Will Democratic Party introduce a new 'New Deal'? Key narrative must be 'focused on economic issues'

This is apropos. Well, after months of campaign pledges, it's now time for US Democrats to put their promises into action. Despite its resounding midterms victories, the party remains divided over whether to tack to the centre or move further left on issues ranging from tax and healthcare to policing and foreign policy. Jack Pannell has more. A promise to make life more affordable and an offer to work across party lines. After winning control of Congress, Democrats say they're ready to negotiate. If the other side of the aisle wants to work with us to deliver the type of bold, dramatic and decisive change the American people are demanding, we'll sit down and we'll have that conversation. But negotiations could run alongside confrontation. Democrats are promising investigations into alleged corruption and could scrutinize the administration's conduct of the Iran war. Both key issues in this election. For political analyst William Anfolis, such a gambit wouldn't go unanswered. We know that the president can be very defensive. Thank And prone to react when he and or his team are called out on one thing or another and I think that's also likely to happen and we're likely to see fights along the way. For his first public appearance since the election, Trump chose the construction site of his new White House ballroom. A $400 million project after an election shaped you. by frustration over the cost of living. Asked about his vice president's assessment that the Iran war had cost Republicans this election, Trump acknowledged its impact on fuel prices. Well, I think it's largely... True, because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term. But he insisted he would make the same decision again. He also signalled a willingness to work with Democrats, provided they were not, in his words, destructive. He also reminded them he can veto their legislation. Democrats are promising voters relief from rising costs once they take control of Congress in January. So how will Democrats use the next two years to constrain the U.S. president and define a clear alternative to discuss? We're joined now by Ian Reefowitz, author and distinguished professor of history at SUNY Empire State University. Thanks so much for being with us on the program this evening, Professor. Do the midterms actually tell us about the current state of the Democratic Party? Does it have a clear sense of direction, do you think? Or is it struggling to define what it stands for beyond its opposition to Donald Trump? A congressional party, and that's where the Democrats are right now at the national level. isn't really something that has a direction. It has individual members. It has positions that are held by a majority of the members, but it doesn't have a direction in the same way that it has when there is a presidential nominee or a president. You have probably about 56 senators that are going to be Democrats, and you're going to have well over 250 House members that are going to be Democrats. The overwhelming majority in the House and the Senate of Democrats are not members of the hard left. So I don't think that the hard left is going to be driving the agenda. You have a few representatives, some from places like New York City, in very, very, very liberal districts or even districts that you could call socialist. There's a district in Brooklyn and Queens that's called the Commie Corridor, Communist Commie Corridor. That's not where most people are at. These Democrats across the country ran on affordability. They are going to try to govern on affordability. They are also, I think, as you mentioned, going to focus on hearings and oversight and corruption, but they can do both of those things at the same time. You can have the oversight track and the legislation track at the same time in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. As we know, they will be controlling both chambers of Congress. Donald Trump, of course, remains on in the White House. He's just in the last few minutes announced that he's going to be doing lots of things over the next few weeks. We don't know exactly what he has in mind as of yet. But what can the Democrats realistically achieve when it comes to legislation over the next two years? Donald Trump already talking about how he still has the power to veto them. Realistically, very little without Donald Trump. That is the last time we had a situation like this was 2007, 2008, when Democrats flipped the House and the Senate in the last two years of George W. Bush's second term. It's almost an exact parallel right now. There are things that perhaps Donald Trump will want to work with Democrats on. I mean, the one major thing that Democrats were able to pass in 07, 08 was an increase in the federal minimum wage. Would Donald Trump go along with that? At this point, that's almost irrelevant because there are so many states that have higher minimum wage laws, but there are, I shouldn't say it's irrelevant, there are still a number of states that have a much lower, that just have the federal minimum wage, which is quite low. Would Donald Trump go along with something like that? I don't know. We'll have to see what he means by, you know, that he's willing to cooperate with Democrats. He's not going to cooperate with Democrats on some of the on some of the largest priorities. I think that, you know, certainly the things that he has emphasized and are his major legislative accomplishments, which has been tax cuts aimed largely at wealthy or Americans. He's not going to go back on those. That's that's what that if anything, that's what the Republican Party is for and has been for going back to Reagan. It's the The one common between all the Republican presidents from 1980 forward. What might he compromise? I mean, your guess is as good as mine. But last in the last term, there was a bipartisan housing bill that President Trump said he didn't like that much, but he didn't veto it in the end. So maybe there are other areas like that where if Democrats and Republicans came together, they could be some kind of grand bargain. Would President Trump go along with bringing back the Affordable Care Act expanded subsidies that were put in place under President Biden? I doubt it. Would he go back to President Biden's green energy subsidies? I doubt it. So it will be up to Democrats to try to find areas where they can contrast themselves, even if Trump vetoes them. Then they can say in two years when they run, we propose X, Y, and Z, and Trump blocked them all. If you want X, Y, and Z, great. Vote for us again and get a Democratic president in there and we'll do it. They can run against Trump's vetoes in two years if that's what if unless he switches and doesn't want 80 and and makes a lot of compromises. It's always hard to know how he will act, as you say. Donald Trump, regardless of his political ideology, he has been effective when it comes to creating certain narratives, when it comes to things like American identity, immigration, cultural divisions. Do you think that the Democrats, we're talking about how some of them are more moderate, there are other more progressives in the party now, do you think they're going to be able to come together to put forward an equally? effective and convincing, I suppose, narrative of their own over the next two years. Well, the key for them is to make sure that the narrative that they bring about is a narrative that's focused on economic issues. This goes back to Democratic success for now, almost a century. The Democratic coalition under Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal coalition was based on economic policy. That coalition held for a long time until Republicans, starting with Barry Barry Goldwater and really Richard Nixon and Reagan got the focus on, non-economic issues, a whole host of cultural issues. Bill Clinton ran in 1992 with his mantra or his campaign's mantra was the economy's stupid. But Donald Trump successfully, you know, in more recent times has shifted, as you said, the focus to identity related issues. And there are some policies there as relates to immigration and immigration enforcement. The key for Democrats is to make sure that they keep the issues focused on affordability, And on the economy and on what are called kitchen table issues, and that they don't get distracted or pulled away from those issues by extreme positions on things like immigration or other cultural issues, which they did. Look, there's no question they did that in the early 2020s. Under President Biden, they did not do a good job with the border, and that was an opening for President Trump. And Trump had the opening on inflation as well. Now inflation is Trump's problem because he has been in office for two years and his policies have driven up inflation, the policies that he can't run away from, Iran war and tariffs. Democrats have to make sure they keep the focus on not just being not Trump. But here's what we will do and we will stay focused on the economy and we won't get distracted by things like ballroom, you know, building, you know, ballrooms or refurbishing golf courses. I mean, we've seen a lot of new faces elected this week. Do you think it's likely that we're going to see a whole new generation of Democratic leaders emerging now? And what might that mean for the party's political identity? Absolutely. The Democratic Party until 2024 was led by Joe Biden, president in his 80s. There were a number of other older figures, Nancy Pelosi, who retired, and some others. You now have a new generation emerging. You have John Ossoff, who just won reelection in Georgia, which was a red state for a very long time. He just won reelection to a second term by 18 points in Georgia. If you told me a year ago that Democrats would win a statewide election by 18 points, I would have laughed at you. There are a lot of other new faces. People who've been around maybe for a couple of years, but who are still quite young, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We have a new figure in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, just elected to a Senate seat. You have James Talerico in Texas, a much more moderate figure who is also quite young. So that's four people right there, two on the more progressive side, two on the more moderate or centrist side. These are the people who are going to be leading the party going forward. Joe Biden is a figure from the past. Barack Obama is still incredibly popular and arguably is the most popular figure in the Democratic Party. But he's not obviously can't be a leader going forward. He can inspire and he can support as he went and supported candidates across the country, including El-Sayed. Keisha Lance Bottoms is the new governor of Georgia. Got the first Democratic governor of Georgia in a generation. She's also a black woman. So you've got a lot of new figures who are emerging. I think the next nominee, if that's what we're thinking about for the Democratic presidential election in 2028, is going to be one of these newer figures, not somebody who has been a national figure in the past. Ian, we'll have to leave it there for now. Thank you so much for your analysis and expertise and for being with us on the program this evening. That is Professor Ian Riefowitz from SUNY Empire State University.