How the Trump era is pushing Democrats toward a new clarity
By Paul Waldman May 26 at 2:28 PM
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has announced that if the Democrats take the House in next year’s elections, within the first 100 hours they will pass a bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. While this might seem like just some unimportant posturing — Republicans will probably still have the Senate, and they have the White House, so such a bill would have almost no chance of becoming law — it shows something important that’s going on within the Democratic Party.
To say the party is “moving left” is basically true, but too simplistic. The Trump presidency is pushing Democrats toward a new kind of clarity — but they’re still arguing over what form it will take.
On the minimum wage, Democrats have been steadily upping their demands in the past few years, as Republican resistance to any increase has hardened. It started at $9, then became $10.10, then $12. At the start of the 2016 campaign, Bernie Sanders supported $15, and Hillary Clinton supported $12, but by the end of the race, she was on board with $15 as well (albeit with some caveats). The bill Democrats are now rallying behind would raise it gradually to $15 by 2024, then index it to inflation.
There are a number of ways to interpret this evolution. One is that Democratic politicians are realizing that this is what their voters want. Another is that they’re being pulled to the left by Sanders and his supporters. Another is that they’re realizing that a more robust emphasis on inequality is critical to them winning back the White House. All of which might contain some truth. But they also may be realizing that they need to stop worrying so much about the details — at least when it comes to what they present to the public — and paint in some broad strokes. Instead of agonizing about whether $14 or $15 might maximize income gains while minimizing job losses, they’re just saying: “$15 is what people like? Fine, we’ll go with $15.”
Democrats are never going to stop being concerned about what works — they’re the party of government, after all — but the election of 2016 was the ultimate test of whether they could win by showing that they cared about getting policy right. As Clinton said in her speech at the Democratic convention, “I sweat the details of policy, whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Mich., the number of mental-health facilities in Iowa or the cost of your prescription drugs. Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid, if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president, too.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/05/26/how-the-trump-era-is-pushing-democrats-toward-a-new-clarity/
