We are not even two weeks from the government shutdown, and the public conversation on the matter has fled the building. This shows, no matter what you believe, there’s a simple truth. The shutdown will have zero lasting consequence for next year’s midterms. The only thing that will persevere is economic pain. And that’s exactly why Democrats won on Nov. 4.
Zohran Mamdani, Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill — even down-ballot Georgia Democrats — all won with soaring margins because the people are pissed. And the people always point their anger at the party in charge. Rent is out of control. Young people can’t afford homes or pay student debt. We’re living through the greatest economic inequality since the Roaring Twenties.
President Trump has done nothing to curb the cost of what it requires to take even a breath in America today, the centerpiece promise of his 2024 campaign. The people are revolting, and they have been for some time.
This offers Democrats the greatest gift you can have in American politics: a second chance. I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.
It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is our only way out of the abyss.
Just as we did in 2018 and even in 2022, it’s all but certain that Democrats will turn out urban and suburban voters in the midterms, specifically the kind of people who vote regularly. At this point, it’s a damn near guarantee for our party, and we must continue to surge these voters. What we must also do is build a platform that helps us permanently uproot the Republican advantage in more rural regions. This can be done only with good old-fashioned economic populism, both in message and measure.
Just as it was for the Mamdani campaign, raging against the rigged, screwed-up, morally bankrupt system that gave us the cost of living crisis must be the centerpiece of every Democratic campaign in America. Unless you’re the top 1 percent, this touches everybody. Even lifelong Republicans know this economy isn’t working.
We have to present ourselves as adamantly, even angrily, opposing the system that is preventing younger rural voters from buying homes, jacking up utility bills and keeping grocery prices at astronomical levels. It is vital that Democrats, with some big ol’ cojones, rail against the unjust economic system that has created these conditions. Otherwise, we will continue to be viewed as part of it.
For this to work, we can’t get sidetracked on our message. The Republican Party’s greatest weapon has always been its uncanny ability to turn us against one another. It cannot be said enough: The era of performative woke politics from 2020 to 2024 has left a lasting stain on our brand, particularly with rural voters and male voters. The term Latinx was despised even by many Latino people. Calling folks “BIPOC” should have never been a thing. “Defund the police” was a terrible idea. Polling shows that nearly 70 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party is “out of touch” and that it is more interested in social issues than economic ones.
We can no longer be a party with a whiff of moral absolutism. We can correct this only by looking toward the future, always, in every situation possible, and pivoting to a form of economic rage as our response.
With all this rage, we must also have a bold, simple policy plan — one that every American can understand. In the richest country in the history of our planet, we should not fear raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, which had a 74 percent approval rating in 2023. We should not fear an America with free public college tuition, which 63 percent of U.S. adults favored in a 2021 poll. When 62 percent of Americans say their electricity or gas bills have increased in the past year and 80 percent feel powerless to control their utility costs, we should not fear the idea of expanding rural broadband as a public utility. Or when 70 percent of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal child care a public good. And darn it, we should not fear that running on a platform of seismic economic scale will cost us a general election. We’ve already lost enough of them by being afraid to try. The era of half-baked political policy is over.
If you’re a student of history, the French Revolution is in the American wind. While the stock market soars, Mr. Trump and decades of corrupt and morally bankrupt Republican economic agendas have splintered the very heart of the American economy. The few are getting vastly richer while a crushing tide drowns the many. Yet even as Mr. Trump’s approval sinks to a low point of his second term, Republicans continue to place their faith in an economy built on pillars of sand, while the people scrape by day after day. This can change. It’s time we as a party do, too.
Le peuple se lève.
James Carville is a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s in 1992, and a consultant to American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post Carville: How About a Sweeping, Aggressive, Unvarnished Platform of Pure Economic Rage appeared first on New York Times.
