Culture Wars, Self-governance, and
America’s Future
In 1837, as Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in her new
book, Leadership
in Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster 2018), twenty-seven year old
Illinois state legislator Abraham
Lincoln said the “founding fathers noble experiment – their
ambitions to show the world that ordinary people could govern themselves had
succeeded” and now it was up to his generation to preserve this “proud fabric”
of freedom. Perhaps the 2018 mid-term elections present another challenge to
show the world ordinary people can govern themselves since these elections will
determine control of Congress, numerous governships, and the balance of power
in state legislatures in the largely unprecedented circumstances of the Trump
presidency.
This year’s campaign demands
examination of two very different political approaches, approaches that will
likely continue in the 2020 Presidential campaign, given Donald
Trump’s almost certain presence on the ballot. The difference in the
approaches of the two major parties generates as much interest for us as any
individual campaign. Which wins will say much about the social, political, and
cultural direction of the country in the next few years. Woodson would go so
far as to say “who prevails will speak to the capacity of ordinary people to
govern themselves and decide who benefits from democracy and who does not.” In
any event, the elections reflect a battle for the nation’s soul.
Some background reading
Two books provide a good starting point
for understanding what’s going in the 2018 campaign -- What’sthe Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank
(Holt & Co. 2004) and That Used to be Us by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2011). Frank’s book reveals the game plan for most Republicans. Democrats, at least many of
them, are trying to follow the advice laid out by Friedman and Mandelbaum.
In a nutshell, What’s the Matter
With Kansas details how Republicans have persuaded many white, low and
middle income Americans to vote against their economic interests. Rather
than supporting candidates who favor tax, wage, and government spending
policies that benefit them, these voters have often helped elect candidates who
oppose those policies. They pass tax cuts tilted toward the rich, nominate and
confirm judges who favor corporate interests at the expense of workers and
consumers, and reject as too expensive infrastructure and job training programs
that provide work for ordinary people or help them cope with the effects of
globalization. Republicans have accomplished this by running cultural issue
campaigns that appeal to the fears of low and middle income white America.
That Used to be Us
isn’t as direct as What’s the Matter With Kansas and it’s not as much a template for Democratic
campaigns. Nevertheless, the policy prescriptions in That Used to be Us on
issues like health care, infrastructure, immigration, and economic innovation
form the foundation for many Democratic campaigns we’ve seen this year and some
Democratic gubernatorial campaigns.
The campaigns we have
As the election draws near, Republican
use of the What’s the Matter With Kansas playbook has become all the more
apparent. Increasingly, GOP television commercials
rely on fear of hordes of brown people pouring across the southern border. Many
ads are deceptive, implicitly or explicitly racist, and anti-democratic. Some
Republicans, for example, present disingenuous positions on the
Affordable Care Act,
claiming support for its popular requirement that insurers cover pre-existing
conditions, while signing on to lawsuits attacking that very provision or
opposing it in Congress. Others run anti-immigration ads that dog whistle to
whites worried about brown people coming to the United States from Latin
America, supposedly bent on taking over the country.
Republican candidates are not running
on the 2017 tax cut (which is generally unpopular, given it’s favorability
toward the wealthy) or the relatively good economy. Instead, Republicans invoke
images of “uppity” (black) National Football League players
disrespecting the
flag by kneeling during the national anthem, gangs of Hispanic youth
terrorizing American citizens, and fears sensible gun safety laws will result
in hunters losing their guns. Republicans ride that horse, hoping it takes them
across the finish line first. They also now rig the system in places like
Georgia, Texas, and North Dakota by changing voting rules,
intending on suppressing the black, brown, and Native American vote.
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| PhotCred: BrennanCenter.org |
Democrats emphasize health care,
especially pushing Medicaid expansion in states
that declined that opportunity when introduced as part of the Affordable Care
Act, economic wage fairness through a $15 minimum wage, and a transportation
and infrastructure program that includes government funding for road and bridge
repairs. Even if Friedman and Mandelbaum didn’t support every one of these
polices in That Used to be Us, the book advocated the kind of bold
governmental action underlying many of them because the authors saw the United
States falling behind the rest of the world in innovation and economic
development.
A sign of just how different an
approach the parties take in 2018 resides in the fact Democrats seldom campaign
on immigration policy (except opposing splitting up immigrant families at the
border) while few Republicans leave aggressive anti-immigration enforcement out
of their pitch. Something has to give.
Who wins?
On the eve of the election, polls
suggest Democrats will take the House, Republicans will hold a narrow Senate majority, and the
intriguing gubernatorial races remain too close to call. Such a split decision
would fit with our polarized politics. Regardless of who wins, however, the
question of which approach best serves America won’t go away. Abraham Lincoln
said America reached a point in the 19th Century where the nation
was called upon and succeeded in showing the world ordinary men and women could
govern themselves. It seems we have reached such a point again, though Rob
thinks that while we’re approaching that kind of crossroads, we’re not quite
there yet.
We want to know what you think.
