This is I guess the Democratic version of make America great again. The New Deal wasn't universal in its application. And the reason it fell apart is similar to the reason that means testing doesn't go down well with a lot of white voters.
A long excerpt from a 2008 working paper by Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz.
An alternate
view. Blacks were also moving into the (still super racist) Democratic party started in 1936 when FDR
won the majority of the black vote and not just with LBJ in 1964 as it's often implied, for example, which goes against the weirdly common 2016 idea that somehow most black people are opposed to these types of ideas because it's "class-only leftism".
In addition, though it wasn't the majority,
plenty of white and/or manual labor folks still voted Democrat in 1976 so it's not like it completely dropped off a cliff because of burning bras. Of course, some of them went to Reagan in 1980, but it's not like Carter did anything to actually keep them in the first place (at best,
Carter ignored union support, and at worst, actively fought against them), and Carter also presided over a bad economy. So some people went to Reagan, but a lot of them actually just stopped voting.
So I don't think the slide of Democrats and certain white voters away from strong class politics and unions was some sort of unavoidable result of their embrace of feminism/antiracism. Democrats, especially starting around 1976, actively embraced...oh my god...I'm gonna say it...guys don't hate me...neoliberalism (
that totally made up term that only started being used by Berniebros in 2016), and they weren't just forced into it. I could see an argument that it was maybe electorally necessary to do so in the 80's and 90's, but I don't see that as very convincing in 2016, post housing crash, post economic crash, post Trump, etc.
For example, this statement:
The uncomplicated commitments to government spending, economic regulation and labor unions that had defined the Democrats progressivism for over thirty years suddenly provided little guidance for dealing with an explosion of potential new constituencies for the party. Their demands for equality, and for a better, as opposed to merely richer, life were starting to redefine what progressivism meant and the Democrats had to struggle to catch up.
Seems to frame "commitments to government spending, economic regulation, and labor unions" as somehow
inherently in opposition to feminism and antiracism, even though there's
no reason to assume
that's true.
What seems more likely is that the Democratic Party either
failed at connecting labor unionism and antiracism/feminism, or they ignored or fought against unionism and other typically "leftist" policies in the
pursuit of a different electoral coalition. Even now, when there are unions composed of women and/or people of color, the Democratic Party may feature them on a random issue page as a token measure of support, but are hesitant (or simply just don't know how) to actually build a campaign around those workers and their views (which is probably why "middle-class" as a term has become so common in political speak, as opposed to "working-class") and why there's still this obsession with the mythical "moderates and centrists" as opposed to trying to win, I dunno, the
masses of people that don't vote.
And this statement:
And indeed that turned out to be the case with the nomination and disastrous defeat of George McGovernwho enthusiastically embraced the new direction taken by the partyin 1972. McGoverns commitment to the traditional Democratic welfare state was unmistakable. But so was his commitment to all the various social movements and constituencies that were re-shaping the party, whose demands were enshrined in McGoverns campaign platform. That made it easy for the Nixon campaign to typecast McGovern as the candidate of acid, amnesty and abortion. The white working class reacted accordingly and gave Nixon overwhelming support at the polls, casting 70 percent of their votes for the Republican candidate.
Ignores that Nixon was working under a better economy that he could take credit for
in addition to the usual Southern Strategy stuff. And another obvious point, but not all white working class live in the South, so there's that as well. And as linked earlier, a relatively higher percentage of white voters voted for Carter 4 years later, so it wasn't exactly an instant and permanent loss for Democrats. And another obvious point, the political environment in 1972 isn't the same as the political environment in 2016.
As a general note, I guess this is where I'm confused. A lot of comments and arguments I've seen basically seem to boil down to this sort of fatalism: "The New Deal wasn't universal in its application...and means testing doesn't go down well with white people in 1972...so let's push for more means-testing in 2016 and hope enough white people die off so that their vote no longer matters as much?" That's an admittedly crude representation of the usual "demographics" argument, but that seems to be the underlying implication of that typical form of politics.
Why doesn't "Let's take the positive universal ideas of the New Deal, but this time, be genuinely committed to it being universal in its actual implementation" not seem to even be on the table? Do people just not think that kind of politics is possible due to the behavior of individual white voters in Ohio?
Or do people think the usual Democratic policies proposed nowadays are actual successors to the ideas of the New Deal and are already good enough? I guess that's where I'll have to agree to disagree...
(And this isn't even getting into the common framing I've seen where it's implied that the "good, non-racist whites" now all vote Democrat, and the "bad, racist whites" all vote Republican.)
Sirpopopop said:
The phrase, "Define far left" has been invoked so many times that I think the very fact of using that phrase should indicate the person who invoked it is far left.
I mean sure, I would probably be considered "far left" by a lot of people. That doesn't really bother me
Though I notice that a lot of people who throw out "far left" just assume that the definition they have in mind 100% applies in all cases or that individual citizens have a perfect conception of what it means to be left/center/right. It was "far left" 10 years ago to support gay rights, and now it's considered "obvious" by a lot of Democrats and gay marriage is now the law of the land that a relatively conservative Supreme Court agrees with (though in some respects, you can argue that gay marriage is a fundamentally conservative view as policy, even though it doesn't map to our current electorate in that way). It was considered "far right" to try to do anything negative to Social Security, yet Obama spent part of his time trying to reach a "Grand Bargain" on it and cut some benefits. Cutting welfare benefits was something that right-wingers would dream about, but a "left" president supported and signed it into law. A lot of self-identified conservatives praise Medicare and Social Security which were also "far left" ideas at one point. Marijuana legalization was often considered "far left". Or was it libertarian, which is "far right"? Either way, it's increasingly gaining support in many states.
So that's why I always wonder, maybe just saying something is "far left/right" doesn't necessarily map 100% to a position's political success, or who will ultimately support it, and there are a lot of other (arguably more important) factors at play? Republicans sure don't let that stop them, so it's weird to see liberals actively shrink from it, even though they have a far more moral and political case for left "extremism" (I use that term loosely, since we're not exactly talking about
communism and seizing the means of production here).
Is the ACA "far left"? Republicans certainly paint it that way, because it's politically useful for them to do so, but in the grand spectrum of political imagination, it obviously isn't. The ACA is "far left" within the context of Democratic/Republican party politics in 2016, sure, but this obviously isn't a static thing. So why should we pretend like "far left" is some universally agreed upon thing that can never be changed?
dramatis said:
I feel like something that people never understand is how minorities and women are not mainstream or establishment or whatever label you would like to give them in the government. They never acknowledge the extra work minorities and women have to put in to be equals, and they never apologize for the smears.
I guess if you want to be technical, her
actual viewpoints and policy ideas that she holds are well within the mainstream of Democratic 2016 viewpoints. The entire premise of her candidacy is that she knew the system and how to get things done within it, and her views won't rock the boat too much. In addition,
Only 8% of Democrats had no opinion of her or didn't hear of her at the start of the primaries. She often ran with a message that she would continue the previous 8 years of policy from the current president of the United States. She's been a known figure in national politics for 20+ years. That all seems pretty solidly mainstream.
I don't know why you're turning that basic observation into the idea that I'm somehow criticizing her hard work in the past. Any sexism she has to deal with doesn't somehow invalidate the fact that she's still a mainstream Democrat. Will Smith is still a mainstream actor even if #oscarssowhite. Obama is still a mainstream Democrat even if he has to deal with racism from right-wingers. They lack privilege in some areas, but hold a ton of privilege in other areas. Intersectionality!
