America Ascendant

by Stanley B Greenberg

  When Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats swept out the conservatives in the 1912 elections, they confronted the problems of the time head-on. The Republican Party remained the party of the industrialists and continued to protect the trusts and fight limits on working hours and child labor. The conservative Republicans had to be decisively defeated before the progressives could limit the workweek, pass real antitrust laws, regulate railway rates, slash high trade tariffs to favor farmers and consumers, introduce direct primaries to defeat the party machines, require the direct election of U.S. senators, bar corporate contributions to campaigns, introduce an income tax, and give women the right to vote.

  The conservative Supreme Court overturned legislation passed in 1916 barring the use of child labor in manufactured products intended for interstate commerce. This and other progressive reforms would have to wait until a more thoroughgoing defeat of the conservatives and the next wave of reform under the New Deal and the post–World War II national investments that produced the American middle class. Nonetheless, the two-decade era of progressive reform that began with Teddy Roosevelt and ended with Woodrow Wilson fundamentally changed the path of American capitalism and democracy and allowed America to dominate the century.

  Today, America is at another tipping point, and Democrats are leading the battle for reform because, quite simply, they are aligned with the ascendant trends and because the Republicans are fighting those trends with growing ferocity. Surging racial and immigrant diversity, the sexual revolution, gay marriage accepted constitutionally, growing secularism, and radically changing family structures have moved conservatives to join a counterrevolution to reverse these trends before it is too late for the country. The modern Republican Party’s raison d’être is to keep the new American majority from governing successfully.

  But this battle against America’s ascendant trends and values has put the Republican Party into a death spiral that it can only hope to slow. Despite its constitutional advantages in the Congress and its success mobilizing voters in off-year elections, the Republican Party is deeply unpopular nationally, and fewer and fewer voters identify themselves as Republican. It is the party of the oldest, most rural, most religiously observant, and mostly married white voters. It is barely up for consideration with the Millennials, the secular, the foreign-born, and anyone with a trace of color or an accent, and it does not compete in the country’s most dynamic metropolitan areas.

  Voters have given Democrats the political stage because they embrace America’s multiculturalism as a unifying concept and welcome the seismic changes that have upended the traditional family, accelerated racial and immigrant diversity, and reshaped the metropolitan areas. With Republicans digging in and contesting these changes, Democrats more explicitly defend the values of equality, equal rights, and fairness; they place more emphasis on empathy and protecting people from harm; they place a high premium on openness to diversity and acceptance of differences; they celebrate an individualism rooted in individual autonomy; and they uphold education and science rather than religion as paths to discoverable truths.

  Having the political stage, however, is not the same as stepping up to push for the reforms that can renew America. That requires putting America’s economic and social contradictions at the top of the public agenda, even as powerful conservative forces mobilize to defeat them. And progressive reformers will have to make the case for government activism, even as it joins the even more difficult battle to reform a deeply corrupted government dominated by special interests. It is not certain that Democrats will be willing to confront those contradictions without growing pressure in civil society, growing protest movements, and electoral battles within the Democratic Party.

  Importantly, the Republicans’ intensifying mobilization against the ascendant trends over the past decade has allowed them to win control of the U.S. Congress and historic numbers of state legislatures. They now govern almost unopposed in nearly half of the states. That will delay America addressing its greatest challenges.

  Republicans sustained high off-year turnouts in 2010 and 2014 by constantly raising the specter of President Barack Obama and the grave risks to the country’s traditional values if Democrats hold office. By stoking fears about Obamacare, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage, they have raised the stakes for conservatives and built their turnout. Every election is national when you are battling to block the new American majority.

  And with the electoral and constitutional bias in favor of rural areas, Republicans have joined the battle for traditional values with great success. Those battles, however, only further alienate the Republicans from the burgeoning new electorate.

  Even more consequential and polarizing is the Republican strategy to hold off the deluge by building a conservative base in the race-conscious and religiously observant South, the Appalachian Valley, across the rural Plains states, and in the Mountain West. It has won nearly total control in twenty states by fighting Obamacare, eliminating aid for the poor and the unemployed, making a last-ditch effort to end abortion, and defending traditional marriage. By winning big in this GOP conservative heartland, the Republicans can govern as conservatives in twenty states and take for granted nearly forty Senate seats, even though the party’s regional base counts for only a quarter of the national presidential electorate.16

  The problem for the Republicans is that the more they succeed in animating and solidifying their support in the GOP conservative heartland, the more the rest of the country views them as out of date and out of touch.

  It also creates forbidding odds against the Republicans in national elections and in the Electoral College. Democrats are aligned with the current trends, only expanding their Electoral College map while Republicans fight these battles.

  This recent history has left America profoundly polarized into red and blue America—and it only grows worse as the economic and cultural revolutions seem ever more certain. The deep red-blue polarization is not a sign that Republicans will prevail. Indeed, it portends the opposite.

  Republicans increasingly say it is important for them to live with people who share their religious faith and political views, while Democrats say they want to live in neighborhoods with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Each holds increasingly negative views of the other party, though Republicans’ contempt for Democrats is in a league of its own: 72 percent of consistent conservatives hold a very unfavorable opinion of Democrats, while just 53 percent of consistent liberals hold a similarly intense negative view of Republicans. Increasingly, they each think that if the other party wins and gets to promote its values, the country is at risk. This intensifying polarization is hardly symmetric, as Republicans grow more alienated from the ascendant values.17

  As the national odds grow longer for conservatives, that only increases the urgency to defend their values and translate them into politics.

  The Republican battle for American values is also a battle for policies that they advance in the GOP-controlled states, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court when they can. They think the social safety net itself, including food stamps and unemployment benefits, is the primary cause of idleness and poverty. They oppose immigration and making gay marriage legal. They oppose further equal-employment protections for women and gays. They are determined to ban abortions. They are an antitax party that cuts corporate and top tax rates as a matter of principle. They cut public spending for education and science. With large financial contributions from the energy companies and banking sector, they promote fossil fuels and battle to protect the coal industry while opposing action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. They want to lift regulations of business and Wall Street banks. They believe campaign spending by the very rich and by corporations counts as constitutionally protected free speech.

  These are the policies Republicans enact, and thus, defeating and marginalizing Republicans and conservatives is the only way to fully proceed with a reform agenda for these times.

  It i
s already happening. Many of the reforms to address the dark side of our economic growth and social transformations are starting to gain momentum in civil society. Initial reformist steps are being taken at the local and state levels that may show the path for enacting much bolder ones nationally.

  If you think this is fanciful, consider what happened in California.

  In 2008, the California budget was in crisis and faced shattering deficits and drastic cuts in public programs. “Political paralysis gripped the Capitol and left the state starved for cash,” The Los Angeles Times observed. The population was leaving and many stories talked about California as no longer the pioneer of change for the country. The citizens of the state despaired of its future, and more than half said the state faced structural problems that would not ease when the national economy recovered. Four of every five voters said the state was on the wrong track going into the 2010 elections. With the deficit projected to reach $60 billion in 2010 and a $27 billion shortfall expected the next year, Jay Leno joked, “California is so broke that I saw a going-out-of-business sign at a meth lab.”18

  The gridlock was painfully familiar. The voters via state initiative had limited state property tax increases and blocked the legislature from raising taxes without the support of two-thirds of the legislature. In any event, the Republican caucus in the Assembly and Senate voted to kill any revenue increase to address the crisis. Between 2008 and 2013, the state’s prestigious universities were cut by $900 million and per-pupil school spending was slashed by 29.3 percent. The voters ignominiously recalled the Democratic governor, Gray Davis, after just ten months in office and rated Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger so poorly he dared not run for reelection in 2010.19

  But California embodies many of the trends in this book, and voters turned against the gridlock and against candidates who were increasingly hostile to spending and taxes, immigration, abortion, and action on climate change. In 2010 voters elected Democrats to every statewide office, and in 2012 they passed a referendum that raised the income tax on the wealthy to fund education. In the general election they gave the Democrats super majorities that ended the Republicans’ ability to veto tax increases. Progress was premised on taking power away from Republicans, not a return to bipartisanship. Reporting on our bipartisan poll for The Los Angeles Times, I observed, “Only in the context of California can you imagine coming out of that scenario and describe it as going more smoothly.”20

  The California budget came into surplus in 2013 and is projected to reach $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2015–2016. The surpluses have been devoted to spending for schools and universities, to a rainy-day fund, and to paying down liabilities. Rather than California going bankrupt and shutting off the lights, Standard & Poor’s upgraded California’s’ bond rating to A+, the state led the country in jobs created, and its economy grew 4 percent in 2014, stronger than the national economy. In its own show of confidence, Boeing announced it was returning some engineering jobs to California.21

  While putting its budget in order, growing the economy, and creating jobs, California also made the state a better place for working families by increasing the minimum wage in 2013, and employers will be required to pay their employees at least $10 an hour by 2016. At the same time, many California cities are proposing and passing even higher minimum wages. California became one of three states to require certain employers to offer paid sick days and has expanded its paid family leave insurance program to include caring for an ill family member. The governor has reached levels of popularity not seen for decades and was reelected in a landslide in 2014.22

  And what is the “best state for business? Yes, California,” according to data compiled by Bloomberg and reported in Bloomberg View. California-based companies over the past four years outperformed the S&P 500 by 23 percent. They delivered returns of 134 percent—2.5 times the returns for companies based in Texas.23

  The United States, too, will soon have a political moment that allows it to transcend the dysfunction and move on to tackle its huge challenges. A lot of people will sigh, finally. A lot of people around the world who need America to be exceptional will be reassured it can renew itself and represent progress again. The plate-shifting changes taking place in the economic realm along with the social and cultural transformations are setting the stage for new leaders—leaders who identify with the new realities, understand its contradictions, and are prepared to fight so all Americans can share in the rewards of America’s ascendant trends.

  There is no evidence in the California story that the specter of extinction brings out Republican leaders ready to join the battle for reform. If anything, the party became more conservative. The conservative columnist David Brooks beseeches his party “to declare a truce on the social safety net” and insists, “They need to assure the country that the net will always be there for the truly needy.” But how do conservatives get there when they believe the safety net is the cause of poverty and idleness?24

  Perhaps a shattering national defeat like the Democrats faced in 1984 or progressives gaining control of the judiciary and Supreme Court will allow the modernizers to gain the upper hand in the Republican Party.

  Until then, Democrats will have the role of addressing the contradictions and dark side of our progress.

  Just as there was building reaction to the trends of the Gilded Age, there is momentum for reform brewing in America today. People are at work in their communities and with their churches to help struggling families; journalists are finding new forms of media and using technology to speak truth to power and to challenge people to act; companies are forming coalitions with nonprofits to pass important legislation that invests in people; and leaders seeking to make bold policy reforms are being promoted in their cities and states. It is becoming clear that America has the capacity to bring the big changes that are necessary for its ascent. America is not paralyzed.

  Just look at what is happening in the cities and states. The political liberation of California, for example, is made possible by the dynamic, diverse, and growing cities and metropolitan areas that refuse to wait for the smoke of national gridlock to clear. California cities as well as metropolitan areas all over the country, even in the conservative heartland, are urgently proceeding with progressive reforms, much as leading cities and states did after the turn of the twentieth century. Cities are beginning to address the issue of low wages, the need for more union organizing, the challenges of balancing work and family, and the need for universal pre-K education to raise social mobility and push back against the rising tide of inequality.

  Cities are taking action because they cannot wait to tackle even the most difficult challenges. Just as an illustration, mayors are taking on the responsibility of addressing climate change. Impatient with “the continuing absence of tangible outcomes from inter-governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gases,” New York City’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg organized the mayors of the world’s greatest cities in the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group to take “concrete actions that demonstrate that preventing catastrophic climate change is possible.” Under that banner, San Francisco is taking steps to reduce emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2017, with the ultimate goal of an 80 percent reduction by 2050.25

  As the United Nations was convening for the first time to consider the issue, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that New York would become the largest city to meet the U.N. target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 2005 levels. That is comparable to taking 700,000 vehicles off the road. “Climate change is an existential threat to New Yorkers and our planet,” de Blasio declared, and “New York City must continue to set the pace and provide the bold leadership that’s needed.” His proposal accepts and builds on the $20 billion plan of his immediate predecessor, Bloomberg, to mitigate the effects of a thirty-one-inch rise in sea levels with vast storm protection, floodwalls, bulkheads, and new building codes. Bloomberg asserted, “If anyone is up to the task of defending and ada
pting the city they love, it’s New Yorkers.”26

  States are also acting. Oregon and Washington have taken dramatic steps to block America’s potential coal-export boom by denying permits that would allow the shipment of coal mined in Wyoming and Montana from their Pacific Coast ports to Asia. Export plans have been blocked by what Ronald Brownstein calls “America’s coal-fired divide.” These states champion the EPA’s efforts to limit new coal-fired plants nationally while shutting down their own. With California implementing its own cap-and-trade law and requiring zero-emission vehicles, the West Coast is rapidly turning to alternative energy and a greenhouse-gas-free future.27

  America’s progressive cities and states will serve as models for future national action to address climate change, the struggles of working women and families, and jobs that don’t pay enough. The actions being taken by city and state leaders will teach the country that it can address the deepest problems holding America back.

  Of course many of the changes in the country are just becoming the new orthodoxy and part of our shared national character—they go unchallenged, or if questioned, there is pushback.

  Millions were moved by Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial featuring seven young women singing “America, the Beautiful” in different languages, because this diversity is something we have integrated into our national identity. When an outspoken few took to Twitter and conservative talk radio to express their discomfort with the ascendant populations, Coca-Cola doubled down and extended their ad buy to the Sochi Winter Olympics, signaling to the world that these angry voices do not speak for America or corporate America.