The question now is not so much that of social conservatism versus social liberalism. Instead the key issue is that of identity, and in particular the tension between globalism and cosmopolitanism on the one hand and nationalism and ethnic or cultural particularism on the other. This is often described as a polarity between “openness” and “closedness”
I call this the Bobo vs. anti-Bobo axis. Note that he applies it to several other countries in addition to the U.S.
Davies imagines a two-by-two matrix, with market-friendly and market-hostile being the other source of division. If you are cosmopolitan and market-friendly, then Davies labels you as “cosmopolitan liberal.” Sounds to me like a libertarian. If you are nationalist and market-friendly, you are a “free-market conservative.” That describes some people who comment frequently on this blog. If you are market-hostile and cosmopolitan, you are “radical left.” If you are market-hostile and nationalist, you are a “national collectivist.”
With that set-up, Davies writes,
Social democratic parties everywhere are in trouble because they have two quite different kinds of voter that are very difficult to combine into a voting coalition.[*] Center right parties face increasing challenges because they are losing voters to both national collectivists and emerging groups of liberal cosmopolitans
. . .we will soon see the emergence of a stable division. In most countries this will be between national collectivists and liberal cosmopolitans, but in some cases it will be between national collectivists and radical leftists.
*Which two? I can’t guess what he means here.
I don’t see liberal cosmopolitanism gaining as much traction as Davies envisions. I think of Macron as the most prominent leader of that persuasion, and we can see how that’s going. In the U.S., I cannot think of a single major party figure who combines the Bobo outlook with a market-friendly ideology.
I don’t think that the Republicans will be strongly market-friendly or market-hostile. The Democrats might get completely captured by the radical left, but otherwise my guess is that they will turn out to be somewhere between where they were under President Clinton and where they were under President Obama. With either party, I expect economic policy to be less about ideology and more about paying off key constituencies.
If I had to guess, in the next 6 years or so in the United States, political contests will focus on demographic identity. The Republicans will stick to a base of non-college-educated white men. The Democrats will stick to a base of college-educated white women.
In primaries, candidates will compete with one another to exploit and deepen the divisions between these two groups. In general elections, Republicans will try to convince other voters that the party of college-educated white women is a threat to everyone else, while Democrats will try to convince other voters that the party of non-college-educated white men is a threat to everyone else. The Democrats seem to do better at that game, but things could change.
At some point different issues will emerge, which disrupt these formulations. Maybe some politician will make an issue out of infrastructure building in rural areas. We seem to need new treatment ideas for narcotics users. We probably need some sort of incentives to revive manufacturing in flyover country. We need to deal with long term unemployment and underemployment. Shouldn’t we be spending more — a lot more — on R&D and creating new industries, instead of pinning our future economic growth on electronics?
Gene modification in infants will be an issue (suppose we can screen fetuses for detection of schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s — will this make abortion more or less acceptable? suppose we can modify fetuses or screen sperm for infants likelier to be healthier, taller, more long lived, more intelligent — should the cost of such modifications be borne by upper classes who can purchase improved children? or should the federal government wrap this sort of thing into Medicaid?)
Neither Republicans nor Democrats seem especially eager to deal with such topics yet, but I suspect they’ll concern voters nefore the end of the century..
I would guess that a lot of ‘liberal cosmopolitans’ are lawyers, yet last I checked the ABA didn’t certify foreign law schools.
My model is the Progressive Coalition vs. the Anti-Progressive Dissenters Coalition. The second group is much weaker for a number of reason but mostly because they have lower social status, have difficulty recruiting or retaining talent, and don’t have a coherent ideological vision to organize and coordinate around because their objections originate in the diverse particular interests they each care about most. That leaves them left with only a feeble and querulous ‘allies of necessity’ confederation for the sake of survival, which may still win the day from time to time.
So in my picture, there is less of an “axis” so much as radial / polar coordinate system, with the angles representing issue space, and the distance representing degree of objection. Maybe market concerns are in one quadrant, social traditionalist matters in another, law and order in another, free speech and association rights in another, etc.
The center is something like the implications for a pure ideal form of a progressivism-compatible society, which is a kind of Universal Harrison Bergeron nightmare (though no one would admit as much) which everyone finds objectionable to some degree, and to which they tolerate exceptions. Maybe an arch-reactionary traditionalist deplorable would be represented by the whole circle at radius 1, objecting to everything with maximum intensity, but almost no one is out there either.
The distribution thus looks like a donut (or, in a polarizing age, maybe two donuts), and the inner donut is being gradually pulled in toward the center by the incentives of the ideological status signalling mechanism, and held back only by pragmatic constraints of electoral expediency so that enough people remain in inner ring – where the material and social benefits of remaining in the coalition outweigh the costs – to ensure elections can usually be won.
Not buying demographic identity. Trump’s election can be explained in two words: “Hillary Clinton.” Had he been running against a candidate without her baggage and extreme positions on increasing taxes and kowtowing to the extreme left, he would have lost. Most of the Trump coalition could be easily swayed towards a moderate Democrat. Most of the Democrats who flipped Republican incumbents in the midterm ran as independent moderates. Just as the electorate was fooled by Obama’s claims to be moderate, so too will it be in 2020. Everybody in 2020 will be running as an independent moderate. The press and chatterati will once again do everything in their power to paint Republicans as satan’s spawn and Democrat’s as competent and courageous. The Democrats will take the presidency and both chambers of congress in 2020. Nothing good will come of it.
“Not buying demographic identity.”
In my model above, and for better or worse, it does indeed become increasingly about ‘identity’ as a natural consequence that spontaneously emerges out of the democratic coalition formation mechanism organized around progressive ideology with its emphasis on oppression narratives.
Here’s another metaphor. Imagine a container ship trying to optimize for profit over time. It wants to carry as much as it can, as fast as it can. But the trouble is that there is a trade off. The more it carries, it must either go slower or else risk sinking if its crashes hard against a bad wave too fast. But if it doesn’t fill at least half of its capacity, it can’t make a profit at all. So it’s going to go for something just over 50% capacity, leaving the rest of the cargo for its rival ship to carry. So there is an optimal number of containers.
Now, not every kind of cargo is expected to be equally ‘profitable’ (that is, reliability as a client voter minus whatever compromises or payoffs are needed to keep them in the coalition). So, in addition to having picked a number of containers, the shipping company also changes up the mix with every trip, pulling in some from the other ship, and kicking some off for the other company to pick up. Maybe it carried one kind of cargo for a long time, but it was ‘expensive’ to carry, and now that it’s no longer necessary, it gets kicked to the curb of the docks.
This is how the progressive democratic coalition evolves over time. For a time the main dividing lines were traditionally ‘Marxist’ in that they were principally about wealth and class, and poor working class whites without college degrees (i.e., ‘proles’) were included in the coalition. Eventually, demographic change made this group not only unnecessary to keep around for the sake of winning elections, and so fewer ideological compromises needed to be made to keep them in. A few iterations later and these white prole man become the new evil archetype in the ‘intersectional’ oppression narrative, and the population group most likely to be disadvantaged in both material benefits and social status by progressive victories and policies. So they flipped.
Again, this seems like the natural sorting that would emerge from the ability of any party to pay off its client groups with benefits and status, which is that those that groups who lose out from those arrangements will find themselves in a rival coalition. The rival party and main intellectual movements influencing it may have started out as at least theoretically colorblind and ‘liberal’ in the identity-neutral meaning, and may continue to advertise themselves as such both out of genuine conviction, intertia, and the desire to remain respectable. But in practice they will observe the demographic base of their voters to increasingly belong to the identity groups on the outs with the progressives, and that the party as a matter of expediency will have to evolve and adjust to take that identity groups political interests into account and as an increasingly important subject of emphasis.
Beto. He doesn’t like “labels” and he is cool.
Edgar:
Actually. as I recall, thanks to Bernie Sanders, a lot of people — me, f’rinstance — voted for Hilary Clinton not for her “kowtowing to the extreme left” bust for being a fairly rightly right-wing example of a Democrat. It sort of sucked, for example, that she’d made so much money giving “we need you, we love you” speeches to banks, but on the other hand, it showed she wasn’t going to bust up the banking system. We kind of saw her as “reformist” rather than disruptive, in other words.
Still seems that way to me.
To be honest, I am not sure what the conservative Anti-Bobos want and understood that the Trump campaign was going to return the US back to 1965 (some 1985 here) society. (Remember Trump won with White Identity politics and it has limited appeal and a large blowback.)
But how is this going to happen?
1) There is really only so much blame conservatives can lay on Immigrants and minorities. And how much of the WWC was hurt by Mexican Immigrants picking avocados in California?
2) There is real interest in the paloconservatives (Buchanan, Trump etc.) of the return of manufacturing and I have no idea how this is going to happen without high tariffs that hurt the rest of the economy. (I think that is slowing our economy today.)
2) Conservatives REALLY want the return of social conservatives of 1965: Marriage at young age and families of 3 – 5 going to church every week. But what is this roadmap and all developed nations are moving away from religion, early marriage and large families.
The other strange reality I am seeing during the Trump is conservative is increasingly pining for return of private sector unions. I am not taking this very seriously in practice, but there was certain aspects of the 1965 economy that did support family stability.
Remember Trump won with White Identity politics …
I show how much I love justice by how well I insult people who don’t agree with me.
We should be careful to dismiss tariffs. They are a symptom of unfairness, not always a cause.
Steel made in China is almost all made by large state-run industries often set up by provincial governments. They have massive overcapacity. They have access to cheap loans. They dally in real estate development, too.
What this means is that cheap steel prices, while a boon to steel consumers, is also truly a problem for our steel producers. (Its a problem in China,too! They are trying to cajole closing some plants due to overcapacity.)
I understand the theory that consumers only matter, and if they wish to subsidize steel for us, so be it, but production also matters. If you have to compete with a state-run Chinese steel firm…yes, you do have a major problem, and its unfair and you might expect government to help you.
Arnold,
Re: “political contests will focus on demographic identity. The Republicans will stick to a base of non-college-educated white men. The Democrats will stick to a base of college-educated white women.”
Social scientists have tracked a growing disequilibrium in the marriage markets. Two trends seem to be on a collision course:
1) Differences between men and women in educational attainment rates. Half a century ago, men earned roughly 60% of college degrees. Today, women earn roughly 60% of college degrees. And the gap seems to be growing, as women outpace men in formal education.
2) Matching by educational attainment in the marriage market — marrying someone at a similar formal education level — is increasing.
Have you any insights or conjectures about how the seeming tension between these two trends eventually might shape politics?
I think people are missing the tiny but non-trivial shift of black and Hispanic voters to the GOP. In Florida, Gillum–a black Democrat–lost 18% of the black female vote and 8% of the black male vote for a total of 16% given to his opponent. Latino males split their vote between Dems and GOP; Latino females were 54-41, a 13 point spread. In Georgia, 11% of black men voted against Abrams, a black female–Hispanic vote was a more traditional 62-37.
In 2014 Florida gov, a white Democrat only lost 12% of the black vote, and the Latino vote was 58-38, or 20 points. 2014 Georgia gov, Deal only got 9% of the black male vote (and he was an incumbent).
In Ohio, it’s hard to compare because Kasich was a very popular governor in a low turnout election, and got 26% in 2014. Can’t find Ohio 2010 exit polls. But Trump got 8% of the black vote in 2016, and Dewine, a very bland GOP candidate, got 13% in 2018.
Claire McCaskill lost only 6% of the black vote in 2012 (7% men, 4% women), but in 2018, a huge turnout election, she lost 8% (7% men, 9% women).
It’s little. But I’m just not sure blacks and eventually working class and middle class Hispanics are going to go along with the progressive social justice nuttiness. If those numbers start moving into the 15-20% range (which is where Trump occasionally polls with black men), then that plays havoc with all the assumptions about what can and can’t happen with national collectivists.
Blacks, in particular, have nothing to really look for in globalism.
Which suggests two possible futures:
1) A continuing mild loss of blacks and hispanics to Republicans as Democrats sound more culturally “progressive”;
2) A Democratic counter-attack that is more overtly racial and anti-white (everybody but white males is on the wrong side of the oppressor-oppressed dynamic).
Yep. Approach 2 has a serious risk, though, of making it impossible for the Dems to put up a white candidate for President–and increasingly, for the more diverse states–and that has the likely effect of pushing more moderate white Dems to GOP.
GOP won’t always be Trump. As Cotton and others with same ideas come forward, it will be more respectable.
One other risk with that approach, of course, is that right now black politicians have the best resumes in national office, but in a few years Hispanics and Asians will catch up. And their numbers are swamping black voters. So increased racialization over time will, I think, also disadvantage blacks.
I am surprised that more people haven’t just talked about why there would be two parties, one with a base of non-college educated white men, and one with a base of college educated women, when to me at least the obvious answer is where those people work and there economic interests. To put it simply, college educated white women are going to work in schools, hospitals, and in bureaucracies (both in the government and in private company bureaucracies). Non-college educated white men are working mostly in the physical world; construction and trades, mining, manufacturing, trucking, etc. Republicans largely promise policies that should benefit the industries where those white men work. Democrats largely promise policies that benefit industries where college educated white women work.
My suspicion is that slowly but surely the overlay of racial and ethnic identity politics is going to fade away, and while we will still see big demographic blocks of voters voting in similar ways, that will be under-girded by professional status, which will correlate with race but not be determined by it. My suspicion is that Democrats will benefit from this, as it will be easier to run on a platform that appeals both to the professions of college educated women and to folks doing service sector work, and that is a large proportion of the population, while Republicans will struggle to come up with policies that are appealing to those working outside of professions and industries that are about physical materials.
“In the U.S., I cannot think of a single major party figure who combines the Bobo outlook with a market-friendly ideology.”
Nikki Haley? Perhaps, this is because she is a college-educated female Republican. Interestingly, white male Democrats that try to appeal to the non-college educated — of course, there are very few politicians that are non-college educated themselves — tend to be market-hostile nationalists. Bernie Sanders comes to mind.
The college-educated women vs. non-college educated men dichotomy is interesting because college-educated men, which fit in neither group, still hold the most leadership positions, whether in government or the private sector. The reason Democrats may “do better at that game” may be because college-educated white men probably have more in common with college-educated white women than with non-college-educated white men.