BEHIND THE MID-TERMS: A FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S SOUL

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. 

    

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 19^th 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.