Moving the Needle

Today on TAP: We keep winning the arguments. Can we win the politics?

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It’s hard to believe that we founded the Prospect 35 years ago this fall, in 1989. We founded the magazine after the Democrats had lost three straight elections, and the conventional wisdom was that the only thing wrong with liberals was that they weren’t more like conservatives.

We had a very different view. Democrats kept losing because they no longer offered working people a plausible update of the New Deal.

Too much neoliberalism had deprived ordinary people of the economic opportunity and security that Democrats once championed. And the belated, overdue progress on civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights made it harder to hold together a winning coalition with a clear pocketbook message.

More from Robert Kuttner

After 35 years, it’s satisfying that most Democrats have abandoned the neoliberal playbook. The Prospect has had a role in that. So did reality, as we keep pointing out.

The recipe of deregulation, privatization, and corporate globalization has been a failure, except for plutocrats. Joe Biden is the most pro-union president since FDR, and he has abandoned corporate globalization in favor of industrial policies to help working Americans.

But in the 35 years of stagnant living standards for workaday voters who once looked to Democrats, a great deal of damage was done. One result was the emergence of a corrupt potential dictator like Donald Trump as the improbable tribune of popular frustration.

So we need to keep at it, and there is no shortage of things to write and topics to address.

I love doing these short On TAP posts, three times every week. I appreciate that you read them. We keep these free, without a paywall, because we hope they will reach a wide readership and stimulate conversation and constructive change.

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If the republic survives this November, the process of rebuilding a strong democracy and a just economy will still be a struggle. You can count on the Prospect to be part of it.

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