Part I
Part II
Part III
Recently mcjoan had a diary discussing Democratic opportunities in the Mountain West. There has been a lot of focus on the Mountain West as a region of potential growth for the Democratic Party, but I think a lot of it is overhyped, and should be reconsidered.
Looking at it from a purely numerical perspective, the Mountain West (containing Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) offers just 44 electoral votes, while other regions offering the potential for growth for Democrats, the South and the Midwest, have 173 and 124 electoral votes, respectively. The Mountain West has 16 Senate seats, but the South has 28, and the Midwest has 26. The Mountain West has 28 House seats, while the South has 145 and the Midwest has 98.
Because of a scarcity of resources, Democrats to some extent have to pick and choose some of these regions to focus on rather than others. These regions tend to be somewhat different ideologically, though it is generalizing quite a bit to say this. We are generally told the Mountain West tends to be somewhat more classically liberal, or libertarian, on most issues. In the Midwest, we have a strong tradition of prairie populists, Farm & Labor Democrats, and Midwesterners have traditionally been pretty moderate culturally, as opposed to the more culturally liberal or libertarian Westerners. Southerners have a strong tradition of populism, and of being culturally conservative. Logically, then, the most compatible pairing among these regions would be the Midwest and South, on economic populism, so the pragmatic option would be to choose that ideological position since it has the broadest appeal in areas in which Democrats seek to make gains.
The story we are told is that because the Mountain West tends to be libertarian, that we should support Democrats in the region who are less like traditional Democrats- big government, pro-labor, etc.- and support New Democrats in the mold more of Bill Clinton than Franklin Roosevelt. It goes well with "left libertarians" and "liberaltarians" who want to see the party move in that direction.
But the stories we are told do not quite hold up. The Mountain West went solidly for William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic and Populist candidate for president in 1896, along with some of the Midwest and the nearly all of the South. Today's popular Montana Democrats Brian Schweitzer and Jon Tester are often referred to as populists, and New Mexico Democrat Bill Richardson exhibits some of the characteristics of a populist leader, while future New Mexico senator Tom Udall votes solidly as an economic populist in the US House. The West has a populist tradition going back over a century, which continues today.
The populism of Brain Schweitzer, unlike Bill Richardson, is all-encompassing. Schweitzer grew up in a more modest position than many Americans, went to a religious school on scholarship, and cares deeply for "the least and the last", the poorest and underprivileged. He is charismatic and has a big persona, he's loud and audacious, aggressive and controversial. He's widely recognized as a populist. Richardson grew up the son of a banker, went to prep schools, and is close to the New Democrats of the 1980s who advocated an abandonment of traditional Democratic economic populism. His personal characteristics, his audacity, his aggressiveness, his persona, are his populism. His neoliberal policies do not necessarily make him the popular governor he is, it is more likely his populist big personality is the culprit.
It is true that today, the West is growing in population, and will likely see an increase in House seats and electoral votes, so it will be more important. But this growth is not at the expense of the South, rather, it is at the expense of the Northeast and Midwest. The South is seeing some of the highest growth rates from Latino and Asian immigrants and a return of African Americans, so it is gaining ground as well. And with growth, we are seeing the Southern tier of both the old South and the Southwest become more competitive for Democrats.
The Mountain West is not one solid region as the old South was. New Mexico is a mostly Democratic state generally, Democrats are in power and still gaining in Colorado, and are making gains in Montana, Arizona, and Nevada. Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, for different reasons, are still generally out of reach for Democrats, though Utah has a Democratic congressman and Wyoming a Democratic governor. Notably, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada (four of the five states which are pretty good for Democrats) have significant Latino and Native American populations, and these groups, particularly Latinos, are growing at rates outpacing the non-Hispanic white populations. Like African Americans, Latinos (and Native Americans) tend to be culturally conservative, so it has confounded Republicans that they cannot make substantial inroads into the community. At the same time, they tend to be economically populist, like African Americans as well. With New Mexico already minority-majority and many other states heading in that direction, and organized labor possibly on the verge of a major resurgence after the potential passage of EFCA (with many Western states being Right to Work), economic populism may face its own resurgence in the West.
So there may be a case for libertarian populists in the Mountain West, but there may also be a case for more traditionally populist Democrats as well, who would be more in line with economic populist Democrats like Bart Stupak of Michigan, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Robert Byrd of West Virginia. If in Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, we can only elect more libertarian or conservative Democrats, then fine, but we should be able to ride traditional Democratic policies to victory in the rest of the Mountain West, without changing the course of the mainstream Democratic Party significantly.
But there is a possibility of reconciling the various strands of Democratic politics into a more or less coherent platform that could create a third period in which the Democratic Party is the hegemonic national party, and the opposition party is fringe and marginalized, and I'll get to that in a later diary.