“The tasks that we face in the reordering of economic life are great, they call for courage, for determination and … the hardihood of the pioneer.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Salt Lake City, Sept. 17, 1932
The remarks above were made in a general address by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first campaign to become president of the United States. He went on to win four consecutive terms in the White House and every time he had the overwhelming support of the Great State of Utah.
That’s right, during FDR’s reign, Utah was a Democratic stronghold. What made him so popular here? His values aligned with predominant Utah values. FDR’s platform was built around the idea that the role of government was to take care of its people, that a society acting together could do greater things than individuals alone, that compassion for the most vulnerable among us was core to American national identity.
When Democrats stopped advocating for the people, the people started looking elsewhere. We’ve left too much room for the morally deficient theories of small government, trickle-down economics and “pull-oneself-up-by-the-bootstraps” ideology to take over.
Republicans filled a vacuum while Democrats overestimated the power of compromise. We saw this with the Affordable Care Act, when Republicans made almost 150 amendments and we still got zero Republican votes.
Now Democrats are put in a position of choosing between two paths: being a progressive or being a moderate. Progressives are seen as idealistic and uncompromising, but ultimately ineffective. Moderates are perceived as pragmatic and concessionary, but also timid when it comes to defending core party values. I believe this is a false dichotomy.
The choice isn’t between picking a progressive at the cost of effective policy-making or a moderate at the cost of principled politics. Rather, it is a question of starting points. So-called progressives, a group I identify with, know how to compromise. Our continued participation in the modern Democratic Party is itself evidence of this fact. We know how to be pragmatic, which is why many progressives are devoted to effecting change through direct action, local politics and down-ballot races.
Progressive Democrats are just Democrats who know that we don’t have to bargain away our values in order to get things done. We start negotiations from a position of strength because the opposition knows we won’t sell out working people to maintain power because we know that working people are our power.
So-called moderates, on the other hand, start from a position of weakness. I believe they care about Democratic values, but they campaign on an attitude of defeatism because they don’t want to be perceived as disrupting the status quo.
The GOP knows how power works. They know that the moderate pre-disposition toward compromise enables Republicans to continue controlling the narrative. They know that they don’t have to compromise because Democrats will do that for them.
Voters want principled fighters. We must show them that Democrats are just that — that we will fight for working people, vulnerable families and a government that works for all of us. What the GOP fights for is almost always in the interests of big money and big corporations, not the people. In other words, it’s time for Democrats to stop being afraid to be Democrats.
COVID-19 has exposed the brokenness of the status quo and it is going to take, as FDR put it, Democratic courage and determination to fix the mess we are in.
Jamie Cheek
Jamie Cheek is a Democratic candidate for Utah’s 1st Congressional District. She is a district director for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation with the Department of Workforce Services.
