The human costs of social decay are clear: declining life expectancy, teen suicide, record incarceration, an opioid epidemic, and rising obesity. The failure to invest in decent schools or even core infrastructure is crippling. Trump called out that failure -- and enough Americans voted for him, even though most thought he didn't have the temperament or the experience to be president.
More of the same will not work. Yet Republicans seem intent on peddling their same old supply-side snake oil. Some establishment Democrats seem mainly content to recycle the Obama agenda. They argue that Trump is just a black swan -- an accident.
Sure, Hillary won a majority of the votes cast, Trump and Republican approval is in the pits, and Democrats are exceeding past performance in all the special elections. Depending on Trump's toxicity alone to mobilize Democrats might suffice to pick up seats, perhaps even take back the House in 2018, but it won't begin the hard process of forging a broad consensus on an agenda that would actually make this economy work for most Americans.
It won't begin to build a consensus for a real security agenda that extracts us from wars without end and without victory. And it won't begin to create a mandate for the public investment and political reforms needed to deal with America's spreading social crisis.
Entrenched interests, policy gurus, political operatives, and big money all have a significant stake in defending business as usual. If Democrats are to meet the promise their leaders made in their "Better Deal" platform to put forth a bold agenda that works for working people, a fierce debate isn't pernicious. It is utterly imperative.
The Record Is ClearPolitically, the Democratic establishment has been an abject failure.
The scope of Democratic reversals over the last eight years is staggering. Hillary's loss was only the last insult. Democrats have lost everywhere -- the Senate, the House, and in state legislatures, and governor's mansions. Since Obama was elected in 2008, Democrats have slowly lost the House and the Senate, and over 1,000 state legislative seats. The Republican party can now claim 34 governors, a record high for the party. Republicans are in full control in 26 states; Democrats in six.
The New York Times reported on the party fight in an article entitled: "Democratic Split Screen: The Base Wants it All; the Party Wants to Win." The basic theme was the activist "base" of the party -- which the authors mistakenly equated with the Sanders movement -- wanted a revolution, while the party pros just wanted to use this moment to win elections.
But, given the track record, clearly the party pros don't have much of a clue on how to win elections, much less forge a lasting majority coalition. There is no show worthy of applause. The consultant class has too big a stake in television ads, and too little awareness of the importance of passion and mobilization. The pros assume an electorate that can't be changed.
Democrats, fixated on the "rising American majority," believe demography is their destiny, but as the Clinton campaign demonstrated, they fail even at reaching and mobilizing what they know is the Democratic base -- African Americans, particularly older African-American women, the young, Latinos, and single women.
They've done a miserable job even of protecting the right to vote in the face of relentless Republican efforts to suppress it. Given the results of the last election, Stan Greenberg's conclusion -- that Democrats don't have a white working-class problem, they have a working-class problem -- is indisputable.
So the party pros' claim to authority based on experience -- "We know how to do this" -- has no traction. If they want to build power, Democrats will have to change their agenda, their message, the way they raise money, the way they reach out to their base, the way they seek to mobilize and inspire voters.
Everyone talks change now, but the same consultants, the same pros, the same operatives close ranks to sustain their careers and build their fortunes. Displacing them -- or getting them to change dramatically -- will again not be easy.
Movements, Not PoliticiansOur media personalizes political debates. Sanders against Clinton, Sanders-Warren against Booker-Harris-Cuomo. And no doubt political leaders looking ahead to 2020 presidential race work to organize ideas, activists, and money to define a political identity.
But this debate is largely driven by movements and activists on the ground. The $15 minimum wage is becoming a Democratic party consensus, and with it a range of measures to lift the floor under workers: fair hours, paid family leave, paid vacation days, overtime, and a crackdown on wage theft.
This happened largely because of the political movement of workers, significantly organized by SEIU and Change to Win, demanding a decent wage. The revolt on trade, culminating in the rejection of Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership, was driven by popular outrage and mobilization forcing politicians (and, more grudgingly, economists) to respond.
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