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and blamed the middle class for their own problems. I just googled-up the '94 Kevin Phillips article below. Applying it's theory, I'd have to say that on the surface RF looks like a guy who'd appeal to the elites, but it's not for the same reason Tsongas did. Feingold is, perhaps, the kind of social-liberal the students might like, but he's no crypto-Republican. To me, this article describes a few other contemporary Democrats aptly, but not Feingold. Take the Democratic Party. Its economic policy is strongly influenced by anti-elite blue-collar workers, farmers, pensioners, critics of business and finance, and those ordinary folk who support rapid economic growth even at some risk of inflation. It's in cultural policy that the Democratic Party leans towards the views of what can fairly be called elites: the secular, nonchurchgoing intelligentsia, the glitterati of Hollywood, fashion and the arts, gays, journalists and communicators, foundation and think-tank executives, and so forth. The Republicans more or less reverse the equation. They represent the elite upper-income and business viewpoint in economic policy, but to flesh out the party coalition, on cultural issues the national GOP has to bow to social-issue conservative and Religious Right constituencies. All of this is well known. Less attention is paid to another central truth: both parties are elite-dominated, which is why they find it so hard to represent ordinary Americans.
This overlapping of elites is where the not-a-dime's-worth-of-difference thesis deserves serious attention. Each party has well-known figures who take a moderate or centrist approach that combines relatively elite (in this case, somewhat conservative) economics with relatively elite (here somewhat liberal) cultural positions. These worthies are
usually staunch internationalists, and rarely do they advocate populism. On the Republican side, the last 30 years have produced presidential ambitions in this vein from the likes of
Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton (1964), New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1968), Representative John Anderson (1980), and now the minor wannabe crop of 1996 -- Weld and Senator Arlen Specter, for example. Politicians who represent a kindred mix have emerged on the Democratic side, too, and it is no ideological coincidence that some of the most prominent were once Republicans or came from Republican families: Massachusetts' Tsongas, Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, White House chief of staff and former Congressman Leon Panetta, New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, and even ex-Colorado Senator Gary Hart.
We should consider why this brand of Democrat hasn't been any more successful in reaching the Oval Office than were the old moderate Republicans of 1960 to 1980. In a nutshell, their media attention exceeds their intra-party popular support. Their principal socioeconomic appeal is to upper-bracket suburbanites, college students, venture capitalists, white-collar professionals, and the financial community -- instead of core Democratic voters interested in bread-and-butter economic growth and distribution issues. Economically, they verge on crypto-Republicanism; this kind of New Democrat would rather meet with money managers or central bankers than with labor leaders (which, of course, isn't as "new" as it seems). At the same time, liberal leanings on culture
and lifestyle issues make these politicos much less interested than the average Republican officeholder in upholding the fiscal and cultural interests of run-of-the-mall suburban constituencies. Indeed, fiscal new Democrats, epitomized by Tsongas and Kerrey, are particularly likely to deplore federal "pandering" to the middle class and to blame the middle class and its federal benefits programs for the nation's problems.
This fiscal revisionism hasn't exactly been a road to the White House. Hart didn't pan out in 1984; neither did Dukakis four years later. Dukakis, who didn't want to use the term "country club" as a pejorative, insisted the election was about competence, not ideology. (He also came from a Republican family.) Then in 1992, Kerrey and Tsongas both miscarried with their early-stage, blame-the-middle-class themes. Tsongas did well in New England, with its tradition of puritanism and guilt, but as the campaign moved south and west, toward heavy industry, minorities, farmers, and pensioners, the Tsongas vote shrank with the ratio of Volvos and home delivery of the New York Times. By the Maryland, Florida, and Illinois primaries, Tsongas support shriveled towards a small affluent core. Clinton tapped the dominant Democratic anti-elite by lauding the middle class, defending pensioners and entitlements, and reiterating his attacks on the rich.http://www.umich.edu/~umisl/articles/parties2.htm |
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