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Why We Must Save the 'Sistine Chapel of the New Deal' From Trump Destruction
It is a tragic irony that murals meant to represent the contract between the government and its citizens—the Social Security that over 70 million Americans rely on today—would be sold to the highest bidder rather than preserved for posterity.
Nov 30, 2025
Painted figures haunt an empty building. A boy leaning on a pair of crutches. A father and son wandering a barren railroad track. A nuclear family at a picnic table. These poignant scenes were painted by two of the foremost American artists of the twentieth century, Ben Shahn and Philip Guston. No one is around to see them. They are on the walls of the Wilbur J. Cohen Building in Washington, DC, one of forty-five federal properties currently earmarked for sale. The staff who worked in the building have been mostly fired, furloughed, or relocated. Only the murals remain—and perhaps not for long.
The Cohen Building has been called the “Sistine Chapel of the New Deal” for its ambitious mural cycles. Shahn and Guston, as well as Seymour Fogel and Ethel and Jenne Magafan, gave indelible form to New Deal tenets: the dignity of labor, the benefit of public works, and the need for a social safety net. A detail of Fogel’s Wealth of the Nation, painted for the lobby, is on the cover of my survey of New Deal art: it crystallizes the period belief in the mutual power of mind and muscle to secure a prosperous future. If the Cohen building is sold, these masterpieces of public art will be in peril. As Timothy Noah has reported, a private developer is unlikely to bear the cost of renovating and maintaining the building, much less the murals. It would be cheaper to tear the whole thing down.
Is it frivolous to worry about art when the world is on fire? The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration didn’t think so. In the midst of the Great Depression, the worst economic calamity in the country’s history, FDR’s New Deal invested in culture as essential to a more “abundant life” for US citizens.
The government paid struggling artists like Shahn, Guston, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel, and Jackson Pollock to create artworks for post offices, schools, hospitals, and airports across the country, in big cities and rural hamlets. New Deal art extolled American livelihoods and landscapes in an accessible style, reassuring anxious viewers about the state of the nation and the economy. “In encouraging the creation and enjoyment of beautiful things,” FDR said in a 1939 address, “we are furthering democracy itself.”
The Cohen murals, like all New Deal art, were made by and belong to the people. They tell us about who we’ve been, who we are, and who we aspire to be.
The Cohen murals were among the New Deal's highest-profile works. Commissioned by the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts, the agency that oversaw art for federal buildings (such as your local post office, which may house a New Deal mural), the murals celebrate the Social Security Act of 1935. The landmark law established retirement benefits and unemployment insurance at a time when most Americans worked until they dropped and risked starvation if fired or injured. When Ben Shahn learned he’d won the commission, he wrote to the head of the Section: “To me, it is the most important job that I could want. The building itself is a symbol of perhaps the most advanced piece of legislation enacted by the New Deal, and I am proud to be given the job of interpreting it, or putting a face on it.”
Shahn and Guston knew social insecurity firsthand. Both came from immigrant Jewish families in flight from persecution. Sympathy for the poor and downtrodden is a leitmotif of Shahn’s career, made vivid by the recent retrospective at the Jewish Museum in New York. Guston, also the subject of a major traveling retrospective, was ten years old when he found his father’s dead body hanging from a noose in the backyard shed: a suicide of despair after a protracted struggle to find work. Guston might have met a similar fate if the federal art projects hadn’t “kept me alive and working,” as he recalled, “It was my education.” Their murals combine humanist conviction with visual invention (“the best work I’ve done,” in Shahn’s estimation), testaments to the idea that art, like social security, should be a shared resource to benefit the public.
It is a tragic irony that murals meant to represent the contract between the government and its citizens—the Social Security that over 70 million Americans rely on today—would be sold to the highest bidder rather than preserved for posterity. The Cohen building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which should require a review and consultation before it’s sold or torn down—but wasn’t that also true of the White House’s historic East Wing? While the nonprofit Living New Deal has taken steps to intervene and issued a petition to save the murals, the administration’s “move fast and break things” ethos may run roughshod over due process.
So it must be said: The Cohen murals, like all New Deal art, were made by and belong to the people. They tell us about who we’ve been, who we are, and who we aspire to be. Preserving them would not only steward a significant chapter of American cultural history—itself a civic responsibility—but also keep alive the New Deal dream of social security for all, especially for society’s most vulnerable. This was Roosevelt’s definition of liberty: something that required “a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.” While Social Security has helped hundreds of millions of Americans earn “enough to live by,” the Cohen murals help us see what Americans “live for”: peace, prosperity, and mutual aid for our fellow citizens.
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25 FDR Quotes We Need to Recall—Now More Than Ever
As we try to gather our forces and articulate a shared progressive vision, we should take hold of FDR's words to inspire and encourage our labors and struggles.
Aug 06, 2025
The democratic achievements of the "Long Age of Roosevelt" (1930s-1960s) have been under siege by corporate bosses, conservatives, and neoliberals for 50 years—and the walls defending them have now been breached. As we try to gather our forces and articulate a shared progressive vision, we should take hold of FDR's words to inspire and encourage our labors and struggles.
- None of us... need feel surprise that the government of our own country, for instance, is conservative by far the greater part of the time. Our national danger is, however, not that it may for four years or eight years become liberal or even radical, but that it may suffer from too long a period of the do-nothing or reactionary standards...—"Whither Bound?" Speech at Milton Academy, Massachusetts, May 18, 1926
- There is no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for a generation.—Letter to John Kingsbury, May 12, 1930
- The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination, and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith, and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!—Campaign Speech at Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, May 22, 1932
- These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized, but the indispensable units of economic power for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.—"The Forgotten Man," A Radio Address from Albany, April 7, 1932
- Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws—sacred, inviolable, unchangeable—cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.—"A New Deal for the American People," Democratic National Convention, Chicago, July 2, 1932
- I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.—"A New Deal for the American People," Democratic National Convention, Chicago, July 2, 1932
- [T]here are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory—and I suppose this goes back to the days of Noah—I won't say Adam and Eve, because they had a less complicated situation—but, at least, back in the days of the flood, there was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks.—"Social Justice through Social Action," Detroit, Michigan, October 2, 1932
- So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.—First Inaugural Address, May 4, 1933
- Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.—Message to Congress on Tax Revision, June 19, 1935
- Within democratic Nations the chief concern of the people is to prevent the continuance or the rise of autocratic institutions that beget slavery at home and aggression abroad. Within our borders, as in the world at large, popular opinion is at war with a power-seeking minority.—Annual Message to Congress, January 3, 1936
- These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.—Accepting Renomination, Democratic Convention, Philadelphia, June 27, 1936
- There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.—Accepting Renomination, Democratic Convention, Philadelphia June 27, 1936
- Inequalities in our social order call for correction. A true patriotism urges us to build an even more substantial America where the good things of life may be shared by more of us, where the social injustices will not be encouraged to flourish.—Dedication of a War Memorial, St. Louis, October 14, 1936
- Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. I am particularly glad to know that today you are making this fine appeal to the youth of America… We look for a younger generation that is going to be more American than we are…—Extemporaneous Remarks to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C., April 21, 1938
- If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.—Speech to the National Education Association, June 30, 1938
- As of today, Fascism and Communism—and old-line Tory Republicanism—are not threats to the continuation of our form of government. But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land...—Radio Address, Hyde Park, New York, November 4, 1938
- The strength of every dictatorship depends upon the power of the one, almighty dictator—supported by a small, highly organized minority who call themselves the "elite." We depend upon the power and allegiance of the 130 million members of our national community from whom our Government's authority is derived and to whom our Government is forever responsible.—Radio Address, Washington D.C., October 24, 1940
- We Americans of today—all of us—we are characters in this living book of democracy. But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters that are to come will tell a story of retreat or a story of continued advance. I believe that the American people will say: "Forward!"—Campaign Address, Cleveland, Ohio, November 2, 1940
- We intend to keep our freedom—to defend it from attacks from without and against corruption from within. We shall defend it against the forces of dictatorship, whatever disguises and false faces they may wear. But we have learned that freedom in itself is not enough. Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say. Freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God. Democracy, to be dynamic, must provide for its citizens opportunity as well as freedom. We of this generation have seen a rebirth of dynamic democracy in America in these past few years.—Campaign Address, Cleveland, Ohio, November 2, 1940
- In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.—Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941
- To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.—Speech Dedicating his Presidential Library, Hyde Park, June 30, 1941
- This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights–among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty. As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.—State of the Union Address, Washington D.C., January 11, 1944
- It is true that there are many undemocratic defects in voting laws in the various States, almost 48 different kinds of defects, and some of these produce injustices which prevent a full and free expression of public opinion. The right to vote must be open to our citizens irrespective of—race, color, or creed—without tax or artificial restriction of any kind. The sooner we get to that basis of political equality, the better it will be for the country as a whole…—Radio Address from the White House, October 5, 1944
- We are not going to turn the clock back!—Campaign Address, Chicago, October 28, 1944
- Today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons at a fearful cost—and we shall profit by them. We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other Nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.—Fourth Inaugural Address, Washington D.C., January 20, 1945
Mamdani Shows Us How to Defeat Trump's MAGA Vision
A democratic socialist won by acknowledging what everyone already knows—life has become unaffordable—and saying we're going to build our way out of it. He's shown Democrats how to stop lying and start acknowledging what's broken. Provide solutions and talk about them relentlessly with excitement and enthusiasm.
Jun 25, 2025
Zohran Mamdani just beat Andrew Cuomo in NYC's mayoral primary by doing something Democrats forgot how to do: acknowledging reality and promising to build our way out of it.
Too few people can afford to live in America anymore. We've given up on the idea that hard work gets you anywhere. We're buying lottery tickets and praying we got into Bitcoin at the right time because that's the only path to stability we can see.
I co-founded Justice Democrats. I was AOC's Communications Director. I've watched the fire die out from Bernie to AOC to Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. I've seen movements and moments that seemed poised to take back our democracy and our economy for the people slow to a crawl. Partly because our leaders were too trusting of the Democratic party. They thought we were all on the same team.
We aren't. We never were.
It's time for a full court press on the party. It's time to reshape it in the image of a better FDR. Take it over from the inside. Primary every corporate Democrat who thinks extraction is an economic policy. We need a new party—not a third party, but a Democratic party willing to clean house—starting with those who forgot how to build.
The party establishment can't just steal Mamdani's message. They've spent 30 years telling us why we can't build things, why we can't have universal healthcare, why we can't afford what every other developed country has. If Chuck Schumer suddenly started talking like Mamdani tomorrow, everyone would know he's full of shit.
So they'll do what they always do. They'll join Republicans in calling him too radical, too far left. They'll wring their hands about needing to appeal to the "center."
The center ain't what they think it is. It's swing voters who went from Obama to Trump and they want change, not compromise. They want someone to acknowledge that the system is broken and promise to fix it. They want a plan that makes sense.
Only 22% of Americans believe government can improve their lives. Twenty-two percent. That's what happens when both parties spend 40 years making sure that public options aren't functional. They make sure we can't build our own housing, transit, childcare, or healthcare system. They made sure the public can't build anything except tax breaks for billionaires.
Democrats tell us it's complicated. Republicans tell us it's immigrants' fault. Working families are taking on credit card debt to buy groceries. Teachers are driving Uber at night. Parents are choosing between daycare and rent.
We've accepted that this is just how it is. That America doesn't build things anymore. That the best we can hope for is tweaking a broken system around the edges.
Mamdani just showed Democrats how to call bullshit on all of that.
He won by acknowledging what everyone already knows—life has become unaffordable—and saying we're going to build our way out of it. Housing that teachers can afford. Transit that actually works. Childcare centers so parents don't have to choose between working and raising their kids. And that the ultra wealthy are going to pay their fair share.
He hasn't even been elected yet. But he's shown Democrats how to stop lying about the problem.
Stop explaining why we can't. Start acknowledging what's broken. Then provide the solution. Talk about it relentlessly with excitement and enthusiasm.
The establishment endorsed Cuomo—a sexual predator who spent his career making life worse for working people—because he represents their vision: pretend everything's fine, blame messaging when voters don't believe you.
Bill Clinton, Bloomberg, Clyburn, Torres—they all backed the predator over the builder. Because predators don't threaten their business model. Someone who acknowledges reality does.
Wall Street is terrified of Mamdani because public building kills private extraction. Every public housing unit is one less rent check for Blackstone. Every public childcare center is one less profit center for private equity. Every public transit line that works means fewer Uber rides, fewer car loans, fewer opportunities to bleed working people dry.
Wall Street doesn't build anymore. They buy what exists, jack up prices, and extract until there's nothing left. Our economy runs on extraction now. Healthcare alone will suck up $75 trillion over the next decade—not to make us healthier, but to transfer wealth upward. Housing, childcare, education—they're all cash vacuums.
Mamdani's promising to build public alternatives. That scares the shit out of them. He's proving you can win by admitting what everyone already knows. You can say "housing is unaffordable and we're going to build more of it" instead of lecturing people about market dynamics.
Now someone wins by saying we can build the things people need? Their business model collapses. Democrats have spent 30 years helping corporations privatize everything—from healthcare to housing to transit. They've turned basic needs into profit centers for Wall Street.
Young people assume they'll never own homes. Parents quit jobs because childcare costs more than they earn. Families crowd into apartments they can't afford while Democrats lecture us about GDP growth.
We've been trained to see poverty as inevitable. To see suffering as complicated. To see solutions as impossible.
Mamdani showed Democrats a different way. Admit that life has gotten harder. Acknowledge that work doesn't pay. Stop pretending the game isn't rigged. Then promise to build the things that make life livable.
Public building doesn't kill capitalism—it saves it from itself. When government builds housing, private developers have to compete. When we build public childcare, private centers can't charge whatever they want. But healthcare? Build public hospitals and clinics, and suddenly private insurers can't extract $75 trillion while people die rationing insulin. That's how you restart real competition. That's how you force corporations to actually create value instead of just extracting it.
Build the things people need to live. Not tax credits. Not market solutions. Not complicated programs that take three years to maybe help some people.
Mamdani won because he's the first Democrat in years to talk about the affordability crisis like someone who's actually tried to pay rent.
Americans aren't stupid. We know when we're being fed bullshit. We know when politicians are pretending our problems don't exist. We know when they're lying about why rent costs $3,000 a month or why insulin costs $600. We've just stopped expecting anyone to acknowledge reality, let alone fix it. We've accepted that politicians are liars and they will keep explaining why suffering is actually prosperity if you squint right.
The lottery tickets and crypto gambling show we've given up on the normal paths working. We need a party willing to admit those paths are broken before we'll believe they can be fixed.
What really terrifies them is if Mamdani succeeds in NYC, it spreads. Other cities start asking why they can't build public housing. Other states wonder why they can't have public childcare. The entire extraction economy—$75 trillion in healthcare alone, trillions more in housing, education, childcare—starts to crack. Every public option is a private profit center destroyed. Every successful public project is proof that we don't need them.
Mamdani hasn't even been elected yet. But he's shown us how to stop lying about what needs fixing. He's shown that you can win by promising to build for everyone, not just donors.
The movement's next job is to help Mamdani actually build—to prove the model works. Then we replicate it. Primaries in NYC, NYS, the US House and Senate. Every corporate Democrat who backs extraction over building needs a challenger who can build. Every AIPAC-purchased politician needs a challenger. Then maybe we can win in Texas and Tennessee and West Virginia. Then maybe people will believe the words we say.
If you still believe in this party, prove it. Help us take it back.
This isn't about purity. It's about survival. Either we build our way out of this mess or we keep managing the collapse until there's nothing left to manage.
Democrats need to learn from this. Or get sent home. We're building anyway.
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Democrats Must Become the Party of the Working Class—Or Else
It's true that the party isn’t dead... yet. But if it does not seriously reflect on its disastrous 2024 performance—and all that led up to it—the future is beyond bleak.
Jun 17, 2025
A few months after the Democrats’ bitter defeat in the 2024 elections, the party convened an Executive Committee meeting. Instead of taking a long hard look at the reasons for their poor performance, the meeting devolved into an orgy of self-congratulations. “We had the best convention ever.” “We raised more money than ever.” “We had the best team and the best cooperation between the White House, the Harris campaign, and the party.”
When one esteemed party leader raised her hand reminding everyone that “we lost” and suggested that the party needed an autopsy to understand what went wrong, her idea was met with indignation. “What do you mean an ‘autopsy’? We’re not dead!”
True, the party isn’t dead, but its 2024 performance was poor. It lost the White House and the Senate. And polls now show Democrats with their lowest favorability ratings in recent history.
Despite denying the need for an autopsy, during the past few months press reports have included advice from “Democratic party operatives” as to what the party should do moving forward and reports of studies commissioned by one or another party entity analyzing the 2024 defeat. The consensus view that has emerged is that Democrats need to move to the “center” and forego radical or “leftist” political ideas. The problem with this assessment is twofold. First, most of the operatives speaking out or the groups commissioned to conduct the studies (reportedly costing $30 million) are the same consultants who dug the hole Democrats now find themselves in. They do not understand the voters they lost or what needs to be done to win them back. Second, their definitions of “centrist” and “leftist” are inventions to suit their own biases. It’s not enough to say “We need to stop being so ‘woke,’ and instead focus on what voters care about,” especially when they don’t really know what voters do care about.
For years, these same consultants have argued that Democrats need to move to “the center” of American politics, which they define as an amalgam of conservative-leaning fiscal/economic policies and more liberal-leaning on some (but not all) social issues. There was no overall theme to this mish-mash of ideas, and candidates who listened to the consultants often tied themselves in knots trying to appeal to voters without a coherent message.
While pre-Trump, Republicans would focus on the Reagan mantra of lower taxes and smaller government, when one asked Democrats what they stood for, they would read off a litany of issues (abortion, social justice, environment, immigration, guns, etc.) leaving it up to voters to find the forest from the trees. Because Republicans’ “smaller government, lower taxes” only increased income inequality and threatened the economic well-being of most voters, they avoided the details on these matters and instead sought to divert voters’ attention by elevating and exaggerating one or another of the Democrats’ stances on social issues. “Democrats want open borders.” “Democrats are soft on crime.” “Democrats want to abolish police.” “Democrats want transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.”
Each time Republicans would lay these traps, Democrats would take the bait, focusing on these issues instead of developing an overarching message that would reach a majority of voters.
Twenty-five years ago, I co-authored a book with my brother John Zogby—“What Ethnic Americans Really Think.” It was based on polling John’s firm had done measuring the political attitudes of voters from several US ethnic groups: Italians, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, and Africans. Despite the deep differences that existed amongst the communities included in the study, what came through was that their views converged on several issues. Strong majorities in all groups were proud of and had an emotional tie to their heritages and were attached to their hometowns and their family connections. This was true for those who immigrated to and those born in the US.
Contrary to the consultants’ “wisdom,” all of these communities supported what can be seen as progressive economic/fiscal policies. For example, overwhelming majorities, from the mid-80% range to mid-90%, wanted the federal government to: help underwrite health insurance; raise the minimum wage; impose penalties on polluters; oppose a regressive taxation system; strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and support public education. Large majorities also wanted: campaign finance reform; gun control; and a US unilateral ban on nuclear weapons testing.
On social issues, the views of the voters from each of these ethnic groups reflected a more nuanced approach. Smaller majorities, but still majorities, supported the death penalty, limits on abortion, school vouchers and opposition to racial preferences in hiring.
So in reality, the “center” is not being more moderate on economic issues and more liberal on social issues because the economic and fiscal issues have the support of almost 9 in 10 voters and are the foundation for building a majoritarian party. At the same time, instead locking out, demeaning, and refusing to engage with voters with divergent views on social issues, Democrats need to respectfully discuss these issues within the party,.
The lesson that Democrats need to learn is that “the left” is not primarily defined by where you stand on social issues. Instead, unlike Republicans, Democrats must define themselves as the party that understands the government’s positive role in creating an economy and programs that create jobs and opportunities for working and middle class families—Black, Asian, Latino, and White ethnics. When they don’t embrace these concerns, they cede this ground to Republicans, who despite their horribly regressive policies now claim to represent the working class while charging that Democrats only represent elites.
This doesn’t mean that Democrats should ever abandon their commitment to the range of social and cultural issues party leaders have long embraced as critical for our diverse democratic society. But these issues can’t define the party. For Democrats to win, they must reclaim their history as the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and, yes, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. That they are the party that believes that government has a role to play in lifting up those who need a helping hand, and providing for the working classes and middle classes of all ethnic and racial communities.
Tariffs Won't Help US Workers. A Job Guarantee Would.
As we confront what some are expecting to be the third once-in-a-generation economic downturn in less than two decades, we need to be ready with real solutions.
Apr 30, 2025
President Trump has given many contradictory reasons for his recent tariff spree, including claiming tariffs will “create jobs like we have never seen before.”
Yet research shows that tariffs don’t increase employment and instead are likely to cost jobs due to increased input prices and retaliatory tariffs. Economist Michael Strain at the conservative American Enterprise Institute expects Trump’s tariffs will lead to "recessionary levels" of unemployment. Ironically, analysts expect the rural and Heartland communities that voted for Trump will be disproportionately negatively impacted by retaliatory tariffs. Given how this Administration has cavalierly forced tens of thousands of federal workers out of good jobs and destroyed just as many research and nonprofit jobs supported by federal grants, it’s clear that employing Americans has never been the true priority.
A federal job guarantee is a public option for a good job—with living wages, full benefits, and union protections—on projects that meet community needs for physical and human infrastructure that are often long-overlooked.
But it should be a national priority. And we have a much better solution than tariffs: a job guarantee.
A federal job guarantee is a public option for a good job—with living wages, full benefits, and union protections—on projects that meet community needs for physical and human infrastructure that are often long-overlooked. Repairing bridges, helping communities recover from disasters, providing quality care for children and the elderly, fixing potholes, and expanding tree canopy to mitigate extreme heat are just a few examples of the community-building work that would become possible with a job guarantee.
A job guarantee would address the failure of our economy to provide good jobs for all. Even during times of relatively low unemployment, millions of Americans—currently 7.9 million—want full-time work but cannot find it. This is a chronic crisis that disproportionately burdens rural communities and communities of color. Another 39 million American workers are stuck in jobs that pay below $17 per hour, often with precarious, unhealthy, and undignified working conditions. Guaranteed jobs would provide these workers with the option of stable employment and real economic security.
Tariffs may grab headlines, but they don’t build communities or deliver good jobs.
A job guarantee is not a new idea. The right to a “useful and remunerative” job was the number one item on the Economic Bill of Rights proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. Guaranteed jobs were a central demand of the civil rights movement, from the 1963 March on Washington to Coretta Scott King’s advocacy throughout the 1970s. And it nearly became law: the original Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 included a legally enforceable right to a job with the federal government acting as employer of last resort, though that provision was stripped from the watered-down version that eventually passed. In recent years, congressional leaders including senators Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders have supported versions of a job guarantee, and representative Ayanna Pressley introduced a Congressional resolution outlining a modernized federal job guarantee that would pay $25 per hour.
While we’ve never had a true federal job guarantee, successful public employment efforts demonstrate its practicality and potential. In the 1930’s, the Works Progress Administration employed 8.5 million people building physical infrastructure and artistic works that strengthened our economy and culture for decades. Smaller-scale “subsidized employment” programs that provide the on-the-job training and wraparound supports for workers facing barriers to employment (similar to what would be provided by a job guarantee) also have a strong track record of success.
A job guarantee is not a new idea. The right to a “useful and remunerative” job was the number one item on the Economic Bill of Rights proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.
By producing not only good jobs but also vital infrastructure and services, a job guarantee bolsters families and the neighborhoods where they live. Moreover, it would generate “trickle-up” economic effects. Money would begin circulating in persistently-disinvested communities, creating opportunities for grocery stores, small businesses, and local entrepreneurship. And a public option for good jobs would put healthy pressure on private employers to better compensate their workers—elevating wages and benefits across the board.
Funded by the federal government and implemented locally, a job guarantee would create new opportunities for civic engagement, with communities suggesting new public investments that meet their needs and manifest their aspirations. This partnership could strengthen democracy and rebuild trust that government can work for working people.
Ultimately, a job guarantee would create a more stable, resilient, and equitable economy. By immediately providing jobs and income at the first sign of an economic downturn, it would act as an automatic stabilizer—maintaining consumer spending and preventing prolonged recessions and jobless recoveries. This would benefit the economy as a whole and protect marginalized Black workers who are the “last hired and first fired” when the economy sours. It would enable a “just transition” away from unsustainable industries and address the threat of job displacement posed by AI, creating new jobs protecting the environment and mitigating climate change.
And for those who would dismiss this as socialism, it’s worth emphasizing: the job guarantee simply ensures there is an available job. If the more “productive” private sector can offer something better, all the better—workers will have the freedom to choose.
As we confront what some are expecting to be the third once-in-a-generation economic downturn in less than two decades, we need to be ready with real solutions. Tariffs may grab headlines, but they don’t build communities or deliver good jobs. Instead, this administration’s chaotic policies are creating widespread economic uncertainty and strain. A federal job guarantee, by contrast, is a bold economic policy rooted in American history and grounded in the needs of workers who’ve been sidelined by our economic policies. If we want to empower workers and build a more resilient economy, we should start investing in real solutions—starting with a job guarantee.
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How to Cut the Billionaires Behind This Coup Down to Size
The political left in Germany has a plan and strategy for the Elon Musk's of this world and maybe we should be learn from it.
Feb 17, 2025
Americans these days don’t much like billionaires. Our ultra-rich, Americans overwhelmingly believe, aren’t paying enough in taxes. Polling earlier this month found that nearly three-quarters of the nation’s likeliest voters — 74 percent — feel billionaires are paying “too little’ at tax time.
Just how concerned about billion-dollar fortunes have Americans become? Nearly half of us overall, Harris polling found last summer, would like to see a limit on “wealth accumulation.” Among Gen Z’ers, that support for limits on billionaire fortunes runs all the way up to 65 percent.
“Billionaires,” some 58 percent of Americans agreed in that same Harris poll, “are becoming more like dictators.”
The share of Americans equating billionaires with dictators — given Elon Musk’s current dominant role in the new Trump White House — is most likely running even higher today.
The best way to counter our ongoing billionaire coup? We might want to look east for some answers. In the run-up to Germany’s February 23 parliamentary elections, that nation’s Left Party, Die Linke, has proposed a detailed five-step set of initiatives designed to cut the super rich down to democratic size.
“We believe,” the Die Linke co-chair Jan van Aken notes simply in his intro to his party’s new plan, “that there should not be any billionaires.”
But van Aken and Die Linke understand quite well that no government can suddenly snap its fingers and make billionaires disappear. The party has instead melded ideas from all around the world into a coherent and common-sense package.
The Die Linke plan’s step one: restoring a “wealth tax.” Germany has been without one since the nation’s top court nixed the wealth tax in effect back in 1995. The proposed new version would revolve around an annual levy starting at 1 percent on wealth over 1 million euros — the equivalent of about $1.03 million — and rising up to 12 percent on wealth concentrations above a billion euros.
On top of that would come a special one-time wealth tax, also on a graduated scale, that would only impact Germans sitting on fortunes worth more than 2 million euros. This levy’s top rate would hit 30 percent for awesomely affluent Germans in the proposal’s highest wealth bracket.
Germany’s super rich would also see, under the Die Linke plan, a higher inheritance tax on the wealth they leave behind. On the annual income side, top corporate executives and other high-earners would face a 75-percent tax rate on their take-homes over a million euros.
The fifth and final plank of the Die Linke plan: replacing the current 25-percent flat tax on capital gains — the income from the sale of financial and other assets — with a graduated sliding scale of rates.
The overall goal of the Die Linke tax plan: a halving of the wealth of Germany’s wealthiest over the next decade. Three other German parties on the left side of German politics are also backing tax hikes on the wealthy, but at levels not nearly as significant as Die Linke.
Elon Musk’s favorite German party, meanwhile, sees nothing wrong in boosting the fortunes of Germany’s most fortunate. The ultra-far-right Alternative for Germany party, the Musk-backed Alternative für Deutschland, is pledging higher tax relief for capital gains and an end to Germany’s existing inheritance tax.
Current polling is making the former investment banker Friedrich Merz the favorite to become Germany’s next chancellor. His conservative Christian Democratic Union party favors lowering the corporate tax rate and is now polling support from near 30 percent of Germany’s voters. Polls have the anti-immigrant AfD at a bit over 20 percent.
Die Linke has been rising in the pre-election polling since the party unveiled its tax plan, and the party gained 11,000 new members in January. Analysts now see Die Linke likely to finish with about 6 percent of the overall vote tally, maybe enough to prevent Germany’s right-wingers from forming a new government. But the party’s bold tax plan, either way, has no shot at becoming the law of the land in Germany’s next legislative session.
Still, what seems no more than tax-the-rich pie-in-the-sky in one generation can become actual tax policy in the next. In 1917, for instance, a bold group of American progressives proposed a tax rate of 100 percent on annual income over $100,000, the equivalent of nearly $2.5 million in today’s dollars. A generation later, in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to place that same 100-percent tax rate on America’s most affluent.
Lawmakers didn’t buy FDR’s 100-percent top rate, but they did pass legislation that had America’s richest facing a 94-percent tax on their top-bracket income by 1944. That U.S. top tax rate would hover around 90 percent for the next two decades, years that would see the United States become the world’s first-ever mass-middle-class nation.
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'Do You Hear What I Hear?' When Will Democrats Listen?
With our latest holiday-themed comic, we seek not only to empower the voices of working people, but also to push the Democrats to do so as we work to rebuild the party in favor of taking back and democratically transforming America.
Dec 16, 2024
It gives us no pleasure in saying this, for we definitely wanted it to go differently, but the Democrats deserved to lose. We, however, did not. They ceased to be the party of the people—the party of working people—years ago and they hardly seemed bothered by what was happening. Apparently the Democratic leaders were not listening to what working people were saying. Or, if they were listening, they failed to hear what was being said.
Embracing neoliberalism, the party’s leaders and presidents cultivated the affections of their billionaire donors; rationalized the widening inequalities and intensifying concentration of wealth and power; joined in the assaults upon the democratic achievements of the Greatest Generation and the Long Age of Roosevelt; distanced themselves from the resistance expressed in the Wisconsin Rising of 2011 and the anger and hopes of Occupy Wall Street; failed the Fight for $15; and made nothing of the polling which showed that Americans wanted not just change—indeed, radical change—but also jobs at living wages, guaranteed healthcare, decent affordable housing for all, and free public higher education (all of which would have amounted to what the greatest of Democratic Presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, projected as an Economic Bill of Rights in 1944).
In fact, even as workers began to organize anew and started demanding better deals from their bosses, the Democrats failed to act seriously to bolster their initiatives. Then, truly proving they had not been listening, they ran a 2024 presidential campaign that avoided calling out the billionaire bosses whose billions are growing ever greater and made little of the voiced needs and wants of the working class.
Situating our new comic in the Holiday season, we seek not only to remind liberals, progressives, radicals, and socialists to listen to and empower the voices of working people, but also to push the Democrats to do so as they/we work to rebuild the party in favor of taking back and democratically transforming America.
We close this installment of our comic-strip series with a portrait of FDR, the Democratic President who—for all of his tragic faults and failings—not only listened to and actually heard working people, but also encouraged them to progressively push him further than he might otherwise have gone and determinedly engaged their labors and energies to dramatically transform the nation and radically enhance freedom, equality, and democracy.
In upcoming comics for Common Dreams we intend to recount that history in hopes of inspiring and propelling Democrats and working people alike to take action.
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Fighting Strongman Trump With Our Vision for a More Beautiful Nation
Do we want to let Donald Trump rob us of our capacity for happiness for the next four years?
Dec 05, 2024
Count on one thing: the next four years are going to be tough. If you can muster the energy for political action while Donald Trump and his minions rule Washington, it will have to be channeled in two ways: first, resisting the worst excesses of him (and his party of billionaires); and second, keeping up the effort to make life truly better for everyone, especially the most vulnerable among us.
Or wait. Should it be the other way around? Could a good offense be the best defense?
At the moment, it’s a question that’s not getting much attention. It may seem all too obvious right now that resistance has to be the top priority. Who could have been surprised by the impassioned pleas to resist when Trump won?
That reflex couldn’t be more natural. No matter how old you are, for as long as you can remember, every president’s critics have focused on resisting the dangers they saw in him, while his supporters hailed him as strong enough to resist the dangers they saw threatening the nation.
Such strength was apparently just what voters wanted in 2024, too. As a New York Times headline summed up the outcome right after Election Day: “America Hires a Strongman.”
Why?
As former President Bill Clinton once explained, “When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd made the point in a more colorful fashion: “When Americans are scared,” she wrote, they want their president to be “the strong father who protects the home from invaders.”
What dangers? What invaders? Every winning candidate for president gets to fill in those blanks in whatever way he (and yes, it always has been a he) thinks will get him the most votes, any connection with reality being purely optional. So, while Kamala Harris offered quite realistic warnings about threats to democracy, Trump traded on fictional images of “illegal” immigrant murderers and rapists, “big bad” transgender girls threatening oh-so-pure “real” girls, and the “Marxists” heading up the Democratic Party. And, of course, we know who won.
Many voters were clearly scared and insecure. In a recent survey, roughly 80% of Harris’s supporters chose “we must find a way to embrace each other” as their highest priority, while about 70% of Trump’s chose “to protect ourselves.” As sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom put it, Trump voters have “a deep wellspring of anxiety about their ability to predict their security into the near and distant future. Trump has given [them] a way to direct that anger and that anxiety… in a toxic direction.”
As political scientist Bruce Cain noted, “In the choice between safety and every other policy goal, safety usually wins. In the choice between hope and fear, fear has proven to be more powerful even when the basis for it is grossly exaggerated.” Many reports showed that Trump voters were indeed angry, but after talking to hundreds of people in focus groups, the New York Times’s Patrick Healy concluded that anger and anxiety “were one and the same” emotion.
So, as usual, many fearful voters chose the candidate they saw as strong enough to protect them. Reporter David Corn heard one message over and over from crowds at Trump rallies: “The nation must be Trump-led or all is lost.” And Corn sensed what increasingly fearful Americans want: a version of “strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior.” Trump typically claimed that “nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” When he listed the ways he would change America in his speeches, making it “strong” and/or “safe” usually came before “great again.”
But it wasn’t just the policies he proposed like “peace through strength” or even the words he used that his voters cared most about. (Trump consistently outperformed Republicans running for Congress who took similar positions and used similar language.) It was the way he projected a mean and nasty personality. When he first ran for president, Trump said, “Every time things get worse, I do better. Because people want strength. We’re going to be so tough and so mean and so nasty.” And that was indeed the image his campaign projected in its advertising. Since the hunger for a strongman only grows in wartime, the Trump campaign happily made the election look like a war, while he even posted a prayer and picture on social media identifying himself with St. Michael battling the demons.
Pundit William Galston notes that the Trump campaign was “convinced that Trump’s intense personal bond with his supporters would do most of the mobilizing work.” GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini thinks that he forged that bond not with his policies but through “his unique style, his unique aesthetic.” (Yes, ugly can be an aesthetic.)
Of course, gender played a role, too. Every dictionary includes the word strongman, but when was the last time you saw strongwoman? And that tells you so much. One study showed that a belief in “hegemonic masculinity” — the idea that men are stronger than women and so should dominate — was the most accurate predictor of who would vote for Trump.
From FDR to Trump
Trump is perhaps the ultimate American politician who has traded on fear and insecurity to look strong and get votes. But the sad fact is that American presidents have been teaching the public to feel threatened and insecure for a long time — at least since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933 and made it a command center for resisting catastrophe in the midst of the Great Depression.
FDR admitted privately that his New Deal aimed to protect the capitalist system by resisting the threat of socialism, but he couldn’t say that out loud. He felt he could win the public’s confidence by staving off immediate disaster (as he indeed did). In the 1930s, that meant keeping as many Americans as possible out of dire poverty. Two prominent historians have labeled his approach “crisis management,” though he favored the word “security,” which is why the checks we retired folks now get from the government are called “Social Security.”
Once Hitler’s armies had conquered most of Europe, FDR announced that the great threat to national security was no longer the Depression at home but the enemy abroad, though he faced a public reluctant to get involved in war until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Throughout World War II, he would be seen as the strong father protecting the home from invaders.
Ever since, presidents have tried to take on that role. Lyndon Johnson warned that if we didn’t fight the communists in South Vietnam, we’d end up fighting North Vietnamese invaders in San Francisco. George W. Bush warned that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal that, if we didn’t take out Iraq first, could someday be used on American homes.
Almost every president since FDR has made the mantra of “national security” the nation’s highest value and insisted that staving off the threat of evildoers was the path to such “security,” no matter the price.
In 2016, Donald Trump paved his way to victory with similar language. His innovation (and it was a big one) was to refocus on the “enemy from within” — the immigrants, the transgendered, and above all, the liberals.
When Kamala Harris began her abbreviated campaign, it looked like she might break out of that mold. Her “politics of joy” seemed like a politics of confidence. She spoke and looked like a woman who was afraid of nothing, certainly not Donald Trump.
Yet in the last weeks of the campaign, as hers seemed to be stalling, she turned to the same old story: there’s a danger out there named Donald Trump and you’d better vote for me to protect yourself. Harris was, of course, correct, but the election results tell us that Trump did a better job of convincing voters that he was the one who could best protect our homes from invaders.
If Harris had focused more on bringing positive improvements to the lives of all Americans… who knows?
The Perils of Resistance
On Election Night, as the depressing results rolled in, the Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart cautioned that those of us who see Trump as a great danger should move beyond resistance: “We have to continue to fight and work day in and day out to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country that we know is possible.” That’s good advice for a lot of reasons.
It may be that simply resisting the world of Donald Trump and trying to prevent the very worst will indeed seem like a full-time job over the next four years, but do we really want to exhaust ourselves that way? Worse yet, the message resisters send is ultimately a negative one: Whatever we may be, we are not that. So, in the years to come, a politics of resistance runs the same risk that befell the Harris campaign. As Harvard pollster John Della Volpe put it: “’Not being Trump’ was never going to be enough.”
What’s more, resistance is all about stopping change. Yes, sometimes change is dangerous and needs to be stopped, but that still makes such resistance inherently conservative. A devotion to preventing the worst will allow the other side to look like the force for change and so define the terms of debate.
Yet, by definition, liberals and progressives are supposed to be that force. Do we really want to cede that to — yes! — Donald Trump?
For now, at least, the lesson of Election Day 2024 is that, in a contest over which party can best protect Americans, the current version of the Republican Party is likely the winner. We’ve learned in the hardest way possible that the Democrats can’t “out-Republican the Republicans,” as Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, put it.
A politics of resistance could end up merely reinforcing the fear driving MAGA-ism’s longing for a strongman. It’s simply not the right message to send to Trump voters if you wish even a small slice of them to change their minds two to four years from now.
It may feel good to focus on Trump’s evils and exclaim, as poet Walt Whitman did about President Franklin Pierce: “Such a rascal and thief in the presidency. This poor scum — the shit-ass! God damn him! — eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it, and tries to force it on the states.” But to focus solely, or even primarily, on such anger means making Trump the center of our attention. (Exactly what he wants, of course!) Hasn’t he gotten enough attention already?
And do we want to carry all the anger that full-time resistance is likely to breed? Do we want to let Donald Trump rob us of our capacity for happiness for the next four years? We could at least balance our outrage with the sentiment Whitman expressed about President Benjamin Harrison: “I think him mainly a gas bag, the smallest potato in the heap. As long as he remains in office, the aura of the presidency will give him prominence — but after that — oh! what will be his oblivion — utter!”
As the Italian revolutionary philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously put it, in the years to come we could use more “pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will.”
Alternative Vision and Action
Of course, we need to keep up some significant degree of resistance. (I’m definitely not among the astounding 28% of Democratic voters who claimed, in a post-election poll, that they would “support” Trump’s presidency.) But we should heed the words of Barack Obama’s former speechwriter Ben Rhodes: “Democrats must reject the impulse to simply be a resistance that condemns whatever outrageous thing Mr. Trump says. While confronting Mr. Trump when we must, we must also focus on what we stand for. We need to articulate an alternative vision for what kind of democracy comes next.”
Even the New York Times editorial board, hardly the most progressive group around, got the point: “A threat to democracy does not exempt leaders from giving voters a plan for the future that reflects the America they want to live in.”
And we can do more than envision a better future and plan for it during the next four years. Though things may be dreadful in Washington, state and local governments still have significant power to pursue policies to make life better. In my Colorado town, for example, there’s a strong effort to push the city council to raise the minimum wage, a measure our county commissioners, under public pressure, already endorsed. Denver is not only preparing to resist the deportation of undocumented residents but offering them access to city services, modeling what a humane government, one that cares about all its people, actually looks like. And even when politicians won’t act, many states allow citizen-initiated referenda like the ones that secured abortion rights in my state and many others.
Then there’s an endless list of things we can do as individuals. Think of it as “prefigurative politics.” As Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day put it, the energy we would burn up trying to tear down an oppressive government can be better used by ignoring that government and building “a new civilization within the shell of the old” — new institutions that genuinely serve people.
It also means building new feelings and attitudes. As we face a nightmarish four years of a federal government built on fear and intent on keeping all Americans (other than billionaires) afraid, anything we do to bring more confidence and happiness into our lives is a step in a better direction — for ourselves and the country.
To repeat: Resistance to Trump will certainly be necessary, especially to protect the most vulnerable among us. But any way we can look to a better future and turn that into a present reality is, in a sense, an act of resistance not only to Trump and the Republicans but to the strongman model of politics that led to his recent victory.
Making beautiful art and music, making delicious meals, making friends, making love — those are all ways to preserve the energy we’ll need for political action. They are also ways to show not just the world but ourselves that, whatever the evils from Washington in the next four years, we can continue building the more humane and happier world we want for everyone.
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For Freedom and Against Fear: From FDR to Kamala Harris
Advocating a platform that both protects and expands freedoms, the Democratic nominee has donned the mantle of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Nov 03, 2024
On Tuesday evening October 29, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the Ellipse, supplanting—with unifying oratory— Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric that prompted an attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Advocating a platform that both protects and expands freedoms, Harris has donned the mantle of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
During the 2024 Democratic National Convention, most media interpreted the repetition of “freedom” as a reclamation of that word from the Republican Party. But what I heard was FDR’s "Four Freedoms Speech," and I still do. That speech was President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address presented to a joint session of Congress on January 6, 1941. Yes, precisely 80 years prior to Donald Trump’s Outrage on the Ellipse and inside the selfsame Capitol Building where MAGA followers tried violently to usurp power. In addition to defining democratic freedoms, Roosevelt denounced dictatorial tyranny in his address, making his words from that January 6th resonate today as a rebuttal to Trumpism.
Before naming freedoms that unite and protect people, Roosevelt painted a picture of the irrational fears that divide. Unlike most State of the Union Addresses, FDR concentrated not on the internal condition of our union but on threats to all democracies. The President broadened his framework because he spoke at a dire moment: Hitler had conquered most of continental Europe and was terrorizing England. In the speech, Roosevelt never names Hitler and Nazism or Mussolini and Fascism but speaks of “dictators” and “tyranny,” making his warnings easily applicable to our own time.
Roosevelt emphasized that dictators succeed by attacking “…the democratic way of life …[with] poisonous propaganda to destroy unity and promote discord,” a prescient portrait of Trump’s language. Autocrats do not offer policies for debate in a public forum; instead, they fill their audience with fear. “Fear” already had a prominent position in Roosevelt’s rhetoric. He had powerfully laid claim to that word in his first Inaugural on March 4, 1933 when he proclaimed that “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror….” In 1933, fear resulted from the Great Depression—a fear of unemployment, of homelessness, of starvation, of bank failure. By 1941, that fear had extended to “…assailants [of democratic life] still on the march.” Fear remains today, and Trump uses it to promote a mythic past with restricted liberties, which provides a narrative to the MAGA mythology.
FDR realized that fear obstructs progress and, in his January 6th, 1941 address, cautioned that it “… paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Paralyzes!
FDR spoke from intimate experience of how paralysis limits motion. As an antidote, FDR prescribed expanding freedoms. His 1941 State of the Union defined four broad and basic human rights, now known as Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. While FDR’s first two Freedoms were established in the First Amendment, the latter two, “from want” and “from fear,” evoked either the expansions granted by his New Deal (such as Work Projects, Unemployment Insurance, and Social Security, all of which alleviated both want and fear) or FDR’s intentions for further augmentation (such as increased medical coverage, job opportunity, and pay equity). Roosevelt believed his “vision [was not for] a distant millennium… [but] attainable in [his] own time….” Part of what makes his address painfully relevant today is that many of Roosevelt’s goals for further rights remain unfulfilled in this new millennium.
Kamala Harris has now revived those goals. Her policies heed FDR’s warning against tyranny by amplifying his call to expand liberties. Like President Roosevelt, Vice President Harris believes in democratic progress.
On January 6, 1941, Roosevelt described American history as “…a perpetual peaceful revolution … adjusting itself to changing conditions … [as] today’s best is not good enough for tomorrow.” But now we must recognize that 1941’s tomorrow is today. Harris’s enlarged Freedom from Want includes freedom for reproductive health, home ownership, and caregiving, while her aspirations to protect Americans from gun violence, climate change, and voter suppression fall under Freedom from Fear. Kamala Harris could lead our democracy towards a better tomorrow if we the people show up for our “…rendezvous with destiny,” as FDR also once said. To give her that opportunity, it's up to us to elect her—along with a Democratic Congress—on November 5, 2024.
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Kamala Harris Has a Plan for Home Care—and FDR Would Love It!
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins saved millions of seniors from the poorhouse. Now, Kamala Harris has a plan to save them from another form of institutionalized care, the nursing home.
Oct 25, 2024
Kamala Harris has a plan to expand Medicare to include home care. If Harris is elected president and signs her plan into law, it will be life-changing for millions of seniors and people with disabilities. Importantly, it builds upon President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision for a New Deal for the American people.
Vice President Harris should get enormous praise for her groundbreaking proposal. Long-term care is a looming challenge that’s barely getting discussed. Harris recognizes this challenge and is offering an important solution: Medicare At Home.
Harris’s Medicare At Home plan would expand economic security by creating a new universal benefit, in the grand tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt and his visionary Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins.
In 1934, President Roosevelt considered adopting a comprehensive cradle-to-grave program of economic security. Ultimately, he decided to start more slowly and incrementally with what became the Social Security Act of 1935, which, among many other achievements, created Social Security and unemployment insurance. He recognized that Social Security was too important to risk failure by beginning too ambitiously.
A decade later, in 1944, having just been elected for the fourth time, FDR built on this legacy by calling for an economic bill of rights in his State of the Union address. This so-called Second Bill of Rights would give every American the right to comprehensive economic security, including a first–rate education; guaranteed employment at a living wage – “enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation”; a decent home; “adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health”; as well as “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.”
He understood, as Vice President Harris does, that people want the right, the ability, and the assistance necessary to age in place, with dignity and independence. In a capitalist system like ours, where working families are dependent on wages, economic security requires insurance against the loss of those wages, which Social Security and Unemployment Insurance provide. That is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Economic security and a decent and dignified life also require getting the care you need, including home care.
Medicare provides health care to Americans over age 65 and people with disabilities, but it has a huge gap: Long-term care. Most people think that Medicare covers long-term care, only to face a devastating shock when they (or a loved one) are in need of care.
Long-term care costs around $100,000 per year, so almost no one can afford it. Currently, the only program that covers long-term care is Medicaid. But unlike Medicare, which is universal, Medicaid is means-tested. As a result, seniors and people with disabilities are forced to “spend down” all of their assets, including property, before they can qualify for long-term care through Medicaid.
Sometimes, people must even divorce their loving spouses in order to qualify for long-term care coverage. And even then, after breaking up families and depleting their nest eggs, they may wind up in a dehumanizing corporate nursing home that exists to exploit patients for profit, because that’s still all they can afford.
In one heartbreaking instance, physicist Leon Lederman was forced to sell his Nobel Prize medal for $765,000 to pay for his care — and he still ultimately wound up in a nursing home.
Medicaid was not enacted as a long-term care program, but that is what it has become by default. And because it was not structured to be a long-term care program, it forces middle class seniors to bankrupt themselves so that they can receive care. It forces seniors and people with disabilities into nursing homes when they are healthy enough to remain at home.
This is a system that is fundamentally broken in this country. But Kamala Harris’s new plan for a universal Medicare At Home benefit would finally begin to change all that.
Those who have responsibilities for aging parents are also often caring for young children. Many other Americans are caring for a spouse while also dealing with their own health challenges. Kamala Harris’s Medicare At Home plan would benefit the entire family. It would empower seniors and people with disabilities who are healthy enough to age in place but can’t afford the care they need to remain at home.
Before the creation of Social Security, it was routine for parents to live with their adult children. Those who did not have children, or whose children were unable or unwilling to care for them, were forced into poorhouses.
FDR and Frances Perkins saved millions of seniors from the poorhouse. Now, Kamala Harris has a plan to save them from another form of institutionalized care, the nursing home.
Her plan is completely affordable because the Biden-Harris administration finally stopped letting Big Pharma rip Americans off. Kamala Harris would pay for this new Medicare At Home benefit, along with adding vision and hearing coverage to Medicare, with the savings from Medicare negotiating lower prescription drug prices. Big Pharma will continue to profit, just not at unconscionably exorbitant rates.
Seniors get to pay lower prescription drug prices, and also receive new hearing, vision, and home care benefits. And the so-called sandwich generation will have more time and resources. Moreover, states will benefit because the proposal will reduce their hard-pressed budgets, which are heavily burdened today by the long-term care costs funded by Medicaid. Harris’s proposal is a win-win for everyone (except for Big Pharma CEOs).
Kamala Harris’s Medicare at Home plan is a big step toward fulfilling Medicare’s promise of a simple, universal benefit. When she signs it into law, it will bring us far closer to the grand vision of full economic security first imagined by President Roosevelt and Secretary Perkins.
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