Can Obama Create a Progressive Majority?

Conservatism and the Republicans were steered into the rocks President Bush’s reckless tenure in office and by the Republican Congress inability to respond effectively (or at all) to any of the major economic and environmental problems facing the nation. One could sense this in Washington in late 2005, as Republicans members of the House and Senate simply sneered at pleas for a change in course on Iraq, act quickly to rescue the Gulf Coast, or recognize the urgent threat of global warming. Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay iced the landslide Democratic victory in 2006, unthinkable just two years early. President Bush has the dubious distinction of being the most unpopular president in modern American history, according to a recent CNN survey.

George Packer, in an excellent article in this week’s New Yorker, shows that there is much dissent within the conservative circles. He interviewed a number of conservative intellectuals, including former Bush administration policy advisor David Frum, New York Times columnist David Brooks, and National Review editor Rich Lowry. All of them believe that the conservative coalition of working class whites, evangelical Christians, libertarians, and the rich is coming to an end. The white lower and middle class mothers who rescued Bush in 2004 turned decisively against Republican policies in 2006. Their governing failures, from cronyism in war contracts to incompetence in Iraq and New Orleans to indifference towards income inequality and torture in Iraq and Afghanistan, played a major part in their downfall ( see Alan Wolfe’s “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern” for a good review of these failures).

The problem for conservatives goes deeper however than governance and managerial skill. The modern Republican party do understand or empathize with any of the major concerns of Americans today, especially young Americans, and they have no ideas, small or large for dealing with them. As one conservative public policymaker told Packer, “There’s an intellectual fatigue, even if it hasn’t yet been made clear by defeat at the polls. The conservative idea factory is not producing as it did. You hear it from everybody, but nobody agrees what to do about it.” David Brooks echoed their comments last Friday on the Lehrer Newshour:

Well, I think what they [the Republicans] should do is just totally re-brand themselves, but they haven’t done that. I mean, they — and I was struck. I’ve been meeting with Republicans for years. Five years ago, they knew the problem was coming. There’s some immobility there that they’re not adjusting to.

And they’ve tried to — maybe the problem is we weren’t conservative enough. But if they were more conservative, they’d be in worse shape. I mean, they really haven’t adjusted to the post-Reagan era. It’s still, who’s the next Reagan? What would Reagan do? And I think it’s just mental blindness.

The Republicans “mental blindness” presents progressives with a game-changing opportunity. Since the 1980s, we have been operating under the assumption that the majority of Americans want to vote for a conservative and probably a Republican, but Reagan’s America is no more. Increasingly, Americans in all areas of the country, but particularly the growing urban and suburban areas in “red” Colorado, North Carolina, and Virginia appear quite ready to vote for a Democrat who believes in government provided-health care, government action to prevent environmental degradation, and a constructive foreign policy that would begin a withdrawal from Iraq and engage with our friends and talk with our enemies.

The second phenomena, which we’re seeing in Kentucky as a I write, is the persistence of a split between liberal Democrats and white voters for rural and old industrial areas, particularly Appalachia. Analysts within and outside of the Democratic fold have been in heated debate over Senator Barack Obama’s problems in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania over the last few weeks. (Senator Hillary Clinton has openly courted the “white working class” in hopes of somehow, someway she can win the Democratic nomination). The “cultural” divide of Democrats from low-income whites is the only thing that appears to seriously threaten the Democrats creating a lasting transformation of American politics in a leftward direction. Many have questioned whether Obama can attract enough “working-class whites” to create a working progressive majority (even George Packer largely fell for this line in his blog).

These folks are asking the wrong question. No Democrat, especially not Hillary Clinton, can win a majority based upon the white working class vote. Unfortunately, urban progressives, white or black, just have not won the confidence of less affluent white voters across the country. What progressives should be asking is which Democrat can add the most voters to its existing coalition on the issues that matter? Democrats, as Packer points out, have been stuck between the electoral polarization of Nixon and Reagan (to some degree, the fault of the American people) and the stand-offishness of many liberal Democrats (the fault of the party). Progressives should not rely on a “coalition of conscience and decency,” as Kennedy aide Fred Dutton once called for or the long defunct New Deal coalition of poor rural and urban whites. Hillary Clinton would have failed miserably to motivate young voters and failed to draw a contrast on the Iraq war. And she would have had a much bigger problem with conservative voters (Appalachia and elsewhere) than Obama will in the fall.

Obama offers a way out of past Democratic electoral conundrums by capturing the whites, blacks, and Latinos that Democrats have done so well with and adding hundreds of thousands of new young voters to the party. And as we have seen, this coalition has already flexed its muscles in three relatively conservative districts, especially in the South. He is probably the only candidate who can forge a working and lasting majority out of these disparate citizen groups in all parts of the Union.

More than coalition building, however, Senator Obama won the nomination because he affirmed the best in the Democratic Party, confidently, while modernizing it and expanding its appeal. Obama has been able to speak about national reconciliation and unity in a way that promotes social justice (“the American Dream”), strong pragmatic judgments (diplomacy as a tool of strength, not weakness), and a commitment to national service. He has sounded intelligent while speaking to a broad group of Americans on a wide number of important topics, particularly race. And he has revitalized the democratic process by reminding people that their voice, and not some consultants or bureaucrats, can be decisive in the today’s cynical political world. Those who fear John McCain’s appeal to white voters in West Virginia and Kentucky are fighting the last battle. Barack Obama will beat McCain in the fall and bring the first working progressive political coalition since the 1960s along with him.

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