‘Trump’s Going to Get Re-elected, Isn’t He?’
Voters have reason to worry.
Opinion
Columnist
·
July 16, 2019
I’m struck at how many people have come
up to me recently and said, “Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And in
each case, when I drilled down to ask why, I bumped into the Democratic
presidential debates in June. I think a lot of Americans were shocked by some
of the things they heard there. I was.
I was shocked that so many candidates
in the party whose nominee I was planning to support want to get rid of
the private health insurance covering some 250 million Americans
and have “Medicare for all” instead. I think we should strengthen Obamacare and
eventually add a public option.
I was shocked that so many were ready
to decriminalize illegal entry into our country. I think people should have to
ring the doorbell before they enter my house or my country.
I
was shocked at all those hands raised in support of providing comprehensive
health coverage to undocumented immigrants. I think promises we’ve made to our
fellow Americans should take priority, like to veterans in need of better
health care.
And
I was shocked by how feeble was front-runner Joe Biden’s response to the attack
from Kamala Harris — and to the more extreme ideas promoted by those to his
left.
So, I wasn’t surprised to hear so many
people expressing fear that the racist, divisive, climate-change-denying,
woman-abusing jerk who is our president was going to get re-elected, and was
even seeing his poll numbers rise.
Dear Democrats: This is not
complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying
the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of
the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald
Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the
Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!
But
please, spare me the revolution! It can wait. Win the presidency, hold the
House and narrow the spread in the Senate, and a lot of good things still can
be accomplished. “No,” you say, “the left wants a revolution now!” O.K., I’ll
give the left a revolution now: four more years of Donald Trump.
That will be a revolution.
Four years of Trump feeling validated
in all the crazy stuff he’s done and said. Four years of Trump unburdened by the
need to run for re-election and able to amplify his racism, make Ivanka
secretary of state, appoint even more crackpots to his cabinet and likely get
to name two right-wing Supreme Court justices under the age of 40.
Yes sir, that will be a revolution!
It will be an overthrow of all the
norms, values, rules and institutions that we cherish, that made us who we are
and that have united us in this common project called the United States of
America.
If the fear of that doesn’t motivate
the Democratic Party’s base, then shame on those people. Not all elections are
equal. Some elections are a vote for great changes — like the Great Society.
Others are a vote to save the country. This election is the latter.
That doesn’t mean a Democratic
candidate should stand for nothing, just keep it simple: Focus on building
national unity and good jobs.
I say national unity because many
Americans are terrified and troubled by how bitterly divided, and therefore
paralyzed, the country has become. There is an opening for a unifier.
And I say good jobs because when the
wealth of the top 1 percent equals that of the bottom 90 percent, we do have to
redivide the pie. I favor raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to
subsidize universal pre-K education and to reduce the burden of student loans.
Let’s give kids a head start and college grads a fresh start.
But
I’m disturbed that so few of the Democratic candidates don’t also talk
about growing
the pie, let
alone celebrating American entrepreneurs and risk-takers. Where do they think
jobs come from?
The winning message is to double down
on redividing the pie in ways that give everyone an opportunity for a
slice while also growing the pie sustainably.
Trump is growing the pie by cannibalizing
the future. He is creating a growth spurt by building up enormous financial and
carbon debts that our kids will pay for.
Democrats should focus on how we create
sustainable wealth and good jobs, which is the American public-private
partnership model: Government enriches the soil and entrepreneurs grow the
companies.
It has always been what’s made us rich,
and we’ve drifted away from it: investing in quality education and basic
scientific research; promulgating the right laws and regulations to incentivize
risk-taking and prevent recklessness and monopolies that can cripple free
markets; encouraging legal immigration of both high-energy and high-I.Q.
foreigners; and building the world’s best enabling infrastructure — ports,
roads, bandwidth and basic social safety nets.
Ask Gina
Raimondo, Rhode Island’s governor, and my kind of Democrat. She was just
elected in 2018 for a second term. In both her elections she had to win a
primary against a more-left Democrat. When Raimondo took office in 2015,
Rhode Island had unemployment near 7 percent, and over 20
percent in some of the building trades.
“When I ran in 2014, there was a temptation to
appeal to particular constituencies — gun safety, choice, all things that I
believe in,” Raimondo recalled. “I resisted that temptation because I felt the
single greatest issue was economic insecurity and people who were afraid, they
were never going to get a job. So, I said there are not three or four issues,
there’s one issue: jobs.” Unemployment in Rhode Island today is about 3.6
percent.
Raimondo has faced a constant refrain
from critics on her left that she is too close to business. “I created an
incentive program for companies to get a tax subsidy if they created jobs that
pay above our state’s median income or jobs in advanced industries,” she noted.
“I have cut small-business taxes two years in a row since 2015. I am not
ashamed of any of that.”
Because, she continued, “I listen to
people every day, and you hear what they are worried about. People say to me,
‘Governor, I just got a real job.’ And I’d ask them, ‘What is a real job?’ And
they’d say, ‘It’s a job where I can support my family with real benefits.’ So I
named our state job-training program ‘Real Jobs Rhode Island.’ “It will be
impossible to “sustain a vibrant democracy with this level of inequality.”
The right answer is to reinvigorate the
key elements of a healthy public-private partnership, said Raimondo:
higher taxes on wealthier people, more investments in affordable housing,
infrastructure and universal pre-K, and empowering the private sector to create
more real jobs — “so that no one who is working full time at any job should
have to collect Medicaid and need food stamps to make ends meet.”
Concluded Raimondo: “I am no apologist
for a brand of capitalism that leads to unsustainable inequality. But I do
believe a more responsible capitalism is necessary for growth. We need to redivide
the pie and grow the pie. I am a ‘pro-growth Democrat.’ I am for growing the
pie as long as everyone has a shot at getting their slice.”
That’s a simple message that can
connect with enough Democrats — as well as independents, moderate Republicans
and suburban women — to win the White House.