As Prospect readers have doubtless noticed, we seem to have entered a golden age of breakthrough progressive proposals. Democratic presidential candidates and members of Congress are advancing proposals for universal Medicare, wealth taxes and much more progressive income taxes, full employment, co-determination, more upper-bracket payroll taxes to fund more adequate Social Security payments, and a Green New Deal. Unions and think tanks are promoting a system of collective bargaining that covers all workers in a sector—whether unionized or not. And in California, Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed requiring social media companies that monetize their data to share the proceeds of that monetization with their users.
That which was off the table, or nowhere even near it, is now on.
Historians will doubtless credit Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign for prying open this Overton Window, as they credit Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign for injecting rightwing ideas into the national discourse. They will also surely credit the 2008 financial crash and its long, unequal recovery for moving millions of Americans, particularly millennials, leftward, as they credit the 1929 crash and the ensuing Great Depression for creating the vibrant and powerful left of the 1930s.
As progressives and Democrats view the emerging 2020 Democratic presidential field, it seems to me the most important criterion (in addition to electability) by which to judge the candidates is simply whether they're part of this dynamic. Do they grasp the need for curtailing our plutocracy, which requires not just political reform but serious taxes on wealth such as those that Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed? Do they understand the disaster that shareholder capitalism has visited upon our middle and working classes, and seek to give workers much more power to bargain and steer their own companies? Do they get the need to break up the big Wall Street banks and establish a range of public banking alternatives? Do they understand that creating a healthier America requires moving to a Medicare for All system (which can be done in a multiplicity of ways)? Do they realize that the oncoming threat of catastrophic climate change requires something like the Green New Deal?
Some current presidential candidates (Warren) and some likely to become presidential candidates (Sanders) have checked off most if not all of these boxes; others (Sherrod Brown) have checked off many of them; and others (Kamala Harris) just some. Still others—Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke—are largely missing in action on these issues, which seems a sure way to depress Democratic turnout in November 2020. However, it's early yet.
