Can the Intra-Party Rift Be Healed, At Least For Now? Or Must the Fight Be Fought in 2020?

by Thomas Neuburger

I’ve written before about the wide and deep rift that splits all three layers of the Democratic “party”*. Today, that split within these layers — office-holders and leaders; activists and campaign workers; voters and angry non-voters — is widening.

A Legacy of Betrayal

The split is greatest in the third layer, among the voters, as the sense of betrayal is greatest there as well. For many who were inspired by Obama’s promise of hope and change, 2008 is seen as a betrayal in retrospect, as they watched his Yes-We-Can promises (for example, to scrap the salary cap to increase Social Security funding) turn into No-I-Won’t policies (the constant Grand Bargain offers to cut Social Security benefits).

For frustrated “hope-and-change” voters — and the legion of “don’t-care” and “they’re-all-crooks” non-voters — 2016 witnessed the obvious sabotage of a change-supporting candidate, Bernie Sanders, to unfairly advance the decidedly Obamist Hillary Clinton. This turned what should have been a landslide election — against a jive-talking, pussy-grabbing, orange-haired reality show host no less — into a squeaker they lost in the Electoral College.

Now 2020 is upon us, and the sense of betrayal is even greater, starting with the very first contest, the Iowa caucus; continuing through DNC chair Tom Perez’s manipulation of debate rules to exclude un-centrist-preferred candidates; through the Establishment’s obvious swing to Mike Bloomberg as the Sanders savior du jour; ending with James Clyburn’s and Barack Obama’s clearing of the entire rest of the field field for Joe Biden, the only Establishment candidate left with any credibility in black and brown communities.

The move by Clyburn and Obama can arguably be seen as “just politics” and nothing out of the ordinary — politicians endorse their friends and colleagues all the time — but it confirmed the Establishment’s anti-Sanders bias so completely in the minds of his supporters that for them, the primary may just as well have been bought and sold on the street, their anger is that implacable.

The split is also great at the two upper layers of Democratic politics. Many activists are divided into mainstream-supporting and progressive-supporting camps, collegial with each other, but suspicious and hostile as well — along with an added interesting subsplit between Warren-loving (or accepting) progressives and those who feel Warren simply should not be trusted. (There are activists who support both Warren and Sanders, of course, but the intensity of what anger exists reminds one of the Hillary-Bernie battles of 2016 and may have been born there.)

Finally, though the split at the top layer — among office-holders and Party leaders, is just taking hold, it is nonetheless real. One only has to witness the disdain shown by Alexandria Occasio-Cortez and her “squad” for the squad-hating Nancy Pelosi, and Pelosi’s concommitant response, to see a divide that won’t be healed soon without supports of one side or the other feeling betrayed.

Will a "Unity Candidate" Unify or Divide?

In this environment, many insiders and those in their circle are looking for a unity candidate, or at least a unifying deal between the progressive wing of the Party and the Clinton-Obama corporatist wing, simply to find a way to get through the 2020 without re-electing Donald Trump.

Could such a deal, even if blessed by Sanders himself, save the Party from Trump? Voters would have to be on board with that — and the mass of non-voters as well, whose ranks could swell. It’s possible such a deal would succeed, but not very likely in the absence of an unexpected, table-turning event.

Consider: The Democrats have three choices. First, nominate Joe Biden. Second, nominate Bernie Sanders. Third, nominate someone who didn’t even run in the primary — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is the latest Sanders-savior being touted.

If they nominate Joe Biden and he doesn’t improve his lackluster, unfocused post-corona virus performances, he’s done. Trump will be the next president. And if he further declines in acuity before our eyes, he's even more done than that — his viability won't last through October and the slaughter in November will be Mondale-esque.

If they nominate Bernie Sanders — well, I’m hearing that they just won’t do that. They’d rather die in the saddle or live out their days strong in the Party but powerless electorally, than surrender the Party to Sanders and the unwashed who want to see them all gone from office for good.

If they nominate a replacement candidate, a Cuomo, say, or a (ready?) Michelle Obama, despite her determination never to take such a job — if they nominate, in other words, the most well-regarded corporate Democrat they can find — how would the Party fare in November? The election would then resolve to a single issue, a battle between NeverTrumpers on one hand and his amped up legions of F-U voters on the other, with voters on neither side just watching the fight.

Remember, this is yet another Change election, and the change candidate won twice before. Will the nation want to change out Donald Trump for an otherwise-no-change corporatist, or stay with the faux-change carnival barker even in the midst of a massively bungled corona virus response? Or just not care?

Given Democrats’ recent propensity for bungling easy elections when they offer no-change non-charismatic candidates, I just don’t see Trump losing that battle. He may not win by a lot, but I don't see him losing it.

Of course, this is not just a Change election, it's a Black Swan election as well. One dark bird has already landed — two if you count this — and several more could alight at any time. But still, it seems Dem leaders are determined to burn the building if they don’t get their way, and as things stand today, they will succeed.

If an Intra-Party Knock-Down Fight Is Unavoidable, Are Progressives Prepared to Win It? 

All of which leads to the real question. The fight that “unity” leaders are determined to avoid, seems unavoidable. The rift seems unhealable and attempts to close it further widen it. If the Party is determined not to elect Sanders, much of the base is determined not to support the alternatives, and the Party presses hard for surrender — what then?

What if the “rift fight,” the battle royale between corporatist Party leaders and progressives at all three layers is unavoidable? What if it can’t be deferred until 2024 and must be addressed in this cycle? It's coming sometime — what if it comes now, in 2020

If all this is true and that fight is can't be avioded, are progressive prepared to win it?

As of this writing, I don’t see evidence they are.

*I put “party” in quotes because, as some of us are aware, actual Democratic Party membership is tiny relative to the number of its almost powerless supporters and voters. Compare the meaning of party membership here vs. in the UK, for example. In the UK, the voters are members and elect their leaders. Not so here. That lack of control by voters who consider themselves “members” — but aren't — is a large part of the problem.
 

Thoughts on Warren and Sanders: How Much Change Is Needed in 2021?

The best of all possible worlds?

by Thomas Neuburger

I've written before comparing Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as presidential candidates, but only preliminarily. (See "The Difference Between Sanders and Warren, or Can Regulated Capitalism Save the Country?") But there's much more to say — foreign policy, for example, is barely touched on there — and also much is evolving in their positions, especially Warren's.

That earlier piece focused on the differences between these two candidates based on their economic ideologies. As I wrote then, "Though both would make the next administration, if either were elected, a progressive one by many definitions, the nature of the progressivism under each would be quite different."

In particular, I asked:

Can the current capitalist system be reformed and retained, or must it be partly nationalized — taken over by government — and reduced in size and capacity, for the country to be saved from its current economic enslavement to the "billionaire class"? In addition to questions of personal preference, Democratic primary voters will be asked to decide this question as well.

And the question applies quite broadly. The billionaire class also controls our response to climate change. Is it possible for a "free" market system — a system in which billionaires and their corporations have control — to transform the energy economy enough to mitigate the coming disaster, or must government wrest control of the energy economy in order to have even a hope of reducing the certain damage?

But there are other contrasts between these two as well, other differences, as Zaid Jilani, writing in Jacobin, points out. He begins where we began, with the ideological and philosophical differences:

Why the Differences Between Sanders and Warren Matter

Both are critics of the Democratic establishment. Both are foes of Wall Street. And both are substantive, policy-focused politicians. But that doesn’t mean Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren share the same worldview.

Sanders tends to focus on “post-distribution” remedies, meaning he prefers to use the government’s power to tax and spend to directly meet Americans’ needs — or replace the market altogether. His social-democratic ideas, like free college and single-payer health care, are now policies most Democrats have to tip their hat to at least for electoral reasons. Warren wants to empower regulators and rejigger markets to shape “pre-distribution” income, before taxes. Less likely to push for big-ticket programs, she wants to re-regulate Wall Street and make life easier for consumers.

So far this is familiar ground.

Different Theories of Change

But as Jilani points out, there are differences in style and "theory of change" as well. ("Theory of change" usually encompasses how a given policy change is to be accomplished, as opposed to what that change should be.) Jilani again:

The two senators also have distinct theories of change. Sanders has long believed in bottom-up, movement-based politics. Since his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he has tried to energize citizens to take part in government. He generally distrusts elites and decision-making that does not include the public. Warren, on the other hand, generally accepts political reality and works to push elite decision-makers towards her point of view.

When I worked at PCCC ["the most influential outside PAC supporting Warren" says Jilani], I was once told that Warren decided to run for the Senate after witnessing the amount of power she had as an oversight chair for the bank bailouts. She believed that “being in the room” with decision-makers in the Obama administration was essential to creating change.

About this he concludes: "While Warren wants to be at the table with elites, arguing for progressive policies, Sanders wants to open the doors and let the public make the policy."

"Elizabeth is all about leverage"

These are significant differences, and his observation goes a long way to explaining this item from a long piece published in Politico Magazine in 2016, an article otherwise about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Discussing why Warren refused to endorse Sanders, Glenn Thrush wrote:

Luckily for Clinton, Warren resisted Sanders’ entreaties, for months telling the senator and his staff she hadn’t made up her mind about which candidate she would support. For all her credibility on the left, Warren is more interested in influencing the granular Washington decisions of policymaking and presidential personnel—and in power politics. Warren’s favored modus operandi: leveraging her outsider popularity to gain influence on the issues she cares about, namely income inequality and financial services reform.

“Elizabeth is all about leverage, and she used it,” a top Warren ally told me. “The main thing, you know, is that she always thought Hillary was going to be the nominee, so that was where the leverage was.”

Warren, several people in her orbit say, never really came close to endorsing the man many progressives consider to be her ideological soulmate.

For many grassroots supporters of Sanders, who were also strong Warren supporters prior to his entry into the race, these revelations — "all about the leverage" and "never came close to endorsing" — took the bloom off the Warren rose. For whatever reason, that bloom appears not to have returned, at least not completely.

Jilani's observation in no way diminishes Warren's credibility or core desirability as a candidate. If you care about achieving your goals through "leverage," joining the Sanders campaign, which may have looked to you like a kind of Children's Crusade, would seem foreign to your way of operating.

The Bottom Line — Not Just Method, But Scope

While Jilani notes that many of Warren's past positions, for example, on charter schools and Medicare for All, have grown more progressive, she still doesn't seem to prioritize Medicare for All as strongly as Sanders does.

In 2012, Warren was explicitly opposed to Medicare for All (called "single payer" at the time). "Five years later — after decades of advocacy by Sanders had helped popularize Medicare for All — Warren [finally] decided to endorse the policy," writes Jilani. "But unlike consumer protections or financial regulation, establishing a single-payer health care system doesn’t seem to be a top priority for Warren." He adds, "It’s hardly a surprise that Warren didn’t raise single-payer during her first two campaign events in Iowa and when asked about it by a Washington Post reporter, [she] suggested she didn’t bring it up because no one else at the events raised it."

As noted above, if either were president, the odds that America will change for the better would vastly improve. But each would do that job in a different way. Each has a different philosophy of how government should work, and approach the process of change from different directions — though I have to give Warren credit for picking public fights with fellow Democrats when others are much more timid.

But to these two differences — philosophy and approach — let me add a third, a difference in sweep. The scope of change envisioned and attempted by a Sanders presidency would likely be far greater than that attempted by Warren.

In these times, with a massive climate tsunami fast approaching and a Depression-style rebellion in full view, can America, in this Franklin Roosevelt moment, afford just a better manager of the current system, a better rearranger, and survive?

There's not much question that Warren would better fix the status quo, and be a better choice as president, than 95% of the other candidates on offer. But would a Warren presidency be enough to bring us through this crisis as safely as Washington, Lincoln and FDR once did?

For many true progressives, I think that's the question she'll be asked to answer, and she has about a year, or less, to answer it.
  

Progressives Ask Why So Many Unions Seem Anti-Progressive

 A South Boston anti-busing protest in the 1970s (source)

by Gaius Publius

As a new Democratic insurgency has risen over the last year, unions have clung tightly to the old guard.

— Aida Chávez & Ryan Grim, The Intercept

The modern progressive movement is far and away a very good friend of labor. The labor movement, on the other hand, seems far less a friend of progressives.

This varies from union to union, of course, and also within unions. There are many pro-progressive unions and union members. National Nurses United, for example, strongly supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary, and unions with many pro-Sanders members endorsed Clinton because their leaders unilaterally chose to do so.

Yet it seems that in the aggregate, organized labor has an anti-progressive tilt. That's not the news though, just an observation. The news is that, for the first time in a while, progressives are noticing this fact, wondering in public what it might mean, and quietly asking each other what they should do about it.

My own comment: sure took a while. This problem has been obvious for quite a long time. But let's stick to the facts for today, look at the questions and leave the answers for later. 

First, Aida Chávez and Ryan Grim raise an interesting question at The Intercept (see headline below). Note that not only is the underlying story — the union behavior — interesting, but also that this question is being asked at all:

Carpenters, Steamfitters, and Other Trade Unions Coalesced Around Notorious Ferguson Prosecutor. Why?

St. Louis County, Missouri, labor unions spent heavily in an effort to re-elect prosecutor Bob McCulloch, who was ousted on Tuesday by criminal justice reformer Wesley Bell, campaign finance reports reveal.

It’s common for police unions to support prosecutors, but the labor groups who backed McCulloch came from the trade union movement: steamfitters, carpenters, electrical workers, and others with no obvious connection to the criminal justice system. Their support came in the form of both endorsements and campaign funds. The unions pumped in at least $25,000 of the $237,000 McCulloch raised during the campaign, arguing that his longtime support of organized labor deserved loyalty.

It's not just the racist Bob McCulloch whom many unions support; this is "an emerging pattern" (emphasis added):

As a new Democratic insurgency has risen over the last year, unions have clung tightly to the old guard. In New York, they sided with Rep. Joe Crowley over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and with Gov. Andrew Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon, even walking out of the Working Families Party on his orders. (In Missouri, the WFP supported Bell.) And the union backing is not limited to incumbents. Unions were firmly behind Gretchen Whitmer, who defeated Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s gubernatorial primary, for instance, and with Brad Ashford, a conservative Democrat who lost to insurgent Kara Eastman in an Omaha, Nebraska, congressional primary.

Next, let's turn to the climate front. Among retweets of progressives like Robert Reich by the United Mine Workers Twitter account, we find this response to progressive critics of the DNC's recent "all of the above" strategy of taking money from fossil fuel companies:

Your message to coal miners, refinery workers, O&G [oil and gas] production workers, fossil fuel utility workers & families is "we hate your industry so it's OK to refuse industry $$." Can't then say say "oh, YOUR money is OK. But we still hate your industry."

— United Mine Workers (@MineWorkers) August 11, 2018

Let's break this down. The DNC wants to keep feeding at the fossil fuel company trough. Progressives object to that and campaign to stop it. The UMW objects to progressive pushback and says to progressives, in effect:

• You hate the industry we love.
• You don't want industry money.
• So you shouldn't want our money either.

As a statement of "we just don't like you," this seems pretty clear, and not that far from a conversation that goes like this:

"Spare some change? I'm on your side."
"But we don't like you."
"Let me explain why you should."
"I guess you weren't listening. We don't like you."
"Of course I was listening. Spare some change?"

The three unions most opposed to oil and gas pipeline protests are the Operating Engineers (heavy equipment operators), Pipefitters and Laborers (LiUNA), whose president interestingly called those protestors "thugs."

It's true that not all unions take these stands, and one could argue in defense of those that do that they're just protecting jobs. But is that really all that's going on? Or is it also true that, when it comes to progressives and their values, they're just opposed on principle?

I'll close with two more thoughts. As Chávez and Grim point out, police unions naturally support prosecutors and the "criminal justice system." But is there not also a racial component to their support for obvious racists like like Bob McCulloch? If so, what values do these unions and those like them represent — true criminal justice, or something else? After all, actual justice would look like ... justice.

Second, as noted above, the leadership of most large unions supported Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders despite Sanders' lifelong and consistent support for workers and unions. As Elizabeth Bruenig asked in 2015, "So why are the very unions that give Sanders money hesitant to lend him their endorsements?"

Again that question, which brings us back to the question posed at the beginning: Why would unions that have nothing to do with criminal justice support a vengeful racist prosecutor like Bob McCulloch? Corrupt Joe Crowley? Powerful, corrupt Andrew Cuomo? Blue Dog Brad Ashford? And so many similar others?

These aren't answers, only questions, but questions in need of asking.

As you ponder them consider both aspects of this issue. The problem isn't simply why so many unions oppose progressives. It's also, what should progressives, in their unbending support for unions, do about it? After all, if a progressive transformation of the nation is not just desirable but critical to our survival, how should those working for that transformation deal with those working against it?

More pointedly, should anti-progressive unions be treated as allies, simply because they're unions?

One more thing to watch as our nation's problems grow worse, the need for solutions grows urgent, and progressives, or at least a few of them, take a brand new look at an old and seemingly unsolvable dilemma.

GP
 

That Word "Allegedly"...

The bulk of the country identifies as "independents" and they're not a patient lot (discussed here). This is who progressives have to look reasonable to when the airship Age of Trump comes crashing to the ground.

by Gaius Publius

There seem to be two groups of Trump attackers these days, those who make statements like "Russia hacked the election and attacked our Democracy" — in other words, present suspected-but-unproved assertions as fact — and those who don't present statements as proved unless there's actual proof.

The worst offenders in the first group are people like MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who regularly asserts as true what he only suspects and could never prove if asked. A good example of the second group is MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who is almost always careful to challenge statements like "Russia cyber-attacked our democracy," which Democratic Party guests like Cory Booker almost always lead with, as though reading blindly from the daily talking points.

Hillary Clinton, for example, in her first appearance since the election, talked about the WikiLeaks material this way: “I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off."

"Russian Wikileaks" — so easy to say it rolls right off the tongue.

I'm not just picking on Clinton — they're almost all doing it. And yet, to stick with the WikiLeaks case for a moment, there's not only no proof that Russia provided hacked material to WikiLeaks, but WikiLeaks itself has always aggressively denied it, stating that the material came to them from an insider, as a "leak, not a hack." A neutral, fair-minded commenter would have to say, at the very least, that the charge is an assertion ... possible but not proved, "alleged" but not solidly demonstrated.

Staying with the WikiLeaks-Clinton case for a moment, there's now even some evidence that the WikiLeaks side of story is the right one. Via Consortium News: "A private investigator looking into last year’s murder of Seth Rich, an employee of the Democratic National Committee, has said that the victim’s computer shows he was in contact with WikiLeaks and may have leaked Democratic Party emails being blamed instead on Russia." Again, not proof, just allegations, though at least we can see some basis in evidence.

The lack of "allegedly" these days works both ways, applies to comments about and by both parties. For example, from the recent Comey memo report by Michael Schmidt at the New York Times:

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

How do we know that Flynn indeed lied to Pence? If we don't know, shouldn't the sentence be written "after it was revealed he had allegedly lied to Vice President Mike Pence"? (Even "revealed" is a problem there.) Consider: Flynn may have lied to Pence. Pence may also have known in November what Flynn allegedly "lied" about. In which case, what was the lie? And if the White House already knew Flynn was being investigated for foreign lobbying, what's the point of Flynn lying at all, or even talking about it, beyond a simple, "Nothing to worry about, boss"?

For all these reasons, the quoted passage above definitely needs an "allegedly." Which leads me to this point — a caution to progressives.

When the Age of Trump Is Over, Will We Look Like "Just Partisans" to Independent Voters?

Almost all of what's talked about so far, all of what people think they know, are just allegations and assertions at this point, just as the pre-election Clinton FBI investigation reports were just allegations and assertions. Perhaps they're all true after all; but perhaps not. At this point there's little produced evidence for any of it, not then and not now. Even the apparently damning Comey memo (“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo) hasn't been produced, or even seen.

That's right — it hasn't even been seen by the reporters who reported on it. From the Times story: "The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter." It was read to the reporter? Over the phone? From across a table at Starbucks?

That doesn't mean these stories won't prove true (nor does it mean they will). But we do ourselves no favors when we treat assertions as facts, act too eager to jump the gun on what we want to be true instead of what's known and provable, as many on our side are doing.

The danger is this. It makes us look, on our side, far less even-handed — and far less principled, meaning "guided by principle and not by mere gain" — than we're going to want to look later, when Trump and his wrecking crew are gone and we offer ourselves as alternatives to the fallen.

We can't look like "just partisans" then, just more of the same but from the other side. We'll need the whole country behind us, or most of it anyway, and last I checked, more of the country identified as "independent" than either as Democrats or Republicans.

At that point, a reputation as "just partisans" may not help us. We may need to convince those people that we're the reasonable choice, not just the only choice left, or we may not get the outcomes we would wish for.

Something to consider for after the airship Age of Trump comes crashing down. If we want to seem reasonable then, we need to start now.

GP
 

Ro Khanna: "The American People Want More Idealism And Substance From Progressive Politics"

Chuck Jones speaks truth to power-- calls out the liar-in-chief

You remember Chuck Jones, the president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999 who fought to keep Carrier in Indiana long before Trump noisily inserted himself, ineffectively as it turns out, into the conflict. Last week, Jones penned an essay for Huff Po, How Democrats Lost Union Workers, saying the problem went well beyond the horrible choice between Trump and Hillary. "A map of Indiana," he wrote, "can show you what went wrong for the Democratic Party and what’s going wrong for the country. Not just the Carrier plant, that’s shipping 550 jobs to Mexico, but another one of our local’s plants, Rexnord Bearings, has 300 jobs headed to the same city, Monterrey. In Huntington, near Fort Wayne, 700 jobs from the same corporation as Carrier-- UTC-- are headed there as well. Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes South Bend, has two Elkhart plants, Harman International and auto-parts maker CTS Corp., shipping more than 350 jobs overseas. The 2nd District used to be a lock for Democrats, and was at least competitive the past 30 years. Now it’s elected a Tea Party Republican to her third term.

The DNC wanted to know why traditional Democratic areas in the industrial Midwest have gotten away from them. It’s because too many manufacturing plants have been getting away from us-- and too many Democratic leaders have been AWOL. When it comes to how they and their families are going to survive, too many workers can’t tell one party from the other.  Yes, we’ve stood up for the safety net and social justice-- we’re not one-issue Democrats. But Indiana, along with much of the industrial Midwest, has been getting hammered by rigged trade deals that have left thousands of Hoosier families stranded. It’s upended our world.

We’re not against trade. But the trade deals we’ve been given by Republicans-- and too many Democrats-- have betrayed people who work for a living. Don’t lose sight of the fact-- because too many politicians already have-- that for these family breadwinners, it’s over. Often middle aged or older, they now look forward to a fraction of their pension, if that, and any dreams they had for their kids getting a leg up into the middle class are gone. For too many it’s been a life of despair leading to alcoholism, bankruptcy, broken families, even suicide. I’ve seen it.

...My message to the Democratic Party is that we need leaders with the guts to stand up to Wall Street and defend working people... donors be damned. Working people will take notice.

...For the Democratic Party to even begin to turn this around, we need to see leaders standing with us when we bargain with corporations. When workers organize, they need to march with them into the boss’s office and demand their rights be respected. A great example of that was recently in Mississippi where Sen. Bernie Sanders marched with Nissan auto workers fighting for a union. That’s how you’ll win back workers, not just the ones you lost last November, but the ones you’ve been losing for decades. And we’ll get the 50 percent on the sidelines to start thinking voting might matter, and that putting heat on politicians can get results.

In Detroit I just stated what I saw on the ground. And what I saw in the Indiana primary was workers, and not just in manufacturing, getting excited about Bernie Sanders like no other candidate ever. His straight talk, consistent positions, and refusal to kowtow to conventional wisdom, made him damn near a hero. But the unvarnished truth about last year is this: after Bernie was eliminated, a lot of workers started drinking the Trump Kool-Aid or just plain took a pass on the election. Many had been Obama voters. Those who did throw in with HRC-- men, women, black and white-- did it without the kind of enthusiasm you need to bring others along.

But it was a situation decades in the making. The Republicans created Trump, he’s theirs; but too many Democrats built the vacuum that Trump filled.

In Detroit I reminded them that the Democratic Party needs to continue to be the home of working families. Trump’s a fraud, and the Republicans don’t have our back. But if the party wants these voters to come home, it needs to stand up for them.

Ro Khanna is the freshman congressman from the Silicon Valley. He was elected 4 months ago with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from employees at pharmaceutical companies. But that didn't stop him from making this blistering maiden floor speech last month. Watch it:




"The pharmaceutical industry is a cancer on this body; The pharmaceutical companies contributions are a cancer," he told his colleagues (and the nation, including PhRMA lobbyists, who pay close attention to that kind of talk). And that isn't the only way Khanna's thinking was in sync with Jones'. Last week he penned this OpEd for the Sacramento Bee on industrial policy and the future viability of the Democratic Party. I don't think it's going to make his House colleagues any more happy than his comments about PhRMA made their lobbyists.

The U.S. economy is moving from the industrial to the digital age. We are seeing transformation in how technology impacts our homes and businesses. We communicate more rapidly and frequently than ever.

And with that comes the urgency for people to learn and apply new skills to be part of the changing workforce. Yet the impact of automation and globalization has created unprecedented inequality.

Recently, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was asked by a New York University sophomore at a CNN town hall how progressives can offer a bold economic vision that differs from conservatives: “We’re capitalists, that’s just the way it is,” she replied.

But too often the national economic debate stalls between free market conservatives who want less regulation and liberals who want greater government participation. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich explain that government sets the rules that create the free market. The problem with our economy is that the rules have been rigged in favor of the wealthy and the connected.

Congress must take bold, transformational action to make the rules of the economy more just.

Take for instance the Affordable Care Act “repeal and replace” debate. In reality, Republicans are rushing through a massive tax break disguised as health policy. The GOP plan is an ill-conceived and bureaucratic bill and should be used as a jumping off point to discuss the simplest policy solution to fix our health care system: Medicare for All.

In the budget blueprint released last week, President Donald Trump included a $1 trillion giveaway to Wall Street investors, but dismantles training programs that enable workers to win jobs of the modern economy. Trump, who hosted a show called The Apprentice, should be funding apprenticeship programs around the country.

The stock market has bounced back from the Great Recession, but working families are not seeing gains in their paychecks. In addition to raising the minimum wage, closing the gender pay gap, and supporting paid family leave, Congress should help working families by dramatically expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. That would place money in the pockets of working families to correct decades of no wage growth.

While working families seek a decent wage, corporations exploit our tax rules. If a family making $48,000 is required to pay taxes on all their income, shouldn’t the same be expected of a multinational company based in the U.S.? That is why we must close the “check-the-box” corporate loophole that allows foreign subsidiaries of multinationals to avoid tax. By eliminating this 1990s corporate giveaway, the U.S. could collect billions of dollars in new revenue and discourage companies from going offshore.

Wall Street reform champions long have asserted that the rules of the stock market favor wealthy individuals who benefit from short-term profits. A 1982 Securities and Exchange Commission rule, written by a former Wall Street banker, allows corporations to make large purchases of their own stock, sending profits to shareholders and executives. This rule should be repealed and such buybacks should once again be scrutinized for market manipulation. A financial transaction tax on stock trades and bonds would generate hundreds of billions of dollars and reduce risky, high-speed trading.

In accepting his re-nomination at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: “These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.”

FDR’s language and programs were far bolder than the consultant-crafted platitudes that too many Democrats have run on these past few election cycles. Members of Congress must see that the American people want more idealism and substance from progressive politics. We neglect their voices at our own peril.