We need to take everyone fed up with the extremes and turn them into an organized force.
This isn’t a Washington project
I’m a member of Congress, but I don’t want the Promise to America to be a Washington operation. We want to return the Democratic Party to its traditional values and rebuild the middle class.
Our founding declaration fits on an index card: We are capitalist, not socialist. For safety, not lawlessness. Mainstream, not extreme. Proud, not ashamed of America.
The American people are upset. Families worry about groceries, housing, health care and energy. They wonder whether their children will ever afford a home – the typical first-time buyer is now 40 years old.
For half a century, too many Americans have watched the economy grow without them. The middle class has been hollowed out.
Democrats have fixed this before. Ever since President Franklin Roosevelt, the party led when it raised the floor and widened the path to the middle class. We need to be the party of and for hardworking Americans again.
Winning in Trump country confirmed what I’ve believed my whole career: You can’t represent people if you start by treating everyone who disagrees with you as an enemy.
Politics requires persuasion. Persuasion requires listening. It also requires telling people plainly what you believe.
Democrats are fighting over socialism. I’ve been clear: I am a Democrat and a capitalist.
Even so, supporting capitalism doesn’t mean defending its excesses or pretending today’s economy works for everybody. It does not.
Fix capitalism. Don’t abandon it
The American economy has produced extraordinary wealth and innovation. Yet millions of hardworking Americans feel the basic bargain slipping away: A full-time job should let you afford a home, raise a family, get health care and retire with dignity.
The answer is to make it work for more people. Competition, entrepreneurship and private investment matter. So do strong unions, a higher minimum wage that lets full-time workers get ahead, affordable health care and ideas like my bipartisan SHARE Plan Act, which would reward companies that give stock to rank-and-file workers. A stronger, broader capitalism is how we rebuild the middle class.
The Promise to America goes beyond economics:
- Public safety and secure borders aren’t incompatible with humanity. We can back law enforcement, enforce our laws and treat people with dignity.
- Believing in government doesn’t mean defending it when it’s wasteful, bureaucratic or incompetent. Government should work.
- The national debt has passed $40 trillion. Both parties ran it up, and both have to confront it.
- Disagreement isn’t hatred. Free speech, pluralism and respect for people with different views are essential to democracy.
And Democrats should never hesitate to say it: We love our country. Patriotism doesn’t mean pretending America has never made mistakes. I’m proud of America in part because every generation has fought to correct those mistakes and make our nation more faithful to its ideals.
Our politics increasingly rewards the loudest voices at both extremes. Ideological movements know what they believe and repeat it constantly. Those of us who believe in practical, problem-solving politics have been far less disciplined about saying what we stand for.
I know the country won’t be repaired by another pledge, another press conference or a pile of signatures.
It will be repaired when elected officials show that government can lower costs, expand opportunity, keep people safe, spend responsibly and get people who disagree to solve problems together – and when voters believe we’re working for them, not ourselves.
The extremes are already organized. It’s time the rest of us stopped wringing our hands and did the same.
Rep. Thomas R. Suozzi, a Democrat, represents New York’s 3rd Congressional District and is a former Nassau County executive.
