Subject: Re: The Ballroom
What's your plan other than "not Trump" and "no to 'progressivism' (whatever that is)"?

Oh, I think the Democrats' path back to power is probably to more fully embrace populism. That's where the electorate is now.

I'm not sure it will work. Left-wing parties have been losing all over the world, and it will be difficult for the Democrats to credibly shed the perception that they are hostile towards working class folks that don't happen to also share college-educated class values and priorities.

The long term policy path will have to involve predistributive efforts: increasing unionization, fighting technological displacement and preserving employment, and probably a fair amount of protectionism. The long-term strategy path will have to involve building organizations and investing resources in rural purple and light-red areas. Not just running ads during elections, but getting people in rural areas to support and join Democratic groups. They need to build up ground-level support to replace all the organizations that got eroded out over the last several decades.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, our system of government means that the policy measures they need to get in place can only be implemented at the federal level. Meaning they'll have to start winning control of the federal government before they've been able to build back up the unions and engage in predistributive policy-making, so they can lever control of the federal government into rebuilding their base.

What the Democrats lack is a big, super-popular thing to make their centerpiece. And I honestly don't know what that would be. Trump already co-opted protectionism and fighting illegal immigration, and the Democrats are never going to be the law and order party. He has utterly demolished the Democrats' old go-to points on abortion and Social Security/Medicare by dint of not giving a rat's patoot about either of them. So what are the Democrats going to run on as the Big Thing, the high-salience issue, that voters should choose them on? I don't really have a great answer.

The Democrats' problem is that the two Big Things that their college-educated base wanted to do ended up not being very popular: single-payer health care and fighting climate change. The former is unpopular because too many voters don't want to get involuntarily moved into a government system or pay for other people's health care; the latter is unpopular because while voters want to fight climate change, they absolutely do not want to pay anything more than a pittance to do it.

So I would turn the question back to you, PP - what do you think is the biggest thing that Democrats could get behind that you think would be very popular among voters, that they should run on as their policy against the GOP?