This One Strange Trick Could Rescue the Economy and Win the Senate
This One Strange Trick Could Rescue the Economy and Win the Senate
Georgia, take note
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Today, we’re going to take a look at the serious issues facing American workers, the economic situation President-Biden will inherit, and how Democrats can win back the mantle of the party of the people while winning the Senate. Plus, lots of news and notes about close elections, marijuana, and campaign strategy!
But first, thank you to GoFundMe donors: Laurence, Jayme, Helen, and Gizem!
The Pandemic and Populism
Winter is coming and Democrats need a plan.
COVID-19 infections are increasing at an exponential rate, states are beginning to shut down again, and Nazi sympathizers just marched in support of a fantasy coup. And yet, leaders in Congress are concerning themselves more with fancy indoor dinner parties than taking any sort of action to protect Americans.
Democrats are supposed to be the party that fights for working people, but their coalition continues to bleed its traditional working-class members as the party’s economic policies shift toward technocratic centrism and uninspiring rhetoric. In order to save the country from what seems like an impending depression, they’ll need to take bold action, and with special elections in Georgia set for early January, Democrats can’t afford to wait until Biden takes office to get started.
The Situation
The baseline economic numbers are sobering, though they might make you want to take up drinking.
According to the Bureau of Labor, there are about 11.6 million unemployed Americans right now. It’s an improvement from the economic nadir that we faced this summer, but the BOL also has a very narrow definition of “unemployed.” The true number of out-of-work Americans is probably closer to 16 or 17 million; if you include those who are underemployed as a result of the virus, it’s at least 30 million Americans who are struggling to hold down a job.
As lockdowns escalate, those numbers should skyrocket, just as they did this past spring and summer. Remember, last April, the country lost 20.7 million jobs and the narrow unemployment rate hit 14.7%.
Beyond the imminent risk of another nosedive, there are other new variables that have entered the equation.
The passage of Proposition 22 in California carved out a narrow labor law exemption for several companies and blew open a major new avenue of exploitation for abusive employers across the country.
The California ballot initiative itself exempted several big gig economy companies from legislation known as AB 5, which requires employers to classify their regular workers as full-time employees and provide them more robust benefits. Uber, Lyft, Postmates, and several other tech companies masquerading as platforms dumped over $200 million into misleading advertisements and public disinformation campaigns to get it over the finish line.
Its passage also creates a terrifying model for other industries nationwide: Drop a chunk of money into a campaign that blankets a state with misleading information and you too can screw over your most vulnerable workers. Uber and Lyft are already promising to replicate the plan in other states.
If there’s a silver lining — and again, I’m grasping here — it’s that many voters who approved of Prop 22 believed that the meager benefits that the companies would offer upon passage were actually an upgrade and preferred by employees. That was only the case because Uber and Lyft refused to comply with AB 5, so technically, a pittance is better than total robbery.
Just look at this blatant collection of lies:
There is likely to be a flurry of lawsuits challenging the legality of Prop 22, especially the part that makes it nearly impossible for the state legislature to override the law. Courts in other states, including Massachusetts and New York, have already called for these companies to compensate regular drivers like employees, though they still refuse to do so.
Elsewhere, progressive policies proved much more popular on the ballot than actual Democrats.
In Florida, voters overwhelmingly chose to pass Amendment 2, which will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026. Democrats, meanwhile, got absolutely creamed in the state. That’s no mere coincidence — as state Rep. Anna Eskamani told us last week, many party members shied away from the initiative during their own campaigns.
In Arizona, voters approved a tax on incomes over $250,000 in order to fund education. Colorado repealed its property tax cap. This summer, Maine authorized bonds for investment in rural broadband and transportation infrastructure, while both Missouri and Oklahoma approved Medicaid expansions.
Perhaps most significantly, four different states voted to legalize recreational marijuana, including the famously blue states of South Dakota and Montana.
Politics and Opportunities
Democrats will need to enact as many economically populist reforms as possible, for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, Biden won the presidency in large part thanks to the grassroots work of activist groups in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. Those groups largely consist of union members and working-class voters — members of UNITE HERE, the powerhouse hospitality workers union, knocked on three million doors in Arizona, Nevada, and Philadelphia alone. And as I learned in conversation with union leaders last week, they have no intention of disarming once Biden takes his oath of office.
“I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is we elect [Democrats] and expect them to do the right thing,” D. Taylor, the International President of UNITE HERE, told me. “We have to continue to organize and push and demand that they do the right thing. I always use a quote by Franklin Roosevelt: ‘I want you to force me to do the right thing.’ In my experience, I think we all made a mistake with the Obama presidency. We expected them to do the right thing. And candidly, they missed a lot of opportunities. So I think we have to continue to hold them accountable and keep on pushing.”
As you might expect, Taylor, whose union is still facing around 85% unemployment due to COVID-19, suggests that Biden focus his energy on ending systemic income inequality.
“I've been walking precincts for 30 years,” he said, “and it is remarkable, the level of increase in poverty over the last several cycles. Income inequality is eating at the fabric of our democracy and what we stand for.”
There are things Biden can do immediately to both show commitment to the labor movement and make tangible changes to help workers, including:
Raise the minimum wage for all federal contractors to $15 an hour and index it for a yearly increase.
Withdraw the Department of Labor’s proposal for independent contractors and instead expand the federal definition of a full-time employee.
Appoint pro-worker members of the National Labor Relations Board and give them a mandate of actually enforcing regulations and laws.
Appoint a union-approved Secretary of Labor (at the very least)
Unfortunately, it will require a Senate majority to pass most of the transformational policies that this country so desperately needs, including Medicare for All (or, in the Biden administration, a public option), the PRO Act (which rewrites labor laws), and a $15/hour minimum wage across the board. A Senate majority will also be required to pass any massive COVID-19 stimulus — a fact that Democrats shouldn’t bemoan, but instead, weaponize.
Mitch McConnell is still pushing his offer of a narrow, “focused” stimulus that would do little to actually help people in any substantive way. It’s becoming a source of frustration to some Republicans, who recognize the tidal wave of disease and despair headed our way. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to flog the same basic bill that they passed months ago.
Both Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia were outrun by Biden by several points, and without Trump on the ballot for them to flog, they could face an even bigger disadvantage in the special election. Instead of running template campaigns about healthcare and the need to give Democrats a majority without offering any specific reason (ugh, who is this supposed to win over or motivate?), they could be running on big promises that put Republicans on the defensive.
If they were savvy, Democrats in the House of Representatives would put together a massive stimulus bill that includes another unemployment extension and expansion, even bigger stimulus checks, money to ward off layoffs in strapped cities and states, and relief for small businesses. Then they’d press Mitch McConnell to bring it up for a vote in the Senate, daring him to deny relief to the tens of millions of Americans profoundly struggling as their state economies continue to shut down.
If McConnell blinks, then great! A huge stimulus bill will get passed, offering a lifeline to tens of millions of Americans. Of course, McConnell is more likely to say screw ‘em, which will give Jon Ossoff and Rev. Ralph Warnock the opportunity to turn their Senate races into a referendum on desperately needed economic stimulus for working families. You’ve got to give people a reason to vote for you, and it’s not enough to simply say Democrats need the majority — instead, you’ve got to explain exactly what they’ll get out of it. Activating canvassers and grassroots GOTV groups and giving them a tangible message and offer is imperative.
“I don't understand all this back and forth with moderates and progressives, because when you're at the doors, people want to talk about what applies to them: Their health insurance, are they gonna be able to get a job, or what kind of job they’ll be able to get — all practical stuff,” Taylor said. “I think a lot of this dialogue that's going on right now really shows you people haven't been talking to folks at the doors. People are worried about how they're going to pay rent or for food. Most people want to know what their futures hold and how whoever you're supporting is going to make that a better future.”
I’d also suggest that Ossoff and Warnock make marijuana decriminalization a major part of their respective campaigns. The House passed decriminalization earlier this year but it died in the Senate, so once again, they can sell that a Democratic Senate could lead directly to a universally popular policy. Biden has expressed hesitancy about actually legalizing marijuana, but the political advantage it would create, to say nothing of the criminal justice implications, is too massive to ignore.
To quote Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman: “The big winner in November was legal weed. I say that when you’re to the right of South Dakota on anything, you really need some gut-check time.”
Look at this map — weed is very popular. Georgians haven’t had the opportunity to vote on it and polls suggest it’s overwhelmingly popular in the state.
2020 in a single photo:
Notable News, Notes, and Headlines
North Carolina: State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley is in a back-and-forth, down-to-the-wire race against Republican Justice Paul Newby.
Both justices’ terms are ending this year and Newby made a play for Beasley’s seat as Chief Justice. The lead continues to change hands as counties submit their final vote counts — North Carolina accepted them up to nine days after Election Day so long as they were postmarked by November 3rd — and as of this afternoon, Beasley is up by just 35 votes. There are five counties that still have to report their totals.
The race for attorney general has also yet to be called, though incumbent Democratic AG Josh Stein is currently up by 14,000 votes. That puts him outside the difference at which his Republican opponent could request a recount.
Georgia: Stacey Abrams looks as if she’ll be running for governor of Georgia again in 2022. She didn’t get the support she requested from the Democratic Party during her excruciatingly close run in 2018, but something tells me that she’ll have no problem with resources this time.
The Atlanta Constitution-Journal ran a bunch of voter interviews on Sunday, with one set featuring Trump voters and another platforming Biden voters. The Trump voters interviewed all live in rural Jasper County, and while I hate the genre of “let’s understand Trump voters in Midwestern diners” journalism, I’m very interested in how Democrats could regain a foothold in rural America.
For the most part, respondents acknowledge that Trump is kind of a dick, but that it doesn’t really bother them. Instead, they were largely concerned with the economy, which they believed improved on Trump’s watch — at least until COVID-19, a calamity that they put at the feet of hysterical Democratic shutdowns. They’re also fans of his tough talk on trade, which really does appeal to people outside more cosmopolitan cities and liberal travel enthusiasts.
Of course, there’s also some racism — one woman said she thought Kamala Harris was a secret Muslim, which she said didn’t comport with her value as a Christian.
Democratic in-fighting: Abigail Spanberger famously complained about being a target of GOP attacks that smeared her with progressive activists’ calls to defund the police. And yet…
New York: The Election Night returns looked rough, but thanks to the massive number of absentee ballots cast in the state, it seems as if Democrats could actually gain the required seats in the State Senate to earn a supermajority that will enable them to override Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s vetoes. This will truly bum out party chairman Jay Jacobs, who was quick to blame presumed losses on progressives.
Should the supermajority come through, Democrats will be able to pass a desperately needed wealth tax over Cuomo’s veto. Pretty incredible that this is on the table just one campaign cycle after Republicans held the State Senate (with Cuomo’s blessing).
One More Thing…
This week, Progressives Everywhere surpassed over $5.3 million dollars raised for progressive Democratic candidates and causes. Isn’t that cool?
That said, none of that money goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out there. Not a dime! In fact, it costs me money to do this. So to make this sustainable, I need your help.
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