The goal is not merely to bring back the social welfarism of the past. It is to create an actual left majority—cross-racial and class-conscious—that has a clear agenda serving its interests and, just as vitally, the bargaining power institutionally to pursue those interests. To move past the moribund legacies of the cold war, we need to invest in new democratic reform efforts across the American institutional landscape.

Most obviously, this means harnessing mass anger at the corporate corruption of the political process and at the undemocratic implications of political features like voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the electoral college. But it also requires a targeted effort to bring together both economic and democratic demands, since when intertwined, these projects can help expand the left’s practical institutional capacity. One exemplary option, already being taken up by some activists, insists that “ban the box” hiring-reform efforts must be seen alongside the overturning of state felony-disenfranchisement laws. Another possibility, much older but less often heard today, would be to strengthen the classic bases of left politics like unions by, in addition to making it easier for them to organize and to strike, returning to the language of “workplace democracy,” insisting that the labor movement be viewed not as an interest group bargaining for mere material goods but as an institution that epitomizes how economic and democratic needs can be jointly satisfied. A similar approach could be taken to the decriminalization of immigrant status, since an empowered immigrant community is one able to press both at work and in politics for a racially and economically reconstructive agenda.