A lot has been written about who did and who
didn’t predict the outcome of the 2016 election, based on polls in the weeks
before Nov. 8th. Yes, a very few were lucky and predicted Trump’s
win but the large majority got it wrong. And even those prognosticators who got
it right, provided data to support their prediction, but little, if any,
analysis of why.
One author got it right well before the two
parties had decided on their candidates and without any reference to polling
data. Thomas Frank, in his book “Listen Liberal” (published in March of 2016),
analyses the decline of the Democratic Party as a party of the people from the
1970s down to through the Obama administration. What he does is put this
election in historical context so can we begin to understand, not just this
loss, but the overall decline of the Democratic Party to a point where it has
less political power than at any time since 1928.
Frank’s thesis is simple – the Democratic Party
has gone from the party of the working class (not just the white working class)
to the party of the “professional” class or the party of the 10% (as opposed to
the Republicans who are the party of the truly wealthy, of the 1%). This class,
which the New Democrats see as the agent of change, is composed of highly
educated (i.e., smart), innovative and successful individuals. They tend to be
socially liberal; they are “hip” and cosmopolitan. They believe that
individuals should reap rewards based on merit and that competition will always
lead to the best results.
The latter explains why these New Democrats
have no real use for unions. It also explains why they support charter schools and
NAFTA and TPP. Most importantly, it explains why the Democrats have failed to take
up the banner against inequality; why they have made balancing the federal
budget a more important goal than full employment; why they have bailed out
banks but not home owners who are being foreclosed; and so on.
Frank documents the failure of both the Clinton
and Obama presidencies to take on inequality in any meaningful way. In fact, he
argues that Clinton’s legacy has made the situation much worse for large
sectors of the working class (particularly African Americans) and notes all the
missed opportunities for combating inequality in responding to the Great
Recession during Obama’s 8 years in office.
The basic logic of focusing on the “professional”
class is that they are the rising demographic which supports the social and
economic politics of the “big tent” party. And the working class? They will
have nowhere else to go and so they will follow their “betters” (my word, not
Frank’s) to the polls and vote Democrat. The problem with this is that there
are other options – stay at home (which many, many did on Nov. 8th)
or follow the pseudo populist who promises to return their country to them.
As should be obvious, this has nothing to do
with Citizens United or the need to raise campaign contributions from the uber-rich.
Getting money out of politics won’t affect this basic ideological shift within
the party. Only making the struggle against inequality CENTRAL to the
Democratic Party’s agenda can we begin to rebuild the “party of the people”.
Conclusion: To quote Gary Younge in The Nation,
“The Democratic machine does not need a tune-up—it needs a complete overhaul.”
