If Democrats want to be the party of the people, they need to go full populist

Middle-class tax cuts are fine. But income transfers are better.

Rebates
(Image credit: (Spencer Platt/Getty Images))

It's fast becoming a consensus in center-left circles that the future of the Democratic Party will rise or fall depending on the economic well-being of the masses. In the wake of the midterms, top-shelf commentators like Josh Marshall and David Leonhardt have correctly identified a decades-long trend of stagnant incomes as the major problem for the Democrats. If the party of the left cannot provide material security to the people, then it simply has no business being in power.

Luckily, this is actually an easy problem to solve. If markets aren't producing enough money through wages, then the government should step in and provide it. It is really that simple.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.