A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Permanent Democratic Majority

I very much liked Matthew Karp’s piece at The Nation, largely a review of Teixeira and Judis’s books, The Emerging Democratic Majority and their recent Where Have All the Democrats Gone?. Here’s the quick summary of the latter work:

To examine how and why, Judis and Teixeira have broken Where Have All the Democrats Gone? into two main parts that assert two distinct arguments, each existing in some tension with the other. The first part is essentially historical and offers a detailed review of national politics since the 1960s, with a special focus on the causes and chronology of class dealignment. Here Judis and Teixeira contend, as forcefully as any member of the Democratic Socialists of America, that “neoliberal” economic policies—under presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama—bear the lion’s share of blame for the working-class defections from the Democratic Party.

The second part of the book goes in a different direction. It is prescriptive, with the authors offering plainspoken, poll-tested advice to the Democratic Party today. To once again become “the party of the people,” the Democrats must do more than merely return to the liberal economics of the New Deal; they must also break with the “cultural radicalism” that, Judis and Teixeira contend, continues to alienate working-class voters from the party. Now sounding less like leftist tribunes than centrist op-ed columnists, the authors call for a pragmatic “middle ground” on questions of race, gender, climate, and immigration.

Predictably enough for an author writing in the reliably progressive The Nation, Mr. Karp scoffs at their prescriptions.

But Judis and Teixeira are not edgy cultural conservatives, just unfashionable moderates. They advocate a suite of positions, from anti-discrimination laws to mixed investment in gas, nuclear, and green energy, that might have passed for liberal common sense in the 1980s but promise to win few disciples today.

What follows is a pretty good description of the development of the two parties since the early 1970s. I found the description of recent developments interesting:

Judis and Teixeira think they know why. As organized labor’s strength has declined, its influence within the Democratic coalition, they argue, has been replaced by progressive think tanks, foundations, media outlets, activist groups, donors, and academics. These institutions, which function as what the authors call a “shadow party,” largely reflect the liberal and left-wing values of “young professionals in the large postindustrial metro centers and college towns.”

I think it was Matt Yglesias who characterized this evolution of the party more succinctly as people who contribute to campaigns or work on campaign staffs. This is the kernel of Mssrs. Teixeira and Judis’s prescriptions:

To regain these voters, Judis and Teixeira conclude, Democrats must trim their sails on these subjects and reclaim a middle ground. In the authors’ view, this does not mean altering the party’s basic commitments to civil rights, lawful immigration, and action to combat climate change. But it does involve a retreat from positions that, polls suggest, have put the party at odds with a majority of voters, such as supporting trans athletes in women’s sports or opposing the use of natural gas. It would also mean adopting a more cautious, moderate vocabulary on these and related questions. Rather than heighten the tensions in an unwinnable war of values, Democrats should seek to lower the temperature with bland affirmations of patriotism, simple opposition to prejudice, and a general openness to disagreement.

That leads to the crux of the piece:

Judis and Teixeira can brandish all the polls and surveys they like, but they are proposing a cease-fire to an army that has swept the field: Why should Democrats abandon the culture war when it has yielded them so much fruit?

The Democratic coalition today is built to fight, and perhaps to win, this struggle. It is not built to become a “party of the people,” a vehicle to oppose elite rule, or a force for major economic reform. Insofar as the upper-middle-class Democratic base finds itself pinched or bruised by the reckless march of capital, it may consider mild adjustments to the fiscal or regulatory order; insofar as it wishes to reward the less-advantaged voters inside the coalition, it may support mild increases in welfare spending. But a party that wins 60 percent support from the wealthiest 10 percent of the country and 75 percent support from top earners in business and finance and that claims enthusiastic allegiance from much of the billionaire class will not organize a new New Deal. Its “material interest and social position” simply does not favor a transformation of class power in the United States—or, to say the same thing in different words, a government that can deliver good jobs, healthcare, housing, and education to all its people. To change the world, the Democrats will first have to change themselves

While I hail self-examination I doubt that the party is capable of doing it for a reason alluded to above: the sense of entitlement.

My interpretation of what has happened over the last 50 years is somewhat different, either from Mr. Karp’s or from Mssrs. Teixeira and Judis. I think that the Democratic Party has increasingly become the party of government, which includes not just the civil bureaucracy but public employees’ unions, “progressive think tanks, foundations, media outlets, activist groups, donors, and academics”, and others who owe their livelihoods in whole or in part to government including lawyers, healthcare workers, and even ABC, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. In preemptive response to complaints about my including those last four, there is nothing natural about any of their business models and they could be wiped out overnight by regulation. Their managements are surely aware of that which is why they are acting to prevent that from happening.

The dirty little secret is that government depends on a healthy private sector. It can’t prosper without it. What people tend to forget is that government’s revenues derive from two sources: taxes and what is sometimes referred to as “money creation”. Taxes by their very definition remove money from the private sector, reducing its output. Government redirecting that money inevitably results in deadweight loss. “Money creation” beyond the growth of aggregate product, similarly, takes money away from the private sector.

One might wonder why, based on those sentiments, I am a Democrat. The reason is simple. Anarcho-capitalism does not result in paradise on earth but in “nature, red in tooth and claw” with the strong preying on the weak. I want a prudent, temperate, moderate, non-corrupt government rather than no government at all and the only way I see to accomplish that is with better Democrats.