Reflections on Dēmos

In late 1997, I was introduced to Charlie Halpern, then-president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Charlie had become deeply worried that America no longer had the imagination to tackle its largest problems and build a more just society. He was thinking about creating a new institution that would bring scholars and practitioners together, combining ideas and action to chart a new course for America. In April 1998, Charlie invited me to a brainstorming session with an exceptional group of public intellectuals, social entrepreneurs, and former politicians, including David Callahan, Arnie Miller, Shirley Sagawa, Robert Fersh, and David Skaggs. The discussion focused on our respective views of the main challenges facing the country and our thoughts about what kind of new organization might catalyze a more vibrant democracy and more broadly shared prosperity.  

While we all agreed on the urgency of this broad agenda, participants differed as to whether the need was for an organization that would be a distinctively progressive center functioning as a counterweight to the right, or one that would seek to forge transpartisan approaches to America’s political and economic challenges. Participants agreed that “the market alone shouldn’t determine who gets rich and who gets poor” and that the new organization should function more as a network than a centralized institution.  

I came to that conversation after a career that began with fifteen years in politics and government service in the state of Connecticut, including terms as commissioner of social welfare and commissioner of economic development. By 1990, I was beginning to feel jaded about American politics—the growing influence of money, the increasing partisan polarization (even then), and a system that seemed to favor the status quo over progress. 

Inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolutions that swept totalitarian regimes from power in Eastern Europe, I decided to leave Connecticut and take a position in Prague, establishing the European headquarters of the EastWest Institute, an international NGO focused on supporting the political, economic, and security transitions in the region. There, I had the honor of working with courageous and visionary leaders like Lech Wałęsa in Poland and Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia, as well as remarkable civil society organizations across Eastern Europe for most of that extraordinary first decade of the post-Cold War era. The experience rekindled my belief in the power of democracy as an animating idea and as a governing system that can improve the lives of the governed.  

If the New Deal created shared prosperity in an industrial era, how can we now create shared prosperity in a post-industrial era?

This was the perspective I brought to planning meetings for this new organization, which continued into the spring of 1998 and culminated in a July retreat in Stony Point, New York. By then, Charlie and I had recruited a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama to join a more formal Steering Committee. At the retreat, participating via conference call (way before the Zoom era), he posed the core question that would guide our early work: “If the New Deal created shared prosperity in an industrial era, how can we now create shared prosperity in a post-industrial era?”  

We resolved to build bridges across the left-right divide by inviting thoughtful leaders from both political parties to join the board of trustees. As American politics grew more deeply polarized during Dēmos’ first decade, this proved difficult to sustain, and we evolved into a more avowedly progressive organization but one devoted to building new American majorities around policies that would empower inclusive participation in both our democracy and our economy. 

Shortly after the Stony Point retreat, Charlie and the Steering Committee asked me to take on a leadership role, and over the next year, we began operating as The Network for American Renewal, working for revitalized democracy and shared prosperity in the United States. By the time we incorporated and secured our 501(c)(3) status, we had a new name—Dēmos: A Network for Ideas and Action—structured as an institution that combines the intellectual rigor of a think tank with the organizing strategies of an advocacy group. I was named Dēmos’ first president by a board of trustees chaired by Charlie and including former Democratic Congressman David Skaggs of Colorado, former Republican Congressman Tom Campbell of California, social entrepreneur Vanessa Kirsch, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and several members of the original brainstorming group.  

Dēmos grew rapidly, quickly becoming a dynamic national organization with a tangible impact on economic policy and democracy reform at both the state and national levels. Now, 25 years later, I look back on the brainstorming sessions Charlie hosted with a mixture of uncomfortable pride in our prescience and profound concern that the problems of declining democracy and growing economic and racial inequality have only grown more acute.  

Our society was built on the values of freedom, free enterprise, private property, and individual initiative balanced by civic responsibility, democratic participation, equal opportunity, checks and balances, and the rule of law. While it is true that how these principles were applied and to whom has been inequitable from the beginning, this blending of capitalism and democracy, as well as the attendant inequity, has served as a foundation for the norms and institutions that have shaped our society over time. But now the balance has been upended. And today’s mix of hyper-capitalism, concentrations of economic and technological power, and impaired and imperiled democracy is undermining the common good.  

As a result, millions of Americans remain mired in poverty. The middle class is struggling and shrinking. Powerful interests have outsized influence on our politics while individual citizens face steep barriers to civic participation. Norms have been upended—greed is good, and truth is a nuisance. Not surprisingly, faith in democracy is at an all-time low. Millions of Americans do not feel they have civic agency—they no longer believe that their voice or their vote matters. Similarly, a growing segment of society no longer has confidence in their place in our economy. The combination is devastating. As citizens withdraw from civic life, the space for demagoguery, manipulation, and self-aggrandizement grows.  

Dēmos was founded on the belief that ideas matter

Dēmos was founded on the belief that ideas matter, that they have transformative power to address and ameliorate the fundamental problems we confront as a nation. But ideas are insufficient without powerful communications and advocacy capabilities. It is the combination of ideas, narratives, and organizing that has been the hallmark of Dēmos’ 25-year record of impact. Today, our work has never been more important. The next few years will be decisive for our country: Will we become the first successful large, multiracial democracy in which everyone has a voice and a chance, or will the expectations of freedom and opportunity kindled 250 years ago slip into history?   

We founded Dēmos to help Americans chart a new course in the 21st century. This work is more urgent than ever before, and in this age of anxiety, it is reassuring and critical that Dēmos is carrying on the fight.