Why Democrats must always rock the boat

Instead of “Yes we can,” many Democrats have adopted a new slogan this election year: “We shouldn’t even try.”

We shouldn’t try for a single-payer health care system, they say. We’ll be lucky if we prevent Republicans from repealing Obamacare.

We shouldn’t try for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. The best we can do is $12 an hour.

We shouldn’t try to restore the GlassSteagall Act that used to separate investment and commercial banking, or bust up the biggest banks. We’ll be lucky to stop Republicans from repealing Dodd-Frank.

We shouldn’t try for free public higher education. As it is, Republicans are out to cut all federal education spending.

Most of all, we shouldn’t even try to get big money out of politics. We’ll be lucky to round up enough wealthy people to back Democratic candidates.

These “we shouldn’t even try” Democrats think it’s foolish to aim for fundamental change — pie-in-the-sky, impractical, silly, naive, quixotic. Not in the cards. No way we can.

I understand their defeatism. After eight years of Republican intransigence and six years of congressional gridlock, many Democrats are desperate just to hold on to what we have.

And ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the political floodgates to big corporations, Wall Street and right-wing billionaires, many Democrats have concluded that bold ideas are unachievable.

In addition, some establishment Democrats have grown comfortable with the way things are. They’d rather not rock the boat they’re safely in.

I get it, but here’s the problem: There’s no way to reform the system without rocking the boat. There’s no way to get to where America should be without aiming high.

Progressive change has never happened without bold ideas championed by bold idealists.

Time and again we’ve learned that important public goals can be achieved — if the public is mobilized behind them. And time and again such mobilization has depended on the energies and enthusiasm of young people combined with the determination and tenacity of the rest.

The situation we’re in now demands such mobilization. Wealth and income are more concentrated at the top than they have been in over a century. And that wealth has translated into political power.

We pay high prices for airline tickets even though fuel costs have tumbled. And high prices for food even though crop prices have declined.

That’s because giant companies have accumulated vast market power. Yet the nation’s antitrust laws are barely enforced.

Meanwhile, the biggest Wall Street banks have more of the nation’s banking assets than they did in 2008, when they were judged too big to fail.

Hedge-fund partners get tax loopholes, oil companies get tax subsidies, and big agriculture gets paid off.

Bankruptcy laws protect the fortunes of billionaires such as Donald Trump but not the homes of underwater homeowners or the savings of graduates burdened with student loans.

A low minimum wage enhances the profits of big-box retailers like Wal-Mart but requires the rest of us to provide its employees and their families with food stamps and Medicaid in order to avoid poverty — an indirect subsidy for WalMart.

And the pay of top corporate executives continues to skyrocket, even as most people’s real wages drop and their job security vanishes. This system is not sustainable. We must get big money out of our democracy, end crony capitalism, and make our economy and democracy work for the many, not just the few.

But change on this scale requires political mobilization. It won’t be easy. It has never been easy. We must try. We have no choice.