Not just yet. But the politics of it aren’t very potent
Jonathan Chait takes a look (gift link)at the Democratic strategy which held that if only the party embraced economic populism, the voters would race back into the fold. This idea is still being pushed hard by the likes of James Carville and others who insist that the reason the Dems lost was a lack of attention to the kitchen table issues that Americans care about.
Chait specifically takes on the idea that it was the neoliberalism of the “uniparty” that caused the working class to abandon the Democratic party showing that the Biden administration took that critique seriously by initiating the most populist program since FDR. The progressive wing was passive during the Biden years and for good reason. He passed the kind of legislation they’d agitated for for years.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out as well politically as we thought it would:
In reality, Biden presided over the most unpopular Democratic presidency since Jimmy Carter’s. In November, working-class voters of all races, the very constituency that Biden’s anti-neoliberal turn was supposed to court, deserted the party. Perhaps hoping for Roosevelt-size majorities was a bit ambitious, but Biden’s sweeping, historic changes ought to have had at least some positive directional impact for the party. Unless, that is, the post-neoliberal theory of politics was wrong all along.
He acknowledges many of the defenses of economic populism in the wake of the defeat and they’re worth looking at as well. They all have some merit, particularly those arguments that the results of Biden’s sweeping policies haven’t taken effect yet so people really had no idea what they would mean to them. Obviously, Biden and the Democrats believed that a second term would see those results and the public would appreciate their accomplishments. However, as he notes, some of them have come online and even if people knew they were a result of Biden’s policies, they just didn’t care. They voted for Trump anyway.
Then there was the problem of inflation which Chait blames on left economic dogmatic rigidity assuming that it wouldn’t be a big deal. (I would have argued that full employment should have been a salve to that problem too, but nobody cares about good high paying jobs when the price of eggs is high, apparently. Live and learn.)
He takes on the idea that it was Biden’s age and the unwillingness or inability of the administration to use the bully pulpit to make its case. He says it was not dispositive but I disagree with Chait here. Biden’s age was almost certainly a huge factor in his unpopularity. I heard it from everyone, people who aren’t engaged in politics and those who follow it as closely as we do. People were incredibly uncomfortable with a geriatric leader and I suspect it was the single most potent reason for his unpopularity.
Harris, of course, wasn’t old. But she was a Black woman who had never been particularly popular with the public and that was if people knew her at all. And she was closely associated with what people believed was a massive failure of the Biden administration.
These were hugely important factors in my opinion. In our fame and celebrity obsessed culture, which is overwhelmingly influenced by propaganda and disinformation, image and narrative are more important than ever. People just didn’t like Biden and Harris much and they inexplicably saw Trump as someone who knew what he was doing.
And I am convinced that the “vibes”narrative hurt Biden immeasurably since the mainstream media absolutely refused to accurately describe economic conditions, hooked as they were on the idea that everyone was suffering. It became a negative feedback loop.
Chait’s take against the anti-neoliberalism is well taken and deserves to be taken seriously. He’s Chait, and therefore annoying, but he’s not wrong. But I shudder to think about his follow up that lays out what he thinks the real reason is that working class Americans abandoned the Democrats and what to do about it. Let’s just say I’m fairly sure he’ll advise Democrats to abandon their values and beliefs about equality, tolerance, pluralism and freedom to accommodate the ignorant paranoia of people who are brainwashed by right wing propaganda.
That won’t work either, I’m afraid. But that’s the way the wind is blowing.
By the way, this is all about the politics. On the merits, economic populism of the sort Biden did was absolutely the right thing to do on the merits. The question is whether it’s enough to win elections and I think that this last election gives us some evidence that it isn’t, at least in this current political environment.
On that count I’m with James Fallows:
Here is the idea that came to me only as I was saying it, at the end of the discussion with John Heilemann.
Heilemann asked me, What is to be done on policy? And I told him I didn’t know.
And then I said something like: The hard truth is, maybe that’s not what will make a difference for the Democrats.
Maybe the only thing that matters is who presents the policies and ideas. It’s the candidate, rather than exactly what that candidate promises to do.
We didn’t have time to discuss it further at that moment, but here’s what I’ve been thinking since then:
Let’s look back on presidential elections over the past century. Here are the Democrats who became president largely because of their personal magic in the moment. Their personal stories, their bearing, their contrast with the opposing candidate—all of this as opposed to details of their policy platforms.
- FDR in 1932—and then 1936, 1940, and 1944. He won in the first place because of the Great Depression, but also because of his jauntiness, his smile, his speeches, his magnetism, in contrast to the honorable but beleaguered Herbert Hoover. As political historians know, FDR ran in 1932 on a platform almost the complete opposite of the New Deal programs he enacted in office. It was the person, more than the policies.
- JFK in 1960. The youngest-ever elected president, dashing and impossibly glamorous, after the heroic but aging Dwight Eisenhower, and against Richard Nixon.
- Jimmy Carter in 1976. As argued above, he was the country-music-plus-rock-music, born- again Christian, rural South, Martin Luther King Sr-endorsed version of the excitement of JFK.
- Bill Clinton in 1992. Yes, it was “the economy, stupid.” But mainly it was a young, energetic, rhetorically gifted, culturally hip new candidate who would look people straight in the eyes and make them feel as if they were the only person who mattered at that moment.
- Barack Obama in 2008. See all of the examples above.
By contrast, here are three examples of Democrats who won mainly on “policy” or reasons other than personal magnetism: Harry Truman in 1948, with his “give ‘em hell” campaign. Lyndon Johnson in 1964, thanks to Barry Goldwater and in the wake of JFK’s death. Joe Biden in 2020, thanks to a party united in opposition to Donald Trump.
I think those three—Truman, Johnson, Biden—are exceptions illustrating the rule. Mostly Democrats have won only when their policy ideas, which of course are crucial, are embodied by a candidate who captures lightning at that time.
“Right policy” is necessary but not sufficient. Right person, right vibe, right time—that is how Democrats have mainly won. They had been lucky that the arcs of history and of personal ambition served up, at the appropriate times, FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton, and Obama, notwithstanding the flaws and limits of each.
I realize that making this point—you need to find a great candidate—is similar to saying “buy low, sell high.” But it’s one more thing that Jimmy Carter’s passing has made me think about. And I’ll try to explore it and other steps in installments to come.
I’ve thought this for quite a while and I would say that it’s never been more important than it is now when it seems that most of politics is conveyed to the masses through memes, symbols and social media posts. I have wracked my brain to see who might fit the bill and I just don’t know. Maybe it’s someone who’s not on the radar just yet.