More voters have no college degrees than do.
To belabor the obvious, a winning political coalition must win the loyalty of most voters, regardless of education level. President Franklin Roosevelt did this.
To those of us who want to stop endless wars, spend money domestically so the U.S. provides the same social benefits as European social democracies offer and regulate business to protect consumers and prevent runaway rents, enlisting all voters into a dominant coalition is a progressive necessity.
It is not enough to win landslide elections. Obama did that, Reagan did that, even Jimmy Carter did that. “To achieve … enduring realignment, a party’s approach to policy has to mesh with its approach to politics. …[The policies must] actually benefit the constituencies … .” Put simply, you can fool the people some of the time, but if the administration takes care of the prosperous and ignores the rest of us, the voters will look for new leadership. This is the conclusion of two political scientists focused on the obstacles to a progressive coalition. Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis’s aptly titled book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? draws its lessons from recent political history.
In 1971, for the first time in the 20th century, the United States started importing more than it exported, running a negative trade balance. The new left, invigorated by its agitation over the Vietnam War and Jim Crow was joining forces with the labor movement. This coalition, which now included black voters, might dominate the Democratic Party and control its agenda.
Business took notice and organized. They hired lobbyist and ramped up campaign contributions. With these moves, the business community and its wealthy allies were no longer vulnerable and became dominant.
During the ‘70s, the U.S. economy spurred by Vietnam War expenditures, operated at full tilt, unemployment was low, and wages were rising even in the non-union South. Companies began to flee the United States to set up subsidiaries in low-wage nations. Even with the expense of transportation, the imported goods offered bigger profits than the goods made in the U.S. Globalization was starting and it would have a disastrous effect. A factory leaving New York City was a hiccup compared to a plant closing in Akron, Ohio or heavy industry leaving big cities like Pittsburgh. “By 1974, the largest American companies, including Ford, Kodak, and Procter & Gamble, employed more than a third of their workforce overseas.”
Industries moving overseas was a body blow to communities all over the United States. Unlike New York City, when smaller communities lost their biggest employer, their civic life suffered. Too often the young despaired, turning to drugs and even suicide. The future looked bleak and states like Iowa, Democratic since FDR, gradually welcomed the Republican Party.
Republicans were no more willing than the Democrats to pursue policies that helped workers. The book offers a clear definition of the working class: working for wages not an annual salary, having no college education, and no real authority over the products they make.
Unlike Senator Bernie Sanders, who includes schoolteachers in the working class, the authors’ definition describes a group whose potent asset is their numbers. United they can make their political party a winner. Judis/Teixeira believe in this possibility, but the political party must win these voters’ loyalty just as FDR did in 1933.
It was Trump’s innovation that put this group’s problems on the political frontburner. He didn’t blame the employers; he blamed China and tax laws for taking jobs overseas. Categories popular among workers became recognized by political elites. There are the “nationalists” and the “globalizers.” Workers fighting for jobs in the U.S. were nationalists, all too often the globalizers were college graduates. Far more numerous than they had been in the 1960’s they formed a voting bloc. They were comfortable with cultural changes, from feminism to opposing racism and choices about sexuality. These differences are fault lines that should be bridged, but so far the Democratic Party fails to unite the diversity in its ranks.
Teixeira and Judis reject the notion that racism has driven whites into Republican arms. These political scientists argue that when George Wallace stopped running for President after 1972, the nation and the white working class learned to live with Civil Rights. That year George McGovern got clobbered by Richard Nixon in one of the most lopsided Presidential votes in U.S. history. The Democrat won only Massachusetts and Washington D.C.
But the book’s most important lesson is that landslide elections are only half the battle; the party’s policies must satisfy the voter.
While racism exists, it doesn’t make a Democratic victory impossible, as demonstrated by Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012. If Nixon clobbered the Democrats in 1972, Obama trounced the Republicans in 2008. Neither victory brought a new political coalition that dominated the nation the way FDR’s New Deal made the United States Democratic.
Recent history shows voters shifting from one party to the next. A victory for Obama in 2008 was followed by a Republican landslide in the 2010 off-year election. Teixeira and Judis suggest neither party is establishing policies that offer real relief to a public hungry for economic growth and good paying jobs. As a result, first one party dominates, then another. In this theory, the decline in Democratic votes that marked Vice-President Harris’s defeat is temporary, unless Trump’s administration really brings peace and prosperity to the U.S. If his policies bring real change, then the ’24 election might signal a realignment placing the Republicans into a quasi-permanent majority, but don’t bet on it.
Obama offered a similar opportunity for the Democrats, but rather than staying populist and enlisting the public to join political disputes on issues that separated the working class from the rich, he sought compromises and followed the advice of budget hawks and the rich. He had the rhetorical skills and intelligence to win political quarrels, yet time and again he avoided public disputes by seeking policies acceptable to Democrats and Republicans. When he left, Clinton lost, and Trump won.
It was a missed opportunity. Like FDR, Obama took office during an economic crisis. He won the election by presenting a plan for economic recovery that made his Republican opponent look like an amateur. The economists in Obama’s administration “calculated that it would take a $1.8 trillion stimulus” to turn the economy around. After meeting with business interests and conservative appointees, the final plan allocated “between $600 billion and $800 billion.”
Obama kept the budget deficit down, but he also let down the voters. The 2010 Republican triumph illustrated the seesaw pattern.
Businesses going overseas created a great divide in the U.S. Communities dependent on technology and finance prospered. Their educated middle-class prospered. Goods manufactured overseas meant globalists could buy their goods cheaply. Immigrants working cheaply meant low food prices. Nothing illustrated the “globalist” blind spot than the preference for foreign cars.
Immigrant rights became an albatross, undermining a Democratic majority. Working class voters understood that these new arrivals work for less money and drove wages down. If Democrats understood this they certainly did so quietly. They didn’t want to offend left voters who wanted an open-door policy. Nobody publicized the extent that immigrant rights were backed by corporate America. Making the left a partner of the corporate elites.
Democrats may benefit from Trump’s failures, but a true victory requires that Democrats make government responsive to the people, even if it makes budget deficits go up.
FREEDOM DEMOCRATS 