A New Way Forward

A different path -- perhaps a third one

Political movements are built on simple stories.

The ascendant Trumpian Right offers one we know all too well. Mass immigration, they claim, has driven up costs, lowered wages, spiked crime, and eroded our national identity. Our country is being exploited by unfair trade deals and foreign aid schemes. As out-of-touch, left-wing elites at the highest echelons of our government and social institutions are using them to push a radical, harmful agenda. The result is a society in decline—one in desperate need of a savior, specifically a spray-tanned billionaire from New York.

The Left also has a simple story of politics. Corporate greed, they argue, has driven growing inequality, environmental degradation, and worker exploitation, amongst a variety of other social ills. In the face of these injustices, the government has failed, having been co-opted by the wealthy to serve their interests at the expense of the public good. This perversion of state power, they contend, has contributed to everything from police brutality to the failed war on drugs to unnecessary foreign entanglements. Their solution is a mass working-class movement to retake government, raise taxes on the rich, tighten regulations on businesses, expand public ownership of assets and services, strengthen unions, and move incrementally towards a society where power is distributed more equally and democratically.

In the face of these two options, I must admit that I am unsatisfied. The Right is clearly wrong. Their anti-immigration hysteria rests on little other than cherry-picked anecdotes and the factless ramblings of their leader. While they correctly note our immigration system is disorderly and the asylum process is broken, immigrants are simply not responsible for stagnant real wages, crime, cultural discord, or any manner of the other things that Right scapegoats them for. Mass deportations are disastrous, and tariffs are self-sabotaging. Foreign aid, which accounts for less than 2% of the federal budget, is hardly the culprit for our national woes. Although some institutions are indeed controlled by out-of-touch elites, they are not part of some centralized cabal orchestrating absurd plots like controlling birthrates, promoting a "great replacement," or brainwashing children into being LGBTQ.

The leftist perspective, while less egregiously flawed, also has some issues. Its reductivism is problematic. Most societal problems cannot be reduced to greed or some endlessly vague concept of "capitalism." Contrary to their frequent claims, economic conditions have improved for most Americans over recent decades. While the American social safety net could be fruitfully expanded, this should be done thoughtfully. Government subsidies risk distorting economic behavior and come with real fiscal and economic consequences. Wealth and high investment taxes are growth-inhibiting and generate limited revenue. Spending hundreds of billions annually on public housing won't resolve the housing crisis if such projects become entangled in the same red tape and bureaucratic inefficiency already fueling the crisis. Price controls create shortages. Not all unions do exclusively good things; some make it their priority to oppose productivity-enhancing automation—an approach deserving of skepticism.

The government has indeed been hijacked, but not by a monolithic wealthy class. It has fallen prey to a myriad of corrupting influences that redirect policy away from the public good. Industry groups have fought to entrench harmful regulations like the Jones Act, which stifles competition and raises consumer costs. Professional associations have fought to legally limit the number of people who enter their industry with licensing restrictions and labor standards boards. Special lobbies have rid the tax code with a myriad of breaks and loopholes, creating a wasteful, byzantine system that inhibits economic activity. Self-serving politicians have driven the deficit to unsustainable levels. Poorly incentivized administrators and economic incumbents have resisted change in the public sector, reducing the quality of public services.

In countless nuanced ways, our government has been corrupted and rendered ineffective—not merely failing to solve problems but also often exacerbating them.

In light of these realities, I believe it is time for a new political movement to emerge in America. The narratives offered by the Right and even, to some extent, the Left are inaccurate and have a tendency to produce policies that hinder progress rather than advance it. We need to offer Americans an alternative—one that speaks to the issues they face, properly attributes blame to these problems' real causes and produces genuine and realistic solutions to these problems.

I believe the Democratic Party can be at the center of this movement. In the face of a sluggish and special-interest-captured government, we can offer Americans an agenda to fix the sickness at the heart of our political system once and for all. One that promises to weed out corruption, restructure institutions to promote effective problem-solving, end anti-competitive and shortage-inducing red tape, slash wasteful corporate welfare, radically streamline the tax code, modernize and digitalize our public services, and reform a federal welfare system that provides far too little income and struggles with problematic poverty traps.

We can add to our critical and important commitments to democracy, gun safety, reproductive freedom, and civil rights, an agenda aimed at truly making the government into the effective servant of the people it should be. But to do so, we will need to get work and do so quickly.

Movements are not born overnight. Successful narratives are ones that get lifted by many voices and are positively received by many ears. If we wish to guide the public towards the real solutions to their problems, we must get started now.

This shall be my focus.

I eagerly hope it will also be—yours.