The Democrats won back the House by staying on message, disregarding Trump’s provocations, and giving individual candidates the latitude to depart from the usual party line when necessary. But what now? What kinds of legislation should they be pursuing?
They should have two broad objectives: first, to help Americans who really need the assistance, regardless of party affiliation; and second, to make it easier to win in 2020. This does not particularly mean base mobilization; Trump takes care of that when he throws red meat to his own base on a daily basis. The emphasis should be on identifying measures to win over swing voters, particularly in the Midwest.
The likely swing voters in 2020 are: (a) business people concerned about Trump’s incompetence and corruption and their impacts on the market; (b) elderly voters concerned about potential future GOP entitlement cuts; and (c) white union members in the Rust Belt who supported Trump in 2016, but dislike his fondness for plutocrats.
With that in mind, I would suggest that the leadership emphasize the following:
- While I have serious reservations about increases in the minimum wage on a national level, they make good politics. The GOP’s inevitable refusal to go along with this will be difficult to explain to white workers in 2020. The likely tradeoff in lost votes from business people is probably worth it. $15 per hour on a national level is too high, however; the final number should be substantially less than that.
- Legislation to shore up individual health insurance markets and provide an additional layer of legal protection for people with pre-existing conditions would help average people and might get bipartisan support. If not, it’s another black mark for the GOP, whose candidates lied consistently about their position on pre-existing conditions in the past campaign.
- Rolling back at least the most egregious parts of the Trump tax cut and using the funds to address the deficits in Social Security and Medicare would also put the GOP in a very awkward position. Republicans would be forced to choose between their business and elderly constituents. Who would win that battle? Wouldn’t it be entertaining to find out?