Despite Democratic attempts to woo symbolic capitalists on cultural issues and foreign policy, most continued to support Republicans because of pocket-book priorities. Meanwhile, the GOP managed to successfully capture those disaffected rural and blue-collar voters Democrats sought to leave behind by emphasizing cultural conservativism. As a consequence, the Democratic Party spent decades in the political wilderness. In the quarter-century between 1968 and 1992, Democrats only managed to hold the White House four years — narrowly squeaking out a 1976 win in the immediate aftermath of Watergate. Republicans, meanwhile, won landslide victories in 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988. And then Bill Clinton changed the game.
Bill Clinton was an embodiment of how symbolic capitalists liked to view themselves. He was relatively young (especially as compared to his Republican rivals in 1992 and 1996). He was smart and charismatic. He was a person from a humble background who managed to ascend into the upper echelons of power as a result of his elite education and savvy. Clinton consistently emphasized the importance of education as a means of competing in the globalized symbolic economy. He surrounded himself with demographically diverse experts from elite institutions. He painted himself as a post-ideological technocrat — as someone who followed ‘the facts’ without regard to what party insiders or his base wanted. Indeed, he regularly went out of his way to alienate remaining vestiges of the traditional Democratic base, or to align with his political rivals, in order to demonstrate his independence.
In his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton formally announced the death of the Democrats’ earlier New Deal coalition, declaring, “The era of big government is over.” And over the course of his administration, the Democratic Party radically shifted to reflect not just the values, but also the economic priorities, of symbolic capitalists.
Four planks were central to Clinton’s vision of reorienting America around the knowledge economy: social investment in skills, infrastructure and research, enhancing market dynamism (through tax cuts, deregulation, privatization), international openness (through trade deals and immigration reform), and macroeconomic stability (including by using U.S. forces to uphold the global international order) – a platform now referred to as “neoliberalism.” Although versions of these ideas date back to the 1940s, and were first piloted under Democrat Jimmy Carter (accelerated under Reagan), Clinton brought the vision full circle by aggressively reorienting the Democratic Party around this vision – giving rise to what is now derisively referred to as the “neoliberal consensus” in Washington, and generating many of the faultlines that continue to define U.S. politics to the present.
For instance, the urban-rural divide first took off in the early 90s, corresponding to the Democratic Party’s reorientation around the knowledge economy (and contemporaneous moves by many left parties in Europe).
With respect to the “urban” side of that divide, under Clinton’s tenure, the Democratic Party dedicated itself to bringing cities ‘under control’ through tough-on-crime policies — despite significant concerns from the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus about the disproportionate and adverse effects these policies would likely have (and indeed, did have) on African Americans and other minorities. Simultaneously, his party committed itself to globalization and free trade, culminating in a series of international agreements that radically expanded China’s economic and geopolitical clout, despite the Clinton Administration’s own forecast that these moves would come at the expense of key U.S. industries and manufacturing workers.
Fulfilling Clinton’s campaign commitment to ‘end welfare as we know it,’ Democrats restructured aid programs, forcing millions of Americans, mostly women, into dead-end and unstable jobs with low pay or benefits in order to continue qualifying for government assistance. Pushing low-income mothers out of the home and into the workforce led to significant increases in child mistreatment incidents and children being dumped into ‘the system.’ However, it also helped expand the pool of workers in the service economy and kept their wages low as a result of the increased labor supply. Simultaneously, the levels, quality and accessibility of government benefits were significantly reduced, as Clinton pushed to ‘downsize’ the federal government (and privatize its functions) in order to balance the budget. As a result of these reforms many low-income Americans ended up with smaller household incomes despite working more, and the share of Americans in deep poverty increased substantially. But in the new and enlightened Democratic Party, it was much better to balance the budget by squeezing the poor than taxing the relatively affluent.
Rather than worrying about the prospects of the working class, the party aligned itself firmly with the tech and finance sectors. The Clinton Administration cut many regulations on these industries, and reduced enforcement of those rules that remained. These moves contributed significantly to the dot-com bubble that burst in 2000, and the housing and financial crisis that came to a head in 2008 (the latter of which had a particularly pernicious and enduring impact on the wealth of black families). Indeed, virtually all of the policies described above advanced the interests and priorities of those affiliated with the symbolic economy at the expense of most others, especially those who were already desperate or vulnerable. The effects of these reforms fell especially hard on women and ethnic / racial minorities. Clinton and his party made these moves nonetheless, confident that they would be able to retain female and minority voters because the Republicans were perceived to be even worse. And, for a while anyway, the bet paid off:
Under Clinton’s tenure, Democrats continued to enjoy roughly the same margins with lower-income and minority voters, but they were able to make significant gains with symbolic economy professionals as well. Looking at the white vote, for instance, we can see that starting in the 1992 election, degree holders shifted hard towards the Democratic Party, and that alignment has only grown over time. Whites without a college degree starting moving away from the Democratic Party by the time Clinton ran for reelection, and moved aggressively away from the party when Al Gore tried to succeed him. (...)
As symbolic capitalists have shifted towards the Democrats, they have also become more “culturally” liberal. According to Pew Research estimates, only about 7 percent of postgraduates held down-the-line liberal views in 1994 (at the beginning of the Clinton realignment). By 2015, that number had more than quadrupled to 31 percent. The share of BA holders with uniformly liberal views increased nearly fivefold, rising from 5 percent in 1994 to 24 percent in 2015— and is significantly higher today.
Indeed, although the Democratic Party platform shifted hard “left” during Obama’s reelection campaign, at the outset of what is today known as the “Great Awokening,” Obama himself was largely focused on painting Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch vulture capitalist who cared too much about corporate profits, and not enough about the struggles of ordinary Americans. It was enough to get him a “win” – albeit by a much smaller margin than in 2008. It was Hillary Clinton who mainstreamed “wokeness” in the Democratic establishment during her 2016 presidential run.
Hillary Clinton had the bad sense to run as the consummate establishment candidate and as a wonky technocrat in a race when growing numbers of Americans across the political spectrum were looking to burn things down. But then she ran one of the most substance-free campaigns of any candidate in either party in contemporary history. Rather than focusing on the substance of Sanders and Trump’s populist platforms, she tried to change the conversation away from criticisms of neoliberal economics via cultural issues.
by Musa Al-Gharbi, Symbolic Capital(ism) | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Only fair after the Reagan essay below to profile the worst Democratic president we've had in my lifetime (in my humble opinion).]
