Using the Constitution to Frame Progressive Values and Political Proposals

Reclaiming the Constitution For Social Justice

A few weeks ago, in a post on this blog, I said that we who work for social justice in the United States should use basic long-standing, America values to frame our goals. In this post, I want to go further and say that we should root our values explicitly in our country's Constitution. Struggles for social justice in the United States have always been struggles over the meaning of our Constitution. Americans have argued about what the Constitution permits our government to do, and more importantly, they have argued about what the Constitution requires our government to do. In recent decades, we progressives have forgotten how to use the Constitution to argue for social justice, but The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution by Fishkin and Forbath tells us how to reclaim that knowledge and how to use it in the political battles of our time.

Fishkin and Forbath show us that the Constitution is not merely – as most liberals now see it - a set of limits on the powers of government. The Constitution also sets out affirmative duties for the Federal Government and especially for its elected branches. The big conflicts of the past including those of the Populist era or those of the New Deal were seen by the people of those times as conflicts over the meaning of the Constitution and were fought out on those grounds in the political arena and not just in the courts.

We must reclaim the tradition of framing political goals like universal healthcare or affordable childcare in terms of values that are rooted in an interpretation of the affirmative duties of the federal government and especially of Congress. We should claim that the policies we recommend ought to be supported by all patriotic Americans because those policies flow from and are required by the basic principles of our Constitution. There are two approaches that we can use: the textual approach and the structural approach.

The Textual Approach to Framing Policy Proposals

The textual approach consists of interpreting the text of the Constitution in a way that stresses underlying values. The affirmative duties of the Federal Government come from several sources. First, the Constitution’s Preamble tells us that it was established in order to “…promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The powers enumerated in the body of the Constitution should thus be interpreted in a way that is consistent with its purpose of promoting the general welfare. For example, Congress might establish a national healthcare system on the grounds that it promotes the general welfare. 

The Preamble is not the only source of affirmative duties. Section 4 of Article IV says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government ….” This clearly means that Congress has a duty to make sure through appropriate legislation that no state turns its democratic government into an oligarchy through restrictions on voting rights or through corruption.  But Congress's duty may extend much farther. For example, Congress may have a duty to prevent our current administration from using the threat of invasion to bypass a state's democratic procedures and guarantees.

The Structural Approach to Framing Policy Proposals

The structural approach relies on the idea that the democratic political system established by our Constitution can survive only if certain structural conditions are met. The founders of our republic believed that democracy requires a broad, stable and secure middle class and an economy that gives members of the middle class opportunities to improve their condition. The founders also believed that democracy is incompatible with the concentration of wealth in an oligarchy that can use its wealth to control the legislative process and generally to subvert democracy. 

Throughout American history, progressive reformers have argued that for these reasons, Congress has a duty to enact legislation to prevent the rise of an oligarchy and to provide security and opportunity to the middle class. The protection of voting rights and campaign finance reform may obviously be justified in this way, but Congress’s responsibility to maintain a broad middle class and to prevent the rise of an oligarchy could also provide a basis for enacting a wealth tax or for expanding Social Security. 

The same logic may be used as a part of the justification for a national healthcare system. Today, healthcare emergencies are the most common cause of personal bankruptcies in the United States, and even in the absence of bankruptcies, the cost of health insurance weighs heavily on our middle class and limits the ability of middle-class people to take advantage of opportunities to get ahead. Thus, the lack of a national healthcare system threatens the structural foundations of our political system, and therefore, our government must provide a national healthcare system in order to preserve the structural conditions without which the democratic political system established by our Constitution cannot survive.

The Constitution and Inclusion

Both the textual and the structural approaches may be used to support policies of inclusion. The general welfare should be seen to include the welfare of women and of racial and religious minorities, and we must see that if oligarchy is incompatible with democracy, an oligarchy of white men is unacceptable.

American Patriots Should Join Us

Thus, progressive values and progressive social and economic policies may be linked explicitly to the affirmative duties placed on Congress and the President by the Constitution. That is the way that fights for social justice were conducted in the Progressive Era and in the New Deal Era, and we can use the Constitution in today’s fights, too. If we do that, we will strengthen the appeal of our demands, and we will be able to say that supporters of our Constitution and all patriotic Americans should join us in making those demands.

What Should Americans Learn From the Holocaust?

 What Can We Learn?

The Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered by the Germans between 1932 and 1945 is one of history’s great crimes, but what can it teach us? What can we learn from it that we can apply to our own country?

Ordinary People Can Do Great Evil 

One lesson we can learn is that ordinary people will do awful things to protect themselves and their families and to advance their careers. Most of the officials who carried out the Holocaust were not ideologically committed Nazis. They did not hate the Jews enough to kill them. The perpetrators of the Holocaust were just soldiers or civil servants who followed orders. That does not absolve them from responsibility, but it helps us to see that as individuals they were not all monsters. They were mostly people who were trying to pursue their own interests in an evil system.

Today, in the United States, we can see a similar process at work. The masked ICE thugs who sweep people up off the streets of American cities are probably not exceptionally cruel or brutal individuals, but ICE offers them a chance to advance their careers and to provide for their families. When they find themselves on a street in Los Angeles or Chicago, they do what the German soldiers did. They cooperate with the orders of their commanders, and they help their comrades to carry out the task they have been assigned. They follow orders. Our people are not different from the Germans. Ordinary Americans caught up in an evil system are capable of doing awful things.

Great Evil Develops Gradually 

Another lesson that we can draw from the Holocaust is that that extreme evil develops gradually. Over time, people come to support more and more extreme policies of violence. When Hitler was elected in 1932, most of his supporters probably did not envision the violence of 1938’s Kristalnacht when synagogues all over Germany were attacked. Those who participated in those attacks cannot all have envisioned the murders of tens of thousands of Jews in Poland, Ukraine and Russia by the Einsatzgruppen after 1939, and even most members of the Einsatzgruppen did not foresee the deadly efficiency of the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem as carried out from 1942-45. Those who voted for Hitler in 1932 certainly did not foresee Auschwitz, Treblinka or Sobibor.

We should apply this lesson to the violence currently being perpetrated by ICE in the United States.  ICE started out by arresting people at the border who had crossed into the United States illegally. They then progressed to conducting street raids using masked gangs of agents in cities far from the border. Then the masked gangs started to raid workplaces. A recent raid on a construction site in Georgia netted hundreds of people. Then, a few days ago, a masked gang of Border Patrol agents conducted a raid at night on an apartment building in Chicago. According to Time magazine,

At around 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, armed federal agents rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a five-storey residential apartment in the South Shore of Chicago. The agents worked their way through the building, kicking down doors and throwing flash bang grenades, rounding up adults and screaming children alike, detaining them in zip-ties and arresting dozens, according to witnesses and local reporting.

This raid was a textbook example of the unreasonable searches and seizures that are banned by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Apparently, the raid was conducted without a warrant. Our government is using a claim that national security is endangered and that therefore, the president may take such extraordinary steps to protect the country. However, the claim has never been substantiated, and it appears to be no more than a pretext to ignore the Constitution. 

We Should Expect an Escalation of Violence

We should expect that, unless the national security claim is rejected by the Supreme Court, the use of unconstitutional violence will grow because the method that Trump is currently using to arrest and deport immigrants is far too slow and requires far too much manpower. He cannot achieve his goal by using the method he is now using. He will have to escalate to more extreme methods just as the Nazis did.

The gradual escalation of violence leading to the death camps of the Final Solution came about because eliminating millions of people is not easy. Shooting people - even in fairly large groups - is much too slow and requires far too much manpower. So, the Nazis invented an efficient industrial solution: Jews were shipped to the death camps by trainloads, and they were gassed and cremated when they arrived.

Trump's program of deporting undocumented immigrants faces the same problem that the Nazis faced. He cannot achieve his goal of deporting all of our undocumented immigrants by the end of his term using the method he is currently using. There are estimated to be at least ten million undocumented immigrants in the United States. How can so many people be arrested and deported? Can the president's current method achieve his goal? A little arithmetic will show that the current method cannot succeed.

The raid in Chicago mentioned above netted 37 people, and some of those were American citizens who had to be released. If the raid netted 30 candidates for deportation, how many such raids would be needed to deport all of our undocumented immigrants?

If we divide our 10 million undocumented immigrants by 30 (the number netted in the raid), we will see that at least 333,000 such raids would be required to arrest and deport all of our undocumented immigrants. However, Trump will continue as president for only a little more than three years - let us say 1200 days - and if ten such raids were conducted every day, he would have carried out only 12,000 raids by the end of his term, and he would have arrested only about 360,000 immigrants. Even if we doubled that number to 720,000, he would still have deported less than 10 percent of the undocumented immigrants in the United States. 

Clearly, he will have to find a more efficient solution to his problem. He will have to resort to more egregious violations of our constitutional rights, and he will have to use more extreme violence to achieve his goal. His policy of replacing officials who question his methods with people who are loyal to him is designed to facilitate his use of ever more extreme methods, and he will find as the Nazis did that plenty of good people trying to advance their careers will be available to carry out his program. We cannot allow that to happen.

We must resist!

Gaza And The End of the Zionist Dream

The End of the Free and Democratic Jewish State?

The war in Gaza will put an end to the Zionist dream of a free and democratic Jewish state. The State of Israel has always been an imperfect realization of that dream, but the war will definitely end it. I write this in sorrow because I am and have always been a supporter of Israel, but we must face reality. I hope that the State of Israel will continue to survive and prosper, but it cannot do so as a purely Jewish state.

Why must the Zionist dream end here? To answer that question, we need to understand the contradiction at the heart of Zionism and indeed of all nationalism.

Zionism - the Jewish Nationalist Dream

The Birth of Jewish Nationalism

Zionism was born in a political world in which nationalist demands underlay many of the political issues of the time. The First World War was triggered by a Serbian nationalist, and nationalism underlay the creation of countries like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia from the remains of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The national aspirations of people in many parts of the world led to the collapse of the British and French colonial empires after WWII. 

European Jews took the nationalist idea and applied it to themselves. They said, “We, too, are a people, and we too have a right to a country of our own,” and they founded the Zionist movement. The Zionists were young and enthusiastic. They were political leftists and envisioned a socialist society in the new country that they were building. The collective farms (kibbutzim) that they founded were expressions of their vision. They also felt themselves to be renewing themselves and the Jewish people.  A song sung by the early settlers says, "We came to the Land to build and to be built."

The Contradiction at the Heart of Nationalism

The Zionists, like all other nationalists, ignored the contradiction at the heart of nationalism. Nationalism says that a national state is the political expression of a single “people” who share a common language, cultural heritage and biological ancestry. For example, a nationalist would say that France is the political expression of the French people. In reality, France is not the simple and natural expression of a culturally unified people. French culture was imposed on a diverse population. The French language started out as the language of the area around Paris, and at the time of the French Revolution, the language was spoken by less than 10% of the people of France. The French national school system, along with military conscription spread the language to all parts of France. All modern countries have similar histories. Their national cultures have been imposed on diverse populations. So, the idea that a national state is the natural expression of a culturally unified people is false.

The Blind Spot in Nationalism

Nationalists, including Zionists, are blind to this reality, and that blindness has led to harsh and brutal conflicts everywhere. The United Kingdom was created by suppressing the independence of the Welsh and the Scots. The recent Basque struggle for independence from Spain produced a long and bloody civil war. Today, Indian Hindus attack Indian Muslims. The Burmese massacre the Rohingya, and the Muslims of Northern Sudan massacre the Christian and Animist peoples of Southern Sudan. Tribal conflicts are endemic in many parts of Africa. Mexico oppresses the indigenous people in the southern part of the country. The United States was created by the extermination of most of the native peoples of its territory. The creation of the State of Israel has inevitably involved repeated conflicts with the Palestinians. 

A Bi-National State

The war in Gaza is a culmination of those conflicts, but it cannot resolve them. Some people still talk of a two-state resolution of the conflicts, but the time when that solution was possible is long past because today, nearly half a million Israeli Jews live in the West Bank. Some Israelis would like the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank to move to other countries, but no country has offered to take the Palestinians in. They have nowhere to go. Nevertheless, it is pretty clear that the State of Israel would like to annex Gaza and the West Bank.

If Israel annexes Gaza and the West Bank, it will acquire approximately 4.5 million new Palestinian citizens in addition to the 2.5 million Palestinians who already live in Israel proper. The total Jewish population of Israel is about 7.6 million. Thus, if Israel annexes the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians will constitute almost half of the country's population, and Israel will inevitably become a bi-national state like Belgium. It will be impossible to maintain the purely Jewish character of the State of Israel except through an unsustainable and morally unacceptable level of suppression of the Palestinians. ,

If for some reason, Israel does not annex the West Bank and Gaza, the conflict with the Palestinians will continue, and Israel's democracy will continue to be eroded. Israel's oppressive rule in the West Bank and the continuing horror in Gaza are incompatible with a democratic society and contrary to basic Jewish values.  

So, the Zionist dream of a free, democratic and Jewish state ends here.

A Dangerous Lie

Trump Says That We Have Lost Wars Because of Woke Thinking

Recently, our Grifter-in-Chief (GC) told one of the most dangerous and misleading lies that he has told in a political career based mainly on lies. He said, 

We won World War II. We won everything before, and as I said, we won everything in between, … And [after WW II] we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn’t fight to win.” He added, “We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or ‘wokey,’ and we just fight forever.

In other words, our military forces could have won if they had not been betrayed and constrained by “woke” politicians. At first glance, this appears merely uninformed, but don't be fooled. It is dangerous. It is dangerous because it leads to the idea that if we had just “fought to win,” we would have won in places like Viet Nam and Afghanistan. It tells us that if we go to war with a more positive attitude, we will be sure to win.

The Truth About Vietnam and Afghanistan

Anyone who is old enough to remember the wars in Viet Nam and Afghanistan knows that this is false. We lost in those places not because our troops failed in the field but because the goal of our intervention was a goal that could not be reached by military means. In Afghanistan, for example, our troops defeated the Taliban militarily and thereby bought time for the Afghan government to solidify its position, but the Afghan government was corrupt and unpopular and could not solidify its position. No amount of positive thinking on our part could convert a weak, corrupt and unpopular government into a strong, popular, democratic government.

The same thing happened in Viet Nam. Our troops fought heroically and bought time for the Vietnamese government to become a popular, democratic government, but - like the Afghan government – the Vietnamese government was weak, corrupt and unpopular. It could not compete with the patriotic appeal of Ho Chi Minh. In both places, we lost because weak, corrupt and unpopular governments could not become strong, popular, democratic governments that could stand on their own. They could survive only as long as we propped them up, and eventually, we came to the unavoidable conclusion that the cost of propping them up was too great. "Wokey" thinking had nothing to do with the outcomes of those wars.

A Disaster in the Making

The GC’s claim that our armed forces were betrayed by “woke” politicians is similar to the myth that was propagated by German conservatives after their country's defeat in World War I.  That myth claimed that the German army did not really lose. It was stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews.  The myth served the purposes of Germany’s conservative politicians and provided one of the bases of the popularity of the Nazi Party. Our GC undoubtedly intends to use his myth for a similar purpose, and we must not let him do that. We must expose his claim for the lie that it is. The German myth ultimately produced a disaster for Germany. By the end of World War II, the country was completely in ruins, and the scholars who had made Germany the world's leader in the natural and social sciences had almost all left the country. The new myth will very likely produce a similar disaster for us if we allow it to spread. We cannot allow that to happen.

Why Is There No Effective Opposition to Trump?

 Trump is Not Popular So, Why is There no Effective Opposition to Him?

A recent article in The Economist discusses the lack of effective opposition to Pres. Trump in the United States. The article says,

If a single political idea has tied Americans together over their first quarter of a millennium, it is that one-person rule is a mistake. Most Americans also agree that the federal government is slow and incompetent. Together, these things ought to make it impossible for one man to govern by diktat from the White House. And yet that is what this president is doing: sending in the troops, slapping on tariffs, asserting control over the central bank, taking stakes in companies, scaring citizens into submission.

The effect is overwhelming, but not popular. President Donald Trump’s net approval rating is minus 14 percentage points. That is little better than Joe Biden’s after his dire debate last year, and no one fretted that he was over-mighty. This is a puzzle. Most Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump. Yet everywhere he seems to be getting his way. Why?

The article goes on to answer its question by pointing first to the fact that Trump is moving so fast that the institutions that might exercise some control cannot keep up. In addition, the article says, his control of the Republican Party is so complete that “… the party’s organizing idea is that Mr, Trump is always right, even when he contradicts himself.” Finally, the independent institutions that might constrain him suffer from a coordination problem. Their interests are not always aligned.

The Democrats Offer No Alternatives to Trump's Policies

I suggest that there is another reason for the lack of effective opposition to Trump: the Democratic Party offers no clear policy alternatives to the voters. We live in a time when working Americans are suffering economically, but the Democratic Party has not unified around a set of economic policy proposals to benefit working Americans. Gov. Newsom of California and Gov. Pritzker of Illinois show the problem clearly. They are popular among those who hate Trump, but their popularity is based entirely on their clever and very public opposition to his attempts to take over policing in their states. Standing against Trump or even against fascism is not the same as offering a program to benefit working Americans.

The Democratic Party is not without ideas. The party's left wing does have policy proposals to offer the voters, but the proposals have mostly been rejected by the party’s leaders and by so-called “centrist” Democrats on the grounds that the proposals are “too radical.” The policies are not really radical, but the people on the left wing of the party have never pointed that out. They don't explain how their proposals flow from basic American values. Instead, the left likes to talk about “revolution" in vague undefined terms and about "socialism" with no clear definition for that word, either.

Trump's Republicans Offer Concrete Proposals

Trump and the Republican Party offer proposals to deal with the concerns of the voters. The proposals are fraudulent, but they are persuasive. The Democrats offer no alternatives except to say that Mr. Trump is a fascist who is destroying our democracy.  That is true. He is trying to destroy our democracy, but that fact is not uppermost in the mind of a woman trying to support herself and her child on her earnings as a waitress. She has more immediate problems, and when Trump tells her that he will make sure that she won’t have to pay income tax on her tips, she is bound to listen. Similarly, a couple that is living paycheck to paycheck and barely able to pay its rent even with two incomes cannot spend much time worrying about the state of our democracy. When Trump tells the couple that their plight is due to the foreigners who have taken American jobs, they are bound to listen, especially when the Democrats are not speaking to them at all.

Democrats May Win in 2026, But in the Long Run, They Must Decide to Stand for Something That Benefits Working Americans

Democrats may win enough congressional seats in 2026 to end Trump's control of Congress, but in the long run, the party will not stop hemorrhaging voters’ until it unifies around a set of policy proposals that promise to benefit working Americans. Being against Trump is not enough. The Democratic Party must be for something, too.

Stress the Basic American Values That Underly Progressive Policy Proposals

Link Policies to Values Explicitly 

In last week’s post on this blog, I said that progressives must retrieve the ability to talk about justice with the vocabulary of class, and I provided examples of the use of a class-based vocabulary from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s campaign web site. However, using the vocabulary of class to describe and promote policy proposals by itself will not be enough. Democrats must also link their proposals explicitly to basic, American values. They must show how their proposals flow from those values.

Basic American Values

Values From Our Founding Documents

Basic American values may be found in the founding documents of our republic, and commitment to those values is part of what it means to be American. Our Declaration of Independence says,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men….

Our Constitution tells us that our government was established in order to:

…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ….

These words say that our government has a positive duty to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare. Democrats can link their policy proposals to this positive duty.

Widely Held Values

Widely held American values may also be found outside of our founding documents. Ideas like equality of opportunity or playing on a level playing field may be used. Finally, we can reclaim patriotism by linking it to each individual’s responsibility to promote the strength, cohesion or competitiveness of our country.

An Example: Linking Basic American Values to the Policy of Free Post-Secondary Education

We can use the policy of free post-secondary education to illustrate each of these approaches.  

The Constitutional Approach

Here is the constitutional approach. Our government should use tax money to provide free post-secondary education because our government has a duty to establish justice and promote the general welfare. A just society cannot be based on the idea that the children of the wealthy who have done nothing to earn their parents’ wealth should have an unearned advantage. They should not be able to start their adult lives without heavy debts while the children of ordinary, working Americans have their financial lives crippled by debts. A government with a responsibility to establish justice and promote the general welfare should not allow such injustice to continue.

An Argument Based on Equality of Opportunity

Democrats can also link the policy of free post-secondary education to the idea of equality of opportunity. We Americans believe that fair competition is fundamental to our system, but a system that saddles some people with heavy debts that others do not have to bear is fundamentally unfair. It is like forcing some runners in a race to run with weights strapped to their ankles. Such a system gives an unfair advantage to the runners who do not have the weights on their ankles. A government with a responsibility to establish justice and promote the general welfare should not allow such injustice to continue.

An Argument Based on Patriotism

Finally, Democrats can relate the policy of free post-secondary education to our patriotic duty to do what we can to strengthen and develop our country. In the brutal international competition for economic primacy, we need all of the trained and educated workers that we can produce. We should not waste a large share of our potential by making it difficult for young people to obtain the training that they need and that our economy needs them to receive. A government that has a responsibility to provide for the common defense should do what is necessary to make sure that we have a sufficient supply of trained people.

This does not include only people trained in the STEM fields. The people who manage the technical folks need a much broader view of the world than that provided by training in computer programming or engineering, and our government needs people with a broad view as well. So, education in the humanities is also important.

Say It Over and Over Again

Whichever approach to linking to values is used, it should be made explicit, and it should be repeated every time the issue is discussed. Democrats should never allow the link between the policy and the values that justify it to be assumed. Instead, they should point to the connection over and over again. They should never allow the issue to be discussed without an explicit reference to the underlying values. That is how Democrats can build a consensus in favor of the policy of free post-secondary education, and the same approach may be used with any other policy position. The repetition of the link to values will gradually establish itself in the minds of voters and will help to build a consensus in favor of the policy.

Using the Vocabulary of Class Solidarity: the Example of AOC

AOC Uses the Vocabulary of Class

 In last week’s post, I said that if Democrats want to defeat the MAGA movement, they will have to recover the ability to talk about class oppression, and in an earlier post, I said that the anti-Trump movement will have to make hard choices about what it stands for. Fortunately, there are leaders in the Democratic Party who understand what needs to be done, and the best known of these is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC). Her campaign website is full of ideas about how the party can move forward.  (In the interests of transparency, I should say that I do not work for AOC or her campaign, and I am not recommending that you do so or that you vote for her. I am using her campaign website as an example because her positions are particularly clear and detailed.)

Her List of Issues Prioritizes Class-Based Concerns

Her list of campaign issues includes (in this order):

1. Medicare for All
2. Housing as a Human Right
3. A Peace Economy
4. Justice for Workers and Small Businesses
5. Real Public Safety
6. Honor in Immigration
7. Just Recovery for Puerto Rico
8. Green New Deal
9. Elevate Public Education
10. Women's Rights
11. Support LGBTQIA* Rights
12. Aging With Dignity

2.    Of these 12 issues, only 4 (numbers 6, 7, 10, 11) refer to benefits for specific social groups like races or genders. Number 12 refers to seniors, but seniors are different because everyone who lives long enough becomes a senior. No one is born a senior.

Moreover, the order of the items in the list shows that she prioritizes issues that affect all working Americans. The first five issues in her list are important to all working Americans. Not one of them mentions a races, genders or even generations.

Her Way of Talking Emphasizes Class Solidarity but Not Socialism

Her descriptions of her positions on these issues show how she thinks that Democrats ought to talk about them. She does not talk about socialism or class conflict on her campaign website although she has described herself as a democratic socialist. She simply says that her policies would be good for all working Americans. 

•          On Medicare for All, she says, “Medicare for All uncouples healthcare from your job.  It allows everyone to receive quality care that is affordable at the hospital, pharmacy or doctor’s office. It will cover primary, mental, dental, vision, women’s health, and emergency room care in addition to prescription drugs.” She is also cost conscious. “A national healthcare system has stronger buying power and can negotiate lower prices for drugs and medical equipment as well as curb the astronomically high administrative salaries."

• On Elevate Public Education, she says, “Our schools should never be on the chopping block, even when budgets are tight. Now is the time to strengthen our education system and make it more affordable to all, so that students are prepared for jobs in a post-COVID economy.” Her website adds, “Rising tuition costs have made college and trade school inaccessible for millions and saddled millions of others with student loan debt.  That is why Alexandria is working to liberate people suffering from student-debt and make our public college system affordable once again.”

• On Justice for Workers and Small Businesses, she says, "Far too often the United States government chooses to side with corporate wealth at the expense of working people and small business. This must end." 

This is a vocabulary of class solidarity among working Americans, but it is not a vocabulary of socialist revolution. It focuses on specific issues and demands incremental changes rather than revolution.  It focuses on policies that restore equity for all working Americans and not on issues that divide working Americans along the lines of race or gender. That is the way that Democrats should talk. That is the way forward.