I’ve been thinking more about this, and you know what? It’s not really about finding the sweet spot in your policies. It’s about having people invested enough to fight for you. It’s about organization.
The historical advantage Labour has had over the LibDems (in the UK) is that it had an organizational base in labour unions (of course). Australia’s Labor Party is the same way. If unions disappeared in those countries, the Labo(u)r Parties would know they were in trouble. Well, labor did a lot of the ground campaigns for the Democrats, and still does. The Democratic Party existed in symbiosis with organized labor, even if it wasn’t as identified with it as a “Labor Party.”
Maybe the whole reason the Democrats are losing so often is the collapse of private sector labor nions as an organizing base. And the Clinton wing didn’t keep up its end, and protect the unions. Bob Rubin’s money couldn’t make up for that. Gays couldn’t make up for that. Al Franken and Rachel Maddow couldn’t make up for that.
Conservatism can succeed–absent upheaval, crisis, & disaster–because it trades on familiarity, or nostalgia, or God. And churches can keep people shepherded into a general conservatism just enough to keep it going. Maybe reformism is harder.
And in fact, there have been difficulties in the relationship between reformist progressives (like McGovern) and somewhat more conservative labor unions.
But right now? The Left need organization. Becoming a Labor Party, not necessarily in name, but in fact, might work.
I consider that the equivalent of the outdated French concept of military élan - victory goes to the guys with the better morale and fighting spirit. It ain’t necessarily so. The Green Party has plenty of super-invested folks - they still don’t amount to much.
With less than 7% of private sector workers being unionized these days and only about 11% overall? I’m afraid I don’t see it. A focused Labor Party will just be a modestly larger version of the Greens. Still not amounting to much.
ETA: This is even without acknowledging that substantial segments of unionized blue-collar labor are not particularly left-leaning in general. Particularly in social terms.
On the other hand, if the Sanderites and more traditional left seized the high ground, that could let the Clintonites and other Neoliberals go off to their natural home on the left of the Republican party — moving that organization back more to Bushie conservatism away from the right-wing crazies ( most of those who ran in the nomination against Trump ) ---- whilst the identity issues people could join the libertarians, who share much of their social liberalism and love of self-interest.
A left party might actually get more people to vote, instead of only one quarter for each party. I am not left inclined, but America has gone so far right it is in danger of catatonia.
Moving further to the left and Corbynising the Democratic party (or whatever new name you want to give it) isn’t the solution at all. Zephyr Teachout and Russ Feingold lost, and of course Bernie Sanders got blown out in the Democratic primary, even though Sanders isn’t a Democrat and never should have been allowed in.
The most important tactic that the Democrats can use going forward to is take on the ridiculous third parties anytime they demonstrate any strength and show them for the fools they are.
There is plenty of opportunity (if not will among the Democratic big wigs) to become the party that is based on being pro-consumer/pro-worker(as opposed to pro-union)/pro-environment/pro-voter/ & pro-defense party. There’s more of us then there are of them. Really.
If the dems want to win then they should do 3 things IMO.
Rebuild the labor movement
Make it as easy to vote as possible, and enable as many people to vote as possible
Push ballot initiatives on the state level that bring people who lean democrat to the ballot box.
For point 1, I cannot find the article right now but it talked about how being in a union or being in a union household pushes your voting to the left. It discussed how if union membership were higher in 2004, John Kerry probably could have won. A white male gun owner from a rural area is highly likely to be GOP. But if he is in a union, it pushes his politics 30ish points to the left. Unions also provide a lot of financial assistance and free labor to political movements.
For point 2, the higher the turnout generally the better democrats do. That is why the GOP is making it as hard as possible to register to vote or to be able to vote. Make voting by mail extremely easy. Other things to do include automatic voter registration, making election day a national holiday, funding for get out the polls efforts, expanded early voting, restore voting rights to felons, look into lowering the voting age, etc.
For point 3, ballot initiatives can in theory bring people who would normally stay home and get them to go out and vote. Higher minimum wage and probably marijuana legalization are two ballot initiatives that get disenchanted voters who lean dem motivated enough to go out and vote. Finding other state wide ballot agendas to get people to vote would also help.
The dems seem to be stuck on point 1. They want corporate sponsorship, so they give lip service to unions without doing much to help them. EFCA for example, they could’ve passed that in 2009 if they really wanted to I’m guessing.
For point 2, I’m not sure why the dems are dropping the ball. The GOP keeps making it harder and harder to vote and the dems just put up with it. What happened in Virginia where a lot of felons had their voting rights restored was a good move, that needs to happen in florida too.
Your entire post is excellent advice for the Democratic Party–but the excerpted part seems particularly trenchant. The ‘let’s get along with the Giant Corporations’ philosophy had some reasonable underpinnings, but the net effect has been a negative for the party, I believe.
Either the DP is the party of the consumer/worker/individual, or it is not. And if it is, then support for those (sadly) few institutions that promote the rights of the consumer/worker/individual is crucial. The abandonment of advocacy for unions has done great harm to the Democratic Party.
They definitely do not have “plenty.” I don’t mean a few hardcore people, I mean a large organization. Quantity has a quality all its own.
That’s the point. It didn’t have to go that way a generation ago. Making a Southern governor with ties to Wal-Mart the leader of a labor party doesn’t work. Was Arkansas right-to-work back then? I don’t know. Anyway, Bill Clinton didn’t care about labor unions, nor did his wife apparently. They thought they could play like the GOP, using big banks for funding and buying lots of ads, and let the entire organizing base go. Turns out it didn’t work out so well.
In economic terms, labor is the typical definition of the left. Capital is the right. I suppose you could make enviros the left and labor+capital the right coalition, but you’d be in the minority with that definition.
So the Democrats and Labour should not listen to their own constituents when they want progressive policies, and they should crush any third parties that offer them. I think I see. :rolleyes:
FWIW I seriously, seriously, seriously do not think the vast majority of voters vote over policy issues. Instead, we’ve had a lot of good in depth journalism and even some good social science studies in the past twelve months that heavily show political beliefs are part of someone’s core identity. Almost akin to religion, and that they vote based on which candidate and which party has convinced them that their political identity as they understand it is in line with said party.
That isn’t to say that you can never get a voter from one party to the other (Trump certainly got some Obama voters and Clinton got some Romney voters for sure), but you do so by somehow selling people that their political identity is part of your party and not the other. Trump’s gambit was in the Mid West he was going to create a campaign that blue collar whites could identify with, and he largely succeeded. I think he probably expected he’d win a lot bigger than he did and probably is surprised he lost the popular vote by so much, but based on demographics in the Rust Belt he could easily improve his lead in all the states he won in 2016 (other than maybe a few in the South like Texas/Georgia that are increasingly turning blue, but he can lose a lot of votes there and still win those states.) Specific policy positions truly appear not to matter. Sanders voters identified with him because their political identity was basically that America is broken, and they were amenable to blaming big moneyed interests. Trump voters felt Trump represented their political identity.
You know policy didn’t matter–because Trump barely had a single consistent policy position at all, and the few he did were vaguely defined.
I think a lot of Democratic voters in Obama states Trump flipped stayed home because Hillary represented a campaign/candidate/Democratic party they didn’t identify with like they did Obama’s in '12 and '08.
Good points, Wes, but wanted to respond to this point. I think the problem is that the democratic party, and their voting base, has spent too much time on national elections and they have been woefully inadequate in their state-level strategies. The problem now is that Democrats at the state level are fighting an uphill battle against Republicans so legislative means are probably not going to work. It goes to your point 3, which is to start using ballot initiatives. I’m not normally a fan of direct democracy but if representative democracy is working against you, and if the causes are legitimate, then that’s an option.