Last month, former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., a regular on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, responded to his party’s attempt to rebrand themselves as an issues-based, pro-working class party by throwing cold water all over it. He told co-host Joe Scarborough that he applauds the effort, but it misses the mark in the sense that his party continues to talk about pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-consumer being issues that are always in conflict and address them as if they each rest in their separate silos.
He added that small and big business all talk about fewer regulations, so they can create jobs. You need a pro-business climate to make that happen. Ford added that there’s growth in the areas where progressives and the elites are cloistered together, citing Washington D.C., Silicon Valley, and New York, but it doesn’t address the problem areas of Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit concerning crime and gang warfare. He noted that those cities are seeing signs of growth, but the Democrats seem to be putting these areas on the backburner.
Speaking of those areas, Ford said “that’s where the growth and the opportunity has to spread to, and until Democrats awaken to these realities, it’s going to be hard to excite our base and hard to bring in independents and new people to the fold. So again, I applaud the try, but we are still a ways away from having a better deal.”