The Democratic Establishment Thinks the Lesson of This Election Is That the Way For Democrats to Win Over White Voters In the Industrial Midwest Is to Switch Sides in the Culture Wars. I Guess. [Updated.]
The race to be the next head of the Democratic National Committee has quickly turned into a proxy fight between liberals and establishment types about where the party needs to go in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss at the hands of Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Liberals are insistent that Clinton’s defeat was the result of nominating a candidate who failed to excite the party’s base of progressives, African Americans and Hispanics. Establishment voices fret that nominating a liberal to run the party misses the point of an election in which Clinton’s loss can be directly traced to her inability to win over white voters in the industrial Midwest.
“The next DNC chair needs to understand what became painfully obvious in the election — that there are two different Americas and that Democrats are really struggling to bridge the gap between the two,” said Mo Elleithee, a longtime Democratic operative who runs the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service. “The fundamental problem is that the party stopped really communicating what it means to be a Democrat.” …
“This is suddenly a really important gig as one of the centers of opposition,” said one longtime Democratic strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess the DNC race. “You can’t do it part time, and you shouldn’t do it while sitting inside one of the most despised institutions in the country.”
— What the DNC chair race tells us about the fight for the Democratic Party’s future, Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, yesterday
Okay, so there are two groups of Democrats who don’t know that Bernie Sanders won massive numbers of Midwestern and Rust Belt white blue collar and middle class voters in the upper Midwest, including every single county in western and northern Michigan. Or they think Sanders campaigned as an anti-choice and anti-gay-rights Democrat.
One of those two groups—mostly people like Paul Krugman, whose only contact with the Rust Belt and the upper Midwest is occasional trips to Chicago—insisted before the election, and apparently many still do, that no one who voted for Obama would vote for Trump, since everyone who would vote for Trump wanted to Build the Wall and bar Muslims from entering this country. The exception, in the opinion of those who acknowledge exceptions at all, was those who didn’t want a woman president.
The other group, apparently comprising most of the Democratic establishment in D.C.—but definitely not in, say, Michigan or northern Ohio—think the way to win white blue collar Midwesterners and Rust Belters is the same as the way to win them was in circa 1988. It’s not the economy of the Rust Belt and rural and small-town Midwest, stupid.
And certainly not the demise of labor union jobs and labor unions and the takeover of small ag by Big Ag and small business by Big Businesses and the massive economic and political power of Wall Street, and of the (mostly) Republican billionaires and their think-tank, lobbyist, and media juggernaut.
Uh-uh. It’s only elite progressives, millennials, African Americans and Hispanics, who care about those things. And since middle-class and upscale moderates in swing suburbia would be offended that anyone would think they, too, care about these things—as well as such things as tuition-free public colleges and universities and Medicare-for-all—the Democrats absolutely must choose between courting them and courting voters (read: white blue-collar ones) in the industrial Midwest.
Pick one, only one; these are mutually exclusive. see.
The Cillizza article goes on to list and discuss the already-announced or likely candidates to head the DNC. The leading candidate, whose momentum much of the establishment is frantically trying to halt, is Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota. About him, Cillizza writes:
* Keith Ellison: The Minnesota congressman is one of the most visible liberals in Congress. And many people within the party believe that Ellison, as a Muslim American and an African American, is exactly the sort of person the party should put forward to counter President Trump. Even before he has formally announced whether he will run, Ellison has won the endorsements of Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.). The knock on Ellison is that he has a day job, making it impossible to focus full time on rebuilding a party infrastructure that badly needs it. “I absolutely love Keith and think he’s great,” a former DNC senior official said. “But [we] need a full-time organizational leader who gets the importance of the tyranny of data but who also has the skills to negotiate the intersection of blue-collar fears and urban aspirations.”
Absolutely! Keith Ellison’s main strength is as a two-fir identity-politics symbol! As a Muslim American and an African American, he is exactly the sort of person the party should put forward to counter President Trump, many people within the party believe. Although none of those people is Bernie Sanders or is one of his supporters. Or is based in the Midwest or the Rust Belt.
Of that I am sure. Because Sanders, his supporters, and, oh, say, Debbie Dingell, by contrast, think Ellison’s main strengths are that he, like Sanders, is an economics-and-structural-power-issues progressive. And that he’s based in the upper Midwest. A state that’s gone pretty comfortably Democratic for president since approximately forever, but this time did so by one percentage point.
And who, coming from that particular upper Midwestern state, is familiar with the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party—what it is and what its nature and history have been. And why that matters.
This past weekend I read several articles, three or four in the NYT and the Washington Post, showing jaw-dropping data: that in several Rust Belt congressional districts—southeastern Michigan (Dingell’s district), the Canton, OH area, Erie County, PA—there were massive swings from Obama in 2012 to Trump on Tuesday. Percentage shifts in the high teens or low 20s, from +16, or +22 for Obama four years ago to +6 or +2 for Trump.
Another article, in the Times, profiled people in Indianapolis who work at the soon-to-be-shuttered Carrier plant there, who voted for Obama twice and Trump this time.
These are not alt-right folks. Their motivation was neither racist nor xenophobic. And it had nothing to do with any culture-wars issue. Any more than did Sanders’ campaign. Which these voters had supported.
So, no, Mr. Elleithee, the fundamental problem isn’t that the party stopped really communicating what it means to be a Democrat. The fundamental problem is that the party communicated all too well what it has meant in recent decades to be a Democrat.
There are indeed two different Americas. But bridging the gap is as simple as Bernie Sanders found it to be.
Elleithee, as with virtually all the other longtime Democratic operatives, was an ardent Clinton supporter in the primaries.
____
UPDATE: The comments thread indicates that there’s some confusion about what I was saying. So maybe this quote from a Politico article from this morning will clarify it:
Ellison, who is scheduled to speak on a Monday afternoon panel at the DA meeting on the challenge Democrats face in winning working-class votes, has been a leading liberal voice for a form of economic populism that Trump at times channeled more than Clinton.
Hope that takes care of it. Although I guess I shouldn’t expect it to. Ellison was a Sanders supporter in the primaries, meaning that he is an economic-progressive, not a identity-politics, Democrat. Like Sanders. And Warren.
There seems to be incredibly strong resistance to the concept that since the current progressive wing of the Democratic Party is pushing economic and power-structure populism and has nothing to do with the culture wars or with identity politics, and since large numbers of white working class and white suburban middle class voters agree with rather than oppose the progressives’ agenda, there is no conflict between targeting those voters and the so-called Democratic Party base.
The base and the targeted white working class and middle class voters support the same types of things: economic and power-structure populism of the Sanders and Warren varieties.
Sheeeesh.
Added 11/14 at 5:24 .m.
Nope it can’t be saved. Getting the slimy Clinton people out will be like wiping out malaria . It’s time to form a new party of all the disaffected and leave the old guard crony democrats to wither and die.
No, those folks are done and they know it. I just inserted a link to this article from Friday’s Washington Post, that really details it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-identity-politics-couldnt-clinch-a-clinton-win/2016/11/11/ed3bf966-a773-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html
I hadn’t read it until about a half-hour ago, and inserted the link into the First sentence of my discussion about Ellison, after the blockquote about him. It’s beyond devastating. It’s also what everyone except those people could see.
There’s about to be complete takeover of the party. A truly new Democratic Party.
Btw, I love it that the author of that article mentioned the harm that some liberal pundits were doing by mindlessly supporting Clinton without criticism and by constantly attributing to all of Trump’s supporters racist and anti-Muslim motives.
Seriously; we’re about to get a new party. Same as the old one in name only.
Bev, a few days after the election I read an early April issue of the Economist. In it was an article reviewing the political right/populist/nationalist shift in Europe. After reading this article I realized the US was following what was going on over there, and had I read and trusted the article predicting this election’s results was easy.
Pertinent to your article it also pointed out the shifts in parties where the parties struggled with moving further left and right, just as the Dems are currently considering.
For this conservative following an Ellison’s leadership might not be the wisest political move for the Dems. It might alienate even more of the moderates/undecideds.
CoRev, my point is, well, what I just told coberly: Economic populism is popular with a substantial majority working-class and middle-class Americans, and therefore there is no conflict between trying to appeal working class and middle class whites, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Asian-Americans, and millennials of all races. That’s the whole point: that the Dem establishment is only now suddenly realizing that, slowly and like pulling teeth.
There’s actually very little in Sanders’ agenda, with the exception of trade, that moderates don’t support, according to polls. Sanders’ agenda is economic populist, not identity politics.
Beverly
I do not understand your point. Is it your infatution with “irony” or my failure to read closely…
the Democrats war against racism and male privilege has run its course. It no longer answers the needs of today. It may be that there is a high concentration of racists etc in the Republican party. But ordinary workers have learned that screaming “racist” doesn’t get them the better jobs they were hoping for.
Reread my post, Dale. It says exactly the opposite of what you think it says. An article, posted on Politico this morning, says about Ellison, says:
“Ellison, who is scheduled to speak on a Monday afternoon panel at the DA meeting on the challenge Democrats face in winning working-class votes, has been a leading liberal voice for a form of economic populism that Trump at times channeled more than Clinton.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-soros-trump-231313
Maybe it’s just simply impossible for older progressives to understand that the Sanders and Warren wing of the party, which Ellison is part of, believe that economic populism is popular with a substantial majority working-class and middle-class Americans, and therefore there is no conflict between trying to appeal working class and middle class whites, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Asian-Americans, and millennials of all races. That’s the whole point: that the Dem establishment is only now suddenly realizing that, slowly and like pulling teeth.
Bev
okay. i read it again. still not clear, i think it’s because you know more than i do but aren’t saying it.
if it helps, i agree that sanders-warren is the way to go. i’d also suggest, quietly, that downplaying (but not forgetting) the culture wars would be a good idea for these times. unless i am wrong, sanders agrees with me (said, not to co-opt sanders for my case, but to suggest what ‘down playing” means.)
Yes. I just said exactly that, in an explanatory update to the post.
It’s the labor economy, smarties (cut-and-paste again :-])
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, put it: “All these histories are bulls
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, put it: “All these histories are bullshit — I got punched in the chest; that’s why I’ve got a lump.”
Trump;s victory is down to the disappearance of the $800 job for the $400 job. That subtracted from the vote in the black ghettos – and added to the vote in the white ghettos — both ghettos being far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghettos because that is me. My old taxi job (much too old now at 72 3/4) was “in-sourced” all over the world to drivers who would work for remarkably less (than the not so great incomes we native born eked out). Today’s low skilled jobs go to native and foreign born who willing to show up for $400 (e.g., since Walmart gutted supermarket contracts). Fast food strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week (min wage $400, 1968 — when per cap income half today’s).
Don’t expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life time of $400/wk servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was down to 6% of employment 15 years ago — now 4% (disappearing like farm labor, mostly robo; look to health care for the future?)??
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
6% union density at private employers = 20/10 BP which starves every healthy process in the social body = disappearance of collective bargaining and its institutional concomitants which supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes …
… votes: notice? 45% take 10% of overall income — 45% earn $15/hr or less — a lot of votes.
*************************
Progressive states making muscling labor organizers out of an election a felony — just like any other economic crime (the federal law does say that’s illegal) — is the cheap and easy way back. Supplementing federal economic protection (e.g., higher minimum wage) is crying out to be done. Even Bernie never seems to catch on to rebuilding union density is the only way back.
6% private firm unionization is like 20/10 BP — it starves every other healthy process. Even the 6% wouldn’t exist today if they had to start from scratch under today’s run-the-impossible-guantlet organizing conditions.
From there, clear and hold.
Sanders made a major point of saying, again and again, what you say that even he seems not to catch on about. And it’s a big reason why so many Rust Belt Trump voters supported not Trump but Bernie in the primaries and why they would again in the general.
What People Don’t Get About The US Working Class
Joan Williams | Harvard Business Review | 10th November 2016
Class trumps gender in American politics. Sexism worked against Hillary Clinton, but class resentment worked against her far more. “A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. Men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want are steady jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need” (2,300 words)
https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class?utm_source=New+Daily+Newsletter+Subscribers&utm_campaign=4c6e9a08ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4675a5c15f-4c6e9a08ad-81758137
I guess the question is, are you leaving more voters at home by having two very similar parties, or are you leaving more voters at home by having two very different parties. A lot of people stayed home in this election, in an era when most declared republicans and democrats are highly partisan (both in the disagreeing with each other sense and in the turn out for elections because they are disgusted sense).
Secondly, which arrangement is more likely to lead to bipartisan work on legislation.
There are some out there who can and do argue that a far left far right coalition has more in common than the two center parties that refuse to work together.
Maybe we’re best served by a centrist party, a populist party, and a crazy white people party.
With three parties, it would be rare for any party to have a majority large enough to hold the public hostage, on any side.
Well, since I believe the members of the white working class party that voted for Trump have never voted for a Democrat in their entire lives, I cannot imagine why you would care about them(other than caring about working class people in general)
If they voted for Trump, they are racists.
What the Dem Party needs to do is grow a set(figuratively, not literally), though I would settle for just one. And call these people racists, and tell them, every single time Trump hurts the working class, that they were not only racist for voting for Trump, but stupid for voting for Trump because he said he would help them.
Ryan and McConnell will not allow any help to the working class. There will be many examples from which to choose, but in the end it will not affect them. Cause they only had one issue their entire life. And Trump made it OK to say out loud.
Well, since you apparently won’t read the articles I link to or any of the other many published in the last week, or the bald voting data from this election and past ones, you really, really, REALLY should stop saying that you believe the members of the white working class party that voted for Trump have never voted for a Democrat in their entire lives.
I mean, a large percentage of Trump’s voters believe clearly false things, too. But why do you want to mimic them?
Union voters never voted Democratic in large majorities? Your claim is ridiculous.
“Well, since I believe the members of the white working class party that voted for Trump have never voted for a Democrat in their entire lives, I cannot imagine why you would care about them(other than caring about working class people in general)”
EMichael, why do you bother commenting on a post you clearly didn’t read. Beverly gave 3 examples of areas that were won by Obama with double digit gaps in 2012 and this year were lost to trump. Do you think every Obama voter in those areas just decided to stay home this year? Or Trump pulled a huge population of white republicans from these areas to the polls who just happened to have not voted for like 12 years?
Bev,
What you need to do is show me that the voters in all of these elections were the same people.
You can’t do that. No one can.
And I have met many union workers in my life. The white ones were, to be kind, not a rainbow kind of person.
And there ain’t many left out there.
Wisconsin they did stay home or didn’t have their vote counted. That state there is no debate what happened.
They did not, however, stay home on primary day–as I just pointed out to EMichael.
“Do you think every Obama voter in those areas just decided to stay home this year? Or Trump pulled a huge population of white republicans from these areas to the polls who just happened to have not voted for like 12 years?”
Efc
Almost. Not every Obama voter stayed home as can be shown by the returns, but in Wisconsin a lot of them did. But yes about the white voters that turned out.
I don’t know why this is so hard. Here are facts.
Wisconsin had the lowest voter turnout in 20 years. Trump received more votes than Romney.
That should be enough.
Indeed he did. And Bernie Sanders received fully 140,000 more votes in that state’s primary than did Clinton–140,000 more votes than Clinton, in a smallish state that is very predominantly white.
THAT’s what should be enough. After all, Trump as an option for those voters on that very same day.
But should you need more, Sanders received 17,000 more votes in Michigan than Clinton. He did that by keeping the African-American vote for Clinton down to 2-1–it was expected to be about 3-1–and by beating Clinton in every single county other than Wayne (Detroit) and Genesee (Flint).
That was an awful lot of white voters, in order to negate a 2-1 advantage for Clinton in Wayne and, probably, about that in Genesee.
We’re talkin’ some mega-Republican-stronghold counties here.
I just read those statistics–140,000-vote margin in Wisc. and a 17,000-vote margin in MI for Sanders, just a few days ago. And I remember being shocked at the MI counties map the day after the primary.
Also telling: Sanders won the Indiana primary, as well, notwithstanding that a very sizable part of Indiana’s Democrats are African-Americans in Indianapolis and in the Gary/Hammond area.
And also very much was made of Clinton’s large win in the Ohio primary, that primary was on the very last day of the state-primaries/caucuses season. Only the DC primary came later, by a week. Ohio’s primary was on the same day as California’s, and the evening before, the AP reported that Clinton had just clinched the nomination with new commitments from super delegates. Meanwhile, in OH, Kasich, who was still on the ballot, won the Republican primary–although partly because the rest of the vote was split between Trump and Cruz.
In every one of these states, as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Republican and Dem primaries were held on the same day. Both states are heavily white and largely blue-collar. Sanders beat Clinton by 22 points in NH and won far more votes than did Trump. And in Iowa, while Clinton the caucus count by 0.03%, it is pretty widely believed that Sanders won the popular vote–which is why the state party committee, which had supported Clinton, refused to release the popular-vote count.
Maybe soon, they will. I hope so.
So what you are saying is that Sanders voters stayed home and helped to elect Donald Trump.
That’s great, and not at all contrary to my thoughts.
I don’t know how much to blame Hillary herself for campaign advertising decisions, but the platform decided on by Clinton and Sanders contained a mother-lode of economic populist proposals. Just using the platform and the obnoxious history of Republican obstructionism and right wing extremism could have been used for many commercials to work on blue collar workers and millennials. The millenials, after all, embraced Bernie for the substance of his campaign, not his charisma. And yet the campaign abandoned substance entirely and went soley for an anti-Donald flight of advertising.
For a generation, Democratic consultants have failed miserably. We thought it was just Mark Penn, but it obviously goes deeper. A whole new crowd of classical Democrats is needed, and they need to be heavily represented by the Midwest and South, not DC or the coastal enclaves.
The Democrats had a “change” message to sell: put Democrats in charge of it all for a change. Everything good the country has done for ordinary Americans came when Democrats controlled both the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Republicans have been in a position to block legislation for all but a few weeks in 2009. Time to get the obnoxious, toxic, billionaire-serving Republicans out of there.
The Democratic consultants sure blew that one.