Arthur Camins reviews recent political history as a way to understand how Democrats lost their principles and values.
Democrats became the party identified with both civil rights and labor, if tepidly on both counts. However, they never fully embraced a multiracial movement for social and economic justice. Neither movement overcame mutual distrust. Segments of working- and middle-class Americans who found economic success in the post-war period began to experience social and economic insecurity. They responded positively to Republicans’ full-frontal law and order, anti-government racist appeals. In response, a group of Democrats identified as the Democratic Leadership Council offered a counter-strategy to gain or maintain diminishing influence. In essence, it amounted to acting more like Republicans in language and policy. They welcomed corporate campaign contributions and deregulation, backed away from integration, became less pro-union, embraced the conservative rhetoric of personal responsibility, public-private partnerships, and individual choice and competition in both education and healthcare.
At the same time, disparate movements for women’s, LGTBQ, and marriage rights, and protecting the environment met with some success and shifted predominant values but did not coalesce into a broader unifying movement for change.
While Democrats did elect Clinton and Obama as two-term presidents, they lost control of the majority of statehouses. Even the momentous election of the first Black president did not fundamentally alter Republican political or ideological hegemony. The Democratic strategy amounted to concessions on big ideas and values. Their compromises on the core idea that government is responsible for the well-being of all failed. They continually repeated, “Chance to climb the latter of success if you work hard and play by the rules,” rhetoric. As the saying goes, you can’t be a little bit pregnant. Either a political party represents full support for equity and democracy or not. Republicans controlled the terms of the debate. The result of the Democrats’ a little-bit progressive and a little-bit conservative strategy was a loss of credibility with great swaths of Americans.
Centrism and neoliberalism left the Democrats as an empty vessel, offering nothing substantially different from Republicans. Then came Trumpism, with its full-throated embrace of the worst, most hateful strains in American political life.
The only Democratic answer to the lived precariousness with which too many struggle is to fight for and establish security for all with no exceptions. Programs pitched to help some but not all, such as the Affordable Care Act or charter schools, divide and alienate rather than unify.
The enabling ideas of racist appeals are that inequity is inevitable, whites and the wealthy are more worthy than people of color and the poor, and that their gain must come at the expense of white people. Ensuring a decent life for all and the unified struggle required to attain it cannot happen without a direct reckoning with the divisive role of white supremacy. Acting to challenge this explicitly in ideas and deed is the only answer to Trumpism.
I AGREE. When the dems started looking more like the rePUG-nicans, they lost their souls.
Clinton and Obama … well … I will shut my fingers … now.
“The result of the Democrats’ a little-bit progressive and a little-bit conservative strategy was a loss of credibility with great swaths of Americans.”…….
This is me! I never felt that either party espoused the belief of “We the People” and it made me a bitter young adult, a disenfranchised voter and then into a non-voter (why bother when nothing seems to change except the rich get richer and the rest toil away until death). Bernie Sanders gave me real hope and a feeling that I was not alone.
The most horrible thing watching the riot on Jan 6th was knowing that I could have been one of those people had my life not dramatically changed (socio-economics/marriage/children). I could see my former bitter self in some of those people and I could relate to their anger, their desperation and their disenfranchisement. Democrats in leadership need to make a decision to follow the ideals of the party or just declare as Republican…..there can be no straddling the line this time around.
Democrats becoming Republicans also pushed Republicans further Right, because Republicans then had to distinguish themselves from Democrats.
It’s really been a disaster for both Parties, and the country. We’re led by people who believe in nothing and offer nothing.
We can’t even manage to stand up a vaccine program in this country. The whole sales pitch for neoliberalism was “government that works” except nothing works- the country is in shambles.
So much if it is just poor quality junk. Do you know anyone who has Obamacare? They hate it. They’re all waiting to get on Medicare. They pay through the nose for a program that doesn’t really work and that was an IMPROVEMENT from what they had because what they had was “nothing”.
I worked in healthcare my entire life (before children) and I would love to know how many hours of phone time I spent trying to get people authorization for the care they needed or disputing lack of payment. It was an awful system before the ACA and I can’t imagine what it is like now. The privatization of healthcare was a Dem and Rep move that hurt EVERYONE. I would love to see M4A in my lifetime.
I know plenty of people who have Obamacare. Without it, my sons would have no health coverage. Instead, they’re able to get routine healthcare at affordable prices, and if hospitalized god forbid, though retired, we could afford to kick in the deductible . ACA is a tremendous boon to millennials like my sons and their many friends who struggle to make a living in this economy despite checking all the boxes.
I grew up in a small family-owned business where parents and brothers were independent contractors: the cost of health insurance began to go through the roof in the sixties and was breaking the family bank by the eighties. Fast-forward to 21st C: 20% of the workforce are independent contractors, and 50% of them do not get health insurance through their employers.
The problems with ACA appear to reflect a system stealing from Peter to pay Paul within a zero-sum setup that—like every other public good in the US– is underfunded due to failure to distribute wealth equitably. Just over a year ago the 1% was closing in on holding more wealth than the entire middle class.
If Biden wants to prove that the Democratic Party is the party of inclusion, he will have to actively support the common good. He will have to support a robust, unapologetic public sector. People in our country should have a right to a public post office and equitable public education. Biden should look at alternative ways to fund public education as depending on real estate taxes shortchanges urban schools. He should do more for unions than saying he supports them. He should actively support public and private unions as they helped build our middle class. Likewise, he should he should support our public schools and stop the federal slush fund that funds endless charter school expansion.
Privatization is by definition anti-unions and anti-workers’ rights. Privatization hurts the middle class, and it turns middle class public jobs with good pensions into low paying jobs with minimal benefits. Biden should support economic justice by raising the minimum wage. People of color have a much harder time borrowing from banks. The Biden administration must work with banks to end the lending red-lining that has prohibited people of color from acquiring wealth. If the Biden administration truly intends to redefine the Democratic Party, he must favor Main St. over Wall St. He must support universal healthcare if he intends to restore some level of stability to working families in this country.
Evanston, Illinois recently decided to offer black residents a “reparations settlement.” The city will use proceeds from the sale of marijuana to fund a $25,000 grant that will help people of color to become property owners. I do not know if their plan will make a difference, but it is an innovative way to try to help future generations of black families build wealth. https://abcnews.go.com/US/evanston-illinois-finds-innovative-solution-funding-reparations-marijuana/story?id=71826707
Democrats first abandoned public health care and then abandoned public education.
Eventually they’ll get us to where they distribute a low value voucher to purchase educational services. They move closer to that goal every year. Inequity will absolutely explode because 80% of people will get the low value voucher and nothing else.
Look at the voucher laws ed reformers are pushing all over the country. The vouchers they offer are a massive cut in funding for schools. It’s the most amazing rip off of students and families I’ve ever seen and they’re pulling off this heist right in front of us.
You’ll be lucky if you get 7k a year for K-12. “The money follows the child” operates to cut “the money” in half.
I don’t know if ed reformers are all just innumerate and don’t understand this or if it’s deliberate. They must realize that a low value voucher replacing public schools is a massive cut in education funding. It’s pretty obvious. If your public school is funded at 10k per student and the voucher they’re seeking to replace it with is worth 5k they just cut your funding in half.
Some of the vouchers also offer tax avoidance measures to the already wealthy, but these are called “scholarships.” What is worse is that the schools are generally low in quality and operated by amateurs. In many cases these schools are highly segregated. Providing separate and unequal schools to mostly minority students is a source of shame, not real “choice.”
This is the Ohio voucher:
“The EdChoice scholarship amount is $4650 for grades K – 8 and $6000 for grades 9-12.”
It operates as a huge cut in education funding. Ed reformers are pushing this all over the country- the end game with “the money follows the child” is to flim flam people into a massive education funding cut.
The money will follow the child alright- they just never mention that it will be vastly LESS money.
Get ready for universal, low value vouchers- they’re ALL lockstep pushing it and they NEVER mention numbers. When we find out that the voucher is worth half of what we used to get for K-12 education it will be too late.
Universal lockstep vouchers are not coming to the US. Ed-reformers have been pushing this for 30 years: only 16 states have any kind of voucher setup, and only 1% of US schoolchildren attend voucher schools. The only federally-funded voucher program is DC’s, started in 2003, which gets $20million annually. DeVos’ proposals to fund them were rejected, as was covid aid.
I have a feeling that for some it is very deliberate, and for those it is generally easy to manipulate the many who don’t understand.
Indeed. It is much harder to manipulate people who do not understand (for all sorts of legit reasons) if there are strong unions (with education programs) and a real Democratic Party (a la Sanders, AOC et al). Without such organization it is relatively easy to mislead people. If we can’t counter manipulation, our task is almost impossible to achieve. When there was a New Deal Democratic Party, strong unions, progressive voices in churches, and healthy public education, there was a social foundation for effective resistance to Capital. The reason cynics hate Sanders and AOC so much (even more than they hate Trumpsters) is that they remind people that things could really be different.
I am not disagreeing with Arthur Camins but one of the 2 political parties is a radicalized far right wing death cult that is a threat to our democracy. The Party of Trump, Cruz Hawley, Gohmert, Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Greene, ad infinitum, who want to carry guns into the Congress and refuse to wear masks. The fascist racist party.
I hope Biden goes progressive since the Democrats will control the House and Senate and he better damn well appoint a liberal to the SCOTUS if Breyer decides to retire. Education is not looking good, more of the same. The main thing is that Trump is gone from the WH, that is crucial. That’s already a big step forward.
If Biden betrays public education after all of his rhetoric, teachers must protest loudly and sign petitions against his betrayal. Progressives gave Obama too much benefit of the doubt because he broke through the barrier of racism. I am not opposed to unity unless it means accepting the unfair status quo.
You are 100% correct.
European social democracies have learned that social programs–health care, housing, family/child support, k-16 education–garner broad public support because they are UNIVERSAL. They have also learned that high taxes are acceptable because citizens actually get something valuable in return. These political truths are not difficult to understand, unless one is soaked in the culture of white supremacy. White supremacy blinds us to the obvious road out of the mess we’ve created for ourselves. Slavery, Jim Crow, No-Nothingism, militarism all supported/support white supremacy. (Thatcherism was the unpretty countercurrent in the UK, and recent racist upheavals in Europe threaten the successes of this social democratic culture.) The modern Republican party is home to white supremacy, and Trumpism has revealed that it is also the heart of that party. Neo-liberal Democrats are mostly craven accomplices to this dominant way of life. Accept among young people. Young people live a multiracial existence more thoroughly than any generation before them. This is why the AOC’s of our country are so important. Let’s hope they bury the Lost Cause, once and for all.
Religion doesn’t play a significant role in the public square of European social democracies.
Trump was elected by conservative religious voters.
European social democracies don’t have a conservative sect’s 40+ state religious conferences created for the sole purpose of influencing public policy. They don’t have the secretive, conservative Christian group, Council for National Policy, populated with influential political figures and, they don’t have a wealthy libertarian like Charles Koch in bed with a conservative religious sect.
Rhetorically, does Camins believe his objective can be achieved without confronting the points made in the article, “Why religion and politics are at play in Georgia” (Christian Recorder,1-3-2021), without confronting the agenda of the Council for National Policy, without confronting the points made in Commonweal,1-8-21, “Piety, Populism and Patriots” and, without acknowledging recent studies, “acceptance of a dominant male hierarchy predicted a positive evaluation of Trump over and above any sexist, racist or homophobic attitude a voter may have.”
There is a mix of not so latent authoritarian, sexist, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic ideas bubbling up to the surface. Depending on leadership and organizing they rise and fall out of favor in the normative culture and in politics. I do think they need to be confronted directly. Sometimes shaming is effective, arguing has its limits for many. But that is insufficient. As I indicated in the full article, how we got here has many parents. I don’t think we will make much progress without local relationship-building organizing around issues that bridge differences: issues like health care, housing, etc. People find their common humanity in common struggle, I think.
Thanks for posting a comment.
We can hope Democrats’ decision pans out in the ebb and flow of time (implemented over decades). We might want to consider the consequences of the decision- (1) the growing power of individuals like Robert P. George. Leonard Leo and John C. Eastman (on the podium with Giuliani on Dec. 6) and their impact on the erosion of abortion and employment civil rights and diverted funding to religious schools (2) the successes of Paul Weyrich (financed by Charles Koch), who co-founded ALEC, the religious right, and the Koch’s Heritage Foundation and their impact on government funding cuts, privatization of common goods, tax avoidance for the rich and incarceration of the most people of any nation in the world,
(3) control by Paul Weyrich’s Council for National Policy which reportedly “chose loyalists to run federal agencies” and was “linked to the breach of the Capitol” and, (4) Christian symbols carried by insurrectionists on Jan. 6 and, a court with 6 conservative religious judges.
Btw- I don’t think they’ll be “confronted directly” when the public doesn’t know because msm and influencers largely avoid religion as a topic.
“The result of the Democrats’ a little-bit progressive and a little-bit conservative strategy was a loss of credibility with great swaths of Americans.”
I’m sure that Arthur is right, as far as many people feeling discouraged or despairing of the Democratic Party being more moderate.
But in my immediate and extended family–we were all Republicans for generations–I can count eight people who are now voting regularly for Democrats–nine, counting me.
We are slightly left of center, and I would hope that this position can be respected by readers of this blog.
Democrats may be losing some voters but gaining others.
That comment resonates with me, Montana teacher. My upstate-NY parents came from a long-Rep tradition; by the early 2000’s they began to cross over; we 4 siblings are all liberals & vote Dem. My grandmother’s clan were arch-conservatives. Of their boomer & pre-boomer offspring, 9 of 12 are liberals and vote Dem.
As ugly and frightening last week’s assault on the U.S. Capitol was, very few of our political/economic cognoscenti have acknowledged the root causes that lead to violent insurrection.
The few individuals who are courageous enough to speak out about this, such as Economic Professor Dr. Richard Wolff, have pointed out that this incident was almost predictable after decades of Americans seeing their standards of living decline. It was predictable when your only political choice is between two parties who have done little to nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.
The elites in this country diverted attention away from these facts for decades. The Republican party convinced people to blame their declining economic fortunes on immigrants or China, not on the banks and corporations that prospered at our expense.
Neoliberal Democrats heavily played the identity card. weaponizing it. Legitimate criticism of Obama was often muted. Biden’s cabinet picks may have a diverse veneer to them, but many of them are Clinton/Obama retreads. (Neera Tanden is openly hostile to progressives.) Obama espoused neoliberalism and serviced the Wall Street crowd and other MIC – Medical Insurance Complex – at our expense.
Trump’s election was a symptom, not a cause of where we are today. The election of Trump was a reaction to decades of dismissiveness and open hostility to the needs of ordinary Americans. Change is needed.
Should the Biden administration be a repeat of the Obama years, look for a smarter, more dangerous version of Trump to come along in 2024.
Eleanor you make excellent points. The billionaires behind Neera Tandem never met a failed Democratic strategist they didn’t like (Tanden was a Hillary campaign advisor).
For decades the Democratic Party ignored the crafty positioning of the GOP as the party of the religious and, refused to call out the marriage of the Koch network with the Catholic establishment. We see the outcome.
Why “the Catholic Establishment”? Why not the Christian evangelicals?
School choice rallies in state capitols were co-hosted by state Catholic Conferences and the AFP. Media wrote about a tight link between Charles Koch and the board of the Catholic University of America. Writers at the Manhattan Institute wrote articles for the purpose of praising Catholic schools, contrasting them with public schools. Faculty and students at Catholic universities opposed Koch’s spending on their campuses and their arguments were dismissed. Robert P. George is on the Bradley Foundation board.
Anecdotally, I don’t find the same level of libertarian dogma in the evangelical churches. The Cardinal Newman Society claimed the “common good” was antithetical to church teaching (Wikipedia).
Christian evangelicals have Foster Freiss who funded Charlie Kirk. Media with high readership, write with abandon about the failings of evangelicals. You may recall the selective derision targeting evangelicals evident in comments at this blog. Given the fact that vouchers in many states go almost exclusively to Catholic schools, it’s odd that?
Jane Mayer should expand her work.
Sourcewatch reports that Tim Busch, of Legatus and Napa Institute, attended a Koch summit.
Sourcewatch posted info about the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative Christian group. The names listed at the Sourcewatch site include well-known evangelicals and Father Eamon Kelly, vice charge, Pontifical Institute Notre Dame and Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life. The entry describes the Koch and Bradley Foundation’s connection to CNP. Robert P. George serves on the board of the Bradley Foundation. Steve Bannon’s name also appears in Sourcewatch’s listing.
Sourcewatch’s description doesn’t identify the religion of the high ranking military officers listed. Military members who belong to the CNP should be of concern to all Americans.
From the UnKochMyCampus.org site
Thirteen senators who were against the confirmation of Pres.-elect Joe Biden were bankrolled by the Koch network.