Reasons abound for the Democratic Party’s expected drubbing in the coming midterm elections.
Inflation is devouring Americans’ earnings, so they are, whether rightly or wrongly, leveling some blame at the White House. President Biden’s approval rating has plummeted. His legislative agenda is stalled. And there is a general sense across the country that things are going in the wrong direction. The COVID-19 pandemic won’t end, a recession may loom, parents can’t find formula for their babies, the stock market has shed thousands of points, and our bitter political and cultural rifts show no signs of abating.
Mr. Biden’s frequent stumbles are reinforcing the image of a president too old and faded to gain control of events. And, historically, the party in power tends to lose seats in the midterm congressional races. None of it portends well for the Democrats.
Problems such as inflation or recession are fleeting. There is a more fundamental reason, decades in the making, for the party’s struggles. The Democrats continue to lose ground in what had been the party’s bedrock constituency: the White working class.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, an expert of leftist political and social movements, talks about the Democratic Party’s triumph in building a loyal working-class constituency as a foundation of its political coalition.
The New Deal began cementing these bricks into place, but cracks began to form in the 1960s and ‘70s, he said. Labor union membership plunged because of structural changes in the global economy and anti-union political forces within the U.S., further eroding the Democrats’ base. By 1950, unions had successfully organized one in three non-farm workers. Today, only 6 percent of private-sector workers are in a union.
NAFTA made matters worse, as it accelerated the job losses in already deindustrialized swaths of the Midwest. Long before Donald Trump pledged to save American manufacturing, the Democratic Party had largely lost its hold over ordinary laborers.
“The ’60s was a crucial period. The ’60s was the end of the New Deal order and the end of the period of Democratic Party dominance that had begun in the early 1930s,” said Mr. Kazin, the author of “What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party.”
Listen to the interview with Mr. Kazin by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
