That picture, above, heads up a column comprised of a number of "Letters To The Editor," published by The New York Times on September 27, 2025. The heading on this column reads as follows: "How The Democrats Lost The Working Class." That question continues to be a pertinent question for those who are engaged in, or who are interested in, the politics that determine what sort of "political world" we will ultimately inhabit, here in the United States of America.
I particularly liked the following letter, written by Harry Boyte, of St. Paul, Minnesota:
To the Editor:
Democrats have come to see voters, including working-class voters, as consumers of government largess, whose loyalty can be purchased. When I coordinated Reinventing Citizenship, an alliance of civic groups, colleges and funders working with the Domestic Policy Council from 1993 to 1995 to study reasons for the growing divide between citizens and government, we concluded that the view of citizens as customers that the administration was adopting from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain was the root cause.
The Clinton administration, like Mrs. Thatcher’s government, defined citizens as customers. Though it professed to be making government more responsive, this view resulted in an immensely diminished idea of working people’s patriotic desires to contribute to the country.
President Bill Clinton advanced a short-lived alternative in his 1995 State of the Union address, the New Covenant, in his call for productive citizenship. But he soon dropped it, and the Democratic Party remained in thrall to customer service.
The only way to win back the working class is to communicate civic respect (emphasis added).
St. Paul, Minn.
The writer is the founder and former director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School and the author of “CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics.”
Anyone who follows my daily blog postings knows that I frequently proclaim that "we are in this together." That phrase means, among other things, that the wealth of the nation is, in fact, our "common wealth," and that we need to mobilize our common wealth for the "common good."
I also frequently emote about how "self-government" means that we, ourselves, are intended to "run the place," and that we are the opposite of "customers." In fact, we are the "owners," and all the elected officials and governmental workers who are carrying out their various tasks on behalf of our nation ultimately work for us.
That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway, and we need to insist that it actually does work that way, following what the United States Constitution has to say about that subject!
"Customers?" Give me a break! We're in charge here, and if we are not effectively utilizing our ownership interest in this nation (and we're not), it's high time we made the necessary changes that will put us back in control.
That does take a lot of "political" work and involvement, though. I do not want to hide that fact, and starting "local" is one great way to begin!
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