I mean...2016 was
literally Trump-style swinging for the fences versus Clintonite incrementalism...down to the level of having an actual Clinton on the ticket. I'm all for leaders telling us what it will take to accomplish goals, but I think 2016 was a clear rejection of the status quo, and if the status quo isn't acceptable, politicians need to have loftier aspirations for the country- even if those goals are harder to reach. Incrementalism is an inevitability of our system- it's what will happen- but I'm not sure it's a good platform to run on in this day and age.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the easiest way for Democrats to lose to Trump again is if they fail to counter his fake populism with some actual populism. Notice that by that I don't mean "veer hard left on everything," but they have to start by admitting that there are lots of things broken- which they didn't do well in 2016- and an incrementalist platform won't send that message as well as a bold one. With Orange Moron in office, the argument for major reform has never been more salient.
"Real change never takes place from the top on down, but always from the bottom on up."
This is the very first line in Sanders' announcement video. He's
been explicit about building from the grassroots. He's injected energy into the base, and changed the conversation significantly, both among voters and among Democratic office seekers. And yeah, there are plenty of people that like his ideas, hear him point out how many other nations have already successfully implemented them, and get impatient about why can't we just do what seems to be common sense
right now- but that's true of just about any political movement, because people are impatient by nature.
That said, one big reason you don't hear Progressives talking about how to get to 60 votes in the Senate (other than a desire by some to kill the filibuster, which I agree with) is that they don't see 60 Senate votes as the primary institutional barrier. What's the point in counting votes when almost every Senator receives campaign donations from industries fundamentally opposed to various planks of the Progressive platform? Talking about the ideas will get them into the public consciousness, win supporters, and force opponents to counter them- and individual lawmakers will sometimes succumb to pressure- but when money wins 90% or so of races, and fundraising is easier when you get money from wealthy industry groups, it disincentives the political parties (as institutions) from acting against their benefactors' interests. Luckily- and you can give Sanders a lot of credit for this- rejecting corporate PAC money became the new "hotness" among many Democratic office-seekers (however symbolic the gesture is). Just today, Warren announced that she won't be doing high-dollar-plate donor dinners. Progressives believe- honestly, and not without evidence- that getting money out of politics (as much as is possible) will move policy to the left of where it is today. This is the real battle, but inspiration has to come before implementation. Healthcare, college, inequality, saving the damn planet- these things are more interesting and tangible than campaign finance, and thus talked about a lot, but the systemic corruption is the biggest roadblock as far as Progressives are concerned.
Ironically, the people that have believed in Sanders's ideas since before he ran in 2015 have had nothing
but incrementalism to content themselves with. You can hardly fault people for getting excited when they sense a change in the winds.
(I can't avoid mentioning here that Trump talks like a child. Tee hee.)
I don't disagree that many Americans may look for that, but I think that plenty of people are looking for bold. I also don't think that bold and realistic have to be mutually exclusive.
The Democratic majority that held the House for basically the entire post-War boom was locked in largely due to socially conservative (and often racist) Southern Democrats. People from states that are today bright red helped build the major social programs of the New Deal and Great Society. And while social issues largely drove those people to the Republican Party (and will keep them there for the foreseeable future), where they were fed mouthful after mouthful of "gubmint bad," the Republican coalition is starting to fracture on economic issues. There are strong signs that the voter base just isn't buying the free market dogma the the party puts out anymore. Trump went completely against the Party's usual line on trade and entitlements- and won. Tucker Carlson's rant from the beginning of the year on how markets are failing people is still being talked about. Right-leaning policy wonks are coming up with parental leave plans (which are jokes btw) and wage subsidies, Fox News is freaking out over how many of their own viewers want to raise taxes on billionaires.
Just as there was decades ago, there is a potential constituency today for people who are cultural conservatives and economically populist. Look at the scatterplot in
this thread (I know, I know, Theo thread). I think there are plenty of people (and I've mentioned this before) that are perfectly fine with the Democrats on economic issues, but won't vote for them because (guns, abortion, immigration, religion, insert other social issues here).
So right now? You don't get those votes. But what happens to the parties in a post-Trump world? Does the GoP get more fractured on economic issues, where more populist Trumpesque candidates join with the Democrats on policy (we can have Medicare for all as long as the immigrants don't get the benefits)? Do Democrats run some more socially conservative candidates across the middle of the country and make their focus on an economic agenda? What happens as the country gets browner, and as the oldest, reddest voters die off much faster than blue voters? How does the GoP change in reaction to the demographic time bombs that they're sitting on? What policies do they change?
The country shifted to the right in the mid-70's and was cemented by the Reagan presidency. Clinton shifted the Dems in that direction to triangulate. But based on the way Millennials vote, and the challenges we face as a generation, I think that another generational shift is coming- whether its imminent or still a ways away, or whether it's back in the area of the Keynsian/New Deal consensus, or farther left, I won't dare to venture, but I am confident that it will be leftward. This doesn't help finding four votes in 2021, but if they want to get there in 2029, or 2033, then arguing for Progressive ideas is still what they should be doing, and there will be a path then.
An America that doesn't hold on dearly to it's middle class, in favor of some kind of constant appeasement of the investment class, is going to lose its wealth, and then lose its power.
The real lesson of the government shutdown this year wasn't that Trump is a pathetic caver (we knew this already). It was that many federal workers are financially fragile. Millions of Americans who make about the same, or less, are just a couple missed paychecks away from the food bank. Income inequality, rising costs of living/education/healthcare, stagnating wages, etc. are all threatening to the prosperity of the country.
Also, the "blue collar industrial throwback" is a Trump voter thing. Progressives are about making sure that the jobs we
have are all jobs that you can live comfortably off of, not trying to bring back the old "good jobs."
This one mainly. I guess maybe it isn't specified much- I always found it self-evident. Supporting unionization and collective bargaining in general will mostly affect the service industry which has traditionally been much less unionized. There are plenty of ideas, but the political class hasn't really settled on exactly what the future of labor looks like, and how it differs from current or past iterations. In the short term, getting rid of the deviously named "right-to-work" laws is wanted to help existing unions maintain themselves.
While Millennials believe in diplomacy and global community, they are more skeptical than previous generations about the US taking the lead role on the world stage. And less enthusiastic about maintaining military supremacy. They're also more critical of capitalism. What is the next generation going to have to say on those issues? It's not the Baby Boomers that are going to see the next Cold War through. It's today's young people and their children. The Liberal international order we've built is maintained to protect American prosperity...but what happens if Americans writ large think that it mostly benefits wealthy multinationals- and not them?
What happens when another generation grows up realizing, as Millennials have been, that living in the richest country in the world doesn't guarantee you access to healthcare, like other less-wealthy countries? Or that your job might not pay a living wage? Or that you don't have the benefits that workers in the rest of the developed world have? What are voters going to ask of their representatives when living in the wealthiest country in the world doesn't feel like living in the wealthiest county in the world?
Millennials are poorer than their parents, and poorer still than Gen-X at comparable ages. Socioeconomic mobility has declined. Not surprisingly, Millennials are the least enamored of American Exceptionalism. So again: what is the next generation going to think? If the upcoming confrontation with China is the most important thing facing our country- if not the world- wouldn't the best way to go about it be by making sure that this country truly believes in, and will fight to defend the idea of America?