Why Are Democrats Defending Al Sharpton?

Why Are Democrats Defending Al Sharpton?

They’ve handed Trump an easy win and yoked themselves to a genuine bigot.

By Glenn C. Loury

Mr. Loury is a professor of economics at Brown University.

·         July 31, 2019

·          

When I first heard that President Trump had gone after the Rev. Al Sharpton — and that Mr. Sharpton had responded in kind — I must admit that I laughed. Are there two New York City hustlers who deserve one another more?

But 48 hours later, I feel differently. That’s thanks to the leading Democratic candidates for president, who have rushed to Mr. Sharpton’s defense, extolling his supposed virtues as a civil-rights paragon while denouncing Mr. Trump’s attack as racist. In doing so, they have, yet again, taken Mr. Trump’s bait, handing him another easy victory while yoking themselves to a genuine bigot.

To read their tweets, you would think Mr. Sharpton was Gandhi-esque. “@TheRevAl has dedicated his life to the fight for justice for all. No amount of racist tweets from the man in the White House will erase that — and we must not let them divide us. I stand with my friend Al Sharpton in calling out these ongoing attacks on people of color,” wrote Elizabeth Warren. Kamala Harris praisedSharpton as a man who has “spent his life fighting for what’s right.” Joe Biden agreed, lauding the reverend as “a champion in the fight for civil rights.”

The problem for Democrats is that Al Sharpton actually is, as Mr. Trump put it on Twitter, “a con man.” And not just a con man: Mr. Sharpton is an ambulance-chasing, anti-Semitic, anti-white race hustler. His history of offensive statements is longer than the current American president’s. And Mr. Sharpton’s worst sin — his blatant incitement to violence during the Crown Heights riots of 1991 — leaves no doubt that he is not a leader, as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio described him, who has spent his years “pushing for justice in the teachings of Dr. King.”

Consider this very partial list of his offenses:

Mr. Sharpton came onto the national scene in 1987, during what is now known as the Tawana Brawley affair. On Nov. 28 of that year, a 15-year-old black girl was found lying in a garbage bag, smeared with feces, with various racial slurs and epithets written in charcoal on her body. She said that she’d been raped by six white men and that two were law-enforcement officials. Mr. Sharpton relentlessly championed her cause. And yet, after seven months of examining police and medical records, a grand jury found “overwhelming evidence” that Ms. Brawley had fabricated her entire story.

Yet Mr. Sharpton proceeded to accuse the prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape. Mr. Sharpton was successfully sued (along with Ms. Brawley’s lawyers, Anthony H. Maddox Jr. and C. Vernon Mason Sr.) for defamation. The jury in this civil action found Mr. Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Mr. Pagones, whose life fell apart as a result of the entire episode. Mr. Sharpton refused to pay his share of damages, which was later paid by a number of his supporters, and he has refused to apologize.

In August 1991, after an automobile accident involving the motorcade of a Hasidic rabbi accidentally killed a black child, riots broke out in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Much of the press portrayed it as a kind of cultural clash between the black and Jewish communities, but it was described accurately by the Times columnist, A.M. Rosenthal, as a “pogrom.”

Following the death of the boy, Gavin Cato, hundreds of black men took to the streets. Within hours of the accident, 20 young black men surrounded Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Australian yeshiva student visiting the United States to conduct research for his doctorate. They stabbed him several times in the back and beat him. He subsequently died of his injuries. The rioting continued for three days, leaving 152 police officers and 38 civilians injured. At least 122 blacks and seven whites were arrested.

Amid this unrest, Mr. Sharpton led hundreds of protesters on a march in front of the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. During his remarks at Gavin Cato’s funeral, at which there was a banner declaring, “Hitler did not do the job,” Mr. Sharpton let loose with a eulogy blaming “the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights,” and insisted that “the issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid.” He continued: “All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffeeklatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds.”

Four years later, Mr. Sharpton incited violence again. In 1995, Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant of a retail property on 125th Street who operated Freddy’s Fashion Mart, sought to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called the Record Shack. Beginning that August, Mr. Sharpton led a series of marches against the planned eviction. Protesters led by Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network picketed outside the store day after day, referring to Jews as “bloodsuckers” and threatening, “We’re going to burn and loot the Jews.” At one point Mr. Sharpton told protesters, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Never mind that the building was actually owned by a black Pentecostal church.

Then, on Dec. 8, 1995, a protester named Roland J. Smith Jr. entered Mr. Harari’s store, told all the black customers to leave, shot several remaining customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation.

Why is a person with such a sordid history — one for which he has offered nothing more than weak apologies for wishing he’d “done more to heal rather than harm” — enjoying the support of such a determinedly antiracist political party? For a few reasons that I can see.

The first is President Barack Obama. Before 2008, Mr. Sharpton had largely remained at the fringe of the Democratic Party. That changed because of Mr. Obama’s candidacy. Mr. Obama was catching flak from his left among African-Americans unhappy about his relative moderation on race-related policies, including his disavowal of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The candidate needed a black “leader” to defend him and deflect criticism. One was found in Mr. Sharpton, who was cultivated by Mr. Obama’s closest aide, Valerie Jarrett.

In short order, Mr. Sharpton became a political kingmaker. In 2011, he got his own show on MSNBC. Between 2009 and 2014 he’d visited the White House 61 times. All of this has left the Democrats joined at the hip with an exemplar of failed black leadership.

The second reason Democrats have rushed to Mr. Sharpton’s defense is South Carolina. Given the critical importance of that state’s early primary election, and the crucial role the black vote is sure to play in that contest, Democrats running for president have had to kiss Mr. Sharpton’s ring — and cover his derrière.

The third, and most powerful, reason is that Mr. Sharpton now has the right enemy: Donald Trump. Democrats seem unable to do two things at once: condemn Mr. Trump and refuse to defend ideas and people that are not worthy of being defended. Instead, anything he criticizes, however plausible that criticism, becomes something they feel compelled to rally behind.

This is a losing strategy. Progressives have been bluffing on the race issue for years now: downplaying black-on-black urban violence, ignoring the polarizing effects of racial identity politics, maintaining a code of silence on the collapse of the black family and more. Mr. Trump knows it.

If Democrats cannot distinguish between Mr. Sharpton’s hucksterism and genuine moral leadership on race and justice in America, I assure you that many moderate voters in battleground states will have no trouble doing so. Shouting “racist” at Mr. Trump, even if there is truth to the accusation, will gain Democrats nothing. The president cannot be further damaged by that epithet. Meantime, he wins votes every time a prominent Democratic politician overreacts to his provocations by defending the indefensible.

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THE MOTHERS OF ALL ENTREPRENEURS - LOOP NORTH NEWS

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The mothers of all entrepreneurs Forget that old argument about nature vs. nurture. It’s way more basic than that. Everyone who gets in the startup game owes a debt to mom. By Howard Tullman 29-Jul-19 – The nature versus nurture debate about whether entrepreneurs are born with a certain unavoidable and inevitable bent or whether they can be built and successfully trained has raged for decades. Having taught and built businesses over the last 50 years – and spending half a decade as the head of Chicago’s startup incubator – it’s obviously a subject that interests me. The opposing arguments are usually framed in terms of determinative genetic tendencies versus the efficacy of academic instruction. The middle ground, where I stand, is that you can’t make me an entrepreneur. But you can make me a much better and more successful entrepreneur – if I’m so constitutionally inclined – by teaching me the tools of the trade. That includes things such as pattern recognition, successive approximation, and iteration. I can tell you without the slightest hesitation that effective mentoring and practical instruction works wonders and builds better businessmen and businesswomen. Of course, if the mentors haven’t been there and done it successfully a few times themselves, then there’s not much hope for a great outcome. I was thinking recently, on the occasion of my departed mother’s birthday (may she rest in peace) that, in all the conversations and throughout all the tomes that have been written on the topic, we’ve consistently failed to acknowledge and give sufficient credit to the role that our parents and other relatives played in our entrepreneurial development process. In fact, to the extent that mom and dad are mentioned at all, in most cases, they’re often regarded as negative influences. There’s typically an undercurrent of “I did it to prove my folks wrong” or “I succeeded in spite of them” or “they showed me exactly what not to do.” As the old joke goes, “Behind every successful entrepreneur stands a surprised mother-in-law.” And, interestingly enough, this behavior seems to be peculiar to – and quite specific to – entrepreneurs. I’ve noticed in hundreds of award ceremonies over the years that, while Broadway actors always thank God and their parents, and Hollywood actors always thank their agents and managers, entrepreneurs never thank much of anyone else except for the mandatory and often pro forma “tip of the hat” to their team. I’m honestly not sure why we find it so hard to share our success. The fact is that our families have a lot more to do with setting the stage and forming the foundation for subsequent success than all the genes or training in the world. Let’s take a moment to give them their due. But first a disclaimer. I realize that today there are many alternative or non-traditional households and parenting situations, including many single-parent homes. That was my situation, for all intents and purposes, for more than half my time growing up. My comments are geared toward the conventional two-parent household and stem from my own experience and broader impressions. For readers otherwise situated, please make the appropriate gender, role, and contribution adjustments as you see fit. I’d start with the most basic idea that our moms are our first coaches. Our dads may eventually teach us to pitch, but it’s our moms who give us the strength, the tools, and the confidence to “pitch” ourselves. To stand tall and to stand up – and/or to get back up when things get rough. No one is born afraid, but while our dads alternatively promise and threaten us with challenges that the world and the future hold for us, it’s our moms who protect and shelter us from the most debilitating of those early, harsh, and often prematurely proffered realities. It turns out that we have a whole lifetime ahead of us to worry about those things. In the short run, dreams are a lot more important than fears. Mothers understand even what their kids often don’t say. And, years down the line, when we look at a new crop of young prospective start-up all-stars, their respective energy, enthusiasm, and passion has a great deal to do with their upbringing. If their moms didn’t give it to them early on, it’s going to be very hard for us to pump up their volume long after the fact. Attitude, early on, has a whole lot to do with altitude in the long run. Mothers are also the primary architects of our people skills. Our dads may be competitive loners and all about measurement and differentiation while our moms are the ones who encourage our diverse talents along with the need for tolerance and teamwork. Fathers are often fiery and fierce while our moms are all about acceptance and forgiveness. Especially for our own faults and failings. While dad may be especially hard to please, you don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. It’s all part of the package. If an entrepreneur’s abundant and often irrational confidence is mainly grounded in a single idea, it’s that he or she always knows that at least one person has their back forever – and that they can always go home again. The last foundational element – true in my case and in so many others where a single parent suffered and stuck it out through so much pain, peril, and heartache – is that nothing prepares you more for the ups and downs, the drama and disappointments, and the day-to-day grind of building a business from scratch than the everyday shining example of a mother’s grit, stamina, and perseverance. And it often takes place in the unrelenting face of undeserved and unwarranted obstacles that life heedlessly throws in her path. It’s her strength, her refusal to become cynical or bitter, and her unconditional and unstoppable love for her family that I will always look to and carry with me. Thanks, mom. Howard Tullman is General Managing Partner for G2T3V, LLC – Investors in Disruptive Innovators, and for Chicago High Tech Investors, LLC. He is also executive director of Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at Illinois Institute of Technology. And the author of You Can’t Win a Race With Your Mouth: And 299 Other Expert Tips from a Lifelong Entrepreneur. By Howard Tullman | Loop North News | h@g2t3v.com Published 29-Jul-19 1:36 AM

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Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman Video on INC. - Why Millies Should Work for Someone Else

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: https://www.inc.com/video/why-every-millennial-should-work-for-someone-smarter-than-them.html

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New INC Magazine Blog Post: The Mothers of All Entrepreneurs

The Mothers of All Entrepreneurs

Forget that old argument about nature vs. nurture. It's way more basic than that. Everyone who gets in the startup game owes a debt to mom.

By Howard Tullman

Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology

@tullman

The "nature versus nurture" debate about whether entrepreneurs are born with a certain unavoidable and inevitable bent or whether they can be "built" and successfully trained has raged on for decades.  Having taught and built businesses over the last 50 years--and spending half a decade as the head of Chicago's startup incubator-- it's obviously a subject that interests me, too. The opposing arguments are usually framed in terms of determinative genetic tendencies (Lady Gaga was, for sure, "Born This Way", versus the efficacy of academic instruction.

The middle ground--where I stand-- is that you can't make me an entrepreneur. But you can make me a much better and more successful entrepreneur, if I'm so constitutionally inclined, by teaching me the tools of the trade. That includes things such as pattern recognition, successive approximation, and iteration. I can tell you without the slightest hesitation that effective mentoring and practical instruction works wonders and builds better businessmen and businesswomen. Of course, if the mentors haven't been there and done it successfully a few times themselves, then there's not much hope for a great outcome.

In any case, I was thinking recently, on the occasion of my departed mother's birthday (may she rest in peace) that, in all the conversations and throughout all the tomes that have been written on the topic, we've consistently failed to acknowledge and give sufficient credit to the role that our parents and other relatives played in our entrepreneurial development process. In fact, to the extent that mom and dad are mentioned at all, in the vast majority of cases, they're often regarded as negative influences. There's typically an undercurrent of "I did it to prove my folks wrong" or I succeeded "in spite of them" or "they showed me exactly what not to do".  As the old joke goes, "Behind every successful entrepreneur stands a surprised mother-in-law". 

And, interestingly enough, this behavior seems to be peculiar to, and quite specific to entrepreneurs. I've noticed in hundreds of award ceremonies over the years that, while Broadway actors always thank God and their parents, and Hollywood actors always thank their agents and managers, entrepreneurs never thank much of anyone else except for the mandatory (and often pro forma) "tip of the hat" to their team. I'm honestly not sure why we find it so hard to share our success. The fact is that our families have a lot more to do with setting the stage and forming the foundation for subsequent success than all the genes or training in the world. Let's take a moment to give them their due.

But first a disclaimer. I realize that today there are many alternative or non-traditional households and parenting situations, including many single-parent homes. That was my situation (for all intents and purposes) for more than half my time growing up. My comments are geared toward the conventional two-parent household and stem from my own experience and broader impressions. For readers otherwise situated, please make the appropriate gender, role and contribution adjustments as you see fit.

I'd start with the most basic idea that our moms are our first coaches. Our dads may eventually teach us to pitch, but it's our moms who give us the strength, the tools and the confidence to "pitch" ourselves. To stand tall and to stand up and/or to get back up when things get rough. No one is born afraid, but while our dads alternatively promise and threaten us with challenges that the world and the future hold for us, it's our moms who protect and shelter us from the most debilitating of those early, harsh, and often prematurely proffered realities.

It turns out that we have a whole lifetime ahead of us to worry about those things. In the short run, dreams are a lot more important than fears. Mothers understand even what their kids often don't say. And, years down the line, when we look at a new crop of young prospective start-up all-stars, their respective energy, enthusiasm and passion has a great deal to do with their upbringing. If their moms didn't give it to them early on, it's gonna be very hard for us to pump up their volume long after the fact. Attitude, early on, has a whole lot to do with altitude in the long run.

Mothers are also the primary architects of our people skills. Our dads may be competitive loners and all about measurement and differentiation while our moms are the ones who encourage our diverse talents along with the need for tolerance and teamwork. Fathers are often fiery and fierce while our moms are all about acceptance and forgiveness. Especially for our own faults and failings. While dad may be especially hard to please, you don't have to deserve your mother's love. It's all part of the package. If an entrepreneur's abundant and often irrational confidence is mainly grounded in a single idea, it's that he or she always knows that at least one person has their back forever. And that they can always go home again.

And the last foundational element - true in my case and in so many others where a single parent suffered and stuck it out through so much pain, peril and heartache - is that nothing prepares you more for the ups and downs, the drama and disappointments, and the day-to-day grind of building a business from scratch than the everyday shining example of a mother's grit, stamina and perseverance. And it often takes place in the unrelenting face of undeserved and unwarranted obstacles that life heedlessly throws in her path. It's her strength, her refusal to become cynical or bitter, and her unconditional and unstoppable love for her family that I will always look to and carry with me. Thanks, Mom. 

Why entrepreneurs – and politicians – should embrace complexity

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Why entrepreneurs – and politicians – should embrace complexity Simple is seductive, but not always smart. By Howard Tullman 22-Jul-19 – There’s a lot to be said for simplicity. For many years, the rule of Occam’s Razor obtained, and it dictated, that the simplest answer was most likely to be the best. Short, sweet, and to the point. I’m certainly on record as being an advocate of brevity. But this is obviously not the be-all and end-all approach for every situation. Contrary to the comics, most movies, and public opinion in general, in the real world, not everything in our lives – or every problem – has a clear-cut solution. Some conflicts and situations aren’t likely to ever be solved even over substantial periods of time and despite the best-intentioned efforts of many. They’re basically facts of life that we’re stuck with for better or worse. One thing’s for certain, though – it’s clear that our lives and our choices have become a lot grayer these days and very little in them is black and white. This modest fact would seem to be especially valuable for our presidents, politicians, and sundry media blowhards to remember as they fire off their latest knee-jerk responses to provocative tweets along with their pithy pronouncements and their startlingly “simple” solutions. Watching the latest Presidential debates, you could readily come to believe that there is often a neat and simple answer for any problem, but in fact, such makeshift solutions – which distract us from addressing the real problems – are also almost always wrong. The truth as far as choices goes is that only Thomas “take it or leave it” Hobson always got it right. And, for entrepreneurs, exercising at least a little bit of caution is especially critical when you’re talking about making tough business choices and complicated decisions. Today, in just about everything we do, we hope to find a quick and straightforward reply to whatever we’re being asked and/or a timely and elegant solution for the problems we’re facing. This isn’t so much a product of sheer laziness or a lack of intellectual curiosity as it is another symptom of the constant time constraints we now live with and the resultant hurry sickness that we’re all victims of to some extent. It’s our “ready, fire, aim” world and it’s bad for smart decision-making and bad for building your business. Sadly, we’ve come to believe – especially in the startup world – that almost any response is better than waiting to act until you’ve gathered at least some of the critical facts. We hear that research is the old way of doing things – due diligence, homework of any kind, or trying to find the customer’s real problem before starting on the solution – is so yesterday. I get that it’s hard work, that you can’t figure it out sitting on your ass, that it all takes too much time, and that things around you are moving so very fast. But that doesn’t justify settling for half an answer or not working the problem as fully as required. It’s so easy to say that it’s better to get right out there, be super-lean, launch something, and just start the ball rolling – hopefully downhill. You can always course-correct and iterate along the way. But, just as likely, you can also become roadkill. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going if you’re on the wrong road and headed in the wrong direction. Looking for the solution without first listening to – and understanding – the problem is like working blindfolded in the dark. Some things just take time to do right. And every entrepreneur today is also told that any decision – right or wrong – is better than not deciding at all. It’s all about speed which drives and dictates everything else today. But the real goal isn’t to make the fastest decisions; it’s to make the correct decisions and sometimes that means holding up a bit and taking the necessary steps to assemble the required information so you can make a thoughtful decision. There’s no job or case analysis that’s so simple that it can’t be done wrong if you’re not careful and a little patient. In our busy lives, there’s constant pressure to reduce the consideration sets and to simplify the choices – especially if you’re trying to “manage up” to a busy boss – but it’s often a bad strategy because you can’t reduce every challenge down to a simple either/or equation. It would be nice, but the world doesn’t work that way today. With all the data and other resources which we now have, we can dramatically improve the odds of getting to the right answer if we just widen our perspective and take in a few more alternatives. Yes, it’s more complicated and, if you overdo it, too many choices – analysis paralysis – will kill any progress at all, but too narrow a field – and a refusal to ever look outside the silo – leads as often as not to the wrong result. When you’re only offered black or white, you’ll get it wrong around half the time. But when you look at multiple options, the odds of getting it right move smartly in your favor and you’ll be batting .600 plus in no time at all. Howard Tullman is General Managing Partner for G2T3V, LLC – Investors in Disruptive Innovators, and for Chicago High Tech Investors, LLC. He is also executive director of Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at Illinois Institute of Technology. And the author of You Can’t Win a Race With Your Mouth: And 299 Other Expert Tips from a Lifelong Entrepreneur. By Howard Tullman | Loop North News | h@g2t3v.com

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‘Trump’s Going to Get Re-elected, Isn’t He?

‘Trump’s Going to Get Re-elected, Isn’t He?’

Voters have reason to worry.

By Thomas L. Friedman

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.