Identity Group Politics and the Future of the Democratic Party

by Larry DeWitt

August 8, 2004

As the keynote speaker at the July 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Illinois Senate-candidate Barack Obama thrilled the jaded convention-goers, although it is not clear that they knew why. They thought it had something to do with his "compelling biography" and his likeable personality.

After all, Obama, is the son of a mixed-marriage between a black Kenyan father and a white mother from the farms of Kansas. He had graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. He had edited the Harvard Law Review. He was an accomplished political figure on the state scene. He had an attractive family, and he was an articulate and telegenic speaker. He spoke the language of inclusion rather than of racial resentment and complaint. He did not accuse anyone, even implicitly, of being a racist, and he made clear that his own values were those of conservative middle-America. He was patriotic without being cloying, and religious without embarrassment. He did not, as Republicans typically do, define his vision of America by waging culture-war against his enemies. And he did all of this with a sense of humor and an evident modesty that seemed at once both reminiscent of yet more genuine than that affected by Ronald Reagan so successfully for so many years.

Obama wowed the delegates, and the TV audience, with rhetoric that was almost "party-less" in that it could have as easily been written by a Republican as a Democrat--which was something the Republican pundits complained about endlessly, they seemed genuinely shocked that a Democrat could use their rhetorical gambits. This reaction was a sure sign something real and important was taking place. He reminded us not of what divides us, as Kerry and Edwards now like to say, but of what unites us--of what we have in common--economic insecurity, a belief in the nobility of work, a sense of fair-play, the ambition to do better, the belief that America is a special land--rather than what particularizes and separates us--primarily race and gender and wealth.

So, the delegates to the Convention, and the political pundits and commentators, thought it all must have something to do with Obama's background and his fresh rhetorical style. And it did, in a way, have something to do with all of this. But it was something much deeper and more important than that. It was because Obama embodied a new style of Democratic politician--a style that was actually not new at all but rather was a return to the successful style of politics practiced by Franklin Roosevelt when he first put together the Democratic-party coalition. Obama was a populist Democrat, which is what any nationally successful Democrat must be, although the Democrats, like pretty much everyone else, has only the dimmest sense of what this means. The problem, you see, is that America has four main political philosophies but only two real political parties. So important insights into our politics necessarily get hidden and confused. One recent pointer in the right direction has been the erstwhile Republican, Kevin Phillips.

Kevin Phillips is an interesting character. He came to prominence during the Nixon Era when he wrote a book in 1969 called The Emerging Republican Majority. This book defined what would become known as the "Southern Strategy" for the Republicans. Basically, Phillips said to his party, forget about the black vote, let the Democrats have it. What we need to do is break apart the old New Deal coalition by appealing to conservative white Southerners on social issues. This worked famously and the Republican resurgence dates really from Phillips' strategy. The so-called "Blue Collar Democrats" or "Reagan Democrats" were Phillips' gift to the Republicans. So he was a folk hero of sorts within the party for many years.

But following the Reagan Administration, Phillips suddenly starting criticizing Republicans. He wrote a book called The Politics of Rich and Poor in 1990 which basically said that the Republican party's cultivation of the rich was a source of concern-that the growing gap between rich and poor was starting to look ominous for his party. He expanded on this theme in his 1994 Arrogant Capital. His book, Wealth and Democracy, was the culmination of this trend in his writing. The Republicans were dumbfounded by their hero's defection. They didn't understand how or why he could be criticizing other Republicans.

The key to the answer is that Phillips is from that segment of the Republican coalition that I would call Populists. Conceptually, we have four main political philosophies in America and only two serious political parties. We have Liberals and Conservatives, Populists and Libertarians. If we look at two metrics-economic fairness and social values-we can see the differences. Liberals believe the government should be involved in producing economic fairness but should stay out of social values (implicitly allowing non-conservative values to flourish); Conservatives believe that the government should stay out of economic issues but should be actively promoting conservative social values; Populists think the government should be involved in both spheres, promoting economic fairness and conservative moral values; Libertarians believe the government should be involved in neither. So arraying the four political philosophies along the single metric of the role of government, Libertarians opt for the minimum involvement and Populists for the maximum; Conservatives and Liberals split the role of government, each preferring a government with only half an interest in their lives-opposite halves to be sure.

Libertarians believe the government ought to keep its nose out of everyone's business. Period. The government has no business promoting economic equality and no business policing people's morals. That government is best which governs least is the true Libertarian motto. (Although I like to think Jefferson wouldn't throw his lot in with today's Libertarians.) Today's Libertarians believe the government ought to provide for the national defense and not much else. No Social Security, no labor laws, no obscenity laws, no laws forbidding gambling or prostitution or drug use, etc.

A genuine Conservative believes that in the economic realm it is pure laissez faire; but in the realm of morals, people should behave in approved ways and the force of law and government can surely be applied in furtherance of this end. Conservatives believe in family values, the free enterprise system, outlawing homosexuals in various professions, criminalizing drugs, and so on.

A good, old-fashioned, honest-to-God Liberal (there are many fewer of them than we think) believes the government must intervene to prevent huge economic disparities-that government has an obligation to look after the poor and disadvantaged, but resists fiercely any intrusion of government into the private conduct of its citizens. This is why Liberals are supporters of all sorts of counter-cultural causes-which alienates both Conservatives and Populists.

A Populist is pained by the specter of economic inequality and exploitation, but shares many of the same moral values and tastes of the Conservative. So a Populist is willing to countenance an intrusive government in both the moral and economic realms. The Populist stands up for the little guy against the corporate bosses. Populists tend to fear all things BIG; as in big business, big labor, big government, and, sometimes, the Big World of international relations. Populists sometimes believe in environmentalism (think Teddy Roosevelt); and sometimes civil rights (think Lyndon Johnson); but they also tend to think the National Endowment for the Arts goes too far in supporting artists who offend the sensibilities of decent citizens. Populists, like Conservatives, are offended by many of the same people and activities which Liberals feel duty-bound to protect.

So, Populists can make common cause with Conservatives on issues related to social values (Phillips' Southern Strategy is an example), but they can also make common cause with Liberals over issues of economic fairness (Phillips' newer books). So Phillips has been consistent all along, it is just that the Republicans do not appreciate that there is more to their coalition than Conservatives.

This typology is a useful key to understanding much of the political to-ing and fro-ing of American political history. It explains how dubious the Democrats' claims are on Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as founders of the Democratic Party (they were both Populists in this typology). It also explains why it is equally fatuous for Republicans to lay claim to Lincoln as the founder of their party (Lincoln too is probably best understood as a Populist). It explains why Teddy Roosevelt actually has more in common with Lyndon Johnson than he does with the President with whom he served (McKinley) or the party he represented (at least until his 1912 third-party Progressive campaign). This typology is also the key to a resurgence for the Democrats if they are smart enough and skillful enough to use it. If Democrats can seize the Populist sentiment-and stay quiet on social issues-they might have a chance of getting back some of those Populists who deserted them for Reagan in the 1980s. Just how Reagan achieved this capture of the populist sentiment is the subject for many learned books; but one key insight is readily at hand.

During her first Christmas in the White House, kindly, just-plain-folks Barbara Bush strolled over the South Lawn, across E Street, down onto the Ellipse, where, at a ceremony which tugged at the heartstrings, she flipped a switch lighting the nation's Christmas Tree. It struck me as a little incongruous at the time, since during the eight years of his presidency Ronald Reagan always lit the Christmas tree while standing on the South Portico of the White House. He never actually walked the 500 yards to where the common folks (and the tree) were. Initially I just wrote this incongruity off as the Bushs' attempt to make an opening pseudo-populist gesture, like Jimmy Carter's open air stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue during his inaugural parade. But it turns out something more sinister was revealed by Barbara Bush's early December stroll.

We subsequently learned that during his entire presidency Reagan never actually lit the National Christmas Tree. Instead, a staffer with a walkie talkie was hidden out of sight behind Reagan (pay no attention to the staffer behind the curtain) and when Reagan flipped a switch on the podium on the South Portico--which was connected to nothing--this hidden staffer radioed to a Park Ranger down by the Tree who flipped the actual switch. But hey, it looked good on television. For me, this little vignette sums up the entire Reagan presidency.

Another insight into the Reagan Administration, if one is needed, was inadvertently offered in a petulant moment by Lyn Nofziger, who was Reagan's Press Secretary at the start of the Reagan Administration. Nofziger was an ugly, unappealing, pugnacious character: perpetual cigar hanging out of one corner of a sneer, rumpled fedora cocked to the side over a bearded grumpy face--and with manners to match. But every politician needs a thug, an enforcer, a guy to do the dirty work. Reagan had Lyn Nofziger. Early in the Reagan presidency complaint was voiced at the low level of qualifications of many of the political cronies Reagan was bringing with him into government. The suggestion was even made that many of them were outright incompetents. "So what?" bellowed Nofziger. "Goddamnit, its our incompetents turn!" Nofziger's one redeeming feature is that he was crude and unpolished enough to occasionally tell the truth.

I remember specifically the first time I heard a politician tell the truth. While Barry Goldwater was defeated soundly in 1964, many of his fellow cactus-skin conservatives made their way into Congress for the first time, there to plant their secret seeds to bloom and be harvested by Ronald Reagan a decade and a half later. One such character was Sam Steiger. Steiger was only just a bit more polished than Lyn Nofziger, but he was every bit as blunt, which is why he only lasted a couple of terms before self-destructing. Years later Steiger would further splinter an already damaged Republican Party in Arizona by running as the Libertarian candidate for Governor against an inept Republican car salesman and John Birch Society official named Evan Mecham. Mecham was Arizona's answer to Harold Stassen. Like Stassen, Mecham was a laughable perennial candidate for Governor who, against all expectations, was actually elected Governor in 1986 and whose first official act was to issue an Executive Order forbidding the State from recognizing the federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Mecham imploded in less than one term, being quickly impeached and removed from office. But Steiger earned the eternal enmity of the Republican Party in Arizona by trying to save them from Mecham. In any case, I vividly remember the first time I became aware of Congressman Steiger.

My little hometown of Holbrook, Arizona is the county seat of sparsely-populated Navajo County, and each year we host the County Fair, around my birthday in early September. One of the staples of these small-town County Fairs is that the local politicians hang around dispensing the glow of their presence, and usually participating in a live radio interview. (We have no television stations within a hundred miles of Holbrook.) As it happens, I was listening to the only radio station in Holbrook one bright September afternoon when our new Congressman, Sam Steiger, was being interviewed. The first question out of the box was, "Well, Sam, how do you like being a member of Congress.?" Steiger chuckled at this obviously unexpected question, paused a moment, and then said, straight out, on the radio, "Well, it sure beats the hell out of heavy lifting." This is a cliched expression these days; but in 1964-as an impressionable 15-year old standing right next to the Congressman when it said it-it gave me a thrill to hear something so blunt and honest. For Bill Clinton the defining moment of his political imprinting came when he met John F. Kennedy. For me, it may have been this moment when I heard for the first time (and very nearly for the last time) a political leader utter the simple, blunt truth. Indeed, a kind of populist bluntness was the essence of Steiger's political appeal in Arizona.

Despite Lyn Nofziger's honest, if impolitic, admission, millions of Americans acclaimed Ronald Reagan as the most popular President since Franklin Roosevelt. His singular success as a politician was precisely in breaking apart the political coalition FDR had put together in the 1930s. He did this by cleaving the diamond right along the fault line joining Liberals and Populists in the New Deal coalition. Reagan captured the Populists from the Democrats and the Conservative Revolution was fait accompli.

So was Reagan a Populist? Not really. The trick performed by Ronald Reagan was simply to smear three of these political categories into one and convince us that there were only two political philosophies possible: Liberals and Everybody Else. So if you're not ONE OF THEM, you're on our side. And since most people don't see themselves as Liberals, they must be part of Everybody Else. Reagan did this to Carter and Mondale; George H. W. Bush did it to Dukakis; and a whole generation of Republicans, of whatever flavor, have hit upon it as their one simple trick to get into office. (It is interesting to speculate as to what Reagan really was. He was so much an empty a suit that I must confess I haven't the slightest idea. Nor, I suspect, did he.)

I think the Republic would be well-served if we could somehow manage to create two additional political parties and to assign everyone to the true party of their choice. Politics, not to mention our understanding of history, would be vastly improved in the process. And for a few brief shining moments in July 2004 it looked like Barack Obama might be the Democratic Party's best hope for restoring the Populist wing of the Party's Roosevelt coalition.

One largely unspoken current flowing through the Obama candidacy was that he appealed not just to black voters, but to what in Illinois politics is euphemistically referred to as the "downstate vote." In other words, conservative white working-class voters. Those very voters whose desertion from the Democratic Party in the early 1980s allowed Ronald Reagan to build his new conservative coalition. It was the loss of these "Reagan Democrats" that has rendered the Democratic Party more and more irrelevant and more an more impotent in national elections. These conservative working-class voters were a core constituency in the coalition Franklin Roosevelt put together and bequeathed to the Democratic Party. And Barack Obama, wonder of wonders, was a black man who was bringing them back! No wonder the Democrats assembled in Boston at the Convention felt like offering up hosannas to the heavens-they well should.

Obama was spectacular. As a lifelong Democrat, it made my own heart soar to watch his speech. He was a virtually ideal candidate: a powerful and effective black political figure who did not, despite his success and power, threaten white voters-in fact he reassured them in an interesting way. I suspect that many of those "downstate voters" were secretly pleased that they could openly support a black candidate-it made them feel good about themselves. It was probably the only way they could rebuff the constant suspicion that their alienation from the identity-group politics of the Democratic Party could only be because they were racists.

The race-card has been played so long and so shamelessly-especially by Democratic politicians and liberal academics-that the mere refusal to toss it on the table is startling in American politics. Another speaker at the 2004 Democratic convention was Al Sharpton, who made a self-promoting career out of accusing pretty much everyone in sight of being a racist. For the Democratic primary campaign he moderated his usual race-rhetoric, trying to broaden his appeal by emphasizing common economic issues that cross racial lines. And in the aftermath of his campaign loss, he endorsed the winning candidate at the right time and with the right tone of sincerity. For these small acts of recent wisdom he was rewarded with a speaking role at the Convention. But one could not help watching the two-Sharpton and Obama-and see in Sharpton's rather enjoyable over-the-top bombast the dying of the age of a certain species of political dinosaur, and in the contrasting performance of Obama, the passing of the flicker of life to the new survivors. But the old identity-group focused politics dies hard.

Shortly after becoming the President of Harvard in July 2001, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers started doing what he thought a university president was supposed to do-oversee the quality of the faculty and the education at Harvard. One professor called on the carpet for his indifferent commitment to his students and his neglect of his teaching duties was Cornel West, University Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard. West, it seems, often failed to show-up for scheduled lectures and spent more time cutting a rap-music CD than teaching-a CD which West himself shamelessly described as "a watershed moment in musical history." This from a man who, also without evident shame, refers to himself as "one of the preeminent minds of our time."

Outraged that his boss would speak to him about his job performance, West publicly accused Summers of being a racist, and threatened to take his "preeminent mind" elsewhere. Other black intellectuals rallied to his defense, expressing outrage and solidarity with West. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Jesse Jackson both questioned not only whether Summers was a racist, but whether the university itself could be seen in any other way. Al Sharpton threatened a lawsuit against Harvard and Summers. Since West was planning to be a manager of Sharpton's presidential campaign, this "attack" could only be an expression of a racist conspiracy against his candidacy! After months of acrimony, West left for a position at Princeton-the face-saving way to resolve matters it seemed.

One has to wonder: could any white faculty member at Harvard call the President of the University a racist and not suffer the same fate? Does anyone on the Harvard faculty want to volunteer to test the thesis? West, now comfortably ensconced at Princeton, could test it himself if he likes. Perhaps he should try publicly calling the President of Princeton a racist. It doesn't matter whether it is true or not-it did not matter at Harvard-so he might as well toss it out like his other endless jeremiads. Oh well, I'm sure that in the fullness of time the President of Princeton will say or do something that does not please Professor West-so it is only a matter of time.

But if Barack Obama represents the new, racially-transcendent, politics in Illinois, the old politics are not all that far behind. There once was another Illinois politician who stepped into the middle of this mess about race and politics in a truly unbelievable way.

Gus Savage was a black Congressman from Illinois, who represented the Chicago area in Congress for more than a decade (1981-1992). Savage was, not to mince words, a fool and a buffoon. Voters finally tired of his bombast after a scandal broke involving his sexual harassment of a female Peace Corps volunteer while he was on a Congressional junket to Zaire, Africa. The 28-year old Peace Corps worker-who had been assigned duties as Savage's guide-told reporters that Savage rode her around Kinshasa in a limousine while fondling her and demanding sex. "That's the way the world works," he told her, by way of explanation. But this boorish behavior was not what made Savage notorious, or important. It was his novel theory of racism which earned Gus Savage his place in the fools hall of fame.

Gus Savage defiantly asserted that only white people can be racists. It is impossible, Savage insisted, for a black person in America (or most other places) to be a racist. In Savage's weird understanding of racism one can only be a racist if one has the requisite political power to impose sanctions on the members of other races. Since African-Americans lack political power in America, they cannot be racists. Thus, for Savage, it was perfectly fine for any black American to harbor and give free expression to any form of virulent and hateful racial animosities toward white Americans-as Savage himself freely did. But white Americans cannot do the same toward blacks, because that would make them racists. I am not making this up. A Congressman of the United States during the 1980s and 1990s actually believed this, and said so publicly.

Now, what does all of this have to do with the future of the Democratic Party? Well, my point is simple: if the Democratic Party is to have a future, it must find it in the unifying, post-identity group politics and values of populist America. We need to champion conservative social values; wrap ourselves without embarrassment in the flag; slather on a healthy dose of religion; and leaven it all with the traditional liberal concerns about economic justice. In other words, if the Democratic Party wants to flourish in the near-term, it had better seek out the lost Populists among it former coalition partners and invite them back into the big-tent. Otherwise, Republicans will continue to dominate our national politics. And we will be stuck with Al Sharpton and Cornel West, instead of Barack Obama.