Michael Lind: Where are the Peasants with Pitchforks?
[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."]
In the aftermath of a global economic collapse brought about in part by the corruption of big government by big finance, many pundits expected a voter backlash in America to take the form of a combination of populist anti-elitism and statist anti-capitalism. But that has not happened, nor is it likely to occur. In the United States, the populists are anti-statist and the statists are anti-populist.
The last realignment of the American party system took place in the 1970s, when the civil rights revolution along with the cultural revolutions of the 1960s blew apart the New Deal order that had coalesced in the 1930s. In the post-New Deal system that exists to this day, the Republican Party is a neo-Jacksonian coalition whose base consists of Southern white Protestants and, to a lesser degree, conservative white Catholic "ethnics" in the Northern suburbs. The Democratic Party is based in big cities and college towns. Among ethnic and racial groups, its most consistent electoral supporters are blacks and Jews, followed by Latinos.
The different ethno-regional bases of the two parties explain their different attitudes toward populism and statism. The Republican Party’s combination of hostility to the federal government with the rhetoric of populism is a revival of the Jacksonian synthesis of the 1820s and 1830s. From the perspective of Jacksonian Democrats or neo-Jacksonian Republicans, anti-statist populism is a rational strategy.
The Jacksonian Democrats of the 19th century, like the neo-Jacksonian Republicans of the 21st century, have believed, not without reason, that wealthy, educated Northeastern elites will always dominate a powerful federal government and sacrifice the interests of the Northern white working class and white Southerners and Westerners. This fear on the part of Jacksonians, past and present, produces a combination of folksy populism with support for state and local governments, which are less likely to be captured by metropolitan elites who look down on Irish and Italian Catholics in the North and the Scots-Irish in the South.
The strategy of today’s Democratic base is equally rational, given its core constituencies. The post-'60s coalition of minorities that forms the Democratic base naturally favors a strong federal government to protect the civil rights of its members from the bigotry of local racial and religious majorities....
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In the aftermath of a global economic collapse brought about in part by the corruption of big government by big finance, many pundits expected a voter backlash in America to take the form of a combination of populist anti-elitism and statist anti-capitalism. But that has not happened, nor is it likely to occur. In the United States, the populists are anti-statist and the statists are anti-populist.
The last realignment of the American party system took place in the 1970s, when the civil rights revolution along with the cultural revolutions of the 1960s blew apart the New Deal order that had coalesced in the 1930s. In the post-New Deal system that exists to this day, the Republican Party is a neo-Jacksonian coalition whose base consists of Southern white Protestants and, to a lesser degree, conservative white Catholic "ethnics" in the Northern suburbs. The Democratic Party is based in big cities and college towns. Among ethnic and racial groups, its most consistent electoral supporters are blacks and Jews, followed by Latinos.
The different ethno-regional bases of the two parties explain their different attitudes toward populism and statism. The Republican Party’s combination of hostility to the federal government with the rhetoric of populism is a revival of the Jacksonian synthesis of the 1820s and 1830s. From the perspective of Jacksonian Democrats or neo-Jacksonian Republicans, anti-statist populism is a rational strategy.
The Jacksonian Democrats of the 19th century, like the neo-Jacksonian Republicans of the 21st century, have believed, not without reason, that wealthy, educated Northeastern elites will always dominate a powerful federal government and sacrifice the interests of the Northern white working class and white Southerners and Westerners. This fear on the part of Jacksonians, past and present, produces a combination of folksy populism with support for state and local governments, which are less likely to be captured by metropolitan elites who look down on Irish and Italian Catholics in the North and the Scots-Irish in the South.
The strategy of today’s Democratic base is equally rational, given its core constituencies. The post-'60s coalition of minorities that forms the Democratic base naturally favors a strong federal government to protect the civil rights of its members from the bigotry of local racial and religious majorities....