Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, January 24, 2025 "Americans Overwhelmingly Want Change"

A Liberal Dose January 24, 2025

Troy D. Smith

“Americans Overwhelmingly Want Change”

I’ve been talking a lot the past month or so about robber barons, past and present, and the need to push back against them. In doing so, I must point out, I have very explicitly stated that it is not merely being wealthy that makes a robber baron, it is how that wealth is used. There are some extremely wealthy people who make a very positive difference in the world, and who have empathy, compassion, and sincere concern for the community. I know many such people personally, and appreciate them. And then there are those who use their wealth and power primarily to gain more wealth and power, taking FROM the community instead of giving TO it. They are “robbers” because they take their wealth at the expense of everyone else; they are “barons” because they act like they think they are some entitled nobility class that is better than everyone else. To visualize the difference between the two types, just picture Ebenezer Scrooge… before and after. The “new” Scrooge was a positive benefit to society… though it DID take supernatural action to get him there.

So what I have been saying is not communism, and it is not socialism. It is progressivism, the kind practiced by Republican president Teddy Roosevelt and, since the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, by the Democratic Party… though in recent decades, that party has largely forgotten how to articulate it, and how to speak to regular, working class people.

Some folks have told me I’ve been way too negative lately, and even come across as mean. Well, I’m going to be honest with you. I, and others like me, have spent most of the last four years talking about the importance of inclusion and diversity (which I still believe in passionately). We have appealed to the public’s sense of decency, morality, justice, fair play, and belief in democracy and all the other things our country was founded on. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is the very personification of “negative” and “mean”… and now he is back in the White House, and has brought a cabal of billionaires with him, already laying plans to restructure America to benefit their personal bank accounts. He did this by dividing the country while claiming to unite it, and by appealing to voters’ sense of dissatisfaction with how their lives are going and promising them the moon. Most people really do think more about grocery prices and providing for their family than they do about grand ideals or the future.

Now, I’m not recommending sinking to his level. What I AM saying is that, for me, the gloves have come off. And the Democratic Party needs to do the same thing. And we need to do that by pointing out to regular people that the “us and them” in this country is not (as Trump claims) defined by race, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, education level, region, citizenship status, or even strictly by class. It is a tiny percentage of grasping robber barons versus the rest of us, dividing us by all those categories in order to get even richer, as has been the case since the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. They want all the cookies. When you point that out, they call it “class warfare”… when that term should really apply to what they’ve been doing to the middle and working classes. To YOU.

Democrats used to know how to tell you that. But, for too long, we have instead run to the center in fear, anxious to maintain the status quo, when the majority of Americans are sick to death of the status quo and want CHANGE. That is the biggest draw among voters for Donald Trump. It was also a big draw for Bernie Sanders, and for the same reasons. Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, has recently pointed out that it could have been a big draw for Kamala Harris: she came out of the gate with a strong populist message that appealed to a lot of people, but halfway through her campaign she listened to her advisers who urged her to stop bashing Wall Street or she might alienate big money… and her momentum stalled.

I am committed to doing my part to move the needle. There are a lot of other people in the party who are determined to do the same. I think it all comes down to two ideas. First, we really are all in this together.

Second… let’s stop handing over our cookies.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE