We Can Fix This. We've Done It Before. Re-imagining Government

When I talk to people who work in Washington, DC these days, I’m struck by the resignation. The political/policy professionals with whom I interact regularly are discouraged by the political posturing that undermines serious efforts at addressing national needs. They’ve counted noses and can tell me why nothing can happen in the next month, before November, before the end of the year, before the next presidential election. They tell us why we should give up. The fatigue is palpable, heavy, and contagious.

But outside of Washington, it feels different. People are angry, and there’s energy in their anger. There’s possibility in their frustration. Their impatience smells of change.

Across the political spectrum, the consensus is strengthening that the rules are rigged against working people. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is so popular because she speaks to the experience of ordinary Americans.

People remember that the big banks that sold exploding mortgages were “rescued,” but the millions of homeowners who bought those mortgages were left in the cold.

They see Congress extending tax cuts for the corporations that provide them with large campaign contributions, but failing to extend emergency unemployment benefits for over three million Americans who have been searching for work for more than six months while eating through their savings and selling off the assets accumulated over a lifetime just to live another day.

They are outraged that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations and individuals are free to spend millions of dollars to influence Congress and state legislatures, but unions can’t require the people they represent to pay dues.

They are appalled at corporate managers who approve the sale of defective products or ongoing workplace safety risks that cost lives and walk away with “slap on the wrist” fines, while poor people who can’t pay civil fines do jail time.

They decry rules that say student loan debt cannot be forgiven in a personal bankruptcy, but corporations and cities that declare bankruptcy can escape their obligations to pay workers the pensions they contributed to their entire lives.

A lot of rules today simply don’t stand up to American values of fair play and common sense.

But any good student of American history can tell you this isn’t new.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are brilliant statements of our ambitions; we continue to work to expand and improve our democratic institutions in order to realize our ambitions. We’ve made enormous strides in improving the living standards and quality of life for an increasing share of our residents. But the expansion of opportunity was never pre-ordained. It has always been a tough slough. We’ve had heartbreaking periods of retrenchment and glorious leaps forward. Reform isn’t easy and is often slow.

What history teaches us is that forward movement requires engagement and energy – and perhaps that anger at injustice and a commitment to use democratic institutions to re-write the rules and set things right begins that process. In every era, democratic government has been the instrument for lasting change. When our political structures fail to address the needs of the people, we change them; we expand the electorate, we change our voting laws, we elect senators directly. Our lurching and imperfect history has arced toward greater inclusion, increased opportunity, and expanded opportunity. And when that path is blocked, when certain factions gain too much power, we rein them in.

It’s time. Let’s de-rig the system, figure out the rules that need rewriting, and get to work.

As a reminder to the discouraged and disheartened, we are starting a new blog post series. In it, we’ll harvest stories from the past about how we expanded our democracy or identified a problem and fixed it. We want to remind our readers and allies that democratic governance is always a work in progress – because the world is always creating new collective challenges for us to solve. By bringing the stories of struggle – and success – from the past into the present, we hope to remind our readers that government has been and still can be the tool for achieving our collective aspirations.

It’s up to us to make it work for working people again.