Bearing Witness

New Report Points American Politics Toward a New and Healing Path

Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Not to be missed among all of the analysis about yesterday’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, is a new report on 2016 voter trends from the Center on American Progress  that suggests it might finally be politically profitable for political candidates to talk about , hunger, poverty and related issues that impact our most vulnerable and voiceless citizens.

One conclusion of the report is about the opportunity to “go beyond the ‘identity politics’ versus ‘economic populism’ debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition that supports economic opportunity, good jobs, and decent social provisions for all people and makes specific steps to improve the conditions of people of color, many of whom continue to suffer from the legacy of historical and institutional racism.

The full report can be found here. There is an excellent summary by John Cassidy in The New Yorker here.

For decades, neither Democrats nor Republicans have had much of an appetite for talking about anything other than the middle class, which by all means needs to be expanded and strengthened. But the “cross-class coalition” referenced above goes beyond that, and if the report’s analysis gives future candidates for office the courage to really tackle inequality and social justice issues, it might point American politics toward a new and healing path.