Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
People in the crowd hold up an image of Stacey Abrams as Joe Biden speaks in Atlanta, January 4, 2021, in support of Georgia Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate.
How can Democrats in Washington address the multiple crises facing our nation while also confronting an increasingly radical—and often explicitly anti-democratic—opposition party? Political strategists perhaps inevitably focus on how to change the hearts and minds of millions of devoted Trump supporters. But there’s another approach to building a lasting, governing, pro-democracy majority, one that’s more likely to succeed in the short term. Paradoxically, to defeat Trumpism, Democrats and progressive groups should look to an unexpected source for strategic insight: the conservative movement.
We tend to forget that conservatives recently faced a significant dilemma after Obama’s 2008 election, facing off against seemingly formidable majorities of people of color and progressive whites implacably opposed to their agenda, and ongoing demographic change making the task of winning governing power even harder. But they did not respond to this challenge by trying to win over their opponents. Instead, conservative political activists and elected officials have become extraordinarily adept at passing policies that shift political power and opportunities by changing the deep math of politics. Democrats should of course govern with the aim of solving the array of policy problems our country faces. But they should also learn from the most successful power shifts conservatives have engineered. In particular, Democrats should pursue policies that break power by eroding the sources of strength of the Trump coalition, and bolster power by empowering workers, people of color, women, and immigrants, both at the ballot box and in communities and workplaces.
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A core part of conservative strategy has been explicitly political, including measures to unfairly restrict access to voting for people of color and young people and to reduce the value of their votes through gerrymandering. Conservatives have also reshaped power relationships outside the political arena in ways that have had profound but less widely understood downstream political consequences. Nowhere is this clearer than with labor policy, where conservatives have continued to press judicial and legislative limits on unions. While such reforms fit well with conservatives’ economic philosophy, they have also dramatically weakened the labor movement. With fewer members and dues payments, unions have been less able to turn out voters, costing Democrats votes up and down the ballot. Beyond unions, conservatives have also sought to cripple other organizational bases of progressive power, including reproductive-health providers and community organizing groups, as well as legal service associations representing low-income constituencies.
Conservatives have not only used policy to weaken progressive organizations, but also to bolster the size, resources, and influence of right-leaning constituencies. The massive increase in spending on law enforcement at the federal level since 9/11 has visited massive harms on people of color and immigrants, and engendered deep distrust of government. Less well understood, however, is how the growth of the homeland-security state has generated massive profits for private-sector corporations and created a sprawling government workforce, each of which form a powerful constituency that lobbies for even more policing and enforcement spending and funds right-wing politicians. These constituencies are the heart of the Trump coalition: Research shows that police unions may have played a decisive role in Trump’s 2016 election victory in key states, while corporations that profit from law enforcement contracts such as Palantir and GEO Group are major financiers of anti-democratic politicians, including Trump. Whenever they are in power, conservatives shovel millions of dollars to fossil fuel companies, anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers,” and right-wing churches—all groups that in turn mobilize at the ballot box for Republicans.
The net result of these conservative strategies has been to maximize the potential political power of right-wing constituencies and to dilute the influence of progressive ones. Democrats should learn from each of these design principles. A progressive approach should not copy but rather flip on its head the anti-democratic character of conservative governance. While conservative power shifts tend to demobilize individuals—whether by limiting voice in elections or the economy—progressives ought to commit to broadening civic participation and inclusion. And while conservative power-shifting tends to advantage individuals and businesses with built-in privilege, progressive power-shifting should start with groups who have historically lacked political and economic standing.
What might a Democratic agenda, informed by conservative successes and sober about the challenge to democracy that we face, look like? Progressive leaders and academics have identified dozens of legislative and administrative actions—some high-profile, requiring legislation; others more technical, requiring only executive action—across a broad set of issues, which would alter relations of power and strengthen democracy.
These reforms seek to change the deep math of politics, by expanding who can vote, redirecting the flow of federal money, and encouraging membership in unions and civil-society groups on whose strength Democrats’ fate depends. Just as economists talk about “economic multipliers” when considering the health and output of the economy, we can increase the “progressive political multiplier,” expanding the electoral power of progressives while shrinking the influence of forces that threaten our democracy. Three examples illustrate the strategy we envision.
To defeat Trumpism, Democrats and progressive groups should look to an unexpected source for strategic insight: the conservative movement.
First, Democrats could pursue measures that make the electorate in America look more like the country’s population. Expanding access to the franchise and combating voter suppression, as proposed by the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, should be the first order of business. And even without help from Congress, the new administration could also take dramatic steps to facilitate naturalization of nine million people eligible for citizenship right now, make voter registration at naturalization ceremonies easier, and connect immigrants with civic and labor organizations. Congress should also prioritize a path to citizenship for essential workers, Dreamers, farmworkers, and others as part of economic-recovery legislation. Such steps would, taken together, create millions of new potential voters with a stake in government, and diversify the electorate in competitive states in future elections, which are usually decided by just tens of thousands of votes.
Second, Democrats could dramatically alter budgetary priorities for enforcement. Research shows that federal funding for policing and immigration enforcement dwarfs funding for civil rights enforcement, worker rights, and prosecuting wealthy tax cheats. For example, funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a staggering 57 times greater than that for enforcement of civil rights laws by the Department of Justice, and 36 times greater than for enforcement of minimum-wage and health and safety laws. You don’t have to sign up to “defund the police” to believe that these budget priorities are wrongheaded and immoral.
Perhaps surprising to some, this pattern of disproportionate enforcement funding, which fosters fear in communities of color and lets wealthy people and corporations off the hook, was not much better in the Obama administration than it was under Trump. Changing enforcement priorities would alter the relationship of vulnerable communities to government in profoundly positive ways. It would also undermine the very security-state actors and institutions that threaten democracy.
Third, Democrats could make it easier for workers to join unions and civil-society groups. For example, COVID relief legislation could scale up funding for benefit navigators of the kind that play such a crucial role in implementing the Affordable Care Act. Grants to unions, community organizers, and civil rights activists to help connect eligible individuals with government services would help make relief efforts more visible to Americans, ensure that relief actually reaches intended beneficiaries, and strengthen the civil-society groups that engage citizens year-round and motivate them to vote.
Community organizing groups, for instance, could use this funding to ensure vulnerable low-wage workers receive earned benefits, while also helping the organizations reach new members. New research on the one-year refundable child tax credit proposed by President Biden shows that the economic multiplier is 8 to 1, but the political multiplier could be even bigger. If every family that stands to benefit gets outreach from a trusted organization about the new credit, that same constituency of millions of people can be mobilized to force Congress to make the change permanent next year.
Changing enforcement priorities would alter the relationship of vulnerable communities to government in profoundly positive ways.
Jerry Taylor, one of the master architects of the right wing’s strategy to depower the left, has written about his shock at the contrast between liberal and conservative approaches to governance: “Too many liberals seem to think that good ideas sell themselves, and that the political terrain is far more conducive to their agendas than it actually is. They assume political power the same way one might assume a can opener … Regardless of what the campaign that brought them into office was about, conservatives invariably attend to policy initiatives designed to cripple Democratic power … Democrats, on the other hand, rarely spend political capital on these matters.”
While power-shifting has not been standard practice for recent Democratic administrations, there is an older tradition in earlier eras of progressive reform. Facing record-high levels of inequality, a catastrophic economic downturn, and boisterous worker organizing, the Roosevelt administration passed the National Labor Relations Act, intended to boost worker organization and check corporate clout. Three decades later, in response to movement pressure, the civil rights and Great Society legislation passed by President Lyndon Johnson offered new rights and federal funds to Black communities to challenge long-standing racist policies and practices. More recently, Stacey Abrams brilliantly brought a progressive multiplier to bear in politics that changed the electoral math in Georgia and delivered the Senate to Democrats. She points out that “Demography is not destiny; it is opportunity.”
Political math is just as important as economic math. If Democrats nationally are to meet the challenges of the current moment—and rebuild democracy in the face of a radical, anti-democratic right—they will need to use their window of governing power with precisely that kind of discipline and sobriety.
