I want you all to take a look at the minimum wage. This was supposed to be a populist issue that would drive Democrats to the polls. Last year all manner of strategies were crafted in Washington on the minimum wage. Votes were forced on the minimum wage. Presidents campaigned for the minimum wage. Minimum and Wage were repeated thousands of times. A few Democratic cities have put in a higher minimum wage. A few states have a sliding scale so that you'll get to the minimum wage somewhere many years from now when if you're an average person you probably hope you wont be earning it, whatever it is. Some referendums were passed raising it. And yet, here we are, with a country dominated by elected officials who are against raising the minimum wage. In some cases they're in favor of abolishing it! Ever wonder why that is?
Take a look at the above graph. It shows the nominal and real value of the minimum wage. You can see that the minimum wage real value reached its peak in 1968, the final year of the New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society era of the 5th Party System. It was just under $2 an hour and had a real value today of just under $11 an hour.
Ok lets stop and consider for a moment. Democrats have proposed a minimum wage something like $10.10 an hour some years from now. Now consider this: If you have a minimum wage job with 40 hours a week of work (lucky if you can find it...most is part time), you'll make something like $400 a week before taxes. Lets go with $350 a week after Social Security and Medicare. That's $1400 a month, or perhaps take home pay of $16,800 a year. About $7000 below the poverty line. In other words, Democrats are saying to the public that some years from now, we guarantee that you will make about three quarters of the poverty line wages.
This is supposed to inspire a robust turnout? Hooray poverty?
Do you know the percentage of the public that earns the minimum wage? Its about 5% of all workers. So, our message is that we want to raise the wages of 5% of all workers...to wages below the poverty line. Do Democrats really believe this is a message that will inspire turnout? Seriously? Sorry. Political malpractice.
Do you know what the median hourly wage is? I mean the wage that most folks actually earn? $19.65 an hour, or about $40k a year. That's a majority of the people who work. And you know what our message was to those people, ten times the number of people who earn the minimum wage? Exactly. Nothing.
We're doing populism on the cheap. We are actually trying to rally people with a pittance and expecting them to come running for the polls to vote for us. We can see the results of that strategy. We have no message for the UPS driver, or the social worker. We keep saying the words middle class, but when it comes to putting money on the table, we got nothing. And for those at or around the minimum wage, our message is a little tiny bit more, a few years from now. Nothing about upward mobility, nothing about clearing the poverty line for anyone who has a job.
If we want real, serious populism, we've got to start talking about EVERYONE MAKING MORE MONEY. A LOT MORE. We've got to start talking about policies for folks making $15 to $25 an hour, who are still struggling to pay bills, feed the family, keep a roof over their heads, and don't have a dime in the bank for retirement. Folks who are keeping their heads afloat, but are just a job loss away from ... well ... minimum wage. If that. We aren't saying anything to them about lifetime job security, retirement security (and don't talk to me about Social Security because that too is a pittance), and overall financial security.
Until we do, the people out there, a good 40% of whom don't even bother to vote in presidential years, will not want their door knocked, or their phone called, or their email box bombarded with endless 'progressive' crap that wont make any difference in their real, everyday lives.
Stop doing populism on the cheap Dems. Put some real money on the table.