Democrats’ Working-Class Woes Aren’t Harris’; They’re Bill Clinton’s

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STEPHEN BLINDER: While searching for consensus in post-election autopsies is often a futile quest, there seems to be at least one nearly universal narrative emerging out of November: Democrats lost the working class. The numbers paint a stark picture, but turning to 2024 for the origins of the problem misses the forest for the trees. Democrats’ working-class woes long predate Kamala Harris’ campaign. Democrats are living in the wake of damage self-inflicted over thirty years ago.

In the buildup to the 1992 presidential election and the aftermath of over a decade of Republican electoral success on the heels of Ronald Reagan, the Democratic Party faced a defining crossroads: maintain the status quo that emerged from the New Deal in the mid-1930s or build anew with an eye on short term political success? 

During the New Deal era, the working class constituted the backbone of the Democratic Party, thanks in no small part to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and later the Great Society initiatives under Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Reagan, however, vaulted to the presidency not by championing more government aid but by famously proclaiming that “government is not the solution to our problem…government is the problem.”

Rather than ceding political ground to a re-energized Republican Party, Democrats caved to Reagan’s messaging. Led principally by then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, Democrats rebranded themselves under the vision of a “New Democrat,” an idea largely conceived by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Established in 1985, the DLC functioned as “a neoliberal think tank” that sought to mirror many of the key tenets that had brought Reagan and Republicans staggering success in the preceding years. 

Thus, the DLC produced a platform based on free market principles over those of a command economy under which the government – exemplified by FDR’s administration – took a central role. While this strategy placed Democrats closer to Reagan Republicans, the shift abandoned the Party’s working-class ties and, thereby, the New Deal coalition that had been a Democratic bulwark for over fifty years. 

Notably, Clinton campaigned on “end[ing] welfare as we know it,” an assertion bolstered by his belief in the merits of globalization and the elevation of individualism over the collective. Indeed, Clinton opposed historically Democratic-friendly policies once in office, including reneging on “a large-scale stimulus program to reverse years of urban neglect and an overt industrial policy to foster new manufacturing jobs.” 

Rather than using government funding to lift people up directly, Clinton opted for better competition and local “empowerment zones” as a means of encouraging disadvantaged communities, in his own words, to “take more responsibility for their own lives and their own successes.” Severing his Party’s longstanding ties with labor unions, Clinton added policy insult to political injury by supporting trade policies and industry standards that reversed manufacturing and labor gains. In the end, he pioneered the Democratic Party’s “business-friendly corporatism” that blindly gave power and unparalleled agency to the wealthy and elite, a politically suicidal nexus Democrats have been unable to shed ever since.  

Through the adoption of supply-side Reaganomics under a different name and the extension of its associated privatization across society, Clinton’s implementation of the “New Democrat” agenda overcompensated for Democratic losses in the preceding years, playing into the hands of Republicans while leaving Democrats in disarray. Indeed, what remained was a Democratic Party anathema to its working-class roots and inextricably tied to the image of “liberal elites” that, unfortunately, remains today. After Clinton, the working class lacked a proverbial “home” in the establishment parties and understandably became disillusioned with “politics as usual.” 

Within the context of Donald Trump’s ascendancy, writer and scholar Henry Olsen’s words are notably apt: “People choose extremes when they feel they have no choice.” Make no mistake: democrats’ working-class woes aren’t Kamala Harris’; they’re Bill Clinton’s.

Stephen Blinder is a staff writer for On the Record. He is a senior studying government and philosophy in the College of Arts & Sciences.