Now is the Time for a Democratic Party Revitalization

The working classes allied with the Democratic Party from the New Deal era (1930s) to the beginning of the Johnson administration in the mid-1960s. Through the domestic reforms of FDR, the patriotic fervor of World War II, and the flourishing of the post-war consumer economy, the Democratic Party was supported by a carefully balanced alliance of northern liberals, immigrants, workers, African Americans, and white southern segregationists. The durability of that coalition began to crumble as civil rights enactments aggravated southern stakeholders beginning in the 1940s. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origins, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to a mass exodus of the South from the Democratic Party. President Lydon Johnson, aware of the political costs in passing these bills, concluded that the South would be lost for the Democratic Party for a generation. 

 The social and cultural forces pushing this shift were further intensified by a middle- and working-class backlash against the Vietnam War protests and the increasing radicalization of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s. Right wing bomb throwers like the ardent segregationist, George Wallace and 1968 Republican VP candidate, Spiro Agnew spoke in rhetorical cadence that appealed to a significant number of what some refer to as mainstream voters. This was what Richard Nixon dubbed as the “silent majority,” “who were sick and tired of what they viewed as the anti-patriotic gore of the 1960s. Playing the “southern strategy,” Nixon and third-party candidate, Wallace carried the entire South, except for Texas, in a 301 to 191 electoral college victory in 1968.

 With the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980, the voter-based conservative realignment of politics was complete. After 1964, the majority of whites voters went for the Republican candidate, typically by a 15–20-point margin. The Democrats had effectively lost the white working and middle classes, key constituencies of the New Deal/Great society coalition. In the process, the Democrats were also losing the culture wars over such issues as abortion, gender equality, gay rights, and economic justice for historically oppressed minority groups of various persuasions. While liberals won many specific battles, their identity-politics focus was issue oriented, which did not rise to the level of sustaining a long-term center-left political movement. By contrast, politically oriented conservatives created mass mobilization movements largely within the Republican Party, so that even when they lost elections, they remained organized and inspired. In short, over a several decade period, the conservative movement garnered the resources—media, think tanks, corporate funders, intellectuals, zealous followers, and the political vision—to play the long game, which the Democrats up to now have utterly failed at.

 One of my concerns about Joseph Biden running for a second term was that while I agreed with him on many policy issues, including his forthright stance on Ukraine and NATO, he was simply not equipped to engage cultural issues in a manner that could effectively counter the rhetorical power conservatives enacted. A more effective communicator was needed to counter the stereotypical depiction of “the left,” as some unified enemy of the American people fanatically poised against the “real Americas” of the heartland.  In galvanizing the Party to new possibilities for a center-left revitalization movement, VP Harris and Gov. Walz have the opportunity now to reposition the Democrats to claim the center in representing core American values while equipping this nation to address the critical issues it faces in the present and near-term future.

 As telegraphed throughout the recent Democratic National Convention, through Harris’s leadership, a precious moment of possibility has opened up to reconstitute a pragmatic-based reformist movement within the Democratic Party to address the central issues the US faces at this critical juncture. These include the existential challenge of global warming, the need to develop a thoroughly modern infrastructure and transportation system, establishing an economy from the middle out based on good paying jobs in sectors focused on the changing needs of the US economy. These developments would be buttressed by the construction of a first-rate educational system at all levels, as the United States approaches the fourth decade of this century.

 This, obviously, is just a sketch; more could be added in the realms of poverty reduction, the need for a serious immigration policy, and a comprehensive foreign policy based on the central leadership role of the US in a changing international world order. The relevance for the immediate time at hand—the election of 2024—is that it fundamentally matters who this nation brings into office in the highest political positions of this nation to effectively address the core issues of our time.