By Richard D. Kahlenberg

The United States is celebrating its 248^th birthday at a moment when people across the political spectrum agree that the country’s experiment in liberal democracy is in deep trouble.

A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable that the presumptive Republican candidate for president would be someone who had tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and speaks of suspending the Constitution. The threat to liberal democracy on the left is less stark, fueled by the power of culture, rather than the power of the state. But it too is chilling. More than half of very liberal college students say it’s acceptable to block fellow students from hearing speakers, (compared with only 13 percent of very conservative students.) College campuses have become deeply corrosive cultures, in which eight in ten students surveyed feel they can’t speak their minds. Illiberalism on the left rises as people become more educated. Antisemitism, a former Harvard dean notes, has taken stronger root in elite colleges than in other American institutions, from libraries to hospitals, because of the way students are being taught.

It is especially worrisome that the willingness to give up on democracy is much greater among young people than those who are older. Whereas only 5 percent of those over 65 said, “Democracy is no longer a viable system, and America should explore alternative forms of government,” a shocking 31 percent of youth ages 18-29 agreed.

Why now?

Keep reading in The Liberal Patriot.

By Claire Ainsley

This Thursday, the United Kingdom is heading for a historic day. Voters across the UK will go to the polls in the first general election since December 2019, when the Labour Party lost its fourth successive election to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, who won a thumping 80-seat parliamentary majority. Extraordinarily, it looks like the Labour Party will now win this election, and usher out fourteen years of continuous but chaotic Conservative governments.

In fact, pollsters are predicting not just a Labour victory but a Labour landslide and a Conservative wipe out, at the hands of a resurgent Labour Party, revived Liberal Democrats, and support for Nigel Farage’s new party Reform UK.

Most of us who have fought for the last five years working for a Labour turnaround are reluctant to talk about election certainties. Part of this is our heads—polls have been wrong before, especially about “shy Tories.” A lot of voters are still undecided, and voters are much more likely to switch parties than they used to be. But part of this reluctance is our hearts, too.

Observers could be forgiven for thinking Labour have been the passive beneficiaries of the Conservatives’ collapse, waiting for the contradictions in the party’s electoral coalition and inter-political rivalries to take them down. They could not be more wrong.

Keep reading in The Liberal Patriot.

Claire Ainsley joined Sky News’ Ali Fortescue to provide the Labour perspective on the first U.S. presidential debate and discuss how the U.S.-U.K. relations might be affected by the result of November’s election.

Watch below:

By Claire Ainsley

If Labour’s manifesto for the 2024 General Election reads more like a strategic plan for Britain than a political sales brochure, that’s because it is. Labour has used its poll lead well to resist the temptation to pack its manifesto with gimmicks and giveaways, instead setting out a serious programme for the country.

The goal of the programme is achieving Labour’s five national missions; the means to get there is stronger economic growth. The first chapter is devoted to wealth creation, and sets out a distinct departure from the economic philosophy we have been used to under the Conservatives.

Gone is the failed old orthodoxy of leaving the vital task of generating widespread prosperity to the market. In comes the new centrism of a dynamic and strategic state that partners with the private sector to drive stronger, more sustainable economic growth across the country.

Just because there were no big policy surprises on the day the manifesto was launched, does not mean there are no big policies. In fact the manifesto is packed full of major structural reforms to the UK economy.

Keep reading in LabourList.

By Will Marshall

In this year of high-stakes elections, none are likely to tell us more about the health of liberal democracy than the marquee contests in the United Kingdom and the United States.

All signs point to a crushing defeat for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party after 14 tumultuous years in power. Poised for victory is a renovated Labour Party, ably led by Keir Starmer and leading the Tories in polls by more than 20 points.

On Wednesday, Sunak surprised the country by announcing a snap election on July 4 rather than wait until the end of the year.

A Labour victory would cap a remarkable turnaround for a party that suffered a devastating rout in 2019. That year, Boris Johnson and the Tories breached Labour’s “Red Wall” across England’s industrial heartland, winning over working class voters with promises to “get Brexit done” and “level up” economic conditions in the less prosperous north.

Labour’s return to power also would be a major morale boost for Europe’s center-left, which hasn’t had much to celebrate lately.

Keep reading in The Hill.

By Richard D. Kahlenberg

If you’re worried about threats to liberal democracy in America, emanating primarily from Donald Trump but also from parts of the progressive left, a new memoir published by two veteran civil rights activists provides a refreshing reminder that a better path remains open.

Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain: The Extraordinary Story of Love, Civil Rights, and Labor Activism, by Norman and Velma Hill, two black civil rights leaders, provides a fascinating account of their years working closely with Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin to make their country live up to its ideals. Norman and Velma (whom I came to know while writing a biography of labor leader Albert Shanker), were in the thick of many of the central battles for racial and economic justice in the mid-twentieth century.

They first met in 1960, fighting racial segregation in Chicago. In 1963, they helped Randolph and Rustin organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As the Black Power movement began to gain salience in the mid-1960s, they shifted to work with organized labor. Norman took a job with Rustin at the A. Philip Randolph Institute to provide a bridge between trade unions and the black community. Velma worked for the United Federation of Teachers to organize mostly black and Hispanic teacher aides in New York City at a time when many black city residents were distrustful of the union.

Throughout, the Hills battled segregationists and union-busters on the right as well as forces of illiberalism and black separatism on the left. In a sense, then, they’ve written two books in one. The first is a familiar—though still deeply affecting—morality tale in which they combat the pure evil of white supremacy and largely prevail. The second story involves the internecine battles on the left with other advocates of black advancement. Like their mentors Randolph and Rustin, the Hills believed in several key principles that received pushback at the time: interracial coalition politics; a common economic agenda across racial lines; nonviolence in achieving social change; democratic norms at home and abroad; and an optimism about the possibilities of America.

Keep reading in The Liberal Patriot.

By Tim Ryan

Speaker Johnson,

As you are well aware, your immediate predecessors—Republicans serving as speakers of the House—had rough goes in the job. Held over a barrel by the extremists in your party, they were loath to work across the aisle for fear of letting the extremists in my party get the better of any legislative deal.

Without a doubt, the Democratic and Republican parties have different and disparate interests, and rarely see eye-to-eye. But in regards to the current impasse on Capitol Hill, you and reasonable members of the Republican conference have more in common with pragmatic members of the Democratic caucus than you do the extremists who are mobilizing to get you fired.

As you plot the way forward, I want to point out a truth few have acknowledged: You’d not only position the U.S. to lead the world in energy, manufacturing, and climate change if you were to champion a grand legislative bargain. By damning the consequences, you’d paint yourself a hero, a patriot, as well and a unique political leader in this country at this very difficult time.

By Tim Ryan

President Biden is touting the strength of America’s post-pandemic economic recovery, and he’s right: Wages are up, unemployment is down, and inflation is finally coming under control. But as pollsters perpetually point out, the president is not getting credit in the polls. Working-class voters—particularly young people in middle American communities like those I represented in northeast Ohio—are particularly despondent. The anger isn’t new—its roots run to before even the Great Recession. But the $10,000 question is why President’s Biden’s success hasn’t yet won over middle America’s minds and hearts?

The problem stems primarily from the way we understand voter attitudes. The old question—”Are you better off than you were four years ago?”—simply doesn’t apply anymore. That’s because working class voters are more focused on the reality that they’re so much worse off than their parents and grandparents were at the same age. Many young people have come to embrace “financial nihilism“: The prospect of upward mobility is so remote and the chance of achieving the American Dream so far-fetched that the tools previous generations used to lever up their prospects appear nothing less than preposterous. To young people, it feels like it’s better to invest in crypto or make parlay bets on FanDuel than try to take advantage of Pell Grants and 401ks that aren’t sufficient to their financial challenges.

These aren’t problems any president would be able to solve in a single term—because the underlying challenges have developed over decades. Through the last quarter century, housing supply has been so severely constricted that starter homes are now out of reach for young people wanting to put down roots. When the Boomers turned 25, their generation had garnered 20 percent of the nation’s household wealth—the Millennials, by contrast, boast only 5 percent. For that reason, the nation’s young working class simply can’t maintain their place on the socio-economic ladder, let alone climb it. And they’re reacting, understandably, with a combination of rage and disaffection.

Keep reading in Newsweek.