Jobs guarantees are more popular than Ivanka Trump thinks
It’s no surprise that Ivanka Trump, who grew up in lavish wealth, is out of touch with ordinary Americans. We were reminded of this fact when she was asked by Fox News host Steve Hilton about leftwing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal and its proposed jobs guarantee. Her reply was baffling: “I don’t think most Americans in their heart want to be given something,” she said, adding: “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years, people want to work for what they get, so I think this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job.”
To state the obvious: a jobs guarantee would by definition give people “the ability to be able to secure a job”. And such a measure wouldn’t foreclose “the potential for upward mobility”, but rather facilitate it for millions. Most importantly, a jobs guarantee is far more popular than Trump realizes: according to one poll, 52% of Americans support this policy, with even higher favorability in poor states such as Mississippi (72%).
Responding to Trump on Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez said: “As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to
live.” She continued by saying: “A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right.”
There’s a reason why people want a jobs guarantee. Today, unemployment is at its lowest rate in decades (around 3.7%), but labor force participation is down from pre-recession levels, and many have to piece together part-time employment. A good job is still hard to come by, and employers know it. The whip of unemployment, or the fear of being thrown into precarious work, is used to keep employees pliant and suppress wage demands. This is especially true of marginalized groups, like black workers who suffer the most from joblessness. Job guarantees and other protections that make collective action (like strikes or unionization) more viable are precisely what allows for the “upward mobility” that Trump claims to support.
There’s a bigger lesson to learn here, though. It’s not just that the Trump administration doesn’t understand the needs of ordinary people – it actually flounders when it comes to rebutting Democratic socialists politicians like Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. And that is especially relevant as we enter into the 2020 election cycle.
Remember when, in May 2016, Donald Trump told late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that he would gladly debate Sanders? After the senator agreed, Trump immediately pulled out, saying that he doesn’t debate “losers”. He was afraid for a reason: Trump made rhetorical appeals to the “ordinary American,” but Sanders actually represents the policies – from higher minimum wages to unions to Medicare for All – that actually resonated with them.
Rather than debating Russia, the president’s many legal battles, or his unsavory personality, this is the terrain upon which a real resistance to him can be built.
Corporate interests have tended to dictate the legislative agenda of both major parties, but opinion research shows how popular a more leftwing program has become. Most Americans favor higher taxes on large corporations and a 70% marginal tax rate on the rich. A Hill-HarrisX survey even shows that close to a majority of Republican voters (45%) support the latter. Between jobs, taxes, and Medicare for All, it’s clear that people want change and they see government power as a way to improve their lives.
There is still the daunting challenge of taking these individual policy preferences and bundling them into a coherent politics. But this is precisely what Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and those in their spirit are starting to offer voters. They use real life examples and straight forward messaging to portray their ideas as common sense and prowealthy Trump ones as out of touch. It’s a perfect counter to the allure of right-populism – a working-class politics that can speak to anger but connect it to a substantive agenda.
Not only should Donald Trump fear going up against Bernie Sanders in
2020, but rich kids turned rightwing politicians all over the country should be warned: faux-populism doesn’t have the appeal it used to.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality