With Barack Obama the presumptive nominee, will 2008 be a Democratic landslide or just another squeaker like 2000 and 2004? The answer depends on whether the Democrats can cut through five misleading myths prominent among media pundits: (1) the myth of "the middle class;" (2) the myth of "the independent voter;" (3 the myth of "the suburban voter;" (4) the myth of "moderation," a rightward shift of American public opinion in the affluent, high-tech society; and (5) the myth that American voters want "bipartisanship." All of these myths blind Democrats to the main lessons of recent elections. They cannot tell us why 2006 was an impressive left-of-center victory. They cannot tell us what coalition creates a stable Democratic majority. Most important, these myths can turn a potential Democratic sweep this November into a near miss if Barack Obama fails to grasp the meaning and distribution of the votes for Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. His challenge is how to retain the white middle majority that gave Democrats their 2006 victory and who voted in 2008 for his opponents in high turnout primaries in populous Democratic and swing states.
The culture war had little to do with any of the results from 2000 to 2006. Old New Deal /Great Society issues equaled the Iraq catastrophe as determinants of election outcomes. Some underplayed findings from recent election studies combined with issue-specific attitude surveys over 50 years tell the story
Center-left Populism Trumped Wedge Issues in 2004 and 2006
Many instant analysts argued that the wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage were critical in the defeat of John Kerry. Using standard multivariate statistics on exit polls and one of the most thorough national post-election surveys, political scientists have now shown that such "moral values" were at best very marginal in the 2004 outcome. Two of the several academics who analyzed this, D.S. Hillygus and T.G. Shields, summarize: Opinions about gay marriage and abortion "...had no effect on voter decision making among Independents, respondents in battleground states, or even among respondents with an anti-gay marriage initiative on the ballot.... Only in the South did either issue have an independent effect on vote choice, and even here the effect was minimal." Overwhelmingly what counted nationally as well as in the South were attitudes toward the economy, the Iraq war, and terrorism. (Of course, no one knows whether gay marriage was worth the 60,000 vote shift in Ohio that would have made Kerry President.)
The lesson from 2006 is that where Democrats spend their energies and money on bread-and-butter issues, where they avoid burning themselves out fighting the culture war and quit searching for a middle mushy ground to accommodate current Republican leadership ("bipartisanship"), they win.
Myth of the "Middle Class"
In understanding the political behavior of everyone's favorite category, "the middle class," it is essential to distinguish the upper-middle college-educated crowd who have good, relatively stable jobs -- they are about one-fifth of the labor force -- from everyone else. Leaving aside the poor, who may vote Democratic but are a small minority of the total vote, you have left what used to be called the upper-working class and the lower-middle class. These two have been merging in behavior, values and beliefs, and life styles for more than half a century to form a "middle mass" sharing the same fate. The middle mass is best measured by level and quality of education, not by the less reliable and less important "income" mostpollsters use. It is crucial in grasping election results.
It is no wonder that astute politicians of both parties have explicitly targeted this middle mass -- high school grads or voters with a year or two of apprenticeship or a vocational school/junior college but no baccalaureate. First, their size: They are well over half the electorate. Second, most of them feel squeezed economically between the rich, including the college-educated crowd, and the poor. They look up and see over-privileged folks who, they think, have easy, stable jobs, live well, seem to evade taxes, and send their children to expensive colleges, or worse, to elite state universities at their expense They look down and see a non-working, non-aged population collecting benefits, including Medicaid, food stamps, and some childcare, without paying taxes. In fact, their real income since the mid-1970s, with the exception of 5 or 6 years of Bill Clinton's presidency, has stagnated or deteriorated. These voters are typically restive and resentful.
From Wallace's ordinary folks to Nixon's silent majority, from Reagan's white ethnic Democrats to Clinton's hard-working Americans who pay their taxes and live by the rules, shrewd politicians have had a clear-eyed view of the composition of the middle mass and how their fears and resentments can be mobilized in national elections or calmed down by alternative appeals. The middle mass were 59% of the total vote of 1994 when Newt Gingrich Republicans were victorious. Enough Democrats among them defected that year to explain the outcome. These voters are the core of the tax-welfare backlash -- anti-tax, anti-social spending, anti-bureaucratic movements and parties that achieve electoral success for substantial periods. Think of Reagan to Bush I and II. In all these cases the tax-welfare backlash is always accompanied by xenophobic appeals -- baiting foreigners, welfare Queens, minorities. For instance, the white middle mass were the center of support not only for George Wallace but for populist-nativist Pat Buchanan in 1996 and Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who won a majority of white voters in a Louisiana primary for U.S. Senate. Finally, studies of both the Perot voters in the 1992 and 1996 U.S. presidential elections and the Gingrich Democratic defectors show that they were overwhelmingly non-college educated white men and women. Voters with modest levels of education typically thought that the economy was getting worse or their personal financial situation had deteriorated. Current surveys locate this sense of being squeezed among the same voters.
The popular vote victory -- and indeed the Florida victory -- of Gore 2000 and the narrow defeat of Kerry reflect a 2004 Republican gain among white high-school/part-college voters who were over 60% of the total vote in 2000 and 56% in 2004.2 Comparing the performance of Gore vs. Bush and Kerry vs. Bush in this strategic majority, there was a shift of about 3 percentage points toward Bush in 2004. The terror/Iraq/homeland-security brew trumped economic erosion among these voters. The middle mass tends toward intense patriotic fervor, more so than the Master's and professional degree holders where Kerry did very well, as he did among the poor.
Unfortunately, if you add the extremes -- high-school dropouts (2.6% of the total 2004 vote) and those graduate and professional degree holders (10.2% of total)-- Kerry's big score among the most and least educated was insufficient to offset the defection of middle-mass Democrats.
Barack Obama faces a more formidable barrier to victory. The dirty little secret of 2008 and 2004 is that the November electorate remains non-black, non-poor, non-young, non-college students, non graduate and professional degree holders. The media have built up Obama as not only the charismatic agent of change (telling us that he is Jack Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and even Abraham Lincoln combined), but also a uniter, a centrist sure to attract the "independent vote" and even Republicans. Add race into this mythical mixture and you will have far greater defections among the white middle mass than the 3 percentage points Kerry experienced.
With Obama as the nominee, Republicans will not have to use the race card in ads as they did in Tennessee against Harold Ford, Jr. or even mention the code words they have used in every election since Goldwater4; silence and some immigrant bashing will suffice. All they need for victory is a 6 or 7 percentage point Democratic defection from the white middle majority. It is wishful thinking to argue that Obama can offset such big defections with increased turnout of blacks, 18 to 24 year olds, college students, or Republican converts and independents. Nothing in November election results since 2000 supports that calculation.
2006 Results and the Myths of the "Independent" Voter and Suburbia
For many elections the Gallup Poll has asserted that upward of 30% of Americans are self-described "independents." Ray Wolfinger and his colleagues, however, show that real independent voters remain roughly stable at 1 in 12 or 1 in 10 voters since 1950. If we measure independence not by self-identification in one question ("I think of myself not as a Democrat or Republican but as an independent") but follow up with "Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican or Democratic Party?" we find that about two-thirds of the respondents who initially called themselves "independent" say they are closer to one or another party and overwhelmingly vote that way This percentage remained stable for half a century.
This is not to deny that by many measures the electorate as a whole has decreased in party attachment and identification (ID). Fluctuation in the vote for both parties indicate that from 1950 through the 1980s House elections trended toward more defectors, although that trend reversed in recent elections. If we ignore the 10% of voters who are black and whose strong partisanship has increased, the strength of party ID among the mass of voters has declined, especially in Presidential choice. Party loyalties are now more lightly held; the long-term trend is toward party dealignment in the electorate.
The 2006 Democratic victory may signal a reversal of this trend. If an aggressive issue-based Democratic campaign is repeated in 2008, it will reinforce the underlying center-left majority. Consider nationwide surveys by Edison Media Research and Mitovsky International for the National Election Pool. In these 2006 exit polls (numbering 13,208 respondents) most voters said that they were more concerned with national than local issues; Democrats succeeded in nationalizing the election around traditional Democratic issues and Iraq. They won 53% of the popular vote in the highest turnout in an off-year congressional election since 1982
Democrats scored high in almost all social and economic groups, typically making substantial gains over 2002. Among the 2 in 5 voters who think of themselves as Democrats, 93% voted Democratic. Among one in four voters who think of themselves as Independent in a single question (not as Democrats or Republicans), 57% voted Democratic. Self-described "liberals" (21% of the exit polled), gave Democrats 87%; "moderates" voted 61% Democratic; even 20% of the self-described "conservatives" (32% of the total) voted Democratic. So, why this outcome?
Many overwrought pundits echoed the Republican spin that 2006 marked a shift to the right; they asserted that the winning Senate Democrats are really "conservative." David Brooks announced that "the muscular middle took control of America" and the voters merely exchanged Republicans for conservative Democrats (New York Times, 11.9.06).6 Survey results for 2006 show that if there was any shift, it was toward old New Deal/Great Society domestic issues and coalitions. The slumping economy since then has accelerated that shift.
The Winning Democratic Coalition, Past and Present
The social and economic composition of the 2006 victorious Democratic vote compared to the 2002 vote reads like the coalition put together by Lyndon Johnson in the tradition of FDR:
-- The Labor vote (union member or member in household were about a quarter of the total vote): 72% of members with another member in the household voted Democratic; 68% of union members and 58% of non-members with someone else who was a union member voted Democratic. Union households scored an 18% point edge over non-union households. As one of the last practitioners of retail politics, labor remains the pragmatic core of the center-left coalition. Even with its declining membership base, the American labor movement in many recent elections has offset the decline in Democratic Party loyalty by its vigorous field work, doing the job political machines once did; the labor vote, a crucial part of FDR's coalition, is still alive. To say that union members are only 16 million (not a trivial figure in itself) is to overlook not only this recent record of voter education and mobilization, but to ignore the network effect. Union members have families; union contracts cover another million and a half nonmembers; union leaders are coalition players. Union political influence is not only stable, organized, and concentrated in strategic states; it goes beyond the number of members.
-- The middle mass: About 52% of the 2006 total vote, high-school graduates and part-college voters gave Democrats 59% to 40% for Republicans, a 9% point gain over 2002. This part of the old coalition returns to Democrats when they accent tax fairness, education, family policies, job security, crime control, and the protection of the universalistic programs of the welfare state (national health insurance, guaranteed pensions, disability insurance). These issues can offset racist and nativist appeals, as they did in 2006. The media labeled this "left" or "economic populism" but it is no more than a traditional Democratic agenda reflecting majority preferences.
-- Incidentally, in 2006 college graduates split about 50-50 (an 8% gain for Democrats) and, as usual, holders of professional and graduate degrees gave Democrats a large lead -- 59 to 40 percent, an 11 percentage point gain over 2002. In the 2008 primaries and especially low-turnout caucuses, Obama did very well among the highly educated. But the main message from 2006 is the return of defecting Democrats in the more numerous middle mass.
The lesson of the caucuses and primaries of 2008 is that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton scored very well among these voters, a vast majority of whom live in populous swing states or big Democratic states or both. And the crucial challenge for Obama is to appeal to their concerns not by running thoughtful seminars on race relations but by mastering the forceful economic-populist themes his rivals articulated.
-- Women, including single women and single mothers. Everywhere women, who are a now a majority of the electorate, are attracted to center-left parties that support family policies, educational reform, expanded health care, active labor-market policies, and environmental protection, and avoid government intrusion into their private decisions about birth and abortion. The development of the gender gap and the image of homogeneous affluent suburbs account for the myth of moderation as applied to women. "Soccer moms" are a small minority of women voters; suburbs or exurbs come in many shapes at every level of education and income. There have long been black suburbs, ethnic suburbs, young singles suburbs, married-with-children suburbs, working-class suburbs, upper-middle affluent suburbs, retirement suburbs -- the label obscures everything important in politics. It is non-affluent women trying to balance work and family who respond most to progressive politics -- wherever they live. White women, many of whom defected from the Democrats in 2004 (fear of terrorism was one reason), voted Democratic 56% in 2006; white males voted Republican 53%, although both men and women gave Democrats substantial gains over 2002. Single men and women, a third of the total vote in 2006, broke 3 to 2 for Democrats. This year Senator Clinton maintained a substantial lead among women. Although most of her supporters will vote for Obama, he cannot afford many defections. Again these women respond to bread-and-butter issues Obama too long avoided.
-- Public-sector employees who, for obvious reasons, favor an activist government. Women and minorities are prominent among them.
-- Sophisticated business leaders, especially those in export industries or high-tech firms who strongly support government-imposed education standards, government support for research and development and infrastructure investment, and who often favor family policies and active labor-market policies. Many would be glad to have the government take over the burden of financing health care. While not numerous, they help to neutralize strident business opposition to center-left causes. More generally, graduate-degree holders disproportionately vote center-left.
-- Racial-ethnic-linguistic-religious minorities and immigrants: In 2006, 9 in 10 self-identified blacks and Jews, 7 in 10 Hispanics/Latinos, and over 6 in 10 of Asians voted Democratic. All except blacks represented substantial gains since 2002. In Congressional races where Republicans ran on illegal immigration, they failed. Among the notable defeats of migrant-bashing Republican incumbents in 2006 were J.D. Hayworth (white suburb of Phoenix) and Randy Graf (Southern Arizona district where Minutemen patrol the dessert). Hispanics are the fastest growing part of the electorate in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and California. In the primary/caucus season Obama won only one of the six -- Colorado. The same undertow of race was evident in the Latino rejection of Obama. In these states Clinton was able to sound populist economic themes convincingly; Obama can do no less if he is to win them back.
-- Regarding religion, although Democrats in 2006 piled up big margins among voters who are least active attenders at religious services (those who say "never," 67% Democratic; a few times a year, 60%; a few times a month, 58%), they also made inroads among the most observant and held their own among Catholics (55% voted Democratic, same as 2002). And, most remarkably, they got almost a third of the "White Evangelical/Born-again Christian" voters (in these exit polls, they were a quarter of the total vote, about the same as the Labor vote). More detailed examination of the successful Congressional challengers once again suggests that for a growing minority of Evangelicals, economic populism and Republican corruption helped to overcome Republican wedge issues so popular among the Christian right. The major Senate exception was the defeat of black challenger Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee where racial-sexual slurs in a close contest apparently worked.
Obama can easily get the usual 9 in 10 of black voters in November. Much more important, he must hold the white middle-majority voters who returned to the Democrats in 2006, while he mobilizes Latino voters and offsets Republican immigrant bashing and underground race baiting. But he cannot do this with soaring rhetoric about bringing people together while he attacks "Washington," reinforcing Republican ideas that government is the problem.
There is plenty of evidence in surveys of voting behavior and political orientation that the six groupings constitute a large majority of voters and respond to a center-left agenda. They constitute a stable Democratic winning coalition.
The Myth of Moderation: Why Old Issues Are Good Issues
The last 50 years of national attitude surveys both in the U.S. and abroad, coupled with the defeat of politicians who appear to be serious about cutting back or reforming the core programs of the welfare state, contradict the idea that we are in a new society with new values and the Democrats must radically change to win again. There is more continuity than meets the eye. The Southern ascendancy of the Republican radical right may be only as old as Goldwater/Reagan, but the issues that remain important to modern voters are as old as the New Deal. Even today's successful environmental movements had their counterparts in the time of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir.
Two major patterns from this large body of surveys stand out. First, vast majorities of voters in the U.S. are ambivalent and contradictory in their values and beliefs about the proper role of government. In response to abstract ideological questions they are simultaneously individualistic/collectivistic, Social Darwinist (every man for himself) and humanistic (pro-welfare state -- we're all in the same boat), laissez-faire and statist, meritocratic and populist, believers in both individual liberty and community as well as equality of opportunity and (to a lesser extent) equality of results. Despite this ambivalence, surveys consistently show that a majority of voters have pro-government intervention, pro-welfare state sentiments
The great ambivalence of mass publics permits politicians to play it either way. If they are hostile to expansive social and labor policies they can work the tax-welfare backlash; if they are friendly, they can mobilize majority sentiments.
When you read pollsters' claims that Americans have shifted to the Republican agenda or have become "moderate" because they are individualistic and want a less active government or have embraced new values, remember that it is typically media-filtered "information" that is fed back to pollsters as public opinion. My favorite example comes from a focus-group survey on the proper role of government done at the height of the balanced budget debate of 1994-95. One older citizen on Social Security who was a heavy user of Medicare explained that "I want the government off my back.... I don't want the government messing around with my Medicare."
The second pattern of results goes beyond abstract ideology to issue-specific opinion about taxes, spending, and particular policies comprising the welfare state. Here there is no confusion and little ambivalence. The structure of public opinion has remained remarkably stable since World War II both in the U.S. and in affluent democracies with sharply contrasting cultures and politics. Briefly, modern voters everywhere love guaranteed pensions and disability insurance and are only a shade less enamored of national health insurance. Next most popular and becoming more so are family policies such as parental leave, publicly subsidized child care, before and after school leisure centers, pre-school education. Active labor-market policies (training, retraining, job counseling and placement, wage subsidies, job creation) also draw majority support. If the idea of tax increases is added to these questions, mass support typically drops only slightly. When we go beyond these most expensive and popular policies we find that the mass of citizens in all these countries have serious reservations about passive unemployment compensation and are downright hostile to means-tested public assistance (American "welfare"); they think the benefits too often go to the undeserving. In mass attitudes toward specific programs Sweden and the United States are brothers (sisters?) under the skin. Again, nowhere do we uncover a mass defection from the core programs of the welfare state--another reason for the Democrats to sharpen their message now about the old issues while they educate and mobilize voters around them.
What about the taxes necessary to finance all this? A major finding in my own work on tax revolts in 19 countries shows that it is not the level of taxes that creates tax-welfare backlash but the type of taxes - property taxes on households and income taxes with their visibility and perceived pain. Conversely, consumption taxes (e.g.VAT) and social-security payroll taxes keep things cool; they have never triggered a sustained tax revolt. In the words of an old pop tune, 'It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it." Democrats who think that they must avoid the "T" word might note a 2006 shift away from the "something-for-nothing" plague: The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that voters passed only one of the 17 state measures that would have saddled legislators with arbitrary budget, taxation, and term-limit restraints, California style.
The center-left big-spending democracies long ago discovered that less reliance on painfully visible taxes and more universalistic spending (e.g. national health insurance) made it possible to finance a civilized welfare state whose benefits are substantial and widespread. Modern voters cannot be mobilized to resist gradual tax increases when the tax structure relies heavily on social-security taxes and consumption taxes and reduces reliance on property taxes and personal income taxes. Such a balanced tax structure -- about a third progressive income taxes, a third consumption taxes, a third payroll taxes -- may be proportional or even regressive but it raises enough revenue to increase social spending not only for the middle mass but also for the poor. The resulting increase in income equality, security, and dignity reduces the politics of resentment.
Again 2006 provides evidence of the resonance of center-left issues. As all pollsters noted, a majority both before the election and in exit polls said the country was on the "wrong track;" the last time this view was more negative than positive was when Gingrich Republicans took over in 1994. And, of course, the Iraq war was at the top of every analyst's list. In the pooled exit polls, if the phrasing was open ended, 31% called the war the most important issue in their vote; 21% listed the economy; 12% health care, one in ten terrorism. But phrased another way, "In your vote for U.S. House, how important was [issue]?" [Extremely, very, somewhat, not at all important], bread-and-butter issues rose to the top along with Iraq and they were more unequivocally helpful to the Democrats than Iraq. Describing their family's financial situation compared to two years ago, 69% said worse or about the same and gave Democrats huge margins. Asked how do they feel about their family's current financial situation, the 31% who felt they were getting ahead financially broke almost 2 to 1 for Republicans. Sixty-eight percent said just enough money to make ends meet or we are falling behind, and again, gave Democrats big margins. These results track their views of the state of economy: not so good/poor (half of total), 4 to 1 Democratic; excellent/good, 7 to 3 Republican. The major pre-election polls found a similar pattern: the economy, jobs, and health care matched Iraq and terrorism as top concerns, and the voters had finally realized that Bush's war and reducing terror were separate matters. This 2006 pattern is still prevalent in 2008.
More important, Senate campaigns of Democratic winners were effective not only in their attacks on Bush's Middle-East catastrophe, but were heavy with aggressive articulation of left-of-center themes: protect Social Security and Medicare, move toward universal health coverage, increase the minimum wage, restore the right to organize. They treated increasing inequality and our high rate of poverty as moral scandals. Combat veteran Jim Webb (Va.) ran on these issues, going far beyond his attack on Bush's war. In case anyone missed his passionate convictions about economic fairness and social justice, he wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal just after his victory repeating his theme that the rich are getting richer while the wellbeing of the middle erodes and poverty increases. Organic farmer/environmentalist John Tester (Montana), who got into politics opposing the deregulation and privatization of electric utilities, as well as Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bob Casey (Pa.), sounded the same alarms.
These candidates were typical of Democratic winners in both Senate and House races in every region. Almost all played down wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage in favor of unifying themes, the old Democratic Party agenda. Successful Democrats were ardently anti-war. But voter opinions were mixed. Only the 36% of the total who said Iraq was "extremely important" in their vote had a big Democratic margin as did the 10% of the total who said it was "not at all important" (2 in 3 voted Democratic). The "somewhats" broke even and the "verys" gave Republicans a 6% edge. If kitchen-table issues helped the Democrats more than Iraq in 2006, they will top Iraq even more in 2008.
This picture is certainly at odds with the argument that the new issues and the new cultural concepts and life styles in the new society are alarm signals for Democrats to change their tune -- and either adopt the manly stance of the Bush administration's propaganda machine (go quail hunting instead of wind surfing?) or accent bipartisanship and moderation as Barack Obama did in the first year of his campaign.
Strategy for a 2008 Sweep
American voters do not grasp issues remote from their experience such as foreign policy, star wars, monetary policy, or war budgets. So the Bush White House could get away with distorting or inventing intelligence; they could occupy Iraq with no plan for civil order and reconstruction, and divert resources from the real problem of terror. They could push an energy policy that increases our dependence on oil and adopt a dangerous doctrine of preventive war. They can continue to fake figures on debt, deficits, and the cost of Iraq. But on the political economy close to home -- people's pensions, their health care, their children's schools, their food and gas prices, their stagnant wages, uncle Joe's loss of a job -- on these issues Bush and now McCain cannot easily manipulate the electorate. That is why the Democrats have so far remained unified in opposition to privatizing Social Security and are preparing to defeat the continuing effort to privatize Medicare. They perceive that the President and the Republicans have been engaged in a massive, radical effort to repeal the New Deal, to privatize public benefits and services, to redistribute income upward, and enhance corporate welfare. And they see polls that suggest that Democrats, even without the bully pulpit, not only defeated the White House campaign to undermine Social Security, but have exposed the new drug benefit as another gift to industry. They have also reinforced the media's belated discovery of reality in the Middle East, making it easier to offset the Republican mantra that Democrats are soft on terror, favor defeat in Iraq, and are selling out our soldiers. By November 2008 these claims will be even less credible than they are now to everyone but Bush loyalists.
In short, if Democrats -- Barack Obama and candidates for the Senate and House -- want to achieve a sweep in 2008, they should allow no foot-in-the-door on Social Security or Medicare. They need to take the offensive by continuing to educate voters about fraudulent domestic policy claims while they confidently defend and expand Social Security, embrace universal health care, and enhance jobs and labor standards, the environment, the right to organize, and the rest of a recognizably Democratic agenda. Where Republicans try to distance themselves from Bush and come on as "moderate" or "compassionate," imitating Democratic rhetoric, it will not be difficult to pin them to their records as loyal Bushies. Meanwhile Democrats can try four short sound bites that resonate with the center-left majority coalition and can turn a squeaker into a rout: "Medicare for Everyone," "Work Should Pay," Make College Education Affordable," and "Stop Reckless Wars." Spell them out credibly and repeat them several times a day.
Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates need to have the courage to face the real electability problem of November: how to trump wedge issues with bread-and-butter appeals and thereby retain the white middle majority they won in 2006. Barack Obama must move away from his "bring-people-together-be-nice" primary campaign and appeal to that strategic Democratic base. A formidable task, but not impossible in the four months left.
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Posted July 15, 2008 | 11:58 AM (EST)