It’s the end of 2021. We’re one year into the Biden-Harris administration and the 2022 midterm elections are about 11 months away (give or take a few days). And the Democrats are in trouble.
Recent polls show the Democrats taking a plunge in support from the general public – or at least those willing to take part in a poll or survey. Much of President Biden’s agenda has been held up at the moment not just by Coupublicans but by two Dems in the Senate (Joe Manchin [WV] and Kyrsten Sinema [AZ]) who’s refusal to support abolishing the filibuster much less anything that could raise taxes for wealthy donors or actually provide concrete support for those people who may need it the most has not only forced Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to scrap key parts of the Build Back Better agenda, but also hurts an already fragile Democratic party majority in both houses of Congress. All of this has the mainstream media predicting the Coupublicans resuming control of at least one house of Congress in the midterms, despite said party refusing to accept the severity of the January 6, 2001 coup attempt or fully deal with very real problems this country still faces.
So what needs to be done? Mainstream pundits in the corporate owned media claim the Dems are in trouble for adopting policies that are supposedly "too far left." They claim this is losing the elusive suburban moderate, citing the recent loss to the Coupubs in the VA Governors Race. However, the far left of the party are the ones fighting hardest to try and get most of Biden's agenda passed. We';re also living in a time when many people are leaving jobs that a lot of them can't afford to quit due to a mix of COVID, not being paid enough, and increasingly untenable working conditions. Add to this a rise in workers strikes with some gaining the most amount of ground since before Reagan fired the air traffic controllers back in 1981.
This is where the Dems need to put their energy and focus. Over the past few decades they've shifted focus from the working class to the upper middle class and the suburbs with mixed success (Bill Clinton's two terms as President is cited though the 1994 Repub counterrevolution was a fairly large slide backwards, for example). It also led them to try and emulate what the Coupublicans used to be, causing them to move even further to the right in the process. As a result, those the Democrats could get as solid voters have gotten overlooked in hopes of gaining Coupub voters who tire of the culture war shtick.
This tends to fail more than they succeed.
So what should the Dems do? They should embrace what's going on and focus on working class issues such as making the minimum wage a living wage, improving access to healthcare (including where it applies to reproductive justice issues), and the like. This, along with making sure we focus on the truth about our history as something to reckon with and make this place better are a couple of things that the establishment democrats should do, not just as a strategy, but because it's the right thing to do.
Will the establishment democrats do this? I wish I could say yes. However, given that both parties in the U.S. listen to wealthy donors way more than actual people I have a fear they'll gladly throw themsleves on a grenade to keep that gravy train flowing while those they're supposed to help suffer. It;s easy for those in power to accept repeatedly losing what they're supposed to get for their voters as long as they make money.
Times are hard now, both in realistic terms as well as politics. The Democrats are in trouble but it isn't terminal. Still, unless they move away from trying to be a slightly less hard right imitation of the Coupubs and become devoted to actually helping those they represent then even abolishing the filibuster (which they should've done months ago) might not help them when all is said and done.
