Source: Bucks County Herald
“This is no ordinary time,” declared First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at the 1940 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Indeed, it was not. World War II, which the United States would not enter for another 17 months, was raging in Europe and Asia. At home, isolationists and those sympathetic to rising fascism abroad were fighting to keep America out of the war.
Eighty-five years later, we find ourselves in a similarly tumultuous era marked by disruptions in human life of a kind not seen since the Industrial Revolution. The technological advances of the last 30 years, particularly in the field of computer science, have upended the labor market. At the same time, the influx of migrants from poor countries into the industrialized world has combined with those changes to produce political instability.
The United States has not been immune from those trends. A growing feeling of economic insecurity and a political system that should have been reformed long ago have created a fertile environment for the rise of demagogues. It is no wonder then that over the course of the last decade many of the longstanding norms of behavior in our democratic system have been shattered. The institutions of our democracy are under attack, and political violence targeting elected officials is on the rise.
Like the summer of 1940, this is no ordinary time. So, what should we Democrats do in response?
First, we must protect workers in every sector of our economy. The biggest threat to jobs is not the outsourcing of manufacturing to foreign countries, but the rise of artificial intelligence. While AI undoubtedly holds great promise, left uncontrolled it presents grave risks as well. The United States must continue to be a leader in the development of AI — which includes building necessary infrastructure, such as data centers — but, at the same time, be clear-eyed about the fact that likely improvements in the field over just the next decade have the potential to create widespread unemployment and not just in white-collar jobs; advances in AI and robotics will threaten blue-collar positions as well. While those losses might be offset by the creation of new AI-related jobs, there is a question as to whether that will happen in significant numbers, and, if it does, whether even those jobs will be displaced by future advances in the field, such as the development of artificial general intelligence.
President Trump has shown no inclination to address this issue. Compounding that failure is the provision in Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill that would preempt the states from regulating AI for the next decade.
Democrats need to push for regulation that would ensure that AI is aligned with human values and goals — including the preservation of jobs — and that would maintain human control over AI’s implementation and use. We also should be calling for an international convention to advance those goals worldwide, as we are not the only nation developing this technology. It is folly to assume that the masters of Silicon Valley and their counterparts abroad will seek these goals of their own volition. Nothing in their behavior to date suggests that they have the slightest intention of doing so. On the contrary, they appear to be single-mindedly focused on increasing their profits, while beating their competitors to the next breakthrough in the technology.
Next, we need to ensure affordable, comprehensive health care for all Americans, not just the rich. The MAGA response to a fragmented, expensive and largely inadequate health care system is to gut Medicaid and Obamacare. Doing so would put health care at risk for millions of Americans. That, in turn, would make people less healthy while driving up costs for everyone. Instead, Democrats should be fighting for an expansion of health care choices by offering a public health insurance option, which was originally proposed as part of the Affordable Care Act, but which was cut out of the final version of the legislation shortly before its passage. Such an option would expand health care coverage and lower costs.
Finally, we need to be the party of democracy, as our very name implies. That means defending and respecting institutions like the courts and the administrative agencies that help keep our society functioning whether in the fields of public health, transportation, education, scientific innovation, disaster response or environmental protection. It means holding social media companies accountable for the spreading of misinformation and putting our children’s mental health at risk. It means amending our Constitution, if need be, to take billions of dollars in dark money out of our political system. It means investing in education and job training.
And above all, it means securing the rights that we grew up taking for granted, but which today are under threat: freedom of speech, assembly, the press, religion, birthright citizenship, reproductive rights, the right to organize, due process and the equal protection of the laws for everyone.
Eleanor Roosevelt argued that the challenges of that extraordinary time could not be met solely by the work of elected officials, but by ordinary people as well. In her words, the responsibility to meet the challenges of the day rested “on each and every one of us as individuals.” That is no less true today. It is time for all of us to get to work, for we live in no ordinary time.
Sen. Steve Santarsiero, a Democrat, represents the 10th PA Senatorial District, which consists of Bristol, Buckingham, Doylestown, Falls, Lower Makefield, New Britain, Newtown, Plumstead, Solebury and Upper Makefield townships as well as the boroughs of Bristol, Chalfont, Doylestown, Morrisville, New Britain, New Hope, Newtown, Tullytown and Yardley.