I recently received a mailing from the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee promoting the “House Democrats’ Project 2026 Agenda.” The letter included a list of what Democrats hoped to do if they took back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 elections.
In addition to fighting back against the Republican’s 2025 Agenda, Democrats promise to do the following:
- Protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
- Strengthen environmental protection laws
- Protect reproductive freedom
- Expose and block attacks on voting rights
- Strengthen gun safety measures
- Advance racial equality and civil rights
These are worthy aims for Democratic legislators, and Americans will be safer, healthier, and happier if Democrats achieve these goals. However, there is at least one very serious and glaring omission to this list.
Where is the statement promising that Democrats will make it their most urgent goal to do everything possible to restore the economic well-being of Americans of all classes, colors, religious beliefs or ethnicities?
After all, isn’t a promise to lower inflation in general and grocery prices in particular what helped Trump win the presidency? Why aren’t Democrats putting primary focus on this bread and butter (literally) issue, without ignoring the other worthwhile issues on their list?
The vindictive behaviors of President Trump as well as many of his public pronouncements, such as his United Nations speech last month, are embarrassing, ignorant, and a danger to Americans and our friends (or former friends) abroad.
And since journalists, like all of us, are attracted to “bright shiny objects,” we have focused our energy on Trump’s flaws – and this allowed him to distract our attention from more important underlying issues.
And the gap between the rich and the rest of us is the most important of these issues.
In 2024, the top 50% of American households controlled 98% of the nation’s wealth and the top 1% controlled 38%. The bottom 50% controlled 2.5% of national wealth.
For decades, this gap has been growing, and neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have taken significant steps to narrow it. That is one reason Donald Trump was elected.
We have tax laws favoring the rich, allowing them to pass down wealth while the poor are often denied loans which could help them buy homes and pass property (wealth) to their children. Black and Latino families are disproportionately poor. Currently 11.5% of Americans live in poverty (www.debt.org).
The Democratic Party has lost voters by not addressing this growing economic disparity. Meanwhile, Republicans (who favor the rich) distracted voters from their economic plight with cultural issues. Trump, sensing the importance of the economy, used rough language and lies to convince working-class voters that he understood their pain and thereby got their votes last November.
If they wish to win elections again, Democrats must return to what used to be their base, the middle and working-class Americans who are still being exploited by the rich. Democrats need to remember the millions of “ill-fed and ill-housed” Americans that Franklin Roosevelt referred to in his first inaugural address in 1933.
In 1982, when presidential candidate Bill Clinton asked political advisor James Carville what was the most important issue, Carville reportedly told Clinton “It’s the economy, stupid.” That is even more true today.
Trump’s base, his MAGA supporters, may desert him when their medical care and ability to feed their families are threatened by cuts to Medicaid and a tariff policy that could lead to higher inflation and even job loss during a recession. Republican economic policies increase the national debt and push middle-class families into poverty. The American dream of upward mobility is disappearing.
Republicans have benefited from a Democratic loss of interest in people in working-class Americans. Economic inequality leads to polarization as much as the cultural issues do. And Trump and the Project 2025 gang are still encouraging us to hate each other.
Now is the time to replace that hate with hope, and elect Democrats who will rebuild an economy that works for ALL of us.
--30--
Comments
