Public concern about rising costs is fueling hopes for a blue wave in the November midterm elections, as well as Democratic wins in Wisconsin that could deliver trifecta control of the Legislature, governor’s mansion and state Supreme Court.

But even if the would-be autocrat in the White House does not find a way to disrupt the midterms, the rise of affordability as the dominant public issue is a both blessing and a trap. The intense focus on micro (household) economics neglects a bigger battle Democrats must fight. 

It’s dangerous to make too narrow a response to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian threat. Democracy is menaced on two fronts: first the immediate attack on its institutional bedrocks — fair elections, equal justice, constitutional checks and balances — and second by the underlying cause of the civic emergency: a profound crisis in legitimacy arising from a chronic failure of government to deliver on the most pressing problems affecting peoples’ lives and futures. 

The long-term failures of the U.S. government to promote and protect a decent life for most people have  produced combustible political kindling, exploited by an authoritarian movement and its charismatic leader, to seize power  and ignite the most profound crisis in democracy since the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Thousands of our neighbors in Minnesota and Illinois, thrust into the first front of the struggle, are responding with courage and discipline. They are demonstrating the power of organized people and civil society groups with active members, aided by the elected officials they inspire to action, to hold the line for democracy. Grassroots defenders of democracy must continue to peacefully resist every authoritarian offensive, but if we fail to also address the underlying drivers of the crisis, victory will be fleeting.

Wisconsin’s crucial role

As a state that will determine the outcome of the 2028 presidential election, Wisconsin may be fated to play its most important role on the second front: the challenge of demonstrating that democracy is up to the task of meeting the challenges of 21st century life. To meet this charge we must come to terms with the depth of public discontent that has opened millions to the scapegoating rhetoric of authoritarian demagogues while demoralizing and disengaging still more who have come to believe, through embittering experience, they have no stake in democracy.

The affordability crisis is not transitory, it is a symptom of a long-term decoupling of the general economy, and democratic government itself, from the bread-and-butter worries of working people. The widespread realization that the economy is stacked against most people casts a pall over American politics. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, two-thirds of respondents believe the middle class is beyond the reach of most Americans. 

Until the late 1970s, majorities of voters could believe that a thriving economy would benefit them personally, and that most had a pathway to the middle class. There were glaring inequalities along racial, gender and geographic lines, yet for millions of working class people, including immigrants from around the globe and Black refugees from the Jim Crow South, macro and micro economics were conjoined.

After 50 years of economic rigging orchestrated by the ultra wealthy, the most rapacious corporations, and pliant politicians from both parties, this faith has been dashed. While lacking the suddenness of the 1929 crash, the cumulative effect is like a slow motion slide towards depression for the working and middle classes. In the richest country on Earth a stunning 60% of Americans worry about affording the basics of life, while in Wisconsin 35% of all households, and 60% of Black households, make less than a survival income.

This is no accident. As Harold Meyerson details in The American Prospect, through a half century of deliberate policy choices most of the benefits of growth have been funneled to the privileged few, resulting in a $79 trillion shift in assets to the top. If national income were distributed now as equally as in 1975, each wage earner would make an astounding $28,000 more per year on average. Combined with the deliberate encouragement of massive corporate monopolies with the power to jack up prices, this immiseration is pushing people to  a breaking point, making affording health care, housing, energy, food and education more and more challenging for the less than rich.

Despite its effectiveness in abetting the largest wealth transfer in history, government at all levels has been rendered stunningly inept when it comes to public works, social policy, and almost everything else that benefits the working and middle classes. 

A parallel crisis in the 1930s

In the New Deal economic order, there seemed to be nothing the government could not accomplish, from the work programs of the 1930s, to the economic mobilization against fascism, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the moon mission. Now everything from high speed rail to rural broadband, affordable housing, health care, child care, public education and cheap, renewable energy is tied up in knots.

While much of the blame can be placed on  the deliberate sabotage of government by an unholy alliance of grasping billionaires, big corporations, and right wing ideologues, a growing chorus of social critics also point the finger at a major shift in liberalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Recent books by Paul Sabin, Marc Dunkelman, Richard Kahenberg, Yoni Appelbaum, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and to significant degrees Bill McKibben and Gary Gerstle, make parts of a compelling case that the reaction against abuses of administrative power provoked liberals to overcorrect by creating so many regulatory and legal hurdles that government struggles to get anything big done that benefits the working and middle classes.

Further tarnishing public trust, this impotence does not apply to oligarchic power. The only force with the political and economic resources to cut through all the landmines and bottlenecks to bold action are the giant corporate monopolies, as we are seeing with the reckless buildout of highly unpopular AI data centers without guardrails to protect the public interest in affordable energy, clean air, and the stability of the climate on which we all depend.

The most useful historical analogy to our perilous situation is what Franklin Roosevelt confronted after Herbert Hoover’s futility in responding to the calamity brought on by that era’s economic royalists. Jonathan Alter and Eric Rauchway show that top opinion leaders of the era such as Walter Lippmann and William Randolph Hearst believed democracy too paralyzed to succeed, and openly advocated for Roosevelt to suspend Congress and assume dictatorial powers. 

Roosevelt was reportedly quite taken with the movie Gabriel Over the White House, a Hearst-funded production about a president seizing dictatorial power and curing the Great Depression. Ultimately, Roosevelt refused to take this path, although he fretted that failure would make him the last president. Democracy’s last near death experience in the 1930s has passed from collective memory only because Roosevelt did not fail. 

Drawing on reforms developed over three decades of progressive and labor organizing, Roosevelt amassed sufficient power to take radical action within the constitutional order to restructure and democratize the economy. Despite atrocious racial discrimination baked in by segregationist Democrats, the reforms tangibly improved material circumstances enough to restore the public’s belief that democracy could deliver. Despite receiving only half a loaf, even Black voters defected from the GOP in droves.

A difference between 1933 and 2026 is that authoritarians had not yet seized power, and despite sharp policy disagreements, Hoover and Roosevelt were committed to democratic norms. Today’s political crisis, like the crisis of the 1930s, is driven by economic elites capturing public policy and destroying democracy’s capacity to deliver what people need to thrive.

Divided Democrats

Within the big tent of the current pro-democracy coalition there is a comparable division to that of Roosevelt’s time on the necessity of structural reform. The division is even more dangerous now, in the face of an actual authoritarian takeover. This fissure is exemplified by the vast gulf between two of the most successful “blue wave” candidates of 2025: New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who gave the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union. 

Spanberger’s affordability agenda focuses on the cost of health care, housing, and utilities. Although strongly messaged, substantively she offers a series of opaque technocratic fixes and small bore policies that will not shift pricing power away from monopolies, nor raise the incomes of workers. For example, she nibbles around the edges of health care, yet keeps the foxes in the henhouse, leaving hospital monopolies, big insurance and Big Pharma in control of setting grossly inflated prices.

This contrasts sharply with Mamdani, who offers remarkably clear and understandable solutions — a rent freeze, fast free buses, a $30 minimum wage, free universal child care, paid for with a wealth tax — which would make one of the world’s most expensive cities more affordable for working and middle class New Yorkers. While Mamdani’s agenda is challenging to achieve in a system stacked against bold action, in contrast to Spanberger’s suite of solution-ettes, its clarity means voters can fulfil their democratic role by holding either the mayor or those who block his agenda accountable.

This divide among Democrats does not necessarily map on a left to center axis but on whether the affordability crisis requires small adjustments to an otherwise healthy system or structural reform that democratizes power and tangibly improves material circumstances. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), the co-chair of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats, declares: “You do not save democracy by running around, yelling about saving democracy. You do it by demonstrating that democracy and Democratic values deliver better quality of life for normal people.”

Springing the affordability trap

Donald Trump is feeling the brunt of public outrage for his false sales pitches on affordability. If he actually had a program to lower prices and raise wages he would have built greater support for his authoritarian project. We may not be so fortunate if a more effective autocrat is elected in 2028.

This is why affordability is a trap for Democrats: winning elections on empty promises will only deepen the crisis in democracy, setting the table for future authoritarians. Josh Bivens writes for In These Times that creating a more equal and affordable economy requires a “sharp change” in the “policy path” of the last half century.

The only solution to the ails of democracy is deeper and more robust democracy. As I wrote in the Wisconsin Examiner after Gov. Evers ignored public pressure to fight for a better state budget, the future of multiracial democracy does not depend on elected officials alone. It depends on more people organizing effectively to push them towards compelling and forceful action. Movements make leaders, not the other way around. 

We have already seen this happen on the first front of the fight to save democracy. Democratic leadership in Congress is fighting harder and using the power they have to more assertively check Trump’s lawless usurpations only because of immense pressure from organized people and everyday Americans. We must now apply this same pressure to demand that candidates and electeds fight to transform the rigged economy and ossified governing structures stacked against effective action. 

Because of Wisconsin’s enormous influence in presidential elections, we have a special obligation to light a fire under Democratic candidates for the Legislature and governor in a crowded primary field. We need more people to push the candidates, and more to join with organizing groups that are working to impel them to fight for bold and impactful reforms that a beleaguered and disillusioned people will feel in their daily lives. How Wisconsin Democrats run in 2026, and especially how they govern in 2027, will have a tremendous influence on how presidential contenders run in 2028, a year that could be democracy’s last best hope.

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WASHINGTON — Tributes poured in across the country for the revered civil rights figure the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., who died Tuesday morning at 84.

The two-time Democratic presidential hopeful and Greenville, South Carolina, native died peacefully, surrounded by his kin, according to his family. 

Jackson, who was active in the civil rights movement as a college student, worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a young adult before King’s 1968 assassination.

Leading his own political movement, Jackson became known for his populist message, charismatic delivery and organizing prowess that elevated the role and influence of Black political leaders and helped shape the modern Democratic Party.

“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” Jackson’s family said in a statement. 

“We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family,” his family added. “His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, ordered flags to fly at half-staff Tuesday in Jackson’s honor in the state where he lived and worked for many years.

The family statement did not list a cause of death. Jackson was diagnosed in 2013 with Parkinson’s disease. His diagnosis was updated last year to progressive supranuclear palsy, according to a November statement from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition that Jackson founded.

Tributes from Obama, Trump and Biden

Former President Barack Obama, the first Black president, and his wife, Michelle Obama, said Jackson’s runs for the presidency “laid the foundation” for Barack Obama’s successful 2008 campaign. And Chicago native Michelle Obama’s “first glimpse of political organizing” was at the Jacksons’ kitchen table, they said.

“From organizing boycotts and sit-ins, to registering millions of voters, to advocating for freedom and democracy around the world, he was relentless in his belief that we are all children of God, deserving of dignity and respect,” they wrote. “Reverend Jackson also created opportunities for generations of African Americans and inspired countless more, including us.”

President Donald Trump paid tribute, dubbing Jackson “a force of nature like few others before him” and a “good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts,’” in a social media post Tuesday.  

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, honored Jackson as a “legendary voice for the voiceless, powerful civil rights champion and trailblazer extraordinaire,” in a social media post. 

“For decades, while laboring in the vineyards of the community, he inspired us to keep hope alive in the struggle for liberty and justice for all,” the New York Democrat said.

Jeffries expressed gratitude for Jackson’s “incredible service” to the country and “profound sacrifice as the people’s champion.” 

Former President Joe Biden called Jackson “a man of God and of the people. Determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.” 

South Carolina legacy

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and longtime friend of Jackson, said the civil rights leader lived a life “defying odds,” in a statement Tuesday.  

“Reverend Jackson showed us that if we all work together – we can bend the arc of the moral universe and change history,” Clyburn said while also pointing to Jackson’s impact on “the nation, Black Americans, and movements to encourage civic participation around the world.” 

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who is the party’s highest-ranking Black elected official, honored Jackson’s legacy as a leader and role model.

“I don’t have to agree with someone politically to deeply respect the role Jesse Jackson, a South Carolina native, played in uplifting Black voices and inspiring young folks to believe their voices mattered,” Scott wrote on social media. “Those that empower people to stand taller always leave a lasting mark. Rest in peace.”

Jackson’s legacy will live on in the next generation, South Carolina state Sen. Deon Tedder said during a news conference Tuesday. 

“The future generation, they’re picking up that torch, they’re picking up that mantle,” said Tedder, a Democrat, gesturing to students from the state’s historically Black colleges and universities. “The baton has been passed, and now what you see is the future.”

South Carolina state Rep. Hamilton Grant recalled seeing Jackson at the July 9, 2015, signing ceremony of the law that removed the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds entirely. The flag was taken down the next day, 15 years after it came off the Statehouse dome in a compromise Jackson opposed. 

“For him, being from South Carolina, to see that moment, and me being there in close proximity with him, meant the world to me,” Grant told the South Carolina Daily Gazette. He said Jackson paved the way for Black leaders like him and helped instill in him pride in his identity.

The South Carolina House and Senate held moments of silence in Jackson’s honor Tuesday. 

“There are so many little boys and little girls in South Carolina who can look in the mirror now and say, ‘I am somebody!’ because of this native son,” state Sen. Karl Allen, a Democrat, said.

Shaping Democratic politics

Jackson leaves behind a legacy of political and social justice work that spanned decades. 

He founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a national social justice organization whose name evoked Jackson’s multiracial voter base and the theme of his 1984 Democratic National Convention speech. That organization was formed by a merger between Operation PUSH, which Jackson founded in 1971, and the Rainbow Coalition.

In his 1988 bid for the presidency, Jackson based his campaign in Iowa prior to that state’s presidential caucuses and made the official announcement of his candidacy at a farm in Greenfield on Oct. 10, 1987. 

He finished in fourth place in the caucuses but went on to briefly become the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination by winning a coalition of Black and Latino voters and white liberals, though he ultimately came in second in delegates to Michael Dukakis. 

Similar blocs propelled Obama to victory two decades later and continue to form national Democrats’ base.

Two of Jackson’s sons, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Jonathan Jackson, would represent Illinois in the U.S. House. Jonathan Jackson remains in office after first winning election in 2022.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont who endorsed Jackson’s 1988 campaign, said in a Tuesday statement Jackson had been a friend and ally for nearly 40 years and credited Jackson with founding modern progressivism.

“His creation of the Rainbow Coalition, a revolutionary idea at the time, that developed a grassroots movement of working people — Black, white, Latino, Asian-American, Native-American, gay and straight — laid the foundation for the modern progressive movement which is continuing to fight for his vision of economic, racial, social and environmental justice,” Sanders wrote. “Jackson has had a profound impact upon our country. His politics of togetherness and solidarity should guide us going forward.”

‘Equal justice is not inevitable’

Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and a Baptist pastor, recalled the influence Jackson’s presidential runs had on a young Warnock growing up in public housing.

“With an eloquence and rhythmic rhetoric all his own, Jesse Jackson reminded America that equal justice is not inevitable,” he said. “It requires vigilance and commitment, and for freedom fighters, sacrifice. His ministry was poetry and spiritual power in the public square. He advanced King’s dream and bent the arc of history closer to justice.”

Jaime Harrison, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Jackson’s 1988 run, which culminated with a speech at the party convention that lauded the United States’ multiracial identity, inspired him.

As “a poor Black kid from South Carolina,” Harrison said he was drawn to Jackson’s command of the convention hall after accumulating more than 1,000 delegates.

“He did not win the nomination,” Harrison wrote. “But he won our imagination.”

Adrian Ashford contributed to this report.