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Democrats adrift?

Public Interest - September 22, 2004

Continued from page 6.

The economic history of the twentieth century can be divided into three phases. During the first third of the century, the U.S. economy moved from a system of agricultural production, craftsmen, and individual entrepreneurs to industrial mass production. By the end of that period, a newly mobilized industrial working class was becoming the driving force in American politics. During the middle third of the century, the political accomplishments of the working class, coupled with America's post-war domination of the world economy, had produced a mass middle class and a politics centered around its concerns. In the last third, the shift toward a highly educated and professionalized post-industrial economy produced fundamental changes in modes of production and in the occupational structure.

By the end of the century, fully eight in ten Americans were engaged in the production of services and ideas, versus only three in ten at the beginning of the century. In turn, this post-industrial transformation generated the first mass upper-middle class in human history. In 1968, only 23 percent of the population earned $50,000 or more (in 1996 dollars). By 1996, their share surged to 34 percent. During that same period, the heart of the middle class (families earning $25,000 to $50,000 a year) declined from 39 percent to only 30 percent of the population. This trend is not the artifact of an arbitrary definition of the middle class: From 1968 to 1996, the percent-age of American families earning in excess of $75,000 rose by almost 10 points, from 6.8 to 16.4, while the percentage earning $25,000 to $75,000 declined by more than 7 points. Compared to the 1970s, the return to education beyond high school roughly doubled in the 1980s and continues at high levels today. In 1976, a person with a post-graduate degree could earn on average 2.6 times as much as someone without a high school education; by the late 1990s, a person with a post-graduate degree could earn, on average, four times as much as someone with no high school degree.

Those who remain in the middle class and who see upward mobility for others but not themselves, feel real anxiety, and not without reason. A report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the mid 1990s indicated that Americans in the middle--those making between $10 and $15 per hour--had seen a decline in their real earnings during the previous decade. Indeed, between 1973 and 1999, median real hourly wages of workers with a high school degree declined by 11 percent, from $13.34 to only $11.83. And this trend is continuing. A recent BLS report, analyzed by the Progressive Policy Institute's Robert Atkinson, shows that between 1999 and 2002, jobs that pay middle-class wages grew more slowly than higher-paid "knowledge" jobs at the top and lower-paid service jobs at the bottom, while wages for occupations in the top quintile grew three to four times faster than those for working-class earners in the fourth quintile.

The "new" new class

Long-term income shifts stemming from increases in the economic salience of education are having important political consequences. More than any other single factor, education predisposes citizens to participate in politics and to vote. As the middle class shrinks and the upper-middle class expands, the upscale bias of the electorate--those who actually turn out to vote--has expanded out of proportion to what would be expected simply given the increased share of highly educated people in the population. An analysis I co-authored with political scientist and longtime Gore aide Elaine C. Kamarck in 1998 showed that while the percentage of Americans in the voting-age population with college degrees had risen from 15 percent to 22 percent between 1980 and 1996, the percentage of college-educated voters had increased from 28 percent to 43 percent. During this same period, the percentage of voters with less than a high school education had fallen even more rapidly than had their share of the voting-age population.

The electoral consequences of this shift are accelerating. In the 2000 election, voters from families with incomes of $50,000 or more constituted 53 percent of the total, sharply up from 39 percent in 1996 (and only 32 percent in 1992). Voters with family incomes in excess of $75,000 were 28 percent of the total, up from 18 percent. And voters making more than $100,000 were 15 percent of the total, up from 9 percent. As Gerald Pomper has noted, these changes were far greater than were changes in income during this period.

These developments have affected Democrats even more than Republicans. Republican voters have always been wealthier than the population as a whole. But over the past two decades, the gap between Republicans and the general population has remained constant. Not so for Democrats. In 1976, the income of the median Democratic presidential voter was roughly equal to the national median; today, the median Democratic voter is significantly above the national median.

These upscale trends are mirrored in the subset of voters who participate in presidential primaries. When Kamarck and I examined the 27 states for which we had presidential exit polls in 1992, we found that, on average, 38 percent of the Democratic primary voters in those states had a college or post-graduate degree while only 20 percent of the voting-age population in those states had a college or graduate degree. We also found that the largest decline in participation had occurred among members of the electorate lacking a high school degree. Over time, the historically low participation levels of these voters had decreased in all 11 states for which we possess continuous data--sometimes by as much as 50 percent.

Based on a traditional class analysis, one would have expected the shift toward a society and electorate dominated by upper-middle-class professionals to work in favor of the party that has historically championed upscale economic interests. But as John Judis and Ruy Teixeira argue in The Emerging Democratic Majority, the reality is more complex. For much of the twentieth century, professionals tended to identify with corporate managers and were among the most Republican of occupational groups. As late as 1960, they supported Nixon over Kennedy by a margin of 61 to 38. By 1980, however, fully 15 percent of professionals supported John Anderson's blend of social liberalism and fiscal moderation. In part because of his critique of Reagan's budget deficits, Mondale got 45 percent of the professional vote, 4 points higher than his overall total. Dukakis, Clinton, and Gore have all won solid majorities of this growing sector: In the four most recent presidential elections, professionals have backed the Democratic nominee by an average margin of 52 to 40.

Judis and Teixeira propose two principal explanations for this shift. First, professionals came increasingly to prize nonmarket occupational values such as creativity and autonomy, which often put them at odds with the imperatives of mainstream corporate life. Second, during their college years, many aspiring professionals were influenced by movements for civil rights, women's rights, the environment, and (during the 1960s and 1970s) by the antiwar movement as well. We can only speculate about the impact of the controversy over Iraq on the next generation of professionals. That the members of this new professional class have increased in absolute terms and their political voice has been magnified bodes well for the Democratic party. But it cannot win the presidency on the coattails of this class alone.

A cultural and class divide

I noted earlier the paradox of Al Gore's general election campaign: His blunt appeal to the "people" against the "powerful" failed to rally the white working class to his side. But there is a flip side to this paradox: Despite this populist appeal, Gore was more successful among upscale professionals than was Bill Clinton, whose 1996 campaign all but expunged references to economic and social class. Gore fared 3 percentage points better than Clinton among voters making more than $75,000 and 5 points better among voters making more than $100,000. Clearly, a strong tide is pulling better educated, higher-income voters toward the Democratic party, at just the moment when an equally strong tide is pushing white working-class voters away.

Judis and Teixeira offer a straightforward response to these conflicting trends. The key to a new Democratic majority, they suggest, lies in a new synthesis--in discovering a strategy that "retains support among the white working class, but also builds support among college-educated professsionals." To do that, they optimistically argue, Democrats need not choose between a populist politics focused on working-class resentment and a professional politics that emphasizes quality of life. They can do both.

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