By Gregg Robinson
The answer to the provocative title of the new book about whether Democrats can win in November is, YES, but that is a long way from “will.” Can the Democrats Win? is based around an essay by two political scientists, Jacob Hacker (Yale) and Paul Pierson (UC Berkeley) and a series of responses to that it. More specifically, it focuses on the debate among political scientists about how economic versus cultural issues play into modern Democratic Party politics. In what follows I discuss this book in the context of my previous posts.
The economics versus cultural debate is about whether the Democratic Party needs to downplay identity politics and return to economic issues in order to attract working class voters and win elections. For Hacker and Pierson (HP) this debate is over: economic issues have triumphed. They admit that this victory came only after a serious struggle. Starting with Jimmy Carter and extending through both Bill Clinton’s and Barak Obama’s presidencies, the Democratic Party had backed away from economic issues in favor of cultural concerns.
Part of the reason for this move away from economic populism was that the base of the Democratic Party had become what HP call “U shaped.” That is, the base of the Party had gone from working-class communities to one based in college educated suburbs and urban communities of color. This demographic shift combined with a turn to neo-liberal economics under Democratic Party advisors like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers made identity issues more relevant to its base in communities of color and less threatening than economic populism to its middle-class professional supporters.
This produced a party that was socially liberal, economically conservative, and based in the large number of urban voters. While this focus encompassed a majority of Americans, it left the Party vulnerable to the anti-democratic structure of American politics.
There is what HP call a “density tax” in the structure of American politics. That is, if a party’s strength is concentrated in urban areas, then, however large the number of these voters, the impact of this vote will be minimized. American democracy gives disproportionate weight to rural voters and small states. This is most obvious in the Senate where a demographic midget like Wyoming has the same number of senators as a demographic giant like California. But this anti-democratic tendency is also found in the Electoral College where Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential races yet nearly half of these races have been delivered to Republicans by this institutional remnant of slavery.
With the increased electoral importance of heavily working-class states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, HP believe Party leaders have reversed the half century concern with identity politics and brought the Party full circle to a focus on working-class economics that characterized the Democratic Party since FDR. They argue that Biden’s policies, like Build Back Better and the Inflation Reduction Act, along with progressive appointments to government institutions like the National Labor Relations Board have created a politics that appeals to working-class voters of all ethnicities.
In HP’s view, however, the appeal of these policies has been limited by two factors. First, full scale enactment of these reforms has been limited by neo-liberal hold overs in the Senate like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. The most popular and effective of Biden’s policies like childcare subsidies, student loan forgiveness, and Medicare reform have been watered down or eliminated by these neo-liberals. In addition, the growth of right-wing media has made many working-class voters who follow these news sources ignorant of the changes in Democratic policies.
For HP, the solution to these limitations is two-fold. First, commitment to this working-class reorientation in policy must be redoubled by keeping them at the center of the Party’s campaigns. Second, groups like labor, environmentalists, and anti-poverty organizations must push harder to elect supporters of working-class policies so the likes of Manchin can no longer be roadblocks.
The most important response in this volume came from Jared Abbott (director of the Center for Working-Class Politics). He points out that HG’s position is too cerebral and too dependent on a policy approach that ironically appeals more to college educated voters than working class ones. Working-class communities pay less attention to the nuances of policy than to a gut-level sense of who is on their side. What is missing from HG’s essay is the kind of “us vs them” economic populist language and policies voiced by Bernie Sanders that would appeal to working-class voters. Many mainstream Democratic politicians, however, are allergic to this economic populism for fear of losing elite class monetary support for their campaigns.
Abbott’s criticism fits with what those like Ian Haney Lopez have said is important in reforming Democratic Party politics. This involves not abandoning the focus on cultural issues but combining it with left-wing economic populism. For working-class voters there must not only be a gut level sense that a politician is on their side, but that we share a common enemy. This involves the populist language of passion and anger at how working-class people of ALL races have been treated by this country’s economic elite. The right-wing has given working-class voters a populism that punches down against immigrants and minorities, instead, we must punch up toward the economic elites who have prospered at our expense. This means a left populism that is not afraid to target economic elites and speaks with an “us vs them” passion.
A Tale of Two Politicians
Let me bring this conversation closer to home by looking at two local politicians. Do we have politicians in San Diego that combine left populism with a passionate defense of working-class communities? Unfortunately, the answer is no, and that is symptomatic not just of our local political leadership, but of the Democratic Party more generally.
Scott Peters is the face of mainstream San Diego Democratic Party. He is smart, well educated, a talented lawyer, and allergic to anything suggesting economic populism. In addition, while he is extremely articulate, no one would accuse him of being a passionate defender of working-class interests. He is a vice-chair of policy at the New Democrat Coalition a socially liberal but corporate friendly organization. According to Open Secrets, Peters’ biggest industry contributor to his campaign in the last election cycle was big pharma followed by Black Rock. On the other hand, he has a perfect record on abortion, and strong records on guns, women’s rights, and gay issues.
This ability to satisfy corporate interests while still preserving a degree of progressivism is the sign of a smart politician. But this kind of very clever balancing act is not a formula for winning over working class voters. Equally important, this form of politics is by its nature is charismatically challenged. Fear of alienating one corporate funder or another means watching what one says and carefully titrating the policies supported. That is, this kind of politics will be a “real” politics of intelligence without passion.
On the other hand, Shirley Weber is in many ways Peters’ opposite. She is San Diego’s most charismatic and principled politician. Dr. Weber speaks passionately for the African American community without concern for polls or political fallout. She has not been deterred by the failure of her initiative to restore affirmative-action or that her commitment to reparations for the descendants of slaves polls poorly. She is committed not to winning a particular election, but to winning the future for African Americans. But this passionate commitment to her community is also her weakness:
Dr. Weber speaks for African Americans, but not economic populism. She is passionate about defending African American communities from police brutality, but not about defending working-class communities battered by economic neo-liberalism. She is hyper-aware of the anger in the Black community about centuries of racist housing practices, but not about the anger in working-class communities about not being able to afford rent payments.
Thus, what we lack in local San Diego Party leadership is symptomatic of the problems with the broader Democratic Party. We have clever politicians without passion and passionate politicians who don’t engage in the language of economic populism. This is the hole in the Democratic Party that HP misses and that those like Lopez and Abbott tell us we must fill.
We need not merely intelligent economic policies, but a passionate defense of the economic interests of the broad majority of working-class voters. We need to combine the concerns of identity politics, by tying it to the broader concerns of working-class people (for an example of what this would look like in terms of abortion go here). Meanwhile the populist anger that first developed among white-working class voters is spreading to the Latino community and other ethnic groups as well. This anger must be addressed, but few major leaders in the Democratic Party are willing to do so with the passion and progressive economic agenda necessary.
We know there are leaders like this beyond Bernie, but they have not been able to advance in a Democratic Party hemmed in by the shadow cast by corporate power. We desperately need them to step out of that shadow, but we don’t have much time for them to do so. The right-wing version of populism is offering a different path into an even darker shadow, and once that path is taken there is little hope of emerging from its night.