The Biggest Political Party in America You’ve Never Heard Of

If I asked you to name the biggest political party in the United States, what would be your answer? You probably have two guesses that come to mind: the Democratic party or the Republican party.Well, it’s neither.

It’s the party of Non-Voters.

Let’s look at the last presidential election: 100 million Americans who were eligible to vote in 2016 DID NOT vote. That’s a bigger number than the number who voted either for Donald Trump or for Hillary Clinton. In Michigan, for example, where the contest came down to roughly 10,000 votes, it’s plausible to say that non-voters were the ones who decided the election.

Non-voters — those Americans eligible to vote but don’t — are in effect America’s biggest political party. Unless we work to reverse this trend, they could decide the next election.

So who are these missing voters? They are Americans who are most affected by decades of a broken political system, economic inequality, and laws designed to make it harder to vote. They are people of color, young people, and people with lower incomes.

At the same time, these missing voters tend to be more progressive than most voters. For example, non-voters are more likely to support higher taxes to pay for government services, a higher minimum wage, a federal jobs guarantee, and other progressive priorities.

There are also seven million young people of color who weren’t old enough to vote in 2016 but will be 18 by the 2020 election. These voters will also be critical to mobilize.

All of which means that voter turnout will determine our future. These non-voters are potential voters, and recent elections with record turnout show that we’re headed in the right direction.

The key question is how to get even more of them to the polls. Four steps:

1. Make it easier to vote, not harder. Some states have enacted laws to suppress the votes of people of color and young people, such as requiring an ID, reducing the number of polling places in Democratic districts, and purging voter rolls. These tactics must be ended. The Voting Rights Act, which for decades kept some of the worst practices in check until major provisions were struck down by the Supreme Court, must be restored.

And we need to make it easier to vote by making Election Day a federal holiday; enacting Automatic Voter Registration, for example when people turn 18; and voting by mail.

2. Mobilize young voters. They’re a huge potential voting block. In the 2018 midterm elections, 36 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots, shattering turnout records from the past quarter-century and contributing to major Democratic victories across the country

3. Inspire enthusiasm and grassroots energy around big ideas and bold policies, not milquetoast, consultant-driven half-measures. Look at Stacey Abrams’s campaign in 2018. Even though she didn’t win, Abrams ran a bold campaign and worked to turn out Democratic voters that had largely been ignored in the red state of Georgia. As a result, Abrams garnered more votes — 1.9 million — than any other Democrat running for any office in the history of the state, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter.

4. Personally encourage others to vote. Make sure they know how to register, and when and where to vote. Tell them to be a voter.

Rebuilding America starts with the simple act of voting. If we can activate even a fraction of those 100 million non-voters, we can restore American democracy and make our economy and our democracy work for the many rather than the few.

This is why it’s so important for you to vote – and urge everyone you know to vote, too.

Robert Reich
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2020

Why I’m Still Hopeful About America

If climate change, nuclear standoffs, assault weapons, hate crimes, mass killings, Russian trolls, near-record inequality, kids locked in cages at our border, and Donald Trump in the White House don’t occasionally cause you feelings of impending doom, you’re not human.

But I want you to remember this: As bad as it looks – as despairing as you can sometimes feel – the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We will again. We already are.

Not convinced?

First, come back in time with me to when I graduated college in 1968. That year, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Our cities were burning. Tens of thousands of young Americans were being ordered to Vietnam to fight an unwinnable and unjust war, which ultimately claimed over 58,000 American lives and the lives of over 3 million Vietnamese. The nation was deeply divided. And then in November of that year, Richard Nixon was elected president. 

I recall thinking this nation would never recover. But somehow we bounced back.

In subsequent years we enacted the Environmental Protection Act. We achieved marriage equality for gays and lesbians. We elected a black man to be president of the United States. We passed the Affordable Care Act.

Even now, it’s not as bleak as it sometimes seems. ​In 2018 we elected a record number of women, people of color, and LGBTQ representatives to Congress, including the first Muslim women.​ ​Eighteen states raised their minimum wages.

Even in traditionally conservative states, surprising things are happening. In Tennessee, a Republican legislature has ​enacted free community college​ and ​raised taxes for infrastructure.​ Nevada has expanded ​voting rights​ and ​gun controls​. New Mexico has increased​ spending by 11 percent and ​raised​ its minimum wage by 60 percent. Teachers have gone on strike in Virginia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina — and won. The public sided with the teachers.

In several states, after decades of tough-on-crime policies, conservative groups have joined with liberals to reform criminal justice systems. ​Early childhood education​ and alternative energy promotion​ have also expanded nationwide, largely on a bipartisan basis.

Now, come forward in time with me.

Look at the startling diversity of younger Americans. ​Most Americans now under 18 years old are ethnically Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, African-American, or of more than one race.​ ​In ten years, it’s estimated that most Americans under ​35​ will also be people of color or of mixed races.​ ​Thirty years from now, most of us will be.​ 

That diversity will be a huge strength. We will be more tolerant, less racist, less xenophobic.

Our young people are also determined to make America better. I’ve been teaching for almost 40 years, and I’ve never taught a generation of students as dedicated to public service, as committed to improving the nation and the world as is the generation I’m now teaching. That’s another sign of our future strength.

Meanwhile, ​most college students today are women​, which means that in future years even more women will be in leadership positions – in science, politics, education, nonprofits, and in corporate suites. That will also be a great boon to America.

I don’t want to minimize the problems we now have. I just want to remind you of how resilient America has been, and how well situated we are for the future. 

Never give up fighting for a more just society. 

The forces of greed and hate would prefer you give up, because that way they win it all. But we have never given up. And we never will.

Robert Reich

January 12, 2020