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Why the Democrats Are Not Radical Enough
Until left Democrats are willing and able to support meaningful job guarantees, they have little chance of reaching the working people they have lost over the past 40 years of wholesale job destruction.
Mar 11, 2026
Centrist Democrats argue that the party should not “go so far left in a primary that they can’t win against MAGA in the general.” As the Center for Working Class Politics observes, these “Third Way” Democrats stress “affordability” and “abundance” without taking on the billionaire class. Progressive Democrats, including groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party, are seen as just too radical to attract working-class voters.
I disagree. I think the problem is that Democrats, even progressive Democrats, are not radical enough.
We have only to look at former President Franklin D.. Roosevelt’s 1941 “Four Freedoms” State of the Union address to be reminded of what our politics could be and should be. The “Four Freedoms” (of speech and religion, from want and fear) are properly the best remembered parts of the address. But just before these “four essential human freedoms,” Roosevelt listed “the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and complexity of our modern world.” They are:
- Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
- Jobs for those who can work.
- Security for those who need it.
- The ending of special privilege for the few.
- The preservation of civil liberties for all.
- The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
What did he want? He thought we “should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance,” which (thankfully!) has been done, although the support should be increased.
He believed we should “widen the opportunities for adequate medical care,” which has been done in part, with much more to do.
And he called for the nation to “plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it,” which we have pretty much stopped talking about altogether, except to mouth empty phrases about economic growth and job creation.
And this is where, in particular, progressive Democrats are not radical enough, at least not for the thousands of workers I have talked to, worked with, and taught. The economic plans offered by the Democratic Party, even those from left Democrats, fail to offer “a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.” And until they do, Democrats will continue to lose traction with working people, who live with job fear each and every day.
Why Are Democrats Not Talking About Guaranteeing a Job at a Living Wage for Everyone Who Wants to Work?
The government guarantees everyone with money to spare a safe place to put it to earn a fair market rate of return. It is called a US Treasury bond. Why doesn’t the government also guarantee everyone with labor to spare—everyone who wants to work but can’t find a job—with a place to work at a fair market rate?
There are no voices, except for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who proclaim loudly and clearly that all working people should be guaranteed a job at a living wage. Why not? Members of the moneyed class are able to protect themselves from financial risk by easily diversifying their investments. But the working class’ most critical investment—their job—is always at risk.
The jobs of working people are increasingly precarious as corporations lay off workers whenever they please, whether for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reasons at all. Today we see millions of layoffs taking place to finance mergers (watch out Hollywood!), leveraged buyouts, and stock buybacks to enrich the richest of the rich. And who knows what AI holds in store?
The millions of workers in rural America who have suffered one mass layoff after another need the power that comes from employment security—jobs that don’t just depend on the profit-maximization strategies of corporate America.
A government-backed guarantee of a job at a living wage would end the wholesale immiseration of families and communities hit by mass layoffs. It would end the kind of job blackmail that makes it difficult for workers to form unions to seek higher wages and better working conditions. This is what counterbalancing corporate power really looks like!
How would it work? Corporations would remain free to reduce their workforces. But every laid-off worker who wants to keep working would be able immediately to find equally remunerative work nearby in the public sector if private sector jobs are not available.
Also, just as employers are able to lay off anyone for business reasons, workers would be free to quit any job they no longer want and easily find another. This kind of “employment assurance” is the worker equivalent of the portfolio diversification and hedging that the wealthy use to protect and enhance their wealth. (And as we all know, when this financial system crashes, the federal government always protects the assets of the wealthy, but not the jobs of working people.)
Is there sufficient public sector work to support such a program? Of course there is, especially if the country commits to rebuilding its physical and human infrastructure. Surely every municipality and state agency needs more workers right now to meet their current goals, let alone new ones to enhance the public’s interests. There’s no shortage of public goods that need to be produced.
Could we afford it? Yes, it would be costly. But the money would be well spent to build better communities. Just ask any group of workers what their communities need, and they will quickly rattle off how to improve them.
And if we all share the costs in proportion to our wealth, we can certainly afford it. Warren Buffett’s tax rate should not be lower than his secretary’s! A small tax on the trade of stocks, bonds, and derivatives might even cover it.
Working-Class Empowerment
Funding and practicality are not the only things holding progressive Democrats back. I worry that power of capital has, if just unconsciously, narrowed their vision. Too many Democrats of all stripes seem to believe that corporate control over employment is an unalterable fact of economic life. Therefore, they don’t go for the jugular—employment guarantees.
The millions of workers in rural America who have suffered one mass layoff after another need the power that comes from employment security—jobs that don’t just depend on the profit-maximization strategies of corporate America.
Until left Democrats are willing and able to support meaningful job guarantees, they have little chance of reaching the working people they have lost over the past 40 years of wholesale job destruction. Massaging the messages is no match for saying loudly and clearly that if you want to work, there is an acceptable job waiting for you.
Many left Democrats believe that we need to shift from a profit-first to a people-first economy. All to the good. But that has little meaning unless working people are assured of a decent paying job if they are looking for work. And also, able to leave a bad job without suffering economic annihilation!
It’s time for the left to become economic radicals again!
(Many thanks to labor historian Mike Merrill for his assistance on this piece.)
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The Price of Not Knowing: Iran, Corporate Interests, and America's Cycle of Violence
Why did the United States help topple a democratic government in Iran some 70 years ago—and how did that decision create the conditions we’re seeing today?
Mar 11, 2026
Every war of choice depends on public complicity.
Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove, but what can we do to stop this war? The justifications coming from the Trump administration are, by any honest accounting, muddled, contradictory, and changing by the day. There are so many unanswered questions, but a good place to start would be by asking how did Iran become our enemy in the first place? Why did the United States help topple a democratic government in Iran some 70 years ago—and how did that decision create the conditions we’re seeing today?
When Iran Was a Democracy
To understand how Iran became an adversary, we can start by returning to the decision made by the United States and Britain to overthrow Iran’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.
Mosaddegh was the sort of leader the US should have loved. He was anti-communist, at a time when containing the Soviet Union was the paramount US foreign policy aim. He pursued reforms that expanded the rights of women, and the political and economic conditions of the poor. He was widely respected internationally, and was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951.
Few Americans know this history. In Iran, though, it is remembered as the moment when the United States claimed the country’s petroleum wealth for itself and crushed a democratic government that sought to make life better for ordinary people.
His fatal crime in the eyes of Western powers, was nationalizing Iran’s oil production, which had been controlled by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
“With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people,” Mosaddegh said in a 1951 speech to the United Nations. “By the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue.”
For British and US leaders, a sovereign nation asserting control over its own resources, rather than bowing to a foreign corporation, was intolerable. Likewise, battling the corrupting influences of a foreign company.
The intelligence agencies of the two nations launched a campaign to destabilize the Mosaddegh government, with media disinformation, targeted bribery, harrassment, lies to religious and political leaders, and orchestrated riots.
Finally, on August 19, 1953, Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup backed by the CIA and Britain’s MI6.
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was restored to power, and he appointed the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister.
The government outlawed Mosaddegh's National Front and arrested most of its leaders. The SAVAK secret police force, with funding and training from the US, conducted widespread repression. Over 130,000 were arrested, and thousands were tortured and executed. The Shah’s policies furthered the wealth and landownings of his own family and friends, while many farmers couldn't get access to land and were forced to migrate to cities and live in shanty towns.
Yet the US built warm relations with the new regime as US corporations gained control of 40% of the country’s oil fields along with access to much of the remaining output.
Blowback
By the late 1970s, resentment toward the Shah’s authoritarian rule exploded into revolution. In 1979, the Shah was overthrown and the Islamic Republic was born. The new government defined itself partly in opposition to the United States—an enemy that many Iranians believed had stolen their democracy a generation earlier.
From that moment on, relations between Washington and Tehran were marked by mistrust, hostility, and periodic confrontation.
Few Americans know this history. In Iran, though, it is remembered as the moment when the United States claimed the country’s petroleum wealth for itself and crushed a democratic government that sought to make life better for ordinary people.
A Pattern of Military Interference
The overthrow of Mosaddegh was not an isolated episode. The United States has a long history of undermining governments that put their own citizens ahead of US economic interests.
In 1954, the CIA helped engineer the overthrow of Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Árbenz. His crime? Land reforms that would have given poor farmers opportunities for a livelihood while taking, and paying for, land unused by the United Fruit Company.
The result of the coup was a series of dictatorships. Political opponents, labor unions leaders, farmers, and human rights activists were imprisoned, “disappeared,” and executed. Wave after wave of genocidal massacres targeted Indigenous villagers. Land reform was reversed and poverty deepened.
We set up the next war when we fail to reckon with choices made in previous conflicts that created instability, oppression, abuses, poverty, and resentment.
Many Americans enjoy visiting this beautiful Central American country, but few know the role the US government played in impoverishing this small nation. Likewise, those calling for the deporting of Guatemalans rarely acknowledge the reasons these refugees are fleeing their communities.
Two decades later, the United States helped destabilize the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, culminating in the US-supported military coup in 1973 led by Augusto Pinochet. The resulting dictatorship lasted for 17 years, leading to the exile of an estimated 200,000, the torture of tens of thousands, and the death of some 3,000 Chileans. The regime’s extreme economic policies brought about cuts in the safety net, a massive buildup in military spending, and high unemployment.
US copper mining companies benefited from the coup, receiving compensation for the nationalizations that had taken place under the Allende government. More importantly, international mining companies were permitted to extract enormous profits from subsequent mining operations.
In addition to enriching these foreign corporations, the coup prevented Allende from leading a successful socialist government that might have inspired others across the Americas to mobilize for more egalitarian governments.
Each case had its own circumstances. But the pattern is unmistakable: When governments around the world pursue policies perceived as threatening US corporate interests, Washington all too often resorts to clandestine interference or military attacks. And all too often, the justifications and patriotic propaganda is all that Americans learn about what took place.
There have been important exceptions to the widespread ignorance. US Marine Smedley Butler, who at the time of his death was the most decorated Marine in US history, saw firsthand who benefited from US wars. He wrote this in a 1935 magazine article:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.
For many Americans, these episodes remain obscure chapters of history. Yet, in much of the world, these events set the stage for decades of poverty and political repression.
The Choice to Support War
Wars are often described as tragic inevitabilities—conflicts that somehow spiral beyond anyone’s understanding. In reality, we set up the next war when we fail to reckon with choices made in previous conflicts that created instability, oppression, abuses, poverty, and resentment.
- Well-connected corporations who insist on military support for their control of resources abroad, even when this means undermining another country’s sovereignty, economy, and political stability.
- Political leaders who put Americans in uniform in harms way and spend trillions in taxpayer dollars to support corporate interests abroad, instead of looking out for the well-being of ordinary people.
- Apologists for violence abroad, who generate anti-communist, anti-Islamic, or other propaganda instead of honest analysis.
- Media outlets that repeat official narratives without scrutiny, and downplay the harms caused by US foreign policy choices, especially when those impacted are of different races or religions.
- Defense contractors who profit from excessive military spending. (US defense stocks have been on the upswing as a $50 billion supplemental defense spending package looms, according to Bloomberg.)
- And US citizens who buy the war propaganda, look away from the suffering, and disregard the reasons refugees may be fleeing the chaos and violence.
Each group occupies its own circle of complicity, and each gains in a different way. Some may claim ignorance and others may argue that they were powerless to intervene. But history suggests that silence and complacency can be powerful enablers of atrocities.
What We Pay for Not Knowing
After disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are signs that this time might be different. A majority of Americans disapprove of the US bombing of Iran, according to a CNN poll taken immediately following the launch of the war. American service members have begun paying with their lives. The Center for American Progress estimates the war’s price tag already exceeds $5 billion—with safety-net programs in free fall and gas prices rising.
But it will take more than passive disapproval to stop yet another war of choice.
Reckoning with the abuses of the powerful and naming those profiting from the willful blindness in the face of atrocities are first steps toward ending the cycles of violence. All of us pay for these wars, whether through lives lost, democracies imperiled, excessive public spending on a bloated military-industrial complex, or through the neglect of needed investments at home.
An informed public—asking questions and refusing complicity—is the first step to stopping this and future wars of choice.
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‘While No One’s Looking,’ Trump DOJ Settles Antitrust Case With Live Nation-Ticketmaster
"This settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
Mar 09, 2026
The Trump Justice Department on Monday reportedly reached a tentative deal with Live Nation—the owner of Ticketmaster—to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit that aimed to break up the company, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry.
News of the settlement, which would not require a breakup of Live Nation, came days after the trial began, with a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department's decimated antitrust division saying last week that the company abuses its market power and earns its massive profits "through illegal action." The antitrust division's counsel in the case, David Dahlquist, was apparently not made aware of the settlement until he appeared in court Monday morning.
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said it is "highly unorthodox for the Justice Department’s lead litigator to be left out of the loop on the settlement and highly prejudicial to the jury’s deliberations."
“According to every observer, this trial was already going well for the Justice Department and states," said Hepner. "They had just won summary judgment and a jury had already heard evidence of Live Nation’s longstanding pattern of retaliation against venues who had attempted to open the market to competition. State AGs are once again left to clean up the mess left by this Administration’s incompetence.”
Under the settlement, which must be approved by a judge, Live Nation "would pay a fine of up to $280 million and divest itself of at least 13 amphitheaters across the country as it opens up its ticketing processes so that competitors can share in the sale of tickets," the Associated Press reported.
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a trade group representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, and promoters, noted in a statement that the reported $280 million settlement amount "is the equivalent of four days of [Live Nation's] 2025 revenue, which means they could potentially make it back by this Friday."
"The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals," said Stephen Parker, NIVA's executive director. "Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them."
"If these facts are true," Parker added, "NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system."
And Trump pardons Ticketmaster while no one’s looking. pic.twitter.com/ZEFcSomb05
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 9, 2026
The antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation was filed in 2024 after a nearly two-year investigation launched amid mounting public outrage aimed at Ticketmaster, spurred in part by its botched presale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in 2022. Then-President Joe Biden's Justice Department filed the complaint in partnership with 30 state attorneys general, most of whom vowed Monday to continue the fight without the Trump administration's support.
"For years, Live Nation has made enormous profits by exploiting its illegal monopoly and raising costs for shows," said New York Attorney General Letitia James. "My office has led a bipartisan group of attorneys general in suing Live Nation for taking advantage of fans, venues, and artists, and we are committed to holding Live Nation accountable."
The settlement deal comes weeks after Gail Slater, the former head of the Justice Department's antitrust arm, was pushed out by DOJ leadership. Prior to Slater's removal, Live Nation executives and lobbyists had reportedly been negotiating the terms of a possible settlement with senior Justice Department officials outside of the antitrust office, heightening corruption concerns.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement that "this settlement amounts to a slap on the wrist that tinkers around the edges of the real problem: Live Nation’s monopoly."
"Instead of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Live Nation will now get to continue forcing the vast majority of live venues to use Ticketmaster," said Peterson-Cassin. "Following the ousting of Gail Slater and the gutting of the government’s antitrust enforcement capabilities, this settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
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