The message still holds as we finish our compaigning.
(Part one discusses the historic transformation of
the Democratic Party. Part two is an updated discussion of the reasons for the
Trump victory in 2016. It reviews some of the political activism of the period
between 2016 and 2020)
Harry Targ
Part One
Our first task was to defeat Donald Trump. That task
has been completed. Our second task is to continue to build a more progressive
and humane society while pursuing a peace and solidarity agenda in the
international system. A central element of moving from the first task to the
second is mobilizing to educate and agitate for progressive reforms and to
oppose, when necessary, the new administration if it stands in our way.
Discussions about the pursuit of the second task have
begun. Many of these discussions revolve around assessments of the recent
elections: contexts, organizing experiences, and outcomes. There has been some
discussion of the economic circumstances which have shaped voting behavior--growing
economic inequality, declining real wages, evictions, medical bills, and other
basic economic vulnerabilities There has been discussion of tactics such as organizing
grassroots groups, the internet, canvassing, and calling blitzes. There have
been some useful testimonials of personal contacts about talking to voters with
competing views, breaking through ideology, confronting fundamentally reactionary
attitudes about race, religion, women’s issues, and guns. And there has been
discussion of the critical nature of issues that need to be addressed: health
care, climate change, racism and police violence, jobs, and, of course, how to
respond to the pandemic.
All of these conversations are useful and important as
we finally move beyond the elections. However, one set of issues has not been
addressed. That is why 70 million plus voters who, after the pandemic, economic
crisis, and spreading environmental calamity, still voted for President Trump.
Concern is also raised about the losses Democrats incurred in the House of
Representatives and the probability of the Senate continuing its deadlock. And
despite some progressive candidate victories in state and local elections, red
states and counties largely remained red as well.
Historic Changes in the Democratic Party
What seems missing from these discussions on the
election outcomes is an analysis that links history and political economy to
the changes that have occurred in the Democratic Party from Keynesianism and
the capital/labor compromise of the late 1940s to neoliberalism, reflected in
the sector of the Democratic Party that gained dominance in the 1980s,
sometimes referred to as “The Third Way.”
Looking at the twentieth century, Franklin Roosevelt’s
presidential victory in 1932 and three subsequent victories presaged both a
transformation of the Democratic Party and public policy from laissez faire to
state-directed policies designed to address social safety needs (creating jobs,
supporting farmers, investing in public works, and funding the arts (theater,
murals, music, historical writing for example). It was assumed that fiscal
stimuli, putting money in workers’ hands would jump start the economy. Fiscal
stimuli were paralleled by increased government regulations of banking,
labor/management relations, and wages and hours. To be clear, the New Deal
programs would not have occurred if millions of working-class men and women had
not hit the streets to demand them. And also, to be clear, as much as the New
Deal programs helped large sectors of the working class, workers of color were
disgracefully excluded from many of them. But nevertheless, the thrust of
public policy, mostly advocated by Democrats was for positive government. The
Democratic Party institutionalized the New Deal, the Fair Deal in the Truman
years, and, in the 1960s, the Great Society.
Most white workers, and increasingly Black workers,
saw the Democratic Party as their home. From the 1930s until the 1980s, voter
studies showed majorities of voters identified with the Democratic Party. And
even mainstream Republicans, such as Dwight Eisenhower, embraced workers’ rights
to form unions and Social Security.
However, the Democratic Party began its long decline
in 1968, with candidate Richard Nixon’s appeal to “the silent majority” and his
embrace of a “southern strategy.” Nixon played on growing frustration with
Vietnam era protestors and the centrality of the civil rights campaigns in
American life. George Wallace became a popular racist third-party candidate for
president.
The last gasp of the New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society
tradition was reflected in the overwhelming defeat of populist presidential
candidate George McGovern in 1972. Two years later, because of his criminality,
President Nixon was forced out of office and his successor Gerald Ford lost the
1976 presidential election to Jimmy Carter.
These political eruptions occurred in a
decade, the 1970s, when the United States was experiencing declining relative
power in the world, both politically and economically. In addition, the
contours of American politics were dramatically affected by the oil crises of
the 1970s, the inability or refusal of government at all levels to continue to
afford the supports that workers had come to expect, and the radical
transformation of production, highlighted by millions of jobs lost through
outsourcing and deindustrialization. The dramatic changes in the political
economy of capitalism and the increased appeal of racism were reflected in a
substantial change in the campaigns and policies of the Democratic Party
The Democratic Party and “The Third Way”
Jimmy Carter planted the seeds for the shift in the
Democratic Party from New Deal liberalism to neoliberalism and the Party’s “Third
Way.” Michael Jordan Smith succinctly summarizes
a theme of the recent book “Reaganland,”
The book’s author, Rick Perlstein, reports
on “the Democrats’ fatal abandonment
of economic fairness in favor of balanced budgets, deregulation, and fiscal
conservatism. Carter led and presided over this transition, over the objections
of traditional liberals including Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill. But Carter
joined with a revitalized business lobby, which gradually succeeded in
persuading Democratic politicians that neoliberalism was the only way forward.
To this day, the Democratic Party hasn’t fully recovered.” (Michael Jordan Smith,
“When Conservatism Triumphed,” The Progressive, August 17, 2020)
President Reagan’s 1980
message, which resonated with a work force that was experiencing seven percent
unemployment and double digit inflation, was “Government is not the solution.
Government is the problem.” Armed with theories from conservative economists,
Reagan expanded dramatically the policies initiated by President Carter. These
included deregulation of the economy, lobbying for the privatization of public
institutions, downsizing programs of welfare and safety nets. To secure support
for programs of austerity, Reagan began the process of destroying the influence
of the labor movement, criminalizing the behavior of people of color, and
shifting the discourse from poverty’s connection to economic failure to blaming
the victims of poverty for their own misfortunes. And, in the main, the
Democratic Party either only weakly opposed the Reagan austerity agenda or
cautiously supported it. What would later be called the “neoliberal agenda”
became the dominant ideological framework of discourse of conventional politics.
In 1985, Washington D. C.
Democrats formed the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The Council
articulated the view that the Democratic Party was losing its grip on public
support because it was “too liberal.” It developed a “Third Way” agenda that
was less committed to working people, was more hostile to people of color,
shifted policy advocacy from providing social safety nets to expanding law
enforcement, and was less vigorously supportive of government regulation. When
Bill Clinton was elected president, he enshrined the neoliberal agenda in the
program of the Democratic Party. Third Way Democrats no longer even pretended
to represent the interests of working people in policy even though they
continued to express empathy for the vast majority of people.
One stark optic of this
was reflected in a Frontline documentary on globalization which showed
candidate Bill Clinton meeting steelworkers at a plant gate during a 1992
campaign stop. He promised them that he would serve their interests,
particularly by opposing the then controversial North America Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA). The next scene in the documentary shows Clinton meeting with
financier Robert Rubin, getting schooled on the “realities” of the modern
economy (PBS, Commanding Heights). Despite labor opposition to NAFTA,
including progressives in the labor movements of Mexican and Canadian workers,
Clinton leaned on Democrats in the House of Representatives to support it.
Clinton’s aggressive support of NAFTA was metaphorically analogous to President
Reagan’s firing of the PATCO workers in 1981 after they endorsed his candidacy
for president.
Part Two: Adapted and edited from an earlier assessment of the
constellation of political forces that led to the surprise victory and support
for Donald Trump.
Trump’s core constituency all along
has been sectors of finance capital, insurance, real estate, the
military/industrial complex, and drug companies whose profits have come from
domestic investments or sales and speculation overseas. It also includes
portions of small and medium sized businesses whose viabilities have been threatened,
not by big government, but by the further monopolization of the economy.
In addition, some workers displaced
by the underside of neoliberalism, including capital flight, automation, and
trade, have supported Trump because they saw no positive economic future in a Hillary
Clinton presidency in 2016. Finally, the Trump constituency has included a
percentage of voters who are ideological legatees of white
supremacy.
Therefore, the Trump coalition from 2016 to today has consisted of fractions of
capital who gain from a more muscular and economically nationalist policy
agenda, marginalized portions of the so-called “middle class,” sectors of the
working class, and portions of all of these whose political learning has
centered on the history and consciousness of white supremacy (“make America
great again”).
Trump’s major adversaries have come from a core sector of the ruling class that
has dominated the policy process at least since the 1980s, the neoliberal
globalists. In response to the squeeze on profits of the 1970s, the
capitalist elites began to promote a dramatic shift in the character of the
economy in the direction of “neoliberalism.” Drawing upon an economic ideology
with a long history from Adam Smith, to Milton Friedman, to mainstream
neoclassical economists of the late twentieth century, every administration
from Carter to Trump has engaged in deregulation of economic life, reduced
government programs that help the poor and working classes, weakened the rights
of workers and their unions, and advocated the privatization of public institutions. The Republicans have
advocated the privatization of Social Security and the postal service. The
neoliberals in both Democratic and Republican administrations “went global;” developing
a network of economic ties via trade agreements, the globalization of
production, and integrating corporate boards. Capitalist elites from every
continent began to develop common approaches to national policy via such
informal organizations as the Trilateral Commission, meetings of the G7
countries, and the annual World Economic Forum.
Debt poor countries were the first
to be forced to embrace neoliberal policies, followed by the former Socialist
Bloc countries, then the Western European social democracies, and finally the
United States. A significant portion of this qualitative change in the way
capitalism works has involved increased financial speculation (as a proportion
of the total gross domestic product), dramatic increases in global inequality
in wealth and income, and increasing economic marginalization of workers,
particularly women, people of color and immigrants.Candidate Donald Trump
orchestrated a campaign against the neoliberal globalists who dominated the
political process in the United States since the 1980s. While he epitomized
finance capital, albeit domestic as well as foreign, and represents the less
than one percent who rule the world, he presented himself as a spokesperson of
the economically marginalized. He attacked the capitalist class of which he is
a member. In addition, he blamed the marginalization of the vast majority on
some of their own; people of color, women, and immigrants.
Resistance to Trump, 2017 to 2020
Since the November 2016 election,
masses of people have been mobilizing in a variety of ways against the agenda
of the newly elected president. The women’s marches and rallies of January 21,
2017 and International Women’s Day on March 8 were historic in size and global
reach. Since then there have been huge mobilizations to reduce the use of
fossil fuels and prevent climate disaster, to support immigrant rights, to
provide basic health care, and most recently around police killings. Many of
these manifestations of outrage and fear occurred as planned events but also
from the beginning of Trump’s term there were numerous spontaneous acts at
Congressional town hall meetings and even in airports challenging his
directives to refuse people entry into the United States.
A multiplicity of groups formed or
increased in size since January, 2017: former Bernie Sanders supporters;
anti-racists mobilizations particularly against police violence; those calling
for sanctuary cities and defending the human rights of immigrants; progressive
Democratic organizations; and women’s mobilizations. Traditional left
organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, benefiting from
the Sanders campaign, tripled in size between 2016 and 2020. And organizations
such as The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood reported large increases in financial
contributions. Since the 2016 election the mobilization of millions of
people bolstered the spirits of
progressives everywhere. They have felt that at this point in history a new
progressivism was about to be born. But the story has been made complicated by
the nature of the opposition to Trumpism.
Oppositions to Trumpism: Neoliberal
and Progressive
Paradoxically, while the last four years has been “a teachable moment” as well
as a movement building moment, progressive forces are struggling to be
organized. In and around the Democratic Party there is a conflict over the
vision and the politics it ought to embrace at this time and in the coming
period. The Sanders supporters, inside and outside the Democratic Party, and
progressive Congress persons such as the “Squad” have marshalled much support for a progressive
agenda: single-payer health care, a green jobs agenda, protecting the
environment, tax reform, building not destroying immigrant rights, defending
women’s rights, and cutting military spending. With the brutal policies
advocated and already instituted by the Trump administration, progressive
democrats and their allies on the left have struggled mightily to articulate a
program, and create some organizational unity to challenge Trumpism. And that
struggle remains relevant since the 2020 election, particularly given the fact
that candidate Trump received in excess of 70 million votes for reelection.
The dilemma for progressives is that
opposition to Trumpism and all it stands for has been and must be a key
component of reigniting a progressive majority in the coming decade. But if it
does not address the fundamental failures of the neoliberal agenda, including
challenging neoliberal globalization, the current phase of capitalism, Trump’s
grassroots support will continue, even after he reluctantly leaves the White
House. Working people who ordinarily would vote for more liberal candidates for
public office need to believe that future candidates are prepared to address
the issues, often economic, that concern them.
Therefore, the fundamental project for progressives today includes mobilizing
against Trumpism while articulating an alternative political and economic
analysis of the current state of capitalist development. In concrete terms,
this approach means challenging the legitimacy of the legacy of the Trump
administration and its allies in Congress while articulating the perspective
that mainstream Democrats, the neoliberal globalists, are part of the problem,
not the solution.
This alternative analysis requires a
bold challenge inside the electoral arena and in the streets that calls for progressive
reforms: single-payer health care; cutting the military-budget; creating
government programs to put people to work on living wage jobs in infrastructure,
social services, and public education; addressing climate change: and fiscal
and regulatory policies that reduce the grotesque inequality of wealth and
income which has increased since the 1980s. It might boldly include discussions of a guaranteed income
for all and/or the right to a job for every member of the society.
The tasks are challenging but
another world is possible.
