Dems get 2-point playbook to take down MAGA in NYT essay

An economist is predicting how Democrats can defeat MAGA and reconnect with American workers with "two major makeovers."

Dani Rodrik, Harvard University’s Kennedy School professor and the author of “Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World: A New Economics for the Middle Class, the Global Poor and Our Climate," suggests a new strategy for Democrats and how they approach the working class in an opinion piece for The New York Times published Monday.

Democrats need a strong jobs agenda, focused on creating good jobs and moving away from the notion that "officials thinking about economic development need to get over their manufacturing fetishism," he argued.

"Only about 40 percent of American workers have one. Nearly half of Americans believe they would not be able to find one. Jobs do not just provide income; they are a source of dignity and social recognition. The disappearance of good jobs and, with them, a reliable path to the middle class, underpins the economic anxieties that have fueled the rise of the far right," Rodrik writes.

As Republicans have called for an increase in manufacturing jobs, Democrats have also followed the strategy. But that's not the right move to "reverse the rise of authoritarian populism."

Instead, the party should shift its focus to services and technological innovation.

"Projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the nation’s top three private sector occupations well into the next decade will be home health and personal care aides, fast food and counter workers, and retail salespersons. The promise of bringing back manufacturing jobs fails to make a connection with the concerns of the typical worker, who is more likely to be employed as a care giver or in food services," Rodrik explained.

He cited China's approach to its green industrial policies as a potential model to help improve job prospects for American workers.

"Since the early 2010s, China has made green technology a national project and prioritized it more than any other nation. While government subsidies played an important role, they were part of a much broader set of policy instruments. China deployed public venture capital, infrastructure investments, regulations and demonstration programs, often in an experimental manner. In contrast to the conventional image of East Asian industrial policy, the approach was collaborative," he wrote.

And it can be done, he added.

"It requires political leaders to shed their preoccupation with manufacturing and embrace the kinds of public-private collaboration that drives economic transformation," Rodrik wrote.