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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: May 2015

Will Aging GOP Just Fade Away?

Daniel J. McGraw’s Politico post “The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally.” paints an optimistic scenario for Democrats, at least those who are patient advocates of taking the long view. McGraw crunches some numbers on a napkin, and reasons:

By combining presidential election exit polls with mortality rates per age group from the U.S. Census Bureau, I calculated that, of the 61 million who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, about 2.75 million will be dead by the 2016 election. President Barack Obama’s voters, of course, will have died too–about 2.3 million of the 66 million who voted for the president won’t make it to 2016 either. That leaves a big gap in between, a difference of roughly 453,000 in favor of the Democrats.
Here is the methodology, using one age group as an example: According to exit polls, 5,488,091 voters aged 60 to 64 years old supported Romney in 2012. The mortality rate for that age group is 1,047.3 deaths per 100,000, which means that 57,475 of those voters died by the end of 2013. Multiply that number by four, and you get 229,900 Romney voters aged 60-to-64 who will be deceased by Election Day 2016. Doing the same calculation across the range of demographic slices pulled from exit polls and census numbers allows one to calculate the total voter deaths. It’s a rough calculation, to be sure, and there are perhaps ways to move the numbers a few thousand this way or that, but by and large, this methodology at least establishes the rough scale of the problem for the Republicans–a problem measured in the mid-hundreds of thousands of lost voters by November 2016. To the best of my knowledge, no one has calculated or published better voter death data before.
…But what if Republicans aren’t able to win over a larger share of the youth vote? In 2012, there were about 13 million in the 15-to-17 year-old demo who will be eligible to vote in 2016. The previous few presidential election cycles indicate that about 45 percent of these youngsters will actually vote, meaning that there will about 6 million new voters total. Exit polling indicates that age bracket has split about 65-35 in favor of the Dems in the past two elections. If that split holds true in 2016, Democrats will have picked up a two million vote advantage among first-time voters. These numbers combined with the voter death data puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage going into 2016.

It’s an appealing political scenario, not that we would celebrate the demise of our adversaries — we would prefer to beat them. So don’t break out the bubbly just yet, since much depends on pro-Democratic young voters staying that way as they age There are studies that indicate most will, but there are always political wild cards that can foil the most rational analyses. Then there is the offsetting higher mortality rate for African American voters. In any case, it would be folly for Democrats to plan electoral strategy based on long-range mortality statistics.
What does make sense is for Democrats to take out an insurance policy in the form of a serious pitch to win over some senior voters. Given the retirement crisis millions of seniors are facing in the immediate future, it ought to be possible for Democrats to get a more significant share of this high-turnout demographic, especially considering the GOP’s proclivity to screw around with Social Security and 401K assets. If Democrats can peel off just 5 percent of senior voters, it could make a huge difference.


Political Strategy Notes

Al Hunt probes the political ramifications of the increasing percentage of “nonreligious” Americans, who are now about 23 percent of the electorate.
In yet another post-mortem/where-do-we-go-from-here take on the UK elections, Will Straw, a losing Labour candidate for Parliament in Rossendale and Darwen, suggests “Four ways for Labour to win back working-class voters.” Writing in The Guardian, Straw observes: “If we want a majority again, we will need to think hard about how to win back the working-class voters, many of whom are highly aspirational, that we have lost in post-industrial areas…It was complacent to assume that the Ukip [right-wing Independence Party] surge would be to Labour’s benefit…Labour’s national message that Ukip were “more Tory than the Tories” failed to resonate with many working-class voters who had decided a decade ago that Labour was no different to the Tories.”
At Politico TDS founding editor Stan Greenberg writes on the UK elections: “The Conservative Party upended the pollsters with the success of their late-breaking nationalist campaign, and they are still celebrating. Had the Labour Party addressed earlier voter doubts on public finances and immigration and made a broader economic offer, it would have been less vulnerable to these tactics, but that came late.”
National Journal’s Sarah Mimms explores “How much of a factor will Hillary Clinton’s gender be in the 2016 presidential race?
Paul Krugman hails the opening of a much-needed and long-postponed debate about the Iraq disaster, made inevitable by Bush 3.0.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes in his latest Washington Post column that “other hawks would rather see the was-the-Iraq-War-right question magically disappear because they know it’s a no-win for them. Most Americans now think the war was ill-advised. Why remind them that most of the same people who are super hawks now brought them an adventure they deeply regret? Thus did the Wall Street Journal editorial page on Friday come out firmly and unequivocally in favor of — evasion. “The right answer to the question is that it’s not a useful or instructive one to answer, because statesmanship, like life, is not conducted in hindsight.” On the GOP side it may be that Jeb’s blundering is very bad news for Lindsey Graham and other Iraq war supporterts and equivocators, but good news for Rand Paul.
And from Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast column, “How Dubya is Winning 2016 for Hillary“: “…In a general-election context, the GOP nominee will probably have to tack back pretty quickly toward the anti-war position. This will give Hillary Clinton a great opportunity. For one thing, it’ll weaken the salience of the whole “she can’t defend the country cuz she’s a girl” line of attack, which will come, however subtly. It will allow Clinton to define the terms of what constitutes a sensible foreign policy, and the Republican man will likely have to agree with her…Poor Republicans! Crime is down; they can’t scream law and order. And now war is unpopular, so they can’t say the Democrats are soft on whomever. Their economic theories are increasingly discredited. I guess that leaves the old standby: race-baiting. But we may have reached a point where that doesn’t work anymore either…”
At MSNBC.com Suzanne Gamboa has a warning for Democrats: “If the turnout rate of the projected 40 million Latinos matches those of whites and blacks in 2008, 66 percent and 65 percent respectively, the number of Latinos who voted in 2012 – 24 percent – could double, Pew calculated…There are some very promising organizations doing incredible work in the community and are trusted: Mi Familia Vota, Voto Latino, NCLR (National Council of La Raza). But those are the same groups that have to fight over scraps because major investors don’t appreciate (the value) of investing in the community,” said Cristobal Alex, who leads the Latino Victory Project.”
The Nation’s Leslie Savan addresses a concern I’ve been wondering about: What are the political consequences of ALEC-supporting Verizon acquiring HuffPo?


May 15: Republicans Struggle With Crowded Debate Stage

Republicans have gotten a little lucky this month as two potential presidential candidates (Rick Snyder and John Bolton) decided against running. But that still leaves a large number of candidates and proto-candidates, and some real problems when it comes to deciding how many of them can be herded onto a debate stage without encouraging clown-car metaphors. I wrote about this Wednesday at the Washington Monthly:

To make a long story short, traditional “screens” where the top ten candidates in national primary polls make the stage would not only lop off six or more candidates, but might very well include some (Donald Trump!) party poohbahs would love to discard while bumping others (most importantly Carly Fiorina, the only woman in the field and the sanctioned Safe Hillary Basher) they desperately want to keep around. On top of all that, there’s the fear someone excluded (e.g., Bobby Jindal) could make it a viable campaign issue, and the certainty that excluding a congressional power (e.g., Lindsey Graham) would come with its own set of consequences for party elites. So GOPers are toying with some unorthodox screens [as reported by the Washington Post‘s Matea Gold]:

Among the novel ideas that have been floated to determine a candidate’s strength is the amount of money raised by his or her campaign committee, according to people with knowledge of the talks. But many candidates will not file an initial fundraising report until mid-October. So what about money raised to support them through independent super PACs, which this year are largely functioning as extensions of the official campaigns? (That concept has gotten little traction.)

Probably not, since when you are being attacked as the Party of Plutocrats which has corrupted American politics to the core via championship of unlimited and sometimes secret campaign contributions, you probably don’t want to give big donors more say over the nominating process than they already have.
If I were them I’d just bite the bullet and say that in this day and age, with dozens of men in the running, no presidential primary debate is complete without a woman on the stage. But horrors!–that might look like Affirmative Action.

I don’t think it’s too cynical to assume that all the lavish praise Fiorina has been getting from Republicans in the early stages of the Invisible Primary is intended to make her credible enough to include in debates. But that may take 2% of the vote in some polls, and she’s probably not close to that just yet.


Republicans Struggle With Crowded Debate Stage

Republicans have gotten a little lucky this month as two potential presidential candidates (Rick Snyder and John Bolton) decided against running. But that still leaves a large number of candidates and proto-candidates, and some real problems when it comes to deciding how many of them can be herded onto a debate stage without encouraging clown-car metaphors. I wrote about this Wednesday at the Washington Monthly:

To make a long story short, traditional “screens” where the top ten candidates in national primary polls make the stage would not only lop off six or more candidates, but might very well include some (Donald Trump!) party poohbahs would love to discard while bumping others (most importantly Carly Fiorina, the only woman in the field and the sanctioned Safe Hillary Basher) they desperately want to keep around. On top of all that, there’s the fear someone excluded (e.g., Bobby Jindal) could make it a viable campaign issue, and the certainty that excluding a congressional power (e.g., Lindsey Graham) would come with its own set of consequences for party elites. So GOPers are toying with some unorthodox screens [as reported by the Washington Post‘s Matea Gold]:

Among the novel ideas that have been floated to determine a candidate’s strength is the amount of money raised by his or her campaign committee, according to people with knowledge of the talks. But many candidates will not file an initial fundraising report until mid-October. So what about money raised to support them through independent super PACs, which this year are largely functioning as extensions of the official campaigns? (That concept has gotten little traction.)

Probably not, since when you are being attacked as the Party of Plutocrats which has corrupted American politics to the core via championship of unlimited and sometimes secret campaign contributions, you probably don’t want to give big donors more say over the nominating process than they already have.
If I were them I’d just bite the bullet and say that in this day and age, with dozens of men in the running, no presidential primary debate is complete without a woman on the stage. But horrors!–that might look like Affirmative Action.

I don’t think it’s too cynical to assume that all the lavish praise Fiorina has been getting from Republicans in the early stages of the Invisible Primary is intended to make her credible enough to include in debates. But that may take 2% of the vote in some polls, and she’s probably not close to that just yet.


Ho-Hum ‘Dems in Disarray’ Meme Dragged Out…Again

There’s just no end to the “Dems in Disarray” meme, no matter how large or chaotic the GOP presidential aspirant field, nor how unified the Democrats may be at any given political moment. The latest installment comes from TheNew York Times Magazine, where Robert Draper’s “The Great Democratic Crack-up of 2016,” regurgitates a few shopworn arguments, while ignoring considerable evidence to the contrary.
TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore put Draper’s screed in adult perspective earlier this week. For another well-crafted critique, read Heather Digby Parton’s Salon.com post, “What the New York Times gets shockingly wrong about the future of the Democratic Party.” Among Parton’s observations:

The piece uses the Senate seat being vacated by the liberal Barbara Mikulski of Maryland as the example of the Party’s awful turmoil, what with liberal congressman Chris Van Hollen running against liberal congresswoman Donna Edwards for the privilege of becoming the liberal senator from a liberal state.
Why this is considered a microcosm for the foul state of the Democratic Party nationwide is explained by making Van Hollen into a “practical” sort-of centrist, fighting for the integrity of his party against a left-wing firebrand, Edwards. Unfortunately, all of that is claptrap.
Both Van Hollen and Edwards come from the liberal wing of the party, the main difference between them being that Van Hollen has been very active in the leadership and therefore had to carry water for the administration from time to time, while Edwards has been a progressive movement candidate from the very beginning of her career and has earned the loyalty of members of that movement. It is hardly surprising that progressive groups would back her over Van Hollen — she has been a model congresswoman.
…And yes, many of these progressives would like to see an African-American woman replace the elder stateswoman Barbara Mikulski. Seeing as there are still only 20 out of 100 senators who are female, and only two African-Americans, given the choice between two qualified liberal candidates is anyone surprised that progressives would choose the woman who has been responsive to them her entire career?

Parton adds, “to cast this race as one that represents a huge schism in the party between the business wing and the populist wing is a ridiculous stretch…But the day after the election, everyone will coalesce around the winner, guaranteed.”
Draper amplifies the “disarray” meme in his analysis of the 2014 midterms, and Parton responds:

..And mixing up the races of 2010, 2012 and 2014 like that is a very big mistake. Why? Because in presidential years the Democrats do a lot better and in midterms the Republicans do a lot better. Who survives in those circumstances has a lot less to do with ideology and a lot more to do with the makeup of the electorate.
Ed Kilgore, who literally wrote the book about why Republicans swept the 2014 midterms (“without once considering the argument that Democrats lost because they were in the grip of mad lefty hippies, or because they had sold their souls to Wall Street,” as he himself describes it), actually consulted the experts and looked at the numbers and discovered that such things as “turnout patterns, the economy, the electoral landscape, and the long history of second-term midterm disasters for the party controlling the White House” were more salient than this stale narrative about Democrats searching aimlessly for their misbegotten souls.

Parton acknowledges, “Yes, there are tensions within the party. It’s a very big party. But there have always been tensions within both of the parties…The political establishment calls this “disarray” and characterizes it as some kind of tearing at the fabric of our civic life. In reality, it’s just democracy.”
You want ‘disarray’? Check out the flip-floppage in the day to day pronouncements of Jeb Bush or Rand Paul.


Dubya Debacles Fading from Memory…Jeb Hopes

NYT columnist Paul Krugman has a couple of instructive pieces about the importance of history and memory in politics, and Democrats who want to win in 2016 ought to read both of them.
In his ‘Conscience of a Liberal’ blog Krugman opens with a chart indicating that favorable ratings of George W. Bush have increased in Gallup Polls by 14 percent (from 35-49) for all Americans between March 2009 and June 2013. For Democrats Dubya’s approvals have increased by 14 points (from 10-24) during that time frame, with a 12 percent improvement for Republicans (from 72-84) and a 17 percent (from 29-46) uptick for self-described “Independents.”
Considering, as Krugman succinctly puts it, that “George W. Bush presided over utter disaster on all fronts,” leaving the U.S. and world economies in a horrific shambles, it is amazing that half of all respondents have a favorable impression of him.
The charitable take on all this historical denial is that Americans are a forgiving people, to a fault. An alternative perspective is that we are the most easily-distracted people on the planet. Or worse, a nation with an astoundingly gullible electorate.
To be fair Americans’ passion for historical denial started well before Bush II. And Democrats have to bear some of the blame. As Krugman explains,

…Progressives are much too willing to cede history to the other side. Legends about the past matter. Really bad economics flourishes in part because Republicans constantly extol the Reagan record, while Democrats rarely mention how shabby that record was compared with the growth in jobs and incomes under Clinton.

Krugman warns, “nonetheless, Jeb is adopting the same policies and even turning to the same advisers.” And it’s not just Jeb Bush. “It’s actually quite horrifying, if you think about it, to hear Republican contenders for president unveil their big ideas, which are to slash taxes on rich people, deregulate banks, and bomb or invade countries we don’t like. What could go wrong?”
Republican historical revisionism is essential to their hopes for 2016. As Krugman notes in his blog’s conclusion, “There’s a reason conservatives constantly publish books and articles glorifying Harding and Coolidge while sliming FDR; there’s a reason they’re still running against Jimmy Carter; and there’s a reason they’re doing their best to rehabilitate W. And progressives need to fight back.”
Krugman’s May 15 column, “Fraternity of Failure” coins a near perfect sobriquet for the GOP in light of their Dubya embrace/ambivalence/denial. First a proper pummeling for Jeb:

The big “Let’s move on” story of the past few days involved Mr. Bush’s response when asked in an interview whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He answered that yes, he would. No W.M.D.? No stability after all the lives and money expended? No problem.
Then he tried to walk it back. He “interpreted the question wrong,” and isn’t interested in engaging “hypotheticals.” Anyway, “going back in time” is a “disservice” to those who served in the war.
Take a moment to savor the cowardice and vileness of that last remark. And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Mr. Bush is trying to hide behind the troops, pretending that any criticism of political leaders — especially, of course, his brother, the commander in chief — is an attack on the courage and patriotism of those who paid the price for their superiors’ mistakes. That’s sinking very low, and it tells us a lot more about the candidate’s character than any number of up-close-and-personal interviews.

Krugman then blasts Bush III for “the old passive-voice dodge, admitting only that “mistakes were made.” He notes that Jeb is getting the band back together, “a who’s-who of mistake-makers, people who played essential roles in the Iraq disaster and other debacles,” including Wolfowitz and Chertoff. “In Bushworld,” adds Krugman, “playing a central role in catastrophic policy failure doesn’t disqualify you from future influence. If anything, a record of being disastrously wrong on national security issues seems to be a required credential.”
Republicans, not just the Bushies, notes Krugman, suffer from a tribal incapacity for honest self-evaluation, characterized by a refusal to acknowledge or learn from mistakes. He recounts an extensive litany of failed GOP predictions about the consequences of policies
Krugman concludes with an astute observation and a chilling question: “It’s kind of a fraternity of failure: men and women united by a shared history of getting everything wrong, and refusing to admit it. Will they get the chance to add more chapters to their reign of error?”
Not if Democrats make sure that the Republican presidential nominees are forced to account for their records.


Political Strategy Notes

In his Wall St. Journal column TDS founding editor William Galston reports on “The Democratic Party’s Economic Divide: Hillary Clinton will have to navigate the center-left split on growth and the role of government.” Galston summarizes the views of Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, who seeks consensus between the party’s centrists and left flank: “Although the private sector must take the lead in promoting economic growth, there is a role for government–creating a nurturing environment for investment and entrepreneurship, improving education, promoting trade, helping families save for college, bringing down health-care costs, strengthening retirement security, and yes, increasing the minimum wage.”
At In These Times Jacob Swenson-Lengyel explains “Why Radicals Like Bernie Sanders Should Run As Democrats, Not Independents.” The author provides several perceptive observations, including “The two major political parties, we are told, have been and will be the parties of capital. For this reason, we are counseled to avoid defilement at the hands of the Democrats and to take on other uncorrupted pursuits. But it is vain to fetishize purity at the cost of power. Better to step onto the field of struggle and risk defilement than relegate oneself to the sidelines.”
The Amtrak tragedy provides yet another indication that America’s decaying transportation infrastructure is becoming a major public safety issue. But the tragedy also should encourage public support for infrastructure upgrades that can create needed jobs across America, As The Nation’s John Nichols puts it, “Safety concerns can and should motivate investment. But so, too, should concerns for job creation and economic development.
Good to see that HuffPo has joined the Transparency Initiative of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) which requires participants to disclose the methodological details associated with reports on their opinion surveys. Among commercial media, only HuffPo and WaPo have made the commitment thus far.
HuffPollsters Ariel Edwards-Levy, Mark Blumenthal and Janie Valencia have a thorough post-mortem on the UK election polling failures.
A Princeton Survey Research Associates poll for Vanderbilt University shows overwhelming support (64 percent of TN RVs surveyed) for “Insure Tennessee,” a plan “which uses federal money made available through the Affordable Care Act to help pay for insurance for low-income Tennesseans,” reports Dave Boucher of The Tennessean.
In the latest Reuters Poll, “President Barack Obama’s signature policy, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, was opposed by 53 percent of almost 21,000 Americans surveyed, and favored by 47 percent…But 60 percent of the roughly 1,800 survey respondents who have coverage through Obamacare favored the law. Within that group, almost two-thirds were satisfied with the healthcare they were getting, including 73 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans,” write Steve Holland and Susan Cornwell.
David A. Graham comments at The Atlantic on the impact of African American mortality on U.S. elections, specifically a new study which indicates that, if African Americans had the same mortality rates as whites, the electorate would include about one million more African American voters. At Vox, Andrew Prokop notes that, without the mortality discrepancy, Al Gore would have likely won Florida’s electoral votes in 2000 — and the presidency.
Ohio Republicans try to bring back the poll tax — in drag.


May 13: The Latest, Greatest “Democrats In Disarray” Piece

Here at TDS, we do not deny there are plenty of debatable differences of opinion among Democrats but do like to explode the phony “struggles for the soul of the party” that grow like mushrooms in poor light. And there was a big one published today by the New York Times Magazine. I took it on at some length at Washington Monthly:

The New York Times Magazine‘s’ Robert Draper, who last drew major attention for speculating that Rand Paul’s presidential campaign might create a “libertarian moment,” swings for the fences again in a “Democrats in Disarray” piece for the ages. I don’t know if his essay completely justifies the headline: “The Great Democratic Crack-Up of 2016”. But he sure does show that if you look at the 2014 elections strictly from the perspective of Democrats who want to make apocalyptic claims about the plight of the party and then refuse to acknowledge any alternative explanation, then yeah, it looks pretty bad.
Maybe I’m prejudiced because I wrote a whole book–not a long book, but still a book–about 2014 without once considering the argument that Democrats lost because they were in the grip of mad lefty hippies, or because they had sold their souls to Wall Street.
Yes, I was aware there was a sizable and vocal group of people who subscribed to each proposition, but let myself be seduced by political scientists and other dispassionate people that things like turnout patterns, the economy, the electoral landscape, and the long history of second-term midterm disasters for the party controlling the White House, probably mattered more than the struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party some have been waging for decades.

Robert Draper sure didn’t go that way. He treats 2014 as an inscrutable disaster probably attributable to Democratic divisions and/or to the people on the wrong (i.e., left) side of the Democratic barricades being too much in charge. And then he plunges on into the current cycle, where he treats the Democratic Senate primary in Maryland as a microcosm of the party’s irrepressible conflicts and the suicidal impulses of progressives. Throughout the essay, the intra-Democratic debate is described as though the Progressive Change Campaign and Third Way speak for everybody.
Like any healthy political party, Democrats have a lot to debate on policy, political tactics and strategy, and occasionally, basic goals and values. Part of what bugs me most about the Draper piece is that it indirectly suggests that debate invites political disaster. It can, if divisions are taken too far. But 2016 is about as likely to become the occasion of a “Great Democratic Crack-Up” as it is of a “libertarian moment:” not much at all.


The Latest, Greatest “Democrats In Disarray” Piece

Here at TDS, we do not deny there are plenty of debatable differences of opinion among Democrats but do like to explode the phony “struggles for the soul of the party” that grow like mushrooms in poor light. And there was a big one published today by the New York Times Magazine. I took it on at some length at Washington Monthly:

The New York Times Magazine‘s’ Robert Draper, who last drew major attention for speculating that Rand Paul’s presidential campaign might create a “libertarian moment,” swings for the fences again in a “Democrats in Disarray” piece for the ages. I don’t know if his essay completely justifies the headline: “The Great Democratic Crack-Up of 2016”. But he sure does show that if you look at the 2014 elections strictly from the perspective of Democrats who want to make apocalyptic claims about the plight of the party and then refuse to acknowledge any alternative explanation, then yeah, it looks pretty bad.
Maybe I’m prejudiced because I wrote a whole book–not a long book, but still a book–about 2014 without once considering the argument that Democrats lost because they were in the grip of mad lefty hippies, or because they had sold their souls to Wall Street.
Yes, I was aware there was a sizable and vocal group of people who subscribed to each proposition, but let myself be seduced by political scientists and other dispassionate people that things like turnout patterns, the economy, the electoral landscape, and the long history of second-term midterm disasters for the party controlling the White House, probably mattered more than the struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party some have been waging for decades.

Robert Draper sure didn’t go that way. He treats 2014 as an inscrutable disaster probably attributable to Democratic divisions and/or to the people on the wrong (i.e., left) side of the Democratic barricades being too much in charge. And then he plunges on into the current cycle, where he treats the Democratic Senate primary in Maryland as a microcosm of the party’s irrepressible conflicts and the suicidal impulses of progressives. Throughout the essay, the intra-Democratic debate is described as though the Progressive Change Campaign and Third Way speak for everybody.
Like any healthy political party, Democrats have a lot to debate on policy, political tactics and strategy, and occasionally, basic goals and values. Part of what bugs me most about the Draper piece is that it indirectly suggests that debate invites political disaster. It can, if divisions are taken too far. But 2016 is about as likely to become the occasion of a “Great Democratic Crack-Up” as it is of a “libertarian moment:” not much at all.


How Dems Can Win Votes of Working-Class Women

Sheerine Alemzadeh has a HuffPo article, “A Message to Clinton: Time to Lean In for Working Class Women,” which should be of interest to all Democratic campaigns, as well as to Hillary Clinton. Alemzadeh’s post illuminates inroads to winning this large constituency and “positions gender equality in a larger framework of intersecting class, race and social inequalities.”
Citing “millions of American women who desperately need a higher minimum wage, who work in exploitative and dangerous workplaces and who will never enjoy the basic economic security required to contemplate the possibility of having more than just enough to survive,” Alemzadeh adds,

…It’s time to elevate the voices of working class women who have bravely taken their employers, industries and elected representatives to task for maintaining a status quo that is not just unfair, but responsible for a labor standards floor so low that Americans’ collective understanding of decent employment has become woefully stunted.
This election cycle, candidates have an unprecedented opportunity address women’s economic justice as a live campaign issue. Living wages, equal pay for equal work, paid time off, subsidized childcare and employment accommodations for pregnant and nursing women are no longer politically untenable talking points. Candidates need to be ready for them. Not only have these questions made it into the public discourse, but they have actually made it to the offices of legislators, and in rare cases, onto the floor of Congress. Many states have passed bills to address federal stagnation around women’s economic justice issues. The cries for equality have become too loud to ignore…The meat of these issues, the very essence of them, is buried miles deeper in the underground economy. In ignoring how class and race inequalities intersect with sex inequality, Clinton would miss an opportunity to sell the truly far reaching benefits of gender parity reforms.
Without acknowledging the invisible labor of domestic workers which permits women to work outside the home, the full range of economic benefits of subsidized childcare, elder care and paid family medical leave remain unspoken. Subsidizing domestic work not only would benefit women who pay for it but also women who provide it — lifting them out of poverty level wages and into the formal economy. Paid family leave would also allow workers to take time off work when their family members are sick, creating more reliable schedules for all working families, including those whose breadwinners are paid caregivers.

Alemzadeh cites the heroic leadership of working-class women in often lonely battles against forms of workplace injustice, including

Working class women have been leaning in for all of us. Domestic workers across the country are lobbying for inclusion under basic labor laws. Restaurant workers are fighting against sexual harassment that is rampant in the industry. Fast food workers are making the case for a living wage. A lone delivery truck driver took the case for pregnancy accommodations all the way to the Supreme Court. Women’s economic equality rests on these women’s shoulders — without safe and dignified working conditions at the lowest rungs of the economy, efforts to truly eradicate gender inequality in the American workplace are destined for failure. And yet, the political work of these working women has not received the attention it deserves. As they stand in the way of an endless race to the bottom by unscrupulous economic actors, our presidential nominee needs to stand with them.

As Democrats seek to secure their identity as champions of economic reforms to help middle-class families, they should also provide a strong voice for the specific concerns of working-class women noted by Alemzadeh. An improved standing with this large constituency should benefit Democratic candidates down-ballot, as well as our candidate for the presidency.