Unnecessary Gloom: The Class v. Culture Clash: Replies
Edsall, Thomas Byrne
Ruy TEIXEIRA and I are in substantial agreement on many of the forces at work in contemporary politics—particularly on the central role of white, working-class voters in recent elections and the...
...90 • DISSENT / Summer 2001...
...In this context, perhaps the three most significant factors to watch in the coming years are the political influence of indirect and direct stock ownership, the partisan alignment of Hispanics, and the social liberalism of professional elites...
...THOMAS BYRNE EDSALL is a national political reporter for the Washington Post...
...Hispanics are coming of political age and they tend to vote Democratic by roughly two to one...
...Rural areas (increasingly Republican) are declining and urban areas (increasingly Democratic) are growing...
...The GOP will change or it will die, and survival instinct is generally stronger than ideology in America...
...He is the author of The New Politics of Inequality and Chain Reaction...
...In fact, there's a good case to be made that, given the right kind of appeals, an emerging Democratic majority should dominate the early part of the twenty-first century...
...This growth is based in part on the rise of 401(k) retirement plans and expanded participation in mutual funds...
...According to Federal Reserve data published on the Statistical Abstract of the United States Web site, after remaining relatively flat from 1935 (21 percent) to 1983 (19 percent), the percentage of Americans owning stock has steadily grown to 32 percent in 1989, 37 percent in 1992, 40 percent in 1995, and 43 percent in 1999...
...DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 89 Middle Passage depicts some of the conditions slaves experienced while being transported from Africa to the western hemisphere...
...indeed, they should welcome it...
...This climate does not create much incentive for a Democratic politician seeking to build a majority in the relatively short time frame of a campaign...
...By the end of this decade, if nothing were to happen to change partisan voting patterns, the growth of the Hispanic vote could well return Texas, Arizona, Florida, and New Mexico to the Democratic column...
...Teixeira quite correctly, writes from the point of view of someone who wants to shape a certain kind of coalition and to have the parties polarize in ways that fit his vision of what the Democratic Party ought to be...
...Also significant is indirect stock ownership via such huge pension and retirement funds as CALPERS (California Public Employee Retirement System), the Teamsters pension fund, and the National Industrial Group Pension Plan (UAW...
...IFINALLY, ONE trend that has not been adequately explored is the growth in the percentage of Americans who own stock...
...In addition, the financial security of millions of working-class Americans who do not see themselves as, or identify with, investors is increasingly dependent on the suc8 8 n DISSENT / Summer 2001 ARGUMENTS cess of their corporate employers...
...Ruy TEIXEIRA and I are in substantial agreement on many of the forces at work in contemporary politics—particularly on the central role of white, working-class voters in recent elections and the necessity of having an effective plan for promoting economic growth and more equitable distribution in new competitive circumstances to win their votes...
...Photo by Felecia Hunt-Taylor...
...But the reality is that both parties adjust to new demographics, and Republicans are working furiously to adapt to the shifting ethnic composition of the American electorate...
...And they certainly should not fear that existing cultural conservatism makes a strong program on economic issues moot...
...As the Clinton administration becomes a more distant memory and as the country continues its economic and social transformation, that conservatism will be less and less decisive to voters', including forgottenmajority voters', decisions...
...Courtesy Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History...
...Teixeira argues that "Democrats and progressives need not fear identification with this [socially liberal] cultural ethos...
...My own approach is less concerned with what ought to be than with what is likely...
...If that is true, and if Hispanics do well over time, Democrats will eventually get a smaller rather than a larger share of the Hispanic vote...
...As Teixeira and Rogers accurately argue, not only does the white working class remain a crucial element in American politics, but political appeals to all these groups are likely to require new tactical thinking...
...This should allow the Democrats, given a forward-looking program for the new economy and defter campaigns that do not needlessly generate cultural antagonism, to develop the support levels they need among working- and middle-class, particularly forgotten-majority, voters...
...We differ, however, on a number of specifics, and those specifics have major consequences...
...White, working-class voters, as Stan Greenberg's polling shows, hold less than welcoming attitudes toward the Democratic Party, and among non-college-educated whites, hostile attitudes outweigh positive ones...
...He is correct in observing trends that suggest favorable demographic circumstances for Democrats...
...Teixeira and other allies may well be able to push politics in a different direction, but I think that their task will be difficult...
...Most of the growth in Democratic support has been among well-educated, white professionals who are liberal on social issues (abortion, school prayer, the culture wars generally...
...Politically, such developments suggest the likelihood of a long-term shift in public attitudes toward the business sector—with consequences for progressive and populist Democratic strategies...
...These trends are well documented in Social Cleavages and Political Change, by Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks...
...Politicians and parties tend to go where the votes are, and in recent years, the Democrats have found their new voters not in the white working class, but among the educated...
...Most important, politicians and political strategists generally respond to market pressures...
...Although the future Hispanic vote remains unknown, Republicans contend that unlike African-Americans, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party remains strong at all income levels, the contemporary Hispanic commitment to the Democratic Party is based more on class than on ethnic or racial commitment, and that middle-class Hispanics tend to vote much more Republican than poor Hispanics...
...In the case of the Democrats, the pressures are to continue to go after upscale, welleducated voters and not to go after white, workingclass voters...
...Relatively well-to-do and very well educated voters (many with more than a college degree) are increasingly drawn to the Democratic Party and have been crucial to the party's success in California, New York, and on both coasts—as well as in the suburbs of such cities as Chicago and Detroit...
...In the same election, Bush won in some of the poorest, predominantly white counties in the country...
...In the 2000 election, Al Gore won DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 87 ARGUMENTS a majority in seventeen of the twenty-five most affluent counties in the nation...
...Using local teenagers as models, sculptors Kim Crowley, Donald Calloway, and LaVern Homan sculpted forty figures...
Vol. 48 • July 2001 • No. 3
