"Letter from Washington" on Clinton and the middle class
Molyneux's, Guy
Minutes before President Clinton delivered his major economic address to Congress, the television camera panned to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the gallery. Flanking her were Alan...
...That's what the "investment" concept is about...
...It worked...
...Many have done this with child care, for example, which is why the demand for government-provided or -assisted care is less than might be expected...
...And the Democrats appear to have, at least so far, a talented salesman making their pitch...
...The other danger is that he'll be steered away from the kind of broad entitlements that solidify support for government...
...Old debates have effectively been settled, and new ones opened up...
...Finally it became a three-way race again...
...Is he really the "New Democrat" that some on the left fear or the New Dealer that conservatives fear...
...One is that too much deficit reduction will choke off economic growth...
...He seems to be a populist by training, but not by instinct...
...He does not use the Democrats' traditional language, much of which has its origins in the civil rights struggle...
...Clinton made his greatest gains, relative to Dukakis, among the middle and upper-middle classes...
...Yet the economic plan Clinton actually unveiled suggested he understood why he, and not Tsongas or Perot, was standing before the House and Senate...
...A durable Democratic majority would need more solid support from such voters...
...Then the white-collar recession of 1991 hit, and faith in Republican prosperity came unraveled...
...q 136 • DISSENT...
...Successfully reforming the American health care system is obviously an enormously challenging task, with plenty of ways to fail...
...This has never been done, in the United States or anywhere else...
...Clinton aspires to do more than simply increase economic growth and gain reelection...
...As governor, as presidential candidate, and as president, Clinton has placed the middle class at the center of his political message...
...When he emerged as a force in the spring, some called for a return to the "base" strategy, because the Democrats now arguably only needed 40 percent in a three-way matchup...
...Clinton won precisely because he went beyond the old base...
...Conservative strategist William Kristol said perceptively that the goal of Clinton's economic address was "to reverse the Reagan agenda and to convince the middle class that their interest lies with big government...
...Clinton made direct appeals to the middle class, proclaiming that Republican economic policies had "squeezed" them economically, and promising to deliver broad-based economic growth...
...Republicans used to fight (when they fought) over economic doctrines—supply side vs...
...Increasing voter turnout, through stronger commitment to the party's traditional values, would end the presidential losing streak...
...Perot did very well with this group...
...Among voters who are culturally conservative and economically liberal—the essence of populism—Clinton won only a meager four-point victory over Bush...
...That's not very impressive, in an election driven by economic discontent...
...If Clinton sometimes sounded like a populist on the campaign trail, that was mostly because his opponents were first Tsongas and then Bush...
...First-time voters over age thirty (people entering the political system for some reason other than simply becoming old enough to vote) gave Clinton exactly the same percentage as everyone else...
...However, significant defections from the GOP were deemed implausible, and attempts to gain them promised only to undercut the Democratic base...
...Jimmy Carter, the first post–New Deal Democratic president, didn't navigate these waters very well...
...fiscal conservatism—and Democrats fought over values...
...Turnout went up in 1992, but had no effect on the outcome...
...they were mistaken...
...Not at all...
...He spoke so often of stagnant wages and growing inequality that they have become virtual cliches...
...Widespread economic insecurity united middleclass and poor voters behind the same candidate in 1992...
...But what they really mean is that they don't like it when it isn't spent on them...
...This is not to say the Democratic party will be free 134 • DISSENT Letter from Washington of internal divisions...
...But if Clinton can provide decent universal care, without severe rationing or limits on doctor choice, the political payoffs for the Democratic party could be extraordinary...
...Now the GOP has a values war raging inside it...
...It's easy to forget that only a year ago such arguments were largely the province of journals like this one...
...The response of the middle class is to privatize everything it can...
...Perot, even more than Clinton, wreaked havoc with the left's political analysis...
...That's why Clinton talks so frequently about hard work, and why he labels public spending "investment...
...It spoke to people who were excluded, and demanded— rightly—inclusion...
...Clinton has two answers, and they're good ones...
...This could be complemented by appeals to some middle-class voters' generosity (or guilt) and liberal social attitudes...
...This marks a reversal from the pattern of the past quarter century...
...Its argument had always been that the party needed to move right on foreign policy and social values...
...But that is what got the Democrats in trouble with the middle class in the first place: it seemed government was taking care of everyone but them...
...In fact, turnout analyst Curtis Gans has found a high correlation between increased turnout in an area and the vote for Ross Perot...
...The left, it turned out, was sustantially wrong...
...Soon after making the speech, Clinton traveled to Hyde Park, New York, home of Franklin Roosevelt...
...Tough financial times do not automatically move middle-class voters to the left...
...The Democrats had their opportunity...
...Clinton stayed with his middle-class message, and prevailed...
...Just what is one to make of Bill Clinton...
...That was the language of "justice" and "oppression...
...The idea is to persuade people that there is an ongoing role for activist government in fueling private-sector growth...
...Middle-class Americans think of themselves not as beneficiaries of government so much as its financial supporters...
...After twelve years of GOP rule, it was no longer plausible to blame Democrats for the financial squeeze felt by the middle class...
...Even as early as 1996, if the Republicans jettison their anti-abortion position and Clinton has pushed through tax increases, upper-middle-class voters may defect...
...Clinton himself is very conscious of this challenge...
...Perhaps nothing was more important to the dismantling of the New Deal coalition than millions of people starting to think of themselves as "taxpayers...
...Was Clinton's victory a vindication for the Democratic party's right wing...
...This is an advantage for the Democrats, because on economic issues you can compromise— a little deficit reduction for you, some spending for you...
...Reagan came in, and his debt-driven economic growth sold the middle class on the superiority of GOP economic management...
...He acknowledges the middle class's cynicism regarding government, but so as to challenge it rather than pander to it...
...It will be a constant struggle for Clinton to balance these tensions...
...SPRING • 1993 • 133 Letter from Washington For years, this remained an interesting theoretical argument...
...Clinton speaks the language of the middle class, which feels more neglected than oppressed...
...The political symbolism again was clear—if quite different...
...In 1992, however, Bill Clinton made it an empirical question...
...The second is health care...
...For Democrats, the trick is to find problems middle-class people can't solve on their own...
...Until fairly recently, most middle-class Americans could count on receiving good health insurance from their employers...
...We live now in a very different world...
...The upper strata of the middle class can't be counted on regularly...
...The deficit would come down somewhat, to be sure, but almost entirely from new taxes on the wealthy and defense cuts...
...No one believes they can create good jobs on their own...
...But there are dangers here for Clinton...
...As Clintonism takes shape, it needs to be understood in the context of the political project facing him and the Democratic party...
...Democratic primaries will increasingly feature races like this year's Clinton-Tsongas contest—fights between those preaching fiscal responsibility and those with a more populist approach...
...Middleclass Americans don't demand "inclusion...
...The rose on FDR's grave notwithstanding, Clinton is indeed a "new Democrat...
...But they didn't...
...Then Perot dropped out, undercutting the argument...
...Clinton himself represents a fairly durable consensus: a liberal core, with a topping of "responsibility" rhetoric and a few tactical nods to conservatives (principally on the death penalty...
...Middle-class Americans say they don't like government spending...
...Faith in government declined as the country endured Vietnam, Watergate, and the collapse of the Great Society, and has never been restored...
...Some on the left had seen little substantial difference between the two parties, but nineteen million Americans saw plenty of daylight there—and ran for it...
...It was precisely economics that held together the winning biracial coalition so many analysts had deemed impossible...
...The preferred political strategy, articulated by Jesse Jackson and others, was mobilizing the party's poor/minority/working class "base...
...In a private moment, he laid a single rose on the grave of the great Democrat...
...Incredibly, some third-party proponents pointed to Perot as proof there was space for independent politics after all—as though where that space was located were a mere detail...
...Same for whites with incomes between $15,000 and $30,000...
...He wants to re-legitimize government in the eyes of the middle class...
...Clinton's early weeks looked dangerously Carteresque: gays in the military to alienate straight working-class men and much talk of "sacrifice" for deficit reduction...
...The left has of course long been skeptical, even suspicious, of direct appeals to the middle class...
...In fact, Clinton is "really" neither of these—or perhaps both...
...More fundamentally, Perot revealed that there were indeed voters who felt shutout by the current parties—but they were in the political center, not to the Democrats' left...
...But wasn't this an acknowledgment that the base strategy couldn't really get the party to a majority...
...Conservatives portrayed the financial pressures then as the result of an over-generous welfare state giving too much money to the urban poor...
...military force...
...The social issues that have so preoccupied both wings of the Democratic party have now largely been settled (abortion) or made moot (anticommunism...
...It appears that many of the marginal voters were Perotistas...
...The Democrats won by increasing their share of the vote among key groups, such as suburbanites and Reagan Democrats, not by increasing turnout among traditional constituencies...
...Right" and "left" will take on new meanings...
...only one in five called themselves a liberal...
...Clinton presumably does not intend to repeat those mistakes...
...From now on, "hawks" and "doves" will refer to one's position on the budget deficit, not the use of U.S...
...They also believe in private property—they don't have a lot, but they have far more than chains to lose...
...The political symbolism could not have been clearer...
...Most were political moderates...
...In the end, Clinton's was not much of a populist victory...
...But unlike many "new Democrats" before him, he hopes to sell an expanded—not shriveled—vision of government to the American people...
...Had Republicans been able to deliver ongoing middle-class prosperity, their top-middle political coalition could have held together indefinitely...
...What is becoming clear is that Clinton's presidency marks a new political period...
...Perot voters were solidly middle class, but economically pressured and anxious about the nation's future...
...That the worst economic times had coincided with a Democratic presidency made Republicans' task easier...
...When Clinton spoke of the forgotten middle class, it was their economic interests that had been forgotten...
...Their mission: build a new majoritarian left-center coalition in an overwhelmingly middle-class nation...
...Clinton can't afford to completely ignore the call for "fiscal responsibility...
...The deficit cutters place great emphasis on limiting programs to the truly needy...
...The first is prosperity...
...But the divisions will be over economic rather than cultural issues...
...But if the middle class isn't buying, then there's just no market for government...
...They explicitly rejected the notion that progressive economic appeals could win middle-class voters...
...That spells death for Clinton, because the one thing he was elected to do was restore prosperity...
...By the end of the 1980s, the steps taken by middle-class families to compensate for stagnant wages—principally sending women to work—had been exhausted...
...On abortion or Nicaragua it's harder to split the difference...
...He says he's tired of the defeatists who say government can't be made to work again for ordinary people...
...Among white voters with a high-school diploma Clinton won over Bush by a 40 to 38 percent margin...
...It won't be an easy sell...
...A more traditional "base" (read: liberal) message from Clinton would almost certainly have further boosted Perot, driving down Clinton's margin and perhaps even giving Bush a narrow plurality...
...Much of the middle class agreed...
...These were old debates, rooted in the cold war or in the social and racial tensions of the late 1960s and early 1970s...
...This was thought to be ineffective at best, an excuse for abandoning historic commitments at worst...
...Flanking her were Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and John Sculley, CEO of Apple Computer...
...Clinton actually beat Bush among this group...
...But the affordability crisis, together with the end of lifetime employment with a single firm, has convinced Americans that only a collective solution is possible...
...That said, satisfying the two economic wings of the party will require great skill on Clinton's part...
...Those who think that the old coalition can be rebuilt should remember that virtually none of the Americans who voted for Franklin Roosevelt paid any income tax at all...
...Middle-class voters also remain deeply skeptical of government's ability to solve the problems they face...
...His commitment to public investment remained intact...
...The Perot voters, who are crucial to his re-election prospects, feel strongly about the issue (as do Tsongas voters...
...The good news for Democrats is that Clinton himself, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, noted that Carter "adopted certain austerity policies . . . [that] wound up disappointing a lot of his blue-collar base on economic issues...
...they want others—both the rich and the poor—to play by the same rules they live by...
...Indeed, the economic trends Clinton identified began in the mid-1970s...
...In 1988, Bush had won voters with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 by about 14 percentage points...
...The real challenge," SPRING • 1993 • 135 Letter from Washington according to Clinton adviser Sam Popkin, is to "convince people that government can be a creator of nongovernment jobs...
Vol. 40 • April 1993 • No. 2
