Recent reporting in The New York Times showed that, in the 30 states that maintain voter registration information by party, a collective 4.5 million registered voters switched their registrations from Democrat to Republican between 2020 and 2024.
I’d bet money that, following the first seven months of the second Donald Trump administration, this trend is reversing in a favorable way for Democrats, but Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs polling from July shows that only 1 in 5 registered Democrats had positive things to say about their party.
What’s the deal?
Comedian Chris Rock once wisely said, as a friend recently shared with me, that voting Republican because you’re dissatisfied with Democrats is like saying “That guy didn’t cure cancer. I’m voting for cancer!†Nonetheless, I myself have long been registered with no party affiliation and there is no shortage of criticisms to be lobbed at the Democratic Party, none of which, by the way, have anything to do with being “woke.â€
I’m talking working-class criticisms. Two issues facing the country today illustrate well how Democrats have had opportunities to do far better than they have and to prevent a lot of suffering but have failed, even when they had the numbers in Washington to have succeeded. First, to quote from reporting in The Guardian:
“Some of the U.S.’s lowest-paying large firms increased their CEOs’ compensation by an average of almost 35% over five years, according to new research. Their workers’ salaries did not keep up.
“As executive renumeration ballooned, the average CEO-to-worker pay gap across the 100 companies in the S&P 500 with the lowest median worker pay — dubbed the Low-Wage 100 by the Institute for Policy Studies [authors of the research] — widened by 12.9% between 2019 and 2024, from 560 to 1 to 632 to 1.â€
The largest gap between CEO and median worker pay in 2024, according to the study, was at Starbucks. The study showed that CEO Brian Niccol received compensation worth $95.8 million, 6,666 times as much as the company’s $14,674 median pay. This is despite the fact that approximately 570 Starbucks locations nationwide have unionized and are awaiting agreement of their first collectively bargained contract. Think about this before buying that next pumpkin spice latte.
Democrats have had opportunities to address this. It would have required changing some U.S. Senate filibuster rules during the Biden administration. However, it wouldn’t have required those changes in the first two years of the Obama administration, when the party enjoyed a Senate majority necessary to overcome a filibuster.
What could they have done? For one thing, they could have passed legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, making it much easier to organize a union, have it legally recognized and obtain a first contract.
They could also have passed legislation raising corporate taxes on any companies with, say, greater than a 50-to-1 ratio of CEO to median worker pay and eliminating tax code loopholes for avoidance of these taxes, with very strong enforcement mechanisms.
Finally, they could have passed high tax rates on stock buybacks. The aforementioned study shows that “Between 2019 to 2024, Low-Wage 100 firms spent $644 billion on stock buybacks. More than half spent more on buybacks than on capital improvements at their firms.†If these companies are going to use their revenues to boost their share prices instead of improving employee compensation, doing so should come with a hefty tax bill.
The second illustrative example is in regard to Social Security Trust Fund solvency. To quote from recent reporting in FEDWeek:
“The Congressional Research Service, in an analysis of the most recent data from the trustees of Social Security’s trust funds, said ‘trust fund asset reserves are predicted to decline from their peak value of $2.91 trillion in 2021 to $0 in 2034. Upon the trust funds’ asset reserves depletion, income from tax revenues is projected to cover approximately 81% of scheduled benefits in 2034 and decrease to 72% in 2099.â€
Again, what can be done that Democrats would be the only major party ever to do and should already have happened? The cap on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax (currently sitting at the first $176,100 of wages and salaries) could be dramatically increased or eliminated altogether. Another great idea, if structured properly, would be a financial transaction tax on the purchase or sale of financial assets (e.g. stocks, bonds, currencies, derivatives) with proceeds going to the Social Security Trust Fund. This could all be covered in one bill.
The point is, we need bold, progressive policy solutions to ongoing problems that are devastating the working classes. Trump 2.0 and the MAGA Cult GOP are nightmares, and worsening by the day, but elections aren’t won by campaigns built solely around opposition. Give us something to vote for.
