The Democratic governor’s message is second to none.

This week’s hottest political news stories This Politico articleposted on Tuesday morning that some Democrats are “panicing” over Joe Biden, who is trailing Donald Trump in most battleground state polls and has a frightening approval/disapproval ratio (38-56, According to FiveThirtyEight:), and he’s, well, old and not getting any younger between now and November.

But barring a tragedy, he will be the Democratic nominee, and Democrats took steps Tuesday to ensure that happens: They will re-nominate the president to ensure Biden qualifies to appear on the ballot in every state. Virtual Roll Call The tournament will be held after the qualifying deadlines for several states before the Chicago tournament in mid-August.Especially in Ohio).

That’s the reality. But you can have two thoughts in your head at the same time. So we can acknowledge that reality while looking further ahead. In my opinion, one of the future stars of the Democratic Party is Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. He got elected in 2022 thanks to a clever theft of one of the right’s favorite phrases: “The right wins.” freedom. Shapiro was in Washington to speak earlier this month, and I had the opportunity to meet with him.

I first took notice of Shapiro when, as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, he fought off Trump’s repeated legal attempts to challenge the state’s election results (“I was 43-0,” he told me). But he really caught my eye when he gave a speech the weekend before the 2022 election that became much talked about because of a line he delivered after pointing out that his Republican opponent loves to talk about freedom:

It is not freedom to tell women what they can do with their bodies. That is not freedom. It is not freedom to tell children what books they can read. It is not freedom for men to choose who they marry. I say love is love. It is not freedom to say you can work 40 hours a week and not join a union. That is not freedom. And it is certainly not freedom to go to the polls and men get to pick the winners. That is not freedom. That is not freedom.

But you know? You know what we want? We want real freedom. Let me tell you what real freedom is. Real freedom is looking at a little child in North Philadelphia, seeing her potential, and investing in her public schools. That’s real freedom. Real freedom is investing in that little child’s neighborhood so that she’s safe for her 18th birthday. That’s real freedom.

The first of the two paragraphs is very good, but it’s the second that is potentially revolutionary: The right has owned the economic concept of freedom at least since Milton Friedman published “The Economic Concept of Freedom” in 1962. Capitalism and freedom, He will convince millions of Americans that freedom means letting the magic of the free market work. Across Pennsylvania and across the country, that “magic” has meant the flight of good-paying jobs and the collapse of social stability in many towns. Shapiro will redefine freedom to put people, not abstract markets, first.

One day, out of the blue, he told me he had never read a book on economic theory. The morning before the election campaign, he was chatting with his wife, who complained about the Republican candidates talking about freedom. “And she said, ‘That’s ridiculous. They don’t stand for freedom. You need to say something about it,'” Shapiro recalled. And that night, when he stopped off in Erie, he began to share his ideas about true freedom.

That night, he limited his use of the word to what he called “negative” uses: freedoms that the right wants to take away, like reproductive freedom. But the more he thought about it, the more he tried to define freedom in a more “positive” sense: the freedoms that government can create for people. “I wasn’t talking about freedom in the traditional sense, like the right to choose or the right to vote, but the freedom to breathe clean air, the freedom to walk down the street and not get shot at, the freedom to receive a quality constitutional education.”

He told me that as governor he has tried to do this in a number of ways: by increasing the budget for education, by increasing funding for teacher training; by providing free breakfast to all school children for the first time in state history; by increasing funding for career and technical education;

Perhaps most notably, on his first day in office, he issued an order that removed the college degree requirement for 92 percent of state government employees. “This is an example of freedom, right? Because we’re no longer going to restrict people because of arbitrary degree requirements,” Shapiro said. “We want to give people freedom and let them carve their own path.”

As governor, Shapiro is perhaps best known for his response to the collapse of a bridge on Interstate 95 about eight miles north of downtown Philadelphia last June. A gasoline tanker truck rolled and exploded, destroying the northbound lanes, damaging the southbound lanes and closing one of the nation’s busiest highways for about nine miles in both directions.

Everyone expected it would be months before the bridge would be open to traffic again, but amazingly, it reopened in just 12 days.

Shapiro recalls being informed of the incident around 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning. “We were hoping that ‘collapse’ was a technical term that didn’t actually mean collapse,” he recalls. He and his team came up with the idea during a helicopter tour that they could put up a temporary bridge fairly quickly by simply piling tons of “aggregate” (recycled glass) on the roadway below the bridge and building a temporary bridge on top of it. Even then, it might have taken longer than it should have without the expectations Shapiro set. “There were a few times when engineers and others would say, ‘Give us two weeks and we’ll come back with a plan,'” he recalls. “I said, ‘Great, an hour is fine.'” A rebuild plan was developed by the end of the first day, he told me.

And thus Approval rating: 59 percent In a deeply divided state, other recent polls have shown his approval rating in the mid-50s.

To be sure, he has received some criticism. Last year, a senior aide resigned after he was accused of sexually assaulting a female aide. The aide had a criminal record, raising questions about what Shapiro knew and when he knew it. Shapiro has defended his record in fighting sexual abuse, including releasing a report on abuse by Catholic clergy, but has avoided questions about the aides. As a candidate, he supported school choice, a strange position for a Democrat. As governor, he rejected the school choice scholarship program, which infuriated conservatives at him. Now he is negotiating with lawmakers over a budget that is due on June 30. The House is controlled by Democrats and the state Senate by Republicans. Shapiro is seeking billions of dollars in funding for education, transportation, industrial and high-tech infrastructure projects. When we spoke, he said Republicans had not yet put up much resistance, but we won’t get an answer to that until June.

But in the eyes of the world at large, Shapiro’s biggest test will come in November. Can he use the vast resources at his disposal as governor to help Biden win must-win states? Biden is second only to Trump in the number of votes. 2 points Polls are close in Pennsylvania (within the margin of error), but Trump has a lead in 10 of the last 12 polls in the state, according to FiveThirtyEight.

“President Biden has a tremendous track record that’s literally helping to rebuild the infrastructure of this country. He’s going to do more on tackling climate change than any generation has done before. He’s kept the world order as stable as possible. He’s leading with grace and honor. And he’s just an honorable, decent guy,” Shapiro said. He argued Biden doesn’t need his advice, saying, “I can tell you what I’ll do as his advocate in Pennsylvania and across the country, and that’s tell his story, tell him he has a story of accomplishment, and aggressively prosecute the case against Donald Trump.”

Shapiro is certainly thinking not just about this presidential election, but future elections (assuming one takes place) — his star would be boosted significantly if he could help lead the state to Biden — and then, of course, he’ll need to win reelection in 2026.

But his rhetoric on freedom caught the ear of many. Biden and other Democrats picked up on the negative, liberty part of Shapiro’s argument that Republicans are trying to take away people’s freedoms. But the positive part is more interesting, because it makes a positive case for public sector intervention while stealing one of conservatives’ favorite words from them (and it doesn’t hurt that it’s a word Americans are taught to cherish from the time they can speak it). It’s the firmest basis for government action on behalf of workers that I’ve heard in my adult life. If he delivers on that rhetoric, he’ll have a strong case to make when his time comes.