Will Donald Trump's Mexican border wall actually make our country safer? How much will Bernie Sanders's Medicare for All plan really cost American taxpayers? You'll find the answers in this book. The 2020 US presidential election doesn't seem so much a battle of ideas as it does a war of two tribes bent on the other's destruction. The Far Left and Far Right increasingly dominate and drive America's political debate, leaving a majority of Americans feeling left out and left behind. The Ultimate Guide to the 2020 Election gives a voice to this majority and provides an unbiased education on the true nature of the problems America faces on several key issues, including: ⢠Health Care ⢠Energy & Climate Change ⢠Infrastructure ⢠Big Tech & Privacy ⢠The American Dream ⢠Immigration ⢠The National Debt ⢠Gun SafetyBeyond these policy issues, No Labels senior advisors Ryan Clancy and Margaret White present ideas for rescuing American democracy itself. Complete with sample questions for the 2020 presidential candidates and an inclusive Unity Agenda that addresses concerns on both sides of the aisle, this nonpartisan political handbook should be required reading for all US voters.
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Since 1939, Gallup pollsters have been asking the American public to identify the biggest problem facing our country. In the February 2019 poll, 35% named government, poor leadership, or politicians as the single greatest problem facing the USâthe highest percentage who made this choice in at least 55 years.
How did it get this bad, this fast?
We blame the iPhone.
No, Apple is not to blame for upending American democracy. But technology is. In the last 30 years, technology has radically reshaped every aspect of our livesâhow we work, how we play, and how we connect to one another. But our political system has barely changed at all. And it simply canât keep up.
Our political system is still stuck in the Industrial Age, and it has no way to deal with the changes brought about by the Information Age. And neither do many of the citizens and communities across the countryâand around the worldâwho increasingly feel left behind.
It only gets harder from here because technology doesnât progress in a linear fashion. It progresses exponentially.
In 1965, Gordon Mooreâthe founder of Intel, which invented the first microprocessorâmade a prescient prediction. He said the number of transistors you could fit on an integrated circuitâa measure of the amount of processing power you could pack into a chipâwould double every two years. Mooreâs Law, as it became known, held true for over 50 years, and it explains why your smartphone has more computing power than all of NASA possessed in 1969 when it sent a man to the moon.
Technology unquestionably makes our lives better. Thanks to technology and innovation, we have conquered diseases, saved lives, developed cleaner energy, and created unprecedented prosperity. Life is more convenient than many of us ever imagined.
But technology always brings disruption. It was true when millions moved from farms to factories at the turn of the 20th century. Itâs still true today.
Technology has usually followed a familiar pattern: When breakthrough innovations happenâlike the advent of the cotton gin, the steam engine, the car, or the internetâthey kill old, unproductive industries and jobs. And they create new and better ones.
When this change happens over decades, communities and our political system have time to adjust. But today, this change is happening instantaneously. And our political system isnât remotely equipped to handle it.
You could argue that Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States because he told Americans a simple story: âYou are worse offâand good jobs are harder to findâbecause of immigration and bad trade deals.â
Most whoâve researched the issue donât endorse the presidentâs view, with one notable study finding that 85% of lost US manufacturing jobs resulted from technological change, not trade. The real problem isnât NAFTA. Itâs the factory that used to employ 10,000 people but now employs 1,000 with robots doing the rest. A 2019 Brookings Institution report found that as many as a quarter of the current jobs in the US are at risk of being disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI).
Just look at truck driving, which is the most common occupation in 29 states and provides a solid middle-class income. In 2015, the first self-driving semitruck was tested in Nevada. Uber has started testing driverless cars on public roads.
So letâs do a little thought experiment together. If AI decimates the top job in most states, what do you think will happen to our already fragile democracy?
Answer: It will strain it like never before, unless we do something about it.
Knowing this is coming, as many politicians in Washington do, you would imagine that the future and the challenges of technological change would be front and center in our political debate. But in their own way, both the Left and Right are pushing agendas rooted in the distant past.
What Do We Mean by
âRightâ and âLeftâ?
The 2020 presidential race has featured almost two dozen candidates running. In this book, we will explain the kinds of policies the Left and the Right are pushing these candidates to embrace. It is important, however, to first define the âLeftâ and âRight.â Although the Left does include radicals like Antifa and the Right includes white nationalists, these groups arenât our focus. For the purposes of this book, when we mention âLeftâ and âRight,â we invite you to think of the most ideological flanks of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Freedom Caucus. Itâs still a rough proxy, but we hope you get the point.
The Green New Deal vs Make America Great Again
The Green New Deal, proposed in early 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and endorsed by several Democratic presidential contenders, is still more aspirational idea than actual policy agenda. But it envisions a ânew national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War IIâ to combat climate change, to correct economic and social injustices, and to guarantee employment, housing, and health care.
Make America Great Again combines a mix of 1950s nostalgia, 1980s economics, and President Trumpâs skepticism toward trade and immigration.
The Green New Deal and Make America Great Again resonate because they speak to real and urgent concerns. Climate change is happening, and itâs getting worse. Globalization and free trade have not distributed their benefits equitably, and too many American communities have been left behind with little hope for the future.
Meanwhile, business and political leaders have contributed to or overseen catastrophic failures like the 2008 financial crisis while others suffered the consequences. No one went to jail. No one took the blame. They got reelected. They got bonuses. Millions of Americans, on the other hand, lost their jobs and were evicted from their homes.
Americans are ticked off, and they have a right to be.
Make America Great Again and the Green New Deal offer radically different visions to address this anger. But they both tap into a deep well of anger in the electorate, and they are great brands. Trump, of course, rode Make America Great Again to victory in 2016. As of early 2019, large majorities of Americans said they supported the goals of the Green New Deal. The problemâas weâll explore throughout this bookâis that both visions too often entail simplistic, unworkable solutions to exceptionally complex challenges.
Make America Great Again and the Green New Dealâwhen you look behind the slogans and into the policiesâare underpinned by several ideas that push the country much further Right or Left than most Americans want to go.
This is a feature, not a bug. The way incentives are set up in our system today, politicians and even presidential candidates donât need to care about what the majority wants. They only need to respond to the comparatively small number of people and interest groups who fund their campaigns and turn out to vote for them in electionsâespecially the primary elections that narrow Americansâ choices more than most of us appreciate.
Partisans on the Left and the Right increasingly subscribe to what we at No Labels have long called the âking (or queen) for a day delusion.â It goes a little something like this: If we just fight long and hard enough for what we believe in, we will prevail. We will win enough power in some future election to ram through every item on our wish list. And we wonât have to deal with those evil people on the other side.
But that day never comes. In a divided country, neither party can ever get all the power it wants. In the instances when one party fully controls the White House and Congressâas when Democrats unilaterally passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 with no Republican votes and Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 with no Democratic votesâthe opposing party immediately tries to dismantle what was just passed. Instead of recognizing the folly of this approach, the extreme partisans double down, demanding more purity and less flexibility in a vicious cycle that never ends. And we end up where we are now, where no one is happy with the status quo, everyone is angry, and our countryâs problems keep getting worse.
As we write this, virtually every force in US politicsâmoney, votes, grassroots energy, and enthusiasmâis pushing our political leaders and parties in one direction: apart.
The only viable answer to these radical forces dividing America is to create equally strong forces pushing in the other direction.
2
No Labels: Bridging the Divide
No Labels waslaunched in 2010 as an effort to answer two pressing questions about American politics:
Is there a way to bridge the growing chasm separating the two parties?
Could an outside group create incentives to prompt the nationâs political leaders to put country above party?
Judging from the daily headlines about Washingtonâs dysfunction almost a decade later, you could be forgiven for thinking the answer to both these questions is an unequivocal âNo.â But No Labels has quietly and consistently built a formidable infrastructure of allies in Congress, ideas, and citizens working to create a space in the political center where solutions can be forged.
Congress
No Labels spent years just trying to get members of Congress from both parties into a room together. Early on, one of us was meeting with a member of Congress in his office when he pointed across the hallway to the office of a three-term member of the other party and said, âI have never really had a conversation with him before.â
It was a clarifying moment in which we realized just how dysfunctional our government had become. After all, how could these members possibly work together to solve tough issues if they didnât like, trust, or even know one another?
It wasnât easy, but over time, these meetings built trust, led to legislation, and ultimately to something that had never before existed on Capitol Hill: the creation of a durable bipartisan bloc committed to getting to âyesâ on key issues. Itâs called the Problem Solvers Caucus.
