Thread by @JakeAuch

🧵Boldface-name Democrats are offering calls-to-action. Their solution: ‘dial down wokeness, amplify economic populism.’

This is offering a Diet Coke to voters who ordered a Coca-Cola. Democrats win by offering an agenda of our own, not a diluted version of MAGA.

1. First, on economic populism:

Democrats should reject it. Like all populism, it calls out real problems but crafts bad solutions.

2. Tariffs, export controls, subsidies, and tax-code hand-outs turbocharge the power of special interests & warp the productive potential of the economy. Are there rare exceptions? Yes; most of them involve China, which has been cheating on the terms of trade.

But in general: when politicians try to control the economy, it won’t be workers who get rich, it’ll be lawyers & lobbyists.

3. The populist promise to engineer the economy – whether for security or prosperity – is hollow.
Prosperity grows like a garden, it is not programmed like a piece of software.
We in Washington should till the soil.

4. Democrats can earn back voters’ trust by going back to the basics of security and prosperity:

- Balance the budget for the first time this century
- Double R&D intensity to 6% of GDP
- Uphold the rule of law
- Secure the southern border
- Train & equip a military that can beat back the belligerence of China, Russia & Iran
- Lift supply restrictions & send demand signals to get America building 10 million units of housing & 1,000 nuclear power plants

5. Americans want to build things that matter, together. And they want to build on a level playing field.
Democrats should take aim at special interests tilting the field. For example:
- Social media’s Section 230 shield from liability
- Health insurers’ safe harbor from the Anti-Kickback Statute
- Gun manufacturers’ 20-year-long immunity from litigation

6. As we used to say in the Marines about infantry tactics: 4 & 5 are ‘simple, but not easy.’

The result would be a country of more builders & doers strengthening America, and fewer NIMBYs & middlemen just out for themselves. In short: an economy that works like Legos, not Monopoly.

7. Now, on to ‘wokeness’.

The term is loaded, but I use it deliberately because Democrats should wrestle with its full freight.

8. First: stake out our values.
We’re not going to insult immigrants, or laugh at misogyny, or ban books. There’s another party for that. And yes, we do seek to ban assault weapons, we do take climate action seriously, and we do want to foster diversity.

Democrats want to expand the envelope of freedom first promised by the Founders.

9. Second: complicate the narrative.

After Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, someone joked that it was the ‘comments section defeating the article’. Since then, too many Democrats have become too wary of trying to explain their positions. That wariness comes off as condescension.

10. We patronize voters if we assume that memes do the work of conversations. In particular: young voters. They are consuming vast amounts of online video, text, and audio content. They are not hyper-partisan; in fact, they’re apolitical.

Democrats should go out & shatter echo chambers, communicating on all channels with millennials & Gen Z about age-old values like meritocracy, patriotism, and law & order; and offering well-reasoned policies for their future that draw sharp contrasts with MAGA.

11. Finally, we need to reclaim trust on education.
The catastrophic school closures, the antisemitism on campuses, the curriculum that seems to erode excellence & platform identitarian ideology: these are mistakes, and ones that rightfully resonate with Americans.

12. Democrats can fix these problems.
But, not by fighting the last campaign & not by offering a Diet Coke and telling voters it’s healthier than the Coca-Cola they ordered.