As Democrats look beyond our disappointing 2000 election to 2002 and
2004, we need to build a new progressive majority for the Information
Age, not try to recreate the Industrial Age coalition of the mid-20th
century that can never again be put back together. Our new progressive
coalition must expand beyond the Democratic base. It must include men
as well as women, whites as well as African-Americans and Hispanics, suburbanites
as well as city dwellers, moderates and even some conservatives as well
as liberals. Above all, it must unite the interests and the support of
voters in the working class with those in what scholars William Galston
and Elaine Kamarck have called "the rising learning class" --
middle- and upper-middle class suburbanites and New Economy workers. Vice
President Gore failed to put together such a new progressive coalition.
What should have been a comfortable Gore victory became a virtual tie,
and President-elect George W. Bush won narrowly in overtime. Rather than
obsess about the Gore campaign's shortcomings, Democrats need to glean
lessons from his defeat to help us build a majority coalition in 2002
and 2004. There are three important lessons that can guide Democrats as
we look ahead.
First, to forge a new progressive majority, Democrats must speak to a
fast-changing America as it is and will be, not as it was. The demographic
changes that are reshaping the American electorate accelerated in the
2000 election. A durable 21st century political and governing majority
necessarily must keep pace with those changes. In short, we must look
to the future, not to the past, for political success in the 21st century.
Second, in the 2000 election Gore chose a populist rather than a New
Democrat message. As a result, voters viewed him as too liberal and identified
him as an advocate of big government. Those perceptions, whether fair
or not, hurt him with male voters in general and with key New Economy
swing voters in particular. By emphasizing class warfare he seemed to
be talking to Industrial Age America, not Information Age America.
Third, the core principles of the New Democrat movement -- opportunity
for all, responsibility from all, a community of all -- must be the foundation
of a new progressive majority. In the Information Age, Democrats must
offer a modern agenda that embraces the New Economy, promotes activist
but limited government that empowers its citizens, and furthers both mainstream
values and cultural tolerance. In the Information Age, the ideas we support
and the messages we deliver will be linked to our political success more
closely than ever. The New Democrat message is the only progressive message
with appeal broad enough to win support from a majority of the new electorate.
This is the bottom line: The New Economy is creating a new electorate
that demands a new politics. The sharp class differences of the Industrial
Age are becoming less distinct as more and more Americans move into the
middle and upper-middle classes. The New Deal political philosophy that
defined our politics for most of the 20th century has run its course;
the political coalition it spawned has been split. Like Humpty Dumpty,
the New Deal coalition cannot be put back together again. The new electorate
is affluent, educated, diverse, suburban, "wired," and moderate.
And it responds more favorably to the New Democrat political philosophy
than to any other.
In the Industrial Age, the working class dominated the electorate. The
new electorate of the Information Age is increasingly dominated by middle-
and upper-middle class voters who live in the suburbs, work in the New
Economy, are culturally tolerant, and have moderate political views. These
new voters respond to Information Age political messages, not those of
the Industrial Age. Changing Electorate The pace of demographic change
in the electorate is staggering. The electorate is rapidly becoming more
affluent.
The percentage of all voters with annual family incomes of more than
$50,000 grew from 32 percent in 1992, to 39 percent in l996, to 53 percent
in 2000. The percentage of voters with annual family incomes of more than
$75,000 rose from 12 percent in 1992, to 18 percent in 1996, to 28 percent
in 2000. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters with annual family incomes
of less than $30,000 dropped from 38 percent in 1992, to 34 percent in
1996, to 23 percent in 2000. The electorate is increasingly invested in
the private economy. Seventy percent of voters in 2000 said they owned
stock. Gore's running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, recalls having breakfast
at a fire station during his vice presidential campaign. He asked the
firefighters what they'd be talking about if he were not there. Their
answer: the stock market.
The electorate is more educated. Forty-two percent of voters in 2000
had college degrees, and 74 percent had at least some college-level education.
Two decades ago, only 33 percent of voters had college degrees and only
61 percent went past high school. The electorate is more racially and
ethnically diverse. In 1980, 89 percent of voters were white and 9 percent
were black. In 2000, the electorate was 81 percent white, 10 percent black,
7 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent Asian. The electorate is increasingly
suburban. In 2000, 29 percent of voters lived in urban areas (with only
9 percent living in large cities), 28 percent in rural areas, and 43 percent
in suburbs. A quarter century ago, the number of urban, rural, and suburban
congressional districts was roughly equal. Today, there are more suburban
congressional districts than urban and rural districts combined.
The electorate is becoming wired at a blistering pace. Four years ago,
only 26 percent of voters said they used the Internet regularly. In 2000,
that figure was up to 64 percent. Polling for Blueprint by Mark J. Penn
shows that a quarter of the electorate is now made up of wired workers
-- New Economy workers who work with computers or in self-directed teams
-- a category that did not even exist just four years ago. And wired workers
can now be found throughout the economy, not just in the high technology
sector. I saw this firsthand when I traveled with Lieberman to Visteon,
an auto parts plant operated jointly with the United Auto Workers in Ypsilanti,
Mich. Workers who once operated lathes and machine tools were now working
with keyboards and screens as well. "I've been here 28 years and
we've made a lot of changes," one worker told Lieberman. "If
we hadn't, we wouldn't be here today."
And, even though the electorate is aging, it is undergoing generational
change. We estimate that fewer than 10 percent of voters in 2000 were
New Deal era voters. That's important, because the New Deal era was the
only period during which Americans looked to a strong centralized federal
government. Today's more skeptical generations -- whose defining political
experiences were Vietnam, Watergate, and double-digit inflation, not the
Depression and World War II -- are much more leery of big government. It's
little wonder that 27 percent of voters today describe themselves as belonging
to the upper-middle class, 46 percent to the middle class, and only 18
percent to the working class.
These predominantly middle and upper-middle class voters are much more
moderate than their counterparts two decades ago. Half of last year's
voters identified themselves as moderates, 20 percent as liberals, and
29 percent as conservatives. In 1980, the electorate was much more polarized
-- 40 percent of voters said they were conservatives, 24 percent liberals,
and just 36 percent moderates. In sum, the 2000 electorate was markedly
different than the electorates of just 10 or 20 years ago. Old political
arrangements and old political philosophies must give way to new ones.
A decade ago, New Democrats set out to forge a progressive coalition that
united the interests of the Democratic base and the middle class -- of
those in the middle class and struggling to stay there and those aspiring
to get there. Today, even that coalition, while still important, would
not be big enough by itself to achieve a majority. That's why, given all
the progress and demographic change of the past 10 years, a new progressive
majority in the first decade of the 21st century will require winning
the middle class, not just the working class, and being competitive among
the more affluent and educated upper-middle class. Simply put, the new
progressive majority must unite the interests of those in the working
class with those in the rising learning class.
To forge that new majority, a Democratic candidate must win the support
of not just factory workers, but of workers in suburban office complexes
as well. During the past eight years, 22 million new jobs were created
in America -- almost all of them in the New Economy. The number of manufacturing
jobs remained essentially unchanged at 18 million. The new workers are
employed in offices, in services, in health care and finance -- in other
words, in the New Economy. And they increasingly live in the suburbs.
Democrats need to appeal to them. Democrats will also have to cut the
gender gap in order to forge a new majority.
Our gender problem is men -- we don't win enough of them. While Democrats
need to continue winning a majority of women, we must also be competitive
among men. We must build a multiracial coalition by winning more white
voters. Democrats should continue to win an overwhelming majority of African-American
and Hispanic voters. But we cannot afford to get clobbered among white
voters for the simple reason that there are eight times as many white
voters as there are black voters, and four times as many white voters
as all minorities combined.
And because there are many more conservatives than liberals in America,
a new progressive majority will also require Democrats to win moderates
by a substantial margin. Gore failed to forge such a coalition. His populist
message was well received by Democratic base voters, but its appeal to
swing voters was limited. Gore won spectacularly among self-identified
Democrats and among liberals -- better even than Bill Clinton did in 1996.
But at the same time, he lost key categories of swing voters that Clinton
won.
Gore also won big among African-Americans and Hispanics. He won a solid,
though not spectacular, majority of women. He won self-identified working-class
voters and every category of voters with annual family incomes of less
than $50,000. The problem is that the number of voters in those categories
has declined significantly during the past four years. Gore also did very
well among union households -- a tribute to the hard work of AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney and leaders of organized labor. Their get-out-the-vote efforts
increased the percentage of voters from union households from 23 percent
in 1996 to 26 percent in 2000, reversing decades of decline.
Gore lost every income category of voters earning more than $50,000 a
year -- the most rapidly growing part of the electorate. Clinton won voters
with annual incomes up to $75,000, including voters in the critical $50,000
to $75,000 category. Gore lost middle-class voters by one percent and
upper-middle-class voters more substantially. And, interestingly, he won
the far ends of the education spectrum -- high school dropouts and voters
with postgraduate degrees. But he lost every other group -- high school
graduates, voters with some college, and college graduates -- leaving him
with the have-nots and the elites, hardly a sustainable coalition. Gore
also lost white voters by 12 points, white men by a whopping 24 points,
and even lost white women by one point (though because of his position
in favor of choice, he won upper-income white women).
He won moderates, but not by nearly enough -- winning them by just eight
points compared to Clinton's 24-point margin in 1996. Most significantly,
Gore lost key groups of swing voters associated with the New Economy.
He lost voters who regularly use the Internet by two points; Clinton won
them by nine. He lost wired workers and voters who invest in the stock
market. In Penn's words, he lost the "new targets of the 2000 election,
the New Economy workers -- suburban, middle class males who have benefited
from the growth of the economy."
There's a clear reason why: His anti-corporate populism and pro-government
message resulted in his being viewed as a liberal advocate of big government.
And that turned off key swing voters. According to exit polls, 46 percent
of the voters wanted the next president's policies to be more conservative
than Clinton's; only 10 percent wanted them to be more liberal. But 43
percent of voters felt Gore was too liberal on the issues. Not surprisingly,
they voted 91 percent for Bush. And, as has been the case in recent elections,
a majority of voters (53 percent) said government should do less, not
more. They, too, voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
Though he has long been a leader in shaping technology policy, Gore ignored
the New Economy in his election campaign, seldom even using the words.
His populist slogan, "the people vs. the powerful," evoked the
specter of class warfare. And he offered a laundry list of government
programs, hardly even talking about his own superb effort to streamline
government. Proponents of Gore's strategy argue that it was aimed at winning
support of downscale white working-class voters, whom they see as the
electorate's critical swing voters. They argue that the strategy was a
success -- that it produced a "progressive majority" if you add
the votes won by Ralph Nader to those that Gore won.
They maintain that Gore lost not because of his populist, big government
message but because of cultural and moral issues, fueled by resentment
of President Clinton's behavior and by Gore's own personal shortcomings.
I think they're wrong on all counts. The assertion that Nader's marginal
vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked
voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won
by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race.
As for President Clinton's impact on the race, I believe his job performance
record helped the vice president more than his personal foibles hurt him.
Clearly, the vice president's strategic decision to run at arm's length
from the Clinton-Gore record was costly. An astonishing 65 percent of
voters said the country was "on the right track," but Gore won
just 61 percent of them, far below the 70 percent to 75 percent that incumbent
party candidates normally win. That alone was enough to be the difference
between a tie and a comfortable victory.
Voters clearly had concerns about Gore's honesty and trustworthiness,
but they had equally severe concerns about Bush's competency and ability
to deal with a world crisis. In the end, these two factors canceled each
other out.
The question of cultural issues is more complicated. Cultural conservatives
backed Bush overwhelmingly, but they were never likely to support a Democrat
in the first place. Polling going back well before the Clinton impeachment
has found a substantial body of cultural conservatives -- even among self-identified
Democrats -- who almost always vote Republican. Veering to the right on
cultural issues to win these voters would take a heavy toll among other
Democrats and swing voters. That, in the end, is the problem with a political
strategy that mainly targets downscale working-class whites. The messages
necessary to attract them -- populist, class-warfare-oriented economics
and cultural conservatism -- are hardly popular with voters in the rising
learning class.
As I wrote in the Summer 2000 issue of The New Democrat, it's important
for Democrats to win those working-class voters. They should be part of
our party's base. But, as the demographics make clear, they are also a
rapidly declining portion of the total electorate. The rising learning
class, in contrast, is growing rapidly. And their preferred messages are
growth-oriented economics, empowering government rather than big government,
and cultural tolerance. Two years ago, in the inaugural issue of Blueprint,
Will Marshall and I wrote that to complete the job of building a New Democratic
majority, Democrats must continue to modernize their message to keep pace
with a changing America.
We outlined ten rules for Democrats to follow. They included these three:
embrace the New Economy; replace class warfare with a politics of common
aspiration; and replace top-down bureaucracies with an enabling government.
Had the vice president's campaign offered a message that followed those
rules, I have no doubt that he would have become the 43rd president of
the United States. And, if the Democratic candidate for president in 2004
offers a New Democrat message that incorporates those rules, I have no
doubt that he or she will occupy the political center and be elected the
44th president of the United States.
