Dean Phillips' Primary Campaign Platform Offers a Path Forward for the Democratic Party
Welfare state expansion with economic dynamism and a security agenda.
As someone who shared Dean Phillips’ concerns about Joe Biden’s cognitive capacity and ability to beat Donald Trump, I paid more attention to his primary campaign than most Americans. It’s a pity that the media wasn’t particularly generous in coverage of his dogged campaign, because I do believe his policy agenda — yes, unlike Joe Biden, he actually had a detailed campaign platform — offers a path forward for the party. His platform genuinely met the moment.
What was it? Last year I wrote that Phillips’ agenda vaguely reminded me of the Danish Social Democrats’ approach, a party that has been far more successful than their center-left peers in other rich countries over the past decade. His platform is a useful artifact for engaging in the increasingly robust discourse about why Kamala lost and how Democrats should move forward:
On social policy and welfare state issues (e.g. health care, housing, child care, higher education, etc.), Phillips is firmly on the center-left and left. He supports single-payer health insurance, paid leave (including at least 30 weeks of parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child), affordable child care, free education from pre-K through college. Moreover, his housing policy criticizes “predatory investors” and the negative impact of Airbnb-type rentals on high-demand housing markets. For retirees, Phillips has called for enhancing Social Security benefits.
On crime and immigration matters, Phillips embraces order and security, not unlike the Danish center-left. His public safety platform calls for improving the quality and increasing the quantity of police. At the same time, he rejects capital punishment, a draconian punishment contrary to the contemporary human rights norms. His immigration platform calls for deterring irregular immigration and increasing legal immigration.
Phillips’ approach to the economy is liberalism. Every child born in the U.S. would receive $1,000 in what he calls “American Dream” investment accounts.
In short, Phillips is a Democrat who rejects Defund The Police, but believes cancer shouldn’t bankrupt a single American.
The future Democratic Party platform should honor widespread public concern over irregular immigration and domestic insecurity while addressing missing pieces of the welfare state present in all other rich countries (e.g. universal health care, affordable child care, paid sick leave, and quality education for all children). With AI disrupting the labor market and widespread DOGE-related job losses among the professional-managerial class, the appetite for more humane social policies will likely be stronger than ever in a few years.
Of course, whenever discussion about expanding the welfare state occurs, there’s alarmist rhetoric about harming America’s exceptional economic dynamism. That’s why the aforementioned platform would be couched in terms of facilitating more, not less, economic growth with active labor market policy as the secret sauce. Active labor market policies — or flexicurity — are common in the Nordic countries, which have higher labor force participation than the United States.
Flexicurity is an integrated strategy for enhancing, at the same time, flexibility and security in the labour market. It attempts to reconcile employers' need for a flexible workforce with workers' need for security – confidence that they will not face long periods of unemployment.
“Flexicurity” would sound like nails on a chalkboard to Americans exhausted by “the experts,” so you’d probably talk about this new socio-economic paradigm with language about expanding freedom — maybe branding it as a “21st Century New Deal.” Of course, the timing — a century after FDR’s New Deal — would be pretty swell.
Call this sensible centrism. Maybe pragmatic progressivism. I don’t really care. The goal is a simple, compelling political agenda that will communicate to Americans that the Democratic Party is once again interested in their material needs and well-being. By placing welfare state expansion alongside liberal economics, it casts aside tedious debates of the past — see Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden — about “socialism” vs. “capitalism,” and instead focuses on delivering national strength and resilience.
If Phillips had made it to the general election, I believe his ideas would have been a powerful weapon against Trumpism. Let’s not allow them to go to waste.