Where Do We Go From Here?

In previous posts in this series, I have said that the Democratic Party has lost its focus on policies to redistribute income from the small, upper class to the rest of us. We must regain that focus if we want to preserve our democracy and rebuild our majority, but what that would mean in practice? 

We Must Remember What a Party of the Left is Supposed to Do

We must begin by remembering that at its core, a party of the left exists to redistribute income from a small, wealthy minority to the rest of us. Economic forces within capitalism drive wealth to be concentrated more and more in the hands of a wealthy few, and our role is to counter those economic forces with political ones. Our purpose is to fight to ensure that our society becomes a society of economic justice. We do not need to abandon the causes that we are passionate about now, but we do need to divert  some of that passion to advocating strongly for redistributive policies that will make life better for people of all races and genders. Such policies will attract many white working-class voters while at the same time allowing us to be anti-racist and feminist in an effective way.

Redistributive Policies that Benefit Everyone Are Effectively Anti-Racist and Feminist

 In How to be an Anti-Racist, Ibram Kendi defines an antiracist policy as “any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.” Policies designed to redistribute income to the working class will reduce the income gap between black and white people because black people are overrepresented in the working class. Such policies will also reduce the income gap between men and women for the same reason. Thus, redistributive policies will be both feminist and anti-racist.

Moreover, redistributive policies will combat the widespread notion that in order for women or racial minorities to gain, white men must give something up. Redistributive policies will redistribute income from the very rich to the rest of us – not from white men to women or racial minorities. Thus, redistributive policy proposals can provide a basis for building an interracial coalition powerful enough to pass them through Congress or through state legislatures.

Do We Have to Talk About Racism First?

It has been persuasively argued that we cannot deal with economic inequality without first talking about race, but I think that is backwards. We must start with policies that can bring people together across racial lines to fight for social justice.  We cannot as a political party eliminate the racism or the sexism in people’s hearts, but we can reduce the economic effects of racism and sexism. We cannot create a perfect society, but we can build a society in which racism and sexism produce less suffering, and that is a worthwhile political goal.

Can We Get Over Our Contempt for Working-Class White Men?

We will have to get over our unfortunate tendency to view working-class white men as a uniform mass of racists. We should see them as a large class with a wide range of opinions. Some are persuadable, and some are not. We will never get all of them to vote as Democrats, but we do not need to do that. We only need to increase our share of the white working-class vote, but we won’t be able to do that if we treat white working-class men with contempt.

What Policies Should We Support?

We do not need to invent new redistributive ideas. Democratic leaders like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a number of useful proposals, and we should follow their lead. We can begin by learning about their ideas, and here are some places to start:

Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on American Families | Elizabeth Warren

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress (ocasiocortez.com)

In addition, here are a couple of useful posts in this blog:

Fox Cities Progressive: Reducing Racial Inequity in the United States By Making Everyone’s Life Better  

Fox Cities Progressive: Working Class Women: a Natural Progressive Constituency

Here is an example from my own state of Wisconsin:

Gov. Evers: Announces plan to bolster child care statewide for working families - WisPolitics

Stress Values and the Moral Basis of Action

Working for redistributive policies will not be enough. We must also make the moral case for them because people vote their values as much as their interests. Too often, we assume that the moral case for our policies is so obvious that we don't need to make it. The Republicans, on the other work hard to make the moral case for their policies, and by so doing, they have built their party’s strength. We must do the same thing. To see how to do it, look at this piece by Elizabeth Warren or at this blog post. We have to say these kinds of things over and over and over again until they become part of what people accept as obvious truth. In letters to the editor, in our public statements, and in conversations with voters, we should focus on values and on their links to policies.

We should not spend time attacking our opponents’ values, because when we do so, we elevate them in the consciousness of our audience. We should stick to emphasizing on our own values. Advocates for abortion rights have done so consistently and effectively. They never spend time debating the question of whether abortion is murder. They hammer over and over again on the right of a woman to control her own body and to make her own decisions in this area. They say that it is wrong for such decisions to be made by old men who have no stake in the issue. That is how we should approach the values related to redistributive policies. We should talk about why we are right - not why our opponents are wrong.

Let's get busy and build a better world!