This post from Richard Kahlenberg is the sixth contribution in the Washington Monthly/The Democratic Strategist roundtable discussion of Stan Greenberg’s new article on government reform and the white working class from WaMo’s June/July/August issue.
Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and coauthor (with Moshe Marvit) of Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right (2012).
Stanley Greenberg’s illuminating Washington Monthly article makes two central points: that Democrats need to do better among white working-class voters if progressives wish to bring about major social change; and that the goal of winning more white working-class voters is achievable if the right appeals are made. I think there is good evidence to support both claims. Indeed, we need something akin to a civil rights movement for working people of all races–both to bring working-class whites back into the Democratic fold, and to resurrect the American Dream.(use arrow to read more)
I. Why the White Working-Class is Necessary for the Democratic Coalition.
Barack Obama won two presidential elections without much support from working-class whites. This development gave rise to the unfortunate belief that the old George McGovern coalition–educated whites, minorities, women, and young people–was the key to Democratic success in an era when the size of the white working-class vote is shrinking.
Greenberg, however, makes a powerful case that “Democrats cannot win big or consistently enough, deep enough down the ticket, or broadly enough in the state, unless they run much stronger with white working-class and downscale voters.” Obama’s electoral success at the presidential level obscures disastrous results for Democrats down ticket. Robert Draper, writing in the New York Times Magazine, notes Democrats are unlikely to retake the House until 2022 at best. With Democrats holding only 18 or 50 gubernatorial seats and controlling both houses in only 11 state legislatures, Draper concludes, “Not since the Hoover Administration has the Democratic Party’s overall power been so low.”
Moreover, Democrats need the white working-class to help fuel major action on the nation’s most pressing challenge: skyrocketing income inequality. As Leo Casey of the Albert Shanker Institute notes, it was the great dream of labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph to create a cross-racial class-based coalition to bring about greater economic equality. Instead, with white working-class voters trending Republican in election after election, the Democrats have a largely race-based cross-class coalition that has less interest in challenging fundamental economic inequalities.
II. How to Appeal to the White Working-Class?
How can Democrats today appeal to white-working class voters, who provided solid support from the 1930’s through the 1960s? Barney Frank’s memoir, Frank, suggests that Democrats need not (and should not) turn their back on civil rights advances for minorities but rather expand the progress for working-class people of all races. Frank writes, “The chief political problem for Democrats is not anger at integration but the belief that the Democratic focus on ‘pleasing minorities’ extends to giving them preference for scarce jobs.” He continues, “White working-class and middle-class men have not lost faith in government in general; they have lost faith in the willingness of Democrats to use the power of government to protect them from hurtful economic trends.”
In a similar vein, Greenberg’s research finds than many white working-class voters believe that “jobs don’t pay enough to live on” and that big business interests “give big money to politicians and then use lobbyists to win special tax breaks and special laws that cost the country billions.”
In an interesting twist, Greenberg finds that campaign finance reform–normally thought of as a good-government cause embraced mostly by highly-educated liberals–resonates strongly with white working-class voters.
What specific policies could embody Frank’s call for broadening civil rights to help working people, and Greenberg’s call for restoring our democracy? Throughout much of American history, organized labor has been both the nation’s strongest voice for good paying jobs and the chief counterweight in elections to large business interests. So any policy solution should seek ways to resurrect labor unions, as this nation has done in previous periods of grave economic inequality. While raising the minimum wage is a good first step for moving the poor to the working-class, only unions can help move the working-class to the middle.
What can be done to help workers unionize? While many have given up hope on the American labor movement, looking abroad, it is clear that labor’s decimation at home is not the inevitable result of economic globalization. Other countries, also subject to competitive global pressures, have much stronger labor movements in part because the laws in those nations are much more supportive of union organizing, as Freedom House has documented. In the U.S., weak labor laws allow employers to discriminate against workers who try to organize a union. Employers routinely fire or demote ringleaders in organizing drives, and pay small penalties for breaking the law.
My colleague Moshe Marvit and I have called for making labor organizing a civil right, allowing workers of all races access to strong civil rights penalties when employers discriminate against employees for exercising their rights to unionize. Two Congressmen–Rep. Keith Ellison and civil rights giant John Lewis–have introduced legislation to make labor organizing a civil right. Similar initiatives could be passed at the state and local level. (Unions could also take steps to better harness the power of technology to promote organizing.)
Making labor organizing a civil right is one important way to giving white working-class voters a direct stake in a civil rights movement for workers and to underline their common cause with black and Latino workers. Americans are rightly proud of the significant advances we have made for civil rights for African Americans, Latinos, women, and gays. It’s now time to complement that progress with a civil rights movement for workers–including working-class whites–to bring them back to their natural home in the Democratic Party.

This post from Mark Schmitt is the fifth contribution in the Washington Monthly/The Democratic Strategist roundtable discussion of Stan Greenberg’s new article on government reform and the white working class from WaMo’s June/July/August issue.
Schmitt is director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation.
Two insights from Stan Greenberg’s analysis and data suggest the foundations of a significant new approach to politics in the years ahead. The first insight is that Americans (and especially the working-class white men and women oversampled in the poll) are enthusiastic about a supportive government role that helps them take advantage of economic and personal opportunities, but that pervasive distrust of government, in all its forms, overshadows that positive feeling. The second insight is that a strong commitment to “reform” or “streamlining” government can help to overcome that distrust.
These insights, taken together, should inspire a coherent alternative to the complacent, established messages of progressive politics. The first existing message has been simply to defend and market specific government programs that promise to support economic opportunity–not only existing programs such as the Affordable Care Act, but also paid family leave, affordable student loans and the rest of the modest agenda that goes by the name “populism.” Good programs sell themselves, the assumption goes, perhaps aided by messages such as the 2012 Obama campaign video, “The Life Of Julia, that showed government helping a woman along the path from HeadStart to Social Security and Medicare. But as Suzanne Mettler’s book The Submerged State and other research suggest, citizens may like the programs, but programs and policies alone, especially when they aren’t clearly shown to be government programs, don’t shake their doubts about the proposition that government can be a force for good.
The other prevailing progressive message has tried to connect with voters’ sense that politics “is bought and paid for by big donors and special interests.” This is language that Hillary Clinton, along with most incumbent Democrats, has enthusiastically embraced. A reader who takes in only this aspect of Greenberg’s article might be tempted to double down on the familiar denunciations of SuperPACs, the Koch brothers, and Citizens United, and, like Clinton, call for an amendment to the Constitution that would “fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all.”
While this language mobilizes the activist base, and, ironically, seems to make for a lucrative fundraising pitch, there is at least one major drawback: It is not a positive solution and it digs the hole of distrust even deeper. For voters who aren’t members of MoveOn.org, amending the Constitution is distant, implausible and confusing. To insist that the only solution is something that will never happen can only deepen cynicism about government, made worse the higher the volume is turned up on the language of corruption, plutocrats, and special interests, without any realistic alternative.
A better approach would link an explicit defense of government, and an aggressive challenge to the anti-government ethos of the modern right, with a clear recognition that government can and should do much better, not only at elections and legislation, but in providing services in innovative, modern ways. Other opinion research suggests that the public’s view of politics–that ugly, avoidable zone of mean elections and poisonous legislative fights–is inseparable from their doubts about government as a provider of benefits and security. That is, people distrust government to provide services fairly and efficiently, not because they have a bad experience at the Department of Motor Vehicles (most DMVs have become vastly more efficient), but because they see Congress is a highly visible zone of dysfunctional conflict. This is not an accident: Ugly politics sows doubts about government, and those who benefit from doubts about government and from inaction have little reason to practice compromise.
Reform of government, then, means more than just getting money out: It should involve specific, plausible reforms that would reengage citizens in the process of government, creating new ways to make all our voices matter. It should go well beyond the technocratic “Reinventing Government” initiatives of the Clinton Administration, with high-profile efforts to show that government can be as innovative as Silicon Valley, as well as accessible and responsive. “Streamlining” government does not have to involve only cutting costs, though that might be a part of it. The tax code, for example, is now as complex for low- and middle-income taxpayers as for the wealthy, littered with credits and deductions, some refundable and some not. Streamlining government could include a strong commitment to making the tax code simpler at the low end and shifting resources to fight fraud at the top end. It could include, for example, efforts to create a single, simple portal to government services ranging from health insurance under the Affordable Care Act to small business assistance–similar to the “no wrong door” initiatives in several states.
Above all, it should include a positive vision of reform of the political process, and the role of money, that does more than reimpose limits on the political influence of the very wealthy, but empowers citizens as donors and participants. And, the most difficult challenge of all, there has to be an effort to restore to the public face of government, the legislative process, a sense of compromise and shared commitment to the public good, despite deep disagreements.
All of this should fit into the context of a reaffirmation of the importance of government, not as a force outside of our lives, for good or ill, but as an expression of our shared aspirations. Stan Greenberg’s article and data marks a new course, especially if progressives can recognize just how deeply it challenges the lines of argument that they have become comfortable with.

This post from Karen Nussbaum is the fourth contribution in the Washington Monthly/The Democratic Strategist roundtable discussion of Stan Greenberg’s new article on government reform and the white working class from WaMo’s June/July/August issue.
Nussbaum is Executive Director of Working America, an AFL-CIO affiliated group that works with non-unionized people.
Two concepts lurk at the heart of political strategist Stan Greenberg’s piece about how Democrats can cohere a winning election strategy. First, garnering the vote of the Rising American Electorate–people of color, young people and single women–is not sufficient; progressives need to reach the white working class, especially white, working-class single women–to build a New American Majority that can win elections and push through progressive policies. Second, Greenberg asserts that in order to persuade working people and white single women to embrace a progressive agenda, one needs to acknowledge and respond to their deep distrust of government, which they see as corrupt and deaf to their problems.
Given those insights, Greenberg and others in search of progressive gains have an avenue for success with Working America. Every day, all year long, year after year, Working America reaches white, working-class people who don’t have a union on the job–and more than half of those are working-class women. Whether Working America canvassers knock on doors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Pine Bluff, Arkansas, they have proven the effectiveness of conversations that couple the corrosive effect of money in politics with an appealing progressive platform for change.
While our experience supports much of what Greenberg argues, including the notion that white, working-class, women voters are, in fact, winnable, we would go a step further: Our experience suggests that even Republican strongholds such as the South and West show signs of weakness when voters are engaged.
White women are the largest demographic among Working America’s membership, accounting for 1.3 million of our 3 million members. Based on what we hear at the doors every night, it’s little wonder that white, working-class and single women voters react positively to Greenberg’s narrative about streamlining and reforming government. After all, what’s government to them? Democrats have done far too little to reach out to white, working-class voters in recent elections, and government has lagged on addressing their core economic needs. In fact, though these voters may be rising in the electorate, they are sinking fast in today’s economy. These women are reachable in 2016, and Democrats must actively engage them with policies that outline new and far-reaching economic solutions.
Working women and men are deep in the midst of a dramatic change process, because they simply have no choice in the matter. America’s white, working-class experience is not the same one of 35 years ago, when Ronald Reagan came into office, nor is it the same as more than 20 years ago, when Bill Clinton first took the White House.
Today’s members of the working class are confronted with the realities of the emerging precarious economy, which has unstable, erratic work as one of its centerpieces. Unpredictable scheduling demands, relentless low pay, nonexistent benefits and part-time work are today’s normal. Greenberg is correct to point out that women often bear the brunt of these new burdens. They’re more likely than men to hold the part-time, low-paying jobs and are saddled with much of the child and elder care responsibilities.
Working America organizers are out in a dozen states, holding front-porch conversations with working people who struggle to stay afloat. A full 85 percent of our members are in working- or lower-middle-class households making less than $75,000 a year.
Given the reservoir of information on working people we have collected over the years, we looked back at nine years of data gathered on their doorsteps–starting in 2007 (the last contested Democratic primary season) and continuing until now–to identify emerging trends. One clear statistic broke with common assumptions about women voters. Overwhelmingly, our working-class and lower-middle-class women members told us that good jobs were their No. 1 priority (40%), beating out health care (32%) and education (14%).
It turns out, these working women’s top priority was not so different than that of men in this income bracket, 45 percent of whom chose good jobs as their top priority. And though Greenberg suggests that the white working class is more solidly red in the South and Mountain states, our organizers have found that working women in purplish states such as North Carolina and Colorado are also deeply concerned about good jobs and are open to economic solutions.
When working-class voters talk about “good jobs,” they mean more than tax credits. They mean bold, new policies that help them get a handle on their schedules, their paychecks and their long-term economic security. They mean a government that incentivizes corporations to create and retain full-time, well-paying jobs. And, as Greenberg points out, they’re keen on policies and messages that address the power imbalance in elections and in government. Even in conservative-leaning states, programs and laws that counter growing corporate power are key, like reviving workers’ ability to join together in collective bargaining.
While Greenberg certainly is right that working people often feel that elected leaders do not prioritize their needs, our experience is that white, working-class Americans are not anti-government. Rather, they are dispirited and disengaged, and have lost belief in their own collective power. Once upon a time unions served as a credible source of information on economic issues for such voters, yet now Fox News and talk radio’s call for small government and individual responsibility fills that void.
If Democrats want to win these voters, they must first re-engage with them and repair the base, one by one. Over the last decade and a half, Working America has found that we can go through any working-class neighborhood in this country, sign up members and dramatically influence their votes. We reawakened a nascent belief that average people could do something about jobs and the economy. Just engaging in those conversations was enough, apparently, to inspire voters to vote progressively.
In the 2014 election, for instance, research by Hart Research Associates of canvassed and general public voters in five senate battlegrounds reveals that women canvassed by Working America voted for the Democratic candidate at a rate of 13 points higher than you would expect based on their party identification, versus five points for all women. Independent voters who were contacted by Working America were 11 points more likely to support the Democratic candidate than those we didn’t contact. In addition, Working America members tend to vote in more elections, even though rates are still too low. Women in single-person households who are Working America members are more likely to routinely vote (46%) than are those in the general public (38%), voting in at least three of six major recent elections.
What’s our secret? We talk to voters about the economy, highlight the outsized role corporate cash plays in electing leaders and influencing government, and give them hope that by uniting with other working people they can tilt the odds in their favor. “I think the Republicans are trying to create a monarchy, get rid of the middle class, and create a bigger divide,” Jan-Marie Weaver of Hastings, Minnesota, recently told one of our canvassers. “They’re keeping the poor people poor, and the rich richer.” Weaver is clearly ready for a middle-class economic narrative. It’s up to the Democratic Party to reach out to her and give her a real reason to believe that greater economic security is on the 2016 horizon.

This post from Joan Walsh is the third contribution in the Washington Monthly/The Democratic Strategist roundtable discussion of Stan Greenberg’s new article on government reform and the white working class from WaMo’s June/July/August issue.
Walsh is Salon’s editor at large and the author of “What’s the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America.”
More than two decades after he helped us understand so-called “Reagan Democrats” back in the Bill Clinton years, Stan Greenberg continues to mine the thinking of the elusive (for Democrats) white working class voter as we head into what may be the Hillary Clinton years. His analysis offers intriguing clues about how Democrats can win key blocs of working class whites, most notably women, and particularly unmarried women.(use arrow to read more)
Even after all this time — after eight years of economic growth under Clinton, and almost two terms of recovery under President Obama — cynicism about government continues to make the white working class skeptical of Democrats, who are perceived as the party of government. Back in the ’80s, Reagan Democrats left their party because they explicitly identified “government” as the province of minorities who benefited at their expense, abetted by Democrats. Sadly, a sizeable subset of white working class voters believe the same thing today, and those whose views are driven by racial animus are probably beyond the reach of Democrats.
But for many of these voters – I so wanted to write “most,” but I don’t think any research, including Greenberg’s, lets us make that case — distrust of government isn’t about race. It comes from the perception (correct, in my view) that the rules have been rigged by the rich, and that government is controlled by the wealthy. White working class women and unmarried white women are the groups most likely to feel this way – and it’s Greenberg’s project to show how Democrats can craft a message that reassures these voters that they will reform and streamline government, not merely expand it.
It makes sense. Polling consistently shows that white non-college voters are the group that’s the least optimistic about the future. And correctly or not, they don’t see government helping them. In Democracy Corps polling, white working class voters are also the most likely to believe that big banks were the primary beneficiaries of the 2009 stimulus: 50 percent said the banks benefited a lot, more than eight times the number of middle class folks who said that. Only one in five said the Economic Recovery Act helped people like them.
But it’s the women among them, especially unmarried women, who are most pessimistic about their chances of getting ahead, and most convinced the rules are rigged for the wealthy. These pessimistic, downscale white women, Greenberg’s research found, need a promise to “streamline” government and lessen the power of money in politics before they’ll listen to Democrats pitch an agenda to improve their lives.
Greenberg acknowledges up front my first twinge of skepticism about his pitch: prior research that’s found “process concerns” like campaign finance reform, or getting money out of politics, are widely shared, but they don’t ultimately drive votes. He shows how his work, along with research by Page Gardner’s Women’s Voices Women’s Vote Action Fund, and David Donnelly’s Every Voice, found that white working class voters, especially women, were much more receptive to Democratic priorities – expanding and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, investing in infrastructure, implementing family-friendly policies like paid leave, and efforts to insure equal pay for women – when it was preceded by messaging that committed to reform politics and government.
He’s also up against Democrats who argue that the party ought to give up mooning after its lost white working class base. After all, Obama won just over a third of white non-college voters in 2012, but he trounced Mitt Romney anyway. Those arguments ignore the paradox of Obama’s success. Yes, the president, and maybe future Democrats, had the capacity to get to 270 electoral votes (and well beyond) and win the White House despite doing poorly with white voters, and the white working class in particular. And yes, his or her coat tails often bring along Democratic House members and senators in those presidential election years, and even some governors.
But every two years, Democrats get creamed in midterm elections, at the congressional level and in statehouses as well, when the older, whiter GOP base reliably turns out and much of the Democratic base does not. Their candidates, and their voters too, suffer from this structural weakness. Republicans’ success in winning statehouses, and controlling the redistricting process, then compounds that structural advantage; gerrymandered districts could keep the House out of reach for Democrats through 2020. Cutting the GOP’s edge with some subgroups of white working class voters seems important – and Greenberg argues, it’s possible.
I absolutely agree. And yet, in the real world, arguments to focus on white working class voters are often heard as a call to lessen reliance on the “rising American electorate,” also known as “the Obama coalition:” African Americans, Latinos, Asians, millennials and unmarried women. I’ve always rejected a zero sum approach to these questions, as though the only way to reach white working class voters involved policies that would alienate non-whites. (That may be true, as Greenberg acknowledges, when it comes to southern working class whites).
Still, there’s a finite amount of time, money and energy in the world of politics, and telling candidates, donors or foundations to devote resources to these as yet unreliable Democratic voters can be a tough sell in the world of politics. At one roundtable I attended after the 2012 election, there was candor about the difficulty of getting resources even to study approaches to reaching the white working class, since it would shave off money not going to projects mobilizing African Americans, Latinos, women or millennials.
It certainly looks like Hillary Clinton’s campaign has decided it’s smarter to focus on consolidating the Obama coalition than try to reassemble the Bill Clinton coalition of minorities plus downscale whites. Clinton’s policy stands on mass incarceration and immigration reform reflect her genuine political beliefs; they’re also evidence that she’ll focus on the issues most pressing to African American and Latino voters, without worrying about traditional white working class concerns about crime and immigrants.
But Clinton’s team is also clearly focused on subsets of white working class voters, particularly unmarried women. When I heard Clinton say she’d consider the pursuit of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, my immediate thought was: she’s read this Greenberg piece! I was also impressed by the way she wove declining life expectancy among working class white women into her important speech calling for an end to the era of mass incarceration. Her campaign believes she has enormous potential to win the support of white unmarried women, senior officials told me recently. Obama won them by 20 points in 2008; his edge dropped to 4 points in 2012, but he still carried them; it’s reasonable to believe Clinton could restore the 2008 margin, or possibly better.
I’m agnostic about Greenberg’s particular approach: meaning, I don’t know enough to say whether he’s right that a good government, streamline bureaucracy, and get-big-money-out-of-politics argument will work. But he offers Democrats an intriguing way to compete for white working class voters – especially women – without compromising their values, or playing on the edges of indulging racial animus. And intuitively, I think it’s probably correct: yes, Republicans worked hard to convince white working class voters that Democrats were giving their hard earned money to minorities. But those voters aren’t wrong to observe that their former party became much more focused on winning over the wealthy then improving their lives.
My personal bias is that a clean up government pitch should be combined with a promise to rein in the power of Wall Street. I’ve always hung onto a data point from 2008 and 2010: In the Obama-McCain race, a majority of voters in CNN exit polls who blamed Wall Street for the economy’s crash voted for Democrats; in the 2010 midterms, they went Republican, believing Obama hadn’t done enough to punish the banks or help their victims.
Still, I don’t expect any presidential campaign to make this its major focus; again, the nominee’s job is to get to 270. Still, getting to 270 is made easier when Democrats can count on swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, which are heavy on white working class voters, and where Obama did better with those voters than he did in the rest of the country in 2012. Greenberg reminds us that outside the South and rural America, Democrats can compete for working class whites, and especially women, with a pitch that plays to their core values, and won’t alienate other groups. There’s no downside to trying.

This post from John Judis is the second contribution in the Washington Monthly/The Democratic Strategist roundtable discussion of Stan Greenberg’s new article on government reform and the white working class from WaMo’s June/July/August issue.
John Judis is a senior editor at National Journal.
The analysis of the white working class’s voting patterns has been an important task for Democratic consultants and pollsters and political analysts over many election cycles–going back to Stan’s early focus groups in Macomb County–but I worry that it is becoming a cul-de-sac. Along with the blanket designation of minorities or people of color as automatic Democrats, it has mainly served simply to provide calculations that either produce or deny a “rising Democratic majority,” and these exercises may provide less insight about the present or the future than they have in the past.(use arrow to read more)
Stan correctly points us to a discussion of Americans’ attitude toward government as a critical issue, which is relevant, incidentally, not just to the non-college educated or non-college graduated, but to a wide range of the voters Democrats need to attract. The Democrats, once known as the party of the common man–a sure winner in American politics–have become known as the party of government, and that is indeed a problem for some of the reasons Stan cites. Bill Clinton, the DLC, and Dave Osborne tried to dispel this impression through launching a campaign in the early ’90s to “reinvent government.” That put Democrats on the right side of the debate, or at least inoculated them against the usual charges. But when I read the current proposals circulating among Democratic candidates and think-tanks and policy groups–highlighted in my mind by the idea of turning the ill-functioning post office into a public banking system–I worry that on the question of government Democrats are going in exactly the wrong direction.
Right now, the Democrats need to focus on thematics rather than on demographics. Yes, government reform is the right direction, as long as the proposals (like the perennial middle class tax cut) take into account how American voters actually think and not how Democrats in certain zip codes on the east or west coasts believe they think. Done correctly such an approach will allow Democrats to gain votes among some constituencies that spurned them.
There will a problem in 2016, however, in presenting “government reform” as the centerpiece of a Democratic agenda. This kind of agenda works best when presented by the party that is out of power–like the Democrats were in 1992 or 2008. It falls flat, on the other hand, when a Democrat or Republican is attempting to succeed someone from their own party. In that case, the candidates’ success depends primarily on convincing voters that their opponent would screw up government–as GHW Bush was able to do in 1988 with Dukakis or as Obama was able to do with Romney in 2012. For this reason, in 2016 the Democrats should basically frame their appeal around the appalling consequences that would result from a GOP victory and hope that the Republicans don’t move to the center in 2016, but instead proudly present themselves as the party of governmental obstruction, religious fanaticism, and welfare for billionaires.

Note: this essay by Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin is the first contribution in the Washington Monthly/The Democratic Strategist roundtable discussion of Stan Greenberg’s new article on government reform and the white working class from Washington Monthly’s June/July/August issue.
Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at both the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress. He is also a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and the author or co-author of six books.
John Halpin is a Senior Fellow at American Progress. He is the co-director and creator of the Progressive Studies Program at CAP.
As the ideological group most committed to activist government, progressives have a special duty to strive for the best social and economic outcomes achievable and the widest public support possible for the major institutions of government. Right now, we are failing on both fronts. The economic status of many working families remains precarious while public trust in government is abysmal.
Much of the blame can be heaped on an obstructionist right blocking policies designed to help working families and on the priorities of conservatives in Congress and state legislatures seeking to advance the agenda of the wealthy. But progressives’ own deficiencies in articulating a vision of government that links collective action to individual empowerment and opportunity, and in defending the institutions of government from the predatory influence of outside interests, has also contributed to the steep decline in public support for government.(use arrow to read more)
Voters today, particularly the white working class voters that Stan Greenberg focuses on in his strong article, have little confidence that government can address the most serious problems facing the country, spend taxpayer wisely on the right priorities, and provide real accountability and make necessary changes when actions fail. These voters are not libertarians. They believe that government plays a vital role in protecting people from hardship and expanding economic opportunity.
What they do not see at all is a government capable of putting aside personal agendas, partisan concerns, and the narrow interests of corporations and the wealthy to serve the greater public good and their own economic standing.
As Stan argues correctly, progressives must take this challenge of trust in government seriously if they want to maintain electoral strength and build long-term support for progressive policy solutions. “Championing reform of government and the political process is the price of admission with these voters,” he writes.
Evidence across multiple survey research and communications projects confirms his ideas about the potential of a government reform message. Candidates and activists would be wise to develop these narratives for 2016 and beyond.
But it’s clear from years of data, that efforts to restore trust in government must go well beyond better messaging. Since the 1960’s, the American National Election Studies has asked voters the question, “Would you say the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all the people?” Majorities of Americans throughout the 1960’s believed government was run for the benefit of all people, and subsequently trusted it to do what is right in the classic measure of trust in government.
At no point since 1970, with the exception of a brief time after 9/11, has the ANES reported a majority of voters saying the government was run for the benefit of all people. These beliefs cut across partisan and ideological lines suggesting that Americans have serious doubts not only with the performance or direction of government but more importantly with its basic orientation as a guarantor of the public good.
Trust in government is a huge and complicated issue to understand and is more of a system design challenge rather than a public communications one. How do we as progressives ensure that policymaking and legislation are developed openly with adequate democratic input? How do we resolve deep ideological and partisan disputes to produce policies that invest in people and our economy? How should we restructure government and elections to drastically reduce the influence of outside money and corporate interests in setting priorities and making policy decisions? And most importantly, how do we get tangible outcomes for people that deliver on their expectations and needs in terms of security, health and education, and economic opportunity?
What progressives and Democrats need to do more than anything is back-up their populist narratives about reform with legitimate structural changes to the corrupt and undemocratic processes of government and sustained efforts to pursue economic policies that will benefit a wide cross-section of working class families and voters.

From NYT’s “Democrats Challenge Voter Restrictions in Battleground States” by Maggie Haberman and Amy Chozick:

Democrats allied with Hillary Rodham Clinton are mounting a nationwide legal battle 17 months before the 2016 presidential election, seeking to roll back Republican-enacted restrictions on voter access that Democrats say could, if unchallenged, prove decisive in a close campaign.
The Democrats began last month with lawsuits filed in Ohio and Wisconsin, presidential battleground states whose governors are likely to run for the Republican nomination themselves. Now, they are most likely going to attack a host of measures. They include voter identification requirements that Democrats consider onerous, time restrictions imposed on early voting that they say could make it difficult to cast ballots the weekend before Election Day, and rules that could nullify ballots cast in the wrong precinct.

Similar efforts are underway in NC, and more are planned for GA, NV and VA, report Chozick and Haberman. While it is doubtful that the efforts will succeed in reversing voter suppression laws in time for the 2016 election, it is hoped that raising consciousness about voter suppression will stimulate voter turnout among African and Latino American voters who are being targeted in battleground states by Republicans and energize progressives to improve voter turnout. Although the effort being spearheaded by Clinton supporters, all Democratic candidates stand to benefit from it.

Brooking Senior Fellow William H. Frey, author of “Diversity Explosion,” has a post, “Today’s race and generational voting preferences cannot predict future election outcomes,” which reveals how potentially-complex America’s political demography will become in the years ahead.
“…While new racial shifts introduced by the millennial generation may very well drive current and future Democratic voter advantages,” says Frey, “the national electorate will also embody a large and growing senior population as the mostly white baby boom population continues to age.” Further:

There will clearly be a browning of the 18- to 29-year-old and 30- to 44-year-old segments of the electorate as the large millennial generation begins entering middle age in 2024. By then, minorities will constitute nearly one-half of young adult eligible voters and 40 percent of those ages 30 to 44. These represent voting blocs that are ripe for Democratic retention if current race and generational political affinities continue.

However, continues Frey,

During the same period, the large, mainly white group of voters age 45 to 64 will lose some of its baby boom population as the latter advance into a sharply rising senior population. Votes from these older two groups will be easier for the Republican Party to retain if current generational voting affinities continue. Thus, there will still be a contest. That is, in 2024, the eligible voter population age 45 and above will be 26 percent larger than the eligible voting population under age 45–a disparity that will be further widened by the higher turnout of older eligible voters.

And if that wasn’t tricky enough political terrain, Frey adds:

Democrats could make greater strides with key white voting blocs including white college graduates–both men and women–who will increasingly dominate post-boomer generations of voters. Republicans could make gains among Hispanics and other minorities. Furthermore, both parties will do their best to garner the favor of the growing, high-turnout senior population that will be increasingly composed of baby boomers.

Going forward, Republicans arguably face the more daunting task, considering their anti-immigration profile and failure to offer young voters anything impressive in terms of better educational and employment opportunities. They are going to have to come up with some new policies to get any political traction with youth and Latino voters, and they seem to have no interest in reaching out to African Americans.
For Democrats, it appears that the overarching challenge in the years ahead is to find creative ways to get a healthier share of senior votes. In terms of policies to improve health care and retirement security, Dems are in good position to accomplish this. But there is plenty of room for improvement in terms of educating senior voters and messaging that appeals to them.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
My careful and objective analysis, based on 35 years in political life, is that ALEC is one of the sleaziest organizations in modern American political life. I know that sounds like a dramatic thing to say, but when more than 100 major corporations find it too embarrassing to be associated with you anymore, you know things have to be pretty bad. And what drives me crazy is that my tax dollars are subsidizing ALEC’s corporate lobbying.
Check out this new video from a web-show called The Undercurrent that my organization, American Family Voices, sponsors. It’s a new investigative journalism collaboration called The Undercurrent: Uncovered with one of my very favorite organizations, the Center for Media and Democracy, and it features the IRS complaint against ALEC filed by CMD and good government watchdog Common Cause:

CMD is an expert on ALEC, having done a lot of investigation into them over the years. And there is no organization in American politics who knows more about money in politics and special interest lobbying than Common Cause, so I can say with a great deal of confidence that this complaint the video speaks to has a lot of merit. Look, I am not naïve: corporate special interest money will always find plenty of ways to influence legislators. Here’s the deal, though: you and I should not have to subsidize that special interest lobbying and influence peddling. The IRS needs to investigate ALEC and stop this sleazy charade now.

Republican presidential candidates would be smart to get a clue that this time they are not going to get a free or easy ride on pay discrimination against women, as former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s HuffPo post “Equal Pay for Women: 5 GOP Hopefuls Who Just Don’t Get It” makes clear. Granholm writes,

If I knew in 1995 that we’d still be talking about gender-based income inequality in 2015, I’d have been thoroughly depressed…In my opinion, every candidate who enters this presidential race should have a record of fighting to end inequality in the workplace.
Instead, here’s what we have:
When asked if he supports the Paycheck Fairness Act to give women equal pay for equal work, Jeb Bush replied, “What is the Paycheck Fairness Act?”
Marco Rubio repeatedly voted against equal pay legislation, calling it “a welfare plan for trial lawyers.”
Rand Paul voted against paycheck fairness legislation multiple times and compared equal pay legislation to the Soviet Politburo.
Scott Walker repealed a Wisconsin law allowing victims of pay discrimination to seek damages in state courts.
Ted Cruz voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act three times.

It is kind of stunning. These are all mainstream GOP candidates, albeit in their party’s admittedly narrowing philosophical context. You have to wonder, how do these guys think they are going to justify opposing something as simple as fair pay for women in the general election, especially when the Democratic front-runner is the country’s most eloquent champion of the principle?
As Granholm notes,

In the Senate, Hillary Clinton consistently advocated for paycheck fairness, introducing legislation to fight discrimination in the workplace and co-chairing hearings on the need to close the wage gap between men and women. Senator Clinton also was an original co-sponsor of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay act, signed into law by President Obama in 2009, which expanded workers’ rights to take pay discrimination issues to court.

Either they think they can deflect the question with dodgey distractions, which have served the Republicans well on some occasions, or they will try some fancy footwork walking it back. Neither option leaves them looking credible.
Perhaps they are gambling that most white women voters have cast ballots for Republicans in recent presidential elections, despite the GOP’s long-standing opposition to fair pay for women. But 2016 will likely see the Democratic nominee and media pressing the issue as never before, and at a time when family income is lagging nationwide.
Expect lots of hemming and hawing on this topic from these five Republican candidates, and they are probably not the only ones in their party who will find themselves in a well-baited trap — largely of their own making. Indications are 2016 will not be a good year for candidates to project themselves as champions of pay discrimination against women.