This is the fourth post in my series on the problems and future of the Democratic Party.[1] The last post in this series said that the Democratic Party is based in the patrimonial middle class. How does the make-up of the party affect its political character?
Our Party’s Concerns Are Those of Its Base
The Democratic Party inevitably reflects the concerns of the
people who make up its base. We members of the patrimonial middle class mostly do not think in terms of class, and so, we do not see class oppression. We do see
racial and gender-based inequity, and we see them mainly in the light of our own experiences, and the experiences of
people we know. We are most passionate about the problems that we know about from these sources. We are also passionate about issues that arise from disgusting public events like the murder of George Floyd.
We Are Passionate About Abortion Rights but Not About a National Health Care System
We can see the effects of our experience by comparing our
weak support for a national health care system with our extremely strong
support for abortion rights. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs
decision galvanized the Democratic electorate. Millions of Democrats who
had been politically inactive became activists. Democrats won political offices
in what had been Republican districts, and recently in Ohio, a referendum that
would have made it more difficult to change Ohio’s restrictive abortion law was
defeated. In contrast, when Bernie Sanders proposed “Medicare for All,” the
reception among Democrats was lukewarm at best. Similarly, when Pres. Obama
proposed the Affordable Care Act, he was able to pass it through Congress, but
there was no broad outpouring of support for it in spite of the fact that illness is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in our country, and the cost of health care keeps millions of women, blacks and whites in poverty.
Why is the support for abortion rights so fervent, while the
support for a national health care system is lukewarm at best? Could it be because
we know that we, our daughters or our sisters may well need abortions? Could it
be because we see that restrictions on abortion affect us directly? A national health care system would have no
such direct effect. Most of us already have health insurance. We do not need a
national program.
We Are Passionate About Women’s Rights but Not About the Plight of Working-Class Women
Democrats have also supported the women’s movement mainly from
a middle-class point of view. We talk about the “glass ceiling,” and articles
are published about the number of women who are CEOs of major companies. We
encourage our daughters to study STEM fields in college. We abhor sexual
harassment because our base includes millions of business and professional
women who have experienced directly the things that are described in a recent
article about pervasive
sexual harassment in a national real estate association. We are passionate
about these issues.
On the other hand, we are not nearly as passionate about
affordable housing, although the cost of housing keeps millions
of women in poverty. In fact, many of our members are strong supporters of the
zoning laws that are among the largest obstacles to affordable housing. We are
not passionate about affordable childcare, either, although the
cost of childcare, like the cost of housing, keeps millions of women in poverty. In short, we are passionate
about the obstacles that women face because they are women, but we are not nearly
as passionate about the ones they face because they are working class. We do
not focus on redistribution of income.
We Are Passionate About Racial Equity but Not About the Plight of Working-Class Black People
Our approach to issues of racial equity is similar. We care
deeply about the number of black people who are admitted to elite universities
and about the number of black people who are heads of major companies. We are horrified by the repeated killing of black people by the police. We work for “inclusion,” and we raise our consciousness on racial issues by
reading books like White
Fragility or How to be an
Antiracist.
On the other hand, we do not work hard for major increases in tax
funding for public universities, although black
people on average carry much more educational debt than white people. We do
not support – or even know much about – Darrity and Hamilton’s proposal
for “baby bonds” to reduce the wealth differential between rich and poor
people, although black people would be major beneficiaries of such a program. Black
people would also be major beneficiaries of affordable housing, but as
mentioned above, we do not support that strongly either. In short, we are
passionate about the problems that black people face because they are black but
not about the problems that they face because they are working class. We do not
focus on redistribution of income.
Our Party Has Good Ideas, But We Do Not Promote Them
Our party does not lack for redistributive ideas. Democratic
leaders like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders have made a number
of redistributive
proposals, but they have not generated the kind of grass-roots enthusiasm
that would be needed to turn them into major planks in the Democratic platform.
In my local party's office, I do not hear redistributive policies being discussed. I do
not read about such issues on Facebook. I do not see opinion pieces discussing
them in the New York Times or the Washington Post. In short,
there is no national effort to explain how such proposals would benefit working
people of all races; there is no national effort to show how such proposals are
rooted in basic, American values; and there is no national effort to build the
kind of coalition that would make the passage of such proposals possible.
We Have Allowed the Republicans to Claim to Represent the Working Class
Our failure to unite around redistributive policies that could benefit everyone has left the white working class without a home in the Democratic Party, and the Republicans have not hesitated to use racism, xenophobia and hatred of cultural elites to build a fake populist movement to attract votes to their candidates. The movement is fake because it offers no real solutions, but it does channel working class anger in a way that helps to elect Republican candidates.
We Can Do Better
We do not have to sit passively and allow the Republicans to claim the white working-class vote. If we offered real solutions to working-class suffering, we would be able to draw many working-class people to our party. Some would continue to prefer racism and xenophobia but many others would see which side of their bread was really buttered. We can win if we remember what a party of the left is really supposed to do.
The last article in this serious will suggest some things
that we might do going forward to build a coalition with a real chance to enact
redistributive policies.
[1]
The earlier posts in the series may be found at Fox
Cities Progressive: The Party of the Patrimonial Middle Class, Fox
Cities Progressive: How We Stopped Thinking About Class in Politics and
No comments:
Post a Comment