Kim Bellard
no way new york times Bret Stephens’ interview with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D – Mass) caught my attention. I am somewhat familiar with Mr. Stephens from various pieces in the NYT. He’s definitely conservative, but in the pre-MAGA sense, meaning he was worried about spending but didn’t hate people who weren’t like you. On the other hand, Representative Auchincloss was an unfamiliar person to me, but the interview title was – Democratic Party that makes me listen – turned out to be appropriate.
For me, the last line of the interview summed it all up. Rep. Auchincloss is a Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan. Mr. Stevens asked, “One last question. What is one thing you learned in the Marine Corps that every American should know?” Representative Auchincloss’s response was concise, to the point, and very informative. “Cops eat last.”
“Cops eat last” – wow. That’s a philosophy I can embrace. That is a creed I hope I can live by. That’s a slogan for a political movement that I can support.
Of course, I’m not just talking about literal Marine Corps officers, and I’m not just talking about eating either. Rep. Auchincloss is convinced it was a life lesson that should be applied broadly. That is, people in authority must ensure that those for whom they are responsible are cared for before they can take care of themselves. I do not believe that such an attitude is solely responsible for the respectable Marine Corps unity. But it has to be part of it.
The problem is, you don’t see much of that attitude in the rest of America. When Congress failed to pass a budget and millions of federal employees didn’t get paid, they (and their employees) continued to get paid. When the White House made various budget cuts, White House jobs weren’t lost.
If you want to keep your blood pressure under control, don’t even ask how generous your congressional severance pay is. If you’re one of the few workers still eligible for a defined benefit pension, suffice it to say that your pension will almost certainly be less than theirs. Don’t bother explaining how insider trading loopholes allow members of Congress to become richer while in office.
According to Gallup, only 10% of Americans support what Congress is doing and 86% disapprove, but they don’t care. Since they get paid anyway and most House seats are uncontested, most incumbents are at little risk of being voted out.
This is not “officers eat last.”
It’s not just politicians.
All those billionaires – there are over 1,000 in the US alone! – You didn’t get or keep all that money by putting other people first. CEOs used to make ‘only’ 15 times the average worker, but now it’s closer to 300 times, and there’s 20 times the average worker’s pay increase in 2025 alone. If there was ever a time when compassionate CEOs cared about their employees, those days are long gone. Compensation is better if the CEO can pay workers less or fire them. The rich eat first, and their labor provides the best meals they can finance.
Or private equity investors. They have wreaked havoc in manufacturing and other industries, and have recently turned to sectors like housing and healthcare. They don’t just come for your job, they come for where you live and where/how you get your care. They don’t pretend that what they do is for your benefit. They engage publicly for ROI. They are face first at the dinner trough and don’t care at all if there are scraps.
It’s obscene. It’s the exact opposite of what officers eat last.
Representative Auchincloss calls for “economic patriotism”:
If the core idea of America is that the circumstances into which you are born should not determine the conditions of your life, if you have a hardened American aristocracy, you cannot have a lasting “demonstration,” a lasting sense of sharing America’s future. And it happened. The top 10% of the American economy are increasingly divorced from the rest.
In particular, he wants to tax more wealth upon death so that the wealthiest Americans cannot continue to pass down their wealth without paying taxes on their gains. He recognizes that government overregulation can be problematic, but he correctly points out that the reckless corporate monopolies seen in recent years are also harmful. Gordon Gecko famously said, “Greed is good,” but Rep. Auchincloss countered, “Cops eat last.”
I know which side I’m on.
If Democrats had any sense, they would grab this slogan and help define how it applies to our daily lives. They will construct what “economic patriotism” means. Democrats are still blamed for the loss of many American jobs due to NAFTA and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, but those jobs did not magically disappear. The rich have decided they can get richer by moving themselves overseas, and if that means losing a lot of jobs and devastating a lot of communities, so be it. Democrats should never have taken responsibility and instead should have been aggressive in pointing out the real culprits.
Frankly, I don’t think the Democratic Party is the right party to champion this idea. They have a cadre of wealthy people in public office or among donors, and this shows in their policies. The Democratic brand may be so toxic that reinvention is impossible. That’s why, for example, Rob Sand in the Iowa gubernatorial race and Graham Platner in the Maine U.S. Senate race are careful not to talk about their party ties, and Dan Osborn in the Nebraska Senate race is running as an independent (with the tacit support of the state Democratic Party).
They are the kind of politicians who can take the “officers eat last” argument and make it work. Chuck Schumer? Kamala Harris? Gavin Newsom? I don’t think so.
Neither party has a real vision or agreement on how to address growing inequality in America, much less how to address AI and other revolutionary technological changes upon us. We’ve needed to address climate change and microplastics for a long time, but as things stand, we have too much money.
not so that But “cops eat last” may be part of the answer. not answer. Show me a candidate who believes in it, lives for it, and fights for it, and they will get my vote.
Kim is a former emarketing executive at Major Blues Plan and editor of the late & Mourned. Tincture.ioAnd now I’m a regular THCB contributor.
