Over the weekend, many Americans took to the streets to air their concerns about Trump’s second term—specifically, what they view as his creeping authoritarianism.
Health care is a winning issue, and one of the few issues I agree with the Democrats on. (As the libertarian John Cochrane put it, cross-subsidies are the original sin of healthcare). But even there, I wouldn't trust the current Democratic leadership to create a better healthcare system, even though the bar is shockingly low. It would be like the Green New Deal and turn into graft and six figure jobs to absorb the surplus of elite overproduction.
The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong. The Democrats are like a rural peasant farming community in the developing world (Banfield etc.). As soon as one person starts to get ahead, the community feels threatened and pulls him back to the pack by demanding make-work jobs, "loans", and gifts. The Democrats should be celebrating success and the creation of wealth, but temper that with the realization that although capitalism creates winners, it also creates losers. If AI is going to wipe out a bunch of jobs, let's have programs to ease people through the transition to a new career. (And by the way, does anything reveal the myopia of Democratic central planning that "learn to code" was a thing right up until AI threatened to take away the coding jobs?).
"The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong."
THANK YOU.
I'm going to toss a little 12 step philosophy into the convo. One of the saying's I like is "help is just the bright, shiny side of control".
Most people don't mind other people getting rich. I think deep down, most people admire them for doing so. You can't talk inequality (as it's currently branded) without moralizing against those who have gotten wealthy. There's also an implied aspect that their wealth will be diminished to provide equity. Deep down, I think most people feel a little squeamish about this.
It's been said ad nauseum, but people don't want equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity. They don't want help, they want empowerment.
Right now, with inflation still bubbling under the surface, there's a gaping maw that the Democrats should be able to fill. But to do so, they need a platform that has ZERO to do with Trump, and zero to do with Republicans.
Abundance says "you can do it, we're here to remove barriers". Equity says "you can't do it without us". I suppose abundance makes too much sense for the current Democratic party to get behind.
All that said, the Dems need to ratchet down the language into something that guy at the party with the Che Guevara shirt on would be embarrassed to say. Focus on helping each individual becoming their own financial center where they're generating their own wealth, not siphoning off that of others, even if they're really yuchy people.
A vision to deal with the impact of AI on the average person would be very compelling. Except agin, and I feel like a very broken record I really don’t think I can trust the party that was in executive power when globalization was issued in in the 90s which devastated rural towns to have a clue how to help anyone with a change such as AI. they are too engaged in their own thoughts of progressive values to be grounded in how to make practical change for something like AI.
There’s definitely some truth to your criticism of Democratic messaging, but ultimately history shows us that you need a middle class to make liberal democratic societies work, and middle classes are relative in nature, as they’re distributionally determined—I.e., they exist when you have a bell curve of outcomes, with a few doing very well, a few doing very poorly (the ends of the curve) and a critical mass doing ‘okay’ or ‘well enough’. (The ‘hump’ in the middle of the curve which constitutes the middle class).
Once you start to get a large amount of inequality and the curve is more like a Zipf distribution—a long tail mostly hugging the bottom register of values, and a tiny but massive vertical rise at one end—then historically you get feudal oligarchy, or communist revolutions, or some other type of anti-democratic system. Democracy is just unsustainable under those conditions.
So the degree of individual opportunity and the degree of individual outcome, while not equivalent, are inseparable. An excess of the latter in too many people will undermine the former, and makes Democratic systems unsustainable.
You are viewing the middle class with the wrong lens - an outsiders lens that applies income and gini scores as a metric. The correct lens is an insiders lens that looks at what makes the middle class so vital to functioning societies. These are the values that conservatives champion. The values found in country music (which I personally can't stand): standing on your own two feet and being independent, finding dignity in work, even if the left sneers at what you do, getting married and raising a family.
The correct metric you need to look at is not gini scores, but trust and social capital. That's the measure of what a strong middle and working class brings to society. As a leftist, I assume you are familiar with the tragedy of the commons - the classic example of why private property cannot solve environmental problems?
Well, a firm is also a type of commons. If all 10,000 employees work hard, then the firm does well. But it's in the interest of each individual employee to shirk on the job. They get paid regardless of whether the firm does well or fails. So there is a norm-setting war that takes place. Employees try to set norms of low work effort.
If you look at your classic high Gini score nations, they are all low in trust and social capital, you will see that they are almost all poor and none of them are capable of creating firms that can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft or SpaceX. That's because in a low-trust society the norms of effort are simply too low and large firms collapse. That's also why these high-Gini societies rely on family businesses - you can't trust strangers to work hard, but you can trust family.
Your metrics aggregate low-trust and oppressive societies - the type of society the left is actively trying to create via their "cultural great replacement" immigration policy - with high-trust societies like the United States that follow non-zero sum economic thinking.
There is no libertarian "get the incentives" right to solving the tragedy of the commons, including in firms. So those middle and working class values that I led with are the solution to this norm setting effort. Trust and social capital in the United States has been declining since the 1950s, partly due to multiculturalism but also due to the decline of the family. As Charlie Kirk put it, "God, family, country, and in that order."
We could eliminate half of wealth inequality in one generation if we could get the average family to put as much into Individual Retirement Accounts as they put into car payments, which is $750 per month. But, is that what they want? No, they do not want greater equality. What they really want is a higher standard of living even if it means going into debt.
Sen. Ruben Gallegos (D-AZ) said, "Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck." Not a big-ass bank account or a big-ass 401k. He wants a big-ass truck even if it comes with a big-ass car note. If you doubt it, look at 401k participation rates. Half of workers eligible to participate in 401k plans actually enroll (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). For state and local government workers, it's 19%.
Sixty percent of American households are living paycheck-to-paycheck. If paid larger paychecks, they would live larger paycheck to larger paycheck. And there is no objective way to say their choices are morally wrong, just short-sighted. What is morally wrong is expecting wealthier people to make up for your own improvidence.
Living beyond one's means is not limited to low income, but it's a lot easier to recover if you are making 3K a week. The jobs those guys have that buy the big assed truck used to pay well enough for a nice car, vacation, pension, health care in retirement too, tuition for the kids and maybe even a tiny vacation place on a lake.
Ruben said last week, that the idea was if things got bad you could just work like hell and dig yourself out of any hole. Now people work like hell and are falling further and further behind. Ruben said people tell him they are scared they won't make it.
My father paid 4% payroll tax in the 1950's, counting both the employee and employer share. There was no Medicare, so no Medicare payroll tax. I and most American workers pay 12.4% on all of our earnings up to $176K, which for most people is all of it. The Medicare tax brings the rate up to 15.4%. The payroll tax is the biggest one most people pay and it is now nearly four times higher than it used to be.
My parents also paid a 2% sales tax back then. I pay 8.75% in the same jurisdiction. He paid a 3 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax. I pay 18.4 cents per gallon and that's only the federal tax. The state tax raises it to 38.4 cents. The highest in the nation is in California, where the total is 87cents per gallon.
The big increase over the decades has been in the regressive taxes. It is harder to dig your way out of a hole if the tax collectors take one-third of every shovelful.
We choose, via our elected representatives, which taxes to levy and which ones we don't.
Almost all of my income is tax free, and now even more is via the Big Beautiful Bill. I'll pay some when I spend it, sales tax and maybe capital gains, depends what other sources of income I had in that tax year. My accountant tells me my effective tax rate every year, but I forget now what it is, it's very low, maybe 10%, a couple years ago it was 4%. I do little to lower my taxes, standard deduction.
I would vote for higher taxes on people like me. Our national debt is very high, waste of money paying interest. If we simply taxed all income at the same rates as the people working fast food we'd have a lot more money. When I pay capital gains no one takes out social security, not for me, not for anyone.
We shifted the tax burden on to people buying stuff via sales tax, and on to the bottom 80% vias Social Security. Every time you hear of a bill to reduce taxes understand they mean raise your taxes and lower someone else's. We've cut services. Our cities are dirty and dangerous, infrastructure falling down, at least the wealthy have a low tax rate.
May I submit a clarification? A 3-cent gasoline tax in 1955 would amount to a 36 cent gasoline tax in 2025 so maybe gasoline taxes haven't grown as much as they seem, when you adjust for inflation.
These polls are so skewed. How about asking "Do you believe some races should be discriminated against and unqualified people should be promoted in a quota system in order to achieve 'equity'"? Or how about: "Do you want the government to provide health care for all even though it may mean long wait times for routine services, you can't pick your doctor, and trillions will have to be cut from other programs (environment, education, defense)?"
Why not short wait times and choose your doctor? We still pay double what similar countries pay and for worse outcomes. We die more. What if change were better not worse?
Summary of this comment: Healthcare in the US can be affordable. I strongly suspect that insurance companies and hospitals have chosen to make it otherwise.
I live in California and we switched to Kaiser about 18 months ago. The difference was shocking: with our PPO, we'd have to wait months to get an appointment for routine care. Example: my daughter needed to see an ENT and I called in mid-May. They told us the soonest they could book her as a new patient was late September. Waits were almost as long if I didn't have an appointment with a doctor even if this was your regular physician.
We switched to Kaiser in June of last year. The first time I called, I needed to see a doctor about a potential new problem and they said, "We can see you at 2 pm today, or tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning."
They can do this because Kaiser doesn't schedule routine office visits more than 2 months in advance (at least, not at the facilities where I am). So slots don't fill up the way they do at Stanford, Sutter Health, or El Camino Medical Group. Kaiser also keeps a small number of office appointments open that I can't see as a patient. I have to get on the phone, describe why I need to go, and then get scheduled. This is why I was able to get an appointment so quickly. They also hold slots for important tests like scans.
Most importantly, they control costs. A medicine I take cost $200 per month before the switch (WITH insurance). Now it's $20 for a 3 month supply. And once you pay your deductible, you don't pay *at all, for anything.* Ours is $3,000 for the family annually. Oh, and our premiums are half of what they were before.
Kaiser has less expertise in more exotic things like rare diseases. They also don't cover more exotic stuff like laser surgery to remove eye floaters (as I learned recently, and was not surprised). This is part of how they keep costs down. I can live with that, because they're so good otherwise.
For 80-90% of medical needs, routine or otherwise, they're great. Their facilities are modern, their equipment is modern, the medical staff are as good as anywhere else, and I don't ever want to go back to our old plan.
If Kaiser has taught me anything, it's that a well-organized system can be cost-effective. We could do this with rare diseases and for systems outside Kaiser if we wanted to. Problem is, we don't. Or, the people running the medical care show don't or aren't up to the task.
“Do you want the government to provide health care for all even though it may mean long wait times for routine services, you can't pick your doctor, and trillions will have to be cut from other programs (environment, education, defense)?”
You forgot ‘lower the cost of doing business’ (by taking medical costs out of companies’ wage bills) and ‘make exports more competitive’. (The latter being partially a function of the former)
Michael, your advice betrays the Democrat's core problem. You suggest focusing on healthcare and affordability because those are what poll well. But the party has no new ideas to address these issues. Doubling down on Obamacare subsidies only highlights that the promises of the Affordable Care Act were false, and promising to bring down costs and inflation just begs the question of why these things skyrocketed under Biden and Harris's policies?
We are all talking about single payer now except you, I suspect. The current system is even less defensible than it was in 2009. A lot of the issues brought up to defend the medical insurers then, and in 1993 won't work today, and the independent physicians were largely eliminated by Obamacare.
3x Trump voter here and I haven't voted for a Democrat since 1992. But even I have given up on the current system. It just sucks and the only feasible 'solution' is to turn it into a heavily regulated bureaucracy with the government as the single payer. There are various reasons why that would suck less. I'm hopeful that with that in place, buying extended coverage ala Medicare Advantage would be possible and more affordable.
To say that strategy has not worked is a massive understatement. For those who do polls, Trump is ahead of both Obama and Bush at this same point in their second terms; he has actually ticked up a point since the shutdown started; and there have been 80,000 net new R gains since August, with Rs gaining 30,000 and Ds losing 50,000. In New Mexico---just the latest---Rs gained 21,000 since last Nov., slashing the D lead there by one-third. Now, that's in a very blue state. I would argue that any time Trump is invoked in ANY bad way, it hurts Ds with the majority. Maybe not "some" of the base, but with the majority. But, I disagree that "health care" is a winning issue. A true fix won't be an improved O-care but a vast news reshaping that will provide catastrophic health care insurance, then focus on reducing actual costs everywhere else to where, as it was when I was young, you just pay your doc in cash. That's the goal, anyway.
Now we know that losing a political election can send millions of Democrats into the five stages of grief. The good news is fewer and fewer are suffering as many have moved through the stages or given up and left the Democrats party. The bad news is that the US lacks an effective party in opposition.
The five stages off grief.
1. Denial - Democrat seem to have completed this stage.
2. Anger - ‘No Kings’ rally
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The party has a long way to go. History shows it can take decades for a party to get back in power. The quick fix is latching onto a charismatic person. The hard way is to govern well what you already control to build prosperity, trust and credibility.
It is one thing for a party out of power to point out problems not being addressed by the one in power. Quite another to know what to do if your campaign works.
Healthcare costs are so high in the US because Americans are so generally unhealthy, and there is so much more that medicine can do nowadays than before, and we are uncomfortable telling people that that whiz bang therapy is not available to them, because they're not rich and their basic insurance doesn't cover it.
The 800 dollars a month we paid to BCBS didn't begin to cover the $750k they spent on my wife's (unsuccessful) cancer treatment.
You are correct about the general unhealthiness of Americans; however, America is not the only unhealthy Western country (though I admit we are the most unhealthy). The question is, why?
The healthiest countries in the world are in Asia and Northern Europe (with the exception, as always, of Switzerland).
Is it American work culture? Well, Japan and Singapore are two of the healthiest countries in the world, yet they (along with Korea, also in the Top 10) work just as many hours as we do, if not more. Is it diet? Maybe. China and India, the two largest countries on Earth and rising economic and military powers, have notoriously poor diets and high rates of diabetes, heart disease and cardiovascular issues (i.e. diet/lifestyle diseases).
The average life span for men and women in those countries is about the same as it is in the U.S.
Yet, the U.S. spends, on average, 2 to 3 times as much as any other country does on healthcare.
To me, the biggest issue with healthcare in America, and why I think you see similar outcomes in the U.S., India and China, is stress, specifically, the stress of lack of security and instability. People who feel like the walls are closing in and the floor is wobbly and ready to crack under their feet at any moment are always stressed out. Stress in turn causes lack of proper sleep, which causes more stress on the heart, not to mention anti-social/unhealthy activities (drug use, caffeine abuse, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc.). Add to this that Americans love our cars, and it is bad recipe.
Another very good posting. Agree about health care being a problem for the Rs, and will say more in a different comment. Right now, I want to talk about the polling data. Specifically: "Trump’s second-term approval rating has come down from its post-inauguration high."
I watch Real Clear Polling carefully. I used it last October to predict Trump's margin, three and a half months after having used the Bureau of Labor Statistics' unemployment data to call the election for Trump -- but not the margin. Some things to say now:
1. Every president's numbers come down from the Inauguration Day high. Trump's second-term RCP average is higher than the last two two-term presidents' averages at this point in their second terms.
2. I have doubts about Trump's average right now. I think the dispersion is too wide for the average to be valid. AP/NORC -24% v Insider Advantage +6%? Really? Come on. I know, I know: That's why you have an average, but I still think it's too wide.
3. I started by saying that I called Trump's margin by using the RCP average. That's true, but I adjusted it to compensate for that average's errors in '16 and '20. Unfortunately, RCP doesn't publish the composition of the second-term polls on Bush Jr. and Obama, so I'm flying blind. If I do the statistics thing and omit the outliers (any result >10%), Trump is -1.7%.
Something calling itself the National Association of Independent Pollsters says Trump is +1.3%. NAIP is a coalition of three pollsters that have tended to be pro-Trump: Insider Advantage, Rasmussen, and Quantus Insights.
I'm neither here nor there on them, but can't go with either that number or my own adjusted -1.7% because I don't know what numbers comprised the averages for Bush Jr. and Obama. My gut feel says -2%, but that's a guess inside of a fog bank.
BOTTOM LINE
I think Trump's numbers have been more or less stable since the inevitable post-inauguration dropoff. The average shows that too. My doubts are about the actual number as opposed to the trend. I think that, going forward, the condition of the economy will drive it more than anything else. And I fervently agree that these "No Kings" rallies are pointless.
Anyone recall the old Maxwell Smart series from the 1960s? Remember the Cone of Silence? If I were inside the Democratic Party's cone, I'd call them the "No Favors" rallies because they're doing the Ds no favors.
I remember seeing a piece last spring where the author dug into the crosstabs of a poll that had Trump tanking and pointed out that Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters nearly 2:1 in the sample. You’d think pollsters would ask a few questions about how people voted (or didn’t) in the last presidential/off year election, compare the responses to the known results, and use that to gauge how accurate their sample is.
I just called up the average again, and it has moved to -6.9%. In particular, I think YouGov is garbage. I could do the really deep dive on this stuff, but see no reason to go further than I already did.
Recall that my wild guess gut feel is -2%. I should note that removing outliers is a well-known technique among statisticians. Past that, I've been following the RCP average closely for more than a year, and have tracked pollsters back in time.
The outliers are all Dem biased. This means that pretty much all polling averages are biased at the presidential level. Recall that I made a pretty good call on the '24 presidential by looking at the RCP average, and then distrusting it enough to adjusting it for the bias. Which was confirmed 8 months ago by none other than Nate Silver, once the darling of the liberals.
In particular, I will repeat my view that YouGov is a complete joke. It's a self-selected email pollster. AP/NORC is new, and I don't trust any outfit that "reports" a result so wildly out of step. Others that are especially untrustworthy are Suffolk, Emerson, New York Times, Quinnipiac, Monmouth, CNN, Fox (!), and Marist.
BOTTOM LINE
1. Trump's not down nearly as much as the average suggests.
2. The media's constant yammering against Trump has barely moved the needle, if at all.
3. If one thing's definitely true, having been established by a series of polling going way back, it's that Americans' trust in the media has collapsed.
I wish I could be more specific, but I remember seeing a poll last Spring which showed that a surprisingly large number of Americans understand the relationship between government spending and inflation. Look what the Democrats did during President Biden's four years in office: Trillions upon trillions of dollars spent on green energy projects and new infrastructure. These may or may not have been worthwhile projects. Some are very worthwhile. Some are just ways of transferring billions of taxpayer dollars to favored insider groups. Much of this spending fueled inflation. Then there is the question of the open border. It feels like the Democrats are in such a deep hole over these issues, that no amount of healthcare spending and income redistribution will get them back to the surface. We simply cannot afford another round of trillion dollar spending sprees or four more years of an open border. Suggestions about focusing on Healthcare spending and inequality seem like little more than distractions from what happened between 2021 and 2024. And that's too bad because Healthcare access isn't something which should be shoved aside. But I fear the Biden years have made that result inevitable.
On the economy the Democrats need to stop searching for the perfect poll tested message and focus on creating economies that work for everyone in the states where they have complete control. If you can do that then you will have no problems selling those policies nationally.
The Democrats are also going to have to choose between a European style safety net or a relatively open immigration policy, because you simply can’t have both. The money just isn’t there. You’ll also need to come clean with the public about the need for European style taxes on the middle and lower middle class to pay for it, because again “the rich” simply don’t have enough money to pay for all the social programs the populist left is asking for.
I like your idea, Norm, that the Democrats need to demonstrate the success of their policies in the states where they have a heavy majority, like California. Women's suffrage and direct election of Senators originally started because some of the states did them, then most of the states, until Congress finally proposed Constitutional amendments to make these the national standard. If a heavily Democratic state like New York or Massachusetts could show the effectiveness of an idea such as a wealth tax, it would strengthen the case for this nationally. Or, if the wealth tax turned out to be a mistake, the state would repeal it and the nation would never adopt it.
Jman, "The Democrats focus on inequality, as opposed to poverty, is simply morally wrong," may be the one of the most important comments on any political pundit sight, ever.
Those of us of a certain age learned long ago, a major ingredient in the US secret sauce was our large middle class, that dwarfed both our top and bottom earners, that were of relative equal size.
Current stats are abysmal. More than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck? 40% of Californians are enrolled in Medicaid, which means they are, literally, too poor to afford subsidized Obamacare. As Gavin Newsom loves to remind everyone, CA is the fourth largest economy in the world and the largest state in the Union, but as its' GDP grew so too did its' mass poverty. How has no one noticed?
As recently as 2019, 6 short years ago, the US was not in this state. Generations had not abandoned the notion of a family, homeownership and a middle class living standard, nor the idea of capitalism. Homelessness was not widely found outside the Coasts.
Surely finding our way back is far more important than loathing the other political Party
I predict that health care will explode as the #1 issue as soon as the double hit of Medicaid cuts and premium hikes take effect. But there's more to it even that soaring costs, which I've been learning about firsthand with some sick family members...Even for people with decent coverage, the entire system has become such an infuriatingly convoluted, bureaucratic, dehumanizing, nonsensical mess. Simple tasks like finding a primary care physician, getting a referral to a specialist, and filling a prescription are often byzantine nightmares. Followup care after major surgery is done by AI robocall. It's truly dystopian.
This all speaks to the need for a single payer system that would simplify and streamline and I believe it could be a winning issue, just as it was for Bernie.
Single provider is even better. I've gotten care in countries where for medical needs you go to a hospital, and they take care of everything from there. All referrals, labs, follow up, and best of all it costs a fraction of what we pay.
The formula for Democrats isn't that difficult but they refuse to do it. Focus on kitchen table issues, sincerely moderate on social and cultural issues and stop obsessing over Trump. Supporting "reproductive rights" and adult trans rights is fine, it should not be what they lead with as they so often do. Pocketbook issues based on class, not race is the sweet spot.
It is unfortunate that Donald Trump’s efforts on behalf of Israel are simply not an issue that is at the top of anybody’s list of his accomplishments. The Democrat party offers absolutely nothing on any topic except to criticize trump! Between now and the 2026 midterms, everybody will stake out a position that they think will work. So the 2026 midterms will truly give a picture of where the American people are at. It will also set the agenda for the balance of trump’s administration. Even if the Democrats take back the house and Senate trump will still control the executive branch and will of course have the veto pen to stop any crazy Democrat legislation because I do not believe that they will have enough of a majority to override any veto! A lot will also depend on about five upcoming Supreme Court decisions. In fact, it is these decisions that will be more important than any legislation.
All well and good, but Trump has successfully brought increasing crime, cashless bail, and the increasing violence by the extreme left to the forefront, which the Democrats seem to brush off. I, myself live in a small New England city of 30,00 or so and have seen crime increase since the huge influx of illegal migrants. My belief in seeing the increase of crime in my city is supported by a few different statistic makers. Why don't the Democrats want to address the increase in crime all over the country? Is it because they caused it with a wide open border that allowed in 10 to 20 million illegal migrants of whom some 500,000+ were convicted criminals? Is it because to acknowledge that would be to have to admit maybe they were wrong? And what about cashless bail that releases many who committed violent crimes back out to the streets? Where are the Democrats on that issue? Trump has made crime the topic of the day and the Democrats continue to fight Trump instead of getting on board to do something about it. The economic welfare of voters will take a back seat if the voters don't feel safe in their communities. Safety is first and foremost.
Yes, inequality would be a strong stance, but the No Kings march seemed to be mostly affluent people unconcerned about anything but DJT.
Running candidates like Jay Jones in Virginia does not help.
People I know who went mostly have no kids.
Health care is a winning issue, and one of the few issues I agree with the Democrats on. (As the libertarian John Cochrane put it, cross-subsidies are the original sin of healthcare). But even there, I wouldn't trust the current Democratic leadership to create a better healthcare system, even though the bar is shockingly low. It would be like the Green New Deal and turn into graft and six figure jobs to absorb the surplus of elite overproduction.
The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong. The Democrats are like a rural peasant farming community in the developing world (Banfield etc.). As soon as one person starts to get ahead, the community feels threatened and pulls him back to the pack by demanding make-work jobs, "loans", and gifts. The Democrats should be celebrating success and the creation of wealth, but temper that with the realization that although capitalism creates winners, it also creates losers. If AI is going to wipe out a bunch of jobs, let's have programs to ease people through the transition to a new career. (And by the way, does anything reveal the myopia of Democratic central planning that "learn to code" was a thing right up until AI threatened to take away the coding jobs?).
"The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong."
THANK YOU.
I'm going to toss a little 12 step philosophy into the convo. One of the saying's I like is "help is just the bright, shiny side of control".
Most people don't mind other people getting rich. I think deep down, most people admire them for doing so. You can't talk inequality (as it's currently branded) without moralizing against those who have gotten wealthy. There's also an implied aspect that their wealth will be diminished to provide equity. Deep down, I think most people feel a little squeamish about this.
It's been said ad nauseum, but people don't want equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity. They don't want help, they want empowerment.
Right now, with inflation still bubbling under the surface, there's a gaping maw that the Democrats should be able to fill. But to do so, they need a platform that has ZERO to do with Trump, and zero to do with Republicans.
Abundance says "you can do it, we're here to remove barriers". Equity says "you can't do it without us". I suppose abundance makes too much sense for the current Democratic party to get behind.
All that said, the Dems need to ratchet down the language into something that guy at the party with the Che Guevara shirt on would be embarrassed to say. Focus on helping each individual becoming their own financial center where they're generating their own wealth, not siphoning off that of others, even if they're really yuchy people.
A vision to deal with the impact of AI on the average person would be very compelling. Except agin, and I feel like a very broken record I really don’t think I can trust the party that was in executive power when globalization was issued in in the 90s which devastated rural towns to have a clue how to help anyone with a change such as AI. they are too engaged in their own thoughts of progressive values to be grounded in how to make practical change for something like AI.
There’s definitely some truth to your criticism of Democratic messaging, but ultimately history shows us that you need a middle class to make liberal democratic societies work, and middle classes are relative in nature, as they’re distributionally determined—I.e., they exist when you have a bell curve of outcomes, with a few doing very well, a few doing very poorly (the ends of the curve) and a critical mass doing ‘okay’ or ‘well enough’. (The ‘hump’ in the middle of the curve which constitutes the middle class).
Once you start to get a large amount of inequality and the curve is more like a Zipf distribution—a long tail mostly hugging the bottom register of values, and a tiny but massive vertical rise at one end—then historically you get feudal oligarchy, or communist revolutions, or some other type of anti-democratic system. Democracy is just unsustainable under those conditions.
So the degree of individual opportunity and the degree of individual outcome, while not equivalent, are inseparable. An excess of the latter in too many people will undermine the former, and makes Democratic systems unsustainable.
You are viewing the middle class with the wrong lens - an outsiders lens that applies income and gini scores as a metric. The correct lens is an insiders lens that looks at what makes the middle class so vital to functioning societies. These are the values that conservatives champion. The values found in country music (which I personally can't stand): standing on your own two feet and being independent, finding dignity in work, even if the left sneers at what you do, getting married and raising a family.
The correct metric you need to look at is not gini scores, but trust and social capital. That's the measure of what a strong middle and working class brings to society. As a leftist, I assume you are familiar with the tragedy of the commons - the classic example of why private property cannot solve environmental problems?
Well, a firm is also a type of commons. If all 10,000 employees work hard, then the firm does well. But it's in the interest of each individual employee to shirk on the job. They get paid regardless of whether the firm does well or fails. So there is a norm-setting war that takes place. Employees try to set norms of low work effort.
If you look at your classic high Gini score nations, they are all low in trust and social capital, you will see that they are almost all poor and none of them are capable of creating firms that can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft or SpaceX. That's because in a low-trust society the norms of effort are simply too low and large firms collapse. That's also why these high-Gini societies rely on family businesses - you can't trust strangers to work hard, but you can trust family.
Your metrics aggregate low-trust and oppressive societies - the type of society the left is actively trying to create via their "cultural great replacement" immigration policy - with high-trust societies like the United States that follow non-zero sum economic thinking.
There is no libertarian "get the incentives" right to solving the tragedy of the commons, including in firms. So those middle and working class values that I led with are the solution to this norm setting effort. Trust and social capital in the United States has been declining since the 1950s, partly due to multiculturalism but also due to the decline of the family. As Charlie Kirk put it, "God, family, country, and in that order."
We could eliminate half of wealth inequality in one generation if we could get the average family to put as much into Individual Retirement Accounts as they put into car payments, which is $750 per month. But, is that what they want? No, they do not want greater equality. What they really want is a higher standard of living even if it means going into debt.
Sen. Ruben Gallegos (D-AZ) said, "Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck." Not a big-ass bank account or a big-ass 401k. He wants a big-ass truck even if it comes with a big-ass car note. If you doubt it, look at 401k participation rates. Half of workers eligible to participate in 401k plans actually enroll (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). For state and local government workers, it's 19%.
Sixty percent of American households are living paycheck-to-paycheck. If paid larger paychecks, they would live larger paycheck to larger paycheck. And there is no objective way to say their choices are morally wrong, just short-sighted. What is morally wrong is expecting wealthier people to make up for your own improvidence.
Living beyond one's means is not limited to low income, but it's a lot easier to recover if you are making 3K a week. The jobs those guys have that buy the big assed truck used to pay well enough for a nice car, vacation, pension, health care in retirement too, tuition for the kids and maybe even a tiny vacation place on a lake.
Ruben said last week, that the idea was if things got bad you could just work like hell and dig yourself out of any hole. Now people work like hell and are falling further and further behind. Ruben said people tell him they are scared they won't make it.
My father paid 4% payroll tax in the 1950's, counting both the employee and employer share. There was no Medicare, so no Medicare payroll tax. I and most American workers pay 12.4% on all of our earnings up to $176K, which for most people is all of it. The Medicare tax brings the rate up to 15.4%. The payroll tax is the biggest one most people pay and it is now nearly four times higher than it used to be.
My parents also paid a 2% sales tax back then. I pay 8.75% in the same jurisdiction. He paid a 3 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax. I pay 18.4 cents per gallon and that's only the federal tax. The state tax raises it to 38.4 cents. The highest in the nation is in California, where the total is 87cents per gallon.
The big increase over the decades has been in the regressive taxes. It is harder to dig your way out of a hole if the tax collectors take one-third of every shovelful.
We choose, via our elected representatives, which taxes to levy and which ones we don't.
Almost all of my income is tax free, and now even more is via the Big Beautiful Bill. I'll pay some when I spend it, sales tax and maybe capital gains, depends what other sources of income I had in that tax year. My accountant tells me my effective tax rate every year, but I forget now what it is, it's very low, maybe 10%, a couple years ago it was 4%. I do little to lower my taxes, standard deduction.
I would vote for higher taxes on people like me. Our national debt is very high, waste of money paying interest. If we simply taxed all income at the same rates as the people working fast food we'd have a lot more money. When I pay capital gains no one takes out social security, not for me, not for anyone.
We shifted the tax burden on to people buying stuff via sales tax, and on to the bottom 80% vias Social Security. Every time you hear of a bill to reduce taxes understand they mean raise your taxes and lower someone else's. We've cut services. Our cities are dirty and dangerous, infrastructure falling down, at least the wealthy have a low tax rate.
May I submit a clarification? A 3-cent gasoline tax in 1955 would amount to a 36 cent gasoline tax in 2025 so maybe gasoline taxes haven't grown as much as they seem, when you adjust for inflation.
These polls are so skewed. How about asking "Do you believe some races should be discriminated against and unqualified people should be promoted in a quota system in order to achieve 'equity'"? Or how about: "Do you want the government to provide health care for all even though it may mean long wait times for routine services, you can't pick your doctor, and trillions will have to be cut from other programs (environment, education, defense)?"
Why not short wait times and choose your doctor? We still pay double what similar countries pay and for worse outcomes. We die more. What if change were better not worse?
Summary of this comment: Healthcare in the US can be affordable. I strongly suspect that insurance companies and hospitals have chosen to make it otherwise.
I live in California and we switched to Kaiser about 18 months ago. The difference was shocking: with our PPO, we'd have to wait months to get an appointment for routine care. Example: my daughter needed to see an ENT and I called in mid-May. They told us the soonest they could book her as a new patient was late September. Waits were almost as long if I didn't have an appointment with a doctor even if this was your regular physician.
We switched to Kaiser in June of last year. The first time I called, I needed to see a doctor about a potential new problem and they said, "We can see you at 2 pm today, or tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning."
They can do this because Kaiser doesn't schedule routine office visits more than 2 months in advance (at least, not at the facilities where I am). So slots don't fill up the way they do at Stanford, Sutter Health, or El Camino Medical Group. Kaiser also keeps a small number of office appointments open that I can't see as a patient. I have to get on the phone, describe why I need to go, and then get scheduled. This is why I was able to get an appointment so quickly. They also hold slots for important tests like scans.
Most importantly, they control costs. A medicine I take cost $200 per month before the switch (WITH insurance). Now it's $20 for a 3 month supply. And once you pay your deductible, you don't pay *at all, for anything.* Ours is $3,000 for the family annually. Oh, and our premiums are half of what they were before.
Kaiser has less expertise in more exotic things like rare diseases. They also don't cover more exotic stuff like laser surgery to remove eye floaters (as I learned recently, and was not surprised). This is part of how they keep costs down. I can live with that, because they're so good otherwise.
For 80-90% of medical needs, routine or otherwise, they're great. Their facilities are modern, their equipment is modern, the medical staff are as good as anywhere else, and I don't ever want to go back to our old plan.
If Kaiser has taught me anything, it's that a well-organized system can be cost-effective. We could do this with rare diseases and for systems outside Kaiser if we wanted to. Problem is, we don't. Or, the people running the medical care show don't or aren't up to the task.
“Do you want the government to provide health care for all even though it may mean long wait times for routine services, you can't pick your doctor, and trillions will have to be cut from other programs (environment, education, defense)?”
You forgot ‘lower the cost of doing business’ (by taking medical costs out of companies’ wage bills) and ‘make exports more competitive’. (The latter being partially a function of the former)
Michael, your advice betrays the Democrat's core problem. You suggest focusing on healthcare and affordability because those are what poll well. But the party has no new ideas to address these issues. Doubling down on Obamacare subsidies only highlights that the promises of the Affordable Care Act were false, and promising to bring down costs and inflation just begs the question of why these things skyrocketed under Biden and Harris's policies?
We are all talking about single payer now except you, I suspect. The current system is even less defensible than it was in 2009. A lot of the issues brought up to defend the medical insurers then, and in 1993 won't work today, and the independent physicians were largely eliminated by Obamacare.
3x Trump voter here and I haven't voted for a Democrat since 1992. But even I have given up on the current system. It just sucks and the only feasible 'solution' is to turn it into a heavily regulated bureaucracy with the government as the single payer. There are various reasons why that would suck less. I'm hopeful that with that in place, buying extended coverage ala Medicare Advantage would be possible and more affordable.
To say that strategy has not worked is a massive understatement. For those who do polls, Trump is ahead of both Obama and Bush at this same point in their second terms; he has actually ticked up a point since the shutdown started; and there have been 80,000 net new R gains since August, with Rs gaining 30,000 and Ds losing 50,000. In New Mexico---just the latest---Rs gained 21,000 since last Nov., slashing the D lead there by one-third. Now, that's in a very blue state. I would argue that any time Trump is invoked in ANY bad way, it hurts Ds with the majority. Maybe not "some" of the base, but with the majority. But, I disagree that "health care" is a winning issue. A true fix won't be an improved O-care but a vast news reshaping that will provide catastrophic health care insurance, then focus on reducing actual costs everywhere else to where, as it was when I was young, you just pay your doc in cash. That's the goal, anyway.
Now we know that losing a political election can send millions of Democrats into the five stages of grief. The good news is fewer and fewer are suffering as many have moved through the stages or given up and left the Democrats party. The bad news is that the US lacks an effective party in opposition.
The five stages off grief.
1. Denial - Democrat seem to have completed this stage.
2. Anger - ‘No Kings’ rally
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The party has a long way to go. History shows it can take decades for a party to get back in power. The quick fix is latching onto a charismatic person. The hard way is to govern well what you already control to build prosperity, trust and credibility.
It is one thing for a party out of power to point out problems not being addressed by the one in power. Quite another to know what to do if your campaign works.
Healthcare costs are so high in the US because Americans are so generally unhealthy, and there is so much more that medicine can do nowadays than before, and we are uncomfortable telling people that that whiz bang therapy is not available to them, because they're not rich and their basic insurance doesn't cover it.
The 800 dollars a month we paid to BCBS didn't begin to cover the $750k they spent on my wife's (unsuccessful) cancer treatment.
You are correct about the general unhealthiness of Americans; however, America is not the only unhealthy Western country (though I admit we are the most unhealthy). The question is, why?
The healthiest countries in the world are in Asia and Northern Europe (with the exception, as always, of Switzerland).
https://ceoworld.biz/2025/06/17/ranked-the-healthiest-and-unhealthiest-countries-in-the-world-2025/
Is it American work culture? Well, Japan and Singapore are two of the healthiest countries in the world, yet they (along with Korea, also in the Top 10) work just as many hours as we do, if not more. Is it diet? Maybe. China and India, the two largest countries on Earth and rising economic and military powers, have notoriously poor diets and high rates of diabetes, heart disease and cardiovascular issues (i.e. diet/lifestyle diseases).
The average life span for men and women in those countries is about the same as it is in the U.S.
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
Yet, the U.S. spends, on average, 2 to 3 times as much as any other country does on healthcare.
To me, the biggest issue with healthcare in America, and why I think you see similar outcomes in the U.S., India and China, is stress, specifically, the stress of lack of security and instability. People who feel like the walls are closing in and the floor is wobbly and ready to crack under their feet at any moment are always stressed out. Stress in turn causes lack of proper sleep, which causes more stress on the heart, not to mention anti-social/unhealthy activities (drug use, caffeine abuse, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc.). Add to this that Americans love our cars, and it is bad recipe.
Another very good posting. Agree about health care being a problem for the Rs, and will say more in a different comment. Right now, I want to talk about the polling data. Specifically: "Trump’s second-term approval rating has come down from its post-inauguration high."
I watch Real Clear Polling carefully. I used it last October to predict Trump's margin, three and a half months after having used the Bureau of Labor Statistics' unemployment data to call the election for Trump -- but not the margin. Some things to say now:
1. Every president's numbers come down from the Inauguration Day high. Trump's second-term RCP average is higher than the last two two-term presidents' averages at this point in their second terms.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/trump-obama-bush-second-term
2. I have doubts about Trump's average right now. I think the dispersion is too wide for the average to be valid. AP/NORC -24% v Insider Advantage +6%? Really? Come on. I know, I know: That's why you have an average, but I still think it's too wide.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating
3. I started by saying that I called Trump's margin by using the RCP average. That's true, but I adjusted it to compensate for that average's errors in '16 and '20. Unfortunately, RCP doesn't publish the composition of the second-term polls on Bush Jr. and Obama, so I'm flying blind. If I do the statistics thing and omit the outliers (any result >10%), Trump is -1.7%.
Something calling itself the National Association of Independent Pollsters says Trump is +1.3%. NAIP is a coalition of three pollsters that have tended to be pro-Trump: Insider Advantage, Rasmussen, and Quantus Insights.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2025/IA_Final_Sept_PDF.pdf
I'm neither here nor there on them, but can't go with either that number or my own adjusted -1.7% because I don't know what numbers comprised the averages for Bush Jr. and Obama. My gut feel says -2%, but that's a guess inside of a fog bank.
BOTTOM LINE
I think Trump's numbers have been more or less stable since the inevitable post-inauguration dropoff. The average shows that too. My doubts are about the actual number as opposed to the trend. I think that, going forward, the condition of the economy will drive it more than anything else. And I fervently agree that these "No Kings" rallies are pointless.
Anyone recall the old Maxwell Smart series from the 1960s? Remember the Cone of Silence? If I were inside the Democratic Party's cone, I'd call them the "No Favors" rallies because they're doing the Ds no favors.
I remember seeing a piece last spring where the author dug into the crosstabs of a poll that had Trump tanking and pointed out that Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters nearly 2:1 in the sample. You’d think pollsters would ask a few questions about how people voted (or didn’t) in the last presidential/off year election, compare the responses to the known results, and use that to gauge how accurate their sample is.
I just called up the average again, and it has moved to -6.9%. In particular, I think YouGov is garbage. I could do the really deep dive on this stuff, but see no reason to go further than I already did.
And now it's -6.5%. Remove the outliers (>10%) and it's -2.1%.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating
Recall that my wild guess gut feel is -2%. I should note that removing outliers is a well-known technique among statisticians. Past that, I've been following the RCP average closely for more than a year, and have tracked pollsters back in time.
The outliers are all Dem biased. This means that pretty much all polling averages are biased at the presidential level. Recall that I made a pretty good call on the '24 presidential by looking at the RCP average, and then distrusting it enough to adjusting it for the bias. Which was confirmed 8 months ago by none other than Nate Silver, once the darling of the liberals.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/so-how-did-the-polls-do-in-2024-its
In particular, I will repeat my view that YouGov is a complete joke. It's a self-selected email pollster. AP/NORC is new, and I don't trust any outfit that "reports" a result so wildly out of step. Others that are especially untrustworthy are Suffolk, Emerson, New York Times, Quinnipiac, Monmouth, CNN, Fox (!), and Marist.
BOTTOM LINE
1. Trump's not down nearly as much as the average suggests.
2. The media's constant yammering against Trump has barely moved the needle, if at all.
3. If one thing's definitely true, having been established by a series of polling going way back, it's that Americans' trust in the media has collapsed.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx
Oops. Did a deep dive. LOL
I wish I could be more specific, but I remember seeing a poll last Spring which showed that a surprisingly large number of Americans understand the relationship between government spending and inflation. Look what the Democrats did during President Biden's four years in office: Trillions upon trillions of dollars spent on green energy projects and new infrastructure. These may or may not have been worthwhile projects. Some are very worthwhile. Some are just ways of transferring billions of taxpayer dollars to favored insider groups. Much of this spending fueled inflation. Then there is the question of the open border. It feels like the Democrats are in such a deep hole over these issues, that no amount of healthcare spending and income redistribution will get them back to the surface. We simply cannot afford another round of trillion dollar spending sprees or four more years of an open border. Suggestions about focusing on Healthcare spending and inequality seem like little more than distractions from what happened between 2021 and 2024. And that's too bad because Healthcare access isn't something which should be shoved aside. But I fear the Biden years have made that result inevitable.
On the economy the Democrats need to stop searching for the perfect poll tested message and focus on creating economies that work for everyone in the states where they have complete control. If you can do that then you will have no problems selling those policies nationally.
The Democrats are also going to have to choose between a European style safety net or a relatively open immigration policy, because you simply can’t have both. The money just isn’t there. You’ll also need to come clean with the public about the need for European style taxes on the middle and lower middle class to pay for it, because again “the rich” simply don’t have enough money to pay for all the social programs the populist left is asking for.
I like your idea, Norm, that the Democrats need to demonstrate the success of their policies in the states where they have a heavy majority, like California. Women's suffrage and direct election of Senators originally started because some of the states did them, then most of the states, until Congress finally proposed Constitutional amendments to make these the national standard. If a heavily Democratic state like New York or Massachusetts could show the effectiveness of an idea such as a wealth tax, it would strengthen the case for this nationally. Or, if the wealth tax turned out to be a mistake, the state would repeal it and the nation would never adopt it.
Thanks but I can’t take credit. The idea that the states are our “laboratories of democracy” is older than I am.
I got curious and went to look it up. Credit goes to Justice Brandeis in a 1932 dissenting opinion. At least according to Wikipedia.
Jman, "The Democrats focus on inequality, as opposed to poverty, is simply morally wrong," may be the one of the most important comments on any political pundit sight, ever.
Those of us of a certain age learned long ago, a major ingredient in the US secret sauce was our large middle class, that dwarfed both our top and bottom earners, that were of relative equal size.
Current stats are abysmal. More than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck? 40% of Californians are enrolled in Medicaid, which means they are, literally, too poor to afford subsidized Obamacare. As Gavin Newsom loves to remind everyone, CA is the fourth largest economy in the world and the largest state in the Union, but as its' GDP grew so too did its' mass poverty. How has no one noticed?
As recently as 2019, 6 short years ago, the US was not in this state. Generations had not abandoned the notion of a family, homeownership and a middle class living standard, nor the idea of capitalism. Homelessness was not widely found outside the Coasts.
Surely finding our way back is far more important than loathing the other political Party
I predict that health care will explode as the #1 issue as soon as the double hit of Medicaid cuts and premium hikes take effect. But there's more to it even that soaring costs, which I've been learning about firsthand with some sick family members...Even for people with decent coverage, the entire system has become such an infuriatingly convoluted, bureaucratic, dehumanizing, nonsensical mess. Simple tasks like finding a primary care physician, getting a referral to a specialist, and filling a prescription are often byzantine nightmares. Followup care after major surgery is done by AI robocall. It's truly dystopian.
This all speaks to the need for a single payer system that would simplify and streamline and I believe it could be a winning issue, just as it was for Bernie.
Single provider is even better. I've gotten care in countries where for medical needs you go to a hospital, and they take care of everything from there. All referrals, labs, follow up, and best of all it costs a fraction of what we pay.
The formula for Democrats isn't that difficult but they refuse to do it. Focus on kitchen table issues, sincerely moderate on social and cultural issues and stop obsessing over Trump. Supporting "reproductive rights" and adult trans rights is fine, it should not be what they lead with as they so often do. Pocketbook issues based on class, not race is the sweet spot.
It is unfortunate that Donald Trump’s efforts on behalf of Israel are simply not an issue that is at the top of anybody’s list of his accomplishments. The Democrat party offers absolutely nothing on any topic except to criticize trump! Between now and the 2026 midterms, everybody will stake out a position that they think will work. So the 2026 midterms will truly give a picture of where the American people are at. It will also set the agenda for the balance of trump’s administration. Even if the Democrats take back the house and Senate trump will still control the executive branch and will of course have the veto pen to stop any crazy Democrat legislation because I do not believe that they will have enough of a majority to override any veto! A lot will also depend on about five upcoming Supreme Court decisions. In fact, it is these decisions that will be more important than any legislation.
All well and good, but Trump has successfully brought increasing crime, cashless bail, and the increasing violence by the extreme left to the forefront, which the Democrats seem to brush off. I, myself live in a small New England city of 30,00 or so and have seen crime increase since the huge influx of illegal migrants. My belief in seeing the increase of crime in my city is supported by a few different statistic makers. Why don't the Democrats want to address the increase in crime all over the country? Is it because they caused it with a wide open border that allowed in 10 to 20 million illegal migrants of whom some 500,000+ were convicted criminals? Is it because to acknowledge that would be to have to admit maybe they were wrong? And what about cashless bail that releases many who committed violent crimes back out to the streets? Where are the Democrats on that issue? Trump has made crime the topic of the day and the Democrats continue to fight Trump instead of getting on board to do something about it. The economic welfare of voters will take a back seat if the voters don't feel safe in their communities. Safety is first and foremost.