Workingman's Dems by @BloggersRUs

Workingman's Dems

by Tom Sullivan

Like a lot of columns dissecting the Democrats' nonperformance this fall, Thomas Frank's in Salon focuses on how Democrats have largely abandoned their erstwhile working-class base. Mocking David Brooks' call for a "common project" to fight the scourge of "classism," Frank believes instead we need a project to help wealthy professionals understand the struggles of working people:

By “we,” I mean the Democratic Party. Once upon a time it was the dedicated champion of the interests of average people, but today Democrats are hemorrhaging the votes of the white working class. This catastrophic development is the pundit subject du jour, replacing the happy tales of demographic inevitability of two years ago. Since the beginning of September, according to Lexis-Nexis, there have been no fewer than 46 newspaper stories predicting, describing and analyzing the evaporation of Democratic appeal among this enormous slice of the electorate.

This is not merely disastrous, it is pathetic. What kind of lamestain left can’t win the working class . . . in year seven of a crushing demonstration of the folly of free markets? What kind of political leadership can’t figure out a way to overcome the backlash sensibility after four decades?

After losing the white working class by 30 points this fall, you'd think it would be obvious to Democratic leaders. And you'd be wrong. The "courthouse gangs" of old boys who dominated Democratic county-level politics for years have yet to get religion or exit the stage in many parts of the country. Higher up the food chain, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party — New Dems and other corporate-friendly Democrats — holds dwindling authority in Washington, yet will not readily change course either. At best, most will give new lip service to the concerns of working-class Americans even as their lips remain firmly planted elsewhere.

Frank again, on the impact of passing NAFTA on the Democrat's base:

The deal crushed enthusiasm for the Democratic Party among the working-class voters who were then considered part of the Democratic base and contributed to the Democrats’ loss of the House of Representatives in 1994, a disaster from which, the economist Jeff Faux wrote in 2006, “the Democratic Party still has not recovered.” And, indeed, from which the party seemingly has no desire to recover. Just the other day, President Obama announced that he is fired up and ready to go . . . with the Republicans in Congress on the Trans Pacific Partnership, even though much of his own party is opposed to it.

Democrats who sign up for our master class on classism might also look back over their response to the financial crisis, during which they bailed out their BFFs on Wall Street and let everyone else go to hell. Or the many favors they failed to do for their former BFFs in organized labor. Or their lack of interest in getting a public option included in health-care reform.

When Democrats give voters the choice of Republican or Republican-lite, voters choose the real thing. Howie Klein and others noted how Democrats who ran this fall on a populist message won even as Blue Dogs and New Dems lot even more ground. North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, who lost narrowly, ran instead on being America's most moderate senator. Meanwhile, progressive ballot initiatives won even in red states.

But it will take more than a populist message to win back a working class Democrats abandoned with NAFTA. It will take admitting the error and a changing of ways. In the South at least, repentance is something working-class voters understand. Yet it is not clear that it is even possible to return to a twentieth-century economic model that seems extinct. It will take a bold, new vision of an economy that has a place for America's working class and a future for Millennials entering the workforce. And it will take Democratic politicians willing to fight for it.

A small conclave over the weekend discussed what kind of message in 2016 might resurrect Democrats' fortunes in North Carolina. The concerns of the working class were a prominent theme. Yet a yearning to return to what worked back in the day was an undercurrent. Via email, a friend described the consultants working for a major 2016 candidate here as "super old school." That's about as auspicious a beginning for Democrats' redemption story as, "It was a dark and stormy night."