Washington Post

“Sore winners” was the phrase critic John Powers came up with to describe the George W. Bush administration, but the term seems more lastingly applicable to those members of the 1 percent who decry the broad economic populism across the land. The most notoriously sore winners are those mega-wealthy investment bankers who have likened critics of economic inequality to the Nazis — most recently, Tom Perkins, founder of the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, who last week equated “the progressive war on the American one percent” to Kristallnacht.

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My colleague Charles Lane, a stellar product of the equally stellar, unionized Montgomery County school district, has opined that collective bargaining should be banned for public employees. However, he writes, “No one is saying public workers have no right to organize. They are free to associate and lobby government, openly, for better wages and working conditions.”

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Among the causes most frequently cited for the dizzying rise in American inequality in recent decades — globalization, technology, de-unionization — one culprit is generally left off the list: the Supreme Court. But the justices (more precisely, the conservative justices) must be given their due. In cases ranging from Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, they have greatly increased the wealthy’s sway over elections — which, in turn, has led to public policies that have reduced taxes on the rich, curtailed regulation of Wall Street and kept workers from forming unions.

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When President Obama delivers his State of the Union address this month, he will surely highlight the issue of growing economic inequality and argue for such remedies as raising the minimum wage. He may also put in a plug for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement his administration is negotiating with 11 Pacific Rim nations and for fast-track legislation that would limit congressional input in the accord to facilitate its ratification.

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Despite the treasured right-wing talking points, it’s increasingly clear that Obamacare is a success. Moreover, in places where Obamacare is not succeeding, it’s also clear that the right wing is to blame. Well, it’s clear to any who look at the state-by-state numbers of the newly insured. A whole lot of Americans will have to look, however, for the program’s success to redound to Democrats’ advantage.

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American liberalism and the Democratic Party — two partially overlapping but by no means identical institutions — have set themselves an unusually clear agenda for 2014: reducing economic inequality and boosting workers’ incomes. These are causes they can fight for on multiple fronts.

Raising the minimum wage should offer the course of least resistance. Although congressional Republicans may persist in blocking an increase in the federal minimum wage, they do so at their own peril. Raising the wage is one of the few issues in U.S. politics that commands across-the-board public support. A CBS News poll in November found that even 57 percent of Republicans support such an increase.

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