Let me start by thanking Elizabeth for having me as a guest on her terrific blog.  I’ve long admired Elizabeth’s work and had the good fortune to share the podium with her several times and to travel up to Cambridge once to speak to her amazing students.  

Recently, in fact, she and I had the chance to be on the right—er, same—side in a discussion about the Democratic Party’s economic agenda and the middle class. In that debate, Elizabeth and I took issue with representatives of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, who argued that Democrats shouldn’t speak forthrightly about the economic problems middle-class Americans are facing because “pessimism” just turns voters off. As we argued, it’s possible, indeed essential, to point out these economic problems—which are real and serious—while still providing an inspiring, optimistic vision for the future.

But Elizabeth and I do agree with the Third Way folks on one point: The Democratic Party has ceded the high ground on the field it once completely dominated—standing up for ordinary Americans on economic policy.

Over the same period in which a whole host of new and newly intensified economic risks have shifted onto American workers and their families, Democrats have mostly clung the old formulas and scripts, failing to develop a compelling argument about how to ensure broad-based prosperity and economic security in an increasingly uncertain world of work and family.

Such a vision is all the more essential today, because Democrats now appear poised to take one or both houses of Congress. Winning an election doesn’t always require a positive agenda, and Republicans seem to be doing everything in their power to lose this election on their own.

But governing does require vision and goals. And whatever else might be said about Republicans, they’ve had a clear economic agenda—what I call “The Personal Responsibility Crusade.” While doling out special favors to privileged interests, they’ve held up personal responsibility as a magic tonic for all economic ills, and called for an endless stream of tax cuts and tax-free accounts as a means of realizing this ideal.

But what do Democrats stand for? In an age of dramatic change in the relationship among workers, families, employers, and government, what should be the next social contract that unites Americans and carries them together into the next American century?

I wrote The Great Risk Shift to begin to answer that question. The book shows that the challenges facing our leaders are great. But the opportunities are great, too. The United States is the richest, most dynamic nation in the world. It has the potential to construct new institutions and new policies that would provide security and expand opportunity in ways that aid our flexible, competitive economy, rather than hinder it.

There is a huge void in American politics just waiting to be filled by the party and leaders that can speak to this potential, and speak to middle-class Americans anxious about their economic security. In the discussion that follows, I hope to show why this great opportunity must be seized, and how it can be.