After the Morning After

First, an admission: I have more questions than answers about what just happened to our country. What I know pales in comparison to what I don’t. I do have a few strong beliefs, however, based on where visible bread crumbs lead me.

I don’t believe for a second that half the voting population chose to join a cult—wittingly or unwittingly—or that half of voters were eagerly awaiting the earliest opportunity to bring an American version of Hitler to power. I believe that when presented a choice between a horribly flawed something and much of nothing, a frustrated majority opted for something.

The Democratic Party faces a reckoning whether it likes it or not. The party knows what it is against but either doesn’t know or won’t say what it’s for. It either lacks the imagination needed to conjure a vision of where America should head and what our country has the potential to become, or lacks the courage to proclaim it.

With America’s working class feeling insecure, vulnerable and forgotten, the best Democrats could do was a nebulous offer to create an “opportunity economy.” Workers don’t want a vague promise of opportunity, they want to know that if they keep putting in an honest day’s work, they’ll be able to afford to buy a home, raise a family, get their kids good schooling, see a doctor when a loved one falls ill. Work used to make those things readily obtainable, doesn’t anymore. An opportunity economy doesn’t cut it. Economic justice is needed.

A bargain has to be struck with American workers. Work hard, you have a roof over your head, food on the table. Work hard, your kids get the education they need to succeed in tomorrow’s America without having to dig out from underneath an avalanche of debt. Work hard, you get medical care when you’re sick. Work hard, you’re looked after when you can’t work anymore.

Democrats struck these kinds of bargains in yesteryear’s America. They created Social Security, Medicare, the GI Bill and so much more. Then they stopped. Stopped striking bargains, stopped thinking about how to maintain economic security in coming years as the structure of American society continues evolving and the nation’s economy keeps radically transforming. Democrats have settled for being a status quo party, defending past achievements like Social Security and Medicare but not bothering to innovate to meet ever-changing needs.

There was a time when one wage could support an entire family. Not anymore. There was a time when a sole breadwinner furnished the income and a homemaker looked after the kids. That doesn’t work today. It takes two incomes—or three, or four—to have any shot at the American Dream.

Our K-12 education system was created when there was one breadwinner and one homemaker, when a high school diploma was enough to get family-supporting employment. That system isn’t enough today. Those high school diplomas, once tickets to the middle class, no longer are, not in the digital age, not with AI and robots taking over. Forget putting anything aside for retirement, try making two working-class incomes stretch to pay a mortgage, day care expenses and doctor bills with enough left for groceries and utilities. Education beyond high school is more necessity than luxury now, but it’s unaffordable for too many. In today’s world, the working class needs that old K-12 system to evolve, supporting families by caring for kids starting at infancy and continuing for at least 14 years after kindergarten.

Workers need and deserve a national health insurance program. Democrats, take a stand, for crying out loud. Take the current patchwork—Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, Obamacare, costlier and costlier private insurance—streamline it, call it Americare or something along those lines, give hard-working Americans true health security. Opponents will say it’s socialized medicine, but surely you must’ve noticed by now that every other industrialized country in the world has managed to make it work.

There’s a housing crisis out there. Democrats, do something dramatic. New low-interest mortgages, downpayment assistance, bigger-than-ever tax breaks for first-time homeowners and renters, home loan guarantees to stave off foreclosures, I don’t know what else, get creative.

Do something more than endeavoring to hold on to past gains. You’ll be called socialists if you do, but surely you must’ve noticed by now that when you stand for next to nothing, jabbering about maybe eventually getting around to trying to bring about an opportunity economy, you get called socialists anyway.

Democrats, face it, you’ve lost America’s working class. But workers do need you. Need you to show some nerve.