse the upward redistribution of the last four decades," Baker told Salon via email. "For example, cracking down on the bloated financial sector is a great place to start. Taxing financial transactions, starting with crypto, would both raise lots of money, which could be used for things like child care and might also eliminate many of the big fortunes earned in the sector." He also suggests reducing prescription-drug costs "by publicly funding the research and making the resulting drugs and inventions available as cheap generics sold in a free market." This would reduce health care costs and free up money for other purposes."

In short, there are relatively straightforward things we can do, which in Democratic politics today are generally coded as "progressive." That's also misleading, because their appeal would reach far across party lines. Baker certainly wouldn't guarantee that such measures could bring white working class voters back to the Democrats, but it could be crucial for securing the allegiance of younger voters, the potential foundation for decades of Democratic dominance.

The end of Roe and court reform

But economics — although certainly crucial — is only part of the story. For decades Republicans have relied on culture-war issues, abortion foremost among them. More precisely, conservatives have devoted immense energy and resources to controlling the courts, thereby enforcing minority views they could never democratically write into law. But having finally realized their goal of overturning Roe in 2022, everything has changed, largely because these culture-war issues have always relied on some degree of subterfuge, and the Dobbs blew a hole in all that, exposing the messy, complicated reality obscured by facile "pro-life" rhetoric. Voters in Michigan, Vermont and California overwhelmingly approved initiatives enshrining abortion rights in their state constitutions, while voters in Kansas, Kentucky and Montana (three solidly Republican states) said no to bans or restrictions. But this is clearly just the beginning of years of further struggle that will be about much more than abortion rights.

The extremist, anti-democratic Supreme Court is a massive problem, but most discussions about how to solve it have been overly abstract and hobbled by a limited sense of history. One exception is a new paper by David Gans, director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center, which proposes concrete potential remedies by drawing on the most compelling historical example we have. That was during Reconstruction, when Congress both expanded and contracted the size of the Supreme Court, limited its jurisdiction and expanded the power of federal courts to protect citizens' rights. The most lasting and consequential impacts came from the last option, which he believes could guide us this time around. "When six Justices insist on rolling back fundamental rights and putting accountability further out of reach," he writes, "Congress should do what it did during Reconstruction: employ its enforcement powers to pass landmark civil rights legislation that opens the courthouse doors and ensure the promise of justice for all Americans."

Gans told Salon that reforming the courts "is about more than the composition of the Supreme Court." While it's highly unlikely that reform legislation can be enacted in the next two years, he said, "progressives in and out of Congress should use this time to develop a multi-pronged approach. The Constitution gives Congress powerful tools to reform our federal judicial system and to ensure that our federal courts — including the Supreme Court — uphold the rights and ideals that lie at the core of our Constitution, including liberty and equal justice under law.

"In this moment, progressives should think boldly about how to deploy these tools to fix a Supreme Court whose conservatives seem bent on decimating fundamental rights and equality. To build popular support, progressives should use every chance they get to make the case that the conservative super-majority of the Supreme Court is getting the Constitution dead wrong and that far-reaching changes are necessary to honor the whole Constitution's safeguards and promises."

Criminal justice reform