The Bulwark Podcast - Where Have All the Democrats Gone?

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Democrats used to be the party of the common man and woman, but they have taken a back seat to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. In the process, the party has been hemorrhaging working-class voters. Can they win them back? Ruy Teixeira joins Charlie Sykes today. show notes: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250877499/wherehaveallthedemocratsgone 

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Before we get started, a couple of things that are coming up I want you to keep your eye out for. On Thursday and Friday, my Morning Shots newsletter is going to be devoted to a lengthy summary of all the deplorables of the year. It's a target-rich environment. We have asked for nominations, which are continuing to pour in. You know most of the usual suspects. In fact, it turns out there are so many usual suspects, I had to break it into two. There's actually kind of a length limit on how long a newsletter can be, and I couldn't fit all the deplorables of the year into one newsletter, so it's going to be a two-part newsletter. Also, on Friday morning, we're going to wrap up the year. I'm going to take off the last two weeks for vacation. So I'm

going to be joined by my colleagues, A.B. Stoddard, Mona Charan, and Will Salatan. And we are going to be looking back at the year in review and the year in preview. You know, the MVPs of the year, the worst actors of the year, the biggest actors of the year, the biggest stories of the year, the most undercovered stories of the year. So you won't want to miss our special year-end podcast on Friday. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the pattern is absolutely full. This is one of those weeks where we're packing several months in. House Republicans appear poised to go ahead with a vote to authorize the impeachment of Joe Biden on a very narrow party line vote. We'll see how that plays out. We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, of course, Jack Smith, this is the big one, going straight to the Supreme Court to say, could you answer the question whether or not the president of the United States is immune from any sort of legal accountability in our criminal justice system, because that's what Donald Trump is saying. And he wants the court to clarify this. To say this is a big deal is putting it mildly. I don't think you can possibly overstate the stakes. If the court, in fact, does go along with Donald Trump's argument, then frankly, the president is above the law. They could, of course, choose a middle ground. They could refuse to take it up. They could delay the trial. But they also could hand Donald Trump a huge defeat while reaffirming the constitutional principle that the president takes an oath to

uphold the Constitution does not mean he takes an oath that immunizes him from any accountability. So what else is going on? It does appear that the talks are broken down and that Vladimir Zelensky is leaving without aid. The prospects of a long winter with America backing out of its commitment, and we're going to talk about that, obviously. Hunter Biden is on Capitol Hill. He wanted to testify in public. They were insisting that he testify in private. So the headlines are he's not going to testify. He's going to violate the subpoena. So we're going to have a lot of that news. But to break all of this down, we are joined by our good friend Rui Teixeira.

Once again, by the way, I love I love the sweatshirt you're rocking today, Rui. Hey, thank you. Well, I'm a proud Badger, and I spent many happy years in Wisconsin, and it helped me get the fine education I have today. So I love Wisconsin. Go Badgers. editor at the Liberal Patriot, also the author of the new book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? For those of you who are watching us on YouTube, here is the cover. Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes, where you are continuing to try to have Democrats. Guys, look in the mirror. Ask why so many of the voters who had voted for you for decades are now voting Republican. So can we just step back for a moment? Because I know how much Democrats love this conversation. But there have been so many polls recently. And increasingly, there seems to be a theme. Donald Trump is, in fact, leading Joe Biden in certain swing states, according to some of the

polls. Joe Biden's approval rating continues to be very, very low. And there's more and more evidence of what you have been warning about of the fracturing of the Democratic coalition, which people had taken for granted. So tell me what you're seeing in the most recent polls. What should we be paying the closest attention to? Yeah, sure, Charlie. I mean, I think there are several things that really jump out at you here. One thing that's been, people have noticed, and they're kind of scratching their head, I mean, could this possibly be real, is the compression of the Democrats' margin very significantly among Black and Hispanic voters. And they don't break it down by working class

and college educated, but my bet is it's primarily among down by working class and college educated. But my bet is it's primarily among working class Hispanics and blacks. But I mean, these are margins that are still in the Democrats' favor, but are like 20 points lower than they were in 2020. And that's potentially pretty disastrous. And, you know, I think just shows you how a lot of the people who the Democrats consider their most reliable constituencies are much less enthusiastic about them to the extent that, yes, it does raise the possibility Donald Trump could be elected president. More broadly, if you just break down the voter pool into two big buckets, working class and college educated, we're continuing to see just an accentuation of this pattern

where Donald Trump and the Republicans have a big margin, positive margin on working class voters that's now going up to like 15 or 20 points. And you have the Democrats with smaller margins among college educated, which is not enough to counteract losing, getting your clock clean about working class voters because there's so many more working class voters. This is not a good situation. Now, things could change. It's early days, but these are not good signs. That's the big question. I mean, won't they come home? Like young voters? Okay, when they're actually faced with a choice, Trump versus Biden, what are they going to do? What are, you know, Black working class voters going to do when they go in the polls? You know,

Hispanic working class voters. I think that there's a lot of, you know, just kind of hopefulness out there, hopium out there that, you know, push comes to shove. It's one thing to tell a pollster in late 2023 when you're firing blanks, but when you actually have to make that choice, will these voters come home or is the Democratic coalition permanently leaking some of these key constituencies? Well, that is the gazillion dollar question. I mean, I think that is the standard pushback on some of these polling results. It's like early. People are almost like casting a protest vote, as it were, by what they tell pollsters. They're all going to come

back home. Well, you know, anything is possible. And, you know, that is a pattern that at least typically obtains to some extent. But the idea that it's going to make up all of these drops in margin, this poor performance among these constituencies, young voters, Black voters, Latino voters, working class voters, I think is not something that should be counted on. I mean, one thing that should make them a bit nervous is if we look at previous elections, and yes, there was some coming home of voters, you know, sort of compared to the early polls, but the early polls have never been this bad in recent times for the Democrats among these constituencies. I mean, they weren't running these kinds of margins, relatively poor margins among Blacks and Hispanics. These are worse than

we've seen. So even if there's some coming home, you wind up with, you know, sort of a situation where the amount of votes are getting out of these constituencies is significantly less than it was in 2020. And you can't afford to do it. I mean, the other thing I'd say here, Charlie, that I think is important is the kind of voters who are least engaged, who are going to come out in a high turnout election, who are, you know, seemingly caught between the two parties at this point, all the data we have suggests that they actually are more negative about Biden and the Democrats and have more conservative attitudes on a lot of key issues than the people who are still kind of currently firmly in Biden's camp. So that's a lot of things to put on the table that suggests some of what's going on at least is real

and can't be waved away and certainly shouldn't be waved away. Okay, so let me see if I can put some of the reaction to these polls, what you just described, among Democrats, actually among, I think, a lot of observers, which is like, how can this possibly be happening? How can Donald Trump, who is so clearly unfit for office, who's facing multiple indictments, who was twice impeached, has been defeated, disgraced in every single way, leaning into the most extreme elements. And the other day, he was in New York, and he's surrounded by, you know, people that even deplorables think are deplorable. I mean, just the worst collection of misfit toys, people who would not even have been allowed in Trump 1.0. You know, he's surrounded by the Steve Bannons and the Jeff Clarks and everything. He continues to, you know, talk about Muslim bans. So I guess part of it is like,

Rui, how can this be happening? How can this man, this extraordinarily awful human being, be leading in the polls and have a, I don't know, 50-50 chance of being elected president? He's a guy joking about being a dictator, but not joking about all the critics that he would go after, the campaign of retribution, the death penalty for generals. And he's leading. So part of it is there are people who say, America has completely lost its mind. Everybody's crazy. Or everybody has been mainlining Fox News. So how do you respond to that? Because part of it is that American voters have just completely lost their minds, that none of the normal rules of politics apply anymore. I think one thing to keep in mind here, Charlie, is most people don't follow politics as closely as

you and I do. You may pick up the paper or watch the news or whatever, look at your social media feed, whatever your favorite source of information is, And absolutely, you know, steam's coming out of your ears. What the hell is going on? How is this even possible? But most people aren't that engaged with the day-to-day of politics. Most people don't pay that much attention to the latest thing that Donald Trump said. You know, so that's part of it, right? They're living in a different world than you or I do. A lot of this is just noise. It's just noise. They've heard about Donald Trump. They've heard about Donald Trump. They've heard about Joe Biden. They have opinions. Those opinions can change a bit over time, but they're not prey to that cycle of outrage that I think drives a lot of people on

the right and the left. So they're more in the middle and they're more like observing things. And I think for them, it's not that clear which party is the extreme party. I mean, the polling regularly shows that Democrats are not viewed as being significantly less extreme than the Republicans at this point. So, you know, the idea that voters would fixate on the extremism of Trump is revealed by his statements and say, oh, you know, gosh, gosh and golly, now I realize how I should never vote for this guy. That's not the way it works. They, in fact, are torn between the parties. They do, in fact, not like a lot about, you know, this is what we write about in our book about the cultural radicalism, which, you know, brands the party to a non-trivial extent. You know, people out there demonstrating

for this and that who seem to be associated with the Democrats who people detest. And importantly, if you look back on the Trump years economically and the Biden years economically, that's not such any... In fact, for a lot of voters, it's a pretty easy choice for Trump because they feel like he did a better job and the economy worked better under his watch. There was no inflation to speak of. Right. But all of the indicators are that the economy is doing quite well. I mean, I'm looking at my 401k. It's higher now under Joe Biden than it was under Donald Trump. Household wealth up dramatically. So let's come back to all of that, because I think we need to do a dive into this. And I found reading your book, it's so revealing when you sort of break down. You know, it's very easy to go to the, you know,

it's Fox News or they're all racist, but the economic issue, the cultural issue, but let's set the stage here because I want people to understand where you're coming from on all of this and just remind people that you and your co-author, John Judas, have been advising Democrats for a very, very long time how to win elections and not to lose elections. So two decades ago, let's just go back two decades ago, you and your co-author, John Judas, predicted in their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, that Democrats were on the cusp of securing political dominance. By the way, I believe that Republicans believe that as well as Democrats, because what you argued two decades ago, what seemed to be self-evident,

was growing numbers of non-white city dwellers, college-educated professionals set the stage for a sustained advantage in national elections. The electoral future looked like it belonged to blue America much more so than to its red counterpart. And back when Barack Obama won in 2008, which seems like a very long time ago now, you were hailed as a seer. I mean, the economy notes that this seemed to, right? I mean, in 2008, you were thinking, yeah, this is it. This is the coming demographic wave. Then you get the Tea Party kind of dents the triumphalism, then the midterm losses in 2014, followed by Trump's victory in 2016. And so your book now is like, okay, what did we get wrong? What was the fundamental thing? And by the way, I think your book kind of

became conventional wisdom. I mean, I don't remember it being actually that controversial. I thought, you know, yes, this is, and Republicans were clearly, you know, back on their heels. And I think this was one of the, you know, it's been one of the motivations. So you're right. We were dead wrong about the Democrats' ability to hold on to the white working class. What did you get wrong, do you think, Rui? Right. Well, that is pretty central to our analysis at this point. Back in the day, when the emerging Democratic majority came out in 2002, it wasn't immediately hailed as a brilliant work of prophecy. People were kind of skeptical about it.

Those were the George W. Bush years. And the case we made was that if you looked at the way the country was changing in terms of the growth of the nonwhite population, the realignment of professionals toward the Democrats, the trends toward the Democrats in the most dynamic metropolitan areas of the country, the changes in the voting patterns of women, particularly single and educated women. You put it all together and it looked like the Democrats and where they were coming from, and we sort of recommended they continue on a course of what we call progressive centrism, were in a good position to harness this emerging coalition. However, however, and this part got quickly forgotten, we had a section in the key chapter

on the white working class. This is kind of basically, guys, you know, we do want to bring this up here. White working class voters are still a huge section of the electorate. Yes, they've been declining, but they're still very big, particularly in a lot of key states in the Midwest and so on. And the political arithmetic of this emerging coalition can only work if you keep a very strong minority share of the white working class, maybe 40 percent overall, maybe closer to 45 in some of the Midwest states. So this is something that has to be paid attention to. And if it's not, the whole coalition could fall apart. That was immediately forgotten. And in the wake of Obama's election in 2008, it's completely forgotten. It's like, hey, look what happened. This is great. Everything they said come true. Look at all the

states that came online. Look at all the constituencies. They're just right about this. But what was ignored there is that if you actually looked beneath the hood of Obama's victory, he actually did quite well, relatively speaking, among white working class voters. But that was not something people paid much attention to. Now, they should have come to their senses in 2010 when the Democrats lose 63 House seats and get their clock clean, a lot because white working class voters do bail out in so many areas of the country, particularly the Midwest. 2012, Obama comes back and again we're hailed as seers because, hey, look, he won twice in a row. He got over 50% of the vote.

The Obama coalition reemerged. But what people ignored in that case was that he doesn't win this election without a swing back toward him in the in the upper Midwest. He ran as a populist. He ran on the auto bailout. He crushed Romney on his plutocratic tendencies. I mean, when the Democrats' weaknesses among white working class voters really come home to bite them. And that's really the reason Donald Trump wins the election. People didn't see it coming because they weren't taking that constituency and its potential for political mischief as seriously as they should have. And so, you know, obviously, John and I are rethinking our thesis as we're going along here from 2010 through 2016. And after 2016, when I, we saw how people were summing up this cataclysmic event, which was basically, oh, my God, the racists and xenophobes have come out of the woodwork. Right. You know, that's the only reason why someone could possibly vote for this awful man whose awfulness you just retailed a few minutes ago. They just, they were like gobsmacked. They couldn't understand it. They couldn't believe it. So they landed on a very simple explanation. These people are just not happy with the way

the country is evolving, the multicultural, multiracial future. Donald Trump is a profound racist and xenophobe. Well, and clearly that's part of it, right? I mean, you know, the race issue is, it would be naive to say that that's not part of it. On the other hand, the Obama-Obama-Trump voter complicates the narrative a bit, doesn't it? Right, because, you know, it never comported that well with the irrefutable fact that there were like millions and millions of Obama-Trump voters, these supposedly racist voters in the Midwest and other places who voted for Obama and then turned around and vote for Donald Trump. And the thing that we emphasize in the book is you have to understand that in a sense, Trump ran the policy oriented campaign. He ran on trade, he ran on immigration, he ran on

how the elites don't care about your jobs, and they're sending them overseas. They're doing bad deals. They don't care about you, the working class person. And what did Hillary talk about? She talked about how bad Donald Trump was and how awful he was and the terrible things he said. They've even done ad studies on this that show the overwhelming proportion of Trump's ads were in a sense policy related, even if you don't think of them as policies or don't care for them as policies. Whereas like the overwhelming proportion of Clinton's ads were on some terrible thing Trump said and how we're all in this together. And Trump is just, you know, he's just a terrible man. And I'll be honest, I thought that was going to work. And clearly it didn't.

So did everybody else. So did I, for that matter. But when reality barks back, I feel you need to start rethinking your priors. Your book actually starts off with, you know, an introduction to the party of the common man and woman and talking about some of these blue collar areas that had once been reliably democratic that have switched and then talking to them. It is interesting because we have to talk about it is the economy stupid and the way the economy has changed and the perceptions of the economy. So you write, and this is right in your introduction, there's no single factor that has driven working class voters out of the

Democratic Party. So then you list some of them. Democrat support for trade deals that led to factory closings in many small towns and mid-sized cities in states that were once Democratic strongholds. Huge. Democrat support for spending bills that the working and middle classes paid for, but that were primarily a benefit to poor Americans, many of whom were minorities. Democrats' enthusiasm for immigration of unskilled workers and the party's opposition to measures that might reduce illegal immigration. This is interesting. You also point out Democrats' support for abortion rights and opposition to any restrictions on those rights. We can talk about how that's playing out now.

Democrat support for strict gun control, which is always problematic, say, in the upper Midwest. Democrat support for an identification with the quest for new identities and lifestyles, particularly among the young and the denigration of all those who are not supportive. Okay, we can go on, but let's start with the economics, because we can get sidetracked on. Is the economy good? Is the economy not good? Are you stupid to think that inflation is a problem? But there's a decade long transformation of the world through the eyes of white working

class voters. And this is something that I don't think that had been accounted for until the Trump shock. So just talk to me a little bit about these small towns, these blue collar workers, how they see the economy and the political alignment, the nationalist versus the globalist debate. Right. Yeah. Well, we do talk obviously a lot about this. I mean, the book itself is divided up into two sections, the great divide and cultural radicalism. And the great divide, part of it is trying to recount this history of how Democrats come to be associated

with an economic term, something that is not at all of benefit and is really anathematized by a lot of people in certain areas of the country that have seen their communities decline. Places dependent on resource extraction, farming communities, small towns and cities that are dependent on manufacturing. All of this really starts to bite in the late part of the 20th century. And the Democrats are associated with a type of economic policy that wasn't really doing anything about all this stuff. We had NAFTA under Clinton. We had also the deregulation of the financial and telecommunications sector, which lays the basis for future mischief. And importantly, you have the China shock, which, you know, was put into motion by the latter part of the Clinton

administration, which has been documented to have this very large effect on the political leanings of people and of communities that were affected by the China shock, by the trade exposure to those events. So you put it all together, and Democrats, which had been the party of prosperity, the party that could deliver prosperity for working class people. You really see this starting to erode starting in the 1980s and then just getting worse over time to the point where they have no advantage or they're actually negative on this question that Gallup has asked forever. So what is left of the Democrats if they're no longer the party of working class prosperity? That's the question a lot of, you know, sort of working class people and particularly white working class people started asking themselves.

And it made them much more open to voting for Republicans. Not that Republicans were so great either, but they did offer an alternative. And then you take it into the 21st century, when Democrats not only do not have the confidence of a lot of these voters in terms of their economic approach, the Democrats move from being the more liberal party on a lot of issues, right? I mean, the party that's for, you know, anti-discrimination, tolerance, gay marriage, what have you, into a party that seemingly is obsessed with a variety of boutique issues that a lot of people find inconsistent with their norms, their traditions, and their way of life. And that's, you know,

that interacts with their economic sense that their way of life is being destroyed or substantially harmed. And they're being looked down on. I mean, that's key, right? I mean, why would you vote for a party who you believe basically looks down on you. It's a little hard to get there. Let's leave the cultural issues aside for a moment. But I do remember back in 2016, the reaction again, because maybe my view is skewed because I live in the upper Midwest. But I just remember how some of this played together. For example, if you were a white collar worker in rural Michigan and watch your entire town wiped out and, you know, a white collar worker in rural Michigan and, you know, watch your entire town wiped out and everyone you know is unemployed. And then you hear politicians on

television talking about white privilege. You're going, what privilege? I'm not privileged. So you had the shock and then you had the indifference and maybe the contempt. But let's go back to this because some people would argue, would push back and say, okay, you know, despite all the demonization of globalization and et cetera, and the dislocation, that it's been good for the economy. Look at the stock market. It's over 36,000 points, the Dow Jones average. Working class Americans, they're buying boats. They're still living a good lifestyle. We are still a prosperous country. It has led to one of the most dramatic booms and the spread of prosperity that we've ever seen in world history. So what is this great divide? Is it because the people who are doing well just do not see what's been happening to the white working class? Is the

white working class spending too much time watching Fox and being told they're not doing well when they're not actually, you know, experiencing that it's not that terrible? What do you think? This is, I think, sometimes a little hard for people who live in the more educated cosmopolitan sections of the country to appreciate the extent of the alienation of these kinds of voters from the Democrats and from, well, people like us. You know, you can take this story, too, back to the late part of the 20th century and the decline of the labor movement, which is absolutely crucial development for changing the character of the Democratic Party. The labor movement ceases to have nearly as much influence

in the Democratic Party. And the union movement provided a kind of working class anchor for the Democrats as a party, which would prevent them in some ways, or push back against them leaning too far in a culturally leftist direction, because that's not where these people come from. And there was a realization, we can't go too far in this direction. So if you have the decline of the labor movement on the one hand, and here you have the rise of the professionals and their influence within the party, on the other hand, and the development of the shadow party, as we talk about in the book of these nonprofits and advocacy groups, all the groups in a sense come out of the 60s, but really gain much more strength and money over time and influence in the Democratic Party in the 90s and 00s, they're more setting the

tone of the party, its agenda. So I think back, you know, 50 years ago, you weren't going to get any Democratic politicians going around having the term white privilege even past their lips, because they would realize how insane this is in a political sense. But I think when people live in a bubble, and they're, to some extent, some of these politicians are elected by people who, you know, in these cities, and by these younger educated voters who feel like there's no danger in saying this stuff, I'm just telling the truth. But there's no sense, there's no sort of almost message discipline about how this might appear or be digested by people in other areas of the country who don't feel so

privileged. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot about increased domination of the Democratic Party by college-educated, liberal-ish professionals, mostly white, actually, and the decline of the influence of unions and working-class people. And I think that really changes your appeal. And it doesn't mean you lose every election at all, of course. But it does mean, I think, what puts a ceiling on your support, which is really a lot what our book is about. Not that the Democrats are going to start losing every election, but I think they're basically in a situation where they can't become the dominant party with the weaknesses they have, even as weak and crazy as the Republican Party is. And as you point out, in the 90s, there was that sort of turn as the Democrats were, I guess, they thought they were modernizing themselves. They became increasingly susceptible to the influence of interest groups like Wall Street, Silicon Valley. They embraced trade liberalization, which I did not think at the time would have all the consequences that it did. And they endeared itself to professionals who were

not threatened by globalization. I think Pamela Paul in the New York Times wrote about your book, and she writes, when it comes to economics, the authors say, Democrats have too often pursued the interests of their own elites and donors. Since the 1990s, the party has pursued policies that worsen the economic plight of Americans who are not well off. President Clinton, for example, supported NAFTA and China's entry into the World Trade Organization, which undermined American manufacturing. The administration also endorsed the Banking Act of 1999, which accelerated the financialization of the American economy. While Barack Obama conveyed a populist message on the campaign trail, as president, they say, he became a captive of neoliberal Washington.

So what is neoliberal Washington? Well, neoliberal economics in general is kind of a shorthand term for the idea that the economic system works best when it's deregulated, when trade is very open, where there are few strictures on what sort of people with capital can do, particularly financial capital. This is what conservative Republicans said, right? It was kind of a reversal of roles there, you know? Well, yeah, now it is kind of, in some sense, at least parts of the Republican Party. But back in the day, in the 90s, everyone was singing from the same humbug, basically. The difference with the Democrats is they were a soft version of neoliberalism. They wanted to approach things

in roughly that way, but they felt we needed to compensate the losers. We needed, you know, sort of safety net programs. We needed to be nice to the people who were losing out, and Republicans were less interested in that. And there's actually a very interesting paper that recently came out by Suresh Naidoo et al., a bunch of economists who basically show that the Democrats move over time and are perceived as moving over time by working class voters as a way from, you know, a focus on sort of jobs in the macro economy and the way people were being compensated in terms of wages to a compensate the losers type approach. And that this coincides with when the Democrats start losing votes among these working class voters. It's not enough for them, apparently, to be compensated.

But that was the dominant strain of thinking among soft neoliberals of the Democratic administrations. This is where the economics and the cultural issues seem to come together. Because, you know, as you write, you know, during the Clinton-Obama years, unions take a backseat to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street, together with various environmental, civil rights, and feminist groups. This is the shadow party. So in the 2020s, the party is now dominated by a host of left progressive organizations and companies that cater to hyper educated urban progressives.

So the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Ford Foundation, The Center for American Progress is all from The Wall Street Journal. I guess, you know, the other question, though, is, though, Joe Biden does not come from this world. Joe Biden seems to be a throwback to the era that you and John Judas are describing when the party was more attuned to the white working class. He's not part of this. And yet the voters who are being polled now don't seem to be cutting him any slack. They don't see that, okay, there's a far left, there's an elitist left, but this is middle-class Joe. Because Joe Biden does not meet these definitions. I mean, you noted that Biden has curtailed some of the shadow party's economic agenda, but has he gone along too much with the rest of the shadow party? Yeah, I think so. I think of him in a way as being the designated normie of the Democratic

Party. He does come out of that old sector of the Democratic Party and its traditions. And that's really why he's president today to some extent, right? Yeah. I mean, he stood out in the primary scrum in 2020, 2019, 2020, as the guy who was like, not crazy. I mean, most people in that primary contest were trying to run to the left of each other and were sort of competing to see how radical they could be on issues of race and gender and immigration and so on. And basically Biden, you know, refused to participate. And even though people discounted him at the time, you know, he winds up being propelled to the nomination by moderate voters, particularly interesting black moderate voters. So, you know, the people spoke

in a way, the Democratic rank and file spoke, and he was the nominee. And while he didn't beat Trump by as much as a lot of us thought he would, he nevertheless was able to prevail. And that was a very, very good thing. But once he's in office, he's still the leader of the Democratic Party that currently exists today. And I think his ability to box out the shadow party and sort of terminate or radically curtail its influence was minimal, even if he intended to do that, which is not at all clear to me. But I think he has, to his credit, tried to brand the party a little bit more along those lines. Every once in a while, it makes a tentative sort of move in the direction of being a little tougher on immigration, a little tougher on crime. His rhetoric is, you know, just naturally tends to be a little bit more

along the traditional Democratic lines. But I do think in the end, it isn't enough to refashion the image of the party. And I think we see that in the polling data today in terms of how people view the Democrats and view their stance on a variety of issues. And, you know, I mean, it's fair, right? The Democrats are significantly the left of people and race, gender, immigration, crime, and a lot of other things they detest the Biden administration for being. And then I think this is a controversial issue. We do talk about it in the book, but to some extent, his economic program, I mean, aside from the fact, you know, critically and fatally that it's been associated with inflation, which they radically underestimated how bad this would be for their economic image and for change. And, you know, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is really a climate change and investment kind of bill. And people aren't that

interested in climate change, particularly working class voters. You know, this is not a high salience issue for them. They think that that is a threat, right? I mean, look, I mean, I'm not going to try to litigate whether or not, you know, the nature, I mean, if you do believe it's an existential threat to the planet, I mean, go for it. But politically, it is important to understand that in the industrial rural Midwest, for example, the focus on climate change often reads as a threat to the economic security and the jobs and the affordability of energy and a variety of other issues. And so I do pick up on that. And I think you're seeing that in some of the polling as well. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, it is, in fact, not that attractive a proposition for a lot of these voters. And I

think it's another example of how the priorities of the shadow party and of the professional elites who dominate the Democrats override and outvote, in a sense, the priorities and preferences of the shadow party and of the professional elites who dominate the Democrats override and outvote, in a sense, the priorities and preferences of the people who they should really be trying to reach. For those people, yes, climate change is an existential crisis. No price is too high. We need to move as fast as possible to replace fossil fuels with renewables. And the reaction of your median working class voter, particularly in rural America or small town America is like, what? Why do we need to do this? You know, this is bad. I'm not seeing the benefits for me in this. And I don't understand why you're so

upset about it. Let's talk about some of the more optimistic things that you see happening, though. I mean, you and John Judas argue that America needs a Democratic Party that is liberal on economics and moderate and conciliatory on cultural issues. But you gave an interview to Time after the Hamas-Israel issue saying that people in the Democratic Party have been leery about intersectionality and everything having to be decolonized. So let's just talk about this break, because in terms of many of the shadow party that you're talking about, I have seen more pushback among Democrats and among progressives against this left wing, the intersectionality, oppression, woke ideology, since October 7th than we ever saw before that. I think that there was initially kind of a shock realizing, you know, these are our allies and they're behaving in this particular way, which has led to, I think, a reevaluation. So you've suggested that maybe some of this

pushback against the intersectional left might be a constructive contribution to these trends you've been describing. Yeah, possibly. I mean, I think your initial point there is correct about what we think the sort of sweet spot is, being somewhat left on economics and culturally moderate. You could really form a coalition that did have some sort of significant and durable majority status. That's really where a lot of Americans are. And it shouldn't be that hard to get there. But obviously, parties are hard to change. And they have, for all the reasons we talk about in the book, the Democrats have had difficulty doing that or even realizing perhaps they need to do it. But beneath the surface, Charlie, I mean, I think there's been a gathering fed upness with some of this intersectionality or wokeness or whatever you want to call it and the liberalism that's associated with it and all the dumb things you're supposed to have to say to be a good Democrat. Floyd's summer. And I think ever since then, it's kind of gone down a bit. It's much more

permissible to say some things were not permissible at the time, but it's still dominant and hegemonic within Democratic Party circles. And everybody feels very leery about pushing back too much on this, even if the doubts are creeping into their mind. But I think what's happened with the October 7th thing, for a lot of people, they've looked at these people in the street who seem to be implicitly pro-Hamas, and they sort of can't believe it. Wait a minute. Look at what just happened. This is not a matter of intersectionality. You can't understand this issue and have a moral stand in it by simply saying the Palestinians are the oppressed and the Israelis are the oppressors. This is nuts. So I think it's a kind of this is nuts moment for a lot of people where they say,

okay, I went along with this as far as it went. I didn't want to annoy the kids. I didn't want it to be on the right side of history. But now I just have to say, this has gone too far. This is not the right way to look at the world. We'll see how far it gets, but I do think you're right that there are more people willing to push back harder now than there has been. And we'll see how far it goes. I think there's a lot of institutional obstacles to it getting too far at this point. I mean, the people who are in the intersectional camp, as it were, control the commanding heights of cultural production. They're the people who staff the nonprofits, the advocacy groups, the foundations. They're being challenged. And that's the first step, right? Being challenged is the first step.

Before October 7th, I don't know that there was a particularly robust pushback against identity politics. You know, there were center-left folks like Yasha Monk who were saying, you know, this leads into some illiberal corners you don't want to be. There were warnings about what was going on in university campuses. But just the surprise that we've seen over the last several months, you know, tells me that we had not fully engaged. You know, the testimony of the three university presidents that, you know, blew up in their face. I think part of the problem was not that they were reaffirming, you know, academic freedom. It's that they're so selective about it, that they have been so hypocritical, that they have gone so far into saying, you know, universities should be safe

space. You shouldn't use this word. You can't use this word. We can allow, you know, this person to feel threatened in any way whatsoever, except when it comes to Jews on campus when they are being assaulted. And I think that that was one of those aha moments. Now, whether it actually has an effect, we just don't know. And I think that in terms of your critique of the extent to which Democrats had allowed the identity politics shadow party to dominate the commanding heights, that might be changing. I think there's a little bit more space to push back against some of that. Now, again, how this plays out in 2024, I just don't know. Okay, I just want to just come back to this, because we're going to get reaction to this

saying that this critique of the white working class being more willing to vote for Donald Trump is a sign of, I'm trying to dance around this without getting right at it, is, I mean, to what extent is this kind of, you know, pulling off the scab of American racism? I mean, you wrestle with this, you provide the detailed economic and cultural argument, but ultimately, aren't we watching Republicans appealing to some of the basest instincts that have long, deep histories in our culture? And so maybe, you know, some of the anti-racist activists have gone too far in the last decade. But are they wrong? How much of this is about race?

Well, several replies to that. One thing that I always like to point out to people who say it really is all about racism and xenophobia is it's kind of funny for Democrats to be talking about this in terms of the reaction of working class people to the situation and to the Democrats when for 40 years prior to 2016, they were talking constantly about the corruption of the neoliberal economic model and how it was oppressing working class people and destroying communities. So you have some of the people in these same destroyed communities winding up voting for someone like Trump. Isn't there at least an interaction effect here between some conservative cultural attitudes, perhaps, and their actually existing and lived experience as people in these communities. And therefore, isn't that part of understanding why

they moved in the way they did? A second comment is, if you look at the actual trend data on racial attitudes, even the so-called racial resentment variable, which I don't think much of, Trump got less votes from the most racially resentful voters than Romney did in 2012. In other words, where Trump really made his gains was among people of more moderate views on these issues. And if you look at the distribution of these racial attitudes between 2012 and 2016, they actually moved in the wrong direction. People didn't become more racially resentful. So none of that fits very well with the standard story. And I think that's really important. And the third thing, and

critically, and this is really what should have opened people's eyes in 2020, if in fact it's all about racial resentment and status threat and people who just don't accept this glorious multicultural, multiracial America, Well, why did Trump get more votes from Hispanic and black voters? And why is he getting even more votes now? I mean, and among working class people, there's something else going on here that cannot and should not be reduced to question of racial attitudes. And I think that that's just a killer, a killer point for a lot of these kinds of arguments. If you're right about, you know, the continuing influence of white supremacy, why do we have all these non-whites toying with this

candidate who supposedly represents this bid to restore, you know, white supremacy or strengthen it and, you know, unleash white Christian nationalism, what have you? There's, you know, various hysterical takes on this by people, but... And a lot of denialism. Yeah, denialism. I mean, I just, it can't possibly be happening. The polls are wrong. You know, they'll come home, or there's a million ways of trying to explain it, but the reality is reality. Working class people of all races are now more sympathetic to the Republicans than they used to be. We need to think about that. In the time that we have left, though, I want you to address how the abortion issue is playing out, because you cite that as one of the reasons that has eroded Democratic support among the white

working class. I think Democrats are thinking that abortion is going to work very much in their favor in 2024. How is this playing out demographically? Is this one of the factors that we're seeing in the Hispanic and Black working classes, that abortion is not playing in the same way that it's playing among suburban swing voters? Yeah, I think actually things have changed in an important way because prior to the Dobbs decision and that long interregnum when Roe was re-weighed was the law of the land, it really wasn't that hard for Republicans basically to portray the Democrats as being for unrestricted abortion at any time and for the pro-life people to make hay out of that. And its salience was just not that high. It was sort of a

subtext to a lot of American politics for a long time. But for some working class voters, it was another straw, you know, sort of didn't exactly break their backs, but it was another factor pushing them toward the Republicans in a way for the Democrats. What you have now and what has decisively changed is in the wake of the Dobbs decision, you basically have the Republicans being able to portray very easily it's having the extreme position because the Dobbs decision did unleash a lot of these people to act like, you know, basically they were pretty close to wanting to ban abortions entirely, extremely unpopular. So Democrats are now basically saying, portraying

any Republican at any time, no matter what their actual position is, is essentially being for banning abortions full stop. Really unpopular. And the Democrats have benefited from that. And they probably will continue to benefit from it in 2024. The question is how much, because it's a little hard to read from the results of the Ohio referendum, for example, that Democrats now have the magic bullet that's going to slay Trump. If you look at the exit polls from that particular election, this was a plus two Biden electorate, which is a 10 point more Democratic electorate than actually existed in Ohio prior to that. So clearly abortion brought out in a relatively low turnout election like that, a certain kind of voter. 2024 is going to be a really different election where you're going to have many more voters coming out of the woodwork who are more peripheral, who are less engaged, who are probably not going to vote just on the basis of abortion, and who in fact are quite sympathetic, relatively speaking, to Donald Trump and where he's coming from. So I've always thought it was a little foolish to try to, not to argue that abortion rights won't benefit the

Democrats. I think that's entirely fair. But to argue that they completely changed the terrain in the context of a presidential election, I think is flawed and just doesn't really take into account the way the electorate actually is. So let's talk about what you want to see the Democrats do, what they perhaps need to do next year. You have described it as a prosperity agenda. The Democrats do well when they are the party of the common man, the working man, when they are convincing people that the best times lie ahead. What is the prosperity agenda? What should Joe Biden be embracing? Well, I find it a little bit hard to answer that in the sense that I think that, you know, they have a limited amount of degrees of freedom at this point, given all the things they've

done under Biden's watch and the way that sort of most voters perceive the Biden economy at the current time. I'd say one thing they shouldn't do is run on Bidenomics. I mean, that was a remarkably poor choice on their part. I mean, if people don't like Biden particularly, and they don't like the economy at all, why would you want to run and put them together and run on Bidenomics? I mean, you're kind of asking for trouble. So, I mean, you always need to pay attention to where voters are coming from, right? Voters were most concerned about cost of living and prices. They really disliked the Biden performance on inflation. They don't even know much about these various acts that

have been passed by the Democrats. They have no idea what's in them. So maybe you should actually run on, you know, your commitment. I mean, this is in the short run, I think, of prosperity agendas, the abundance agendas, is more long term proposition. You're basically going to focus laser like on bringing prices down, making life easier for the normal person. You're going to make sure energy prices stay down. And along those lines, I mean, Biden's actually done a pretty good job of oil and gas production in the United States, which is one reason why things aren't worse than they are. So why not talk about that? Now, of course, this is the kind of thing his own party will slam him for

if he does it. But, you know, I think its appeal to normal voters should not be underestimated in the context of my commitment. I, Joe Biden, my commitment is to keep prices down and make sure, you know, your life is prosperous. And along those lines, too, I mean, people don't know what's in the Inflation Reduction Act, right? Other than we seem to be spending a boatload of money on climate stuff. But a part of that was the prescription drug, part of that bill, by keeping prescription drug. As someone once said to me, why aren't these the 10 most famous drugs in America? Because Biden's always talking about it, because that's what Trump would do. I mean, this is a concrete thing that they did, people feel strongly about, that has to do with prices. So why not talk

about it? So I think all of those things are just at least a beginning bid on trying to move the Democrat economic message in a different direction. And I think beyond that, the question of, you know, prosperity has a lot to do with other things besides climate, has a lot to do with other industries that Biden doesn't even talk about, and people would like to hear more about maybe. And it has to do with, it's too hard to build stuff in this country. It just is. I mean, why not a message that says we're going to unleash the productive potential of the American economy, because it does have potential. We've got to get rid of all these barriers in the way. People are frustrated with a lot of this stuff. They know from their communities and from

what they read or hear about that when we want to do something, it seems to take forever to do it. I mean, you know, you talk to your neighbors, I talk to my neighbors, everybody's like, Jesus Christ, they've been doing this project for, you know, 15 years. Why isn't it done? So I think that's an underlying vein of frustration that Biden could potentially tap by saying, hey, I'm the guy who's going to get this stuff out of the way. I'm a different kind of Democrat. But again, that's the kind of thing he would get blowback about. Well, speaking of blowback, another indication that the Biden folks are prepared to move to the center or pivot toward the center are these negotiations about the border. I don't think that they're going to come up with a deal. But it is interesting,

isn't it? I want to get your take on that. They have shown a rather significant willingness to, whether you want to say cave in or to compromise with Republicans, obviously recognizing the border is a political liability. This is an opportunity for them perhaps to blunt the edge. So is Joe Biden kind of getting it that he's got to do something significant on the border? And will it be enough, do you think? Well, I think his instincts on this are probably pretty good. I think the problem is he's a creature of his party and is surrounded by people and under pressure from groups that don't really want him to do anything about this. But I mean, when you have an issue upon which you have a 23% approval rating, like border security, that's really bad. You know, another thing is it's

salient. I mean, a lot of polls now show that, you know, second to the economy and inflation and what have you, immigration pops more than anything else. So clearly it's on a lot of voters' minds. Nobody thinks he's doing a really good job except for the most liberal Democrats. So this is a golden opportunity to rebrand yourself on this issue and say, yes, I'm doing something about border security. Look at this deal that I cut with the Republicans on Ukraine and Israel aid. So it would be potentially a real win-win for the Democrats. But I just don't think they're going to be able to do it. There's just too much resistance. And I think if I were them, I would have made this deal three weeks ago, but I'm not them.

And they're just probably going to continue to do this very unproductive dance with the Republicans on the issue rather than seizing an opportunity to actually decisively say something different about immigration and the border than what they've said before. Because obviously they do need to say something different about immigration and the border. Well, we're going to find out what happens. We'll find out whether Republicans even want to have a deal. I had David Frum on yesterday and he said they're not even negotiating in good faith here. But clearly something's happening. I don't know about that.

But I mean, there's a political logic to them, too, of not having a deal so they can keep on criticizing. But this is what deals are all about. I mean, I think it's silly to accuse either side of not negotiating in good faith. I mean, negotiations are hard. And when push comes to shove, you know, things have to give and sometimes it doesn't happen. But yeah, I mean, I think that there was potentially a deal there. Maybe there still is. And we'll see if they move to take it.

All right, the book, I'm holding this up for the YouTube listeners. The book is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes by Rui Teixeira and John Judas. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. And if I don't talk with you, have a great Christmas and a great new year, Rui. Thank you very much, Charlie. Thanks for having me. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.