STEPHEN MOORE: Desperately Seeking A Pro-Growth Democrat

The most recent Wall Street Journal political poll shows that Democrats have swerved into a deep ditch.

Only three of 10 voters have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, and that is the lowest this number has been since Bill Clinton’s first term in office. Republicans aren’t very popular either – but they have a big lead over the donkeys.

I’m not a cheerleader for the Republicans, and I don’t pretend the GOP is the solution to all of our nation’s problems. Republicans have been co-conspirators in the runaway spending and debt crisis in Washington. (RELATED: Pete Buttigieg Says Dems Have Become ‘Too Attached’ To ‘Failing’ Status Quo)

What is concerning is that the Democrats have become what I call a donut party: they have no middle. Back at the turn of the century the progressive left started capturing all the important leadership seats in their party. It began with the elevation of Nancy Pelosi and the full-scale takeover of the party happened with the election of Barack Obama. Since then the commanding voices of the party have included AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. They are the voices of the party.

Even as the Trump policies take root and appear to be working, Dems in Washington today are opposed to nearly every Trump policy – even policies like trade protectionism that they once supported. Every Democrat voted against making the Trump tax cuts permanent- apparently, they were fine with the Typical American family paying about $2,000 a year more in taxes. OK fine. But what exactly is the Democratic economic message?

Here are a few of them:

• Raise taxes on the rich.

• Destroy America’s energy capacity due to climate change religiosity.

• Businesses are evil.

• Expand welfare payments.

• Grow the government.

• Defend rotten schools and put teacher union interests above parents and kids.

• Put diversity over merit selection.

I’ve often observed with deepest regrets that the Democrats have sprinted away from the JFK agenda of free trade, lower tax rates, and balanced budgets.  Can you imagine ANY Democrat today saying, as Kennedy did in 1963, that “tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the fastest way to balance the budget is to lower the rates now.”

Even more recently, we had the Bill Clinton market-friendly centrists who were ascendant in the Democratic Party. The 1990s was a decade of balanced budgets, abundant jobs, falling government spending, free trade, a technology boom, lower capital gains taxes, and a mighty stock market surge.

The era of big government really was over – temporarily.

Now it’s back. Biden’s demise was in no small part to the embrace of Modern Monetary Policy – which was a witless theory that the U.S. government could spend and borrow as much as it wanted and good things would happen. Whether they actually believed this non sequitur is an open question. But it shot grocery and gas prices up by nearly 30% and sent voters into Donald Trump’s waiting arms.

The latest wisdom of the DNC is to simply oppose everything President Trump is doing.

It’s not an economic philosophy, it’s a pathology.

It’s not healthy that one of the two political parties has belly flopped off the shallow end. We need a war – or at least a competition – of ideas and solutions. Ceding the debate to the Republicans isn’t healthy for either party.

I’m hard pressed to name even one Democrat in Washington – just one – that has a pro-growth, pro-America agenda. Maybe there is one in the states. I like some of what I’ve heard from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. But even he admits that he’s too centrist and free market oriented for the national party.

In 1980 Democrats got shellacked by Ronald Reagan. They moved left with Walter Mondale and lost 49 states four years later. And then even when Reagan was gone, they went further left with Massachusetts liberal Michael Dukakis and lost again in 1988. It was only THEN that they went with pragmatism and won with Bill Clinton. I think Dems are going to have to take another beating at the polls in 2028 to see the errors of their ways.

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Donald Trump economic advisor.  

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