America’s middle class, the heart and soul of the nation, is hurting. There are a litany of statistics that illustrate as much. The top 10% of earners in the United States own more than two-thirds of the nation’s total wealth, while the bottom 50% own about 2.5% of it. Nearly half of Americans say they’re living paycheck to paycheck. In general, Americans have really soured on the economy. The only thing as upsetting as these statistics is the utterly pathetic unresponsiveness of American politicians and elites, who are supposed to help solve this problem.
The bottom line is clear — both Democrats and Republicans have failed the middle class, and a new political movement must begin to address the needs of working people and revive our country.
The Republican Party appears entirely beholden to the billionaire class. Despite running on a working-class message, President Donald Trump has packed his second cabinet with billionaires rife with conflicts of interest. Trump and his fellow Republicans can talk all they want, but the administration’s tax plan speaks for itself: it lowers taxes for corporations, spiking the deficit in favor of changes to the tax code that primarily benefit wealthy individuals and families.
Trump has also made Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, a prominent feature of his second administration. Trump has paused new regulation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which is meant to protect workers from heat illness and better prepare them for emergency response scenarios. Meanwhile, his close allies in Congress have introduced legislation to eliminate OSHA altogether. He fired senior staffers at the National Labor Relations Board, which brought hundreds of cases of alleged unlawful labor practices to a halt. He mass-fired inspectors general — independent watch dogs meant to mitigate fraud and waste — across the federal government. In short, Trump is slashing the parts of the administrative state that support working people.
This has all been in the first few weeks of his second stint in office; his first term was infinitely worse. Trump’s first four years in office were marked by open hostility toward workers, threats to veto a federal increase of the minimum wage, revoking overtime pay eligibility for millions of workers and packing courts with anti-union judges. I could go on.
It’s clear that Republicans are openly hostile to unions in particular and workers in general. The problem is that Democrats are not offering a strong alternative. In my estimation, the Democratic Party has shifted towards a globalist, excessively woke agenda over the past 20 years. It has sold out domestic workers in the process, prioritizing politically correct culture wars over the kinds of concrete solutions the American people so desperately need.
On trade and globalism, the Obama administration’s approach to the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2016 is a prime example. The Obama administration listened to economists who trumpeted net economic growth and corporate leaders who drooled over the prospect of cheap unregulated labor. In turn, they neglected the advice of labor organizations and advocates who warned of major job losses and wage suppression for American workers. Although Hillary Clinton’s opinions shifted when she ran for president in 2016, she originally described the deal as setting the “gold standard in trade agreements.”
Democrats’ abandonment of the working class goes back decades. Bill Clinton’s ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement suppressed workers’ wages, killed manufacturing jobs and allowed multinational corporations to take advantage of relaxed labor laws in Mexico by sending jobs across the border. Clinton’s push to further integrate China into global trade — including by supporting China’s membership in the World Trade Organization — has helped China rocket to becoming the world’s second largest economy, stealing U.S. intellectual property and prying away American jobs in the process. Over and over again, I have watched Democrats pursue legislation for greed and for a globalist elitism that sees immense financial upside for the few — at the cost of pain to working-class American households.
Although Joe Biden’s presidency was more protectionist and strong on labor issues, his administration’s fixation on a niche, woke social agenda drew attention away from the good work he did to help the middle class. Progressive Democrats make up a minority of the Democratic Party and are demographically unrepresentative of the party on the whole. Yet, the Biden administration followed their lead on issues including immigration, policing and identity politics. These policies were broadly unpopular, and overshadowed Biden’s positive leadership on labor and economic equality.
In general, it is clear that neither Democrats nor Republicans are making effective cases to the American people. It’s time for the country to adopt a bold new agenda — one that doesn’t overstate social issues and globalism. As a country, we need to focus on real, pro-worker policy, rather than exploitative rhetoric.
At Dartmouth, we remain in a progressive bubble. In my opinion, this is fundamentally incongruent with the culture that Americans desire. If Dartmouth’s goal is to educate promising students for responsible global leadership, we should not be coddled with extensive diversity, equity and inclusion programs and land acknowledgments. Our education should be focused on keeping students in touch with the problems that a majority of American people are facing each day. We need to find a way to communicate with the majority of the country and empower bold solutions.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He is from Connecticut, and studies government and creative writing.
On campus, Eli is an active member of the Dartmouth Political Union and Dartmouth Army ROTC. He attends Dartmouth on an ROTC scholarship, and upon graduation, he will commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He has been an active writer and political organizer from a young age, working on over 15 political campaigns varying from local to presidential races, and publishing both fiction and nonfiction on various platforms.
First and foremost, Eli loves to write, and he intends to make some form of it his full time career after his time in the Army.
