The Democratic Party, the Working Class, and the Culture War in San Diego
Part 2 in a three-part series
By Gregg Robinson
In Part 1 of this series, I examined the current debate around the Democratic Party, the Union Movement, and the Culture war. I took as a jumping off place three books: Judas and Teixeira’s Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, Newman and Skocpol’s Rust-Belt Blue-Collar Union Blues, and Ian Hany Lopez’s Merge Left. All agreed that the Democratic Party has lost support of working-class people of various ethnicities as a result of being captured by upper-middle-class culture warriors, but they differed on what should be done about it. Judas and Teixeira wanted the Party to turn away from cultural radicalism; Newman and Skocpol believed the Democratic Party needed a strengthened union movement to overcome its problems with the working class; and Lopez argued that a narrative that synthesized cultural and, most importantly, class-based concerns was key. I found Lopez’s “culture/class” synthesis most attractive.
The Democratic Party in San Diego, like the national party, is a loose collection of competing interests, goals, and resources. Mediating these competitions are the institutions of the County Party. Among the most important of these are three main groups: the first is a set of Area Clubs; the second, a group of Affinity Clubs often tied to a particular movement or set of interests; and third, the directly elected members of the Central Committee. The first two of these groups have input into Area Caucuses (North Coastal, North Inland, South Area, etc.) which, in turn, make recommendations to the Central Committee where formal policy is determined. While these recommendations are usually taken seriously by the Central Committee, the final decision rests with Committee members. I will work my way through each of these three groups and then examine what this means for the Labor Movement and progressives more generally in San Diego.
Area Clubs
Area Clubs are generally composed of people who feel ideologically committed to the general values of the Democratic Party, and they are located in a particular party of the county (e.g., Downtown San Diego, Chula Vista, Carlsbad, etc.). They are often dedicated to the formal institutional interests of the Party, and as partisans are most concerned about winning elections for Democrats. Any party needs people like these who are first and foremost organizational loyalists. That is, they are Party True Believers.
Members of these Area Clubs tend to be older, retired, white, and privileged, and because of both their age and general orientation to the Party, they do not tend to have the fervor of the Affinity Clubs. However, their free time and affluence mean they are apt to be those who regularly donate to the Party, help staff its booths, send out its letters, and walk its precincts. Hard-working, institutionally loyal, and relatively affluent, they provide much of the backbone of the Party’s volunteers and economic infrastructure.
However, there is a downside to these Area Clubs. Because of the age and relative privilege of their members, many of these clubs are dominated by upper-middle-class versions of “progressivism.” While their members may support women’s rights, LGBTQ issues, and oppose racism, they are weak on class-based issues. This weakness shows up most importantly in the area of housing and homelessness. These are largely home owners, and they may be concerned about poverty in the abstract, but in the concrete they don’t want the “character” of their communities changed, oppose apartment buildings in their single-family neighborhoods, and are horrified at a proposal to build a homeless shelter down the block. They are “environmentalists” when that means planting trees and preserving their ocean views, but NOT when it comes to increased housing density or when density interferes with their ocean views.
Because class-based issues are uncomfortable for this group, there is a tendency for many of their members to double down on culture issues, particularly around race, gender, and sexuality. This performs a double function: it insulates members of these clubs from being accused of being hypocritical elitists and unifies them with the Affinity based clubs. This is one source of Judas and Teixeira’s accusation that the Democratic Party is dominated by “woke” liberals.
Affinity Clubs
This second major local Democratic Party structure is composed of progressives who feel strongly about a particular issue. For example, there are several areas covered: a Women’s Club, a Young Democrats Club, an Environmental Club, and an LGBTQ+ Club, etc. These clubs are where most of the ideological work of the county Party takes place. Their members are tireless in supporting their group concerns and tend to be more committed to the specific interests of their group than to the institution of the Democratic Party. These club members bring passion and willingness to push the Party in directions that may at first make some institutionalists uncomfortable. They are not poll- driven and often not willing to compromise their values. They operate out of commitment to their principles; and these principles take precedent over expediency or political opportunism.
This is, however, also where the criticisms of those like Judas and Teixeira are the most relevant: positions supported by these clubs can seem like a checklist of culture war issues. The Women’s Club is mostly concerned about women’s issues, the Environmental Democrats are focused on preserving open space, Young Democrats only want to see young members elected to Party leadership etc. It is, of course, natural that these Affinity clubs would be concerned disproportionately about their issues, however, some of their more extreme positions often alienate working class voters. Each of these clubs then uses whatever resources available to them to determine the positions and candidates endorsed by the Central Committee.
Similar to the Area Clubs, these Affinity Clubs can often be weak on class-based issues. Many of the leaders of these clubs are middle class; the leader of the Latino Club may be Latino, but they are also a doctor; the head of the Women’s Club may be female, but they are also a lawyer; etc. These leaders may share the class-based antagonism toward issues like housing and homelessness found among the Area Clubs. Most importantly, these very articulate leaders are also likely to be resistant to the kind of “Culture/Class” narrative that Lopez suggests. They feel more comfortable with the culture-based narratives of the academy than with Lopez’s call for a common struggle against an economic elite of which they themselves may be members.
Elected/Central Committee Members
There are two major groups that compose the Democratic Party Central Committee. The first is composed of 42 elected members from each of the Assembly areas in San Diego County. In the past, elections for Central Committee have been “down/down ballot” races attracting very little interest. Most Democratic voters don’t even know there is a Central Committee let alone who their members are. This has meant that, until recently, those who typically ran were people who came out of the Area and Affinity Clubs.
The second group of Central Committee members is composed of statewide and nationally elected leaders—including State Assembly and Senate members as well as members of the U.S. Congress. While these leaders may be small in number, because of their stature, their power is vastly greater than their number of formal votes. Area club leaders are quick to defer to them because of their status as Party leaders, and Affinity Club leaders, which may have helped elect them in the first place, are likely to support “one of their own”.
This “Power of Charisma” also applies to other local elected members who do not have formal voting rights in the Party. Supervisors, mayors, and city council members may not show up often, but when they do, they have a great deal of influence. Recently, however, this group of leaders has begun taking more seriously their role in the Party and have started to run for membership in the Central Committee. For example, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Council Member Stephen Whitburn just ran successfully for membership. This has created tension with both Area and Affinity clubs who were used to seeing their members elected to these positions in the past.
These elected officials are the face of the Democratic Party that the general public knows and are a major source of pragmatism in the Party. They may have originally come out of an Affinity club, but they are primarily concerned with getting and staying elected. They are often the first to recognize when some of the NIMBYism coming out of the Area Clubs needs to be contained or to limit the damage done when an extreme position taken by an Affinity Club is political suicide.
The downside of this pragmatism is their willingness to compromise around issues of principle. While they can be fluent in the language of “woke,” their primary tongue is pragmatism. Most important to this discussion, they are also often turned off by the kind of class-based narrative that Lopez champions. With their eyes on the prize of getting re-elected, they are opposed to Lopez’s call to make economic elites the enemy when those elites might be sources of funding for their campaigns.
The final player in local Democratic politics is, of course, the labor movement itself. Part three of this series will address that part of San Diego’s political landscape.
Gregg Robinson is a long-time activist, retired Grossmont College Sociology professor, and a member of the AFT Guild, Local 1931 Retiree Chapter.