Republicans now have total control of the statehouse and legislature in a record 24 states and will be able to push a corporate and conservative wish list of legislation. Democrats have control in just six. Even so, with reform impossible at the national level, progressive groups should be stepping up efforts to develop emblematic reforms at the state and local levels that can help drive a national message. Republicans have stymied efforts to increase the minimum wage nationally, but the Fight for $15 continues to push successful reforms and initiatives in cities and states. Groups like People's Action, with affiliates in 29 states, can help move issues at the same time. Progressives in Congress can give these efforts national recognition and sharpen the contrast with the right.
Similar efforts are already moving forward on paid sick days and family leave, fair hours, wage theft, and more. This agenda can be expanded. Progressive taxes for public investment -- creating green jobs or funding universal pre-K -- can attract majority support. New efforts to use public procurement to develop local suppliers, or to give preference to companies that recognize their workers' right to organize, are promising. Creative efforts to penalize companies with excessive executive-pay structures need to spread.
On foreign policy and national security, Democrats have allowed liberal interventionists to define their playbook, despite a deplorable record of endless wars without victory leading to failed states. Obama also embraced extreme assertions of executive power -- to make covert and overt war, undertake mass surveillance, imprison without due process, target people for assassination, and more.
Progressives should force a fundamental reassessment of our national-security strategy, defining a new conception of how we live in the world and a reassertion of constitutional limits on the presidency. Progressive legislators can help lead this effort and give it greater recognition, but it will gain little traction unless bolder citizen movements build to challenge our endless wars, the increasingly threatening developments on the nuclear-arms front, and our catastrophic retreat from leading on climate change.
These are dangerous times. Trump has stoked hatreds and divisions that could grow ever more perilous. His denial of climate change could be literally calamitous. His disinterest in policy suggests that he'll probably become captive to a Republican Congress increasingly dominated by the extreme right. His Supreme Court nominee will surely revive the Court's right-wing majority.
But neither Trump nor the Republican right have answers for the working people who elected him. Trump may torpedo the TPP, but he hasn't a clue about what a sensible trade policy would be. A Republican Congress will block any efforts to empower workers, lift their wages, secure their retirements, and make education and health care affordable. The buyers' remorse will set in quickly.
Citizen movements -- the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, the Dreamers, 350.org, and others -- drove reform in the Obama years. Now these same movements will have to mobilize to fend off reaction. Progressives in the House and Senate need to take over the Democratic Party's agenda and message. New populist energy can drive important reforms at the state and local level, and recruit and train a new generation of populist candidates. Democrats don't need to abandon their social liberalism; they need to develop their economic populism. If they do, the Trump era may turn out to be as short as his attention span.
Originally published at The Nation(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
