In an interview in today’s NYT, Elissa Slotkin argues that the Democrats failed to understand how angry the public was about the economy and didn’t have a persuasive argument for change. As I’ve noted many times, however, Joe Biden did have an ambitious plan to make fundamental changes to the economy for the benefit of workers in 2020, but it failed in the face of inflation, intolerably slow implementation, bad salesmanship, and a lack of votes in the Senate. The Democrats could not run as change agents in 2024 because their plan for change had already run aground. What does this mean for next time?
It will be even harder to accomplish major reforms after 2028 than it was after 2020 because the debt and the cost of money have gone up significantly in the interim. That means a progressive plan to expand the welfare state will have to be funded by major tax increases, and not just on the very wealthy, to be plausible. The alternative will be to push the lower cost abundance agenda and downplay wealth redistribution; that was the model used successfully by the Labour Party last year. Getting rid of the Trump tariffs will, of course, be the centerpiece of the plan.
Will the electorate be willing to accept tax increases in exchange for additional economic security? We’ll find out in 2028; it won’t be necessary to talk about the tradeoff in 2026.