The 2024 election left Democrats with three fundamental questions. First, what is the party “about” (i.e., what are our core principles)? Second, how do we explain what we are about (i.e., what is our “brand)?” Third, how do we approach the Trump 2.0 era in a way that matches those core principles and strengthens that brand? In other words, what is our strategy?
The answer to all three starts by recognizing a painful truth: that the crux of President Donald Trump‘s argument was right. It hurts to hear (and to write), because of the sheer awfulness that he brings to nearly everything. But Democrats have to deal with it if we’re going to get our mojo back. And the good news is that it’s not as big a leap as it seems.
The reasoning requires an ultra-brief review of recent economic history.
Trucks are seen transporting containers in Qingdao Port, east China’s Shandong province on Jan. 13.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
In the early 1970s, changes to the post-World War II international monetary system spurred a dramatic increase in international trade. That meant that by the 1980s there was a lot more global competition for U.S.-made goods, which began to depress U.S. wages, particularly for lower-education workers most vulnerable to being undercut by foreign labor.
Two watersheds accelerated the trend. First, the United States entered the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. That directly wiped out about 700,000 mostly manufacturing jobs. The people pushed out found that their new jobs were disproportionately service sector jobs that brought in half as much income. NAFTA also put a broader damper on incomes, driving those still in manufacturing into accepting lower wages.
Critically, it also fueled a dramatic increase in illegal immigration that added downward pressure on pay, particularly for those with lower income to start with.
The second monumental shift came in 2000 when China entered the World Trade Organization. It was the equivalent of throwing dynamite on the economic bonfire, bringing an immediate, dramatic restructuring in the economy. U.S. industrial production abruptly flatlined, and the next two decades saw changes that, according to investment bank J.P. Morgan, suspiciously coincide: “rising manufacturing job losses, falling labor share of gross profits… and rising non-metro poverty rates.”
Taken together, the effect was a slow-motion car crash for low- and medium-income Americans: a vast diversion of wealth that left them with no increase in purchasing power for decades while, according to the Center for American Progress, “the costs of key elements of middle-class security— child care, higher education, health care, housing, and retirement—rose by more than $10,000.” Amid that dire economic squeeze, measures of pain have risen dramatically, including soaring drug use, suicides, and a doubling of mental health distress.
Piling insult on injury, the overall economy has grown by more than $8 trillion since 2000 (all that added trade does drive GDP growth, largely through consumption of lower-cost imported goods). Where has all the money gone, if not to the American middle and working class? Almost entirely to people in the wealthiest top 10 percent. From 1979-2013, low-wage workers saw their real wages drop 5 percent, the middle-class stagnated, but those with very high wages saw a 41 percent increase.
So, you can see why so many American voters are angry; why they have been so receptive to “change” messages from both parties, open to arguments that the standard economic consensus on trade might be wrong, and dismissive of all that “good” economic news from the Biden White House about job gains and GDP growth, since more pay is a bigger concern than finding a job and economic growth seems like an obnoxious reminder that other people are riding high while you’re flailing.
Is it a surprise that 2011 saw the Occupy Wall Street eruption of outrage against the concentration of wealth among the “top 1 percent?” Or that 2016 brought a shockingly successful insurgency from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), with his jeremiads against the gaudy excess of the “millionaires and billionaires?”
And is it really any wonder that Trump’s core message about American suffering —”For years, Americans have watched as our country has been stripped of our jobs and stripped of our wealth”— found such a passionate, receptive audience?
Of course not, especially when it bore more than a passing resemblance to the kind of message that was animating the left, and most especially when there was a grain of truth in the idea that immigrants were having an effect on jobs and wages for many American workers, and a whole bushel of truth in the charge that unfair competition from China was a major cause of economic distress for so many.
That basic economic story—immigration and high cost of living were the two issues that dominated the last election—has been the hidden engine driving our politics. Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that over the past 20 years, congressional districts that have more exposure to the effects of trade showed a distinct pattern: if they were majority white or Republican to start with, they moved further right, but if they were majority-minority or Democratic at the outset, they moved further left. American economic distress is driving our parties apart and our voters together.
But that’s been hard for Democrats to wrap their heads around, because of course, Trump.
The core Trump economic theme which shares so much DNA with old-school liberalism is buried underneath a noxious layer of hatred, lawlessness, violence, lying, and incoherence. When he ties his economic message to immigration it bears the original sin of his racism, when he points to China his ham-handed proposals reek of stupidity. Trump is a reverse Trojan Horse: a shred of reason inside a thick armor of malignancy.
So, here’s a suggestion for Democrats. Accept the core, reject the packaging. Recognize that the reason that Trump’s basic argument feels like it has so much merit is that he stole it from our forebears. Let’s take it back.
We’ve somehow gotten sticky-brained about defending unconstrained immigration because of genuine humanitarian concern, combined with more than a dash of political calculus based on the stale political theory that identity-based appeals work (they don’t) and Latinos favor lax immigration policies (nope). We’ve somehow gotten mired in the economic thinking of the late 1990s that increased globalization is an unfettered good. Well, it is if you’re tech bro who spent the mid-2010s prattling about the wonders of the blockchain and the early 2020s agog about the wonders of AI.
The answer to Democrats’ three existential questions is to go back to what we once were. Our core principles? Fight for the middle and working class. Our brand? The party that fights for the middle and working class. And our strategy? Co-opt and own the issues that voters care about and expect action on.
Let’s beat Trump to the punch. Lean in by talking relentlessly about a strong border and offering policy to match, without the cruel Trumpian plans for deportation or child separation. Embrace measures like the Laken Riley Act (48 House Democrats and most senators just did). Work with incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—a protégé of Democratic megadonor George Soros after all—to craft a smart, targeted tariff plan instead of Trump’s slapdash nonsense. Grab the middle, and leave Trump to fall into the overreach trap with his excesses.
Would Trump claim some wins? Yes. That will sting. But it’s a lot better than being relegated to the side that voters have shown they hate. And in the long run, these would be Democrats’ wins too, and the path back to what we used to be—and could be again.
Matt Robison is a writer, podcast host, and former congressional staffer.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
This post was originally published on here
