Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a baffling and potentially harmful opinion piece by two history professors, Lily Geismer and Michael Lessner, titled “Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn't Worth the Cost.” In short, they argue that affluent suburban districts, if they elect Democrats, are likely to elect centrists who won’t pass the kind of progressive legislation that will adequately address economic and racial inequality. The short-term benefits of winning races in those districts, they say, will eventually be outweighed by the long-term harm created from a Democratic congressional caucus that’s too heavy on economic elites and not enough “real Americans.”
I’m going to propose a counterargument that may blow some minds with how off-the-wall it is: Maybe Democrats should contest as many races as possible, and try to win elections in as many places as possible, regardless of income, education, or race. There are different aspects to the Democratic agenda that can appeal to different types of people, and historically, electoral success for one party or the other has generally relied on putting up a big tent that can house a broad coalition capable of earning and sustaining a majority.
Moreover, this isn’t the right time to be writing off any seats or any capable Democratic candidates because they’re too hot or too cold. Given the existential threats to American democracy currently posed by those in charge of Washington, DC, I can’t even imagine the level of detached privilege that would lead one to say that we shouldn’t try to target some of the seats that are likeliest right now to fall into our grasp, and instead focus on the groundwork for a purer and more perfect party at some point in the future.
But even beyond the “well, duh” aspect of needing an all-hands-on-deck majority now to reverse the nation’s slide toward moronic authoritarianism, Geismer and Lessner’s article seems unaware of who lives in these affluent suburbs, who they currently elect, and who’s running to represent them. Their article does cover its historical bases very well, in terms of how we got here—they accurately recount how the suburbs were the destination for white flight, especially against the backdrop of the busing fights in the 1970s, and how Bill Clinton’s turn toward the center in the 1990s was instrumental in getting some of these suburbs into the Democratic column in the first place—but it seems to be all history, with little awareness of the present.
Who lives in these suburbs?
For starters, there’s been a lot of recent research showing that college-educated whites (presumably, the authors’ vision of who lives in these affluent suburbs) are now somewhat more liberal in their policy preferences than non-college-educated whites. This is a reversal from, say, the mid-to-late 20th century. You can see this if you look at the changes in county-level election results over the decades, broken out by education level. You can also see it if you look at long-term studies that track the electorate’s views over time.
Researcher Sean McElwee has been one of the main proponents of this line of thought; he’s used data from the American National Election Studies (a long-term polling project conducted by political scientists that asks a battery of demographic and policy questions) to show that college-educated whites are now more liberal on questions about progressive economic policies than non-college whites are.
For instance, college-educated whites answer “yes” at a higher rate to questions like “Favor millionaires’ tax,” “Government should reduce inequality,” and “More regulation of banks.” Similarly, Democratic primary voters have become significantly less racist in the last decade: The number of Democrats who “strongly disagree” with the proposition that “If black people would try harder, they could be just as well off as whites” shot up between 2008 and 2016.
Part of this shift may have to do with the decline of organized labor. The votes of non-college whites’ were easier to round up when they had the opportunity to hear economic progressive priorities discussed in the union hall, and peer pressure from shop floor buddies certainly helped with voter “discipline.” Without that influence, more and more non-college whites are left with Fox News and conservative talk radio.
But part of the change may also have to do with “negative partisanship.” Most political scientists will point out that, contrary to conventional wisdom, voters don’t generally start with their own rational policy preferences that make sense based on their own economic positions and find the appropriate party from there.
Instead, most people join parties based on cultural cues and their peer networks, and they backfill their policy preferences from there, based on what their team (i.e. their party) is doing. Affluent suburban voters who are already leaning toward the Democrats for cultural reasons, such as their views on abortion rights or same-sex marriage, may well be taking cues from the party’s leadership and pundits on other matters, and their preferences are moving left on issues like health care, redistribution of wealth and racial issues, just as the party’s center of gravity is (haltingly, I’ll admit) moving left, too.
Who represents these suburbs?
Next, let’s take a dive into House membership and see who actually represents these affluent suburban districts that are allegedly full of conservative whites ready to drag Democrats to the right. As a benchmark, let’s look at the 20 suburban congressional districts that have the highest median household income, according to the Census. These districts (in order of income) are:
| DISTRICT |
SUBURB OF |
REPRESENTATIVE |
PARTY |
DISTRICT |
SUBURB OF |
REPRESENTATIVE |
PARTY |
| CA-14 |
San Fran. |
Jackie Speier |
(D) |
MD-08 |
D.C. |
Jamie Raskin |
(D) |
| CA-15 |
San Fran. |
Eric Swalwell |
(D) |
NJ-05 |
NYC |
Josh Gottheimer |
(D) |
| CA-17 |
San Jose |
Ro Khanna |
(D) |
NJ-07 |
NYC |
Leonard Lance |
(R) |
| CA-18 |
San Jose |
Anna Eshoo |
(D) |
NJ-11 |
NYC |
Rodney Frelinghuysen |
(R) |
| CA-33 |
L.A. |
Ted Lieu |
(D) |
NY-03 |
NYC |
Tom Suozzi |
(D) |
| CA-45 |
L.A. |
Mimi Walters |
(R) |
NY-04 |
NYC |
Kathleen Rice |
(D) |
| CT-04 |
NYC |
Jim Himes |
(D) |
NY-17 |
NYC |
Nita Lowey |
(D) |
| IL-06 |
Chicago |
Peter Roskam |
(R) |
VA-08 |
D.C. |
Don Beyer |
(D) |
| MA-04 |
Boston |
Joe Kennedy |
(D) |
VA-10 |
D.C. |
Barbara Comstock |
(R) |
| MD-05 |
D.C. |
Steny Hoyer |
(D) |
VA-11 |
D.C. |
Gerry Connolly |
(D) |
First things first: Fifteen of these 20 districts are represented by Democrats. Five are represented by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus: Khanna, Lieu, Beyer, Raskin, and Kennedy. Khanna and Raskin, in fact, are literally the two most progressive members of the House, at least based on their Progressive Punch scores for the current Congress. Four more of the representatives from these districts aren’t CPC members but still have very good voting records that put them at or to the left of the midpoint of the Democratic caucus: Eshoo, Swalwell, Speier, and Lowey. Together, that’s nearly half of the 20 most affluent suburban districts.
Another six districts are represented by Democrats whose records are somewhat less than stellar from a progressive point of view: Suozzi, Connolly, Gottheimer, Rice, Hoyer, and Himes. But even these Democrats, for the most part, tend to stick with the herd on the really important votes. For instance, Gottheimer, who has probably the most problematic record of these six, and who represents a wealthy New Jersey district that’s home to lots of financial industry employees, still voted no on the recent GOP bill to roll back some of the Dodd-Frank Act’s regulations on Wall Street.
Finally, five of these districts are represented by Republicans: Comstock, Frelinghuysen (who is retiring), Lance, Roskam, and Walters. All of these seats are either tossups in the November midterms or lean toward Democrats. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if all five of these seats end up in Democratic hands next year. Moreover, in some of these seats, the Democratic candidate is on the progressive side of the ledger: For instance, the party’s nominee in California’s 45th, Katie Porter, is a supporter of single-payer health care.
Who’s running in these suburbs?
Next, let’s turn to the House districts that the Democrats are actually targeting in the 2018 midterm. For this, I’m relying on the DCCC's current list of 43 “Red to Blue” candidates they’re emphasizing. While this list isn't perfect—and it will certainly change—it does a pretty good job outlining the shape of the midterm battlefield.
It turns out that slightly over half—22—of these targets are districts where the median household income is lower than the 2016 national average of $57,617.1 In other words, the whole notion that the Democratic establishment is only targeting affluent suburban districts and flushing more rural blue-collar districts down the memory hole is a straw man par excellence, one that’s not borne out by even the slightest amount of research.
For instance, the list includes a number of districts with below-median incomes but sizable Latino majorities, like California’s 21st, Florida’s 26th, New Mexico’s 2nd, and Texas’ 23rd. It also includes a number of districts with a mostly white, mostly non-college electorate where the Democratic vote fell off in 2016 but, based on the kinds of places where we’ve been seeing the best legislative special election results this cycle, seem poised to roar back into the Democratic column. That includes places like Iowa’s 1st (Davenport and Dubuque), Illinois’s 12th (rural southern Illinois), Michigan’s 7th (rural southern Michigan and blue-collar suburbs), New York’s 22nd (Utica), and Ohio’s 7th (Canton).
Of those 21 seats where household income is above the median, only 15 are also home to an above-average percentage of white residents—the kind of districts that Geismer and Lessner apparently have in mind when they talk about white flight.2 And even in several of these districts, the Democratic nominees don’t look anything like the elitist technocrat stereotype.
For example, the Democratic nominee in Illinois’s 14th is an African American registered nurse, Lauren Underwood, who’s running a healthcare-centered campaign. It also includes Wisconsin’s 1st (Paul Ryan’s district), where the DCCC’s preferred candidate is tough-talking ironworker Randy Bryce, probably the furthest thing from what Geismer and Lessner are visualizing.
The other six affluent suburban districts on this list may have high incomes, relatively speaking, but they also showcase greater-than-average diversity than the country as a whole.3 California’s 39th district is an extreme case in point: It’s an well-to-do part of Orange County that ranks 39th nationally for median household income and 67th in college attainment, but Latinos make up a 34 percent plurality of its population, while 31 percent identify as Asian-American and just 28 percent are white.
Geismer and Lessner, to their credit, do mention that the nation’s suburbs, even the affluent parts of them, are becoming dramatically more diverse than they used to be. But that makes the call to de-emphasize the nation’s affluent suburbs even more off-base: These affluent suburbs are becoming much bluer in large part because they’re becoming so diverse so fast, with so many non-white voters—many of whom are also college-educated—moving in.
The Latino and Asian voters in California’s 39th District, for instance, aren't there because they white-flighted it out of the cities, and they certainly don't feel like the Republican party's racist dogwhistling has much to offer them. Maybe Geismer and Lessner have in mind only wealthy, mostly white GOP-held districts like New Jersey’s 11th and Pennsylvania’s 6th, but that’s only a small part of the congressional battleground and we shouldn't pretend as though it’s the dominant bloc in the new Democratic coalition.
Conclusion
Finally, I wanted to turn my attention to a particular passage in their article, one that a lot of readers latched onto as a good one, and which, I agree, is spot on, in diagnosing a certain class of affluent voters:
Democrats cannot cater to white swing voters in affluent suburbs and also promote policies that fundamentally challenge income inequality, exclusionary zoning, housing segregation, school inequality, police brutality and mass incarceration. The political culture of upscale suburbs revolves around resource hoarding of children’s educational advantages, pervasive opposition to economic integration and affordable housing, and the consistent defense of homeowner privileges and taxpayer rights.
Let me share a little about my own life: I live in north Seattle, which is an affluent and mostly white part of town; it’s not “suburban” to the extent that it’s outside the city limits of a major city, but it’s mostly single-family residences, and an East Coaster dropped randomly in north Seattle would visually infer that she’s in the “suburbs.”
North Seattle is also absolutely rife with these very problems: the hoarding of children’s educational advantages, opposition to affordable housing, consistent defense of homeowner privileges. It’s the same problem that’s an even bigger crisis in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and rears its head in, say, West Los Angeles and Portland as well. As one observer noted, “Upscale liberal whites ‘who consider themselves committed to racial justice’ tend to be NIMBYists when it comes to their neighborhoods … not living up to their affordable housing commitments and resisting apartment density around mass transportation stops.”
And yet, this part of town gave 80 to 90 percent of its vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election; I’m represented by Pramila Jayapal, who’s a Progressive Caucus member, who Progressive Punch rates as one of the 10 most progressive members of the House, and who’s been in the news lately for seeking to aid asylum seekers. Aside from maybe West L.A., north Seattle may well be the largest monolith of progressive white voters in the country, at the same time as it’s a hotbed of Not-In-My-Backyard privilege.
What gives? My supposition is that many of these progressive-but-not-progressive voters view their preferences in national politics—where they understand they’re fighting against an anti-science, anti-reason, and simply racist collection of would-be oligarchs—differently than their preferences in local politics—where they’re more invested in protecting what they incorrectly view as scarce (their home equity, their kids’ access to high-quality education). Their battles over what happens at the planning commission and at the school board are largely mentally separated, for them, from what happens in Congress and the White House. They can hold both beliefs in their head at the same time and still view themselves as progressive.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't challenge those ostensibly progressive voters on how problematic their preferences in local politics are (and be open to challenges to our own positions as well); some of them, for instance, might simply never have had explained to them the connection between NIMBYism, exclusionary zoning, and the way that economic and racial privilege reinforces itself. But if we're going to keep everyone out of the tent who isn't already a full-blown progressive on every issue and policy within the pantheon, without believing that they have the capacity to learn more and to change, then we're not likely to elect a large enough majority to ever achieve any of those policies in the first place.
So … are people who’ve won the housing lottery via either privilege or simply by virtue of having gotten there first, but who are generally progressive in their values and policy preferences—who, at the national level, want a more equitable tax system, who want a higher minimum wage, who want more government involvement in providing health care to everyone, and above all, who want a non-embarrassing, non-threatening president, but who are NIMBYish in their beliefs about their own neighborhood—to be welcomed into the big tent, even though they’re imperfect? Or are they to be cast aside in pursuit of a Democratic Party unicorn that looks more like the one of old—when, it should be pointed out, they repeatedly lost presidential elections, under the banner of fellows like Adlai Stevenson, Walter Mondale, and George McGovern? I know which one I’d prefer.
1 AR-02, AZ-02, CA-21, FL-06, FL-18, FL-26, IA-01, IL-12, IL-13, KS-02, KY-06, MI-07, NC-09, NC-13, NM-02, NV-04, NY-22, NY-24, OH-01, OH-07, TX-23, and WA-05
2 CO-06, IL-06, IL-14, MI-08, MN-01, MN-02, MN-03, NJ-02, NJ-03, NJ-07, NJ-11, PA-06, UT-04, VA-02, and WI-01.
3 CA-39, CA-48, NV-03, NY-11, TX-07, and TX-32.
