What should Democrats do now?

"I am not a member of any organized political party.  I am a Democrat."

--Will Rogers

Democrats had a big win in November's election.  Now they control the House of Representatives, in addition to racking up major successes in state capitols.  That's a huge change, going from having no control in Washington, D.C. to controlling half of Congress.

Now, they have to figure out what to do with that new power.

Today's Democratic Party is not all that much different from the party that emerged from America's riches-to-rags story of the 1920's and 1930's.  As Will Rogers observed at the time, it was a motley and fractious collection of liberals, intellectuals, small-holder farmers, organized laborers, urban dwellers, and the remaining Wilsonian idealists and internationalists.  They shared the principles of an activist, progressive government and demand-side economics.  Originally isolationist, the Democratic Party eventually dismantled the protectionism of the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, forged the international alliances that won World War II, and championed the continuation of those alliances in the cause of a global expansion of democracy, regulated free markets and increasing prosperity.

Sound familiar? It should.

Democrats are still pretty much the same type of motley collection as they were seven or eight decades ago. And they have a whole bunch of ideas on what to do with their newly-acquired Congressional powers.

"Hey there, Nancy Pelosi!  It's great to see you back in the corner office with a view!"
-- Lots of people (but including very few Republicans)

Nancy Pelosi is once again Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.  That makes her second in line of presidential succession, immediately following the Vice President.  Since the beginning of the 20th century, Pelosi is only the second person to have, lose, and then reclaim the Speaker's chair.  (Sam Rayburn did it twice, for a total of three different stints as Speaker of the House.)

Under Pelosi's leadership, House Democrats will have to take actions to show that they can deliver a government that is more in tune with public interests than what has happened during the last two years of Republican control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.  Because these years were headlined by failed attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and a successful effort at rewriting the income tax codes to favor the wealthiest individuals and powerful corporations, Democrats have plenty of opportunities open to them to appeal to the 99% of the population that was disfavored by the last two years' worth of legislation.

What should Democrats do first?

At the moment, top of the list has to be putting the government back to work. Without the House, the Senate and Trump agreeing on a budget, about a quarter of the Federal departments and workforce are inoperative.  As of this writing, the partial government shutdown has lasted three weeks.  According to Trump, he's willing to let it go on for weeks, months or even years.

What a waste.

"Partial" makes it sound inconsequential.  Some people seem to think that the government saves money by being shut down.

In fact, having a quarter of the Federal government in stasis means that FDA food inspections are not taking place, EPA air and water safety inspections are not being done, 800,000 workers are either being forced to work without pay or are on furlough without pay, national parks are being trashed because they are not staffed, the government is missing out on revenue that is not being collected for visitor entries to national parks, recreation areas and monuments, and the list could go on.  That's hardly inconsequential.

About those unpaid employees:  The various parties in the budget drama all seem to agree that eventually a budget will provide for payment of back wages.  Which means that hundreds of thousands of Federal workers will eventually end up being paid for not working.  (In full disclosure here, the author's daughter is an affected Federal employee, and I'm 100% in favor of her getting paid, even though she's not at the office these days, so they all should receive back pay.) 

It's important to note that these people (all of the Federal workers, not just my daughter) have living expenses and bills to pay, just like everybody else.  The longer this shutdown lasts, the more these workers will be harmed by not having the regular incomes that have been promised.

The government loses money by being shut down; it doesn't save any money.  And some people will  get sick or hurt because of inspections and other services not being done, or harmed by being some kind of collateral damage.

This is all about the politics of Trump wanting money to start building his wall on the southern border.

If the wall was to have been built, he should have gotten the money during the last two years that his party controlled both Houses of Congress.  Those were the easy years of the Trump presidency.

There has never been a solid case for wall-building.  Illegal border crossings have been on a downtrend for the last two decades, according to figures compiled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  The great majority of illegal drug trafficking is done through Ports of Entry, not over unwalled-parts of the border (same source).  About one-third of the southern border already has entry barriers; the rest is geographically unfriendly to structures, being very rugged territory or in the middle of the Rio Grande River.

Trump never had a governing mandate to build a wall.  He never had a governing mandate at all,  and it's worse for him now than it was on his inauguration day.  Hillary Clinton bested him in the popular vote of the 2016 election by 2%, or 2.9 million votes.  In last November's election, the Democratic vote total for the House of Representatives exceeded the Republican vote total by almost 10 million votes, or about 9%.

Trump made the 2018 election all about himself and a border wall.  It was Trump who conjured up images of invasion from the south in a xenophobic attempt to stir up votes for Republican candidates, only to have voters wise up to the realities of people who are simply trying to find a better place to live and work because their native countries cannot provide security and opportunities.

Elections deliver governing mandates.  The 2018 election delivered an anti-wall mandate.

How to get past these things and move on?  Well, here's an idea for compromise:  Let's have the Federal budget authorize the billions of dollars that Trump wants for his wall, but that money is to be used not on the border, but instead is to be used to improve security and opportunities in those countries south of the border that have seen their citizens leave to make hazardous journeys to the United States.  The last thing that most people want to do is leave home.  Using the money in this way will help to keep them at home.

With the budget battles settled down, Democrats can move on to other things.  Perhaps this will happen even while there is no agreement on the budget.  There's a long list of areas for possible constructive action (to overcome the destructive actions of the Trump years):  healthcare; infrastructure; international trade; government debt; climate change; immigration (encouraging, not discouraging, it); gun violence; Social Security; Medicare; election security; encouragement for voting; promoting traditional American values of democracy, dependable international alliances and regulated markets. 

And, yes, there should be investigations done by the House of Representatives.  The Constitution has set up the national government as a system of checks-and-balances.  As said earlier, the first two years of Trump's presidency have been the easy ones:  He has had a compliant Congress that has done little to fulfill its duties of oversight of the executive branch. 

That will probably change soon.