It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Michael Kazin, author of What it Took to Win and Georgetown professor, on the Democrats, political performers, and moral capitalism.
We want to understand what it takes to win a Presidential election in America. What it takes to win a majority in the House or Senate. What it takes to pass legislation. What it takes to govern a country as wild and vast as the United States. What it would take to feel some semblance of organization, character, or intention from those that govern. Sometimes, you have to look back in order to move forward.
One look at the polls below and it's clear we're a country divided – united only by suffering from the cost of living. Today we’re in conversation with historian, professor, and author Michael Kazin, who helps us assess the reality of our political parties – and the Democrats at large.
This interview was conducted and condensed by Tatti Ribeiro for franknews.
My name is Michael Kazin, and I teach history at Georgetown University. I've been a historian for many years. I mostly write about politics and social movements. For a dozen years, I was co-editor of Dissent Magazine – a magazine of the left that has been around since 1954. I see myself as sort of part of the larger Democratic left.
And your newest book is What it Took to Win?
Yeah. It’s really the first analytical history of the Democratic Party, which is surprising since the party has been around, I would argue, since the 1820s, when Andrew Jackson was elected president. That makes it the oldest mass political party in the history of the world, not just the United States. In many ways, it is a template for other mass political parties, both here and elsewhere.
Why do you think this hasn’t been written until now?
Historians tend to write about social movements, ideologies, or demographic groups. They don't usually write about institutional history. They don't write about the institutions which have tremendous power over people. I mean, you can't get elected to any office in this country, with very few exceptions, unless you're a member of one of the mass political parties. I wanted to write a book that would explain the evolution of the Democrats in terms of the coalitions they had been able to put together, how their policies and electioneering techniques evolved, and how, as the title says, they are able to dominate American politics – which they haven't done for most of their history.
My argument is that they have been able to dominate when they are able to put forth a vision of what I call "moral capitalism", and the policies to match.
In the 19th century, that meant anti-monopoly rhetoric and policies; it meant supporting the interests of the ordinary white man, which was the main voting bloc at the time.
In the 20th century, the Democrats' definition of moral capitalism became much more based on wage earners’ interests on the job, and focused on housing, healthcare, and other social provisions that working people needed. That's when the Democrats went from being a pretty explicitly racist party to the more interracial party we think of today. This is the party that takes the lead on building an interracial labor movement, getting the Civil Rights Law passed, getting The Voting Rights Act passed, and becoming the home party, so to speak, of most non-white people in the United States, especially African Americans.
Was that shift, in terms of race, intentional?
It happened gradually – and it happened for both practical and principled reasons. It really began in the early 20th century when a lot of Black people moved to the north during the Great Migration. American Democratic political machines in places like New York City had to win elections, and so they had to try to win over votes from these recent migrants.
It takes off in the late 1930s when the industrial unions, the steelworkers, the auto workers, the meat packers, and the tobacco workers, grow and become the core of the labor movement. Those unions were interracial unions. It was clear to them that they were not going to win contracts or win big strikes, against big, industrial corporations in America unless they signed up workers across racial lines. Those unions became a core of the Democratic party in the Eastern and Midwestern states, places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which, before the 1930s, had pretty much been Republican states.
So, over the thirties and the forties, the Democrats in the north, with its presidential leadership under Franklin Roosevelt and then Harry Truman, its Senatorial leadership with people like Robert Wagner, began to battle with the Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats were still very powerful in the party and they didn't like unions. They were afraid that those unions were going to sign up workers regardless of race and would undermine the Jim Crow system in the South. This was the beginning of the shift of white Southern Democrats from voting solidly for Democrats, to voting more and more for Republicans. That happens gradually, and doesn't really happen at the presidential level, until Barry Goldwater runs in 1964 as a Republican candidate.
Do you think moral capitalism is still where the Democratic Party can thrive? Is this what people still want?
I think so. I mean, really what I'm arguing is, as the Bill Clinton campaign said in 1992, it's the economy stupid. Elections are usually about how people are doing economically, and about helping them do better economically. And that's not just about wages or inflation – it’s also about housing being affordable, and healthcare being affordable.
I think the only way to unite different parts of the party is behind a demand for universal programs, which can serve the majority of working Americans. The kinds of policies and plans that were actually in the Build Back Better program, that of course didn't pass because the Democrats had such a narrow majority. Also, policies that make it easier for people to organize labor unions, like the Pro Act, which would accelerate, what I think, is the revival of labor unionism, especially among retail workers.
In general, most Americans don't like politicians who talk about all the things they could do for them, but then don't do them. When Democrats have the majorities to pass programs like social security, the Wagner Act, Medicare, and minimum wage – they thrive. In that sense, what I call “moral capitalism” remains the best strategy for Democrats to capture an enduring majority.
That is not to say that Democrats should backslide on race, feminism, LGBTQ rights, or environmental programs. But, if you're known primarily for defending cultural issues, which of course are economic as well, but are usually represented primarily as cultural issues of identity, then Democrats are going to have a hard time cobbling together an enduring majority. This is true, especially in a country where the majority of people are still white. More and more of those people vote Republican, especially working people, because they feel the Democratic Party doesn't really care about them.
Does the Democratic Party know how to build power that people are actually excited about?
In a word? No.
Democrats are organized strongly in areas where they win elections regularly – New York City, the Bay Area, Los Angeles. The problem is they don't have much organization away from the big cities.
One thing that has happened over the last 40 or 50 years is that leadership and momentum for both parties, both Democrats and Republicans, have been driven by social movements. That's true of the Christian right and the NRA in the Republican Party. And that's true of the feminist movement, the LGBTQ movement, the environmental movement, and the Black movement in the Democratic Party.
On the Democratic side, there are no organizations that can put together these different groups and come up with a common agenda for politicians to run on. This is not true for the Republican Party because it is still, for the most part, a party of white Christians. It is easier for Republicans to organize because they have fewer internal debates.
Do you feel like the Democratic party has become lost in its own narrative? Is that why it’s so difficult for them to win?
Yeah, I think it's a struggle. If you're white with a college education, you are much more likely to be a Democrat, which is the complete reverse of the way it was throughout most of American history. Even when Bill Clinton was elected in ‘92 and ‘96, a majority of college-educated white people voted Republican.
It's important to say that most union members still vote for Democrats regardless. But perception matters in politics. That’s a real problem and is going to take real effort made by people in social movements and in grassroots organizations. This is not just a top-down problem; a different advertising message is not going to change everything. Change is driven by popular upwells – that's always how it happened in the past, and how it's going to happen in the future too.
Change happens because people at the top feel that in order to protect their electoral fate, they have to respond to a groundswell of discontent from below.
There seems to be a resurgence of unions happening right now.
We'll see. I think it's a sign that younger people are always the important people in any social movement. I saw a recent poll that said 68% of young people under 30 are supportive of labor unions. Whereas for the general population, it's more like 55%. It’s a very good thing, but, again, it's not easy politically. Republicans will take over at least the House of Representatives, maybe the Senate, and they will try to stop the National Labor Relations Board from doing some of the things we'd like to do.
Democrats can really make changes, and adopt the economic policies I think they should adopt, if they have larger majorities, not just in Congress, but also in key states. The problem is, the perception of them as a party that is friendly to the cultural elites makes it harder for them to win votes in the places they need to win to get large majorities.
How do Democrats realign themselves towards more winning strategies?
Well, they’ve got to do two things.
One, they’ve got to help to encourage the formation of these social movements – the labor movement, but also movements pushing for popular policies. The policies in Build Back Better were popular, but there was no movement of parents to support universal Pre-K or childcare credits.
Two, Democrats have to start running candidates who talk about these issues and talk about them in an appealing way. A good example is John Fetterman, who's running for Senate in Pennsylvania. He has a way of talking about economic issues, even fairly radical ones like Medicare for all, that people in industrial areas can relate to. And his personality is also important – he wears cargo shorts, and he jokes around. Performance matters in politics. Donald Trump picked up a lot of those white working-class voters because he's a great performer. Democrats need not just good performers per se, but people who can talk in authentic ways about the economic problems that Americans face, and have faced, for a long time. Because most Americans are not well off; most Americans don't live in San Francisco.
How do you see the role of the left in pushing the Democratic party – historically and now?
Well, it's essential. I mean, the left is both an intellectual movement, made up of college professors like me, or journalists, and it’s a social movement as well. The left has grown, by any estimation, since Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016, and, arguably, since the Great Recession of 2008. The discussion of economic inequality in the public sphere, the union revival, the public dialogue about the economy – the left did a lot of that. And the Bernie Sanders campaign did a lot of that. I mean, the fact that a socialist was able to run and come second in the Democratic primaries, both in 2016 and 2020, was something big. The Progressive Caucus in the House has 95 members. That's a major change. Biden wouldn't be proposing a lot of the ideas he's proposing without that push.
On the other hand, the left is a minority of the party and obviously represents only a minority of the voters. Most left-wing elected officials get elected in very blue areas. The test of the left, always, is not just to advocate for its ideas, but also organize, make itself larger, make itself better known, and connect with the Democrats when they can.
The left has to be both visionary and practical at the same time. And sometimes it's a little too visionary for its own good.