issue: Politics

Ainsley for The Guardian: How the lessons of the UK election could help Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Claire Ainsley

On 4 July, against all odds, Labour overturned the most shattering defeat in decades to win a stunning landslide. A talented and energetic party team deserves huge credit for this victory: effective communications, innovative digital output, creative policy culminating in the five missions, organisationally brilliant events and a super-efficient ground force – all under the leadership of campaign director Morgan McSweeney and political leads Pat McFadden and Ellie Reeves.

It was a cohesive campaign united by its sharp, disciplined focus on our very tightly defined “hero voters”. Could a similar single-mindedness help Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump on 5 November?

Just three years before, Labour had suffered the devastating setback of the Hartlepool byelection. While Keir Starmer had made significant strides towards returning Labour to the service of working people in his first year as leader, the party still struggled to embrace a disparate coalition of voters stretching from its base to a wider group of progressive voters and including the “red wall” that had so dramatically abandoned Labour in 2019.

Keep reading in The Guardian.

Marshall for The Hill: Kamala Harris has united her party, now she must transcend it

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Will Marshall

This summer’s Republican and Democratic nominating conventions were anything but conventional. Absent from both were the personal rivalries and factional infighting that usually flare up when these coalition parties gather to anoint their standard bearer.

What explains these rare displays of party cohesion? That would be Donald Trump’s genius for polarizing Americans.

July’s Republican convention in Milwaukee looked like a gaudier and more raucous version of a Chinese Communist Party plenum. Speaker after speaker acclaimed Trump as their party’s great helmsman as he looked on approvingly from his imperial box.

Trump’s third nomination essentially was a mass conversion ceremony in which Republicans swore fealty to his brand of apocalyptic populism. Peruse their platform, and you’ll see that Republicans no longer stand for free markets, small government, individual autonomy, fiscal rectitude, judicial restraint and muscular U.S. leadership for a freer world.

Keep reading in The Hill.

Ainsley in The Times: Harris’s border talk is textbook Starmer

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Pete Kavanaugh, deputy campaign director to Biden in 2020; Muthoni Wambu Kraal, who built a winning electoral coalition at the grass roots that year; Amy Dacey, once chief executive of the Democratic National Convention — these are the kinds of people who remain in constant conversation with Labour on how exactly the left defies stereotype and fights the right on the ground it usually owns.

This is a shared project with a shared infrastructure. Claire Ainsley, once director of policy for Starmer, has made much of this transatlantic traffic happen from her post at the Progressive Policy Institute, the favoured think tank of the White House. And next week Labour is sending its own delegation to the Democratic convention in Chicago, led by its victorious general secretary David Evans, and Jon Ashworth, whose failure to retain his Leicester South seat has obscured the extent of his influence over an otherwise successful campaign.

The challenge now is to keep speaking the same language. Recession looms over America. Starmer may yet end up on the wrong side of Britain’s fraught debate on migration. And party strategists are not their parties, whose habits are harder to shift. “The jury is still out,” frets one influential Labour MP. Some fear that “wet and self-important” Labour backbenchers, as well as West Coast liberals, will revert to type rather than adopt this new lingua franca. For the time being, though, Harris and Starmer are protagonists created by the same writers’ room.

Read more in The Times.

PPI at the DNC: Our 2024 Policy Agenda

Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) will be in Chicago to host an afternoon of programming centered around our Campaign for Working America. This agenda is focused on a policy framework to address what we see as the Democratic Party’s overriding political imperative: Regaining the allegiance of working-class Americans. The event will include a fireside chat as well as two panels on the policies that matter to working Americans across the nation. The programming will feature Senator Michael Bennet, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, former US Representative Tim Ryan, as well as other elected officials and will include two panels.

Click here to see the full agenda and register for the event.

 

Ainsley in The New York Times: Britain’s Anti-Immigrant Riots Pose Critical Test for Starmer

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Those close to Mr. Starmer say he is getting a grip on the disorder, drawing on his experience as a chief prosecutor in 2011, when riots took place in London and he pushed to get those responsible tried, sentenced and jailed swiftly to deter others.

“He has a detailed knowledge of how to do this, and he understands how you prosecute and convict quickly, and you do so visibly in a way that sends a message to anybody who is thinking about participating in one of these riots,” said Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Mr. Starmer.

But ensuring that such violence does not recur is harder, she said.

“We have had the far right with us in good economic times and in bad economic times,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research institute.

“But it is much harder for them to have any kind of influence when you are in better economic times,” she added. “That means people’s living standards rising and people starting to feel they are better off and that they are part of a system that is working — and that isn’t a description of Britain today.”

Ms. Ainsley pointed to the role of social media in spreading misinformation and stoking tensions, and cautioned against making a direct link between the riots and immigration. She noted that, alongside extremists, some of the rioters may be looters and other opportunists.

It is, she added, “wrong to assume that all of the people participating in these riots are politically motivated by immigration.”

Read more in The New York Times.

Marshall for The Hill: Can Kamala Harris rebuild America’s anti-Trump majority?

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Will Marshall

As the Paris Olympics wind down, it’s hard to say which has been the more riveting spectacle, the games or the 2024 presidential race. Next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago will cap a summer of high political drama with dizzying plot twists.

It began with Donald Trump’s history-making criminal convictions, which perversely seemed to help him sew up his party’s nomination.

Then came President Biden’s mercilessly revealing debate performance, Trump’s narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet and a GOP national convention in Milwaukee that looked more like a royal coronation.

Biden then upstaged the Republicans with his eleventh-hour handoff to Vice President Kamala Harris. This rattled Trump by depriving him of the grudge-match he’s been itching for ever since his stinging 2020 defeat.

Keep reading in The Hill.

PPI Statement on Selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee

Posted on by Max Sherrill

WASHINGTON — Today, Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement in response to Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate:

“Vice President Kamala Harris has made her first major decision since becoming the Democrats’ presumptive nominee – and it’s a good one. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is something you won’t find anywhere on the Republican ticket: A seasoned veteran of public service who knows how to bring Americans together and get things done.

“Gov. Walz brings the pragmatic perspective of Middle America to the Democratic ticket. He was a high school teacher and coach, a U.S. military veteran, and a former Member of Congress representing rural Minnesota. Now he’s a very popular Midwest governor in his second term, with a solid record of governing success under his belt.

“Throughout his career, Gov. Walz has shown a knack for winning the trust and votes of rural and working class voters. He flipped a swing district to win his House seat. In Congress, he stood out as a consistent public champion of the economic aspirations and moral outlook of ordinary working Americans.

“Nearly 15 years ago, as a junior member of Congress, he called for comprehensive deficit reduction, emphasizing the need to get our fiscal house in order — a vision that, if heeded, would have positioned us better today.

“Gov. Walz is a builder. As governor, he’s launched major infrastructure projects and called for permitting reform to ensure Minnesotans get access to better roads, schools and clean energy soon rather than the distant future.

“Harris’s choice of Gov. Walz to be her running mate contrasts favorably with Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. The callow Vance is an insult artist who adds little but a second troll to Trump’s ticket.

“Gov. Walz is a proven and radically pragmatic leader whose record shows he knows how to make American democracy work.”

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.

Follow the Progressive Policy Institute.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Maag and Malec for The Hill: Democrats must prioritize the workforce to win back the working class

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

By Taylor Maag and Stuart Malec

Amid America’s current news cycle, it can be hard to see past the daily barrage of political crises and focus on the underlying policy offerings of each campaign.

But with November rapidly approaching, policymakers — especially Democrats who hope to hold the presidency and win back control of the House — must not forget about the issues voters care about.

Our organization, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), is looking closely at the issues that matter most to working-class Americans, a constituency once considered the bedrock of the Democratic Party that has been almost completely co-opted by Trump and the populist right.

Keep reading in The Hill.

Lewis for Progressive Britain: To Win, Harris Will Need to Follow Starmer’s Example

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

By Lindsay Mark Lewis

When Democratic primary voters selected Joe Biden to be the Party’s standard bearer in 2020, the faithful made their choice in a very specific context: the Trump administration. Like with Labour facing a Tory government gone off the rails, progressive in the U.S. were determined to nominate a candidate who would appeal to the electorate as a whole—who would, namely, be capable of drawing together the anti-Trump vote. Joe Biden was, without a doubt, perfectly suited to play that role. The man from Scranton—a figure with bipartisan sensibilities rooted in his experience growing up as a working-class kid in Pennsylvania—met the moment and succeeded. He vanquished the incumbent populist.

But then things changed. In an odd twist ostensibly fueled by a moderate’s determination to unite progressives, the man who ran most notably as a beacon of the center chose to govern as a paragon of the left. There’s no mystery to why Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist who competed against Biden in the 2020 primaries, was among the most vociferous figures hoping to keep the incumbent atop the ticket. The rationale was clear: Biden had allowed himself to become a vehicle for Sanders’ leftist agenda. Ironically, it was the party’s centrists, figures who had originally propelled Biden’s candidacy, who now wanted him to exit. They wanted the change not only based on the debate debacle but based on defending an agenda they did not sign up for.

Keep reading in Progressive Britain. 

Paying for Progress: A Blueprint to Cut Costs, Boost Growth, and Expand American Opportunity

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The next administration must confront the consequences that the American people are finally facing from more than two decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington. Annual deficits in excess of $2 trillion during a time when the unemployment rate hovers near a historically low 4% have put upward pressure on prices and strained family budgets. Annual interest payments on the national debt, now the highest they’ve ever been in history, are crowding out public investments into our collective future, which have fallen near historic lows. Working families face a future with lower incomes and diminished opportunities if we continue on our current path.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes that the best way to promote opportunity for all Americans and tackle the nation’s many problems is to reorient our public budgets away from subsidizing short-term consumption and towards investments that lay the foundation for long-term economic abundance. Rather than eviscerating government in the name of fiscal probity, as many on the right seek to do, our “Paying for Progress” Blueprint offers a visionary framework for a fairer and more prosperous society.

Our blueprint would raise enough revenue to fund our government through a tax code that is simpler, more progressive, and more pro-growth than current policy. We offer innovative ideas to modernize our nation’s health-care and retirement programs so they better reflect the needs of our aging population. We would invest in the engines of American innovation and expand access to affordable housing, education, and child care to cut the cost of living for working families. And we propose changes to rationalize federal programs and institutions so that our government spends smarter rather than merely spending more.

Many of these transformative policies are politically popular — the kind of bold, aspirational ideas a presidential candidate could build a campaign around — while others are more controversial because they would require some sacrifice from politically influential constituencies. But the reality is that both kinds of policies must be on the table, because public programs can only work if the vast majority of Americans that benefit from them are willing to contribute to them. Unlike many on the left, we recognize that progressive policies must be fiscally sound and grounded in economic pragmatism to make government work for working Americans now and in the future.

If fully enacted during the first year of the next president’s administration, the recommendations in this report would put the federal budget on a path to balance within 20 years. But we do not see actually balancing the budget as a necessary end. Rather, PPI seeks to put the budget on a healthy trajectory so that future policymakers have the fiscal freedom to address emergencies and other unforeseen needs. Moreover, because PPI’s blueprint meets such an ambitious fiscal target, we ensure that adopting even half of our recommended savings would be enough to stabilize the debt as a percent of GDP. Thus, our proposals to cut costs, boost growth, and expand American opportunity will remain a strong menu of options for policymakers to draw upon for years to come, even if they are unlikely to be enacted in their entirety any time soon.

The roughly six dozen federal policy recommendations in this report are organized into 12 overarching priorities:

I. Replace Taxes on Work with Taxes on Consumption and Unearned Income
II. Make the Individual Income Tax Code Simpler and More Progressive
III. Reform the Business Tax Code to Promote Growth and International Competitiveness
IV. Secure America’s Global Leadership
V. Strengthen Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
VI. Modernize Medicare
VII. Cut Health-Care Costs and Improve Outcomes
VIII. Support Working Families and Economic Opportunity
IX. Make Housing Affordable for All
X. Rationalize Safety-Net Programs
XI. Improve Public Administration
XII. Manage Public Debt Responsibly

Read the full Blueprint. 

Read the Summary of Recommendations.

Read the PPI press release.

See how PPI’s Blueprint compares to six alternatives. 

Media Mentions:

PPI Statement on President Joe Biden’s Decision to Not Seek Re-Election

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Washington, D.C. — Today, Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek re-election.

“It was a wrenching decision for a proud and deeply accomplished veteran of public service, but President Joe Biden made the right call yesterday by ending his re-election campaign.

“In putting his country’s interests over his personal ambitions, Biden has shown Americans what real patriotism looks like. Contrast his conduct to Donald Trump’s treacherous coup attempt after losing badly to Biden in 2020.

“What forced Biden’s hand was not the fact that he is running behind Trump in national and battleground state polls. He might have remedied that with a vigorous general election campaign.

“But Biden’s June 27 debate performance left nearly three-quarters of Americans worried about his ability to withstand the incredible rigors and stresses of the world’s toughest job for another four years.

“Biden’s departure from the race comes late — in truth, too late. This was a decision that should have been made in January.

“Nonetheless, it removes a daunting obstacle to Democrats’ prospects and shifts public attention to the 78-year-old Trump’s mental state. He’s never had a firm grasp on reality, and his meandering nomination speech in Milwaukee last week showed it’s getting even weaker.

“Contrary to Trump’s over-the-top insults, Joe Biden has been a good president with many significant accomplishments to his credit. The U.S. economy is the strongest in the free world, and Biden deserves enormous credit for rededicating America to the defense of freedom and democracy abroad after Trump’s detour into a selfish and insular jingoism.

“More fundamentally, though, Biden restored decency, dignity, and integrity to a White House defaced by Trump. When Democrats needed an experienced national leader to unite the party and the country against Trump’s political vandalism, the old pro from Delaware rose to the occasion.

“That’s something that can never be taken away from Joe Biden, regardless of what happens in November.”

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe — iokeefe@ppionline.org

Weinstein for Forbes: November’s Presidential Election Won’t Stop Fed From Cutting Rates

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Paul Weinstein Jr.

Last month, prices fell to their lowest levels almost two years. The June Consumer Price Index (CPI) dropped to 3.0% annually–down from 3.4% the prior month—and is now on the verge of hitting the Federal Reserve’s inflation target of 2%.

Almost immediately after the release of the CPI data, Republicans warned the Federal Reserve not to cut rates prior to the election in November. After Fed Chair Jerome Powell testified before the Senate Banking Committee Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) argued that “I personally don’t think they should…anything they do before November would be rightfully—would raise the question of their own independence.”

But will the Fed heed the call from Republicans to keep rates at their current level when its Federal Open Markets Committee meets on July 31 and September 18? Based on past history, the answer is a resounding no (assuming economic conditions require action).

Keep reading in Forbes.

Johnson for Infinite Scroll: What is the purpose of liberalism?

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Jeremiah Johnson

When attacks like this happen, the first and most obvious thing that every political figure does is to condemn the violence. I think this is the morally correct choice, but it’s worth unpacking why.

It’s not a secret that in my day job I am quite liberal and vocally anti-Trump. I think he’s a genuinely dangerous person, far beyond the typical partisan disagreements I have with other Republicans. I think given the opportunity, he would gladly seize authoritarian power. He has little respect for human rights, democracy, the rule of law, or anything else other than his own profit and power. He has a history of encouraging political violence himself. I’d even say that if he were to drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, the world would be a better place for it. So why exactly, ask some voices, should we be concerned for Trump? If he’s so awful, if he’s such a danger to democracy, if he promotes violence himself… why do we need to condemn violence against him?

When I try to wrap my head around difficult or painful topics, I tend to fall back on my core values. Before I am anything else – a Democrat, a New Yorker, an American – I am a liberal. I condemn political violence because I’m a liberal, and because I remember the purpose of liberalism.

Keep reading in Infinite Scroll.

Ainsley for The Financial Times: Labour must heed warnings from the global centre-left

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Claire Ainsley

It is a quirk of the British political system that the leader of the opposition goes from inhabiting cramped parliamentary offices to rubbing shoulders with leaders of the free world within such a short time. Sir Keir Starmer looked at ease at the Nato summit this week. But he faces a difficult new role as champion of a troubled global centre-left.

Political parties love a winner. And centre-left parties around the world are hungry to learn how Labour defeated the long-dominant Conservative party. Next week, the European contingent will gather at Blenheim Palace for the European Political Community meeting. Starmer would do well to use the time to learn from the problems besetting his global colleagues.

In many other countries, centre-left parties are incumbents facing difficult re-elections under pressure from a revived far right. Opposition is high: a majority of voters in every EU country except Poland, which changed government in 2023, think that their country is headed in the wrong direction, according to research by Datapraxis for the Progressive Governance summit in Berlin recently.

Keep reading in The Financial Times.

Ainsley for The Economist: A former adviser to Keir Starmer on what his victory can teach the global left

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Claire Ainsley

The Labour Party’s thumping victory in Britain’s general election seems to have bucked the trend of declining support for social-democratic parties, particularly in the face of fervour for the populist right. The left and centre in France have only staved off a triumph of the far right by standing down candidates to form a united front. In Germany the main party in the ruling coalition, the SPD, finished third in the European Parliament elections in June, behind the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. Those elections saw an overall shift to the political right in Europe.

Labour’s success is all the more striking because of the speed of the party’s turnaround under Sir Keir Starmer. When he was elected leader in April 2020, Labour had been defeated by the Conservatives for a fourth consecutive time, with Boris Johnson’s Tories winning a comfortable majority that included dozens of seats the party hadn’t won for decades, or ever.

The election of a Labour government after 14 years of Conservative rule is a shot in the arm for the global centre-left. But it is vital to understand why and how Labour won, before taking any comfort that this marks the start of the centre-left’s comeback.

Keep reading in The Economist.

Ainsley for The Hill: Why UK Labour’s win is a shot in the arm for Democrats

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Claire Ainsley

This weekend, something shifted in the public mood in Britain.

There were no street parties or jubilant scenes greeting the new Labour government, unlike the last time the Labour Party broke a long period of Conservative rule, an occasion marked with a dawn party at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1997. But as the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer took to the steps of Downing Street to offer a new kind of leadership, and broke party traditions with a slew of expert appointments as incoming ministers, it’s like a weight has lifted.

People don’t expect miracles in this age of tight finances, but they have given change a chance. As a neighbor commented with a wry smile, “It’s a start.”

How did the United Kingdom go from electing a fourth consecutive Conservative government led by Boris Johnson with an 80-seat parliamentary majority in 2019 to electing a Labour government in a landslide less than five years later? And can this victory offer the Democratic Party hope that there is a way to defeat the political right and win big?

Keep reading in The Hill.