What Happened to My Party?
I grew up among people who worshipped the key pillars of the twentieth century Democratic Party: the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt, and the great public works project known as New York City. The Democrats then were the party of progress—of new roads, bridges, ports, factories, and laboratories. They were also the party of national defense, a holdover from the triumph of World War II that was sustained by a fear of Communist aggression.
But the Democratic Party’s recent evolution contrasts sharply to its glory days. Today, the Democrats are losing out among some of the party’s core constituencies, notably those who work with their hands, Latinos, Jews, Asians, and even some African Americans. In their new configuration, the Democrats function as an electoral cabal forged by an alliance between the business elite, the professional classes, the federal bureaucracy, and dependent voters.
If anything, the Democrats synchronized swimming of the past month could only occur in a party largely uniform in its core constituencies and essential beliefs. They shift positions and allegiances through technology and media control, using influencers to hide troublesome past positions with a dexterity that a Communist vozdh like Joseph Stalin would have appreciated.
The new mindset is obvious considering the Democrats’ embrace of censorship in alliance with the tech oligarchs, who have been long-time backers of Kamala Harris, and the universities, another bulwark of progressive power. It also builds upon the assumption that the experts embraced by progressive voters should be allowed free reign since they know better than the masses.
The keys to understanding the increasingly authoritarian Democratic Party are threefold: class, racial politics, and sexual politics. As someone schooled in Marxist theory, I tend to place the class component first. In the past, Democrats were a party that appealed to “the little people” like factory hands, small shopkeepers, yeoman farmers, skilled mechanics, and artisans. Democrats from Kennedy to Clinton focused on private sector growth as a means to achieve upward mobility for middle- and working-class Americans.
But in the new Democratic policy world, most employment growth has been focused on government and public-funded health care. And the Democrats’ electoral base is largely those professionals who benefit from an expanded regulatory state.
The differences between the professional urban elect, who tend to cluster in college towns and dense big cities, and the bulk of the population are enormous. Indeed, a recent Rasmussen study of high-earning, grad-degree urban professionals found that their views on a host of issues such as restrictions on meat, gas, and free speech differ widely from most Americans.
Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Democratic Donkey Down, by DonkeyHotey Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
