How the Democrats lost the working class

Democrats have a "yuppie gloss." It's killing us with working class voters.

Stodder

A Guest Post by Jim Stodder

An economist looks at why it is a truck driver or factory worker or waitress might actually prefer that "orange-sprayed structurally coffed liar and rich bastard" to the the Democratic candidate.

"The Rise of the Meritocracy, Or How the Liberal-Left Lost the Working Class"     

The first thing to understand is that it wasn’t just racism or anti-immigrant prejudice. 

For verification, look at Obama-to-Trump voters. Two studies estimate that a crucial 11% to 13% of Trump’s 2016 vote came from people who voted for Obama in 2012.    Click: Rasmussen

These are mostly white voters, but there are also many Latinos. In a December Pew poll, 31% of Latinos approve of Trump’s performance as President, with 23% approving strongly: Click: Pew.  

The second thing is that this is not just a US phenomenon --- most European center-left parties have seen the collapse of their working class base, that of Britain’s Labour Party being only the most recent.

The most obvious factor uniting right-populist leaders – Trump, Johnson, Le Pen, Salvini, Orban – is the stoking of racism. But they wrap their racism up in an anti-elite anti-intellectual package.  

Go back to the roots of today’s progressive Democrats – the student New Left of the 1960s, which is where I come from. Most of us couldn’t have cared less about the proletariat. They were racist, supported the war, and might beat us up.  

We cared about self-directed work, and our radical vision was a society where all would have equal access to education – no more segregation by class, race, or income – and where the most capable, not the rich, would make all the important decisions.

But there was also a dark patch on the road to an egalitarian society.  One of the first to see it was an English sociologist, Michael Young, who wrote “The Rise of the Meritocracy” in 1958 – a sort of “social-science-fiction.”  A militant egalitarian, Young nonetheless recognized that if Labor's goal of equal educational opportunity were achieved, and education became the basis of social advancement then the new hierarchy would form, a “meritocracy.”  (Young coined the term.)   

It would be more individualized and “natural” than any previous aristocracy, defined person-by-person and by scientific testing. But it would still be hereditary, since intellectual ability and skill are largely heritable. He saw a self-perpetuating elite coming to power in the early 21st Century, and it scared him.

Today's Left has a renewed interest in socialism – but center-left parties like the Democrats have largely given up on the idea of more social power because of what you do. They are rather fighting for your rights no matter who you are – gay, trans-gender, of color, foreign-born, female.    

It is no longer that factory workers or waitresses deserve power because what they do is necessary. It is rather that they, or more likely their sons and daughters, should have an equal right to education – so that they will no longer be factory workers or waitresses.  

I think most liberal Dems would say the biggest problem in America today is economic inequality. I agree. I suspect many of them, especially those with higher income and status, would define this inequality not so much in terms of outcome, but in terms of opportunity. The Democratic Party’s idea of a “more perfect union” has become a more perfect meritocracy.  

This isn't the Democratic Party of FDR, with left-labor and Marxist support, believing that working people as a group should have more power. This move to equal opportunity has better protects women, people of color and other minorities, but something has been lost.

To see what’s been lost, say you’re a young white male. Let’s say you’re a truck driver. If you’re dissatisfied with your situation, what does the Democratic party say to you? Basically, that you should go back to school. If you feel frustrated and haven’t had a fair shot, well, they would say you are simply wrong, and that as a white male, you are actually the beneficiary of historically unjustified privileges. You’re lucky we don’t give that truck to someone more deserving.

Can we now begin to see how Donald Trump might look more attractive to this guy than Hillary Clinton? Or more than Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren, despite her folksy charm? Better someone who was born rich and has lots of construction workers and cleaning ladies working for him. He may be a rich bastard, but he knows he’s a lucky bastard, born lucky. Better him than someone who thinks they’ve earned all their wealth and privilege. And who thinks that you must really be a stupid shit. Otherwise, why would a white guy be driving a truck?

To many of us on the Left, it is absurd that this scion of New York real estate sells himself as anti elitist. We sneer at his gold-plated escalators. How can millions of working class folks can see this orange-sprayed, structurally-coiffed liar as closer to their interests than Hillary Clinton, as more trustworthy than our people? But they do. It’s visceral.  

I hope it’s not too late for the Democratic Party to rediscover its labor roots.  Personally, I like and trust Warren most of all, and hope she has a chance.  But I suspect that only Sanders or Biden can mute that yuppie gloss on the Democratic party. Sanders is more of the real deal, but he hasn’t been attacked by Trump yet. I suspect that’s because Trump would rather face him than Biden.  

That yuppie gloss is more than skin deep. Unless we Democrats become more than advocates of better meritocracy, we can kiss the ass of the working class – not just of whites but lots of Latinos and others – as they leave our party. And kiss goodbye to political power for a long time.  

But the best reason to reject meritocracy is that it’s morally empty. Inheriting intelligence and skill is not so different from inheriting other wealth. Yes, you have to work at it, but that’s true for other forms as well. And for my fellow boomer professionals, it’s time for a politics that is more than our glorified self-image. 

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[Jim Stodder teaches international economics and securities regulation at Boston University, with recent research on how carbon taxes and rebates can be both income equalizing and green. He was a college classmate, then received a Ph.D. from Yale in economics. His website: www.jimstodder.com]