Minority Politics

In the New York Times a couple of days ago, Paul Starr suggested that Democrats have failed to win national majorities lately because they have become too identified with minority causes and have relied overmuch on the courts. The Democrats need to finesse, compromise, or re-frame issues on which they are unpopular (abortion, gay rights, affirmative action) and focus on issues in which they have an advantage.

Starr is really making two different, although related, arguments here. The first is that Democrats have lost the ability to persuade people to support civil rights for minorities. Since they can't win at the polls, they have relied on the legal system. This has failed in the long-term because a) the Republicans are changing the composition of the courts, and b) they have not generated a long-term political majority in favor of these positions. By using the courts to advance civil liberties, they have ignored the importance of political persuasion.

I think there is some truth to this accusation. However, it has scarcely been "the Democrats" who have done so. Instead, it is has been the champions of those minority interests who have pushed their agenda in the courts, in part because it was there that they had the best chance, but also because it is the job of the courts to protect unpopular minorities from oppressive majorities. John Kerry didn't ask the Massachusetts judge to legalize gay marriage, but he was identified with the voters as in favor of it because gay rights advocates are part of the Democratic coalition.

Furthermore, you could even argue that using the courts to advance civil liberties is a way of finessing the issue for Democratic candidates: "I don't agree with the judges, but I will respect their decision. Now as I was saying about health care... Now of course this doesn't work if the other party is waging war on the courts, but that doesn't mean the strategy doesn't make some sense. But Starr's broader point, that civil liberties will not be preserved over the long term unless a majority of the voters supports it, is obviously true. The Democrats have failed to craft a sufficiently persuasive justification for minority rights, part of their overall narrative failure.

Which brings me to the second part of Starr's argument, that Democrats have been hurt by the Pluralist element of their coalition, the part identified with identity politics. As I have discussed in the past, pluralists are one part of the Democrats' ideological coalition, the other being Progressives and Populists. The pressure of identity groups has driven a lot of Populists out of the party and delivered the Republicans their majority. You could say this has been THE problem facing liberals since the 1960's.

But Starr's advice is only partially useful. He suggests that we use race-neutral politics which emphasizes our common citizenship and shifts the subject to populist themes that unite Democrats. This makes political sense not only because it brings us a majority, but also because if you emphasize class politics, minorities (who are poorer) will inevitably benefit even though they are not the overt subject of the policy.

Unfortunately, Starr's approach won't work for gay rights or abortion. This is because there is not one Pluralist position, but two. Starr's strategy solves the problem of ethnic minorities (African-Americans, Hispanics) but not the problem of cultural minorities (gays, feminists). The former are subject to direct populist appeals, but are ultimately less controversial (and these days I don't think affirmative action is an issue with all that much salience). The latter groups' issues are the ones that are driving culturally traditionalist working class voters into the Republican party. Ethnic minorities just want a share of the pie, but cultural minorities want to overturn the existing social order. Becoming race-neutral just won't solve that problem.

So what does Starr suggest we do about unpopular cultural minority issues? Here we have the dilemma that I have yet to see an solution for. Finessing the issue doesn't work, because Kerry tried this (he was for civil unions and said he was personally against abortion) and he was portrayed as a waffler and defined as a supporter of extreme positions anyway (because extremists supported him and were identified as part of his coalition). Compromising on these issues would, I suspect, just alienate our supporters while not winning any new converts, while at the same time making us look like wafflers again. Changing the subject doesn't seem to work, because voters do seem to care about these issues. Which leaves us with the "re-framing" strategy (recently attempted by Hilary on abortion), which has some promise but which has also generated a lot of suspicion from those it is meant to persuade while pissing off the people we already have.

So I do think that Starr is right that the Pluralists in the party are costing us some votes among Populists, but I don't think Starr has identified the right culprit or the right strategy for dealing with it. The political problem that Democrats face, that salient cultural issues divide our party, remains. I'm still waiting for an answer.