In the years preceding the electoral earthquake triggered by the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress and Barack Obama’s 2008 election, political junkies were treated to a full shelf of books diagnosing what ailed the Democratic Party. If that catalog of publications is any indication, the party’s problems were many and insurmountable. Among other critiques, national Democrats were deemed too soft to trust on foreign policy and defense issues including, and especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the handling of the growing threat of global terrorism.1 Democrats and liberals were chastised for losing voters otherwise sympathetic to their economic policies by being “out of touch” with Americans’ social and familial values,2 and specifically for a secularized politics that offended voters’ religious sensibilities.3

Democrats were blamed for both having lost the center by becoming too liberal,4 and for losing their liberal base by becoming too corporate or centrist.5 The party was faulted for its inability to attract sufficient support from white voters, particularly suburban whites6 and white men.7 Regionally, national Democrats were advised to either find a solution to their festering Southern problems,8 figure out ways to win outside the former Confederacy,9 or try to swing key voting blocs regardless of region.10 A new campaign finance law sponsored by Senators Feingold and McCain, that banned the soft money donations Democrats had relied upon for years to maintain some degree of fundraising parity with Republicans, was pronounced the “Democratic Party suicide bill.”11 More broadly, Democrats and liberals were pilloried for allowing Republicans and the conservative movement to dominate them not only strategically and tactically,12 but rhetorically as well.13

By election night 2008, however, the political narrative had reversed—the focus of the partisan doubt shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, and the national punditry began asking how the Republican Party had fallen so far, so fast. Now, with Democrats expected to lose significant numbers of Senate, House, gubernatorial, and state legislative seats across the country in the 2010 midterm elections, the post-Obama future of the Democratic Party is causing center-left critics to wring their hands again. Were the very successful Democratic cycles of 2006 and 2008 in fact an affirmation of Democratic policy prescriptions and politics, or merely a rebuke of Republicans during the George W. Bush era? Did Obama save his party or was his election merely the result of a terrific campaign waged by a superior candidate during a favorable electoral cycle? Is there such a phenomenon as “Obama Democrats,” and what is the meaning of this movement and its future?

The Obama Coalitions

Perhaps the best way to begin answering these questions is to deconstruct how the 2008 Democratic coalition assembled by Barack Obama differed from previous winning Democratic formulas. As Phil Klinkner and I demonstrate,14 then-Senator Obama built two new coalitions in 2008: one for the Democratic primary to defeat Hillary Clinton, and another for the general election to defeat John McCain.

The first coalition was unlike that of any previous winning Democratic presidential nominee. Obama paired the historically insufficient so-called “wine-track” voters—the liberal core of young voters, urbanites, and college-educated whites—with strong support from African-Americans and a sliver of independent and moderate Republicans. Clinton’s residual support among the so-called “beer-track” coalition of older whites, Latinos, non-black women, and rank-and-file Democrats helped her amass roughly eighteen million votes, about the same number Obama received. But because Obama more efficiently translated his votes into Democratic delegates, the Illinois senator manufactured a small but insurmountable delegate lead.

Obama built his second unprecedented coalition outward from the first, capitalizing on the recent growth of African-American and Latino voting populations, and ratcheting up their turnout along with that of younger and first-time voters to forge a winning combination Democrats had long dreamed about but could never quite assemble. Among the many contrasts between the Obama electorate and the one that sent Bill Clinton to Washington in 1992, the most obvious is its racial composition. For the first time in U.S. presidential history, non-white voters comprised more than a fourth of the electorate, thanks in large part to the 19 percent increase in the number of nonwhite voters between 2004 and 2008. Meanwhile, McCain’s support was limited to a rump Republican minority of older and whiter voters: 90 percent of McCain voters were non-Hispanic whites, and 54 percent were non-Hispanic whites over age forty-five.

Obama also performed well among secular voters, the unmarried, and residents of the cities and inner suburbs. Combined with his support among younger and non-white voters, these groups are notable for one important reason: each is rising as a share of the American population. For example, Latinos now outnumber African-Americans in total population, and will soon surpass them among total voters; half of all American women over age sixteen are presently unmarried, and soon half of all men will be; and by some estimates the number of people who are atheistic, agnostic, or do not identify with a particular religion has doubled in the past two decades. Put another way, if support for Obama or future Democratic nominees among these various demographic subgroups were held constant moving forward, by dint of their growing share of the population and (presumably) electorate, winning margins for future Democratic presidential candidates only stand to widen. This is the so-called “Emerging Democratic Majority” that John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, among others, had forecasted for some time. The most notable exception to this trend is union membership: although voters from union families have held relatively steady as union workers retire, eventually the shrinking unionized share of the American workforce will catch up with the Democrats—if it has not already.

The shrinking unionized share of the American workforce will catch up with the Democrats—if it has not already. 

Obama’s two new coalitions long held a latent potential that was not fully realized until Obama arrived on the scene. A candidate whose biography differed in important ways from that of earlier African-American Democratic presidential hopefuls—he is mixed-race, his father was continental African rather than African-American, and his rise up the more traditional political ladder via law school and the Senate departed from the clericalactivist backgrounds of previous contenders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton—Obama was able to change the calculus within the Democratic primary and break the racial glass ceiling in the general election. His uniqueness, however, raises the question of whether such a coalition can be mobilized by future, presumably white Democratic presidential candidates or nominees. Put another way, are the so-called “Obama surge” voters “surge” voters or merely “Obama” voters?

Although the 2010 midterm and 2012 presidential cycles should provide preliminary answers, the long-term implications of this newly-mobilized cohort of voters remain unknown. Organizing for America, the arm of the Democratic National Committee built out of the Obama campaign’s mybarackobama.com website, is working hard to cultivate, train, and mobilize the voters and volunteers it collected in 2008 to ensure that they remain active in non-presidential contests and off-year cycles. Should these voters remain politically active—especially in near-term midterm cycles when Obama is not on the ballot, or future presidential contests once Obama’s presidency ends—they could transform party and electoral politics in the United States in the Democrats’ favor. Their latent potential contrasts sharply with the fate of the Democratic majorities “New Democrat” Bill Clinton inherited in 1992, which promptly disappeared two years later because of low turnout in 1994.

The “New” New Democrats?

Bolstered by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, “New Democrat” Bill Clinton promised a new, “third-way” or “triangulated” approach to governing that would draw the best ideas from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Although Clinton was more liberal than his Democratic predecessors in the White House on social issues like abortion and gay rights, his economic policies were generally business-friendly and, in some cases, hostile to the regulatory state. Clinton raised marginal income tax rates and attempted to overhaul the national health care system, but most of the economic benefits and middle-class gains during his presidency resulted from deficit reduction, the Federal Reserve’s dedication to low interest rates, and the technology market and early housing market booms. Other than targeted tax incentives for working-class voters, there was little in the way of directly redistributive policies—and, of course, Clinton supervised the supposed “end to welfare as we know it.” Whatever his record, Clinton’s third-way politics—devised as a solution to the Democrats’ electoral struggles in the 1970s and 1980s15—seem to have been validated: he left office with the highest approval rating of any modern president.

Do Obama’s governing approach and ideological posture signal a newly reconstituted Democratic Party for the new century, or are they warmed-over versions of Clintonian triangulation? The stimulus plan signed into law in early 2009 and the health care reform package passed in March 2010 demonstrate a willingness to spend big on new investments, to spur economic growth and rectify the socioeconomic disparities caused by the asymmetrical access to affordable health insurance. But in other ways Obama has disappointed his ideological base, which by dint of his electoral coalition is more liberal than Clinton’s. Latinos are frustrated with Obama’s foot-dragging on immigration reform; economic populists are deflated by Obama’s appointment of Timothy Geithner to Treasury and the toothless prosecution of Goldman Sachs; gay rights activists are angry about the president’s refusal to press their legislative agenda; and foreign policy liberals are fretting aloud about everything from Obama’s Afghanistan troops increase to his torture and Guantanamo policies. Analogizing the new president’s cautious approach to none other than president Herbert Hoover’s governing style, Harper’s magazine critic Kevin Baker produced a laundry list of complaints about the disconnect between Obama’s campaign rhetoric and his governing choices. “Obama has done nothing to pass ‘card check’ provisions that would facilitate union organization and quietly announced that he would not seek stronger labor and environmental protections in NAFTA,” Baker wrote six months into Obama’s young presidency.16 All of which has led some to wonder if Obama is a new kind of Democrat, or kind of a New Democrat?

Given his and his administration’s proximity to Wall Street and other special interests he railed against during the campaign, and his affirmation of tax cuts for virtually all but the very rich, Obama bears some striking similarities to the New Democrats of the Clinton era. On the other hand, his support for a nearly $800 billion stimulus package, along with passage of health care reform legislation that promises to expand coverage for younger, poorer, and uninsured Americans, Obama looks like a more liberal version of the post-Great Society Democratic Party. Readers of his book, The Audacity of Hope, will find this splitting-ofthe-difference quite familiar, for this is how the new president’s intellect generally operates. In that regard, though his conservative critics dismiss his policies as “socialist,” the stimulus was a capitalismpreserving Keynesian response to the economic recession he inherited; conversely, though some of his liberal critics worry that health care reform provides unnecessary financial windfalls to insurers, the new legislation extends coverage to millions of working-class and poor Americans who are presently uninsured. All of which is to say that Barack Obama is too liberal to be classified as a Democratic Leadership Council-style centrist—but not as liberal as opponents portray him.

What this means for the Democratic Party of the Obama “brand,” insofar as it exists, will obviously hinge on Obama’s ability to get re-elected. But it will also depend upon what he does with the mandate for change he asserted in 2008, and the degree to which his policies represent a major break from those of his recent predecessors. A “reconstructive” president, as presidential scholar Stephen Skowronek argues, uses the presidency and his political capital to fundamentally disrupt the politics of the past. Shifting America’s foreign policy posture from interventionist to diplomatic; re-regulating the financial sector in ways that prevent or at least mitigate future market bubbles; and creating a new entitlement for health insurance—these are the types of large-scale transformations out of which reconstructive presidencies are made. Thus far there is a clear intent to achieve the first two; the verdict on the third—given that so many of the health care reform provisions do not kick in until 2014—may not be known until after Obama’s presidency ends.

Ideas and Infrastructure

A political party’s standing is judged first and foremost by its electoral and governing success—by offices won and policies enacted. In 2006 and 2008, Democrats forged new majorities in both the

Shifting foreign policy from interventionist to diplomatic and creating a new entitlement for health insurance are the types of large-scale transformations out of which reconstructive presidencies are made. 

House and Senate—and among governors and state legislatures—and recaptured the White House. In the three years since taking over Congress, they shepherded into law a minimum wage increase, new consumer protections, a $787 billion stimulus package, and the landmark health care reform package; and they are presently pushing for new regulations on the financial industry, banks, and securities trading. But electoral gains can be reversed, and much of the Democratic agenda took the form of responsive measures to lingering problems. To permanently realign American politics a party needs something more—specifically, the Democrats need broadly popular new policy ideas and the political-electoral infrastructure to sustain the majorities necessary to enact those policies. What are the Democrats’ new governing ideas and how well organized are they for the political-electoral battles ahead?

On the ideas front, the problem with Obama’s “hope” and “change” themes is that such vagaries are better suited to campaigning than governing. Obama complicated his electoral mandate and ratcheted up expectations for his presidency by promising to fundamentally disrupt partisan politics and interest group influence in Washington—a promise far easier to make than deliver. After closely observing Obama’s first year in office, Jonathan Alter writes: “Unfortunately, for Obama, the means of achieving that vision— pragmatism and a long-term horizon—did not yet add up to a coherent governing philosophy. Obama’s policy prescriptions were complex and defied easy summation, which made it harder for him to explain them than it was for [Ronald] Reagan, Clinton, and even Bush. The rocket fuel of his campaign was his personal story; developing a powerful story about America and where it was going proved more elusive.”17

If Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress proved better at building a partisan majority than developing a coherent governing philosophy, it’s because Democrats were blessed

Obama ratcheted up expectations for his presidency by promising to fundamentally disrupt partisan politics and interest group influence. 

by the public rejection of Bush-era politics and policies. But this blessing also implies the curse of an ambiguous policy mandate, one further muddled by certain Democratic policy choices that appear to perpetuate rather than break with those of the recent past. The near-term fortunes of the national Democratic Party thus turn on how well the president, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and other national Democrats can make an affirmative, forward-looking case for retaining their power. The menu of tectonic policy changes might include a reconfiguration of income and payroll tax rates to shift the tax burden away from work to income and wealth; a shift in anti-terrorism policy that includes a new philosophy on how to use American power without tilting toward interventionist and preemptive attack; and a wholesale reconsideration of immigration and amnesty policies that venerates both human rights for illegal immigrants and the protection of U.S. borders.

Certain Democratic policy choices appear to perpetuate rather than break with those of the recent past. 

The battle for new ideas and agendas remains an uphill struggle. Critics would say the lack of new ideas proves there’s little meat on the “hopeychangey” bone, to borrow language from 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Defenders would counter that so much of Obama’s early presidency (aside from health care) needed to be reactive because of the messes he inherited and had to fix. Whatever the case, the good news for Obama-era Democrats is the downhill speed with which they reversed the infrastructural disadvantages they once suffered relative to the Republicans. Within a single presidential cycle, the Democratic Party—under the stewardship of Obama and 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe—has been converted from a beleaguered, underfunded, disorganized, strategically myopic, and technologically-deficient party into a lean, mean, political-electoral fighting machine.

Obama raised and spent roughly a quarter billion dollars in the Democratic primary, then promptly raised and spent another half billion for the general election. In addition to these record sums, Obama revolutionized the way money was raised: because so much was raised so fast online, the campaign dramatically reduced the overhead costs of old fundraising models. The Obama campaign also built a state-of-the-art campaign operation that used regression analyses to identify potential supporters, cutting-edge technology to communicate with those supporters, and creative social networking tools to connect those supporters to each other. The campaign’s sophisticated mobilization model not only created economies of scale, but permitted the Obama campaign to shift significant get-out-the-vote and fundraising costs onto volunteers and surrogates. The ideal supporter, in fact, was persuaded to perform three functions—vote, donate, and organize. Just four short years after White House adviser Karl Rove and Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign manager Ken Mehlman created a revolutionary field operation and a state-of-the-art “seventy-two-hour program,” Republican operatives had to concede that their organizational model was already eclipsed by the Obama campaign.18

After the election, that campaign operation was converted into Organizing for America (OFA), run by the Obama political organization from within the Democratic National Committee. OFA controls demographic information and donor profiles on an estimated thirteen million supporters. If recharged and updated properly by 2012, Obama could push that figure closer to twenty million and become the first $1 billion presidential candidate. Elsewhere, the Democratic Party’s progressive allies have built new political infrastructure, ranging from think tanks like the Center for American Progress to the media watchdog group Media Matters. No longer do pundits speak of a slow-footed, disorganized, and underfunded center-left. When Rove and former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie announced, in May 2010, the creation of five new, overlapping organizations designed to rectify the GOP’s structural deficiencies in order to help Republicans recapture Congress and the White House, it was clear that the partisan playing field once tilted decidedly against the Democrats has tipped, for now at least, in their favor.19

Obama and the Prospects for Democratic Realignment

As the 2010 midterms and the midpoint of Barack Obama’s first term approach, the Democratic Party— nationally—is better positioned than at any time since at least the early 1990s, and probably as far back as the mid-1960s. Of course, by November 1994 Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton was watching helplessly as his party lost its congressional majorities—a storyline that could repeat itself in 2010. What’s different for Obama-era Democrats is that they are buffeted by a demographically-favorable electorate and a formidable political-electoral machine. What’s still absent—and it’s a key missing ingredient—is a more comprehensive and coherent national policy agenda.

No longer do pundits speak of a slow-footed, disorganized, and underfunded center-left.

Thus far, an “Obama Democrat” is a discernable electoral phenomenon. But an electoral victory does not a partisan or political realignment make and an “Obama Democrat,” from a policy standpoint, is less obviously distinct. In order to cement their recent electoral victories and create such distinctions, following a reasonable period of reactive policies to solve inherited problems, Obama and his Democratic allies must fashion a new policy agenda that satisfies and builds upon their electoral majorities of 2006 and 2008. The early outlines of this disruptive break could be seen in a less aggressive defense posture and a more humble, diplomatic foreign policy, as well as in the domestic investments aimed at reducing the onerous burdens of health care premiums in order to achieve productivity and wage gains for businesses and the workers they employ. But again, these are policies that are largely retrospective-looking responses to failures by Obama’s two immediate predecessors. Less clear is what an affirmative, prospective agenda—around which a new, dominant political coalition can be built—for the longer term would look like. Assembling a majority to correct errors and failures of the past is far easier than building a majority to prosecute a hopeful, change-oriented agenda for the future.

If Obama-era Democrats can resolve some of these festering problems and still survive the 2010 midterms and 2012 presidential cycle, at that point they will have a chance to reconstitute themselves as “Obama Democrats” in a way that not only brings closure to Reagan-era conservatism, but also represents a striking departure from earlier periods of Democratic governance. Failing that, today’s Democratic Party will merely have revived its former self under new, more effective management than an embattled Bill Clinton was able to achieve at a moment when Republicans and conservatives enjoyed greater political momentum than they do today. Of course, if Obama and congressional Democrats fail to offer an affirmative, forward-looking, policy-based warrant for their leadership, and if they permit their current political-electoral advantages to slip away, the party could find itself yet again in retreat.

 

Notes:

1. Peter Beinart, The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again (New York: Harper Collins, 2006); and Matthew Yglesias, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008).
2. Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Henry Holt, 2005).
3. Amy Sullivan, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap (New York: Scribner, 2008); and Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (San Francisco: Harper, 2005).
4. William A. Galston and Elaine Kamarck, “The Politics of Polarization” (2005 paper, available at www.third-way.com); and Zell Miller, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat (Macon, Ga.: Stroud & Hall, 2003).
5. Matthew R. Kerbel, “Conclusion: Blueprint for Progressive Change,” in Get This Party Started: How Progressives Can Fight Back and Win, ed. Matthew R. Kerbel (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 177- 192; and Mike Lux, “The DLC, Past and Present,” August 14, 2007, available at http:// www.openleft.com/showDiary. do?diaryId=770.
6. Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
7. William A. Galston, “The White Male Problem,” Blueprint, July 12, 2001; and David Paul Kuhn, The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008).
8. Steve Jarding and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must Do to Run ‘em Out (New York: Touchstone, 2006); and Bob Moser, Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority (New York: Times Books, 2008).
9. Thomas F. Schaller, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). 10. John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (New York: Scribner, 2002).
11. Seth Gittell, “The Democratic Party Suicide Bill,” Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2003, 106-113.
12. Matt Bai, The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics (New York: Penguin, 2007); and Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
13. Glenn Hurowitz, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party (College Park, MD: Maisonneuve Press, 2007); and Paul Waldman, Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006).
14. Philip A. Klinkner and Thomas F. Schaller, “LBJ’s Revenge: The 2008 Election and the Rise of the Great Society Coalition,” Forum 6, no. 4, article 9, available at http:// www.bepress.com/forum/vol6/iss4/art9.
15. Kenneth S. Baer, Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
16. Kevin Baker, “Barack Hoover Obama,” Harper’s, July 2003, 31.
17. Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), xvii.
18. Michael McDonald and Thomas F. Schaller, “Voter Mobilization in the 2008 Election,” chapter 4 in The Change Election: Money, Mobilization, and Persuasion in the 2008 Federal Elections, ed. David B. Magleby (Provo, UT: Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, 2009).
19. Mike Allen and Kenneth P. Vogel, “Rove, GOP Plot Vast Network to Reclaim Power,” Politico, May 6, 2010, available at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36841.html.

 

New Labor Forum 19(3): 32-39, Fall 2010
Copyright © Joseph S. Murphy Institute, CUNY
ISSN: 1095-7960/10 print, DOI: 10.4179/NLF.193.0000006