A White-Collar New Deal

I've argued for a long time now that the left wing of the Democratic Party's vision of economic reform has been out of touch with the majority of voters. Back in the days of FDR's New Deal, a majority of America was made up of toiling rural farmers and industrial workers. Today, this is no longer the case. The percentage of Americans employed in heavy industry and manufacturing jobs has fallen from 35 percent in the 1960s to less than 20 percent today, while agriculture employs less than 1 percent of the population.

Industrial towns such as "Mo(tor)town" Detroit have stagnated, while thoroughly white-collar cities such as Dallas' "silicon prairie" have boomed. Detroit was more than five times larger than Dallas in 1940, but by the turn of the century, populations had reversed - and Dallas had become the bigger of the two cities. Following this trajectory, the life of the typical American worker has turned into the movie Office Space (filmed in Dallas). And the profound feelings of white-collar discontent embodied by protagonist of Office Space should be the inspiration for a 21st century vision of reform.

Democrats have long cried in perplexion that lower-income voters are voting against their own self-interests by supporting the Republican Party (read "What's the matter with Kansas?" by Thomas Frank for a full exposition of this condescending argument), but they simultaneously expect middle-class and wealthy voters to oppose their own self-interest by voting Democrat. The truth of the matter is that lower taxes mean more lattes for this nation's liberals. So much for the reliability of that constituency.

Values-oriented liberals and FDR-style working class voters do not, and cannot, make up a stable majority in this country. Since at least the 1960s, the coalition between downscale and upscale Democrats has been incredibly shaky. Upscale liberals (including students) and downscale, bread-and-butter Democrats first faced one another openly in the 1968 election, when anti-Vietnam protesters supporting Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy launched an assault against the party establishment and forced Lyndon Johnson out of the race. They then were beaten back by Chicago's (bread-and-butter Democrat) Mayor Daley and his police, before losing the nomination to (bread-and-butter Democrat, and Lyndon Johnson's Vice-President) Hubert Humphrey.

In 1972, the flower-power wing of the party staged a comeback, and won the nomination for George McGovern, but the bread-and-butter wing responded by deserting in numbers that put the anti-Vietnam crowd to shame, handing a landslide to Richard Nixon. Tensions between the downscale and upscale elements of the post-1968 Democratic Party were arguably the direct cause of Ronald Reagan's political revolution in the 1980s and the Republican storming of Congress in 1994. All of this happened long before Barack's latte revolution faced Hillary's canned-beer resistance.

The Democratic Party is riding a wave of support in 2008 on the back of the Bush implosion, but Democrats shouldn't allow the GOP's failures to blind them to their own electoral problems. Democrats have lost seven out of the last ten presidential elections, and their three victories were only won because of Watergate (pure luck in 1976), Ross Perot (pure luck in 1992), and because of a Democrat who governed like a fiscal Republican (Bill Clinton's signature achievements for his 1996 reelection were NAFTA and welfare reform - both policies supported by more Republicans in Congress than Democrats).

Even if they win the 2008 and 2012 elections, and even with the help of a GOP that is fervently guarding its own borders against Latino voters, the Democrats still need to do more to fashion a popular majority that extends beyond the immediate aftermath of Dubyaism. They need to seize upon this moment to rid themselves of their historic deficiency - the futile effort of trying to build a "majority of minorities."

The situation the Democrats have found themselves in during the 40-year period since 1968 has been remarkably similar to the party's struggles in the half-century following the end of the Civil War. After Gettysburg led to Appomattox and the defeat and incarceration of lifelong Democrat Jefferson Davis, it was fairly clear to everyone who had been through the bloodbath of 1860-65 that the Republican Party represented the dominant majority in the country, while the Democrats represented a patchwork of minorities - mostly disgruntled southerners and suffering lower-class industrial workers. For the next 65 years, when Democrats won elections it was more due to Republican weakness than their own strength. To make matters worse, southern whites and northern reformists were united by very little apart from their opposition to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party's quest to build a "majority of disgruntled minorities" in American politics was an enduring and historic failure.

Flash forward to 2008. The Democratic Party has been trying to build a majority of minorities again, for 40 years now (since 1968). Black Americans, 1960s-style cultural liberals, the working poor and the unemployed - these are all minorities. Add them all together, and you still just get a bunch of minorities.

This is not meant to belittle the hopes and needs of racial or cultural minorities - but if Democrats hope to speak for a majority in this country, an enduring majority, they need to propose a bold and creative vision of reform aimed squarely at the majority. More specifically, this vision must be aimed squarely at the self-interest of a majority of Americans. Roosevelt's New Deal was clearly aimed at the American majority of 1930, which is why it succeeded in making the Democratic Party strong for 40 years. The Democrats of the 21st century need to propose a New Deal whose appeal is just as broad and deep as its blue-collar, Depression-era cousin, but aimed at today's white-collar society.

The United States is a nation of unrivaled economic opportunity - just as it was in the era following the Civil War. However, then just as much as now, a majority was ready to rally behind a higher quality of life. Opportunity isn't everything, after all. The rural and industrial masses of 1930 were ready to rally behind radical ideas such as social security, massive public works that brought modern roads and electricity to the deepest pockets of rural poverty, and the decency and security of health standards and unemployment benefits into the factories.

So what ails the majority of America today? The costs of education are skyrocketing, and people in their 30s and 40s are struggling to pay off student loans incurred during their 20s. Americans may have lower unemployment and bigger houses than their compatriots in other developed nations, but they get less time off each year to spend with their families than any other developed nation in the world.

Who's willing to bet that a majority of voters in this nation would rally behind the notion of government-mandated vacation time? Similarly, a little government help in returning to a 40-hour work week could lure even those making upwards of $200,000 a year into the ranks of a white-collar New Deal. How about interest-free student loans for everyone who wants to go to college? Tired of missing the important events in your children's lives? How about everyone in the nation gets one excused absence from work every calendar month - by legislative mandate, no questions asked - and just to make certain, if employees "choose" not to take advantage of the absence in a given month, it transforms into a mandatory three-day weekend? Tired of seeing your salary cut while the boss gives himself a raise - how about a government mandate stating that every qualifying employer in the country must give their employees equity shareholdings, so that profits get shared, and the "interests of stockholders" and the "interests of employees" no longer diverge?

These are the type of reforms that could build a popular majority. From those making less than $20,000 a year, to those making more than $200,000, who wouldn't like a little more vacation time, or the right to take an emergency day off to spend with the kids? It's time for the left-wing reform movement to wake up to the reality of the 21st century, and start thinking about how to make white-collar society a better place for everyone. And if they run out of ideas, they can make Mike Judge, the creator of Office Space, into the new Secretary of Labor.