This article is part of a continuing series promoting honest self-examination among Democrats.
The Steps To Recovery
The purpose of this article is not to criticize the supporters of any particular Democratic politician or to assign blame to any set of voters. The Democratic Party cannot and will not benefit from such behavior. Every one of us share the blame for what has happened to the party. Blaming others, as good as it may make one feel in the short term, will not solve any problems. In fact, it stands a good chance of making things much worse not only for the blamer’s mental health, but also for the Party and for the country. Those of us who supported Clinton, those of us who voted against her, and those of us who simply didn’t vote, all share the responsibility.
We destroyed Democrats’ power together even if we opposed each other. We’re in a mess that we created. No one else is responsible for it. If we can admit that then we can understand that we have the power to control our fate. If we deny it, then we cede our power to those who oppose us.
We caused our problems, and we have the power to change. There is only one question which should concern us now: Will Democrats continue what they were doing before, or will they change?
It’s time to decide how to clean up our mess.
This article’s intent is to move Democrats along on a path for returning to success for the benefit of our country. To accomplish that, we must undertake certain steps that are common to any disaster recovery plan:
- Perform an honest examination of what our current state is,
- Perform an honest examination of how we got here,
- Establish new and specific goals, and
- Develop a plan for proceeding.
in that order.
Step One: Where the hell are we?
Honesty is required. Pride is of absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
Barack Obama failed as our President. He was the leader of our party, and he led us from having a super-majority to being a powerless minority in government at all levels. Very soon, Republicans will reverse everything that he did, and it will be as if he had never been the President. His legacy will be erased, and Democrats will be left impotent in nationwide government.
Furthermore, it wasn’t the Russians and it wasn’t Trumps’ racist horde that defeated Hillary Clinton. Republican voter turnout did not increase substantially over previous elections. Democratic voter turnout, on the other hand, has tanked. The Party’s policies have driven crucial Democratic voters from the polls. Millions of Democratic voters, who did not vote for Trump, simply decided that she wasn’t worth voting for. Many of them cast votes for other Democratic candidates, but did not vote for her because she represented not what they wanted but what they didn’t want.
Democrats have lost millions more voters since 2008 than Republicans have gained. (The percentage of votes cast for third parties has not changed over the years and is, therefore, irrelevant.) Millions of people who used to vote Democratic simply don’t want to vote anymore.
The result is that Democrats don’t have the votes in Congress or in the legislatures of 33 states to set or even to substantially influence policy. For anything. Anywhere. Sure, there are a handful of states where Democrats can control most of what happens, but that’s about it. Republicans will be calling the shots nationwide.
Democrats are powerless to shape policy and administer laws. They have less political power now than at any time in the last 88 years, when Democrats lost to Herbert Hoover and lost similar control over Congress and the states.
Acceptance of this fact will take many Democratic loyalists some time to accept. A lot of people are afraid and grieving, and productive self-examination in such a time simply is not possible for most homo sapiens. That’s just how we are. But such a self-examination, both individually and as a party, is what we need most.
All is not lost
However, Democrats are not completely powerless. Let’s note another fact: Democrats have total control over what they do with the party and over what direction they choose to take for the future.
Also, Republicans have never left the country better off than when they found it. Their policies have always resulted in disasters, big or small, slow-moving or fast, and there is no reason to believe that Donald Trump and current Republicans will do any different. Therefore, Democrats have an opportunity to regain their strength following what will surely be another disaster cause entirely by the Republicans.
There are other features of our landscape that we should also try to identify, among them being the burning conflict between identity politics and policy that is still smoldering, and the open battles between liberals and progressives. For the time being, however, it’s not necessary that we address such issues as long as we can change the direction of the party with regard to policy. In order to solve those other problems, we’ll probably have to remodel our entire education system, and it will take a couple of generations before any real improvement is seen in those areas. We can try to deal with issues that are facets of our individual characters later — and, hopefully, in the privacy of our bathrooms while looking into a mirror.
So, we know where we’re at: Alone in the middle of the desert, abandoned, powerless, distrusted, and disliked. And we know the question that we must answer:
Why have so many crucial voters fled the Democratic Party?
Step Two: How the hell did we get here?
Identifying historical patterns is one of the most useful ways to learn from history, and in the history of the Democratic Party, there is one pattern that stands out: The party has been losing political power steadily for about forty years. The main question is “Why?”
A Short History of democrats and Labor
(Recommended reading: “The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions In The U.S.”, by G. William Domhoff, 2013. Please do your homework, folks. It has a link to a mobile format at the bottom of the page, and this kind of homework has never been more important. What follows is only a partial summary of a section of that publication, but understanding the longer history of labor is essential.)
Democratic liberals, as well as progressives, had been strong supporters of labor unions for many decades, but support among liberals began to wane in the 1960s. Inflation was a problem of the time, and the unions and corporations developed voluntary guidelines to control it with limitations on wage and price increases. However, while the unions reduced their demands for higher wages, seeking mostly only to match inflation, the corporations continued to raise prices, and inflation was not eased. The traditional Keynesian solution to inflation is to raise taxes on the rich, but the people who controlled the corporations absolutely opposed that solution. Furthermore, they hated the unions, and sought to put all of the blame for inflation on them. The solution they proposed was to raise interest rates which, while it lowers inflation, also reduces consumption and throws large numbers of people out of work. This cost the unions dearly.
There were other problems: Lyndon Johnson needed to pay for the Vietnam War, but he could not raise taxes due to the resistance by the rich. Furthermore, while many Democrats wanted to take actions to protect unions, conservative lobbying groups were successfully fighting those efforts by lobbying the Democratic-controlled Congress and getting favorable rulings from sympathetic judges.
Side Note: Some of the rulings against the unions were later overturned and, in the light of history, some would be now with an impartial view of the Constitution. However, given that judgeships were often political appointments in return for favors, impartiality with regard to judging the law could not always be expected.
Johnson couldn’t afford (i.e., he didn’t have the money) to support the unions in a fight against the corporations because he needed money to fight the Vietnam war, and he needed the support of the wealthy for the war. So he let interest rates rise. As a result, people lost their jobs, and the unions were hurt. Nixon continued that policy, and he executed many other anti-labor efforts, and unions have continued to suffer losses in membership and in the courts ever since. Although they tried to seek common ground and to work with the corporations, they were guided by a principle that turned out to be completely wrong: They thought that the people who controlled the corporations were primarily interested in profits, but they weren’t. They wanted power.
After 1976, and after huge setbacks under the three previous presidents, the unions found an opportunity to repair some of the damage that had been done to them. The unions may have erred in their strategy for getting the legislation they wanted through Congress, but heavy lobbying by the corporation-sponsored organizations put heavy pressure — and lots of campaign contributions — into stopping the unions’ first efforts during the Carter administration. Even though Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, their bills attempting to regain some of the strength that unions had lost to the corporations were either defeated or watered down so much at the insistence of conservative and even some liberal Democrats as to make them anemic. The oligarchs of the time had won the battle, and unions have continued their decline. After Carter, Reagan was able to finally finish off the industrial unions. He was helped by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council: Democrats in Congress, although they still held controlling power, did not stop Reagan from decimating the unions.
The rich used their money to influence policy. The problem then, as it is now, was money in politics.
Liberals’ Shifting Focus
Over time, liberals have steadily shifted their attention away from labor and the middle and lower economic tiers toward higher income people. Thomas Frank (“Listen, Liberal: Whatever Happened to the Party of The People?”, 2016), and Lily Geismer (“Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party”, 2014), both describe a Democratic Party that moved from supporting the working classes toward the professional and managerial classes. Beverly Gage, of the New York Times Book Review, describes their arguments:
Too busy attending TED talks and vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, Frank argues, the Democratic elite has abandoned the party’s traditional commitments to the working class…
Echoing the historian Lily Geismer, Frank argues that the Democratic Party — once “the Party of the People” — now caters to the interests of a “professional-managerial class” consisting of lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, programmers, even investment bankers. These affluent city dwellers and suburbanites believe firmly in meritocracy and individual opportunity, but shun the kind of social policies that once gave a real leg up to the working class.
See Sam Seder’s interview with Lily Geismer here:
Later, according to Jordan Chariton (“Trump's victory over Clinton was sealed 40 years ago”, CNBC, Nov. 10, 2016. Read it!), political reporter for “The Young Turks” online news show,
Bill Clinton saw a fork in the road, and the path to victory was in abandoning working people...
...as Ronald Reagan assumed power and began America's shift to a country based on social Darwinism and "I'm gonna get mine," the Democratic Party, now led by the neoliberal, Clinton-backed Democratic Leadership Council, sat to the side—complicit.
Those working people, abandoned by Democrats, have moved to the Republican Party. Using baldly emotional arguments, Republicans have convinced them that ethnic minorities and the poor are to blame for their economic problems, and that only the job creators, i.e., the rich, can save them. Meanwhile, both Republicans and Democrats implement policies that make their lives worse by moving our national wealth out of their hands and into the hands of the elite.
Last came Barack Obama, promising financial reforms, public health care, reforms to the campaign finance system and the elimination of the influence of corporate lobbyists in government. He was elected in a landslide. While it can be argued that credit for his victory was due largely to the fact that Republicans had just, once again, destroyed the economy, people felt good about voting for him because of what he said that he would do. Soon, however, it became clear that he would deliver on none of those promises and would, instead, proceed with the same neoliberal polices promoted by Bill Clinton. As a result, Democratic voters, feeling betrayed, stayed home in 2010, and Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives. In the 2012 election, almost five million fewer Democrats cast votes for President, while Republican votes did not substantially increase. Those formerly Democratic voters simply did not vote. The same held true this year. Democrats have lost millions more voters than Republican have gained.
We must get them back.
The Shorter Version
Republicans have not been winning elections. Democrats have been losing them. Democrats have been losing elections because they have not been doing what their voters want them to do.
That is how we got into this mess. It wasn’t because any one candidate was terrible. It wasn’t because of Russian propaganda. Democrats created their own demise over a long period of time by losing focus on what made them powerful in the first place: Working to meet the needs and well-being of everyday Americans. Doing that benefited everyone — even the rich who hated the egalitarian policies that made them rich.
If this is, indeed, how Democrats arrived at their current state then solutions to their problems become obvious, and the succeeding steps in their recovery are much easier to understand and implement.
However, until we can agree upon and accept the facts in Steps One and Two, there is no sense in trying to proceed further, and we’re not there yet. Discussion of Steps Three and Four can, hopefully, proceed productively later. Let’s just work on these two for now. There’s a lot left about how we got here that we still need to learn, and expansions or corrections on what has been described here are welcome.
— David Dickinson