In his political column this week, Vermont writer Bill Schubart surmises why Democrats are struggling to regain power nationally, and what to do about it.

“A Democratic Party renaissance can only occur if and when our party speaks directly to the needs and concerns of Americans who work hard to make ends meet today, and who under the current administration of plutocrats with an orange hood ornament, are losing ground daily.” He notes that MIT’s living wage calculator says that for a Vermont family with two children and both parents working, a “livable wage” is $34.47 an hour or $122, 956 per year after taxes. Vermont’s current minimum wage is $14.01 an hour or $69,546 per year, while the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr.

“The simple fact is that American working families are losing ground as MAGA Republicans move ever more money to the wealthiest,” he writes, adding: “Put simply: There will be a clear path to leadership only when the Democratic Party listens to working Americans and takes up their cause.”

He cites seven such causes to work toward, slightly edited for brevity:

“1. Healthcare: For better or for worse, 73 countries in the world have declared healthcare a human right. We’re an outlier, believing that the $4 trillion a year business is too profitable to those running it to allow the common good to prevail over profit. Annual cost to Americans is $14,570 a year. Our party could lend its voice to the chorus of people calling for Medicare for All.

“2. Daycare and paid family leave are integral to the social safety net in Scandinavian countries. Average per child cost in the U.S. for daycare is $11,582. Vermont is one of few states where the cost of daycare for two children exceeds the cost of an average rental home. Our party could advocate for initiating a national plan to offer, or at least subvene, daycare costs for working families and support paid-family-leave so that a parent might bond with their newborn or care for a dying family member.

“3. Housing costs are 55% higher today than they were in 2020 and mortgage rates are 7%. Trump tariffs will only increase housing costs. Vermont has 20,551 extremely low-income renter households, and the 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report shows Vermont ranks fourth in the country for homelessness per capita with 4,588 unhoused Vermonters today. Our party could advocate for state and federal funds to be used to build efficient, secure, affordable housing clusters.

“4. Hunger remains rampant in the U.S. with 13.5% or 18M U.S. households food insecure. We can advocate for regenerative agriculture and the work local farmers do producing unprocessed, local foods for local markets. We can fight to retain the SNAP program, which is under serious attack by the current administration.

“5. Criminal Justice: The U.S. incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than all but five countries in the world, more than 1.8M in 2025. The largest share of U.S. prisoners in federal correctional facilities were of African-American origin. As of 2020, there were 345,500 black, non-Hispanic prisoners, compared to 327,300 white, non-Hispanic inmates. Vermont has 2026 people in prison costing $57,615 per inmate or $116,727,820 per year. Our party can advocate for substantive decarceration, elimination of for-profit and private concierge prisons, and advocate for education, rehabilitation, trauma-informed therapy, and safe community reentry with needed support systems. What would $25 billion of the $80.7 billion the U.S. currently spends on jailing our citizens do for housing and hunger? We will always need serious felons to be isolated from society, but especially now with ICE jailing citizens and legal immigrants with no constitutional due process… we must support the constitutional requirement for due process and openly oppose the racist strategies espoused by Stephen Miller.

“6. Higher ed: The average annual cost of tuition at a public 4-year college is 40 times higher than tuition in 1963. Adjusted for inflation, tuition and fees at private national colleges and universities have increased some 41% just since 2005. The post-secondary education market is changing… Lectures, note-taking, labs, and exams are under challenge from a new generation of students who want engagement, experience, and internships as they learn. We must reimagine higher ed and develop lifelong learning opportunities that mirror a changing workplace model and market.

“7. Taxation: As of 2024, there are 756 billionaires living in 43 of the 50 US states or Washington, D.C. How much money does one need to live comfortably? As I recently asked a dear friend and priest, “At what point does working to care for one’s self, one’s family, and one’s community go from an ethical imperative to a mortal sin? What is the crossover dollar amount? Is it $10M, $100M, or $1B? When is enough enough? We must stand for the good of the common working-class person or family. The Trump administration has secured passage of a budget bill that further migrates income from the lower levels of society to the highest levels. Factoring in its tax provisions and cuts in benefits, Trump’s budget bill will incur a net financial loss for the bottom 30% of American households by income, whereas the bill will benefit the wealthy with a $12,000 increase in net income, on average, for households in the top 10% who earn above $692,000 a year. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the top 0.1% – those with incomes over $3.3 million – would receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average. Impoverish the many to enrich the few. We must advocate for more progressive state and national tax codes that further tax massive wealth, as we did after WWII.”

He concludes with an appeal for Democrats to espouse their core values: “The pushback by middle-of-the-road Democrats against Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Greg Casar, Summer Lee, and most recently, Zohran Mamdani whom Democratic New Yorkers chose as the lead candidate for their mayor, has only further blurred the image of a dithering party that for a century has worked to better conditions for working Americans. Such a recommitment is the only path to regaining leadership.”

Bill Schubart is a frequent columnist on Vermont and national politics. His columns appear in VtDigger and now in his Substack posts.