3282. American Electoral Politics: The Changing Shape of the Parties Is Changing Where They Get Their Money

By Thomas B. Edsall, The New York Times, September 18, 2019

Money is the mother’s milk of politics, as the old saying goes, and the slow-motion realignment of our two major political parties has changed who raises more money from the rich and who raises more from small donors.

A pair of major developments give us a hint about how future trends will develop on the partisan battleground.

First: Heading into the 2020 election, President Trump is on track to far surpass President Barack Obama’s record in collecting small-donor contributions — those under $200 — lending weight to his claim of populist legitimacy.

Second: Democratic candidates and their party committees are making inroads in gathering contributions from the wealthiest of the wealthy, the Forbes 400, a once-solid Republican constituency. Democrats are also pulling ahead in contributions from highly educated professionals — doctors, lawyers, tech executives, software engineers, architects, scientists, teachers and so on.

These knowledge class donors, deeply hostile to Trump, propelled the fund-raising success of Democratic House candidates in 2018 — $1 billion to the Republicans’ $661 million.

While there are advantages for Democrats in gaining support from previously Republican-leaning donors, this success carries costs. In winning over the high-tech industry, the party has acquired a constituency at odds with competing Democratic interest groups, especially organized labor and consumer protection proponents. Picking up rich backers also reinforces the image of a party dominated by elites.

In their paper, “Increasing Inequality in Wealth and the Political Expenditures of Billionaires,” Adam Bonica and Howard Rosenthal, political scientists at Stanford and N.Y.U., track the partisan contribution patterns of the Forbes 400 from the 1981-82 election cycle through the 2011-12 cycle.

For that three-decade period, the level of giving to Republicans and Republican Party committees by members of the Forbes 400 followed a steady downward trajectory, falling from 68 percent to 59 percent.

This downward trajectory coincided with the steady transformation of the sources of wealth for those on the Forbes list. In 1982, when the list was first published, solidly Republican manufacturers and energy producers dominated — 89 of the 400 richest Americans having made their fortunes in oil.

By 2018, 59 of the Forbes 400 had made their fortunes in technology, including six of the top ten: Jeff Bezos, No. 1; Bill Gates No. 2; Mark Zuckerberg, No. 4; Larry Ellison, No. 5; Larry Page, number 6; and Sergey Brin number 9. Eighty-eight more made their money in the financial sector. In contrast to the 1982 Forbes list, only 14 on the 2018 list made their money in manufacturing and 24 in energy.

“The 400 have trended steadily to the left,” conclude Bonica and Rosenthal.

The two authors write that from 1989 to 2017, members of the Forbes 400 have fared much better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents: The 400 “did very well under the two Democrats, Clinton and Obama. They did not do well under either Bush.”

Bonica and Rosenthal’s analysis may prove troubling for those seeking to slow or reverse increasing wealth and income inequality. As the Forbes 400 moves toward the Democratic Party, they write, “Inequality in campaign contributions in the American plutocracy has grown hand in hand with the growth in economic inequality.”

They go on to raise another basic question: Does increased support for Democrats among the affluent and the rich undermine efforts to stem the growth of inequality?

The historic rise in inequality in recent decades has not ushered in an era of Republican fund-raising dominance. On the contrary, Democrats have made substantial gains against Republicans in recent decades while inequality was on the rise.

In a separate essay, published on the Scholars’ Strategy Network, which discusses the implications of their work, Bonica and Rosenthal wrote:

The superrich control resources that parties and politicians require and, as a result, are courted. Politicians have incentives to pay attention to the policy concerns that animate wealthy donors on left and right alike — and this dynamic influences public discussion and policymaking.

The continued concentration of money at the top, they write, translates into more political power:

"The ideas, values, and preferences of wealthy donors distort the focus of U.S. democracy more than individuals’ desires to grow their already vast fortunes. Rather than worry about individual corruption, citizens and leaders should worry about the many ways money in politics can amplify the voices of the privileged few over those of the majority. As wealth concentration grows, so will uneven political influence."

Bonica has turned tracking campaign contributions by wealth and occupation into a specialty.

He provided The Times with data extending from 1980 to 2016 covering the contribution patterns of donors who gave the largest amount of money in each election cycle. (Roughly a quarter of Bonica’s list overlaps with the Forbes 400 list.)

In the 1979-80 presidential election cycle, 71 percent of the top 400 donors gave to Republicans and to right-of-center political action committees, while 29 percent gave to Democrats and left-of-center PACS, a 42-point difference. In the 2015-16 presidential cycle, 54 percent gave to Republicans and right-leaning PACs, and 46 percent gave to Democrats, an 8-point difference.

In the case of contribution patterns of those in different occupations, Bonica emailed in response to my inquiry:

"The medical profession has perhaps experienced the largest generational realignment. Physicians who graduated medical school before the 1990s tend to favor Republicans, but younger cohorts have trended sharply to the left.

Bonica’s data shows that doctors who graduated in the 30 years from 1960 to 1990 consistently gave more to Republicans than to Democrats, generally in the 54-55 percent range."

Starting with those graduating in 1990, however, the share of contributions going to Republicans began to decline, dropping below 50 percent for those graduating in 1996 and falling to the low 30s for the youngest cohort.

As further evidence of this trend, Bonica cited a 2017 survey of 1,660 medical students published in the journal Academic Medicine. The survey reported that 89.1 percent said they supported Obamacare. In the survey, 77.7 identified themselves as liberal, 12.2 percent moderate and 7.2 percent conservative.

Bonica’s study of lawyers, conducted with Maya Sen, a political scientist at Harvard, also demonstrates a strong pro-Democratic trend in campaign contributions, although attorneys have leaned Democratic for decades.

On an ideological scale — with plus numbers indicating right-of-center and minus numbers indicating left-of-center — Bonica found that lawyers who graduated from nonelite schools shifted from roughly evenly split between left and right in the 1950s to minus .6, or liberal, by 2012. Lawyers from elite schools (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.) were liberal-leaning in the 1950s (minus .25) and became rock-solid liberals by the current decade (minus .9).

Three different scholars — David E. Broockman and Neil Malhotra, professors at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and Gregory Ferenstein, an independent journalist who writes about Silicon Valley — have a different take. Their paper, “Predispositions and the Political Behavior of American Economic Elites: Evidence from Technology Entrepreneurs,” explores some of the political consequences of the ascendance of high-tech.

Technology entrepreneurs, despite their Democratic leanings, are ambivalent on key elements of the Democratic agenda, according to Broockman and his co-authors. They are reliably orthodox liberals on some issues, not so reliable on others.

On matters of globalization, trade, and immigration, this Silicon Valley constituency is firmly pro-globalization. Eighty-seven percent support free trade agreements and 56 percent are “in favor of increasing levels of immigration,” which is “15 points higher than Democratic” rank and file, the paper says.

On social issues, the authors found that “technology entrepreneurs are again very liberal,” including near-universal (96 percent) support of same-sex marriage, 82 percent support of gun control and 67 percent opposition to the death penalty.

Perhaps most significant and most surprising, surveys of high tech executives conducted by Broockman and colleagues show that tech entrepreneurs “strongly support redistribution and taxation.” For example, Broockman et al. continue, “nearly all technology entrepreneurs support increasing taxes on those making over $250,000 or $1,000,000 per year (with 76 and 83 percent expressing some support for each, respectively).” Seventy-five percent support programs specifically targeted toward the poor, including 59 percent in support of increased spending for the poor. Some 82 percent indicated “support for universal health care even if it means raising taxes.”

While high tech executives share the views of liberal elites generally on the issues described above, there are significant areas of conflict.

“Technology entrepreneurs do not share conventional Democratic views on the regulation of product and labor markets,” the authors write. “Technology entrepreneurs are indeed more conservative even than Republican citizens and most similar to Republican donors.”

On specific issues, almost all (82 percent) tech executives believe that it is too difficult to fire workers and that the government should make it easier to do so. However, majorities of Democratic donors and citizens believe the government should make it harder to fire workers (a 50 percentage point difference from technology entrepreneurs).

In the case of organized labor, three quarters (74 percent) of tech executives “say they would like to see labor unions’ influence decrease, versus only 18 percent of Democratic donors and 33 percent of Democratic citizens.”

In their conclusion, the three authors address how the growing influence of the tech industry in Democratic politics will affect the party’s approach to social spending and the reduction of inequality.

On one hand, they write, “technology entrepreneurs seem poised to support Democratic candidates — and therefore redistributive policies that should reduce inequality — financially.”

On the other, they point out that these entrepreneurs generally stand opposed to many government interventions in markets — such as government support for labor unions, worker protections, and consumer protections — that have long been central to the Democratic Party’s ideological answer to inequality and supported by traditional Democratic constituencies.

The result, they suggest, is that as Democratic elected officials receive increasing financial support from technology entrepreneurs and attempt to court further support from them” intraparty conflicts over “regulating product and labor markets may take center stage.

Altogether, the developments at the high-end of campaign finance are a mixed bag for the Democratic Party, expanding the sources of political money while simultaneously risking internal divisions.

More worrisome for the Democratic Party and its candidates is Donald Trump’s exceptional success in raising campaign money in small dollar amounts, which suggests that his racial and anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to motivate supporters.

Federal Election Commission data on Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid, along with an analysis of Trump’s fund-raising in the 2020 campaign by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows the following.

By the end of his re-election campaign, Obama raised a total of $549.4 million, of which $234.4 million, or 42.7 percent, came in contributions of less than $200.

By the end of her 2016 campaign, Clinton raised a total of $405.7 million, of which $105.6 million, or 26.0 percent, came in low dollar amount,

By the end of June 2019, at a much earlier stage in his campaign, Trump had raised a total of $124.8 million, of which $87.3 million, or 70.0 percent, is made up of donations under $200.

Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, wrote in an email that “Trump’s appeal is more to ideologues and emotional Republican contributors rather than to strategic and traditional Republican large-dollar donors.”

He argues that the fact that Trump raises such a large share from small-dollar donors is due less to Trump’s improvement among small donors than it is to the difficulty he has raising money from large donors. This is really a story about how the traditional large donors in the Republican Party didn’t want to give to Trump in 2016 and even so far in 2020 they continue to be reluctant to contribute to him.

Raymond J. La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, also emailed me:

"It is not too surprising that Trump has outpaced others, even Obama, in raising money from small donors." 

Individual donors — big and small — tend to be much more polarized compared to the rest of the electorate. They give because of strong ideological preferences and passions. People like Trump ignite those passions.

Bonica notes that “there is a strong association between ideological extremity and total funds raised from small donors at the presidential level.” Bonica’s calculations of the ideological positioning of the candidates shows that Trump is “the most extreme conservative,” while Bernie Sanders, who “raised 58 percent of his campaign dollars from small donors” in 2016, stands out as the most liberal candidate, “which might mirror what we see in Trump from the left.”

Trump’s success in raising small-dollar contributions is not necessarily a harbinger of his prospects in November 2020. It does, however, raise a question about the contemporary role of the two major political parties.

Traditionally, one of the core strengths of the Democratic Party has been that voters trust it more than the Republican Party to protect and advance the interests of the middle class. In recent years, however, that advantage has been eroding.

The NBC/WSJ poll has repeatedly asked voters “which party do you think would do a better job looking out for the middle class?”

In the 1990s, an average of eight polls showed the Democrats with a 22.25 point advantage, 43.0 to 21.75. The question was dropped only to be resumed in December 2011. From 2011 to September 2014, the Democratic advantage fell to 19.5 points, 44.0 to 24.5.

Since then, in six surveys conducted from June 2015 to October 2018 — the Trump era — the Democratic advantage continued to erode to 13.1 points, 41.3 to 28.2. In the two most recent surveys, the Democratic advantage fell to 10 points, 41 to 31, less than half of what it was in the 1990s.

The Democrats may or may not regain the presidency in 2020, but they could well lose their invaluable credential as the party of the middle class.

2464. The Two-Party System and the 2016 Presidential Elections

By Charlie Post, The Brooklyn Rail, October 4, 2016

For over eighty years, the reformist left in the United States has sought to transform one of the capitalist parties into a “people’s” party. Both the Communist Party’s popular front strategy and the social-democratic strategy of “realignment” (formulated by the brilliant ex-Marxist Max Shachtman) sought to transform the Democratic Party. The Democrats, through the 1950s, were a coalition of urban real estate developers, Jewish and Catholic capitalists and southern planters who enjoyed the voting support of northern industrial workers, black and white, middle-class liberals, and most southern whites. The reformists’ goal was to drive out the conservative, pro-capitalist elements—especially the Dixiecrats—leaving the labor officialdom and middle-class liberals to dominate a “labor-liberal” Party. As Paul Heideman pointed out in a recent essay in Jacobin,1 there was a realignment in the Democratic Party in the 1970s—but not the one the reformists hoped for. The southerners abandoned the Democrats for the Republicans, but with urban growth the non-WASP capitalists were joined by new capitalists in high technology and the media, and an increasingly neo-liberal urban middle class. Rather than becoming a labor-liberal party, the Democrats moved sharply right in the 1980s as the official leaders of the labor, civil rights, and women’s movements were marginalized.

Today, we are seeing a realignment within the oldest party of industrial capitalism in the U.S.—the Republicans. The party establishment—those with the closest historic ties to old-line, WASP manufacturers, bankers, and financiers—have lost control of the party to a right-wing populist, Donald Trump. Since the 1960s, the mass voter base of the Republican Party has been made up primarily of older, suburban, white, middle-class small-businesspeople, professionals, and managers, many of whom are self-described Christian fundamentalists, and a minority of older white workers, including a minority of union households. Until recently, the Party base’s particular passions—especially its hostility to the democratic gains of people of color, women, and LGBT people—could be contained. Minor concessions to the social conservatives on abortion, affirmative action, voter restrictions, and same-sex marriage/legal equality maintained their loyalty, while capitalists set the substantive neo-liberalagenda for the Republicans (and the Democrats as well). As in the Democratic Party, the non-capitalist elements of the Republican coalition were clearly junior partners to capital.

In 2016, a radical, right-wing, middle-class insurgency that began in the wake of the world economic crisis of 2007 – 08 has displaced, at least temporarily, the hegemonic capitalists in the Republican Party. Donald Trump’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate is the most recent act of a struggle for the leadership of the party that began in the aftermath of the global recession and the election of Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate. While capital did push back against the first wave of middle-class radicalism in the Republican Party—the Tea Party—during the 2014 Congressional elections, these rebels were not vanquished. In fact, they have become even more radically nationalist and populist, imposing a Presidential candidate hostile to the neo-liberal agenda. 

In the immediate aftermath of the 2007 – 08 global recession, the mainstream media predicted, and much of the left hoped for, a sharp turn to the left in both public opinion and state policies. Growing support for “socialism”—more capitalist state regulation of the market economy and the expansion of social welfare—seemed to sound the death knell of neo-liberalism across the advanced capitalist world. The 2008 election, when Obama and the Democrats scored large majorities with vague promises of a return to “New Deal” policies, seemed to confirm these prognostications. However, within two years of Obama’s election it was clear that the U.S., like other capitalist societies, was experiencing a sharpening political polarization. While capital and mainstream political leaders remained committed to austerity and deregulation, there was widespread rejection of neo-liberalism from both the left and the right. On the one hand, a significant portion of youth and working people were moving left—as manifested in the Wisconsin Uprising, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and, electorally, in the massive support for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries. On the other, we saw the radicalization of the older, white middle classes around a right-wing populist program that targeted both people of color, immigrants, women, and LGBT folks, and the “corporate establishment.” 

The Bush and Obama administrations’ bail-outs of banks, the auto industry, and some homeowners was the catalyst for the radicalization of the Republican electorate.2 The “Tea Party” began as an alliance between a grass-roots rebellion of older, white, suburban small-business people, professionals and managers, and elements of the capitalist class. The middle-class ranks of the Tea Party railed against “corporate welfare” and “bailouts for undeserving” homeowners, in particular people of color who held sub-prime mortgages. Capitalists like the Koch brothers saw an opportunity to advance their libertarian agenda of defeating Obamacare and privatizing Medicare and Social Security pensions.3 Broader layers of the capitalist class encouraged the Tea Party’s mobilizations as long as it championed the weakening of unions, further deregulation of capital, and social-service austerity. Capitalists were also happy to manipulate hostility to Obama’s health care plan to force the Democrats to increase subsidies to the private health care and insurance industries. 

This alliance continued through the 2010 Congressional elections, when the Republicans won a majority in the House and deprived the Democrats of their filibuster-proof “super majority” in the Senate. While particularly right-wing capitalists like the Koch brothers helped finance the Tea Party, most capitalists continued to hedge their bets electorally. Capitalist donors slightly preferredthe Democrats over the Republicans in 2010. The rise of a new populist right targeting immigrants, people of color, and unions for the current economic crisis represented a radicalization of the white, suburban middle classand a minority of older, white, native-born workers. Capital was more than willing to use this nativist, racist, and anti-union movement when their interests coincided. However, the new right has an agenda independent of and, at points, opposed to that of capital. 

The issues of immigration and the possibility of a Federal credit default distinguished the Tea Party right from the political establishment. The minority of older white workers who voted Republican viewed undocumented immigrants as competitors on the labor-market; while the older small businesspeople and professionals who made up the majority of the Tea Party cadre and voters viewed undocumented immigrants are a threat to their “quality of life” and competitors for scarce social services. Mass deportations and denying the undocumented any path to citizenship (and access to social services), with lower Federal deficits, would protect the “earned benefits” (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) upon which they rely.

Capitalists, however, have a very different perspective on both immigration and the debt ceiling. Not only do high-tech industries want access to skilled foreign professionals, but labor-intensive industries like agriculture, construction, landscaping, domestic service, child-care, healthcare, and hospitality rely on low-wage, vulnerable immigrant labor. Capital wants a precarious migrant workforce without legal status, disciplined by selective deportations, to labor for substandard wages in these industries. The two most important “business lobbying” organizations—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable—are leading the fight for an immigration reform that would create massive “guest worker” programs and a long, difficult and complex “path to citizenship” for those in the U.S. without papers, while opposing wholesale deportations and other policies that reduce the size of the immigrant workforce. 

Capital supports massive cuts to social spending in the U.S. and a reduction of the Federal budget deficit. However, the Tea Party’s political brinkmanship—its willingness to let the U.S. default on its public debt by refusing to raise the debt ceiling in 2011—estranged capital from the Tea Party. Both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable led the opposition to attempts to “shut down the government” as a threat to the U.S. and global financial system upon which capitalists depend.

The fall 2013 government shut-down marked the end of the uneasy alliance between the Tea Party and the capitalist class. The campaign to “Fix the Debt” was launched in 2012, bringing together dozens of former Senators and Congressmen and over one hundred fifty CEOs of some of the largest U.S. transnational corporations in support of a “grand bargain” of closing corporate tax loop-holes while lowering the overall tax rate “in exchange” for “restructuring” (i.e. massive cuts to) federal pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. While the “bargain” garnered the support of Obama, the Democratic leadership, and mainstream Republicans, key leaders of the Tea Party refused to accept this compromise, sparking the government shut-down of fall 2013.4

In the midst of the 2013 budget crisis, leaders and staff of key elements of the “business lobby,” (National Retail Federation, National Federation of Independent Businesses, National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable) and the “Fix the Debt” campaign began to wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had engineered the government shut-down. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce led the mobilization for mainstream Republicans. Scott Reed, the Chamber’s chief political strategist launched “Vote for Jobs,” targeting key Senate and House races to defend incumbents like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and defeat Tea Party intransigents. “Vote for Jobs” made very effective interventions in the Republican Congressional primaries and in the general election in November 2014. Only one Republican was elected to the Senate without the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce. 

Initially, the capitalist class’s attempts to discipline the Republican Party appeared to be successful. Despite calls by the still sizeable Tea Party contingent in both chambers to shut down the government to block Obama’s Executive Order on immigration, bipartisan coalitions in both the House and Senate pushed through the nearly $1.1 trillion spending plan in late December 2014. But while a government shutdown was avoided, the greatly reduced Tea Party contingent in the House and Senate was able to block serious discussion of a pro-corporate immigration reform. Their continued influence was most clearly seen when John Boehner, Republican Speaker of the House, was forced out of Congress despite having successfully navigated several budget deals. While his replacement, Paul Ryan, is considerably to the right, he has clearly distanced himself from the populist insurgency that has metamorphosed into the Trump campaign. 

Donald Trump’s “outsider” campaign for President marked a deepening of the right-wing radicalization of sections of the middle classes and of the crisis of capitalist hegemony in the Republican Party. When Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in June 2015, few political commentators took his campaign seriously. With a field dominated by mainstream Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, most believed that Trump’s campaign would be short-lived. However, within a month of announcing his bid for the presidency, Trump was out-polling a crowded Republican field. And in July 2016, he became the official nominee of the Republican party.

What makes Trump unacceptable to the Republican establishment and their corporate backers is not merely his unabashed racism and misogyny, his casual references to his penis size, nor does their hostility flow from electoral calculations, though it is true that Trump is likely to lose the presidency and possibly help return Democratic majorities in the House and Senate—Trump, in many ways, is a radical, right-wing opponent of capital’s dominance over the Republican Party.5Not only does Trump express the xenophobia and racism of his populist base, but he rejects central tenets of the bipartisan neoliberal agenda that has impoverished segments of the middle class along with working and poor people. Capital is clearly uneasy with Trump’s stance on immigration and the federal debt—he floated the idea of trying to persuade creditors to accept less than full payment on loans to the U.S. government.6 The corporate elite is even more disturbed by his ideas about foreign policy and global “free trade.” 

Trump rejects the established “U.S. role in the world”—a muscular, imperialist foreign policy ready to use military force to protect the global interests of U.S. capital. While there have been debates within the U.S. ruling class over where and when to send troops since Vietnam, no segment of the corporate class questions the U.S. alliance with the most stable capitalist power in the Middle East, Israel, the justice of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the maintenance of nuclear hegemony. Trump has also made incendiary comments on “bombing the shit” out of the Islamic State forces, threatened to break off negotiations with the Iranian regime, and called for U.S. allies to pay for U.S. military and political protection. Not surprisingly, those allies are uneasy: “In many capitals, Mr. Trump’s formal and off-the-cuff foreign policy proposals: his threat to pull out of NATO; his musings about removing the United States nuclear umbrella over Japan and South Korea; his pledge to slap huge trade tariffs on China—are regarded with a mix of alarm and confusion.”7 As an advocate of an “America First” politics that has been rejected by the U.S. corporate elite since the 1940s, Trump is perceived as a much less reliable agent of U.S. capital globally than a committed and experienced imperialist politician like Hillary Clinton.8

Even more disturbing for the corporate elite are Trump’s positions on “free trade” and taxation. The removal of any and all political obstacles to the free movement of capital and goods—but not labor—has been a fundamental element of neo-liberal orthodoxy for well over thirty years. From Bill Clinton’s signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the entire U.S. capitalist class and its political representatives in both the Democratic and Republican parties have promoted the liberalization of trade and investment. Equally important to the neo-liberal agenda is the lowering of taxes on U.S. corporations and wealthy individuals, theoretically to promote investment. Trump is opposed to both of these pillars of neoliberalism. He blames NAFTA and other trade deals for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, and calls for tariffs as high as 40% on imports to protect U.S. jobs against “unfair” competition—despite warnings that this could spark a global trade war that could damage the role of U.S. corporations in the world economy.9 Nor do any sections of capital in the U.S. support higher taxes on wealthy individuals or punitive taxation on those who “export American jobs.”10

Despite winning the nomination, Trump’s politics have alienated a broad swath of the Republican establishment. Within a month of the Republican National Convention, more than seventy prominent Republicans sent a letter to the Republican National Committee urging it to cut off funding to Trump’s campaign, and instead shift resources to vulnerable Republicans in House and Senate seats.11The New York Times estimated that over 110 Republican leaders had, by late August, declared that they could not campaign or vote for Trump.12

Trump’s right-wing nationalist populist positions on foreign policy, trade, and taxation help explain why growing segments of the capitalist class in the U.S.—including former Tea Party backers like the Koch brothers—attempted to block his nomination.13 Even more ominously for Trump, traditionally Republican corporate funders are either sitting out the Presidential election or supporting the more reliable spokesperson for capital, Hillary Clinton. A USA Today survey of 156 individuals, corporations, and organizations that have donated at least $1 million to super PACs since January 1, 2015 found that many who usually donate to Republican candidates “up and down the ticket” are not providing funds for Trump. Some are actually donating to Clinton, while others are focusing their donations on “down ticket” Republican candidates for the House and Senate. Not only has Clinton been successful in raising funds from investment bankers,14 but the usually Republican defense industry is backing her 2 to 1 in campaign donations.15

Data on the overall contributions to Presidential candidates through early August reveals an even more lopsided capitalist preference for Clinton over Trump.16 After deducting contributions from civil servants and public officials, non-profit institutions, unions, retirees, and Democratic and Republican ideological groups, Clinton raised over $150 million from the capitalist class, compared to Trump’s mere $5.5 million. Clinton received over 90% of corporate donations from business services, education, health care and pharmaceutical producers, electronics manufacturers, construction services and contractors, lawyers, and the film-television-music industries. She has garnered donations from over 80% of traditionally Republican capitalists in general manufacturing, finance-insurance-securities, and real estate (Trump’s own industry). This is an especially big problem for Trump, who self-financed his primary campaign, but is not in a position to provide the approximately $1.5 billion needed to run in the general elections. 

Who are Trump’s voters? Despite claims that he has won the “white working class,” the vast majority of Trump’s supporters, like those of the Tea Party, are drawn from the traditional and new middle classes, especially the older, white male and less well-off strata of these classes. Clearly, Trump’s right-wing opposition to neoliberal trade and tax policies resonates with a minority of older, white workers, including a minority of union members.17 However, the claims that most of his support comes from “the white working class” are based on a problematic definition of the “working class” as all non-Hispanic whites without a college education. Not only does this conception allow mainstream commentators to caricature white workers as ignoramuses swayed by demagogic buffoons like Trump, but it allows them to misrepresent the social basis of Trump’s campaign.18First, while approximately 55% of Trump supporters do not have a bachelor’s degree, this demographic makes up approximately 70% of the U.S. population—they are under-represented among Trump voters. However, the college-educated white new middle class (professionals and managers), is approximately 30% of the population, but are over-represented, at 40%, among Trump supporters. Not surprisingly, the median household income of Trump voters is around $70,000 annually.19

More importantly, the category “non-college educated whites” includes both wage workers and the self-employed—the traditional middle class. The Economist found that “better-paid and better-educated voters have always formed as big a part of Mr. Trump’s base as those at the lower end of the scale for income and education.”20 A systematic review of Gallup polling data demonstrates, again, that most Trump supporters are part of the traditional middle class (self-employed) and those sectors of the new middle class (supervisors) who do not require college degrees. They tend to live in “white enclaves” isolated from immigrants and other people of color, have worse health than the average U.S. resident, and are experiencing low rates of inter-generational mobility. While not directly affected either by the decline of industry in the Midwest or by immigration, these sectors are experiencing declining living standards and are fearful about their children’s prospects of remaining in the middle class.21

The impact of three decades of neoliberalism, in particular the stagnation of real incomes and growing inequality, combined with massive losses of personal wealth (mostly housing values), growing personal debt, and growing economic insecurity among broad segments of the U.S. working and middle classes since the recession of 2007 – 08, has fueled the deepening polarization of U.S. politics.22 While younger working- and middle-class voters have been disproportionately attracted to the left-wing populism of the Sanders campaign, older white middle-class voters have been drawn to Trump.23 Caught between a decimated labor movement and an extremely aggressive capitalist class, parts of the middle classes are drawn to a politics that scapegoats immigrants, unions, women, LGBT people, and people of color. The Trump phenomenon is part and parcel of the growth of right-wing populism among the middle classes across the capitalist world, as seen in the growth of the U.K. Independence Party in Britain, the National Front in France, and the Five Star Movement in Italy.24

Right-wing populism is ideologically similar to the classic fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s. Without question, the Trump campaign has allowed genuinely fascist elements in the United States—white supremacist organizations that physically confront unions, immigrants, native-born people of color, and LGBT people—to emerge into the political sunlight. Trump’s encouragement of physical violence against his political opponents and the emergence of the “Lion’s Guard”— “an informal civilian group dedicated to the safety and security of Trump supporters by exposing Far-Left rioters”—are alarming.25 The hiring of the “alt-Right” Breitbart News CEO Steve Bannon as the head of Trump’s campaign sends a clear message to various “racialists” and “white nationalists” that they have a place in mainstream U.S. politics.26

While Trump gives aid and comfort to the still relatively tiny fascist right (the Klan, etc.), his campaign is not fascist. More importantly, neither the fascist elements around it—or Trump himself—have a significant chance of coming to power. Populist ideology, alone, does not define fascism. Fascism is a social movement of the middle classes that is organized as both an electoral party and a street-fighting organization that seeks to physically defeat the organizations of working people (left-wing parties, unions, etc.) and destroy the institutions of capitalist democracy. Fascism becomes a mass movement with the potential of taking political power when left-wing movements threaten, but fail to take power; and capitalist classes continue to fear challenges from below. Trump is attempting to win an election, not abolish representative government. More importantly, U.S. capitalists, unfortunately, have not faced any serious challenge to their dominance in the U.S.They have no need to turn power over to the radicalized middle classes. Faced with a Trump nomination, most capitalists have joined much of the Republican establishment in either sitting out the election, or crossing partisan lines to support the “reliable” neoliberal Hillary Clinton.28

The claim that Trump is a fascist is not simply an academic or analytic problem. More importantly, it buttresses a strategy for the progressive left that is self-defeating.29 Reasonably frightened by the prospect of a Trump presidency, the official leadership of the unions and organizations of women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBT people will double down in their support of Clinton as the “lesser evil.”30 This strategy is based on two illusions. The first is the notion that Trump has a reasonable chance of being elected President. Most political commentators agree that Trump can win onlyif there is a sharp decline in voter participation, especially among young people, women, and people of color.31 While Trump cannot raise sufficient funds to finance an effective general election campaign, Clinton is armed with a much larger war chest. Fueled by the widespread loathing of Trump among young people, women, people of color, and immigrants, Clinton will build a massive “get out the vote” machine—well beyond the foot soldiers provided by the AFL-CIO and the mainstream organizations of women, LGBT folks, and people of color. While she may not be able to mobilize the electorate on the scale Obama did in 2008, when nearly 60% of eligible voters came to the polls, the election is Clinton’s to lose. 

Second, lesser-evilism has actually accelerated the drift to the right in U.S. politics. The fear of alienating their Democratic “allies” has led the official leadership of reform movements in the past eighty years to derail the sort of social movements—militant labor struggles, mass movements against racism, sexism, and war—that can win reforms and build left-wing consciousness and politics. In the name of “being realistic,” these forces follow the Democrats, dropping demands for real reforms. The Democrats are then free to “compromise” with the Republican right. This can be seen clearly in the marginalization of Sanders and his supporters at the Democratic convention, congressional Democrats’ continued support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Clinton’s choice of the “free trade” advocate Tim Kaine as her running mate, and her sharp tack to the right on foreign policy.32 With social movements weakened and invisible, the “alliance” with the Democrats allows the populist right to remain the main voice of militant opposition to the failed policies of the Democrats. Put simply, the left’s support for a rightward-moving Democratic Party as a “lesser evil” to the populist right actually facilitatesthe growing right-wing radicalization. Only by rebuilding effective extra-electoral resistance to capital and the state, no matter which party is in power, and by creating a mass political party that can speak for working and oppressed people, will we be able to defeat the right.

What is the future of the Republican party? It is unlikely that the middle-class insurgency will permanently transform the Republicans. While the party establishment and their capitalist backers are sitting out the Presidential campaign, they are attempting to reassert their hegemony in the Congressional elections. First, the Republican National Committee and corporate donors are pouring millions into the Republican congressional campaign, hoping to stave off a Democratic sweep.33 Even more importantly, the party leadership has been able to defeat several challenges from the remnants of the increasingly pro-Trump Tea Party. The Chamber of Commerce and farm organizations funded Roger Marshall’s successful primary challenge to the Kansas Tea Party Congressmen, Tim Huelskamp.34 Tea Party challenges to John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida were defeated, along with all the other Tea Party candidates challenging mainstream Republican candidates.35 Whether or not Trump’s likely defeat in November leads to a Democratic majority in the House or Senate, the Republican establishment will likely move to reorganize the party so that this sort of right-wing populist insurgency never succeeds again. In all likelihood they will follow the example of the Democrats after the right wing of the anti-war movement temporarily seized control of the party with the McGovern candidacy of 1972, by creating unelected “super-delegates” who will guarantee that the party base will never again upset the apple cart. 

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Endnotes 

1. “It’s Their Party” Jacobin 20 (Winter 2016).
2. The following paragraphs are based on Charles Post, “Why the Tea Party?” New Politics 53 (Summer 2012.
3. Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
4. The following paragraphs are based upon Charlie Post, “Whither the Republican Party?: The 2014 Elections and the Future of Capital’s ‘A Team’ ” Brooklyn Rail (December 2014) and “The Future of the Republican Party” Jacobin (December 23, 2014).
5. For a similar analysis, see Nichole M. Aschoff, “Why Elites Hate Trump” Jacobin (May 5, 2016).
6. Binyamin Appelbaum, “Donald Trumnp’s Idea to Cut National Debt: Get Creditors to Accept Less” New York Times (May 6, 2016).
7. David E. Sanger and Jim Yardley, “In Donald Trump’s Rise, Allies See New American Approach” New York Times (May 5, 2016).
8. David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, “In Donald Trump’s Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays,” New York Times (March 26, 2016); David E. Sanger, “Paul Ryan on Foreign Policy Is Closer to Hillary Clinton Than Donald Trump” New York Times (April 14, 2016); Mark Lander, “How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk,” New York Times Magazine (April 21, 2016).
9. Binyamin Applebaum, “Experts Warn of Backlash in Donald Trump’s China Trade Policies” New York Times (May 2, 2016). See also “Reforming The U.S.-China Trade Relationship To Make America Great Again” Trump: Make America Great Again!
10. “Tax Reform that Will Make America Great Again,” Trump: Make America Great Again!
11. Anna Palmer, “Dozens of Republicans To Urge RNC to Cut Off Funds for Trump” Politico (August 11, 2016).
12. Karen Yourish and Larry Buchanan, “At Least 110 Republicans Leaders Won’t Vote for Donald Trump: Here’s When They Reached Their Breaking Point,” New York Times (August 29, 2016).
13. Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, “Corporations Grow Nervous About Participating in Republican Convention,” New York Times (March 30, 2016); Kristen East, “Charles Koch: ‘It’ Possible’ Clinton is Preferable to a Republican for President,” Politico (April 23, 2016); Kenneth P. Vogel, “Billionaires Fund Anti-Trump Delegate Push: Super PAC Mounts State-By-State Effort To Elect Convention Delegates Who Oppose Trump” Politico (April 12, 2016).
14. Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin, “Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich,” New York Times (September 3, 2016).
15. Austin Wright and Jeremy Herb, “Defense Industry Bucks Tradition With Donations to Clinton” Politico (August 23, 2016).
16. Data from www.opensecrets.org.
17. Timothy Aepeel, “Special Report: Why An Emblematic American City Has Turned to Trump” Reuters (May 25, 2016).
18. See Jack Metzger’s excellent “Misrepresenting the White Working Class: What the Narrating Class Gets Wrong,” Working-Class Perspectives (March 14, 2016); and Lance Selfa, “Are White Workers the Base of Trump Reaciton?” Socialist Worker (January 13, 2016) for excellent critiques of these claims.
19. Nate Silver, “The Mythology of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support” FiveThirtyEight.com (May 3, 2016).
20. “Uptown Trump,” The Economist (April 263, 2016).
21. Jonathan Rothwell, “Explaining Nationalist Political Views: The Case of Donald Trump” Gallup Draft Working Paper (August 1, 2016); Dan LaBotz, “Trump emprte les primaires républicaines secousse politique aux USA,” Journal solidaritéS, N° 292 (25/08/2016). Many thanks to LaBotz for providing an English translation.
22. A new study of the impact of unemployment linked to trade in former industrial regions like the Midwest have found that moderate Congressional Republicans and Democrats who supported “free trade” are likely to be defeated by either right-wing populist Republicans or left-wing populist Democrats. See David Autor, et al. “Importing Political Polarization?: The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure” Working Paper: Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics: University of Chicago (2016).
23. It is not clear whether Clinton will be able to mobilize the younger voters who supported Sanders, many of whom may not vote in November. Harry Enten, “Clinton and Trump Are Losing a Lot of Young Voters” FiveThirtyEight.com (August 18, 2016).
24. For the European populist right, see F. LePlat (ed)., The Far Right in Europe (London: Resistance Books, 2015).
25. See also Ben Schreckinger, “Meet the Vigilantes Who Patrol Trump’s Rallies,” Politico (April 25, 2016).
26. David Weigel, “Racialists Are Cheered by Trump’s Latest Strategy” The Washington Post (August 20, 2016.
27. For an excellent critique of claims that Trump is a fascist, see Chip Berlet, “Trumping Democracy: Right-Wing Populism, Fascism, and the Case for Action” Public Eye (December 12, 2015).
28. Eli Stolkos, “Republicans Consider Clinton Over Trump,” Politico (May 4, 2016); Patrick Healy, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, “With Donald Trump in Charge, Republicans Have a Day of Reckoning” New York Times (May 4, 2016); Ben White, “Hillary Forces Target Bush Donors” Politico (May 5, 2016); Amy Chozick, “Hillary Clinton Targets Republicans Turned Off by Donald Trump” New York Times (May 6, 2016).
29. David Broder’s excellent “Antifascism of Fools” Jacobin (March 21, 2016) and Dylan Riley’s contribution to “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” Jacobin (December 15, 2015) makes these points in much greater detail.
30. What remains of the U.S. left, most influenced by the popular front strategy of the U.S. Communist Party, has jumped on the defeat Trump/elect Clinton bandwagon. Linda Burnham, “Notes on the Election” Organizing Upgrade (May 1, 2016).
31. William H. Frey, “Can Trump Win In November?:” The Avenue: Rethinking Metropolitan America (March 2, 2016).
32. Sean Hackbarth, “Tim Kaine Also Has A Great Track Record on Trade” U.S. Chamber of Commerce(July 27, 2016); Maureen Dowd, “The Perfect GOP Nominee” New York Times (August 13, 2016); Peter Beinart, “How Democrats Became the Conservative Party” The Atlantic (August 19, 2016); Edward-Isaac Dovere, “Pro-Trade Democrats Call Labor’s Bluff” Politico (August 31, 2016).
33. Jennifer Steinhauer and Rachel Shorey, “Souring on Donald Trump, Republicans Pour Money into Senate Races” New York Times (September 7, 2016).
34. Carl Hulse, “Voters in Kansas Send Message by Ousting Tea Party Firebrand Tim Huelskamp from House” New York Times (August 3, 2016).
35. Lizette Alvarez, “Marco Rubio and John McCain Win Primaries in Florida and Arizona” New York Times (August 30, 2016); Rachel Bade and Elena Schneider, “GOP Establishment Trounces Tea Party in Congressional Primaries” Politico (August 3, 2016).

CHARLIE POST is a long-time socialist political activist who teaches at the City University of New York and is active in his faculty union.

2055. Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist Capitalist

By Josh Barro, The New York Times, October 19, 2015

From a Sanders for President union poster

In last week’s Democratic Party debate, Bernie Sanders stuck up for the idea that Americans are prepared to elect a democratic socialist, which is how he describes himself. “We’re gonna win,” he said, when the moderator, Anderson Cooper, pressed him on his electability under any kind of socialist label.

This led Hillary Rodham Clinton to defend capitalism, saying, “We would be making a grave mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class in history,” though she allowed the need to “rein in the excesses of capitalism.”

The weirdest thing about this fight is that Mr. Sanders, a Vermont senator, is not really a socialist. Or at least, if he is a socialist, he is also, at the same time, a capitalist.

“I think Bernie Sanders’s use of the word ‘socialism’ is causing much more confusion than it is adding value,” said Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego. Mr. Kenworthy, who recently wrote a book called “Social Democratic America” and thinks about these sorts of things for a living, offered a suggestion: “He is, if you want to put it this way, a democratic socialist capitalist.”

Ugh. Do we have to put it that way? In addition to being a mouthful, that still seems as if it’s going to confuse a lot of people.

After all, Mr. Sanders does not want to nationalize the steel mills or the auto companies or even the banks. Like Mrs. Clinton, he believes in a mixed economy, where capitalist institutions are mediated through taxes and regulation. He just wants more taxes and more regulation than Mrs. Clinton does. He certainly seems like a regular Democrat, only more so.

“It’s not socialism, it’s social democracy, which is a big difference,” said Mike Konczal, an economic policy expert at the left-wing Roosevelt Institute. Social democracy, Mr. Konczal noted, “implies a very active role for capitalism in the framework.”

Social democracy, Mr. Sanders will have you remember, is not what they were up to in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It’s the little-of-this, little-of-that philosophy of parties like Labour in Britain or the Social Democrats in Germany. Such parties have abandoned their past support for the nationalization of industry and have presided for long periods over economies that certainly appeared capitalist to visiting American tourists, albeit with higher taxes than we have in the United States.

Mr. Sanders himself emphasizes the “democratic” part of democratic socialism, and promised in last week’s debate that “we’re gonna explain what democratic socialism is.” He cited Denmark, which has very high taxes, very generous social programs and a robust economy driven by private capital investment, as an example of a place that does social democracy really well. (Though, as Matt Yglesias at Vox noted, Denmark’s Social Democrats have been out of power for 11 of the last 15 years while the country’s policies have continued to look pretty social democratic, further highlighting the difficulty of figuring out who’s really a socialist or not, or what.)

Mr. Konczal laid out four hallmarks. You might be a social democrat if you support: a mixed economy, that is, a combination of private enterprise and government spending; social insurance programs that support the old and the poor; a Keynesian economic policy of government borrowing and spending to offset economic recessions; and democratic participation in government and the workplace.

If that’s what social democracy is, it’s not obvious what the term would add to the American political lexicon. Most Democrats would tell you they support all four of those things. So would quite a few Republicans.

Mr. Sanders said on the campaign trail this week that police and fire departments are “socialist institutions,” as are public libraries. He noted that Social Security and Medicare, which are very popular with Americans, are “socialist programs.” This, again, is more confusing than clarifying. If supporting Social Security and public firefighting makes you a social democrat, the term does nothing to distinguish Mr. Sanders from his opponents.

“When you look at the policies, there’s a way to see it as Bernie has cranked up Hillary’s agenda to 11,” Mr. Konczal said. To wit: Mrs. Clinton favors preserving Social Security with some enhancements for the poorest beneficiaries while he wants to raise taxes on the rich to expand it in ways that could add $65 per month to the average benefit. This, like most political debates, is a disagreement about how far to turn the knobs when adjusting policy; it does not seem to call for a separate ideological label.

That said, Mr. Konczal did offer one difference between Mr. Sanders’s and Mrs. Clinton’s worldviews that is of kind rather than degree. This is decommodification: the idea that some goods and services are so important that they ought to be removed from the market economy altogether.

The idea behind the Affordable Care Act, and behind Mrs. Clinton’s approach to tinkering with Obamacare, is that quality health insurance should be affordable to everyone, and that people who can’t afford it should be given subsidies to buy it. For a democratic socialist, that’s not good enough; instead, health care should simply be provided to everyone without charge, removing the profit motive from health care.

But even this is a matter of degrees. Mr. Sanders favors Medicare for all: a single-payer health care system, with the federal government as the sole insurer. This would remove the profit motive from health insurance but not from health care, which could continue to be provided by private doctors and hospitals, often working on a for-profit basis. Mr. Sanders is not proposing to go further, like Britain, and have doctors work directly for the government. Nor does he appear inclined to decommodify broad swathes of the economy; in other countries, even conservatives often endorse special, less-marketized rules for health care than for other sectors.

This distinction is real, but it’s not clear to me that it merits Mr. Sanders his own ideological label. So when Mr. Kenworthy, the California professor, proposed the “democratic socialist capitalist” label to me, I responded by asking how that’s different from being a very liberal Democrat.