How I describe myself politically in the US these days

I struggle these days whenever someone asks me for my political affiliation. But if you really force me, I'd describe myself as a “Waymo Democrat”.

- Thomas L Friedman

Waymos are the self-driving electric taxis started by Google. My party's bumper sticker would read, “A chicken in every pot anda Waymo in every city” And our TV ads would say: “Trump is for he/him — his grievances, his revenge, his corruption — and for bringing old stuff back ‘again like coal and gasoline cars. Waymo Democrats are for ‘We the People’ and reinventing American industry anew.”

Why am I bringing this up now? It’s because, as my colleague David Brooks likes to say, Donald Trump is often the wrong answer to the right question. Mr Trump today is offering America a spectacularly wrong answer — a tariff war against the whole world and a revival of 1960s assembly lines — to avery valid question: How do we get more Americans making stuff again?

So, then, what's the right answer? I admire the fiery protest campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, -Vt, and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D NY. I love their ability to get people out to push back on Mr Trump's destroy-America-in-100-days campaign. God bless them for that.

But when I listen to Ms Ocasio-Cortez and Mr Sanders, I don’t hear them solving for the future. So much of what they are about is lazily bashing billionaires, along with defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the Trump-Elon Musk chainsaw. Please, save all of that.

But if Democrats are going to again be the party of the working class, and unify the country more, they need a strategy for expanding the pie of work by expanding new industries — not just protecting the pie of benefits. Ata time when Trump Republicans have so given up on the future, Democrats should be for reinventing it. And that requires a strategy to push advanced manufacturing in America into wholly new realms. And that is why Iam a Waymo Democrat. It is the right answer to the right question: How can we create more good jobs in advanced manufacturing?