Would Turning Left Save the Democratic Party?

GELFAND’S WORLD-An interesting thought is provoked by a set of columns published recently in Salon. Perhaps the most amusing is Edwin Lyngar's Angry right's secret playbook: How it uses a good story to peddle an agenda America hates. I will leave you to read it, but the basic argument is simple. The right wing doesn't mind being outrageous, inventive, and sometimes downright dishonest, so the left should adopt the same tactics. 

I don't have a solid opinion as to the wisdom of this approach, but it does bring to mind a related idea: In those critical midterm elections that the Democrats have been so good at losing, it would be advantageous for their candidates to get a little outrageous themselves, by arguing for populist, economically redistributionist positions. This would stimulate unemployed people and middle income people to go to the polls, because there would be something for them to vote for. 

This idea was developed in another recent Salon.com piece written by Joan Walsh, and is titled The left strikes back! Democrats are making actual populist policy proposals. You can find it here. Walsh refers to the proposal by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, which is described as "a plan for massive middle class tax cuts funded by tax hikes on business and Wall Street, particularly a stock transaction tax."  Everyone understands that this is a nonstarter in the current Republican controlled legislature, but there is a kicker to this column that is worth considering: 

Yet low turnout in non-presidential years is tied to the fact that voters think little is at stake. Democrats are finally making clear there's a whole lot at stake. This is a years-long, maybe decades-long project. But this was a big week. 

Put these two recent columns together and the message to Democratic strategists becomes clear: Offer the suffering working people of this country something worth taking. The term for this is redistribution, as in income. 

Conservatives use this word as a pejorative, the same way they say the word liberal as if it were a bad thing, but real liberals, if they want to win, should think about grabbing the concept of redistribution and going with it. Let's consider why this might be a strategy for the Democrats. 

You have to offer the voters something to favor if you want them to vote for you. The Republicans have their side of the battle figured out already. It's a lot easier for them, because they have a built in constituency of increasingly aging, white, middle class folks. Add to those characteristics the words "suburban homeowner," and you have the perfect combination of people who worry because they have something to lose, and are in a demographic that goes to the polls routinely. 

Republican voters have a better record of turning out voters in off year elections. Compare this to Democratic presidential year turnouts, which are cobbled together out of a more disparate sort of electorate. The Democrats haven't been able to generate enough enthusiasm in midterm elections such as 2014 to keep these coalitions in place. 

That's where the left turn strategy comes in for Democratic Party candidates. 

Let's first dispose of an obvious counterargument, namely that going left will alienate a too-large bloc of voters. After all, the U.S. has a history going back a century, of fearing and hating leftists and leftist politics. We have the experience of Joe McCarthy as a low point, but Senator Joe was simply wading into attitudinal waters that already existed, and have continued to exist throughout our lives. 

But there is a difference between opposing violent subversion and considering economic philosophy. The New Deal was, in its own way, a left turn, but it was accomplished through acts of congress, and sustained through practical politics. 

What's more, there are a lot of voters who would be embarrassed to call themselves liberals, but who vote for liberal ideas. As many pundits have pointed out, voters in ostensibly conservative states supported increases in the minimum wage in the 2014 elections, and have routinely voted down anti-abortion measures when they come up on statewide ballots. 

There is also the fact, as explained by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post, that the U.S. is actually more redistributive from poor to rich than the other way around. The Democrats have a built in storyline of their own, if they choose to use it, that a left turn would merely take the U.S. a little bit back towards the center. 

From the standpoint of practical politics, we should mention that American voters defend their own entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare to a striking degree. Everyone was amused when a conservative voter told the Democrats, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare," but his economic illiteracy reflected the fact that a lot of Americans, conservatives among them, are perfectly willing to adopt seemingly leftist positions when it is to their advantage. Or to put it another way, middle class entitlements that are universal are the ones that survive over the decades. 

The strategic analysis goes like this: Going left will certainly antagonize a certain fraction of the electorate, but it is that fraction that the Democrats are never going to get anyway. It's the same 30 or 40 percent that are always going to support the conservative position. Generations of losing Democrats have tried to win over the liberals with a wink and a nod, and hope to fool enough moderate conservatives to eke out victory. It doesn't seem to be working much nowadays. It was, at best, a strategy in which long-term incumbents held out against changing times. In races for open seats, it's a losing strategy. 

So how do you put together the kind of coalition that could win for Democrats? The answer does not lie in converting  hard core Republicans. But there are lots and lots of people who could vote but don't bother. Some of them are chronic non-voters, and some are occasional voters who, as a group, don't turn out consistently. 

And the reason they don't turn out consistently? That's the core problem for the Democratic Party establishment. Perhaps, as Walsh and other pundits suggest, it's that Democratic candidates aren't giving them sufficient motivation to get themselves to the voting booth. 

Of course a left turn strategy can go too far, and turn off some of the voters who might otherwise vote the Democratic slate by force of habit. That's a balancing act, but all politics is a balancing act. The idea here is to motivate people who have simply been anesthetized to political thinking and to incite them to take action. 

And you only have to motivate a small fraction of all those people who never had health insurance, who work in dead end jobs, and who worry about losing it all. These are the people who haven't really had much of a remedy offered to them, one that they could proudly support at the polls. 

The Democrats and the newly recruited Democratic voters will have to be provided a better vocabulary too. In typing this, I find that I'm using words that the right wing has demonized. There's liberal, and left, and redistribution for a start. The right wing uses the term socialist to attack the philosophies and policies that are so inadequately served by such terms. Progressive is kind of lame, and the term populist has baggage of its own. But this is a solvable problem. I suspect that the solution lies in taking back words like liberal, rather than perpetually trying to pretend that you aren't one. 

The real issue lies in defining what specific policies and plans fall under that label. A politically centrist-left message in favor of constructive redistribution, if presented aggressively, would bring out a lot of voters who are looking for hope and change.

 

(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 5

Pub: Jan 16, 2015