Throughout their history, Democrats won national elections and were competitive in most states when they articulated an egalitarian economic vision and advocated laws intended to fulfill it — first only for white Americans but eventually for every citizen. Only programs designed to make life more prosperous, or at least more secure, for ordinary people proved capable of uniting Democrats and winning over enough voters to enable the party to create a governing majority that could last for more than one or two election cycles.
To put political muscle and government funding behind the Constitution’s vow “to promote the general Welfare” has been and remains the best way to unify Democrats and win their candidates enough votes to make possible the creation of a more caring society. Such universal programs as Social Security, the GI Bill and Medicare were popular when a Democratic Congress and Democratic president enacted them, and they have since become impregnable pillars of state policy.
Democrats have seized on opportunities amid crisis before to advance such an agenda. In 1960, John Kennedy won an exceedingly narrow victory on the strength of his charisma and then proposed the most far-reaching reforms since the New Deal, including a civil rights bill. These programs and a slew of others were enacted by Lyndon Johnson, with big majorities in Congress, only after the young president was gunned down on the streets of Dallas. Democrats now have another chance to continue the progressive agenda that Biden, a lifelong centrist, embraced in the White House because he understood the direction in which his party was evolving.
But Democrats will first have to address the reasons why so many people with working-class backgrounds voted twice for Donald Trump and seem ready to do so again. That’s not just members of the white working class who have departed the party in droves in recent decades; polls have shown Trump poised to scoop up working-class Black and Latino voters in potentially historic proportions. Trump and his vice presidential pick JD Vance have eagerly embraced the populist mantle and sought to co-opt some progressive critiques of the free market, even if they’d surely govern in service of plutocrats.
Too often, Democrats have failed to articulate a coherent vision of where to take the nation, apart from tolerating cultural differences and moving toward a greener economy, and neither goal speaks to those who have struggled to make ends meet. With Kamala Harris as their candidate, they have an opportunity to begin to change that image. The danger is that they may believe that the crisis they have gone through can be resolved by shifting candidates without addressing the discontents that roil the nation.