the only way that democrats can regain a majority
TPM Cafe blog
By Michael Lind [The New Republic]
From: Politics
Can the Democratic Party regain the kind of majority enjoyed by the New Deal Democrats between the 1930s and the 1960s? Not an occasional bare majority, but the kind of solid, enduring majority that permits the passage of major legislation?
The answer is yes--but only if the Democratic Party ceases to be defined by social liberalism. As a social liberal party with economic liberal and economic conservative wings, the Democrats are doomed to perpetual minority status. As an economic liberal party with social conservative and social liberal wings, the Democrats might have a chance--but only if the social conservative Democrats outnumber the social liberal Democrats in the Democratic Party itself.
Aug 04, 2005 -- 02:48:52 PM EST
First, a word about definitions. By liberal and conservative I mean center-left and center-right, not far-left and far-right. An economic liberal supports welfare-state capitalism, not far-left democratic socialism. A social conservative is a moderate traditionalist with qualms about abortion and gay marriage, not a far-right Christian fundamentalist who thinks that Satan controls the UN and that every unimplanted embryo is a child.
The United States has a right-of-center majority with respect to social issues and a a left-of-center majority with respect to economic issues. The stability of this popular consensus recently has been illustrated by the nearly simultaneous popular rejection of gay marriage and Social Security privatization. Social liberals are too far to the left of most Americans on social issues; economic conservatives are too far to the right of most Americans on economic issues.
This combination of moderate social conservatism with moderate economic liberalism explains the success of the New Deal Democrats and the failure of the party that succeeded them, the Civil Rights Democrats.
The 72 year period from 1932 to 2004 divides neatly into two 36 year periods, with 1968 as the turning point.
During the 1932-68 era the New Deal Democrats were an economic liberal party, with a social conservative wing and a social liberal wing. The social conservative Democrats--white Southern and Western Protestants and northern Catholics--outnumbered the small number of social liberals, most of them northern liberal Protestants and Jews. Even when the racism of many Southerners and white working-class Northerners is factored out, the New Deal Democrats were a predominantly social conservative party. Most New Deal constituencies were not liberal on the questions of abortion, gay rights, censorship, and other issues which were dealt with at the state and local level, so that Roosevelt, Truman, Kenney and Johnson never had to take positions on them.
As a result of the Civil Rights Revolution, the civil rights coalition of blacks with Northern white Protestants, Jews and, increasingly, Latinos replaced the old farmer-labor coalition of the New Deal Democrats. Despite a few holdovers from the New Deal era, the post-1968 Civil Rights Democrats were a new party whose actual precursors were failed Northeastern parties of the nineteenth century: Liberal Republicans, Whigs and Federalists. The Civil Rights Democrats were (and remain) a social liberal party with an economic liberal wing (the pro-union "Old Democrats") and an economic conservative wing (the free-business "New Democrats").
Between 1968 and 2004 the Democrats went from dominating U.S. government at all levels to being the minority party at all levels. Their 36 year downfall was a direct result of the fact that they define themselves by social liberalism. There aren't enough social liberals in the U.S. to sustain a social liberal majority party.
As Al From has pointed out, in 2004 45 percent of American voters identified themselves as moderate, 34 percent as conservative and only 21 percent as liberal.
You need 51 percent to be a majority. That means that a majority Democratic party at the very least must be 30 percent moderate and only 21 percent liberal. The larger the Democratic majority, the less important social liberals would be within the Democratic party.
The "moderate" category is somewhat misleading, since it includes two distinct groups: libertarians and populists, who hold opposite views about everything. Libertarians are social liberals and economic conservatives. Populists are social conservatives and economic liberals.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the only two presidents the post-1968 Civil Rights Democrats have elected, ran as social conservative, economic liberal populists. But once they got elected by appealing to the populist vote, they betrayed the populists and promoted policies favored by moderate libertarians--that is, a combination of social liberalism and economic conservatism. Carter, in power, supported affirmative action and abortion (social liberalism) and broke with the New Deal tradition to push for economic deregulation (economic conservatism). Clinton, in power, defended affirmative action, abortion and gays in the military (social liberalism) and, after the failure of his business-friendly health care proposal, broke with most of his party to promote NAFTA, the WTO, and balanced budgets (economic conservatism).
The populist voters aren't stupid. Twice they were burned by Carter and Clinton, who pretended to be social conservative economic liberals only until they won election and then revealed the Democratic Party in its true colors as a social liberal party in which disagreement about abortion is banned but disagreement about free trade is acceptable. Instead of teaming up with Perot's populists against the economic conservatives, Clinton teamed up with the economic conservatives against Perot's populists. Clinton echoed the economic conservatives, announcing: "The era of big government is over." This was so far from being true that Clinton's successor George W. Bush, doing a reverse Clinton (that is, betraying the economic conservatives to side with the populists), presided over the biggest expanstion of socialized medicine in the U.S. since Lyndon Johnson, in the form of the Medicare drug benefit.
Many "New Democrats" and "neoliberals" approved of Clintonism, on the grounds that instead of reaching out to working-class white populists the Democrats should reach out to upscale libertarians who support choice and free trade. In one respect, this strategy succeeded. In recent elections, the Democrats have been gaining more and more of the socially liberal, economically conservative professional and managerial elite.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, working-class white populists with a high school education greatly outnumber elite professionals in the U.S. electorate. Some Democrats hope that Latino immigration will boost the Democrats into majority status. But Latinos tend to be social conservatives, and are likely to vote more like white populists than like loyal black Democrats as they assimilate.
Given the large number of populists and the small number of libertarians, a liberal-populist alliance can defeat a conservative-libertarian alliance--but a conservative-populist alliance, of the kind found in today's Republican party, can easily defeat a liberal-libertarian alliance, of the kind found in today's Democratic party.
All of this means good news for Democrats and bad news for social liberals.
The good news for Democrats is that they can regain the majority if the now-dead Civil Rights Democrat coalition of 1968-2004, a coalition of social liberals who agreed to disagree about economic issues, is replaced by something like the New Deal coalition of 1932-68, a coalition of economic liberals who agree to disagree about social issues.
The bad news for social liberals is that in a Democratic majority defined by economic liberalism the social liberals would be the minority in their own party and the socially conservative, economically liberal populists would be the majority. Not only would social liberals have to welcome back pro-middle-class-welfare-state social conservatives to the Democratic party, but also they would have to consent to being the junior partners, as in the New Deal era.
Social liberals can be the minority in a majority party. Or social liberals can be the majority in a minority party. But social liberals can't be the majority in a majority party--not in the United States, not in the foreseeable future. There just aren't enough social liberals in the American electorate.
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