Ezra Klein asks today, "Why haven't the Democrats completely cleaned the Republicans' clock?"
Actually it's Ruy Teixeira who asked that question, and it's one I share. I mean, Republicans have turned into complete loons. Democrats should have been able to build a huge and enduring lead over the past decade. Why haven't they?
Teixeira suggests it's because Democrats have lost blue-collar voters:
We have to get back to some of the underlying trends that have affected working class voters in the United States and how they’ve experienced their lives, and how their communities have evolved and the resentments they have about the various political parties and what they stand for.
....I tend to believe if Democrats could produce rising incomes and wages for most working-class voters for many, many years and transformed the political economy of the United States into something pretty different and perceived as something pretty different than what they’ve experienced in the last several decades, do I think they’d benefit and be able to dominate a Republican Party whose economic policies are far less salubrious? Yes. I do think that’s, in fact, possible.
That is possible. Here's a chart I've posted before, though it's been a while:
Over the last 30 years college educated workers have seen their earnings go up. Not a whole lot, but at least up. The same is true of women who only completed high school.
But men with only a high school diploma have seen their incomes slide and then slide some more. There were brief exceptions during the expansions of the late '90s and aughts, but they didn't last. Right now, men with no college earn 6% less than they did 30 years ago. The college kids, who were already making more, have opened up ever bigger leads over time.
In other words, it's really true that blue-collar men in particular have an economic beef they probably don't think Democrats take seriously. On the other hand, this started as far back as Nixon, long before neoliberals took over the party. It's also true that by far the worst decade for blue-collar men was the Reagan era and the best decade was the Clinton era. But they loved Reagan and didn't care much for Clinton. Economics just doesn't seem like it can explain much.
Every time this comes up, I refresh myself on the evidence and end up coming back to the same thing: the two drivers of Democratic losses are race and culture. Race is obvious: the white South has switched pretty much completely from Democratic to Republican and it was quite obviously due to the Civil Rights Act and other racial turnabouts of the '60s and beyond. Today, the Republican Party is almost entirely white.¹
Culture is also fairly obvious because we've talked it to death over the past couple of decades. Working class discontent with liberals has been driven by an underlying long-term trend starting in the counterculture '60s and then supercharged by Fox News starting in the late '90s. Fox may tell their audience that Democrats are bad for the economy, but they spend ten times as much time obsessing over the latest cultural outrage from liberals. You could pretty much write a political history of the right just by listing the most common subjects covered by Fox News over the years since 2001. It's gone from Muslims to voter fraud to the tea party to Critical Race Theory to whatever they decide to focus on this year.
Research suggests that Fox News generates about 3% more votes for Republicans than they'd otherwise get. In a 50-50 electorate, that's a lot. And it doesn't help that Democrats make themselves so easy to attack. From "Defund the Police" to extreme softness on the border to defending trans girls competing in high school sports, liberals have been pushing the boundaries of social conventions pretty hard. That scares ordinary people and costs votes.
There's probably not a lot we can do about race. Some people are racists and that's that. We just have to fight them. But we could probably tone down the cultural leftism and adopt moderately more populist economic policies. It wouldn't take a lot. But it might make enough of a difference to sink the Republicans for the coming decade.
¹In Congress, there are currently four Black Republican House members out of 222 and one Black senator out of 49. That's less than 2%.
Democrats do not act/speak in lockstep (as republicans, until very recently, have consistently done). We therefore have no mechanism to ensure that "we" democrats "tone down the cultural leftism." If anything, that problem is growing (in light of the fact that some of the "leftie" pro-Palestinian voices veer off into antisemitism and pro-terrorism territory).
This is true, but also downstream of the fact that the Democratic party doesn't really have a propaganda organ that can set the agenda the way that Fox does on the Right.
I don't really know if this is a solvable problem for a Left-leaning political party; the base is too eccelctic and the media environment is too fractured.
👍👍👍👍👍
Absolutely right. The Democratic Party is barely a political party: it has no mechanisms for deciding on or forcing an agenda, and includes several factions that would be at war with each other if not united by fear of fascists among the Repubs. I wish Kevin would recognize that even if he's absolutely right about what the Dems should do it is impossible to make happen.
In light? What about the mainstream islamophobism and tarring anyone noting the genocide in Gaza as Hamas-lovers?
"Liberals" as the term is used these days aren't talking about DTP or ACAB, they're not particularly far less "extremely" soft on immigration, nor are they agitating for trans rights in sports. Liberals are centrist. You are confusing them with a very small minority of activists who are doing good things but of course generate pages and pages of frothy racist howling.
Anyone who uses the term "woke" to equate with the 90s political correctness is part of the problem, btw.
Democrats aren't steam-rolling Republicans because the vast majority of the media that Republicans consume is aligned with the capitalist economy that is actively working to undermine their health and wealth. I'm not denying them agency but if you're deeply embedded in a propaganda machine decades/centuries in the making it is hard to see beyond the lies.
I have been following ex-scientologists of late. Stated by accident when I viewed one of their YouTubes. I had a relationship with a woman scientologist some 30 years ago. It came to naught because, I think, Scientology told her to dump me.
Anyway, back to topic.
YouTubers seen on Aaron Smith Levin, Mark and Clare Headey, Mike Render and Leah Remini's videos speak of the brain twisting that is done on children born into Scientology. The brain twisting in scientology is similar to what the rethuglicans have been doing over my lifetime. Not quite yet 1984, but close.
lol
"And it doesn't help that Democrats make themselves so easy to attack. From 'Defund the Police' to extreme softness on the border to defending trans girls competing in high school sports, liberals have been pushing the boundaries of social conventions pretty hard. That scares ordinary people and costs votes."
Does anyone honestly believe if no one anywhere had ever used "Defund the Police" as a slogan, things would be much different for Democrats? For one thing, if it wasn't "Defund the police", they would have attacked Democrats over BLM protests. I don't see a world where there aren't the 2020 protests. Maybe without the Defund slogan we'd have a barely Democratic House instead of a barely Republican House, and that's not nothing, but it's a long way from "sinking" the Republicans.
I'm also skeptical Democrats could get there being tougher on the border. Obama tried to win credibility to get reform passed by cracking down on the border, and it didn't get him a deal, and it didn't seem to win over people worried about the border. So are you thinking an Obama-style crackdown but with no DACA is the path to electoral victory? First, I don't really buy it, and second, I'm not sure I'm not sure I could get behind it even if it could work.
Trans girls in sports? What? How many people are actually being affected by that? The numbers are trivial. And if you concede the trans sports issue, they'll go after trans bathrooms.
In the end, you can go after any of these, maybe shave off enough independents to get a few more wins, and that's worth discussing, but it doesn't get you anywhere near "steamrolling" Republicans. There's still going to be at least 45% of the country rabidly supporting them, with low information voters breaking this way or that. We'll still be staying up all night to see which way the electoral college flips. We should certainly go for all the wins we can get, but I don't see anything that makes me think if Democrats were more moderate, they'd be crushing the Republicans.
Have some Delong with your Breakfast beer!!
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/musings-on-manufacturings-delaborization
Watcha gonna do when creative destruction and changing modes of production kick you in the ass????
The coming of driverless long haul trucks aint gonna help.
The coming of advanced AI aint gonna help as it is coming for the middle class workers.
The Klein piece is another in a continuous stream in the MSM trying to avoid the role of racism and religion and pin the difference between parties and the rise of partisanship on economics. Racism is not even mentioned in the piece. Why do they do this? Is it to avoid antagonizing the very large racist element, who apparently buy the papers or watch the TV? It is not a good strategy to campaign on the proposition that anyone who thinks of voting for Republicans is a hopeless racist, but when you write an op-ed piece you should have to face reality.
Republicans have been winning elections and shifting the nation's economics to the right because they can tap into very powerful tribal instincts as well as tradition. The supremacy of White Christians over others was unquestioned until the middle of the 20th century. Democratic politicians and the "liberal" media don't have this advantage. Economics just does not have the same instinctive appeal. Once the tribal instinct is strongly aroused, it makes people ignore reality - they buy the blatant lies of Trump and Fox News about the economy, among many other things.
There is no easy solution to this problem. More traditional leftish economics have failed for Democrats in past elections - it's not entirely a matter of the influence of big money. Hard-core racists resent any welfare going to non-whites, and they will deny benefits to themselves if they have to be shared.
"Why do they do this? Is it to avoid antagonizing the very large racist element, who apparently buy the papers or watch the TV? "
Yes. Or rather, the people who get their news from newspapers and TV skew old, which is a close enough proxy as not to matter to the owners.
I just don't agree with the "just tone down the cultural leftism" belief.
Fox and other republicans will just invent things. There are always oberlin menu items that can be pointed to as extreme to paint the entire centrist Dem party as out of touch.
and tell me where the dems are "soft on the border"? both parties and the courts have set it up to fail. we all know tossing business owners in jail is the solution
"and tell me where the dems are 'soft on the border'"
I've had several commenters on this site tell me there is, in fact, no crises at the border because there shouldn't be any issue with letting into this country anyone that wants to come in. I'd say that is "soft on the border". No, these commenters are not elected officials. But that doesn't matter. When republicans vote for candidates that say they will be tough on border security, they do so because they'll be thinking about lefties like these commenters who think there should be an open border. Republicans don't want that belief to be in any way represented by those elected.
I say there is no crisis at the border unless you're prepared to say that border has been in crisis for the last seventy or eighty years. Both asylum seekers and illegals have been with us for a long time (how old is the term "wetback"?). Numbers are up and down but have shown an overall trend of increasing roughly in proportion to the populations of the countries from which the southern border crossers mostly come.
At the moment, the CBP reports a record high number of "encounters" with illegal immigrants, which says that at the moment there is a record high level of enforcement. In other words, Biden (or Mayorkas) is being as tough on border security as the resources granted by Congress allow.
Democrats are losing votes that they otherwise would have won because a random guy on the internet said some words! While Democrats dont agree with this random guy, if the guy hadnt said those words, Dems would receive more votes.
Hmm, not sure about this one. Doesnt make a bit of sense.
And not even really random; it's a dude of known questionable morality who's already made it clear they have no interntion of voting for a Democrat, ever.
Democrats will throw working and middle class under the bus any chance they get. Newsome just demanded all state workers go back into the office although you won't find his signature on it because he knows how unpopular it is. This kind of thing goes on and on. Sure Republicans are worse but this is one area where there isn't much space between the parties. Dems also have no problem raising taxes on the middle class or passing non-progressive taxes that fall mostly on the middle and working class. Finally just look at the tepid support for Unions. They stood by while Unions were dismantled in this country.
Look at
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-college-degrees-in-the-labor-force/
The question that matters is why "the left" is obsessed with the .001% of the US that cares about becoming a Senator or CEO (and related issues, like who gets into Harvard, or who gets to build Davos-level personal networks) and is utterly uninterested in everyone else.
Why is the obsession with what *groups* (however defined) get what scores on IQ (however defined) not with helping the less-smart *individuals* who have a miserable life trying to navigate modern society (even the parts, like benefits) that are supposed to help them?
THAT is what is really going on. Scream racism all you like but that's as pathetic and irrelevant to the politics of today as De Santis (remember him, the guy who DID NOT get any traction in the Republic Primaries) and his version of the opposite idiocy.
The reality is that US society is freaking fantastic for the upper 10% in smartness, pretty damn good for the 30%..90% range, and horrible for the below 30%. And while both parties aren't doing much about this
- the Republicans don't come across as absolutely contemptuous of this bottom 30% the way "the Left" does. Sure, Democrats are not "the Left" and that's an important distinction for many purposes AT THE NATIONAL level. But people LIVE at the county and municipal level, and at that level "the Left" becomes a lot more salient.
- likewise the nickel-and-dime issues referenced in the earlier Kevin Drum post are essentially the consequences of "the Left". It was decisions like Griggs vs Duke Power (1970), at the behest of "the Left" that created the credentialing society of today that has so dramatically frozen the less smart, specifically the people that may have other skills but do not have the skills appropriate to getting a degree, out of so many jobs and promotions
- this mindset IS starting to become part of Democratic Party ideology. Look at HR 7024. Yes, 47 Republicans voted no. But ALSO 23 hard left Democrats, who apparently care more about punishing the rich and virtue signaling than about accepting a genuine win for this lowest 30%.
- "the Left" is not exactly synonymous with "US elites". But it's pretty damn close, even more so since Radical Chic was published (in 1970, lest we forget... The US left has been the party of Radical Chic for LONGER than the period from 2017 to 2070...). And it is US elites that have championed cultural changes that while pleasant to neutral for the elites (drugs, divorce, child-care regimes, land use restrictions and building codes, etc) have been unpleasant to catastrophic for this same lowest 30%. Just because someone can't clearly articulate why they support a certain set of cultural values doesn't mean they are stupid or acting against their own interests for supporting those values.
The bill you linked had more support from Dems than Republicans. How this is a problem for the Left, but not a problem for the Right is a bit of a headscratcher.
This post doesnt make much sense. But it reinforces the point that culture war is a driving force for much of the opposition to the Left.
Elites! Contemptous! Supporting a bill that I favor is bad because THE LEFT is VIRTUE SIGNALING!
"Why is the obsession with what *groups* (however defined) get what scores on IQ (however defined)"
Uh, no, that'd be you guys.
Great comment thread. I'll add these. Richard Rorty detailed in "Achieving Our Country" (in 1996!) the costs of the socio-political left's increasing fixation on identity and cultural politics, including (as was noted in 2016) the inevitable rise of someone like Trump. It sometimes may be a moral imperative, it may sometimes be a necessity for a just society, but an endemic focus on identity is inherently divisive, and it's obvious that many on the cultural left cannot escape their convictions of moral goodness, and therefore righteousness and blindness to what's become a self fulfilling prophesy of fighting against the not-good, i.e.. 'evil', other. I see this on the granular level all the time. Rorty’s solution was exactly what Kevin says: an economic populism that lifts all boats and has the unsurprising effects of reducing class and identity resentment. And I’ll go further than Kevin and say that what has long become a self serving, reductive, and reactive posturing by what I believe is a relatively small percentage of the left needs to be kicked to the curb wholesale.
On another level, my personal hobbyhorse in these kinds of discussions is the intentional political marginalization by Clinton-esqe apparatchiks, under the rubric of realpolitik, of America’s rural and non-urban areas. For me the shining example of this catastrophic dividing of the electorate is Rahm Emmanuel when he 86’d Howard Dean’s Fifty State Strategy - which was, remember, a deciding factor in 2006’s Democratic wave election. To my knowledge Emmanuel’s destruction of a Democratic presence in red states has not been reversed, and at this point would take a decade at best to fix. Stupid doesn’t even begin to cover it, but Emmanuel was not alone in his disregard for people who weren’t of any use to his brilliant vision for Democratic ascendancy.
To think that people don’t pick up on this stuff and what it means to their lives is to continue to treat them like they don’t matter. It’s not that race and class aren’t issues. They are. But at least part, and I contend a large to very large part, of why the left in this country doesn’t dominate the socio-political ecology is because of these actions, the underlying values and assumptions they represent, and how they’re seen and understood for exactly what they are by people who may not have Master’s degrees, but are not stupid.
To hell with the working class. I’m a professional. I don’t need them or want their votes. Why do you care?
Back when I was an undergraduate social science major (late 60's), I was assigned a book by Murray Edelman entitled "The Symbolic Uses of Politics". It was a complex book for a 19 year old but it made a last impression on me. Basically the argument was that for most people politics is just a passing parade of symbols. Those who manipulated symbols the best gained power. There is no doubt in my mind that the modern Republican party manipulates symbols far better than the Democratic party. This has very little to do with whose policies will help the most people.
The first one now will later be last.