What Do Democrats Stand For?

Excellent question! You'll find much to ponder in a new interview by Susan Glasser of five prominent Democrats in the new edition of the Politico magazine. They are: Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, historian Michael Kazin, Mitch Stewart of 270 Strategies, Jess O'Connell, CEO of the Democratic National Committee and Tom Perez, chair of the same organization. 

Glasser remarks:

It was striking, in fact, to hear Perez open by talking about “the loss of over 900 seats in state legislatures, the movement from 60 Democrats in the Senate to 48, the loss of governors and secretaries of state and state attorneys general, etc.,” over the course of the Obama presidency—and equally so to hear Tanden, who advised Clinton on her economic strategy in last year’s race and runs perhaps the party’s leading think tank, say “we have to show a bolder economic plan than we have before.”…..

[T]here was surface agreement on Perez’s “every ZIP code strategy”; how could there not be, with Trump having won the election by claiming the three swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin on the basis of his appeals to their disaffected white majorities? But nagging worries remained: Could the Democratic Party address the lost white working class with its policies? Would it? Or were the economic fears Trump claimed to address really just a cover for a darker Trump agenda of racial exclusion and immigrant-bashing that Democrats won’t and shouldn’t cater to?

 Does this roundtable answer these questions, not to mention the Big One about what do Democrats stand for? You be the judge.