A Democratic Message For The Working Class Beyond “Anti-Trump”:
The Electoral Stakes of Not Reforming Our Brand Are Tremendous, Just as the Awards Are Also Enormous.
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the 2024 Election Autopsy, the true story about former 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.
Another brief thought here: With the imperialist ambitions of Co-Presidents-Elect Trump and Musk, let’s hope a war doesn’t break out between us, Canada, and Greenland. A South Park movie turned reality. “Blame Canada!”
And imagine Pete Hegseth at the helm. “Deus Vult!,” as he might say.
What insanity. But what is the alternative to that insanity that we will present to the American people? People of all kinds including the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Greg Casar, Pramila Jayapal, AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Ruben Gallego, Ro Khanna, Tim Ryan, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and even Dan Osborn are speaking to something going on on-the-ground.
Put simply, the issue of 2024 is not about the ideological labels of left or right. It is about what people regard as the establishment and who are the ones who will take them on for the working class.
Take this. While Joe Manchin cries about the criticism he has received in recent weeks, he and Kyrsten Sinema are the best examples of the establishment that everyone hates and has hated for a long time. While Manchin chaired the Senate Committee on Energy, blocking alternative energy options, he was boosting his own family’s coal businesses in West Virginia. He took Big Pharma money as his daughter price-gouged Epi-Pens and outsourced jobs overseas from West Virginia. He was an ALEC lawmaker in West Virginia who consistently supported ALEC bills practically handwritten by corporate interests. He, a self-described Independent, even has a house yacht, all while he lectures everyone else about why the working class drifted away from Democrats.
What about Sinema? Well, she fought to protect the carried interest loophole (not exactly a priority of working families in Arizona, but of Wall Street venture capital and private equity interests). She took a record amount of money from the Big Banks responsible for the 2008 Recession during her tenure in Congress. She backed Silicon Valley Bank’s efforts at financial deregulation as a House member. She spent her campaign funds lavishly despite not running for reelection. And both she and Manchin this past month tanked President Biden’s National Labor Relations Board nominee, allowing Trump to empower an anti-union majority immediately in 2025 in that labor watchdog agency.
Representatives of the working class? I think not. Furthermore, Democrats like myself should let the Manchinema duo know that we wish them the very best as former Democrats, and that they would be better served in today’s Republican Party. Good riddance to them, their fragile egos, and their damage to the Democratic Party brand. To proudly second Progressive Caucus Chair Casar’s dead-on statement, our party is much better served without them.
There is a lot that is forgotten in history. That is why I was delighted to see Harold Meyerson’s piece from last month on the historic Democratic Party connection to the working class, using FDR’s own words in 1936. Namely, FDR campaigned saying that he welcomed the hatred of wealthy enemies like “monopolists, speculators, bankers, and oligarchs.”
Likewise, Meyerson also says that to our good graces, Democrats are no longer talking about embracing Republican Party economics to win elections. No more talk of embracing trickle-down tax cuts and mass deregulation for the wealthy. No more talk of joining in the budget austerity or government privatization efforts of lifesaving, anti-poverty social service programs. No more talk of inaction on corporate monopolies or appeasing the elite classes. No more talk of stabbing labor and farm in the back with bad trade deals and taking other constituencies for granted, and the rest. Some people, like Jake Sullivan, have actually called for an end to the retreat from Rooseveltian ambitions of government support for working families.
These are positive steps, but they are far from the only ones needed.
To oppose Trump, Democrats have to understand him in whole. His schtick reaps on economic discontent 100%. Trade deal bashing and immigration scapegoating are both keys to that message alike, whether it is as cultural red meat or a mere acknowledgment to the long term economic pain out there. Even as Trump’s regime is the one that will only preserve the Reagan-Clinton-Bush political status quo and empower the political and business establishment, not dismantle it.
Democrats have to do in the coming weeks and months what Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan did long before they held power in 1964. In our case, that means breaking free of farcical bipartisan consensus and publicly call for a change beyond almost half a century of trickle-down, deregulated, free trade, oligarchical, unfettered capitalist economics. This is what takes place in many corners in the party, started by Sanders and Warren in the 2010s (and continued by President Joe Biden legislatively), but the party as a whole has to challenge that ideological governing regime’s legitimacy as Reagan did to the New Deal-Great Society era prior to 1980.
Ironically, it was the Democrats who were pegged as the establishment forces in 2024, no doubt helped by GOP messaging, but also by some truths stemming back to NAFTA, PNTR, CAFTA, TPP, Glass-Steagall repeal, bankruptcy reform, welfare reform, the crime bills, agricultural program cuts, Medicare privatization, Pentagon budget bloating, and even the Wall Street bailout post-2008. This association of Democrats with the establishment was part of the Tea Party’s anti-elite messaging too.
But Democrats can turn the tide. Republicans pledged to get rid of Big Government, but they never got rid of it, and maybe they never intended to. All they did was shift its priorities from serving the entire country’s interests, to basking it all in with the super wealthy oligarchy we see today, with the high costs of living, income inequalities, racial inequalities, poverty, homelessness, war profiteering, industry monopolization, farm consolidation, and union-busting. The result of it all since 1980: ballooning deficits, the deterioration of the quality of life, the shrinking of the middle class generally, and a 21st century Gilded Age. The system has been, and is still, a disaster in waiting.
And Democrats must turn the tide for its own sake. Despite what were low expectations anyways, its party has reached historic low points in 2024; even in states like Florida, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Indiana. And if the party can’t stop Republican advances in Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey for instance, forget about it for both the Senate and House.
Unless it wins back industrial blue-collar and rural working class voters especially, expect Democrats to have a hard time simply getting a bare majority in the Senate and squeaking the House in the best case scenarios by the slimmest of margins. Abandoning the working class is no option electorally, at least long term. Way too much electoral ground has been forfeited to the Trump salesmanship show.
Democrats across the country should start simple and start early, creating a template somewhat similar to the format of this one (or those of the CPC’s Progressive Promise and Gingrich’s Contract with America):
Raising the minimum wage nationally to $15/hr, and being adjusted to inflation afterwards, alongside the passage of paid leave and the Child Tax Credit
Reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, Dodd-Frank, FDIC authority, and other consumer guardrails that Trump Republicans have and are dismantling
Passing pro-labor legislation into law, from the PRO Act to the Workplace Democracy Act, OSHA standards, repealing right-to-work laws in the states, and repealing the hated Taft-Hartley Act.
Renegotiating past free trade agreements that encouraged the failed “Race to the Bottom” globally with allied collaboration. And strategic tariffs as a last resort
Break up agricultural monopolies through Lina Khan-style antitrust, farm bill subsidy reforms, food safety measures, Right-to-Repair, and more
Reimplement industrial strategy that awards small businesses and entrepreneurs in manufacturing, and not large multinational corporations through corporate welfare
Holding to account corporate instigators of the opioid epidemic and the fentanyl addiction emergency in America. And end corporate price-gouging at large
Repealing multiple legislative tax cut provisions since the 1980s that rewarded Corporate America and America’s elite brackets over Main Street America
Establishing a joint global minimum tax on the millionaire-billionaire class and on multinational corporations across the globe, and restore overtime pay at home
Having a jobs guarantee program, especially in infrastructure & transportation construction, vocational training, the blue-green economy, childcare, eldercare
Have nationwide-scale community service projects in distressed areas through AmeriCorps, City Year, and more with community nonprofit collaboration
Keep essential social services off the austerity chopping block (e.g Social Security, Head Start, Pell Grants, Food Stamps) and reign in the corporate welfare spending
Guaranteeing healthcare as a human right (starting with lowering age eligibility, coverage expansion, and long-term movement towards a single-payer system)
Reinstating the social ladder with education guaranteed to all people regardless of income, from public education funding restoration, to tuition-free public and community colleges
Addressing the climate crisis in its totality as a moral responsibility, an existential threat to society, and a future harbinger of economic growth and job employment. Climate change will make inflation worse. Remember that, and use that to make climate change a working class issue.
Moving away from the private sector and having the government fund & build more public housing and all low income/middle class affordable housing projects
Follow Eisenhower’s call to reign in the bloated Pentagon defense-industrial complex, and support soldiers and veterans like we did with burn pit assistance
Allow tenant unions, enact necessary and targeted rent and utility price controls, implement postal banking, and permit rural electric co-ops and state-owned banks (much like the North Dakota model)
Ratify the UN Law of the Sea for the Critical Minerals Race, and unionize the Gig Economy
Ban insider family stock trading, close the DC lobbyist revolving door for ex-lawmakers, eliminate junk fees, end surprise billing, and cap credit card rates
Put up the appropriate broad anti-Section 230 guardrails and rules for companies regarding Big Tech monopolies, social media algorithms, cryptocurrency usage, corporate media regulation, and AI
Restore and strengthen campaign finance laws struck down by the Supreme Court and blocked by Congressional GOP leadership
Pass ethics reform for both Congress and the US Supreme Court, and in the states
Push for voting rights legislation with a total ban on partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression practices, and nefarious election robocalls
Support all civil rights, including tribal sovereignty, and restore net neutrality
Punishing corporate entities—especially in meatpacking and agriculture—who exploit undocumented immigrants or child labor for cheaper costs
Protecting law-abiding undocumented immigrants and children who contribute to all of our local communities alongside border toughening and criminal/drug activity detection systems
Implement criminal justice reform to reverse the punitive and ineffective War on Drugs and War on Crime, and reign in the prison-industrial complex as well
Establish and strengthen regional economic development commissions in Appalachia, the Black Belt, the Rio Grande Valley, and Indian Country
Support for allies and all vulnerable people in Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Belarus, Xinjiang, and elsewhere
Confront GOP Cancel Culture on social media and on topics like January 6 revisionism, 2020 election denial, Nazism education, the Civil War, Jim Crow, the First Gilded Age, and slavery
Consider all major gun safety legislation with input and collaboration from schools, law enforcement, and gun owners
Codify reproductive health rights and women’s rights into law finally
Not to mention taking the time to listen to voters again.
That is a true pathway for the future, rooted not only in the Economic Bill of Rights, but very much so in the Catholic Social Doctrine, and in the commitment of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference towards economic and racial justice. Given the passing of Jimmy Carter—and his beautiful funeral service demonstrating the power of the Christian example and family values—we should strive to present this type of true religious devotion and not the hypocritical intolerant Christianity of Trump and Musk.
And especially if, or more likely when, Donald Trump focuses much more on immigrants and people of color than on the elites jacking up healthcare, education, rent, grocery, and utility costs, that will be when the Democratic Party can come to the rescue as the real working class champions the country needs today, not the insincere conservative divide-and-conquer panderers to real societal distress.
Somewhat related to this, I have to recommend 2024 Senate candidate Lucas Kunce’s “Against the Wind” and “Running as a Normal Person” posts. Just outstanding.
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How does the destruction of America's southern border help the working people?
Your espousing favoritism of certain groups help build the unity America needs to survive.
I agree the Cabal of Govt and mega companies is a threat to everyday Americans is a dangerous thing.
It has never been more apparent than the last for years.
The solution to that is to reduce the Size of Government confine or to its original Constitutional mandate. Put in place solely to protect the rights found in our Constitution.