At The Nation, Contributing Editor Doug Henwood and Lauren Melodia, deputy director of macroeconomic analysis at the Roosevelt Institute, discuss two separate approaches in “What Should the Democrats Do About Rising Inflation? Doug Henwood argues that without raising taxes, many leftist policies will come with risks, while Lauren Melodia writes that the GOP is exaggerating inflation concerns.”

In his contribution, “Raise Taxes, Later,” Henwood writes,

The Democrats’ reaction to this price scare has often been evasive, dismissing it as not real or as unimportant or “transitory.” That’s wrong on both facts and politics. It is real, it’s important for as long as it lasts, and only a soothsayer knows if it’s transient. More recently, they’ve blamed corporate greed, which has been with us forever, and high profits, which have been with us for decades. Many progressive economists argue that inflation is confined to a few product lines: goods (rather than services) and energy, led by gasoline—whose price has more than doubled over the year. A problem with this argument is that price indexes put out by the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and New York that remove extreme price changes to isolate underlying trends are rising as well. The outliers are driving the headlines, but other prices are going up too.

The standard remedy—raising interest rates and provoking a recession—would be disastrous in an economy still recovering from the Covid shock. But we can’t deny that huge deficit spending and an infusion of trillions of dollars conjured out of nothing has something to do with the problem….The stimulus spending is mostly gone; people are running down their bank accounts. That will reduce demand and probably make holdouts more willing to take a job. (Their numbers are greatly exaggerated, but they do exist.) That should ease inflationary pressures. The supply chain will eventually get its act together….But the longer-term ambitions of the early Joe Biden era—really building back better—come with economic risks. The support payments in the Covid relief bills are models for some of the redistributionist social spending that we’d like to see made permanent, but unless the spending is paid for by taxes on people who have money to spare rather than by borrowing, it will have strong inflationary potential. There’s a belief on the left that you can fund a social democratic program just by taxing the rich, but there’s simply not enough money up there to do it.

In “Not Panic,” Melodia argues,

Most of the recent increase in the inflation rate—both in the United States and abroad—is not due to an overheating economy or too much stimulus; it’s the result of supply and demand factors that are linked to the pandemic….Covid-19 has played a role in nearly every dramatic price increase in the past year. I believe that this inflation will subside once people and our public infrastructure have adapted to the changes brought about by the pandemic. We must, of course, keep working toward vaccinating as many people as possible and implementing other public health measures so that people will want to return to services. As of November, consumer spending on services remains well below pre-pandemic levels, while spending on goods is well above them. These dynamics are taking place in an economy whose GDP is still significantly lower than we’d expect without a pandemic. Therefore, as people shift their spending back to more services, spending on goods will decrease and relieve the stress on supply chains, which will stabilize prices. The United States must also be a leader of and a major contributor to the international pandemic response, so that the global economy can operate with less disruption.

….What we are experiencing is the result not of too much overall demand but of supply-side issues coupled with a shift in demand. For example, a semiconductor shortage has led to the production of fewer cars just as more Americans are looking to buy. Raising interest rates would raise the cost of borrowing and discourage investment by automobile manufacturers—investment that is necessary to expand the production of and access to semiconductor chips. Rather than compare the headline inflation rate with the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent, we need to consider the sector-specific factors. If Democrats do that, they will find that there are many solutions to rising prices….In 2019, Oregon and California were the first states to adopt policies that regulate the amount by which rent can increase each year. More than 180 municipalities already have some form of rent stabilization policy. Democratic officeholders throughout the country could implement similar measures and launch public education campaigns to help their constituents take advantage of them….Energy costs have also been one of the largest contributors to inflation over the past five months….in the short term, Democrats can demand more transparency and oversight. They can also expand the eligibility for and the coverage of programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and invest more in the campaigns that inform the public about these lesser-known programs….Being proactive about addressing the major expenses households face every month, and continuing to address the pandemic that has caused or exacerbated rises in those costs, can be a unifying policy agenda for Democrats—one that uses every level of government to demonstrate that Democrats are committed to improving the quality of life for all.

President Biden has already taken substantive action, including “the largest-ever release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve”  and he has taken some effective steps to reduce bottlenecks. Of course, Democrats can — and probably should – leverage components of both approaches noted above and heavily publicize what they are doing at the federal, state and local levels.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

In my latest for The Liberal Patriot, I consider the Democrats’ ongoing problems with Hispanic voters.

“The Democrats are steadily losing ground with Hispanic voters. The seriousness of this problem tends to be underestimated in Democratic circles for a couple of reasons: (1) they don’t realize how big the shift is; and (2) they don’t realize how thoroughly it undermines the most influential Democratic theory of the case for building their coalition.

On the latter, consider that most Democrats like to believe that, since a relatively conservative white population is in sharp decline while a presumably liberal nonwhite population keeps growing, the course of social and demographic change should deliver an ever-growing Democratic coalition. It is simply a matter of getting this burgeoning nonwhite population to the polls.

But consider further that, as the Census documents, the biggest single driver of the increased nonwhite population is the growth of the Hispanic population. They are by far the largest group within the Census-designated nonwhite population (19 percent vs. 12 percent for blacks). While their representation among voters considerably lags their representation in the overall population, it is fair to say that voting trends among this group will decisively shape voting trends among nonwhites in the future since their share of voters will continue to increase while black voter share is expected to remain roughly constant.

It therefore follows that, if Hispanic voting trends continue to move steadily against the Democrats, the pro-Democratic effect of nonwhite population growth will be blunted, if not cancelled out entirely, and that very influential Democratic theory of the case falls apart. That could—or should—provoke quite a sea change in Democratic thinking.

Turning to the nature and size of recent Hispanic shifts against the Democrats—it’s not as bad as you think, it’s worse. Here are ten points drawn from available data about the views and voting behavior of this population. Read ‘em and weep.

1. In the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, Hispanic voters were split evenly between Democrats and Republicans in the 2022 generic Congressional ballot. And in a 2024 hypothetical rematch between Trump and Biden, these voters favored Biden by only a single point. This is among a voter group that favored Biden over Trump in 2020 by 26 points according to Catalist (two party vote).”

Read all ten at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe!

Ronald Brownstein mulls over the reasons “Why Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars” at The Atlantic and provides some insightful observations about the policy and messaging options being discussed by Democratic strategists and analysts, including:

Today’s Democratic conflict is not yet as sustained or as institutionalized as the earlier battles. Although dozens of elected officials joined the DLC, the loudest internal critics of progressivism now are mostly political consultants, election analysts, and writers—a list that includes the data scientist David Shor and a coterie of prominent left-of-center journalists (such as Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and Jonathan Chait) who have popularized his work; the longtime demographic and election analyst Ruy Teixeira and like-minded writers clustered around the website The Liberal Patriot; and the pollster Stanley B. Greenberg and the political strategist James Carville, two of the key figures in Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Compared with the early ’90s, “the pragmatic wing of the party is more fractured and leaderless,” says Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank that was initially founded by the DLC but that has long outlived its parent organization (which closed its doors in 2011).

For now, these dissenters from the party’s progressive consensus are mostly shouting from the bleachers. On virtually every major cultural and economic issue, the Democrats’ baseline position today is well to the left of their consensus in the Clinton years (and the country itself has also moved left on some previously polarizing cultural issues, such as marriage equality). As president, Biden has not embraced all of the vanguard liberal positions that critics such as Shor and Teixeira consider damaging, but neither has he publicly confronted and separated himself from the most leftist elements of his party—the way Clinton most famously did during the 1992 campaign when he accused the hip-hop artist Sister Souljah of promoting “hatred” against white people. Only a handful of elected officials—most prominently, incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams—seem willing to take a more confrontational approach toward cultural liberals, as analysts such as Teixeira are urging. But if next year’s midterm elections go badly for the party, it’s possible, even likely, that more Democrats will join the push for a more Clintonite approach. And that could restart a whole range of battles over policy and political strategy that seemed to have been long settled.

Brownstein discusses President Clinton’s success in the nineties, and credits Clinton’s “folksy, populist style he had developed while repeatedly winning office in Arkansas, a state dominated by culturally conservative, mostly non-college-educated white Americans” as a reason for his success. “After a quarter century of futility,” Brownstein adds, “Clinton’s reformulation of the traditional Democratic message restored the party’s ability to compete for the White House.” Brownstein notes, further,

David Shor, a young data analyst and pollster who personally identifies as a democratic socialist, has promoted his ideas primarily through interviews with sympathetic journalists (taking criticism along the way for failing to document some of his assertions about polling results). Ruy Teixeira and his allies have advanced similar ideas in greater depth through essays primarily in their Substack project, The Liberal Patriot. Stan Greenberg, the pollster, summarized his approach in an extensive recent polling report on how to improve the party’s performance with working-class voters that he conducted along with firms that specialize in Hispanic (Equis Labs) and Black (HIT Strategies) voters….Shor, Teixeira, and Greenberg all argue that economic assistance alone won’t recapture voters who consider Democrats out of touch with their values on social and cultural issues. (Today’s critics don’t worry as much as the DLC did about the party appearing weak on national security.) “The more working class voters see their values as being at variance with the Democratic party brand,” Teixeira wrote recently in a direct echo of “Evasion,” “the less likely it is that Democrats will see due credit for even their measures that do provide benefits to working class voters.”

….(Shor also believes that Democrats must move to the center on cultural issues but he’s suggested that the answer is less to pick fights within the party than to simply downplay those issues in favor of economics, where the party’s agenda usually has more public support, an approach that has been described as “popularism.” “On the social issues, you want to take the median position,” he told me, “but really the game is that our positions are so unpopular, we have to do everything we can to keep them out of the conversation. Period.”)….“It took me a long time to accept this, because it was very ideologically against what I wanted to be true, but the reality is, the way to win elections is to go against your party and to seem moderate,” Shor said. “I like to tell people that symbolic and ideological moderation are not just helpful but actually are the only things that matter to a big degree.”

However, notes Brownstein, “Democrats today need fewer culturally conservative voters to win power. Roughly since the mid-’90s, white Americans without a college degree—the principal audience for the centrist critics—have fallen from about three-fifths of all voters to about two-fifths (give or take a percentage point or two, depending on the source). Over that same period, voters of color have nearly doubled, to about 30 percent of the total vote, and white voters with a college degree have ticked up to just above that level (again with slight variations depending on the source).”

Brownstein shares a messaging tip from Stanley Greenberg, one of the top experts on political attitudes of the white working-class: “Greenberg says in his recent study that non-college-educated Hispanics and Black Americans, as well as blue-collar white voters, all responded to a tough populist economic message aimed at the rich and big corporations, but only after Democrats explicitly rejected defunding the police. “You just didn’t get there [with those voters] unless you were for funding and respecting, but reforming, the police as part of your message,” Greenberg told me. “The same way that in his era and time … welfare reform unlocked a lot of things for Bill Clinton, it may be that addressing defunding the police unlocks things in a way that is similar.”

Of course the risk is that overstating a centrist message will discourage turnout among Black, Hispanic and young voters. Brownstein notes alternative strategies, including:

“Rather than chasing the working-class white voters attracted to Trump’s messages by shifting right on crime and immigration, groups focused on mobilizing the growing number of nonwhite voters, such as Way to Win, argue that Democrats should respond with what they call the “class-race narrative.” That approach directly accuses Republicans of using racial division to distract from policies that benefit the rich, a message these groups say can both motivate nonwhite intermittent voters and convince some blue-collar white voters.”….Meanwhile, organizations such as Way to Win are arguing that Democrats should worry less about recapturing voters drawn to Trump than mobilizing the estimated 91 million individuals who turned out to vote for the party in at least one of the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections.”

The question remains: What is the best policy and messaging mix that can help Democrats win a modestly larger share of white working-class voters, while not discouraging turnout by other core constituencies? The answer holds the key to building a stable, working majority.

The following Greenberg Research article, based on a battleground web poll by Democracy Corps, focus groups with Hispanic voters by EquisLabs and qualitative research with Black voters by HIT Strategies, is cross-posted from Democracy Corps:

• Key one — recognizing that the overwhelming majority of our diverse base is the hardworking working class. They are citizens who have never completed a four-year college degree. Fully 70 percent of Blacks in HIT Strategy’s battleground survey are working class, 75 percent in EquisLab’s surveys with Hispanics in Florida, Texas, Arizona and other battleground states. The AAPI voters are predominantly college grads in Orange County, but 67 percent of millennials and GenZ voters lack a four-year degree, as do 69 percent of unmarried women, and 57 percent of white unmarried women across the 2022 battleground. We need to wear their working class shoes.

• Key two is recognizing that all our base of Black, Hispanics, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are feeling less hopeful about the country’s direction and giving Democrats a weaker generic congressional vote than expected because of uncertainty on COVID, the economy, and whether Biden in the end will make life better for them… And that may be decided this week.

• Key three is recognizing our base is pretty clear-eyed and united about Build Back priorities: labor protections that promote a $15 wage and watch out for workers rights in the workplace; expanding Medicare or maintaining insurance subsidies that lower insurance premiums for the first time; the child tax credit; and infrastructure jobs. They want material help but also to strengthen workers and weaken big corporations who should pay their fair share of taxes.

•Key four is recognizing that campaigns to win these voters back must focus on a base that is consumed with material gains and class position, a base that prioritizes improving economic conditions of their communities within the context of racial disparity. AAPI voters put initiatives on racial equities at the bottom of their list, as do Hispanics in Democracy Corps’ research. Racial justice is an important priority for Blacks in HIT’s battleground research, but it is part of a top set of priorities that include greater labor protection, reduced health costs, infrastructure jobs, managing COVID, and the CTC.

• Key five is realizing that Democrats need to be showing, they care more about people like you and are are “better for Hispanics.” Democrats need to talk about each Hispanic community, its immigrant and class history that bring them to America to fulfill the American dream. Delivery on immigration in the Congress shows Democrats don’t take them for granted, are indeed better for Hispanics and helps them with pro-immigration voters. Democrats need to deliver in areas of Democratic strength: COVID, health care, immigration, and “caring for people like you.” And hit the Republicans who govern only for the biggest corporations.

• Key six is recognizing that AAPI voters are pretty alienated, believe country on wrong track, and Democrats are underperforming. They resent other groups getting more attention, yet very aligned with Democrats on corporations paying higher tax and respond strongly to message, “need government that works for us.”

•Key seven is recognizing that both our diverse base and persuadable working class voters have very similar priorities for government and they too, resent hardworking people no longer calling the shots in society and government. Our base and working class targets both want government to offer more protections and higher pay for low-wage workers, and maintain the child tax credit, reduced health insurance premiums and prescription drug costs and better Medicare, and big corporations paying much more in taxes.

• Key eight is recognizing this is an opportunity for Dems to pass legislation that lifts all working class boats but to advance messaging that describes how the new laws specifically addresses the needs of Black, Hispanic and Latino, AAPI and white working voters. It shows Democrats care about them, allays fear that some groups benefiting more than others and improves perception that “neither” party is delivering for them.

•Key nine is recognizing that crime is a major issue in every community and addressing it is a precondition for Democrats regaining support. Crime was among the very top concerns with AAPI and Black voters, where it ranks higher than police abuse. Trump’s message on respecting police still gets a strong hearing in all these communities. However, Democracy Corps research showed how much Democrats gained their biggest margin in an experiment where voters heard, “we must be for funding, not defunding the police” and “respect officers.” The Democrats are also unequivocal that abusive officers will be held accountable.

•Key ten is recognizing that persons with a disability are heavily represented in the white working class and rural areas, as is evident in every focus group we conducted. They respond with great enthusiasm to the current agenda and become more Democratic. Can they become base voters?

• Key eleven is recognizing that making the new expanded, monthly child tax credit a centerpiece of the Democratic agenda reveals new things about the the white working class. First, it is very popular, but also shows that white working class voters under 50 years of age may be culturally different than their parents and therefore more accessible to Democrats.

• Key twelve is recognizing the working class is really independent contractors, small business owners, and those who work in small businesses. Democrats need to have programs to help them, as well as be seen to battle for small businesses.

• Key thirteen. All of this research points to a common message frame where Democrats are on your side while Republicans fight for the rich corporations.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

My latest at The Liberal Patriot!

“It’s not exactly a secret the Republicans are running hard against the Democrats on sociocultural issues like crime, immigration, ideology in the schools and cancel culture. Their strategy is to combine attacks on these perceived vulnerabilities with an indictment of Democrats’ failure to return normalcy to the economy and thoroughly contain the pandemic. The goal is to paint a picture of the Democrats as an incompetent party distracted by secondary issues out of step with normal voters.

The Democrats’ standard response to Republican sociocultural attacks is to insist that the problem areas identified by the GOP aren’t really problems. They are fake issues cynically pumped up by right wing media to scare voters who would otherwise be responding favorably to the Democrats’ superior performance and policy ideas. The apotheosis of this was Terry McAuliffe’s robotic pronouncement of voter concern about schools in the Virginia gubernatorial contest as responding to “racist dog whistles”.

This seems unlikely to work….

Unmuddling the Democratic story starts with defusing the culture war issues that give so much credence to the Republican claim that Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of ordinary voters and prevent Democrats themselves from focusing attention where it is most needed. This may strike many Democrats as terribly unfair; why should Democrats try to do this when GOP attacks are so cynically motivated and so many in their own ranks are guilty of holding truly reactionary and extreme cultural views?

This may not be “fair” in some sense. But it is necessary because it is Republicans who benefit from the endless battle over these issues, not Democrats. Democrats are not on strong ground when they have to defend views that appear wobbly on rising violent crime, surging immigration at the border and non-meritocratic, race-essentialist approaches to education. They would be on much stronger ground if they became identified with an inclusive nationalism that emphasizes what Americans have in common and their right not just to economic prosperity but to public safety, secure borders and a world-class but non-ideological education for their children.

Republicans would continue their attacks of course but they would land with less force, allowing—and perhaps forcing—Democrats to sharpen their focus on voters’ primary concerns like the economy. That is probably the very last thing Republicans would want Democrats to do—and therefore the very thing that Democrats should be doing.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe–it’s free!

Congressional redistricting is still underway in many states, so speculation about which Democratic House seats are in danger and which GOP House seats are vulnerable has to be pretty sketchy. Sabato’s Crystal Ball is on the case as it develops. Here’s their latest chart with poll and analysis-driven estimates for the House of Reps seats in the 25 states that have finished redistricting:

Crystal Ball sees 5 toss-up House races in half of the states with 11 months to go until the midterm elections. Four of the five toss-ups are currently held by Democrats, with one planned district, CO-8. Note that House districts for megastates CA, FL  GA, MI, NY and PA are not yet charted.

Looking toward the midterm elections, Louis Jacobson provides a well-researched update, “Secretary of State Races: More Important Than Ever in 2022, and More Complicated, Too” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. As Jacobson writes,

Next year, 27 states will hold elections for secretary of state. With former President Donald Trump continuing to make election fraud the centerpiece of his effort to return to the presidency — despite the lack of any evidence — the outcome of secretary of state races in 2022 will loom larger than ever, because in most states the office oversees election administration….Trump has inserted himself directly in some of these races by endorsing primary candidates in several states.

Handicapping these races is more complicated than usual because if some of the more aggressively pro-Trump candidates end up winning the nomination, they could enable a more promising outlook for Democrats in the general election.

In Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, the general election for secretary of state is likely to be competitive regardless of who the Republican nominee is. In addition, another half-dozen races could be competitive, including Democratic-held seats in Colorado, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Jacobson shares insights on each of the 27 races, and concludes,

Several states will hold gubernatorial races in which the winner will be able to appoint the secretary of state.

Two big prizes, Florida and Texas, lean towards GOP holds, while one smaller prize, Maryland, is a good prospect for a Democratic flip. In addition, a few states have their legislature choose the secretary of state, and among those are Maine and New Hampshire, which could have a competitive fight for control in one or both chambers (Democrats control both chambers in Maine, while Republicans control both in New Hampshire).

The biggest prize for a secretary of state appointment, however, could be Pennsylvania. The Keystone State is another highly-competitive Trump-to-Biden state where Trump and his allies sought to overturn the election results. Democrats are all but decided on their gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, while the Republican primary field is large and wide open: It includes candidates with varying degrees of fealty to Trump, including former Rep. Lou Barletta and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who has sought an Arizona-style “audit” of Pennsylvania.

With American democracy under unprecedented assault, the integrity of the nation’s Secretaries of State, who will be responsible for enforcing voting rights in the states during the midterm elections, has never been more important. Jacobson’s article provides an excellent update on these races.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

John Halpin explains in his latest at The Liberal Patriot:

“Is it any wonder that the Democratic Party’s brand is in the toilet these days? Voters don’t have a clue what Democrats are talking about half the time but sense that it has little to do with them or their values.

Much of modern progressive-left discourse sounds like a dreary small group discussion in sociology class. “Systemic problem this” and “structural change that” with no clarity whatsoever about what is being discussed, why it matters, and why anyone should care. Contemporary progressive language often seems designed to alienate and confuse people rather than find shared priorities and connections across disparate groups….

According to Pew’s data, Americans draw ideas about what is right and wrong in the world from several sources—religion among them for one-third of Americans, along with common sense (45 percent), philosophy (11 percent), and science (9 percent).

American values rightly emerge from a nice blend of all these sources.

But rather than listen to another strange Democratic speech on systemic inequality or a 10-point plan about a complicated new social policy that few people understand, it would be nice occasionally if religious Democrats just said: “We believe everyone is equal in the eyes of God and under our Constitution. Our policies are motivated by a desire to secure the common good for the entire nation and equal dignity and rights for all people.”

What would a Democratic politics motivated by concern for the common good look like? As Ruy Teixeira and I outlined way back in 2006 in a report for The American Prospect entitled, “The Politics of Definition”:

“Securing the common good means putting the public interest above narrow self-interest and group demands; working to achieve social and economic conditions that benefit everyone; promoting a personal, governmental and corporate ethic of responsibility and service to others; creating a more open and honest governmental structure that relies upon an engaged and participatory citizenry; and doing more to meet our common responsibilities to aid the disadvantaged, protect our natural resources, and provide opportunities rather than burdens for future generations…

A primary goal of the government in this approach is to ensure basic fairness and opportunity: the civil, legal, and economic arrangements necessary to ensure every American has a real shot at his or her dreams. Common-good progressivism does not guarantee that everybody will be the same, think the same, or get the same material benefits in life; it simply means that people should start from a level playing field and have a reasonable chance at achieving success.

Internationally, common-good progressivism focuses on new and revitalized global leadership grounded in the integrated use of military, economic, and diplomatic power; the just use of force; global engagement; new institutions and networks to deal with intractable problems; and global equity. As in past battles against fascism and totalitarianism, common-good progressives today seek to fight global extremism by using a comprehensive national-security strategy that employs all our strengths for strategic and moral advantage. This requires true leadership and global cooperation rather than the dominant “my-way-or-the-highway” mentality…

Progressives should not forget that the common good is a powerful theme in the social teachings of many major faith traditions—Catholicism and mainline Protestantism, in particular, and in moderate evangelical and other denominations as well. The principle of the common good is drawn upon in these faiths to guide people towards more thoughtful consideration of their own actions in light of others; to compel political leaders and policymakers to consider the needs of the entire society; and to check unrestrained individualism that frequently erodes community sensibilities and values.

The goal of the common good in both the secular and faith traditions is a more balanced and considerate populace that seeks to provide the social and economic conditions necessary for all people to lead meaningful and dignified lives.”

These common good values, in turn, underlie Democrats’ efforts to advance affordable health care, support for the poor, family and environmental policies, and public investments. If Democrats lead with consensus values like these—religious or otherwise—then specific policies and messages will flow more naturally and persuasively for voters.”

The common good: it was a great idea then, it’s an even better idea now!

At The New Republic’s ‘the Soapbox,’ Editor Michael Tomasky argues that “Democrats Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Tell Voters What the Build Back Better Act Is All About: The Biden agenda will make everyone’s lives a little bit easier and a little bit better. There’s no need to hide from a good deal.” As Tomasky writes,

Assuming the Democratic Party–controlled Senate passes some version of the Build Back Better Act this year, as Chuck Schumer has vowed it will, the new year will dawn with Democrats fanning out across the country to sell the Biden agenda (which House Democrats have already started doing with the version of the president’s social provision bill they passed last week, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill).

Among the people I talk to, there seems to be a consensus forming that Democrats are going to have a hard time convincing voters about the generous array of wonderful benefits these bills will unleash before the midterm elections. People are in a sour mood, they say. Besides, inflation and the pandemic dictate everything, Donald Trump’s America is more fired up to vote, swing voters are going Republican, and too few of these programs are going to be up and running by next November.

On top of that, political science tells us that voters don’t often reward a party that passes transformative legislation. Voters are a cranky bunch. People are far more likely to use their votes to punish what they don’t like than to reward what they do like.

I suppose there’s truth to a lot of these observations. But I look through the reports on what happened to be in the bill, and I feel like I’m seeing a lot of stuff that Democrats can campaign on. Say you’re a Democrat trying to hold onto your seat in a purple district and you’re not Maine’s Jared Golden (in other words—you voted for these bills). You’re being challenged by some right-wing loon who’s carrying on about socialism and handouts and taxing and spending. Can’t that person say something that sounds a little something like this?

“I’d really like to know what particular things in the bill my opponent has such trouble with. Let’s start with Medicare. This bill adds hearing aids to Medicare coverage. The average cost of a prescription hearing aid in this country is $4,700. That’s a lot of money—for most seniors, a prohibitive amount of money. Now it’s covered. Is that a handout? In my opinion, it’s something that’s going to improve a lot of people’s quality of life. The bill also caps prescription drug outlays at $2,000 a year. Right now, there’s no hard cap, and there’s that infamous donut hole, which you know all about if you’ve bothered to talk to seniors. Maybe my opponent hasn’t. But it strikes me that saving seniors some money is a pretty good thing. Maybe my opponent doesn’t. And of course, insulin is going to cost $35, as opposed to the current $100. Is that what my opponent means by socialism?

“Let’s see, what else.… There’s a lot of money in there for the states—not the federal government, the states—to build and stand up pre-kindergarten programs and childcare centers. The bill ensures that a family of four with income up to $300,000, which is about 98 percent of the population, will pay no more than 7 percent of their income on childcare. Is this going to create a society of layabouts? I think the opposite. I think affordable day care will give a lot of parents, mothers in particular, the chance to work or go back to school and better themselves so they can move up the ladder at work. I’m not seeing how this is bad.

“And how about the climate? There are a lot of tax incentives for companies and people to produce and purchase more renewables and to move away from coal. All kinds of things to encourage individuals and communities to invest in green energy. I guess if you think climate change is a hoax, you think all this is a waste of money. But most people don’t think it’s a hoax. Most people think it’s real. So, I think these are good ideas.”

Tomasky also has a “don’t”: “The one thing that was in the bill that I’d advise this candidate to skip is the lifting of the cap on the state and local tax deduction, which is, no doubt about it, a gift to higher-income taxpayers. But it was political reality that some moderates from high-tax states might have voted no if this wasn’t included—and another political reality that if it hadn’t been included and isn’t in whatever ends up passing in some way, shape, or form, some Democrats from swing districts in New Jersey, New York, and elsewhere would be much more likely to lose.”

Tomasky shares some more good messaging tips:

But there’s a lot more good news than bad. Democrats ought to welcome a debate about what they’ve done for the American people with their GOP opponents. Incumbents should defend their vote in terms like I’ve laid out above. And Democratic challengers to Republicans in winnable swing districts should clearly be able to say: Look at all these good things this person voted against.

In fact, Democrats should go even further. This is an old pet peeve of mine about how Democrats debate policy. Republicans talk about this stuff solely on the abstract level—it’s socialism and profligacy and so on. They do this because they know the programs are individually popular but the idea of big government is not. By the same token, Democrats do the opposite. They read the same polls, so they tend to emphasize the specifics and steer clear of the abstract.

I get it. But it leaves Democrats sounding like they’re just for individual policy programs here and there instead of a big-picture vision for the kind of society they want to build. This bill, whatever its shortcomings, contains a vision of society: a more humane place where wealth is being shifted back from the rich to the middle so that more people can fulfill their potential.

Democrats don’t really need to mention government at all. In the end, what these bills are seeking to do has nothing to do with the government anyway. The public sector is the means to an end. That end is creating the means by which people can lead more fulfilling lives and do so with greater ease at that. Democrats need to be willing to say as much, and they need to demonstrate a willingness to fight for it.

So much recent political analysis explains what many Democrats have been doing wrong, and that’s useful information. But now Dems have to regroup and attack. Tomasky’s article provides a promising battle plan.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Jon Chait, in an important article in New York magazine, analyzes the profoundly ineffective anti-politics of the Democratic party left, aided and abetted by donors and foundations who finance this nonsense. (Note: he also has some stern words for centrist Democrats who oppose very popular Democratic measures in the name of moderation.)

Here is perhaps the most important part of his argument:

“When confronted with the reality that the Democratic Party is losing Black and Latino moderates, the response on the left is often to treat their views as morally beyond the pale. “Yes, it turns out that a number of people of color, especially those without a college education, can see the allure of the jackboot authoritarian thuggery offered by modern Republicans,” wrote The Nation’s Elie Mystal. “A certain percentage of non-college-educated people are hostile to immigration. Sure. Does that mean Democrats should embrace beating migrants? A certain percentage of non-college-educated people are resistant to science. Sure. Does that mean Democrats should embrace horse dewormer?”

Obviously, nobody is proposing Democrats run on authoritarian thuggery. The question is whether any compromise with the center is acceptable. Obama competed for moderate views by promising that people could keep their private insurance even as he covered those who couldn’t get any coverage, that he would secure the border even as he gave amnesty to Dreamers. Reducing all these spectra of belief to a simple binary, then declaring the opposing position so horrific it cannot be accommodated, is not a political strategy. It is a kind of anti-politics.

This anti-politics did not materialize out of thin air. It is the working assumption of a vast array of progressive nonprofit organizations and the millionaires who fund them. Over the past half-dozen years, several people who work in and around the nonprofit world have told me, the internal political culture at progressive foundations has undergone the same changes that have torn through elite universities, mainstream-media newsrooms, and private schools. An uncompromising version of left-wing political rhetoric has put the leadership of these organizations on the defensive and often prodded them to fund more radical organizations and ideas than before.

These groups have churned out studies and deployed activists to bring left-wing ideas into the political debate. At this they have enjoyed overwhelming success. In recent years, a host of new slogans and plans — the Green New Deal, “Defund the police,” “Abolish ICE,” and so on — have leaped from the world of nonprofit activism onto the chyrons of MSNBC and Fox News. Obviously, the conservative media have played an important role in publicizing (and often distorting) the most radical ideas from the activist left. But the right didn’t invent these edgy slogans; the left did, injecting them into the national bloodstream.

Twitter is often blamed for (or, alternately, credited with) facilitating the rise of the Democratic Party’s left wing. But an important and generally unexamined source of the left’s growth is the left-wing millionaires who finance it. A little more than a decade ago, David Callahan wrote a book, Fortunes of Change, describing a social and political evolution among the American rich. The rise of a knowledge economy had produced a growing class of liberal millionaires and billionaires, and this elite cohort had begun to work its will on the system by forming “a new progressive donor class.”

Read more…