What's the Matter with Democrats?

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted November 30, 2004.

It's hard find anyone on the left who hasn't heard of Tom Frank's latest book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Its brilliant analysis of the political impact of the culture wars made it a must-read from almost the moment it came out in June. That the book was published in an election year made it all the more timely – and, as it turns out, prophetic. On Nov. 3, many progressives were left shaking our heads and asking ourselves, "What's the matter with America?"

The outcome of the 2004 elections offered most visible and spectacular confirmation of Frank's analysis of backlash politics. In red states across the nation, working class Americans put their social values ahead of their economic well-being and voted for George Bush. It wasn't the economy, stupid! It was god, guns, and, of course, gays.

So what now? The intractable reality of the culture wars seems all the more daunting thanks to the Democratic Party leadership, which shows no sign of breaking the decades-long habit of responding to defeat with abject submission. Having already moved to the right on economic issues, the party seems ready to don the mask of social conservatism – as in the appointment of an anti-abortion Harry Reid as the Senate Minority leader – to hold on to a sliver of power.

That's exactly the wrong strategy to beat the Republicans, says Tom Frank. The solution is not Bible-thumping but economic populism. Liberals need to respond to the faux populism of the GOP – which pits "real" working class Americans against over-educated, snotty liberals – with the real deal. Frank argues it's time for the Democratic Party to return to its roots, to rediscover its lost soul. To become once again the champion of the working class.

Frank spoke to AlterNet from his office in Chicago.

So why did the Democrats lose to Bush?

In my opinion, they consistently underestimated the phenomenon I wrote about in the book ["What's the Matter with Kansas?"], which is the culture wars.

I don’t think the strategy to deal with these things is to capitulate. You have to look at what goes on in the culture wars, understand what the subtext of it is, and figure out a way of short-circuiting it. The Democrats don’t even bother, they don’t think about it at all, and it’s constantly surprised them.

Take, for example, the Swift Boat incident, remember those guys? Totally blindsided the Democrats. Now, how is that possible? For me, it was obvious that was going to happen – not that it would happen in that exact way, but that the Republicans would try to make an issue out of the Vietnam stuff. That they would even go to the extreme, outrageous lengths to do so.

The gay marriage thing – totally blindsided them. The two candidates didn’t even talk about it. It was a below-the-radar effort, and yet the Republicans did talk about it at their convention, behind the scenes. That they were going to win by getting out the base with culture war appeals.

The Democrats, in response, went to their usual centrist strategy: play it right down the middle, be a very safe candidate, safe for business, safe for moderates to vote for. Essentially, it was being the non-Bush candidate, not riling up the base with the old populist rhetoric.

That’s why they lost. First of all, they did not come up with a way of beating the "culture war "appeal. Second of all, they didn’t rally their base. They could have done both of those things with the same strategy: being more populist in the economic sense.

Give me an example of how you would short-circuit something like that.

What you have to understand first is what motivates the culture wars – in each of these issues, and the broader cultural civil war that has gone since the late 60’s. At the bottom of it all is this way of thinking and talking about social class.

Instead of it being blue collar against white collar, or workers against the Fortune 500, it is average Americans – or "authentic" Americans – versus an affected liberal elite. They use this language of class all the time and it is there in every single one of these issues. It’s just below the surface – usually not even below the surface. It’s right there.

This [class issue] was not a problem for Democrats fifty years ago. Calling Democrats an elite group back then would have been laughable. The idea of liberals being elite was ridiculous because liberals were autoworkers in Detroit, sharecroppers in Alabama. And that’s who they still are, to some degree. But they have to rediscover that identity.

The Democrats have to reach out to those groups again. So you deal with that kind of upside down class vision of the culture wars is by confronting it with the real deal – with real economic populism.

And that is reflected in how you pick candidates, right? One of the things that struck me is that while both Kerry and Bush were from Yale, at least the Republicans made an effort to remake Bush in this fake …

Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of AlterNet.

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