Centrism, Neoliberalism and the Democratic Party

Over the years innumerable authors have purported to explain the decay of the Democratic Party from the robust contender of the era of Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson in the middle decades of the twentieth century into the hapless and hopeless train wreck that it has become in the twenty-first century. Some do better than others at this--like Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal, where he describes the party's eagerness to abandon working class concerns in the late 1960s, and its gravitation to the concerns and mentality of urban professionals (less "populist" than "progressive" in the nineteenth century sense of the term, to which distinction Frank devoted his later book The People, No).

Still, so far I have yet to see any one author give the matter its proper due, which seems to me to require acknowledging the fundamental limits of the Democratic Party's "liberalism" even in its heyday--and indeed, that the emphasis on liberalism, which misleads, should be set aside in favor of attention to centrism—and with it, to the conservatism of that centrism. Conveniently articulated by a considerable body of work, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr's The Vital Center set forth most of the essentials early on in a highly influential way. Reading that book with attention one sees that there is nothing in the essential philosophy at odds with Russell Kirk's canons of conservatism (indeed, Schlesinger arguably affirms the lot, and very forcefully too), and nothing in its economic thinking that would have prevented Schlesinger from signing the Mont Pelerin Society's Statement of Aims. All this is precisely because centrism is an application of classical conservatism to a liberal capitalist society, with all its fear of the common man as a political actor, and aversion to change, all as centrism gives away that the officially pox-on-both-your-houses anti-extremism so often summed up as the "horseshoe theory" is really a flimsy cover for a view of the real enemy as the left--with not just the Communist, but those Schlesinger called "progressives" and "liberals" objects of his disdain--and this, if anything, recognized at the time. (Thus did Irwin Ross in Commentary remark that Schlesinger displayed no real fear of the right, just the left in his book, while Richard Hofstadter was to remark a few years later that in American politics those of the center were the country's true conservatives.)

None of this ever getting the attention that a proper understanding of the situation required, it was subsequently the case that between the essential conservatism of their ideology; their (not unselective) respect for the authority of experts (not least, economists generally libertarian in inclination and hostile to big government); their reliance on supporters among the relatively affluent, and in business, with no great liking of reform; their own hostility to mass politics that did that much more to limit the influence of the working class base on the party's policies; the strength of the opposition among the still more-resistant right, which was not only a practical obstacle to a reform program but an excuse not to pursue it; and to a greater degree than elsewhere pressure to attend to matters of race domestically and foreign policy internationally that competed with other objects for attention; they were relatively tepid reformers compared with (for example) their West European counterparts, with all this mattering when after the unraveling of a post-war boom that seems to have been the product of a unique, unforeseeable combination of circumstances they found themselves confronted with the necessity of reexamining their favored line of policy. Some called for a shift to more activist government, with John Kenneth Galbraith calling for social democracy, and Lester Thurow to industrial policy. Instead the Democratic Party's leadership gravitated toward neoliberalism--and Neo-Liberals--the latter so named because they defined themselves in opposition to the New Deal-Great Society-minded "old liberals" they sneered at as having gone decadent. Thus did Jimmy Carter renege on his big social promises (an employment guarantee and universal health care) as he prioritized balanced budgets and halting inflation through the means of a Paul Volcker who declared that American working people's living standard simply had to fall, and proceeded to make it happen--broadly beginning the Reagan Revolution before Reagan. And thus did the Gary Harts sideline the Walter Mondales (and certainly the Jesse Jacksons), while if Hart self-destructed none other than that avowed champion of Neo-Liberalism Charles Peters hailed the rise of Bill Clinton as the movement's "Second Coming."

The shift on the part of the Democratic Party was not popular with the public. It was in fact hugely unpopular, as neoliberalism has always been. But the party leadership never looked back, for the following half century continuing to stand by neoliberal (and neoconservative) policies its old base hates as the party's leaders offer them nothing better than the counsel to "Hold your nose and vote"--and, unsurprisingly in light of the essential repugnance of the sales pitch (assuming "Hold your nose and vote" even deserves to be called a "sales pitch") a critical portion of the electorate refusing to do that. The result has again and again been the advantaging of its Republican rivals, and of the form of conservatism the Democratic Party represents--centrist, modern, cosmopolitan, science-respecting, technocratic, capable of pragmatic compromise at home and abroad--as against the intransigent-to-the-point-of-reaction traditionalism and nationalism of the Republicans. Those loyal to the Democratic Party's leadership insist this to be the fault of those who, sick of being corralled behind policies they oppose through the party's blackmailing of them in backing candidates whose elitist positions they despise, refused to do as they were instructed, did not hold their noses, did not vote in the manner they were told. Of course, the insistence on the bottom being to blame is, of course, reflective of the leadership's contempt for public opinion, and sense of entitlement to public support, evident in its repeating what failed again and again--most recently, in the name of "Abundance" as said leadership shows that it is only ever willing to compromise with the Republicans who treat them with contempt, not those voters whose support it keeps demanding.