If the Economy Improves Under Trump, How do Democrats Respond?
Democrats must become the party of the working class again
The cascade of stupidity which pours out from the White House every day has emboldened progressives into believing that their resistance is working. The president’s approval ratings still sag below 40 percent and his obsequious Congress continues to display galling, but predictable, levels of incompetence.
The only governing principle Trump and Co. can seemingly agree upon is tax cuts for the rich, and even then, their methods of achieving that supply-side Holy Grail are extremely unpopular. Their pathetic American Health Care Act, which, remember, they had over seven years to put together, is supported by only one in five Americans. Throw in the fact that Democrats are overperforming in special elections almost everywhere and you can understand why many progressives are beginning to think “there’s something going on here.”
Progressives should not get too haughty, however, as Republicans are overseeing a remarkably positive shift in public opinion around the economy—the most important electoral topic for Americans today.
According to Gallup, we “are less worried about eight specific financial issues” than at this time last year. Some of these eight issues are consequential financial concerns, such as saving enough for retirement and paying monthly bills.
It’s not that these issues have alleviated just a little bit in the minds of voters, either. Some have decreased by over ten percentage points, “falling to their lowest levels in a decade or more.”
The optimism is driven, sadly and unsurprisingly, by partisanship. Nelson Schwartz recently unveiled how party affiliation is now having an “unprecedented” effect on consumer sentiment, noting that since Trump took office, Democrats’ view of the economy worsened by 24 percent, while Republicans’ hopefulness increased by 50 percent.
Even when setting aside partisan lenses, America is still seeing the highest consumer spending average since 2008. “This is the seventh daily spending average of $100 or more that Gallup has recorded for any month over nine years of tracking Americans,” a report in March stated.
But it’s not just Main Street that is feeling better, as Wall Street is also adoring the Trump presidency thus far. The Dow, S&P 500, and the Nasdaq all notched record closes earlier this month—a milestone that will further the public’s optimism about our economic situation.
Progressives will find it tempting to attribute all of these gains under Trump to Obama’s policies—and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. Yet, to diminish these gains in a partisan fashion will do nothing but make the left look obstinate and disconnected from the working class…again.
Democrats should not get angry, either, when Trump owns all of this good economic news. He is merely continuing a time-honored American tradition—we all know how much President Clinton and Obama loved to tout the stock market’s performance under their stewardship.
Rather, progressives need to vilify the asymmetrical returns brought forth by a stock market and economy that has largely benefitted the well-off. This time around, Republicans will be the ones defending the status quo in 2018 and 2020, and even if the economic landscape is improving, my gut tells me it’s still not going to be wholly satisfying for the majority of Americans.
In that scenario, Democrats would have an amazing opportunity to regain their title of the “party of the working class.” They can begin by tapping into people’s anger and criticizing the economic status quo, no matter how improved. They can also explain how the economy grows from a virtuous cycle between higher wages and higher consumption—not from deregulation and tax cuts.
That was essentially the take-home message from DNC Chair, Tom Perez, when he spoke to us on our latest podcast episode. You can listen to the extended interview below.
It appears very likely that no matter how good the economy gets under Trump, the 99 percent will still be left picking up the scraps. Knowing this, Democrats must spend the next four years appreciating people’s frustrations and offering a proactive strategy to help those outside of the upper echelons.
Thomas Edsall at the NYT recently provided a similar prescription, arguing the more Democrats abandon “the moral imperative to represent the interests of the less well off of all races and ethnicities, the more it risks a repetition of the electoral disaster of 2016 in 2018, 2020 and beyond.”
If Perez’s interview with us is any indication, the DNC seems to be aware of this strategy. In these troubling times, that should give progressives a little bit of hope.
