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   From: democrat-criminals@mail.house.gov   
      
   https://time.com/6332506/democrats-2024-activist-left-elections/   
      
   This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign   
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   For the last few cycles, Democrats have taken too many of their supporters   
   for granted. As working-class voters suspected the party cared more about   
   woke jargon and performative ultimatums than the needs of their former   
   base, the thinking went that a new coalition of younger, progressive   
   activists steeped in campus activism would backfill the workers’ exodus.   
   All the while, communities of color were seen as permanent assets for the   
   Democratic column come Election Day. No one uses the term these days, but   
   a carbon-neutral iteration of limousine liberalism did Democrats no favors   
   in recent years.   
      
   That elitism, a compelling new book argues. has led to a party that is far   
   more at risk of following the Republican Party into an extremist spiral   
   that could take decades to steer out of than they’ve really recognized.   
   And as the trope goes: It’s the economy, stupid.   
      
   That’s the distilled take-away from John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, a pair   
   of political historians who, 20 years ago, predicted the rise of the   
   coalition that put Barack Obama in power but failed to fully understand   
   what might follow afterward. In their new book, Where Have All the   
   Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes, they argue   
   that Democrats blindly believed that they were coasting to a generation of   
   dominance based on their self-congratulating condescension toward white   
   working-class voters.   
      
   In a way, the finely written book counsels a return to New Deal populism   
   that prioritizes opportunity over identity politics, and inclusion over   
   tribalism. Lining up nicely with the 15th anniversary of Obama’s history-   
   making victory, and on the heels of polling from the New York Times that   
   has liberals panicked about Joe Biden's re-election prospects, it’s   
   tempting to consider how the once-ascendant Democratic majority found   
   itself adrift if not alone. The book also should be required reading for   
   every Democratic campaign manager in the field right now. Its warnings may   
   prove as ultimately ill-aging as Judis and Teixeira’s prophetic framework   
   of how someone like Obama could rise to power and change the party, but   
   they are some of the most well-considered and clear-eyed analyses of the   
   Democratic Party as it stands today. The following transcript of our   
   conversation last week has been edited and condensed.   
      
   TIME: So let's get at the premise of this book. Answer your question:   
   Where have the Democrats gone?   
      
   Judis: They've gone from a party that was rooted in the working class to a   
   party that has the appearance of an hourglass, with a lot of upscale   
   voters and upper-middle class professionals, and a lot of voters who are   
   not that well off, including a considerable number of minorities. But   
   what's missing is a lot of what used to be the middle of the party, which   
   is blue-collar workers, primarily white, Midwestern, and Southern.   
      
   Teixeira: We argue in the book Democrats have done best historically when   
   they've been seen as the party of the people, of the common man and woman,   
   of the ordinary American. It's increasingly not been the case the last   
   half century. We trace the economic divide between working-class and   
   college-educated people, and Democratic policies were implicated as the   
   labor movement declined and as they became increasingly susceptible to the   
   influence of the [interest] groups and Wall Street and Silicon Valley. We   
   trace the evolution of cultural radicalism, which is this sort of   
   diffusion out of the campuses of a rarefied vocabulary about race, gender,   
   and so on. A different attitude toward issues around crime and   
   immigration, and a general tendency to see everything in these   
   intersectional terms of oppression and oppressor, the marginalized or non-   
   marginalized.   
      
   TIME: Was there a breaking point for the Democratic Party?   
      
   Judis: It wasn't just one time. The first big change comes after Civil   
   Rights in the ‘60s. You really should look at the Nixon election where all   
   the George Wallace voters, many of whom were Democrats, go into the   
   Republicans. And it's not just a matter of segregation and desegregation.   
   It's also the counterculture, patriotism, acid, amnesty, and abortion.   
   Democrats lost out in the 1970s when Carter is unable to contain inflation   
   and unemployment and when he points [Paul] Volcker [as Federal Reserve   
   chair] and the party really loses its reputation as the party that can   
   help the economy.   
      
   Teixeira: You could clearly see this in the Gallup data. They've asked a   
   question about which party could better provide prosperity for the country   
   going forward. At that point, the Democrats start losing these double-   
   digit advantages they had on that question and actually start being   
   negative on it, or barely positive. Particularly for working-class people,   
   they are not any longer the party of prosperity.   
      
   Judis: What happens in the ‘90s is Clinton figures out how he can win   
   elections. The idea of a New Democrat, who combines a kind of neoliberal   
   economics, free trade, immigration, financial deregulation, moderation on   
   social issues, moderation on guns to be tough on crime. They ride the boom   
   of the 1990s, but when the 2000s come and this unemployment begins to   
   occur, de-industrialization in the Midwest, and when people see their jobs   
   going to China, to Mexico, you get the second big backlash against the   
   Democrats.   
      
   Obama benefits again from Bush, the Iraq War, Katrina, the Great   
   Recession, and wins in 2008. But Obama doesn't quite do it. He gives into   
   the idea that he can't increase deficits too much so the economy still   
   staggers. Obamacare benefits poor people, the lower middle class, but   
   other people see their premiums going up. In 2010, the Democrats get   
   drubbed. Obama comes back in 2012 and at this point, Democrats become   
   cocky and they adopt a comic book version of the emerging Democratic   
   majority. Which is that It doesn't matter if we get these working-class   
   votes from the past, if we just get a minority majority plus some   
   professionals and women.   
      
   And this guy Trump comes along. He promises to build a wall and stop   
   illegal immigration. And lo and behold, a lot of these working-class   
   voters support him. And he wins all these states that were seen as safe   
   Democratic states in the Midwest. Democrats are losing voters, even though   
   at the same time they win a lot of college-educated voters during that   
   period. It's just not enough in 2010, 2014, and 2016, to counteract the   
   loss of working-class voters.   
      
   Teixeira: 2016 is a transition point because it's at this point that the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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