There Are No Accidents

I've been wanting to acknowledge something from comments a few days back - Valhalla, one of a few visitors who's been kind enough to drop a comment here or there, pointed out on my healthcare post (where I mentioned blogs I read):

Give Corrente a spin, please. Lots of info, reporting on activism (esp. single-payer), and connecting the political issues involved in the health care debates with other current politcal issues.

I wanted to bring that forward, because I do read Correntewire (as does J in B), and I've greatly appreciated that blog (especially Lambert) offering supportive links and blog mentions... and I haven't had a chance to say it. The things is, I don't think of Corrente as a "health blog" per se, and I think it's important to make the distinction: there are places to get some important info on the shape of our healthcare crisis... and then there's places like Corrente, which do a brilliant job of breaking down the problems, specifically, within our lefty politics.

And I bring all of this up, because I've found Lambert's connecting of dots, around the realities of corporate interests, the media elite and the Democratic establishment, to be a good tonic for the "how did this happen?" kind of logic that's cropped up in the first year of the Obama Administration.

It's well past the time, I think, to admit that clearly we have not gotten what we needed from the Obama folks, a reality that I agree should have been apparent during the election cycle. People who seem surprised or disillusioned, now, are really very late; what has happened - on the economy, in terms of financial "reform", and surely in the healthcare debacle - were all in the cards well before we came down to Obama vs. McCain (a choice which, I'll say again, left only Obama as any kind of option for any sensible lefty).

This week has seen a, well, confluence, of events that point to the deepening disillusionment: whether it's the sinking poll numbers on Obama approval (a trend that seems all too real and clear, despite any number of denialists), or the incredibly dense tempest-in-a-teapot debate that's developed over an otherwise unremarkable piece from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone this week pointing to Obama's economic team as major-bank-connected-and-driven apologists... the sense that Democrats are in a problematic place and sinking can't be ignored or wished away.

But at the same time... there are no accidents: we're here for a number of reasons, not least of which is a reality that many observers, not to mention many ordinary Democrats seem to continue to deny: that the Democrats have become the majority of the educated, upper middle class elite. And what follows from that reality is, well, everything we've gotten from the Obama Administration - a concern for proposals and positions which benefit the Democrats true base, and pay lip service to traditional Democratic ideals.

That reality crystallized for me today when Charles Lemos, attempting to debunk a Wall Street Journal piece by Michael Petrilli at the Hoover institute, pulled together stats I think no one has compiled quiet so clearly, stats which prove that in 2008 Democrats finally overcame a hurdle that had always worked against them: achieving an absolute majority of the college educated vote.

Election Year	College-Educated Share of Electorate	Republican	Democratic
2008	44%	45%	53%
2004	42%	49%	49%
2000	42%	49%	47%
1996	43%	44%	47%
1992	43%	41%	39%
1988	41%	62%	37%
Source: CNN & NY Times

If you read up the chart, you can see both the growth of the college educated vote, and the increase over time for Democrats (in 1996, for instance, Clinton's 47% is the first clear win of college grads... but 9% or so of the group voted for Ross Perot). This mirrors trends we saw in the primaries, where Obama was more consistently drawing these college grad voters (as well as post college grads, ie. the Master's and PhD set), and Clinton was appealing to working class voters, especially whites (since Obama has been the best absolute draw of black voters, for fairly obvious reasons). (Oh, don't start.)

This shift at the Presidential level is not isolated; it's mirrored in the shifts in Congressional votes, and in changes at the state level (most pronounced in the northeast, where the educated elites elect everything from big city Mayors like Bloomberg to Governors like Deval Patrick). What has happened is that after years of democratizing college campsues, a critical mass has formed of educated professionals who have drifted into a majority of one political party.

There are no accidents; this is why the right's anti-intellectual bent may have been foreordained (a combination of educated elites becoming more liberal on social issues as a class, and the Republican decision to chase the religious right at the expense of "Country Club" Republicans who were, in a previous generation, that very same educated elite), and why Petrilli's advice may well be a fool's errand: the GOP might be smarter to chase the working class base it already appeals to (among whites), and let the left gradually alienate its working class roots.

To some extent, that's what the past year has been: a realization that the old Democratic party, a knitting together of ethnic working class whites with black and other minority votes by a small, determined intellectual liberal elite has been up-ended, and the educated elite finally has critical mass. And a lifetime of assumptions - that liberal professionals share identification with poor urban workers, that a coalition of minority groups can manage everyone's struggle equally well - has finally broken down. That's why you get Stupak. That's why you have true blue Democrats - as real in their party loyalty as me or my mom - working to protect banks. That's why you have a Columbia educated Harvard law graduate, a black man, as our President; he's about as not working class as you can possibly get. Is it any wonder he identifies more closely with those CEOs he had in for a "talk" today, then with a woman who needs better Medicaid and more food stamps?

Democrats can't really go on, much longer, assuming that there's unanimity in our politics, or that "we're all in this together" as if class differences don't exist or there's a significant, real difference between representing the interests of the poor and working class, and the interests of an educated elite. You cannot do both; or at least, you can't do it by choosing the elite over the others every time it matters.

If we're facing disaster in 2010 as Democrats - and clearly, it seems, we are - it is in part because tensions that never got settled from the primaries of 2008 continue to reverberate: this isn't about Republicans fidning an oppositon voice (not yet anyway) or "the media" making Obama look bad... this is about a series of choices, consciously made, to pursue an election strategy (which, BTW, worked) by appealing to a specific growing demographic group. There are no accidents. And it will be no accident if, in a few years, educated progressives discover that the working class has simpy walked away.

Comments

[Susie from Philly]

You're right, of course. But it makes me want to jump off a cliff.

[jinb]

(O, don't start.) LOL

Gotta love how over at TAPPED, threads concerning Taibbi's piece have about 200% of the # of comments placed elsewhere.

I'm seeing a bit of denial on this topic from establishment voices.

Nice post.

[Charles Lemos]

You're right about the hurdle. I wish you had included the post-graduate data because I honestly feel that set is the more significant set. That shows more clearly a marked and growing trend for Democratic tickets.

Again, I caution that 1988 was a landslide for the GOP and that thus distorts the initial marker. I wish I could have found the breakout going back to say to 1976 because I think that would give a clearer picture though I suspect that among college graduates that Ford outpaced Carter.

I do understand your point however.

On Obama not being working-class. Perhaps not. But Michelle Robinson Obama most certainly is despite her Princeton and Harvard degrees. It is not one's education that matters but one's values. I've got Stanford degrees and still think myself working-class in terms of my politics.

I also suspect that the Obama coalition of 2008 is untenable for Democrats in the long-term. I think it a serious mistake for the party to eschew the Jacksonian wing of the party. Problem is that there is an increasing cultural divide that the GOP has exploited to their advantage. I simply don't believe that the being the party of an"educated, upper middle class elite" holds much political promise if the poor are abandoned wholesale.

Cheers.

Charles Lemos