One lesson from Tuesday’s election is clear: Democrats failed to present a compelling economic vision for the working class, and we lost because of it. To come back, we must speak to the anger of families who have been shafted by our economic system and offer surgical solutions to remedy them instead of glib slogans that could have been generated by ChatGPT.
We need a New Economic Deal.
For too long, we’ve failed to listen to or truly get people’s anger and pain about falling behind. Americans are hurting because the governing class watched as their jobs and industries went overseas, corporations engaged in stock buybacks and jacked up executive pay, and globalization and automation hollowed out local communities. Profits in the manufacturing sector have been cut in half while Wall Street profits have doubled in the past few decades. In recent years, thousands of storefronts have gone empty and inflation has spiraled the cost of rent, gas, and child care.
Here’s the harsh truth: Our party does remember rural and factory towns — when election time rolls around, as constituency groups to be won over by packaging. But Americans can see through that. Let’s improve the Democratic product instead of just chasing the customers.
Advertisement
Democrats need to speak every day about a vision for our nation centered on manufacturing, apprenticeships, and high-paying jobs in places left out of modern prosperity. We need to spend the next years in these communities, listening to their fears, pain, and hopes. It’s not just about policy or legislation but about telling a vivid story again and again that makes people feel seen and heard.
Advertisement
Economic development and revitalization will look different depending on the history of an area and the skill sets of those who live there. For Johnstown, Pa., that means building modern iron and steel plants to replace the ones that moved overseas. For Orangeburg, S.C., it means investing in Black talent and connecting tech companies with historically Black colleges and universities. For Jefferson, Iowa, it may mean creating a program at Des Moines Community College to credential students in AI and tech that they can use for good jobs in agriculture and retail.
President Biden and Congress did a lot to try to boost manufacturing. But just passing good legislation is not sufficient if it does not renew people’s hope about their family’s and community’s prospects.
Consider the Chips and Science Act of 2022, which I coauthored. The reality is that the money went to places that already had significant economic activity, like Columbus, Ohio, rather than the ones most in need of development. There was no targeted timeline for factories getting built, and the initiative was not woven into a larger vision for building America’s future. We failed to convince Americans that the Democratic Party spent morning, afternoon, and evening figuring out how to reindustrialize places like Galesburg, Ill.; Anderson, Ind.; and Downriver Michigan.
We also failed to center the empowerment of workers in our campaign message. We should be screaming from the rooftop that workers must receive higher wages and some equity or stock ownership in modern economic production, given the increase in their productivity. Electricians, machinists, and autoworkers making things should be able to build wealth tied to a company’s performance like the C-suite executives.
Advertisement
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal wasn’t just focused on good jobs and fairness for workers. It addressed basic needs for families, including building a national network of public child care centers. President Harry Truman ended that program despite fierce pushback.
I recently heard about a 37-year-old man in Pennsylvania who voiced his frustration about day care costing $16,000 a year. That matches the national average. I have introduced legislation to cap the cost of child care at just $10 a day for families earning under $250,000 while paying child care workers a living wage.
It would be an $80 billion investment, and it would send a clear message: Enough with convoluted plans and vague messaging. The cost of child care is too high, and we can change that. Democrats need to speak in plain language about what we will do for people across the board for housing, health care, education, and protecting Social Security.
A New Economic Deal will also demand the political courage to take on a system rigged against working people. Americans are sick and tired of the corruption in Washington. Democrats should run on a political reform plan to ban stock trading for members of Congress, to ban all PAC and lobbyist money, to have term limits for members of Congress and Supreme Court justices, to ban members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists, and to establish a code of ethics for the Supreme Court.
And, let us be honest, for our economic message to be heard, we must show common sense on issues of crime and the safety of families and not shame or cancel those who may have honest disagreements with us on a particular social issue.
Advertisement
As I watched the results from this election roll in, I thought of something by John Updike that I read when I was growing up in Bucks County, Pa. In Updike’s 1981 book “Rabbit Is Rich,” the character Harry Angstrom bemoaned: “I think it’s a helluva world we’re coming to, where a young person like yourselves can’t afford to buy a car or own a home. If you can’t get your foot on even the bottom rung of a society geared like this, people are going to lose faith in the system.”
Alas, this is more true for American families today than it was then. Our first step is simply acknowledging that reality. Our political comeback will depend on whether we have the imagination and courage to offer more than focus-group-tested platitudes and do something to reverse this decline.
A substantive vision for economic renewal is our best hope to achieve the healing and reconciliation that our nation will increasingly crave after a decade of division.
Ro Khanna is a Democratic US representative from Silicon Valley.