Opinion | The Democrats Are in Trouble. This Man Can Save Them.

The election victory by Donald Trump and his Republican Party was a rebuke of a Democratic Party that has positioned itself as protector of a despised status quo, rendering it unable to connect with an electorate desperate for change.Defeating Mr.

Trump in the future will require liberals, progressives and others on the left to articulate a positive vision that can capture the imagination of a broad majority of Americans.But where can they find the inspiration for such a vision?The answer lies in the work of the towering 20th century political philosopher John Rawls.In his epoch-defining treatise “A Theory of Justice,” published in 1971, Rawls set out a humane and egalitarian vision of a liberal society, an alternative both to the toxic blend of neoliberal economics and identity politics that has dominated Democratic thinking in recent decades and the pessimistic anti-liberalism that holds sway among some more radical parts of the left.In this time of crisis for liberalism, it offers an unparalleled, and as yet largely untapped, resource for shaping a broad-based and genuinely transformational progressive politics — not just for Democrats but for center-left parties internationally.The philosophy of Rawls, who died in 2002, is grounded not in self-interest and competition, but in reciprocity and cooperation.

His most famous idea is a thought experiment: If you want to conceive of a fair society, put on a “veil of ignorance.” That is, consider a way to organize it if you didn’t know your position — your race, religion or economic status.It’s an intuitive idea, similar to the classic scenario of how you might cut a cake more fairly if you didn’t know which slice you would end up getting.The idea resonates widely, since it is, in effect, a political version of the Golden Rule — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — that in some form is found across cultural and religious traditions.Rawls argued that we should choose two guid...