By Jonathan Weiler and Marc J. Hetherington
Authoritarianism is central both to understanding the nature of the contemporary political divide and why Republican issue appeals, which have been increasingly organized around authoritarian-inspired issues, have been so effective. A lately neglected concept in the social sciences that originally arose to explain the causes of mass attitudes in totalitarian societies after World War II, authoritarianism has gotten some attention in recent months, especially with John Dean’s bestselling new book, Conservatives Without Conscience. While Dean is concerned about the quarter of the public who are extreme authoritarians, the problem for Democrats is bigger. Republican efforts to raise people’s fears about terrorism, gay rights, and immigration make people who are not particularly authoritarian behave more like people who are. This is an important source of Republican electoral advantage. Authoritarianism embodies an entire world view that provides the connective tissue for a range of attitudes on issues that happen now to be at the center of the political fight.
Authoritarianism: A Primer
Authoritarianism has long been understood to encompass a set of personality traits strongly associated with aversion to difference and desire for conformity to prevailing social norms and proper authority. Though many scholars have linked authoritarianism to many attitudes and traits, a handful stand out: a general moral, political and social intolerance, an aversion to ambiguity and a related desire for clear and unambiguous authority.
The issues and policies that ought to engage authoritarianism are those that prompt thinking in terms of difference, like immigration and gay rights, and that engage authoritarians’ antipathy toward complexity and moral ambiguity — such as clear and simply stated solutions to vexing problems, like global terrorism. In more general terms, authoritarianism is a worldview, a set of connected beliefs animated by some fundamental, underlying value orientation that is, itself, connected to a visceral sense of right and wrong. When people say Republicans have better “moral values” than Democrats, they mean that Republicans reflect traditional, time-honored, simple, common-sense understandings of the world.
The original treatment of authoritarianism suggested it was a static personality type, but much recent work suggests that it waxes and wanes according to specific social contexts, especially levels of threat.¹ When issues arrive on the agenda that engage authoritarianism, these issues will activate perceptions of threat and difference, making authoritarianism more central to shaping the terrain on which politics is contested even if, as has been true over the past decade, average levels of authoritarianism remain unchanged.
Importantly, issues likely to engage authoritarianism are among the most salient today. In 2004, gay marriage and the war on terror were particularly prominent. In 2005 and 2006, Republican elites served up constitutional amendments to ban flag burning and gay marriage, obstructed extension of the Voting Rights Act over multilingual ballots, pushed English as the nation’s official language, passed congressional resolutions resisting withdrawal from Iraq, and proposed a long security fence between the United States and Mexico in response to illegal immigration. All these issues tap, quite directly, fundamental concerns about the proper structure of the family and authority, the need to quell possible threats to social homogeneity, and the need to use whatever means necessary to protect a suddenly vulnerable-seeming nation. In short, all of these issues tap anxieties central to an authoritarian world view.
The study of authoritarianism received a boost when, in 1992, the National Election Study (NES) introduced its four item authoritarianism index. Specifically, it asked respondents to judge attractive attributes in children. Although at first blush the use of child-rearing values to measure authoritarianism may seem odd, child-rearing values reflect a fundamental understanding of how people view the world. Scholars have long argued for the political import of child-rearing preferences because bringing up children involves fundamental judgments about right and wrong.²
The NES begins its four-item battery with: “Although there are a number of qualities that people feel that children should have, every person thinks that some are more important than others. I am going to read you pairs of desirable qualities. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have.” The pairs of attributes are independence versus respect for elders, obedience versus self-reliance, curiosity versus good manners, and being considerate versus being well behaved. Authoritarian choices are scored as 5 points, while non-authoritarian choices are scored as 1 point. Responses that indicate both are scored as 3 points. The authoritarianism measure is the sum of the four response scores, rescaled so that the measure ranges between 0 and 1. Those who value “respect for elders”, “obedience”, “good manners”, and being “well behaved” score at the maximum of the scale. Those who value “independence”, “self-reliance”, “curiosity”, and “being considerate” score at the minimum
The Effect of Authoritarianism on Contemporary American Politics
With gay rights, terrorism, war, and immigration topping the issue agenda, our theory connecting authoritarianism to party choice suggests that a huge increase in its effect ought to have occurred. Since the NES has only asked these questions since 1992, our time horizon is necessarily constrained to elections between this year and 2004. This time horizon proves useful.
The 1992 presidential election was about, most centrally, the economy. Issues like health care were also important. Although gays in the military received some attention, its importance was secondary to pocketbook and economic policy issues. Importantly for our analysis, pocketbook concerns do not engage authoritarians.
Since 1992, “moral values” and, after 9/11, terrorism — a new 800-pound gorilla — have become much more important. Unlike pocketbook issues, these new fixtures polarize authoritarians and non-authoritarians. For example, issues involving gay rights — including gay marriage and gay adoption — represent a clear challenge to existing social norms, something those especially concerned about maintaining social cohesion and a traditional social order might find particularly distressing. Though concerns about gay rights and worries over terrorism might seem unrelated at first blush, what connects these issues is the clear way they divide authoritarians from non-authoritarians.
A simple illustration tells the story. Consider the difference in support for gay adoption in 2004 between those who score at the low end of the authoritarianism scale and those who score at the top (the same divisions are true on all the gay rights issues). For pure non-authoritarians, fully 87 percent support gay adoption. For pure authoritarians, only 27 percent do, a whopping 60-percentage-point difference. In fact, authoritarianism has a larger effect on support for gay rights issues than does either partisanship or ideology.
Terrorism provides another, and more obviously grave, threat to established American traditions and authority. Since it has the potential to cause chaos and uncertainty — conditions that are particularly troubling to those who desire order and predictability — it is an issue of great concern to authoritarians, who favor a muscular response, while non-authoritarians are more inclined to negotiation and multilateralism. When given the choice to either engage in diplomacy or fight in the face of a foreign challenge, we find that authoritarians favor fighting, whereas non-authoritarians favor diplomacy.
One implication of this discussion is particularly noteworthy. The same type of person who is attracted by the Republicans’ position on “moral values” is also attracted to their position on terrorism. Both positions place a premium on order, strength, established norms and suspicion — if not outright hostility — toward those who are different. When Republicans talk about one, they might as well be talking about both. Reference to the social agenda and security issues tap into the same worldview, which is embodied by authoritarianism. The same can be said for flag burning and illegal immigration — two issues that trigger authoritarians’ aversion to social dissensus and potential unruliness.
The result of this state of affairs is what we call a worldview evolution, in which non-blacks with an authoritarian worldview are gravitating to the Republican Party and people with a non-authoritarian worldview are gravitating to the Democratic Party. To demonstrate this, we predict Americans’ partisanship from a number of their characteristics, using a statistical technique called regression analysis.³ We include authoritarianism, spending preferences, and a range of social characteristics as explanatory variables. In 1992, authoritarianism barely had an effect on partisanship. Other things being equal, authoritarians tended to score about 7 percentage points toward the Republican end of the seven-point partisanship scale. By 2004, however, that 7 percentage point difference between authoritarians and non-authoritarians had ballooned to more than 20 percentage points. Other things being equal, being a pure authoritarian rather than a pure anti-authoritarian translated into a move toward the Republican end of the partisanship scale that was equivalent to 7 percent of the distance between being a strong Democrat and being a strong Republican. By 2004, however, that rightward shift of 7 percentage points had ballooned to more than 20 points.
Authoritarianism’s effect in 2004 was also strong relative to other variables. Its effect was substantially smaller than that of income in 1992. By 2004, its effect was twice that of income. In 1992, its effect was less than one-fifth as strong as the effect of government spending preferences. By 2004, the effects were much closer. It is not that the traditional left-right dimension in American politics is unimportant. What has changed is how relevant authoritarianism has become.
Who are the Authoritarians?
Contrary to the overall story of political change, racial minorities — the most resolute Democrats — are more authoritarian than non-Hispanic whites. Identity politics, however, trumps parental philosophy among members of these groups. Authoritarianism has no effect on their partisanship. Although the relationship of race to authoritarianism is not politically important, the relationship between religion and authoritarianism, not surprisingly, is. Authoritarians tend to be religious. This is particularly true among those who adopt a literal interpretation of the Bible, who appear to have received a double dose of authoritarianism at birth.
Besides adopting a literal interpretation of the Bible, nothing is more predictive of authoritarianism than education. This squares nicely with the parties’ recent changing fortunes. Republicans have made their biggest gains among whites who have less than a four-year college degree. Among whites, stark differences in authoritarianism exist between the college and non-college educated.
Threat and Authoritarianism: Why Republicans Can Hardly Lose
Historically, authoritarians have been the most alienated individuals in the electorate with participation rates lower than most. In 1992, for example, the average level of authoritarianism among those who reported not voting was about 0.7 (remember, all scores are mapped onto a 0 to 1 interval, with 1 being most authoritarian). Among Republican voters, the average was about 0.6. And among Perot and Clinton supporters, it was 0.5. This likely explains the nature of subsequent Republican mobilization strategies. When Karl Rove talked about mobilizing the four million evangelicals who didn’t vote in 2000, he likely had in mind authoritarians. By 2004, even as the average level of authoritarianism in the entire population decreased a bit, Bush voters still registered about 0.6 on the authoritarianism index while the average non-voter clocked in at 0.63. Democratic voters, on the other hand, had an average authoritarianism score of 0.45 in 2004. In other words, appeals to authoritarian issues are mobilizing non-voters into the Republican camp, making non-voters and Republican voters nearly indistinguishable in their authoritarianism. This formerly disaffected group has found a political home.
One might wonder why such appeals do not alienate non-authoritarians. Part of the reason is the role that threat plays in the effect of authoritarianism. Most scholarship suggests that authoritarianism is activated by threat, which is true. But the time-honored understanding, which is based on lab experiments, suggests that threat only affects authoritarians, and this is wrong.
Figure 1 illustrates the effect of authoritarianism on support for gay adoption in 2004 at various levels of perceived threat. Any number of other political preferences work in basically the same fashion. Threat is measured using a question that asks whether “The newer lifestyles are contributing to the breakdown of our society.” The measure ranges from 1 to 5, with 1 indicating strong agreement and 5 indicating strong disagreement. We find that, when even non-authoritarians perceive substantial threat from gays and lesbians they behave like authoritarians. Specifically, when people perceive maximum threat from gays and lesbians (Threat = 1), then the predicted probability of supporting gay adoption is low (less than 25%) and constant across different levels of authoritarianism. At moderate levels of perceived threat (Threat = .5), those who score low on the authoritarianism scale might approve of gay adoption (predicted probability greater than 0.5), but those who are more authoritarian do not. When threat is eliminated entirely (Threat = 0), then those who score from the middle to the bottom on the authoritarianism scale support gay adoption. Lowering levels of perceived threat increases support for progressive goals, which in turn ought to affect Democratic fortunes.
In short, this figure is meant to illustrate the broader point that Republicans always benefit from increasing public fears, whether about gays, terrorism, illegal immigration, or anything that activates authoritarianism. It makes people who only have a little authoritarianism share the preferences of those who have a lot. The political implications of this fact for Republican fortunes are clear.
What is To Be Done?
Republicans have done a masterful job of cultivating cultural anxiety and resentment since the debacle of 1992 by making visceral appeals to people’s most basic fears and concerns. While they have, at times, tried to appeal to a broader middle as well (Bush attempted this in 2000), most often they have been determined to excite their base.
Duke’s legendary basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski likes to tell his players that people remember 30% of what they hear, 50% of what they see and 100% of what they feel. Since Coach K stumped for Liddy Dole during her 2002 bid for the Senate in North Carolina, it’s unlikely that he’s going to be available for Democratic strategy sessions anytime soon. But, his insight is one that needs to be heeded. America has, at best, an ambivalent relationship to intellectually or rationally-based appeals. Its politics are going to be fought on an emotion-laden playing field and this is evermore true in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world characterized by evermore rapid social change. Our analysis suggests that the Democratic Party’s tendency to worry about tweaking its issue positions is misplaced. Instead, Democrats need to respond to the emotion-laden appeals of the Republican Party. And, to repeat, at the heart of that set of appeals is authoritarianism.
Knowing what we do about authoritarianism, we suggest several ideas. Perceived threat is what makes those who score in the middle of the authoritarianism distribution act like authoritarians. Democrats benefit if they can make people feel less fear. Without holding the presidency, this will be hard to accomplish. But, candidates like Jim Webb might be able to argue credibly that the nation can only achieve its potential if its citizens stop living in fear.
If it is hard to decrease levels of perceived threat, then the Democrats have to become a credible alternative in responding to threat. During the height of the Cold War, authoritarianism was often not politically decisive for Republicans because both parties needed to confront the Soviet Union. This started to change during the Reagan presidency and accelerated after the end of the Cold War. National security and terrorism appeals work because the public does not believe Democrats will keep us as safe as Republicans will. One solution might be to argue that Republican efforts in Iraq have made us less safe. In addition, it is noteworthy that the administration recently gave up the hunt for Bin Laden. Finally, Republicans don’t spend money on homeland security in the places that are most threatened. In short, Democrats might argue that Republicans aren’t doing the things that would truly keep us safe. And, in fact, some Democratic candidates have begun to go on the offensive on national security matters. Our analysis specifies whose voting loyalties might be at stake in successfully doing so.
As far as moral issues are concerned, it is important to make the Republicans’ implicit appeals to authoritarian concerns about difference into explicit appeals. In her book about the 1988 presidential campaign, The Race Card, Tali Mendelberg showed that implicit racial appeals like the Willie Horton advertisement were effective. Had Republicans made explicit appeals to racial prejudice, however, they would have failed, because we live in an era where a norm of racial equality prevails and very few people want to see themselves as racists. In fact, once Jesse Jackson made the Republicans’ implicit appeals to racial resentment explicit, Mendelberg argued, the tide of the election began to turn, though by then it was too late.
We argue that a similar strategy is worthy of consideration here. We live in an era where, generally speaking, norms of tolerance and opposition to bigotry prevail. Evidence for this norm has been clear in President Bush’s speeches. After 9/11, for instance, tolerance of religious differences featured prominently in his rhetoric. On a more subtle note, a favored Bush phrase over the past two years, in chiding liberals on standards and educational reform, has been “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s understood that tolerance is good, as a rule, and bigotry is bad.
Republicans have avoided being tagged with these negative labels because Democrats haven’t called them on it in any global way. When Republicans raise the issue of gay marriage, they raise it as a matter of defending the family and the social order. Perhaps Democrats could get traction by arguing that such appeals, at bottom, are rooted in bigotry and social divisiveness. The goal here would not be to paint with the brush of bigotry and intolerance every voter who opposes gay marriage. Rather, it would challenge as bigots those individuals who repeatedly make an issue of it. If Rick Santorum can call gay relationships the effective equivalent of bigamy and bestiality, then why not argue that Santorum’s real quarry isn’t defending marriage, but instead, fomenting hatred and intolerance more generally. Making explicit what has been allowed to remain implicit in the intolerance, fear and deep-seated pessimism under-girding the authoritarian worldview might change the terms of debate, forcing Republicans to either defend their positions on these issues in more explicit terms — “we do fear difference, and won’t stand for it” — or backing off.
Most Americans, we believe, may be ambivalent about some of the individual issues in question here — whether illegal immigration or gay marriage. The point is not to vilify them. Instead, it’s to call the Republican Party on its increasing and strategically-motivated single-minded appeals to the worst in our natures.

Jonathan Weiler is Director of undergraduate studies and a faculty member in the Curriculum in International Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. His book, Human Rights in Russia: A Darker Side of Reform, was published by Lynne Rienner Publishers in 2004. He is a regular contributor to the Gadflyer political blog.
Marc Hetherington is associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and is the author of Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. In 2004 he received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion section of the American Political Science Association.

¹Feldman, Stanley and Karen Stenner. 1997. “Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism,” Political Psychology 18 (4): 741-770. Stenner, Karen. 2005. The Authoritarian Dynamic. Cambridge Press.
²George Lakoff, Moral Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1996); J. G. Martin, The Tolerant Personality (Detroit, 1964).
³Regression is a method that allows us to estimate the effect of a set of explanatory variables on a dependent variable while holding all other potential causes constant. This is a powerful tool, especially when our explanations for various phenomena are related. For example, we know that both party identification and ideology predict how people feel about George W. Bush. Regression can tell us the effect of each, independent of the other.

By Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler
Replying to this round of posts, we are reminded of Harry Truman’s line: “The best letters I ever wrote were the ones I never sent.”
Allow us to start with a clarification to our first round response – we did not reply to Ruy because his comments came in too late.
We found many of the points made by the respondents to be thoughtful and instructive. We found a lot to draw upon from both Winship and Whitehead; they agreed with some of our arguments while strongly disagreeing with others. More importantly, for our purposes, they each gave us some new tangents to explore. Whitehead, for example, pointed out some interesting economic numbers about single, prime-age adults that we will look into as we continue our work.
In all, we found much to agree with in the posts.
Despite our differences with our critics, we remain, well, optimistic — about the internal debate within the Party as well as the long-term prospects for the American middle class and the Democratic Party.
KSK

By Ruy Teixeira
I can’t say I consider the Kim, Solomon and Kessler (KSK) reply to be very responsive to the various criticisms that have been made of their argument. Indeed, KSK’s response to being taken to task for being one-sided and caricaturing their opponents is to offer more of the same. I note the somewhat exasperated tones of the titles of Bill Galston’s (“A Focus on Insecurity Is Not a Catalogue of Woes“) and Jacob Hacker’s (“Focusing on Security Need Not Be Pessimistic“) Round 2 comments. I share their exasperation. Evidently, the challenge to walk down the street and chew gum at the same time has proved too daunting for KSK.
Let me illustrate my pessimistic (that word again!) assessment of KSK’s reply by considering how their reply matches up with points I made in my Round 1 critique.

1. I argued that some of their statistics obscure more than they clarify about who is in the middle class and the nature of their economic experience.
   KSK here are content to reiterate the data from their initial piece, along with a few additional factoids in the same vein. But they do not really answer the point I raised: if exhibit “A” on the Democrats’ middle class problem is their terrible performance among white middle class voters–which they appear to define as having between $30,000 and $75,000 in household income–doesn’t their focus on married, prime-age households comport poorly with their own definition of the problem? This is both because the majority of white voters within the $30,000-$75,000 range are either not married or not prime-age or both and because, given that the median income of married, prime-age households is $70,000 (presumably higher among whites), around half of white married, prime-age voters are probably above the $75,000 cutoff.
   Starting from these observations, let’s break this down a little further.
   A. One implication is that KSK appear to want to push up the income cutoff above $75,000 to include more of these married, prime-age households. Fine. But let’s keep in mind that only one-third of white voters have incomes above $75,000 (data here and below from the 2004 NEP exit poll).
   B. Let’s say we do include those white voters with $75,000-$100,000 within the white middle class. Given what KSK say has been the Democrats’ gloomy, security-obsessed, turn-off-those-doing-relatively-well e conomic message, you would think the Democrats would do much worse among this segment of the white middle class than among the poorer segments of this group. Not really. Kerry lost whites between $75,000 and $100,000 by 59-40. But he lost whites between $30,000 and $50,000 by a very similar 58-41.
   C. KSK are at pains to focus our attention away from the $44,000 overall median income figure onto higher figures for various subgroups. But there are some very important subgroups for whom this is a reasonable approximation. For example, 53 percent of white non-college-educated voters have household incomes under $50,000, from which I infer that the median income of this group is somewhere close to…..$44,000. (Of course, KSK would point out that this group contains many people who are not married and/or not prime-age. True–but, by definition, they all vote!)
   This is important because Democrats have been doing particularly badly among white non-college educated voters with some purchase on the middle class-voters who live modestly and whose skill set might reasonably make them feel a bit insecure in today’s economic environment. For example, among whites between $30,000 and $50,000, Democrats lost the non-college educated by a whopping 62-38, while splitting the college-educated evenly.
   D. KSK can reasonably claim that $44,000 is not a good figure to use when thinking about some parts of a broadly-defined middle class. I would never argue otherwise. But it is less reasonable to conclude that, because some white middle-class voters live in households that pull down, say, $70,000 a year, they are the “real” white middle class. Nor is it reasonable to claim that these voters, by dint of their income level, are not particularly affected by problems-dare I say insecurity?– around health care, retirement, education and childcare expenses, work-family stress, income instability and generally keeping their middle-class lifestyle afloat in choppy economic seas. A household income of $70,000 does not strike me as a sufficient economic cushion to ward off all these worries, especially when you’re attempting to raise a family with all the attendant expenses.
   In light of these data, the sensible thing is to view the middle class, including the white middle class, as quite diverse. Some are married. Some are not. Some are prime-age. Some are not. Some make $40,000 a year. Some make considerably more. The Democrats are doing poorly among white middle-class voters both at lower levels, where economic vulnerability is most obvious, and at higher levels. This is a big problem, whose dimensions are not well-defined by dwelling on the fact that married, prime-age households have a median income of $70,000.

2. I argued that they incorrectly represent the economic views of the middle class by focusing only on their sense of personal optimism.
   I do not believe KSK attempted to refute this point, so my characterization of middle class economic views stands as initially made:

   Americans, including white middle class Americans, are optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. That is, they are optimistic about their personal economic situation and believe they will be able to get ahead, even as they pessimistically recognize that the workings of today’s economy make their struggle, and that of people like them, much more difficult than it should be.

3. I argued that they incorrectly counterpose the concepts of security and opportunity and in doing so come up with an economic message that won’t make a great deal of sense to the middle class.
   KSK did not do a satisfactory job of replying to this point, as Galston and Hacker forcefully argued. And, as both Galston and Hacker noted, the close connection between some measure of economic security and taking advantage of economic opportunity continues to elude them or, at any rate, not to interest them much. I’d say “providing security to expand opportunity”, to use the capsule characterization offered by Hacker and myself, stands as a superior alternative to KSK’s one-sided approach.

4. I argued that the policies they propose seem poorly suited to the actual economic situation and the actual economic views of the middle class.
   On this point, KSK punted but assured us that Third Way is hard at work on a set of policies that really are appropriate to the situation of the middle class. Good. There is room for plenty of toilers in that particular vineyard. But I worry that their one-sided conception of the middle class’s economic situation and the appropriate approach to reaching middle-class voters will lead them toward, not away from, the grab-bag of tax breaks offered in their initial contribution to this discussion. We shall see.

Let me close by saying that, if I have seemed a bit hard on KSK, it is because I agree so strongly that opportunity is a central part of the Democrats’ message. Put bluntly, people want to get ahead. But the one-sided argument KSK present runs the risk of making it harder, not easier, to incorporate opportunity and optimism into the Democrats’ message by making the whole idea sound kind of goofy. Goofy because, as they articulate the idea, it so clearly departs from many aspects of the middle class’s current economic situation and views. Goofy because they are proffering their only-opportunity-and-optimism-please approach in a context where Democrats are the out party trying to oust the incumbents in a time of considerable economic discontent. Goofy because, as John Halpin points out, the Democrat in the recent past who most successfully reached the middle class with an economic message–Bill Clinton–wasn’t afraid to talk about the economic insecurity and problems of the middle class, even as he put forward an optimistic vision of how these problems could be addressed and middle-class opportunity enhanced.
Now there was someone who could definitely walk down the street and chew gum at the same time! I suggest we emulate him.

Ruy Teixeira is a joint fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation. He is the author of five books – including The Emerging Democratic Majority (with John Judis) – and over 100 articles – including the recent series, “The Politics of Definition”, with John Halpin.

By Elizabeth Warren
“It’s the economy, stupid.” Where do the famous words that propelled Bill Clinton into the White House fit in the optimism-pessimism paradigm that Kim, Solomon, and Kessler assert defines the politics of winning? Nowhere, and that’s what’s wrong with their paradigm.
Bill Clinton ran for office on a clear statement that he got it. I agree with Jacob Hacker (once again) that Clinton understood what was wrong in America, and he thought we could do better. If that were KSK’s message, then I’d be singing doo-wop backup in the chorus.
There is optimism born of realism–the “here’s the problem, and here’s how we can beat it” attitude, conveyed in the messages of “here’s what we need to unleash the potential of our young people” and “here’s how we can secure the safety of our neighborhoods.” It is the optimism that knows things are wrong and but believes that things can get better.
But something called optimism that is nothing more than trying to put a happy face on the struggles facing middle-class families in America is not optimism. Quoting average statistics of wealth that are inflated by the extraordinary gains made by those at the top is a manipulative ploy. Talking about the rise in family income without talking about the fact that the entire increase came from putting a second earner into the marketplace and that a median-earning one-earner family in America is hanging on by its fingernails to the bottom rung of the middle class is an insult. Politicians who try these sorts of good-news number scams should be called on it.
So what is the reality? Each year since Bush has occupied the White House, more people have filed for bankruptcy than have graduated from college.¹ Why? Just three reasons–job losses, medical problems, and family breakups–explain 90% of those bankruptcies. Americans across the spectrum are drowning in debt, with the median family now owing a record 108% of its annual income.² Try telling those hard-working, middle-class families that Americans are richer than ever.
I think of the people behind the data–the families fielding debt collection calls, the half of Americans who wake up at night worrying about paying their bills,³ the third of Americans who owe money they cannot pay to a doctor or hospital.⁴ I think about the 46.6 million Americans with no health insurance (a new record!),⁵ and the 21 million households that couldn’t afford to make more than a minimum monthly payment on their credit card bill.⁶ I think of one in four military families who are trying to serve their countries while they are tangled up in financial scams and payday loans that are running an average of 400% interest.⁷ I think about the 20-30% of college grads who will graduate with so much debt that experts predict their debt loads will be “very difficult to manage,”⁸ and the almost 20 percent of low-income high school graduates with very high math test scores for whom money is a barrier that keeps them from going on to college.⁹
I think we can do better. And I think that’s a message of real optimism.

A native Oklahoman, Warren graduated from the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School. She is now the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches contract law, bankruptcy and commercial law. Her latest book, All Your Worth, is for people who worry about money. She posts on TPM Cafe.

¹Administrative Office of the United States Courts; U.S. Census Bureau. Data calculations in Warren and Tyagi, The Two-Income Trap, Chapter 1.
²Center for American Progress, Drowning in Debt (analysis of 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance data)
³AP/Neilsen poll of 1,000 Americans December 2004, reported in “Poll: Half of Americans Worry About Debts” (December 20, 2004). The medical effects of these worries are discussed in Jean Lawrence, “Debt Can be Bad for Your Health,” WebMD (January 3, 2005); Center for American Progress/Center for Responsible Lending, “Frequency Questionnaire,” April 13-20, 2006 (33% of respondents “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about being the victim of a terrorist attack, 48% “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about “not having enough money to pay all your bills”).
⁴Sarah Collins, Michelle Doty, Karen Davis, Cathy Schoen, Alyssa Holmgren, and Alice Ho, The Affordability Crisis in U.S. Health Care: Findings from the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey xii (March 2004) (reporting 32% of Americans aged 18-64 with incomes above $35,000 have outstanding medical bills they cannot pay, have been contacted by collection agents on behalf of health care providers, have medical debt being paid off over time or have other signs of distress in paying medical bills).
⁵Rick Lyman, Census Reports Slight Increase In ’05 Incomes, New York Times, August 30, 2006.
⁶Cambridge Consumer Credit Index, March 7, 2005 (45% of those with credit balances were making minimum payment or no payment because they couldn’t afford more); 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance, A-30 2006 (46.2% of all household carry an unpaid credit card balance).
⁷Summary data at Center for Responsible Lending.
⁸Sandy Baum and Marie O’Malley, College on Credit, Nellie Mae, 2003.
⁹David Ellwood and Thomas Kane, “Who is Getting a College Education? Family Background and the Growing Gaps in Enrollment,” in S. Danziger and J. Waldfogel, eds. Securing the Future. New York: Russell Sage (2000). See also Sandy Baum and Kathleen Payea, Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society, 2004. The College Board, 2004.

By Ralph Whitehead, Jr.
[CORRECTION: Stephen Rose has found an important error in my originalpost. In the following passage, the assertion in the second sentence is wrong: “Granted, $44K is not the midpoint in the income distribution for prime age households. But it isn’t too far below the midpoint of the earnings distribution for prime-age white households of a particular type: those with at least two adults, neither of whom holds a four-year college degree.” The assertion holds for ALL prime-age households in this universe, but does NOT hold for white households only. Using Steve’s methodology and age range for prime-age adults, the median earnings figure for the white households only is roughly $55,000 and the median income figure for them is $61,500. The median income figure is very close to Third Way’s median income figure for prime-age households of all races and is significantly higher than $44,000. This error obviously weakens my case for the validity of the $44K figure. The post has been edited in order to omit the passage that was affected by the error.] The topic of this roundtable is well-chosen. As all of the contributors to it have agreed, the economic posture of our party is crucial, but is now at odds with both economic reality and electoral necessity. The topic is also well-timed. If November goes well, the party can begin to shift onto offense. Then, the good news might be that our economic message will be heard. But the bad news might be that it won’t be much worth hearing.
In the borderless universe of cyberspace, this debate has spread across several websites, and the roundtable is now part of a broader discussion. So this post touches on posts elsewhere, as well as the posts so far on TDS.
Third Way’s position, as it now stands, is roughly this:
Within the party, there is an incumbent definition of the middle class: households whose incomes are close to the median for all of the country’s roughly 115 million households, $44,000. But this definition should be challenged. It underestimates the affluence of the middle class. It makes its economic circumstances seem gloomier than they are. It prompts the party to hold a view of the economic standing and outlook of the middle class that is more pessimistic than the reality. The party’s expressions of this view cause the members of the middle class to wonder what economic planet the party is living on. To solve the problem, the party should adopt a different definition of the middle class, and thus a different conception of it. Using this conception, the party will offer apter descriptions of the economic life of the middle class and apter prescriptions for improving it.
FtdsLet me begin with a note on nomenclature: “Middle class” is a charged term. The country has long viewed itself as a middle-class nation, and this implies that “middle class” is synonymous with “The majority” or “The mainstream.” So a party that is out of touch with the middle class must be out of touch with the majority. In a two-party system, this is a bad place for a party to be. Because of what “middle class” implies, and because there are divergent definitions of the term (some of them have appeared in this debate)–a country that can’t agree on a definition of “class” can’t agree on a definition of “middle class”–I’ll try to use “middle class” sparingly, in favor of blandly clinical terms that are low on connotation.
To add a little perspective to this discussion, it is useful to recognize one of the effects of economic polarization. Here, I refer not to the division between the top one percent and the other 99–a division highlighted by Paul Krugman, and with good reason–but to the divisions that now exist within the 99 percent. As Democrats, we worry about this polarization, study it, talk about it, try to make sure it gets the media attention that we think it deserves, and search for ways to lessen it. Nevertheless, we don’t always get a chance to pause and note that economic polarization has been occurring for many decades now, and has advanced to a point where the distribution is now pretty divergent. It isn’t our father’s economic ladder–wide and short, hammered into shape by The Great Compression. This has consequences for our efforts to discern the shape of the playing field. For example:
To make its case for the affluence of prime-age households, Third Way mentions a particular type of household, the household with two earners, and notes its current median income of nearly $80,000. Even after we apply Professor Hacker’s point (over 10 years, $80K will average $74K) and Professor Warren’s (on the balance sheet of a two-adult household, a topline of $74K doesn’t necessarily lead to a strong bottom line), Third Way’s two-earner households are still flusher than the prime-age households whose incomes are closer to $44,000. To put it a little differently: If you have to be on an economic rollercoaster, it’s better to take its periodic plunges from a height of $74K than $44K. Thus, what we might have here–and this suggestion is made less implicitly in Stephen Rose’s post over at The American Prospect–are voters who seem to be holding a relatively good economic hand, and don’t necessarily think it has been dealt to them by the Democratic Party.
In my view, this suggestion should be viewed as a hypothesis, not an assertion, and subjected to empirical inquiry and possibly trial-and-error, not to reflexive scorn. But, even as this particular set of households is put beneath the microscope, there are a couple of other things to bear in mind at the same time:

1. Let’s define a two-earner household as one with two adults who both work full-time and year-round, and then briefly note a bit of its history. In 1960, at roughly the midpoint of the era of the Social Contract, TV wives like June Cleaver and Wilma Flintstone weren’t doing paid work on a full-time/full-year basis, and neither were their real-life analogues. The share of prime age households who fit our definition then was just nine percent.¹
   Since then, of course, the percentage of partnered women who do paid work full-time and full-year has grown. So the two-earner household makes up a larger share of prime-age households today. But this doesn’t mean that it makes up a majority of them. Its share is roughly 30 percent. This is not a majority of prime-age households, nor does it contain a majority of the prime-age adults.

2. During those years, as it happens, another type of household has also increased its share to 30 percent. It is a household of a different kind: It has no more than one adult earner for the simple reason that it has no more than one adult. In 1960, it was 14 percent of prime-age households.

Its share of the prime-age electorate, of course, is smaller than 30 percent, just as the two-earner share is larger than 30 percent. Still, it forms the prime-age segment of the men and women who make up what has been called Unmarried America. The adults in these households are an important–and also a growing–constituency for the Democratic Party. Their median income: roughly $30K.
Thus, a 60-percent majority of prime-age households now consists of two very different household types. The income gap between them is nearly $50,000. It’s a big and economically diverse country.
Consequently, for those who will shape the economic posture of the party, the task is not only to deal with economic polarization. It is also to deal with it in light of the distribution that is marked by this polarization. This is a hard thing to do. Recognizing the nature and degree of the difficulty is one step toward making it possible for the party to do it.
Finally, on optimism and pessimism: As Third Way says, we don’t want to be seen as the party of economic gloom and doom. Also, if we want to avoid this, we have to consider the relationship between how we describe the economy and how the electorate experiences it. (Here, Teixeira’s post offers evidence and advice.) But another relationship matters, too: the relationship between diagnosis and prescription. This is because the goal shouldn’t be to express economic optimism. If it were, George W. Bush would be our model, and Herbert Hoover our ideal. The goal should be to instill optimism. Thus, I would echo the spirit of John Halpin’s post: In describing the economic experience of a particular region or particular group, and if the evidence warrants, we should feel free to diagnose like lions. This by itself won’t brand us as Doctor Gloom-and-Doom. What will do it, however, is if we diagnose like lions, but only as a prelude to prescribing like mere lambs. The worse conditions are, and the franker we are in describing them, the more pressure we put on our policy designers to come up with high-protein solutions and on our leaders to build support for them.

Ralph Whitehead, Jr., a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts, is completing a book on the new distribution of earnings, how it hurts the Democrats, and how they can offset the damage.

¹The data on non-college two-adult households, two-earner households, and one-adult households are for a definition of prime-age households that is slightly broader than the one used by Third Way: households whose heads are ages 25 through 62. All income and household composition data cited are from the March 2005 Current Population Survey.

By John Halpin
Quantitative data and historical evidence suggest that talking up the economy and seeking to downplay “security” policies to focus on ownership and opportunity issues alone is not a wise approach for Democrats to pursue. It has not worked for Republicans over the past few years and was not the successful model utilized by President Clinton in his 1992 victory. Voters across the income spectrum expect attention to both economic security and opportunity, particularly as the decades-old social contract between individuals, business and government continues to fall apart, leaving more middle-class voters out on their own.
According to Democracy Corps’ time series data, from March 2001 to the November 2002 midterm elections, the Republican Party held anywhere from a 1- to 9-point advantage over the Democrats on the economy. From the beginning of 2003 to the present, the GOP has steadily lost support on economic issues and now suffers a 14-point deficit on the economy–a net swing of 23-points since the GOP golden years in mid-2002. More importantly, Democrats currently hold a 23-point advantage on the economy among those with $50,000-$75,000 in total family income–a range encompassing Third Way’s conception of the typical middle class family.
What happened during this time period?
President Bush (like his father before him) and his GOP allies in Congress relentlessly talked up the economy for three years running. They passed numerous tax cuts, some of which arguably helped the shareholding voters at the upper end of the middle-class income range. They attacked the building blocks of the Democratic economic security agenda as wasteful and archaic and proposed to replace it with an “ownership society” built on education, tax cuts, private accounts and greater individual responsibility. All of this to no avail. Their economic numbers tanked and Republicans resorted to running on fear about national security.
Democrats, in contrast, acknowledged the economic truth facing the middle class over this same period and challenged Bush on his economic interpretation, his tax cuts, and his attempts to privatize key social programs. The party’s numbers rose considerably on multiple fronts, from the economy and taxes to health care and Social Security. There is scant survey evidence to suggest that the Democrats should suddenly reverse course, talk up the economy and embrace economic optimism as the best path forward.
On the historical front, the Third Way authors continually cite President Clinton as evidence for their thesis of optimism and opportunity. But as Jacob points out, Clinton got elected in 1992 by telling people the truth about the economy and “putting people first.” The 1992 campaign was won on a message of change and the issues of the economy and health care–obviously not about opportunity or middle-class optimism alone.
President Clinton in his recent autobiography described the enthusiasm for his campaign in 1992 as follows:

It represented both the common touch and forward progress. In 1992, Americans were worried but still hopeful. We spoke to their fears and validated their enduring optimism. Al and I developed a good routine. At each stop, he would list all of America’s problems and say, ‘Everything that should be down is up, and everything that should be up is down.’ Then he would introduce me and I’d tell people what we intended to do to fix it.

Worries and fears combined with optimism and hope; not one set of ideas over the other.
Clinton successfully united lower-and middle-income voters with a message that wisely recognized that economic truth can be a powerful form of identification with voters. Optimism and prescriptions for the future then helped to seal the deal for his election, but they did not replace Clinton’s emotional connection with people’s economic anxieties.
In his acceptance speech after winning the ’92 contest, Clinton stated, “This victory was more than a victory of party; it was a victory for those who work hard and play by the rules, a victory for people who felt left out and left behind and want to do better.” When the Democrats are out of power at multiple levels, why would the party want to avoid those who feel “left out and left behind” to focus solely on those seeking to do better?
Successful Democratic politics in the future will require a new version of both Al Gore’s truth-telling routine and Clinton’s optimism if the party is to address genuine concerns among middle-class voters about the fraying social contract in America.

By William A. Galston
For the most part, the authors’ response on the question of insecurity amounts to a series of non sequiturs. It is easy to agree that “a catalogue of woes is not a path forward.” But who ever said it was? Naming a problem is the first step toward solving it. Those of us who argue that we must take economic insecurity more seriously than we did in the 1990s are hard at work crafting can-do responses. For example, collapse of defined-benefit pensions need not mean the end of pension security. Instead, we need a 21st century model that reallocates responsibilities among individuals, government, and the private sector.
Nor is a focus on insecurity an “inherently pessimistic” exercise, any more than a focus on inadequate or unequal opportunity would be. Pessimism is related, not to specific problems, but to an attitude about their solutions–namely, that there are none. But those of us who focus on insecurity do so in a spirit of optimism. There is a way forward; it’s up to us to find it and rally others to it.
The authors suggest that there is a contradiction between the quest for security and the acceptance of risk. This disregards the well-established fact that at least up to a certain point, increased security facilitates risk-taking. I will be more willing to start a new profession, and perhaps fail, if I don’t think I may jeopardize my family’s health insurance in the process.
The authors invoke FDR as an exemplar of optimism and hope, as indeed he was. But much of the New Deal was designed to address the extraordinary insecurity that economic collapse had produced. Is it really necessary to list all the programs–many of which exist today–that fall under this rubric? It is unfair to write this off as the “comforting bosom of the state.” Worse than unfair; it is implicitly to accept the conservative critique of the New Deal and everything that followed from it. I suspect that voters who still fear the “road to serfdom” will be Republicans all their lives (unless, perhaps, they start paying attention to what their party is doing in their name).
The authors conclude by invoking President Clinton, for whom I was proud to work. But that begs the question I raised: Are the problems, the solutions, and the public’s sentiments in 2006 the same as they were in 1992? It’s intellectually and politically easier to respond in the affirmative. That doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.

By Jacob S. Hacker

My opponent says America is a nation in decline. Of our economy, he says we are somewhere on the list beneath Germany, heading south toward Sri Lanka. Well, don’t let anyone tell you that America is second-rate, especially somebody running for President.
Maybe he hasn’t heard that we are still the world’s largest economy. No other nation sells more outside its borders. The Germans, the British, the Japanese can’t touch the productivity of you, the American worker and the American farmer. My opponent won’t mention that. He won’t remind you that interest rates are the lowest they’ve been in 20 years, and millions of Americans have refinanced their homes. You just won’t hear that inflation, the thief of the middle class, has been locked in a maximum security prison…
Now, I know that Americans are uneasy today. There is anxious talk around our kitchen tables. But from where I stand, I see not America’s sunset but a sunrise.
The world changes for which we’ve sacrificed for a generation have finally come to pass, and with them a rare and unprecedented opportunity to pass the sweet cup of prosperity around our American table.

Sounds pretty optimistic to me. Only this was George H. W. Bush, accepting the Republican nomination in 1992. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was feeling America’s pain: “Tonight 10 million of our fellow Americans are out of work,” he said in his acceptance speech.

Tens of millions more work harder for lower pay. The incumbent President says unemployment always goes up a little before a recovery begins, but unemployment only has to go up by one more person before a real recovery can begin. And Mr. President, you are that man.

A great passage capped with humor, but hardly devoid of gloom.
Of course, Bill Clinton went on to talk about his vision for the nation, about how he would put people first and change the country for the better and clean up government. But that’s the whole point: His message spoke to Americans’ fears and their hopes, their anxieties and their aspirations. And if there’s a single lesson in Clinton’s success–and I think there are more than one, some cautionary and some prescriptive–it’s that a winning economic strategy is rooted in an evocative narrative about why the country is not living up to its potential and how it yet can. That was certainly the story with FDR, the greatest by far of the three presidents whom Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler lionize (and the one, incidentally, that most befuddled the interesting, if preliminary, analysis by Seligman and Zullow that they cite–I guess when you’re fighting the Great Depression and World War II, optimism isn’t essential for success).
Kim, Solomon, and Kessler (as before, “KSK”) strike back hard, but I cannot tell exactly what they are striking back against. Not the notion that everything is hunky dory. They recognize that there are serious challenges and real sources of insecurity. Nor do KSK dispute the importance of linking security with opportunity, though they are certain that insecurity shouldn’t be the only subject, as if anyone in the discussion had suggested it should. (My argument, for example, was that security and opportunity are inextricably interwoven–a point that critics of public and private insurance have long disputed, as I show in The Great Risk Shift, but which those concerned about the health of the middle class should not let slip from their rhetorical and policy arsenal lightly.) Their main point seems to be that the middle class, properly defined, is richer than most of us think. But, as I noted in my last post and elaborate on in a moment, their view of the middle class is too static to capture either Americans’ real sense of insecurity (which KSK wisely don’t deny–they can read the polls, too) or Americans’ real, if often thwarted, aspirations for genuine upward mobility.
I should say right away, however, that I am grateful to KSK for talking about government and the need to restore public faith in it–a point that I emphasized in my last post. Reagan famously said that government isn’t the solution to America’s problems; government is the problem. Today, it’s fair to say that government may not be the solution to the Democrats’ problems, but that running away from government will do nothing to deal with the real problem of rebuilding the tattered public trust in the public sector, or in the Democratic Party. The dominant economic message today is that you must make it on your own, that government’s goal is mostly limited to protecting you from the illegitimate claims of others. There is no way to reverse this long-term tide without reclaiming the ideal that de Tocqueville once termed “self-interest, rightly understood”–the notion that we can achieve personal ends in concert that we cannot dream of achieving alone.
The economic standing of the middle class is constantly in flux, because our economy is constantly in flux. American incomes rise and fall–indeed, rise and fall to a far greater degree than they did a generation ago–and in those rises and those falls are stories of hopes fulfilled and dreams postponed, of expectations realized and expectations dashed. No single story will capture this complex reality. But any story that does not take seriously the legitimate fears Americans have about the increasingly ubiquitous downward trips on our economic roller coaster will fail to speak to today’s middle class.
In any case, the economic standing of the middle class can never be captured in a single statistical snapshot, because the middle class is an aspiration and ideal, not just a set of numbers in a Census table. Americans with incomes much, much lower than those that KSK hold up consider themselves solidly middle class. Indeed, those white voters with $23,700 in annual income who sat on the dividing line between the parties in 2002 probably consider themselves middle class. Which, come to think of it, is a good reason to be skeptical that the Democrats’ problems with the middle class are reflective of their failure to target their message more assiduously to families that make $63,300 a year.
What being middle class has historically meant is this: If you work hard and do right by your families, you should enjoy both basic financial security and a fair shot at the American Dream. And it is the loss of this guarantee that increasingly defines the middle class today. Middle class Americans are the new “tweeners”–too rich to receive Medicaid and too poor to know that they’ll always be protected from ruinous health costs, too rich to expect to live on Social Security alone and too poor to know that they’ll be able to put away enough in their 401(k).
The only message that these middle-class Americans have heard loud and clear, whether they’re making $20,000 or $120,000, is that they’re the ones responsible for their successes and their failures, that they are the ones who need to invest in education, take on a mortgage, ensure they have health coverage, put away enough for their retirement–and bail themselves out (now, without traditional bankruptcy protections) if things go bad. No wonder they don’t think government is there for them. It often isn’t. More important, there’s no one telling them that being middle class isn’t just about what you don’t have or what you need to do on your own. It’s about reaching a point on the economic ladder where the grip is more secure, the view more enticing, and the distance to the top shorter.
To place security at the center of Democrats’ economic agenda wouldn’t mean incessantly cataloguing the woes of the middle class, as KSK dismissively put it. It would mean identifying the gaps in the ladder of advancement and fixing them. Policy can’t be an afterthought in this vision; it has to be at the heart of the effort. Messages are one thing; leadership and action are another. And it will take leadership and action aplenty before Americans can look confidently up toward the ladder’s highest rungs, rather than worry about what lies below.

By Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler
Before rebutting the critique of our strategy document, we’d like to express our thanks. First, a tremendous thanks to The Democratic Strategist for creating an exciting new forum for individuals and organizations to post ideas that challenge orthodoxies to help create a new progressive majority. We especially appreciate your asking Third Way to contribute a piece to your second issue.
We’d also like to thank our critics, Elizabeth Warren, Jacob Hacker, John Halpin, Ruy Teixeira, and Bill Galston, for taking the time to read and take a sledgehammer to our piece. In all seriousness, we appreciate your comments and take them to heart. We are honored that each of you spent the time to discuss and critique our work.
And finally, we want to thank the readers who took it upon themselves to post comments on the discussion page. We were heartened that most of you had very positive things to say about our piece as well as some very interesting ideas and suggestions. We are constantly on the lookout for relevant facts and perspectives, and you can rest assured that we’ll be incorporating these ideas in our future work.
Now to our response…
We’ll begin on common ground. All of us appear to agree on three fundamental points raised in our original piece:

1. Progressives have a problem with middle-class voters, and that problem includes our economic message;
2. Progressives need new ideas that speak to the middle class and reflect their concerns and desires; and
3. The overall economy isn’t headed off a cliff.

Where our critics disagree with us is on the following three points:

1. The “truth” about the condition of the middle class;
2. Whether security is more important to voters than opportunity or vice versa; and
3. Whether the policies briefly outlined in our piece are sufficiently robust to support an enduring message.

We’ll concede the third point up front. Our initial piece was a political strategy document, not a policy memo. In future work by Third Way, we will lay out the policy details.
On the first two points, however, we do not cede ground.
The truth about the middle class
A recurring theme among our critics is that we deny the “truth” about the middle-class condition: that the middle class is beleaguered, fragile and, as a consequence, pessimistic. Though we disagree with these characterizations of the middle-class psyche (more on that below), we don’t deny there’s cause for anxiety.
Men’s wages are stagnant or declining, especially for the less-educated. Long-term male job tenure is down; income inequality is up. Moreover, as Galston points out, massive structural shifts are now unfolding; this is a new era of fierce global competition and rapid technological change. Two billion people have entered the world labor market since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which could potentially depress world wages–particularly at the bottom of the earnings scale–for decades to come. These are truths we accept.
Nevertheless, too many progressives zero in on a handful of negative numbers as if bad news is the whole story and the only story. When progressives warn of the growth in debt, they don’t mention how assets have grown even faster. Real median net worth has risen 35% since 1989. When progressives talk of stagnant male wages, they neglect the phenomenal rise in women’s incomes at all levels of education, which has increased in real terms by 54% since 1979. Why has the bad news about men so greatly overshadowed the good news about women?
We think the current progressive bias toward the negative distorts progressive message and policy. And unless that bias is corrected, progressives will never fully understand the middle class or be able to reach it politically.
For example, it is axiomatic among progressives that the “typical” middle-class American family makes about $44,000–that’s approximately the median income for all households in 2004. But $44,000–while “accurate”–distorts the big picture in at least two significant respects:

• The very young and the very old drag the median down. In our original piece, we argued that policy makers and politicians should think of the “typical” middle-class income as being $63,300 (not $44,000). This higher figure is the median income for prime-age households, age 26-59, in 2004. From the perspective of a responsible strategist (an oxymoron?) it makes sense to exclude the very young and the very old in understanding the “typical” middle-class family. Young people at the start of their careers are underpaid but upwardly mobile. Their current income does not provide an accurate picture of their economic concerns and opportunities. Likewise, people at or near retirement often no longer draw a paycheck. However, since their costs are often lower (mortgages are paid, no children to support) their standard of living is stable, even with a lower income.
• Many more people live in upper-income households than in lower-income ones. The Census Bureau divides households into quintiles, but lower income households have fewer people in them. In fact, only 14.4% of the population lives in the bottom quintile, while 25% of Americans live in the top quintile. A family with income of $45,000 ranks only in the 35th percentile among all prime-earner families, and drops to the 16th percentile among married, two-earner households. The median income for prime-age households with two adults and children is $70,420.

These facts alone should radically change the mental image that most progressives hold about the middle class, and it should change the way that progressives think about how to target the middle class effectively. Believing that the “typical” middle-class family earns $44,000 leads to a different place from where the middle class actually is, and this could in fact be one reason why some progressives think populism works. But that extra $20,000 to $30,000 likely makes a huge difference, for example, as to whether people find high gas prices annoying or oppressive–and whether they find oil companies distasteful or puppeteers.
We will never reach the middle class unless we fully understand it.
The politics of opportunity and the trap of security
The second broad set of criticisms leveled at our piece argues that security, not opportunity, is the real concern of most Americans and that security should therefore occupy center stage when progressives talk about the economy.
Again, we don’t deny that security should be an important component of the progressive message and policy agenda. In The Politics of Opportunity, on which our discussion piece was based, we in fact put economic security as one of three pillars for creating opportunity.
But we don’t think security should be the linchpin of the progressive message. If security is the central building block of an economic policy agenda and message, it’s inevitable that policy analysts and politicians will spend a lot of time cataloging all of the anxieties and catastrophes that justify that effort. Such an exercise is inherently pessimistic; and the truth about pessimistic candidates is that they lose.
In 1990, two leading psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, Martin Seligman and Harold Zullow, conducted groundbreaking research on the effect of optimism in politics. They found that in 18 out of the 22 presidential elections from 1900 to 1984, the more optimistic candidate won. Since 1948, the only pessimist who’s won is Richard Nixon.
The second problem with a message based on insecurity is that it fails the test of leadership. A catalogue of woes is not a path forward; it is simply telling folks what they already know: a lot of them have debt and everyone worries about paying their bills (especially those involving education, health and retirement).
Americans like to aim high and want to succeed. And they want leaders who can show them the way. Presidents Clinton, Kennedy and Roosevelt challenged and inspired Americans to be greater than they were and to aim for something higher and better for themselves. They stood for confronting a changing world with hope and optimism–even if that involved taking risks. This is the reason they are the greatest politicians of the last century. They promised people more than security and the comforting bosom of the state.
Sure, as Warren points out, 800,000 people might watch the populist tirades of Lou Dobbs at night. But let’s put that in perspective: 35 million people tune in to American Idol, a show that for all its faults epitomizes the aspirational spirit of America.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter warned Americans that, “For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western World.”
If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. For the last 35 years progressives have carried the same message of angst; the one exception is President Clinton, the only Democrat in recent history to win the White House. As a political strategy, this message of misery has generally failed. We see no reason why–given the relatively strong state of the economy and the actual state of the “typical” middle class family–a new, updated catalogue of woes would work today.
A politically winning message is not about where people are but where they want to go. It’s time for something new.
The way forward
Progressives have poured tremendous intellectual energy into describing the decline of the middle class when that energy would be better spent in developing new ideas for re-engaging the middle class and helping it to prosper. That is what we aim to do.
As Third Way continues its work on economic messaging and policy, we envision a new role for government–reinvigorated, ambitious and in tune with modern times. In our view, the business world and the American people are already adapting to the changing realities of the modern era. Why else are American companies still dominating the global economy, and why else are so many Americans making college an imperative for their children? They already know what it takes to succeed in today’s world.
Government policies and institutions, however, have failed to evolve in step with changing times, and these failures are a drag on America’s continued prosperity. Worse, the Republican administration and Republican Congress have moved the nation backward, to the detriment of the middle class. They’ve squandered opportunities to ready the nation for its future by wasting Clinton’s surplus on tax cuts for people who don’t need them instead of on tax cuts for middle-class people so they can send their kids to college. Their active mismanagement of government has degraded faith in government as an active force for good in people’s lives.
As Governor Tom Vilsack noted in David Broder’s recent column, Americans feel isolated from government and have the sense that they are navigating the crosscurrents of change on their own. It will take a lot to undo the damage and restore people’s faith in government.
We began our opening piece reciting the number $23,700 and noted that in 2004, this was the household income level at which a white voter was more likely to vote Republican than Democratic in congressional races. Of course, national security and cultural issues come in to play with these voters as they do to a certain degree with all voters. But this extremely low tipping point is a bright-red neon sign message to Democrats.
Middle-class voters do not find our policies at all relevant to their economic situation. They do not believe that what we offer will make an appreciably positive difference in their lives. And when an economic message and agenda have little relevancy, the other issues–abortion, gay marriage, and national security–will take primacy.
To all progressives, we ask that each of us do a better job of really understanding who the middle class is and how it lives, otherwise we will find that our message is not only tone deaf, it is just plain wrong.

By Ruy Teixeira
Let me begin on a note of agreement with Kim, Solomon and Kessler (KSK): the Democrats have a very large problem with middle-class voters, particularly white middle-class voters. And crafting a potent economic message is key to reaching these voters. A better national security message and/or reassuring these voters on values issue will not be enough to enlist a critical mass of these voters in the Democratic camp.
They are also right that getting pummeled among white middle-class voters is a problem of large magnitude. As they correctly note, white middle-class (defined as those with between $30,000 and $75,000 in household income) voters are about a third (35 percent) of voters, according to the 2004 NEP exit poll. Note, however, that if we restrict our attention to “prime-age” voters (aged 25-59) or prime-age married voters in the white middle class, as they seem to urge us to do at one point in their analysis, the magnitude of the problem is reduced substantially (to 24 percent and 16 percent of the voters, respectively). Perhaps they need to decide which white middle-class voters they are really concerned with. A majority of white middle-class voters (54 percent) are either outside of the prime-age range or are not married. Does that make them not “real” white middle-class voters?
A further note: their statistics about the relatively high median incomes of prime-age households, prime-age married households and prime-age married households with two earners are obviously about all the households with such characteristics, not just those that fit their definition of middle class ($30,000-$75,000 in income). Citing these data in the context of a discussion about the middle class is therefore not strictly pertinent and actually somewhat misleading.
But these are relatively minor objections to their analysis. I am much more concerned with the following three questions about their argument.

1. Do KSK correctly characterize the economic views of the white middle class?
2. Do KSK correctly formulate an economic message that will resonate with these voters?
3. Do KSK offer a set of policy prescriptions that make sense in light of the economic views of the white middle class and the economic message that is needed to reach them?

Do KSK Correctly Characterize the Economic Views of the White Middle Class?
KSK argue that the economic outlook of the white middle class is optimistic, not pessimistic. To support this claim, they cite some data showing that Americans, when it comes to their personal economic situation and future prospects, have an optimistic outlook.
I might quibble with some of the data they selected to bolster their case. But the point is nevertheless a reasonable one. In fact, I make the same point, along with my co-authors, Larry Mishel and David Kusnet, in our forthcoming Economic Policy Institute report, “Americans Discuss Economics: Bridging the Gap Between What Elites Say and What Everyday Americans Believe”. The report reviews public opinion data from the last decade and a half, including our own survey in the spring of 2006 specifically on the public’s economic views (the survey was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Economic Resiliency Group and will henceforth be referred to as the ERG survey). These data generally support what KSK say: the public does tend to view their own economic situation optimistically.
I might also quibble that the data they cite are not really about the white middle class but rather about the public in general. But that is less of a problem than it might seem. The views of white middle-class Americans typically do not deviate much from the views of the American public as a whole, so lacking crosstabular data, using the overall survey figure is a reasonable approximation. In fact, I will use the same strategy below, citing overall survey figures when I don’t have specific figures for the white middle class.
So my quarrel is not with the claim that the white middle class harbors considerable optimism about their personal economic situation. They do tend to see themselves getting by fairly well, given the economic circumstances they have to contend with, and do believe they will be able to better their economic situation over time.
But what of the economic circumstances they do have to contend with? Here is where my quarrel lies. It seems willfully obtuse of KSK to ignore the abundant evidence that Americans are quite pessimistic about the economic circumstances they have to deal with and how these circumstances make their struggle to get ahead a great deal harder, and their progress slower, than they would like.
Consider just a few recent examples (many earlier examples may be found in my forthcoming EPI report, referenced above). In the ERG survey, we asked respondents to choose between two statements characterizing today’s economy:

1. Most people today face increasing uncertainty about employment, with stagnant incomes, paying more for health care, taxes, and retirement, while those at the top have booming incomes and lower taxes.
2. Our economy faces ups and downs, but most people can expect to better themselves, see rising incomes, find good jobs and provide economic security for their families. The American dream is very much alive.

By 2:1 (64-32), respondents selected the first statement about increasing uncertainty as coming closer to their views. And among white middle class respondents, these pessimistic sentiments were actually slightly stronger (68-30).
Part of what drives these pessimistic sentiments is the sense that the social contract that used to underlie the U.S. economy has broken down, making it harder to attain a stable, economically secure middle-class life. For example, a June, 2006 Penn Schoen Berland poll for the Aspen Institute found 90 percent agreeing that “25 years ago, if you worked hard and played by the rules, you would be able to have a solid middle class life”, compared to only 49 percent who agreed this characterization was true today. Ninety percent also agreed that retirement today is far less secure than it used to be, because you need to fund retirement yourself, through IRAs and 401(k)s. In contrast, 82 percent agreed that “25 years ago you could retire in dignity and comfort because most people had company pensions”. And perhaps most startling, 80 percent agreed that “Today, with the costs of housing, healthcare, education and self-financed retirement, a middle class life has become unaffordable for most people”.
Similar findings come from an August, 2006 Pew Research Center survey, released this Labor Day. In that survey, they asked respondents to compare how the average working person was faring today as opposed to 20 or 30 years ago in a number of categories. On job security, 62 percent said there was less security, compared to 11 percent who said there was more and 24 percent who thought it was about the same. On how hard one has to work to earn a decent living, 59 percent said harder, 13 percent said not as hard and 26 percent said about as hard. Concerning on-the-job stress, the analogous figures were 69 more/6 less/22 same; concerning employer loyalty to employees, the figures were 56 less/6 more/33 same; concerning retirement benefits, the figures were 51 worse/16 better/27 same; and concerning employee benefits such as health insurance and vacations, the figures were 44 worse/24 better/26 same.
Clearly, there are widely-shared pessimistic sentiments about how well the economy is working for the typical American. Indeed, there is a sense that important aspects of our economy that used to serve the middle class well are now broken. It would be as silly for Democrats to ignore these data as it would be for them to ignore the data about Americans’ personal optimism. And it would be even goofier to argue that somehow only the optimistic data are “real” data and the pessimistic data are artifacts of question wording, survey timing and so on (or vice-versa).
No, I am afraid we shall have to accept the fact that Americans, including white middle-class Americans, are optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. That is, they are optimistic about their personal economic situation and believe they will be able to get ahead, even as they pessimistically recognize that the workings of today’s economy make their struggle, and that of people like them, much more difficult than it should be. The dual nature of this economic viewpoint may be summarized as follows.

1. When it comes to their own individual and family situations, most people say that they are succeeding (and expect their kids to succeed), thanks to their hard work and personal sacrifice in the face of great obstacles. This allows them to tell a story where they and their families are the heroes and where their difficulties redound to their credit.
2. But, when they talk about how the economy is actually performing for “people like me” or for the entire nation or for the next generation as a whole, people are more forthright and forthcoming about the challenges that they themselves face. Now, they are not pitying themselves; they are expressing concern for their children, their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, and their fellow citizens.

This dual viewpoint is nicely illustrated by the relationship between two questions asked on the ERG survey. The first was given above: when respondents were asked whether a pessimistic or optimistic statement about how the economy was working was closer to their view; they chose the pessimistic statement by 64-32. The other asked whether respondents thought they would attain the American Dream within their lifetime or had already attained it; 69 percent optimistically said they would attain the Dream or had already attained. But this group that thought they had reached, or would reach, the Dream, nevertheless endorsed the pessimistic statement (“Most people today face increasing uncertainty about employment, with stagnant incomes, paying more for health care, taxes, and retirement, while those at the top have booming incomes and lower taxes.”) about today’s economy by 59-38!
What explains this seeming paradox? Part of the answer surely lies in the optimistic, aspirational nature of Americans as a people, who see themselves as being able to move ahead even when overall economic circumstances are difficult. But another part of the answer lies in the fact that most people, in fact, tend to gain more income as they get older and climb the “age-earnings profile”, even when the economy as a whole is performing poorly (see Larry Mishel’s contribution over at the The American Prospect version of this debate for a lucid discussion of this phenomenon). In other words, even though workers now “start lower and go up slower” than they did in the past (part of what colors people’s jaundiced view of today’s economy), they nevertheless do go up over time and this reality helps explain why they evaluate their personal trend line positively.
So it’s not “either-or”, it’s “both-and”. On to the next question.
Do KSK Correctly Formulate an Economic Message That Will Resonate With These Voters?
Stripped down to its essentials, KSK are clearly recommending that Democrats stop blathering so much about economic security and focus instead on economic opportunity. Arguments like this contribute to my occasional sense that Democrats can’t walk down the street and chew gum at the same time.
In light of the data reviewed above, it seems much more sensible to argue that Democrats should do both. Americans clearly want both more opportunity and more security–so why talk about just one of these? As KSK correctly point out, an economic message that boils down to “your life sucks, and here’s how we’re going to cushion your fall” is a loser, precisely because Americans do not see themselves that way and believe in their ability to get ahead. But equally a message that ignores the many ways in which Americans believe today’s economy promotes insecurity and constrains their ability to get ahead and that simply says “here are some tax breaks-go get ’em tiger!” will also seem out of touch.
In fact, Democrats should not only talk about both economic opportunity and security, they should link them together. The phrase Jacob Hacker and I use in a forthcoming American Prospect article is “providing security to expand opportunity”. Here’s a summary of our approach:

Add on top of the big causes of long-term insecurity your typical family’s struggle to cover steadily rising health care costs, get or safeguard health insurance coverage, pay for decent childcare while both parents are working and simultaneously put away enough savings in their 401(k) plans (if a family has one) for a comfortable retirement and you have a recipe for running in place, rather than moving ahead. Change becomes a foe, rather than a friend, despite the typical American’s strong belief in upward mobility.
Democrats’ job is to offer the struggling but hard-working and optimistic American family a way out. The general problem of economic security can be addressed by some sort of universal insurance program that, in exchange for a small premium, protects families against catastrophic declines in their economic situation (whether that be from suddenly-falling income or rising expenses). There is probably also a role here for personal accounts that would help families manage their expenses before they reached meltdown levels. Such accounts would be less regressive than those proposed by Bush and would include small annual (and on the birth of a child) progressive contributions from the government.
The details of a universal insurance approach, of course, can be complicated and one of the present authors has provided some. But for purposes of thinking about the Democrats’ message, the details are far less important than the general approach.
That is also true of the rest of the Democrats’ economic agenda. Efforts to increase health coverage (perhaps by expanding Medicare, which most Americans know and like) and contain health care costs (including prescription drugs), to improve the quality and availability of childcare, to defend (Social Security) and extend (a universal 401(k)) existing retirement benefits, and to make college and specialized training available to all are the subjects of countless and competing policy prescriptions. But the important thing is that these policies-whatever the details-should be put in the context of helping Americans get ahead. These are measures to allow the typical American family to raise its head from the day-to-day struggle to get by and concentrate on its most heartfelt wish: to better oneself, to move up in the world, to even become wealthy.

Sounds like a winner to me.
Do KSK Offer a Set of Policy Prescriptions That Make Sense in Light of the Economic Views of These Voters and the Economic Message That Is Needed to Reach Them?
Obviously, I am skeptical. There is certainly a place for some of the targeted tax breaks they advocate, and they are correct that if you want to reach the white middle class, you must, logically, advocate policies that would benefit them. Defending transfer payments and other programs that directly assist the poor, whatever their considerable virtues, will not be enough to convince middle-class voters that Democrats embrace their economic interests and are concerned about their struggle to get ahead.
But the targeted tax breaks they advocate do not seem particularly responsive to the magnitude of the structural economic problems middle-class families currently have to negotiate–problems which don’t just exist in the minds of progressive economists but are clearly recognized by these families themselves. These tax breaks would likely be underwhelming both in practice and in the perceptions of the very constituency they are designed to reach.
A better approach is the kind of universal programs suggested above. Universal programs have succeeded in the past in both substantially improving the country for everyone and convincing white middle-class voters that their economic aspirations are well-served by identifying with the Democratic Party. And, as John Halpin and I argue in our paper, “The Politics of Definition“, this approach would help build up a “common good” identity for the party that would be congenial to both white middle-class voters and the minority/labor/low-income/professional base of the Party.
In conclusion, I commend KSK for forcefully raising the importance of optimism and economic opportunity to the Democratic economic message. But their approach is too one-sided. Time for Democrats, including KSK, to give the lie to the idea they can’t walk down the street and chew gum at the same time. Walking and chewing: try it, you’ll like it!