Francis Fukuyama: Paths to Depolarization
The Democratic Party has completely lost its bearings. It transformed from being a pro-union, center-left party in the middle of the 20th century into a &quot;third way&quot; neoliberal party that is much more well known for its social stances than for any semblance of a cohesive economic policy.<p>The article denigrates Bernie Sanders and &quot;the Squad&quot; as being extremely out of touch with mainstream American political views, but on average 40% of eligible voters do not vote in presidential elections, not to mention midterm elections with their even worse turnout. American adults are disillusioned, and feel that no matter who wins elections, nothing will change -- and to a large extent, this is true! The biggest economic proposals of any candidate in recent memory were the &quot;Medicare for all&quot; proposal from Sanders, and Obama&#x27;s healthcare reform.<p>Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a single-payer healthcare system, rather than Romneycare. Of course the Republicans were going to throw a fit, stomp their feet, and call it socialism -- they&#x27;ve been doing that for decades. Starting from single-payer healthcare would&#x27;ve given the Republicans room to negotiate the bill into something actually bipartisan, but by starting with the furthest-right possible position, all they could do was say no. The desire to pass a bipartisan bill meant only that the Republicans were allowed to criticize the Affordable Care Act as socialism, despite the fact that they themselves had proposed an almost identical measure in the &#x27;90s under Gingrich, and Romney had implemented the same in Massachusetts.<p>Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a New New Deal, rather than the anemic $800 billion that ended up being spent on the Recovery Act. There was so much room for far-reaching infrastructure and green energy spending that just didn&#x27;t get to happen.<p>The Republican party thrives on the government implementing half measures. It is worse to have an underfunded and thereby ineffective government program than it is to have no program at all -- look at the NHS in the U.K., which is a perfect example. The Conservative party removed a huge amount of funding from the NHS, and it began struggling. Wait times have increased, and quality of care has decreased. Now the Conservatives get to use the NHS as an example of an ineffective, inefficient, and failing government program, and are proposing private options to &quot;bolster&quot; it. If they just increased the funding and actually hired people and paid them well, this would be a non-issue.<p>In sum, I think that the Democrats need to show some cohesion and spine for once. They need to come up with a unified economic policy that is well-vetted, and they need to completely ignore Republican criticism, rather than waffling and watering things down. Nothing turns a voter off more than a politician who&#x27;s views are blown about with the winds of opinion -- a simple, strong message that promises to make individuals lives better can be enough. They also need to stop proposing policies that result in large swathes of the population being immediately turned off -- there are nearly 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States -- it is simply not feasible to ban them at this point. What can be accomplished is regulation around the acquisition of firearms and ammunition: universal background checks, classes with meaningful exams, licensing to be able to buy (but not registration of the firearm itself, which plays right into the &quot;gun grabber&quot; fearmongering).<p>When Republicans say &quot;this will mean tax raises!&quot;, the Democrats should respond &quot;no, this will mean the closing of tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to shelter their profits from taxation&quot;.<p>When Republicans say &quot;this is socialism and will take away your freedoms&quot;, the Democrats should respond &quot;this is not socialism -- our European friends have policies that go far beyond these, and they are just as free as we are&quot;.<p>This stuff isn&#x27;t rocket science -- the rest of the developed world has figured out a way for center-left and even left parties to move forward substantive policies that improve the lives of most citizens. The Democrats need to stop cowering and start leading.