The Democrats’ Real Problem
“A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy — twice the percentage that said the same about Trump.”
Greg Sargent, writing in the Washington Post, revealed results of polls and focus groups taken by Democratic pollsters since the election, and the above quote is the over-arching theme; many people who voted for Obama in 2012 switched to Trump in 2016 because they either believed Trump better represented their interests, or opposed Hillary as a candidate. The studies found that over and over, it was clear that the Democrats have lost serious ground with working class whites. I believe there are several reasons for this: First, working class wage growth has been stagnated since the Reagan years, virtually destroying the American dream of a home, a car, and higher education. Second, the Republican noise machine has successfully targeted this group since the early 90’s, blaming Democrats and liberal policies for the working class’s woes.
What’s happened? Well, for one, starting with Bill Clinton, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be dragged farther and farther to the right. As staunch liberals died off, the new generation of Democrats, lead by Clinton, adopted more conservative policies including limiting welfare, don’t ask don’t tell, and DOMA. He took one stab at healthcare reform with Hillary leading that effort which ended in failure. For the rest of his White House days, he was embroiled in scandals, some manufactured but some stupidly self-inflicted.
During those years, the Democrats, rather than being staunch supporters of workers and US industry, tried to walk the fine lines between liberal-moderate-conservative to avoid being labeled by opponents, and stopped defending labor and the Working Joe as Republican policies to push industry and money offshore seriously damaged US workers.
The inexorable slide was slowed a little by the rise of Barack Obama and his populist/social justice agenda. He spoke clearly to the working class, and they came to him by the millions. However, after he was elected, he was effectively stymied in many of his initiatives because of Great Recession as well as the weakness of the Dems and pervasive stonewalling by Repubs. The only significant legislative legacy for Obama was the ACA, which is now threatened with repeal after the Dems were swept out of office in 2016. Now they are thrashing around trying to make sense of the shocking loss in November.
The Democrats ignore these findings at their own peril. The opportunity to make huge gains in 2018 and 2020 are there; all the Dems need do is grasp the message and policies that propelled the party to dominance for the 40 years begun by FDR. They need to reclaim their legacy of being the party of the middle and working class. Until they do that, they will continue to flounder.
It’s time to stop licking wounds. It’s time to acknowledge the mistakes and poor leadership in recent years and get to work.
Jefe, I hate to say it but you are sounding a bit like a Bernie-bot.
Hillary and her advisers but huge trust in the voters to vote on the issues and put out one policy statement after another. The policies themselves did have some conservative paint on them but by and large working class whites would do much better with those rather than what Trump is actually pushing.
One one hand it worked: Hillary got 3M+ more votes than the opponent.
On the other had it did not work: She didn’t get far enough ahead so that Comey’s bit of sabotage could swing the election.
To this day the demographic you are talking about “white middle class” does not respond to policy proposals.
They respond to the media “effectuals” used so relentlessly (sometimes even skillfully) by the right AND center media. Hillary had boring speeches of facts and figures. Trump had hysterical slogans and big cheering crowds and the near total attention of media. How? By lying his head off and pushing the limits far beyond what any normal person would consider decent.
So this demographic doesn’t know what the ACA is, what Obamacare is, what the EPA does, what Dodd-Frank is or any of the rest of it. What they know is: 1) Hillary is the big liar, 2) Hillary is going to tax you to death just like Obama did, 3) She’s going to give that money to lazy shiftless ______ who don’t deserve it, 4) she’s going to let the LBGT community make your kid gay and, of course, 5) they’re coming for your guns. Oh — and 6) something wrong with e-mails.
Sure I would like to see more leftist policies pushed forward. But I see absolutely no evidence that the white working class of today would somehow turn into the FDR democrats of long ago if only we proposed things more liberal than what Hillary ran with in 2016.
1Agree 100%.
BTW, that’s Bill (NAFTA Kid-Third Way) Clinton…sadly, his wife Hillary had many of the same faults and views.
No Democrats since LBJ have done a damned significant thing for average workers or unions.
And any little crumbs thrown out by Obama are being daily swept away by the barbarians now in absolute control, due to his abject failure to solidify and advance the Democratic Party (and ‘brand’).
I’ve watched the formerly pre-eminent US manufacturing base get destroyed over the last 50+ years (I worked some early jobs in it). This destruction could have been avoided with some judicious restraints on the ‘total globalization’ ideas of both Dem and Rep Parties. In the end there wasn’t much difference between Reagan/GHWB/Carla Anderson Hills and Clinton/Obama.
2El Jefe:
3I am a reader here who agrees with much of what you have written over the past year. I was a reluctant Hilary voter but I strongly feel we need to move on regarding her. What is the old saw about fighting today’s war with yesterday’s weapons? Or something to that effect. The future belongs to younger, less white, more open to change people. As to campaign tactics, the Dems need to craft messaging that uses stark contrast imagery to show the effects of Republican policies, and humor. In her effort to sell herself as a competent manager Hilary projected a humorlessness that turned people off. I am not saying go out and do stand-up. There is a middle ground.
Hmmmm
This is a difficult response.
I understand that in order to have a chance to govern wisely a party must first present a candidate for which the party faithful will vote and who will be attractive to uncommitted voters and to the nominally faithful of the other party. In this last election, that was Drumpf. In the two preceding elections that was Obama. I’m not comfortable that to accomplish this the Dem party must move itself toward the other and away from what had heretofore been its core beliefs. I see that as the nacilbupeR have moved further right, so has the Dem. In that sense the conservatives have won the war for the moral soul of the republic. (The brothers Kennedy would hardly recognize 2016 America, let alone be electable in the same ways that they were.)
Regardless of ones feelings for the Clintons, the faithful progressive voter must move on from 2016. Historians may argue the merits or disadvantages of one strategy over the other for years. For the remainder of us, we as a party striving to survive needs to develop leadership and candidates for the next several election cycles, with improvement goals for each cycle.
Sadly it really does come down to winning elections and the Dems have not won either consistently or often for several election cycles.
4I’m sighing a lot these days. I read about that poll. Will have to rely on my grad work in psych to assure you that there will always be a contingent like the one who thinks that Dems are for the rich guys and Trump is not (?????). This contingent is also not likely to believe what is 1.) right before their eyes, 2.) and eating its way up their legs.
5Hate to say it, but you are correct. It seems strange that disenchantment with the Dems would elect slime like tRump, but it did. My son and DIL did exactly that.
6Micr, thank you good friend for occupying that position in the middle ground quicksand that I normally stand where the incoming comes at you from both sides.
Moving forward to win in 2018 and the future, the core values of the Democratic Party need not be abandoned. Little things like equality, reproductive health care choices for women, and whatever else is in the main platform need to remain. What needs improvement is the economic “message.” Ted McLaughlin writes about it extensively, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus cites the numbers, the facts and the issues. Remember how popular Senators Warren is? Read why:
The People’s Budget http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-peoples-budget-parts-3-and-4.html
imho That’s the winning message.
7“working class wage growth has been stagnated since the Reagan years”
8President Reagan, and those who venerate him (Paul Ryan), is the culprit in our misery. Taxes not paid do not create more jobs. Taxes not paid into our freeways and overpasses were used to invest over, over, and over again in Wall Street to reap even more little-taxed income.
“White working class” must be stupid as f*&% to not see what and how the republicans have given everything to the rich while taking everything away from them. Why should the liberal “establishment” have to lie to the people who are never going to vote for them because the democrats don’t exclude the poor, blacks, women, lgbt and other minorities as policy. Why would YOU want them in the party? They’ve trashed their own lives with the decisions they’ve made based on meanness and willful ignorance, they’ve trashed their local communities/states and now they’re willing to burn down the country because democrats don’t come around to lie and stroke their egos. Sure the democrats have to move way farther left but doing things just for the sake of these a-holes who won’t take responsibility for their lives, their actions and the decisions they make is just going to make this country worse. They’re the ones who keep voting into office people who take from the poor & middle class and give to the rich. They’re the ones who are willing to literally cut off their hand as long as the group they hate will have it just as bad. In fact they’ll beg to have their entire arm cut off as well to make sure the “other” will be a dollar worse off. They hate other people more than they love themselves.
9Differences in turnout by white and black voters had a significant impact on election 2016. Nationally, turnout among white voters increased by 2.4% in 2016, as compared to 2012, while turnout among black voters fell by 4.7%.
Given how important black voters are to the Democratic coalition, the collapse of black turnout had a profound impact on Clinton. Nowhere was this more significant than in swing states.
In Michigan and Wisconsin — two key states where Trump won — black turnout actually fell by more than 12 points. Let that sink in, 12 POINTS. How much of this was due to Cross Check and how much to no Obama is open to debate.
As the Washington Post pointed out, “If we changed nothing but the turnout rates of various racial and ethnic groups, in Michigan, the actual Clinton loss by .2 percentage points would have become a victory by 1.5 percentage points. Clinton’s actual loss by 0.7 percentage points in Pennsylvania would have been a 0.5 percent victory. And instead of Trump winning Wisconsin by 0.8 points, Clinton would have won by 0.1 percent. Clinton’s electoral college total would have been 278 votes, putting her in the White House.”
Having said that, A new study from the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic finds that being in fair or poor financial shape actually predicted support for Hillary Clinton among white working-class Americans, rather than support for Donald Trump. I get that this flies in the face of conventional wisdom but it doesn’t appear that economically
disenfranchised voters in the Midwest tipped the election to Trump.
In fact, those who reported being in “fair” or “poor” financial shape were actually 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton than Trump.
Here is where it gets interesting, 64% of white voters without college degrees voted for Trump, while only 32% voted for Clinton and economic anxiety wasn’t their reason for doing so, they liked Trump’s message of protecting the “American way of life.”
White working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and who believed the U.S. needed to be “protected foreign influence” (Presumably this doesn’t apply to Russia), were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share these concerns.While, white working-class voters who favored deporting immigrants living in the country illegally were 3.3 times more likely to express a preference for Trump than those who didn’t.
Here is a particularly telling stat; White working-class voters who said a college education is a gamble were almost twice as likely to express a preference for Trump as those who said it was an important investment in the future. And you wondered why Trump and the a Republicans appointed Betsy DeVoss to dismantle public education! This is their base.
If Democrats lose labor (they have), blacks (they’ve taken significant hits here), Hispanics, and women (they seem determined to), they are done as a party. Respectfully, women are really peeved about all the Hillary bashing that led up to and followed the election. We are peeved that in over 200 years no woman has ever been “good enough” to run this country. We are peeved that as usual, it’s “ALL THE WOMAN’s (Hillary’s) FAULT” that “we” lost the election. I’m calling connerie on that (because mama is reading this).
Don’t shoot the messenger, Susan can vouch for my credentials, I’ve been running campaigns, held minor office, and voted in every election since I turned 18. I’m a grunt who taught this stuff for 31 years. That’s why I know that united we stand and divided we fall – to Trump and his ilk. So sing the Frozen song and “Let It Go.” But while you are doing that you might want to remember that there are a whole lot of women out there, 51% of the electorate, a whole lot of Hispanics, 17%, and Blacks 12.3%. Clearly you can get elected without us but it is a darned site easier to do with us.
10Ever since Ronnie Raygun’s reign of terror wingnuts have been assaulting Dems and unions with the same lies told over and over.
Dems have not been as effective as needed.but workers would still be paid a buck an hour if not for Dems efforts to raise minimum wage and try to protect benefits along the way. What about workplace safety, short work weeks, vacation time, maternity leave, job security, overtime pay, etc. That Dems have done nothing for workers is Bulloney.
Now guess which opposition party has ever lead the fight to take away all these advances?
11It isn’t complicated…Democrats should be Democrats, and not GOP Lite.
12Liberal Democratic policies work on all levels. snacilbupeR policies don’t, but chunks of the population don’t recognize that. Why? It’s not the policies, it’s the messaging.
As Kellybee just said, let’s be real Liberal Democrats, nominate a real, Liberal Democrat, and craft a method and style of messaging that reflects real Liberal Democratic policies.
And get rid of voter suppression with uniform federal laws or a constitutional amendment. Every citizen 18 and older may vote unless incarcerated. Automatic registration with social security card. Etc.
13Hmm. Problem is, none of that is going to happen in Heiltrumpistan. Sessions promote the Voting Rights Act version of equality? You’re kidding, amirite? In other news, there is now hard data that illustrates just how much James Comey actually overstated the late breaking issues with Hil’s emails. It’s in this afternoon’s Washington Post. Not to keep beating a dead horse or anything, but…this is the third time in 17 years the Republican camp has meddled in elections and walked away. One of those attempts was unsuccessful, but TWO of them have worked. So by all means, let’s work on our message, let’s recruit some great candidates-but let’s all get real and admit we have a little issue with our elections and our election coverage that ought to be addressed!!
14Harry Truman said it best. “If you run a fake Republican against a real Republican, the real Republican wins every time.
15Why did 1.8 million voters nationwide leave president blank on the ballots? Could it be they weren’t happy with the choices?
When Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader of the US Senate said:
“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
I knew that the Democratic Party of my mother and father (I’m almost 60) was dead and gone. When the Democrats chose to eschew the votes of Democratic Party members in favor of the votes of Republicans they can no longer claim to be the Democratic Party. The Party can go back to being FDR and LBJ Democrats or they can continue to lose elections and go the way of the dinosaurs. There is no middle ground.
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