There’s something that is frequently mentioned but is rarely every defined: the Democratic base. Who, precisely, makes up the Democratic base? That’s the subject that David Edward Burke tackles at the Washington Monthly:
Commentator Jess McIntosch recently described the base quite narrowly. “We all know†the Democratic base is “African-American voters and voters of color,†she said. But activists Page Gardner and pollster Stanley Greenberg think of the base more broadly, as a coalition “of people of color, unmarried women and young people.†Thomas Edsall, on the other hand, has argued that Democrats are effectively three different parties—ranging from “very liberal†and “somewhat liberal,†to “moderate to conservative†Americans—all of which are racially and ethnically diverse.
Not only do these descriptions of the Democratic base vary wildly, but so, too, do theories of how to “excite†or “energize†the base. Progressives like Robert Reich and Michael Moore have argued that candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders are most likely to increase voter turnout because of their transformative plans. As Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’s former chief of staff has explained, “You do the biggest, most badass thing you possibly can—and that’s going to excite people, and then they’re going to go vote.†Others disagree and believe the Democratic base will turn out in droves regardless of who the nominee is as long as Trump is on the ballot.
I would define it even more narrowly. The first and foremost requirement is that you’ve got to show up and vote. That cuts out young people, Hispanics, and black immigrants, of whom the number is increasing. All of those groups vote at lower rates than Democrats, generally.
That leaves two major groups: native-born blacks over the age of 30 and college-educated whites over the age of 30.
That group of blacks is ideologically heterogeneous including both some of the most radically left Democrats as well as the most conservative. Their ideological breakdown is 33% liberal, 40% moderate, 24% conservative compared with 54% liberal, 33% moderate, and 12% conservative for white Democrats.
It has been pointed out for most of the last century how fragile the Democratic coalition is with the interests of different factions in direct conflict with one another but IMO it has never been more so than now.
My point here is that it is darned hard to appeal to college-educated whites and blacks simultaneously. When you throw the Democratic Party’s technocratic leanings into the mix it’s even harder.
Pew Research drew the conclusion from its survey of whether the race of the candidates mattered to voters that it didn’t but I disagree. I don’t have the link handy (Google it) but for 17% of Democrats an all-white presidential ticket would discourage them from voting. 17% reduction in not only enough to make or break a presidential candidate, it’s easily enough to flip the House.
The Democratic party currently is a tossed salad of squabbling tribes with wildly different wants and desires, many of which conflict, with too many garden chefs for their own selfish reasons slicing and dicing and adding more ingredients in order to create even more divisions while simultaneously encouraging irreconcilable absolutist demands. At this point I don’t think even Obama, were he able to run again, could stitch together a winning coalition out of that mess, he’s already too old-fashioned and unwoke for much of the base.
I look at it a bit more charitably. 50 years ago both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party were what is known as “catch-all” parties. Now the Republican Party is much more of a programmatic party and the progressive faction of the Democratic Party is pushing as hard as it can to make the Democratic Party a programmatic party as well. That’s why 40% of voters are independents.
Another way of looking at it is that the Democratic Party has two major wings: a technocratic wing and a populist wing. Typically, academics, progressives, and party apparatchiks (there is overlap) have inhabited the technocratic wing while most of the rest of the party, particularly blacks and local politicians, are in the populist wing. That two-way split is fracturing.
I think that’s a minority of the base. A very loud, frequently angry minority.
I agree with the broad sentiments here, though I think Will Rogers nailed it long ago with his claim to belonging to no organized party. The party just isn’t built like the GOP which is why I think they are wrong to try to imitate the GOP. Running some ignorant, corrupt A-hole worked for the GOP since he was the best they had seen at pissing off liberals (and he was running against the worst Dem candidate in modern history). Once he had the nomination everyone found ways to justify jumping on board. There is a group on the left who want to replicate that with someone who triggers the right, but that group is small enough they cant win and if they somehow did it would alienate a bunch of people.
Steve
That’s a pretty fair summary of the post.
I also agree that the situations of the Democrats and Republicans are not symmetrical although I probably disagree on some of the details.
Democratic base:
Public employee’s unions.
Rush Limbaugh makes the point that national elections are decided by White men. The Democrat base that Burke identifies makes up less than one-fourth of the electorate, and many of them don’t vote. Democrats must attract many White people in order to win, and they do. Because of blacks, Jews, Hispanics and single women, Democrats don’t need a majority of Whites, but they do need a significant minority.
Democrats have another problem that their voters are concentrated in a few states. If California votes are removed from the 2016 total, Trump gets a majority of the popular vote. If New York votes are also removed, he gets a substantial majority. The policy of White displacement and disempowerment will eventually change that. However, we will then have political parties organized on racial and ethnic lines, at least at the state level. Everyone will then votes as blacks and Jews do now, for their own kind regardless on anything else.
Don’t listen to Rush much anymore, but it makes sense that white men, being employed or in charge of their own finances, would be more pro-active and vote every cycle, I know I do. Whereas, Black or brown men, feeling they are at the mercy of political currents, may let it slide.
In the 2018 election black voter turnout was just about within the margin of error of white voter turnout. Hispanic voter turnout was 10 percentage points (20%) lower.
In 2016 there was a bigger gap between white voters and black voters but the turnout for both was higher than in 2018: 65.3 for non-Hispanic whites, 59.6 for non-Hispanic blacks.