Hey Democrats, do more than talk: J.D. Vance

At least since the late 1970s, a relatively consistent domestic policy agenda has guided the Republican Party. GOP leaders, drawing on thinkers such as the brilliant economist Milton Friedman, pushed a combination of tax cuts, regulatory reform and open trade. Sometimes, as in President Reagan’s time, these policies proved popular. And other times, as during President George W. Bush’s time, they didn’t. Yet the party marched on, with little revision to the core ideas that informed Reagan’s presidency. As late as summer 2015, putative Republican presidential front-runners announced their candidacies in speeches that promised the same basic agenda.

Whatever you might think of these policies, evidence slowly accumulated that they failed to address a very real social crisis among the Republican base. The factories that formed the base of the blue-collar economy shed jobs or ceased operating altogether. Median wages stagnated, and white working-class voters began telling pollsters that they believed their children’s future would be worse than their own. Divorce rates crept steadily upward, and a frightening drug epidemic took hold. Last year, in the medium-sized Ohio county where I was born, deaths from drug overdoses outnumbered deaths from natural causes.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that candidates promising more tax cuts and free trade would fail to excite these voters, but it wasn’t so obvious in real time. Early in the primary season, a number of pundits celebrated the “deep bench” of the Republican Party — from competent governors to exciting young senators. Now, of course, we know what happened to the Republican bloom of candidates: It wilted when confronted with actual voters. And a populist revolt crowned Donald Trump king of the party.

This week, the Democrats have gathered in Philadelphia, and though much drama undoubtedly remains, their convention has already struck an upbeat tone. Hillary Clinton earned the endorsement of her chief rival, something Trump failed to do. And in some ways, the Democratic convention itself has been a celebration of America’s promise: The first lady, in an implicit shot at Trump, argued eloquently that America is already great; Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, striking high notes of optimism, promised the delegates that “we will rise”; and former president Bill Clinton offered a folksy, loving tribute to his wife. The cynical flavor of last week’s Republican convention in Cleveland bore little resemblance.

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Yet if the Democrats are hopeful about the future, it’s not entirely clear that they should be. Though white working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic Party and taken their struggles with them, the 21st century has brought significant problems to a number of core Democratic constituencies. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the average black American has seen tens of thousands of dollars in personal wealth disappear. The average worker hasn’t seen a significant increase in the weekly paycheck in years. A whole generation of students depends on their parents for help with skyrocketing student loan payments.

If the Republicans looked at problems like these and offered solutions from the 1980s, Democrats appear focused on solutions from the 1960s. Their response to stagnant wages, for instance, is a $15 minimum wage, which has long been an article of faith among the party’s left wing. The problem, as former Obama administration chief economist Alan Krueger noted, is that such a large minimum-wage increase might force a lot of employers to lay people off. In areas slammed by job losses, the party offers a medicine worse than the disease.

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Democrats today, like Republicans four years ago, appear unable to consider the poor as they actually are. Free college tuition, another insertion in the party’s platform, sounds great. College is undoubtedly a path to upward mobility for many Americans, and the costs can be prohibitive. But the reason disadvantaged children don’t attend college has little to do with finances and more to do with a lack of preparedness. Indeed, already existing public and private need-based aid programs make most colleges affordable for the poor now. The problem, as a teacher at my old high school told me, is that many of these children face indescribable chaos and instability at home, and it leaves them unable to function well in high school, much less college.

Many European countries devote significant resources to non-university higher education — vocational schools, apprenticeships and other skills-based training. In Switzerland, for instance, more students opt for vocational training over a traditional college education. Consequently, Switzerland has one of the lowest youth unemployment rates in the world. Meanwhile, U.S. data suggest that most university tuition subsidies benefit higher-income children, not the impoverished. In funneling resources to a broken system — rather than reforming the one we have — the Democrats' policy hands money to the rich while it masquerades as a benefit to the poor.

Though it’s admirable that the Democrats devote so much airtime to the disadvantaged, talking won’t do. Stagnating wages and pessimism about stalled upward mobility challenge the very heart of the American Dream, yet the Democrats' platform is full of policies that definitely won’t help and might even hurt. To my Democratic friends: Celebrate all you want in Philadelphia, but unless you get serious, you just might find your party overthrown by the people you’ve long been pretending to help.

J.D. Vance, author ofHillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis, is a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm. Follow him on Twitter @JDVance1.

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