A Bolder, Smarter Left

If politics were ruled by “black and white” polling, Democrats would be set. Ask voters if they want good health care, clean air and water, good schools, and most of the other things Democrats espouse, and large majorities of the electorate answer yes. The last two Democrats to lose Presidential elections, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, both won the majority of the issues polled in the exit polls among the voters who rejected them. Both still lost.

The problem for Democrats always starts when we leave the hypothetical and stop talking about ideals, but start talking details. Generally somewhere around the point that the price tag, and subsequent tax bills, start being a part of the discussion, popularity for the programs end. When you start discussing job losses, which programs lose money to fund new programs, or the taxes to finance a new program, our advantages with the electorate on the ideals begin to dissipate. They love our ideas, they hate the costs.

One would think, given that reality, that Democrats and the broader left in general would be the party taking a serious look at tax reform and a major budget overhaul- but we’re not. Instead, Democrats have ceded that ground to Paul Ryan for the better part of the past decade, putting progressive tax reform and re-prioritizing our budget expenditures on the political back-burner while we try to argue for the large-scale domestic programs we want, even though they aren’t politically feasible. It is a hopeless cycle, and yet Democrats have literally chosen to live in this political impotency- for no good reason.

If what Democrats want is large scale new investments in health care, education, and renewable energy, and they want those positions to be politically tenable with the public, then what Democrats need to be fighting for right now is progressive tax reform and an entirely re-worked budget that shifts spending towards the programs that match our values. A Democratic Party that really wants to make progressive change would start by immediately calling for:

1. A shift in taxation off of the middle class by increasing the number of income brackets, removing tax loopholes, reasonably taxing inheritance, and generally moving the tax burden from middle-class suburbanites, and onto wealthy interests and people.
2. An end to corporate welfare, particularly for industries that use the money to cut their workforce or generally harm the health of our nation.
3. A shift of our budget priorities, away from a massive military industrial complex, and towards the bread and butter needs of our people at home.

The net effect of making this the liberal economic agenda is that we would free up more dollars for domestic policy programs, without a net massive tax increase that is easy for the right-wing to attack in an effort to win the argument without winning the merits. It would give Democrats some more serious street-cred on being good stewards of tax dollars, but also give Democrats some actual tax dollars to work with in a hypothetical future Congressional majority where we have a shot to re-write existing domestic programs, and create the ones that our activists constantly pine for.

In very rough terms, about a third of federal budget dollars goes towards discretionary domestic programs, while another third goes towards mandatory spending dollars. This leaves Democrats strapped for the dollars to make the bold change they promise the electorate, and forces them to make deals and cut corners that undermine their political argument. This is simply unworkable.

Activists don’t like to hear about pragmatism or strategy all that much, it’s a lot less fun than talking about the grand plans we have. Unlike the right-wing, we want to do things with government, not just tear it all down, and that is a much more difficult task. If the left wants to go bold, and make transformational change, we need to take a good look at the nuts and bolts, and figure out how to make things work better. We have to be the “smart” party, and stop ceding the important work of deciding how the government works to the people on the other side who don’t want it to work. We have to be smart. We have to think three steps at a time. We have to be bold. Mostly, we have to realize that government can’t do all the big, bold things that we want, because of politics, until we make government work again. That must be our immediate agenda.