Padawanbater2
Well-Known Member
Two truths about the white working class have framed the discussion of American working-class politics for more than fifty years. White workers, as political scientist Elisabeth Jacobs has summarized, are both “substantially more liberal” on economic policy and “marginally more conservative” on cultural issues than more well-off whites. This dynamic left the post–Civil Rights Democratic Party with a choice: move right on race, left on economics, or abandon the working class completely.
Since George McGovern’s landslide loss in the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic Party, under the influence of the neoliberal “New Democrats,” has chosen the final option. Rather than woo white workers with social conservatism or economic populism, the party decided to woo well-off white suburbanites with moderation on both social and economic issues.
Central to the belief that Clinton was sailing to an easy victory was the conviction that educated suburban whites would abandon Trump and his crude racism in droves. Acting on that conventional wisdom, Clinton downplayed economic populism and zeroed in on Trump’s divisive personality and general unfitness for office.
When the votes were counted, however, it became clear that educated white moderates hadn’t flocked to Clinton in anything close to the margins pundits had predicted. Even worse, Clinton’s strategy of avoiding economic populism had the unintended consequence of dampening the Democratic base’s enthusiasm, driving down support and turnout among both people of color and Millennials.
And last month, Will Marshall, one of the cofounders of the Democratic Leadership Council — the preeminent group of neoliberal Democrats in the 1980s and ’90s — joined with other centrist Democrats to form New Democracy, a group that once again aims to stanch the electoral bleeding among working-class whites and further court well-off whites by steering the party right —away from the “distraction,” as Marshall put it, of progressive policies like single-payer health care.
By focusing on the role of white voters in Clinton’s defeat, rather than the failure of the Democrats’ neoliberal strategy, liberal pundits and party leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from Trump’s victory. Instead of debating how to win white workers or doubling down on the misguided strategy of courting upscale whites, Democrats must train their attention on the needs of the working class as a whole.
This doesn’t just mean that the party must retain its concern with racial, gender, and sexual inequalities. It means that Democrats must move beyond vague discussions of diversity and opportunity, and begin committing themselves to fighting for a more substantive justice. It means they must make a real commitment to confronting income stagnation, rising inequality, and the increasing power of the rich in American politics.
Such a politics would not only win back many of the working-class whites who flipped from Obama to Trump this election. It would also increase turnout among Millennials and people of color, enlarging the Democratic base by bringing many low- and moderate-income Americans alienated from politics back into the political system.
Only by prioritizing the working class as a whole, in all of its diversity, can the Democratic Party craft the policies and messages that will create a durable electoral majority.
What Democrats Must Do
Since George McGovern’s landslide loss in the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic Party, under the influence of the neoliberal “New Democrats,” has chosen the final option. Rather than woo white workers with social conservatism or economic populism, the party decided to woo well-off white suburbanites with moderation on both social and economic issues.
Central to the belief that Clinton was sailing to an easy victory was the conviction that educated suburban whites would abandon Trump and his crude racism in droves. Acting on that conventional wisdom, Clinton downplayed economic populism and zeroed in on Trump’s divisive personality and general unfitness for office.
When the votes were counted, however, it became clear that educated white moderates hadn’t flocked to Clinton in anything close to the margins pundits had predicted. Even worse, Clinton’s strategy of avoiding economic populism had the unintended consequence of dampening the Democratic base’s enthusiasm, driving down support and turnout among both people of color and Millennials.
And last month, Will Marshall, one of the cofounders of the Democratic Leadership Council — the preeminent group of neoliberal Democrats in the 1980s and ’90s — joined with other centrist Democrats to form New Democracy, a group that once again aims to stanch the electoral bleeding among working-class whites and further court well-off whites by steering the party right —away from the “distraction,” as Marshall put it, of progressive policies like single-payer health care.
By focusing on the role of white voters in Clinton’s defeat, rather than the failure of the Democrats’ neoliberal strategy, liberal pundits and party leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from Trump’s victory. Instead of debating how to win white workers or doubling down on the misguided strategy of courting upscale whites, Democrats must train their attention on the needs of the working class as a whole.
This doesn’t just mean that the party must retain its concern with racial, gender, and sexual inequalities. It means that Democrats must move beyond vague discussions of diversity and opportunity, and begin committing themselves to fighting for a more substantive justice. It means they must make a real commitment to confronting income stagnation, rising inequality, and the increasing power of the rich in American politics.
Such a politics would not only win back many of the working-class whites who flipped from Obama to Trump this election. It would also increase turnout among Millennials and people of color, enlarging the Democratic base by bringing many low- and moderate-income Americans alienated from politics back into the political system.
Only by prioritizing the working class as a whole, in all of its diversity, can the Democratic Party craft the policies and messages that will create a durable electoral majority.
What Democrats Must Do
