In my last post, I promised to sell you on a new political party. I also mentioned the Libertarian Party because it illustrates a general strategy that I think could be effective. However, while I believe there is value in the libertarian movement, my personal political preferences align more closely with its theoretical opposite, and I’ll try to sell you on the prospects of a party in line with this ideology. Though I’ve never been a particular fan of broad political ideologies, labels, or identities, my preferences tend to align with what any other country would call a Christian Democratic Party (though most now have more inclusive names that are not explicitly religious)—a party that is socially conservative while promoting economic equality – unfortunately such parties are not very popular in this country. Many countries throughout the world have influential Christian Democrat parties, and a quick Google search tells me that America in fact has one called the American Solidarity Party that I had never before heard of. I am not advocating for this particular party because I know nothing about it, but after a quick look at their platform I personally agree with many of their policies. Perhaps I can offer my ideas as free, unsolicited and probably unwanted advice to bring this party, or one like it, into greater prominence by leveraging the issues and frustrations that have become apparent throughout the current election.
 
As a quick preview before I get to the details, I am advocating for a party that supports traditional values and free trade, while also supporting government programs that invest in education and actively seeks to alleviate the inequalities produced by both the global economy and historic (and arguably continuing) injustices against disadvantaged groups. The first half of that might sound good to Republicans and the second to Democrats, but I expect the combination may not be too appealing to many without a bit of persuasion. A Christian Democrat Party traditionally follows this ideology and, “seeks to promote the common good and the welfare of all people, and stands for the sanctity of human life and the necessity of social justice.”¹This quote is taken in pieces from the American Solidarity Party website, but purposely removes explicitly religious references for reasons discussed below. If you follow anything Pope Francis says, I think he and I would probably fit in this political camp, though he would probably argue he’s not in a political camp and I have no particular connection to the Catholic Church. This ideology advocates the idea that traditional values and human life are both undervalued in our society, and that we have a social responsibility to fight extreme poverty, inequality, and social injustice by all means possible. This ideology obviously has roots in Christianity, and my interest in it is clearly influenced by my personal religious beliefs, but I think the principles might be broadly appealing for those with differing or no religious convictions.
 
So, my first piece of advice to build a successful Christian Democrat party along these lines is sadly to drop all reference to the Christian Democrat heritage, while maintaining the general ideological focus, for two reasons. The first is that the explicit religious basis is naturally exclusive and seems to violate the American ideal (though not reality) of separating religious and political identity. The second is that Christian Democratic parties have historically not been popular in America and seem like a European or Latin-American invention. Many Americans like to think they have a unique and exceptional political system and have a natural aversion to imported ideas, so this party needs to have an identity (and a name) that does not directly reference the Christian Democrat history.  I’ll turn to an analysis of recent election events to help find the appropriate focus and identity for the party, but will leave the re-naming to someone with better marketing skills.
 
In my opinion, two broad themes have led to many of the unexpected outcomes in this year’s election (in my view, Trump’s nomination and Sanders’ considerable challenge to Clinton’s front-runner status were the major unexpected outcomes, along with the Brexit). The two themes, broadly speaking, are globalization and frustration with “the establishment.” Any emerging party needs to focus on these issues and offer a comprehensive ideology to address the frustrations and challenges evident in these areas. I’ll leave the “establishment” issue for later and focus more on globalization for now. Globalization is a very broad term and encompasses all the ways that the world becomes more interconnected, but for now I’ll talk about trade and migration. It’s easy to see how these issues are pivotal to Trump’s nomination. While he has drawn some support simply with a sense of nationalism, ethnocentrism, or even racism, many good people support Trump because of their honest and legitimate concern with the way America has integrated into the world economy. As much as I am a proponent of both free trade and more open immigration, we cannot ignore the fact that many hard-working Americans have lost their jobs and livelihood to foreign competition – and this is a legitimate and important concern we need to deal with. The UK’s recent decision to exit the EU is perhaps even stronger evidence of growing concerns over globalization and frustrations with the way the world is integrating. I think Trump has capitalized on these concerns by proposing drastic (and I believe dangerously misguided) measures to address an issue that neither party has adequately dealt with. Bernie Sanders has also addressed the issue of how free trade has hurt American workers, and both these surprisingly successful candidates have gotten a lot of support because they promise to address the frustrations of those who have been harmed by global integration. I agree with both that the issue is of paramount importance, but I don’t agree with either’s policy prescriptions to address it.
 
As I have discussed in previous posts, free trade, in my opinion, is a fairly straight forward challenge with an obvious solution (at least in general terms). While there is much to argue relating to free trade, there is relative consensus on two basic facts. 1) Free trade between countries makes everyone better off as a whole, and 2) the benefits of free trade are not evenly distributed, meaning some people are better off while some are worse off, while the overall “size of the pie” increases – please read my past posts if you would like elaboration on this, otherwise you’ll have to believe me. Trade has promoted economic development and massive improvements in overall well-being in the world, but not everyone benefits equally. As our developed economy integrates with the international market, there is a strong incentive for lower-skill jobs to move out of our borders to countries with lower wages like China and Mexico, or for migrants from such countries to compete for jobs here. However, such integration also creates massive opportunities for growth in other sectors as American high-skilled industries sell products across the world. This means that the potential for innovation and growth in our economy is great, but lots of blue-collar workers can lose their jobs and will have trouble finding new ones. This globalization is happening and will continue to happen as technology improves, and there are three general strategies to deal with it. First, we could erect barriers to free trade to protect the workers in our country from competition. Second, we could drop the barriers and not worry about our workers, knowing that the overall benefits outweigh the costs. Third, we could drop the barriers to free trade, but then use the benefits of that free trade to help those negatively affected by it adjust to the changing conditions. Option three sounds reasonable to me and probably to some of you, but what it entails in reality is taxes and government spending – things that have gotten a bad reputation. In our country, Republicans have traditionally gone for option 2, free trade with no help from the government, while Democrats tended to go for option 1, protect the workers, but have slowly embraced the benefits of free trade (notably with Bill Clinton’s approval of NAFTA and Obama’s support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership). However, our country has done little to deal with the inevitable job losses and inequalities associated with this increase in free trade (in my opinion because of the excessive focus on limited government by libertarian and Tea Party leaders). Both Bernie and Trump have gained a lot of support by threatening to put the brakes on free trade while everyone else just watches people lose their jobs, with Bernie also focusing on taxation and redistribution to address inequality and Trump trying to limit migration as well as trade. They clearly are both hitting on an important concern to many Americans.
 
The central identity of my proposed party is to offer a reasonable and comprehensive strategy for engaging the increasingly globalized world; you could call it the Engagement Party until someone thinks of something better. The policy focus would be squarely on option 3 as described above, and I hope it will appeal to some in both the current parties. I believe we should promote and encourage free trade (and more open migration), but while doing so we need to actively help with the necessary adjustments and inequalities it creates. I don’t believe the American worker, farmer, or entrepreneur needs government protection from competition, but that we do need policy that promotes globally competitive businesses (that should make some Republicans happy). However, I also think we have a responsibility to assist our workers when this competition means they lose jobs. With every free trade bill that we pursue (and we should do so), we should create a robust program to fund training and education for those workers that lose out due to free trade and migration, along with other programs to ensure that those who face this difficult adjustment have reasonable options available to them (government jobs programs, early retirement, unemployment benefits, etc.) – and these programs should be funded through the taxation of those who benefit most from the open global economy (meaning people who have excessively high personal incomes – that should make some Democrats happy).
 
In addition, I think the government needs a role in preparing people to deal with this global economy, especially people who are least prepared for these adjustments because of historic and systematic injustices. This means that education needs to be a major priority. By priority I mean that we need to spend money on paying teachers and educating our people, not just make up new rules that don’t really change anything or make teachers’ jobs more difficult. This party should be committed to a balanced budget, so I’ll discuss later how to increase our focus on education without deficits (hint: less military spending that doesn’t make anyone safer), but we need to drastically increase our investment in human capital, from pre-school through college. We need to ensure that everyone has a reasonable chance to succeed in a global economy, even those people who were born in zip codes with bad schools or still suffer the effects of hundreds of years of racist and sexist government policies. This party should entertain competing ideas about how to improve education, whether it’s through more local control of curriculums or federally funded universal community college, whether it’s by reducing the power of teachers’ unions that sometimes protect their own power instead of students’ interests or by drastically increasing (with federal support) teachers’ salaries and prestige, but it will not hesitate to invest in the human capital necessary to ensure opportunity and growth.  Along with education, the party should not hesitate to invest in the infrastructure and research necessary to compete in a global economy. This means spending federal money on basic and applied research, transportation, information technology, sustainable energy, and other areas of infrastructure development.
 
Globalization is an inescapable phenomenon that we must deal with, and dealing with it effectively will require difficult adjustment and sacrifices. Moving briefly to the second theme, I believe many people have become dissatisfied with “establishment” leaders because they so often tell us what we want to hear without actually solving any problems.  They focus on sound bites and appealing ideology without delivering carefully thought out solutions. They seem afraid to tell us about the hard work that has to be done. They promise they will deliver a world-class military or better education and that they can do it without raising taxes or causing us any pain. Many people like Bernie because they see him as honestly deviating from the typical politicians’ rhetoric, just as many support Trump because they see his refusal to be politically correct as a welcome refutation of the status quo. This party needs to recognize that people need to hear and will welcome the hard truth, but the truth that needs to be declared is that America’s struggles in the world economy are not the fault of any other country, but rather our unwillingness to invest in our own future. We can challenge the establishment by recognizing that Americans aren’t being taken advantage of and don’t need to blame anyone, but that we need a better strategy to ensure our children have an increased chance of success in the global economy.
 
You may or may not recognize that this general strategy is very similar to the Clinton economic platform of pursuing free trade while improving government support for those suffering economic hardship or facing extreme inequality. This is one reason, as I hope to discuss later, why I think Hillary is a very reasonable candidate for President, though I personally hesitate to offer her or the Democratic Party my full support for other reasons. Hillary is more supportive of free-trade than traditional Democrats, and I think that is one reason Bernie has been a major challenge to her and she has actually backed off her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership – it seems that the Democratic Party is moving back towards its traditional stance of protection from trade. I believe a third party can have some success if they are firmly in the free trade with government support camp, but this has some challenges I’ll discuss below.
 
Another reason I personally have not been more supportive of the Democratic Party is simply that I am socially conservative – by which I mean that I believe that traditional family values are the bedrock of a successful society and have been attacked and eroded to a dangerous degree. I will try to discuss this in greater detail later, most importantly sharing how people with such values can be (but sadly sometimes aren’t) tolerant, welcoming, and inclusive, but for now will just state, rather than defend²I feel the need to defend because I sadly recognize that many people, both historically and at present, advocating for supposed traditional values often do so in ways that are intolerant, hateful, xenophobic, racist, and sexist. I cannot condone such fear based views, and don’t want to be confused with someone who does. I plan to discuss this in greater detail at some point, but I believe a party advocating traditional family values needs to make a much stronger effort to ensure their views are based in the love of all human life that is central to those ideas., my preferences and why I think they might lead to a successful party.
 
As the world has globalized and modernized, I believe there is rising concern not only with how countries and nations are integrating, but also with how the family and society are disintegrating. I hope, and maybe even believe, that there may be a significant portion of the American public that shares these views and recognizes the federal government’s constitutional responsibility to, “promote the general welfare,” requires a defense of family as the foundational institution in our country as well as an active role in providing support to those suffering economic hardships. For this to be successful, I will need to convince some on the Right that the single-minded focus on “limited government” is misguided and unhelpful and upholding conservative values doesn’t always mean opposing progress, and convince some on the Left that free trade is inevitable, beneficial, and moral, and that supporting the family is necessary and not at odds with individual justice and tolerance.  I’ll try to make those arguments in the posts to follow.

Also published on Medium.