EXCERPTS: Senator Coons lays out positive policy vision for the Democratic Party as featured speaker at Georgetown University’s Whittington Lecture

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) reflected on the current political moment and the challenge facing the Democratic Party yesterday, arguing that a new policy framework is needed to win back the trust of Americans centered around opportunity, security, and justice. He delivered his remarks as the Whittington Lecturer at Georgetown University's McCourt Institute of Public Policy. The speech builds on an argument Senator Coons has been making for several months, beginning with an essay in Democracy Journal in December.

Senator Coons began his speech by acknowledging a growing disconnect between Democrats and working people, saying, "We think we're fighting for working people, but a majority of the working people of America don't think we're fighting for them."

To fix that disconnect, he laid out the path that led him to become a Democrat and outlined his future vision: a positive policy framework grounded in opportunity, security, and justice. He describes opportunity as the belief that upward mobility is real - that a person's future is not fixed by where they live, and that hard work and following the rules can lead to success not only for individuals, but for their children as well. Security includes physical safety, but also financial security such as a safety net and the ability to retire with dignity. He concluded with a discussion of justice. He spoke about it as rooted in his faith and about how justice includes economic justice and a moral responsibility to those on the margins of society.

A video of Senator Coons' full remarks is available here.

A partial transcript of Senator Coons' remarks is included below:

On rebuilding the Democratic Party

We have a challenge and an opportunity in front of us - to not just wallow in the ashes or the division of the current moment, but to build up a vision for a different future going forward and to see whether it's embraced, whether we can jointly build a new consensus and a new path forward.

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I've spent some time thinking about the vision of my party… And I've heard a question that has sort of echoed in the back of my head now for years. When I first heard it, I was standing on the sidelines of a community pool with my young kids competing, and a guy standing next to me, who was a blue-collar tradesman - a member of a building trade union. And he said: "You know, when did you Democrats stop caring about working people?" It wasn't the first time I'd hear that, certainly wasn't the last. And the dynamics of the last election show what has been a slow and steady loss of trust and support among working people in the United States for the Democratic Party. Most elected Democrats like me think that that's what we're principally doing as we craft policy in the Capitol…We think we're fighting for working people, but a majority of the working people of America don't think we're fighting for them. And so, I've spent some time thinking through, what is it that our party stands for?

On opportunity, security, and justice

Opportunity is a core principle of the United States, of its history and its future: a belief that social mobility is possible - that your future isn't determined by your zip code, that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead, and more importantly, so can your kids. Millions and millions of people have come to this country seeking opportunity, and people who believe they are stuck, overlooked, left out, or going backwards have moved from believing the Democratic Party best supports their future to the Republican Party under Trump. If we don't regain that narrative - if we don't show that we believe in opportunity and deliver proposals that actually make that real - I don't think we have a future.

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Everybody deserves safe, sanitary, decent housing; a basic, solid education; the fundamentals of health care; the opportunity to work hard and to save for your future and to advance your kids' possibilities. High ceiling, but strong floor. And we need a stronger floor.

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And that's not just physical security - terror that masked agents may show up at any moment, break down your door, take your child or deport you. It's also fiscal security - that you don't go to bed worried sick about your bills as well as security that you don't get mugged on your way into work. So even as we need to fight for every American to be secure in our homes, in our borders, and our bodies. We need to reimagine security in a way that actually speaks to Americans and meets their moment.

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But security without justice - we'll go through these for a minute - if you offer justice without focusing on people's security, they shut you out. If you convince them that you don't care about their security, all you want to do is lecture them about justice, they're going to focus on the security. You can deliver security through a heavy-handed state. You're watching that unfold right now. But that doesn't deliver a sustainable, humane, and just society. You can have opportunity without justice, but then you have yawning inequality, where the few get dramatically richer and the majority see no hope and no future. I don't believe that's sustainable. I think we can deliver opportunity and security as long as we look at it, in the end, through the lens of justice.