by
N. Peter Kramer
The Democrats didn’t only lose the White House and made only marginal gains in the House and the Senate, two third of the American states have now a Republican governor, and in most of them Republicans ‘reign’ the state houses and senates.
So, news that leading American newspapers as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal brought the end of last week, wasn’t that surprising: ’Congressional Democrats, divided and struggling for a path from the electoral wilderness, are constructing an agenda to align with proposals of President-elect Donald J. Trump’.
These proposals are for instance about more infrastructure spending, child tax credits, paid maternity leave and dismantling trade agreements; issues that Democrats have long championed and Republicans resisted. Republicans will not like the proposals but they have been fulsome in their praise of Donald Trump since his elections. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican majority leader in the House, has repeatedly said that he expects Trump to work with the Republicans.
The new Democratic minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, has spoken with Donald Trump, also a New Yorker, several times and it is expected that Democrats plan to announce populist economic and ethics initiatives they think Trump might like. The leftist Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said ‘I will work with Donald Trump’; Senator Bernie Sanders: ‘I and other progressives are prepared to work with him’.
The Washington Post wrote: ‘Nancy Pelosi says Democrats are willing to work with Trump’. Although Mrs Pelosi, Representative of California, is in an internal battle with Tim Ryan of Ohio, for the minority leadership of the House.
What the Democratic Party needs is a clear, coherent alternative to populism, technocratic elitism and the failed faith that globalisation works for everyone’s advantage. The challenge begins with economic policy but does not end there.
