The New Politics of Inequality

An important book that I read when it first came out. Too bad more prominent Democrats didn't.

Thomas Edsall's book, The New Politics of Inequality, was first published in 1989, near the end of the Ronald Reagan's second term as president. Given the passing of twenty-two event-filled years, covering both Clinton Administrations, both George W. Bush Administrations, and the first three and a half yeas of the Obama Presidency, one might imagine that Edsall would have little genuinely new to say to us, and his book might best be relegated to the status of documents that are largely of historical interest.After all, there are no references to the war in Bosnia. Neither the first nor the second Gulf War receives any coverage. There is one passing reference to a conflict in Afghanistan, but not the one involving the so-called coalition forces; instead Edsall is referring to the Soviet Union's misadventure, leading to its humiliating defeat by the U.S. backed mujahideen, many of whom later participated in the burtally repressive Islamic fundamentalist reign of the Taliban.The twin towers of the World Trade Center were still standing, and so was the Berlin Wall. Few in the western world had heard of Osama Bin Laden. Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the ostensibly soul-sapping welfare program that provided an endless supply of outrages for right-wing talk show heroes and heroines, was still supplying sustenance for many unfortunate Americans, not yer replaced by Clinton's Temporary Aid to Needy Families. No one had heard of Monica Lewinsky or the determinedly conspicuous Kenneth Starr. No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were bad ideas whose time had not yet come. The U.S. Supreme Court had not yet given George W, Bush his first term in office, nor had it rendered its Citizens United decision, opening the electoral process to the potentially overwhelming force of corporate campaign contributions ...We could go on and on, but the central question remains the same: how could a book written before these events, some truly momentous and some simply sensational, be of value to anyone trying to understand the American political landscape in 2012?In truth, The New Politics of Inequality shows us the foundation for many of the crucial outcomes that have determined Americans' prospects and the nation's place in the world. Edsall wrote roughly two decades after the passing of the Era of the Social Contract, a time when capital and labor existed harmoniously and, broadly speaking, approximated the roles of countervailing powers joined in a common endeavor. His book, thus, is set in a period when internationalization, technnological advances, outsourcing, down-sizing, and the subsequent disastrous decline of organized labor were operating in full force. As a result, real incomes of for most people -- the working poor, the working class, the lower middle class -- had stagnated and then sharply declined. Even solidly middle class and upper middle class families were bearing, in both relative and real terms, an ever-larger share of the tax burden, and the circumstances of those below them were even worse.The wealthy, however, were in a much improved position. Their incomes had risen dramatically as labor costs were further diminished, and the nominally progressive federal income tax was no longer distributing downward in an effort toward greater equity. Instead, tax-based redistribution was occurring upward, resulting in ever greater concentration the further one moved through the top fifth of the income distribution. Furthermore, when Reagan became president, his administration slashed funding for AFDC; sharply cut appropriations for food stamps and children's nutritiion; spending on public education was dramatically diminished; public service employment was completely eliminated; and the estate tax, sometimes characterized as the nefarious "death tax" was gutted, eliminating an important policy that slowed cross-generational concentration of wealth in the hope of giving everyone a chance to participate with a modicum of effectiveness in the political and economic world.But how did all this come about? Where were the Democrats, the majority party and nominal representatives of the least fortunate and the working and middle classes. If we follow Edsall's compelling argument, the Democrats were stuck in the '60's.The Democrats and their primary allies, especially organized labor, were taken by surprise when the traditional Republican minorty coalesced with increasingly politicized and aggressive business interests and a growing and well financed conservative intellectual establishment. Almost unnoticed, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Stanford's Hoover Institution, and similarly conservative-to-reactionary think tanks began setting the intellectual terms for congressional policy making, something that, at least since 1932, had been the purview of the Democrats.In the meantime, the Democrats had been busy with squeaky-clean procedural reforms that, on their face, promised to make policy making and the electoral process more open, decentralized, and accessible, no longer dominated by a few congressional committee charimen who had gained their positions by virtue of seniority and who had long impeded passage of progressive legislation regarding civil rights and labor. In an odd turn of events, however, by decentralizing power and by increasing the number and importance of primary elections, Democrats had undercut their dominant position.The Era of the Capital-Labor Social Contract was long gone. Republicans made no secret of the fact that they represented a homogeneous group, the big-maney elites and their intellectual allies. Yes, there were differences among elements of the Republican constituency, but these were inconsequential when compared with the over-riding commonalities that gave the party cohesion.The Democrats, by contrast, were the party of a diverse, often conflicting collection of out-groups, people who wanted to change the status quo rather than reinforce it. The working class, for example, had little or nothing in common with environmentalists. In fact, the objectives of the two groups were often at odds -- jobs or the environment -- and environmentalists tended to be better educated and more affluent than members of labor unions and others who did American society's essential but devalued grunt work. As another example, blacks and gays, both groups closer to the Demcratic Party than to the Republicans, often had fundamentally different views when it came to sex, marriage, and what it means to be a moral person. In an ironic and damaging twist, the Democrat's progressive agenda, while meant to make things more equitable for everyone, had led to a split between the working class and the poor, a product of the fact that the over-taxed working class was no longer doing well. Schisms of this sort had long been intrinsic to the makeup of the Demcratic Party, but in the past the conflicting elements had been forged into working coalitions that enabled Democrats to function as a unit.However, with the well-intentioned procedural reforms, along with the proliferation of primaries, and the renaissance of an aggressively conservative Republican Party, Democrats were in decline. In spite of their diversity, they had long been the party of lower income Americans, while the Republicans were increasingly strengthened by their representation of the wealthy. When primaries were held, high-income members of both parties turned out in relatively large numbers, while members of the Democrat's low-income core constituency were much less likely to participate. In a general election this often meant that wealthy Republicans were able to vote for candidates with interests very similar to their own. Democratic voters, however, had to vote for those who won the primaries, meaning the favorites of upper-income Democrats, who often had little in common with the Democrat's lower-income majority. To make matter worse, even in general elections, lower-income people were less likely to turn out to vote. The combination of non-representative winners of primaries and lower Democratic turnout under the best of circumstances gave the resurgent Republicans an enormous advantage.The new Republican coalition, moreover, had the money and know-how to take full advantage of technological advances that made door-to-door visits by ward heelers vastly less important than computerized lists of the demographic and political make-up of electoral districts throughout the country, enabling the proliferation of political action committees to judiciously target their resources. Democrats were slow to recognize the value of technology in accurately targeting their resources, and they spent exorbitant amounts on incumbents who, in many instances, were in traditionally very safe districts.During the decade of the '80's, the temporal focus of Thomas Edsall's fine book, the Democrats were not only slow to recognize the importance of modern technology in winning elections, they were also often under-funded. As a result, technological innovations were beyond their reach.Even television presented unique problems for Democrats. Republicans, after all, when they delivered a compaign message by way of TV knew that their audience was sufficiently homogeneous that no constituency would be offended. For the Democrats, even when adequately funded, the divisions among their constituent groups worked against them, as no one message could be tailored to the interests of all.There is so much information and there are so many unexpected insights in The New Politics of Inequality that any review, even an unduly long one, is fraught with selectivity. In fact, Edsall's book is so densely packed with information that it is difficult to grasp unifying themes around which to organize an assessment.In addition, while Edsall makes exemplary use of tabular presentation of easy-to-grasp quantitative informaion, he also includes percentages, percent changes, and comparative dollar values in the body of his text. As a result, the reader is sometimes overwhelmed, and an otherwise excellent book is pock-marked with areas of tediuim. Edsall's occasional use of percentages of percentages, moreover, is misleading, something his editor should have caught.Nevertheless, Edsall makes a fine, even if complex case that the party with the big-money constituency will turn out the votes, win the elections, and reward their members. In this instance, that means that the distribution of wealth and income in the U.S. will become even more skewed toward the top, approximating a great American plutocracy. Developed Western European countries have been able to avoid this because they have strong labor unions that include large percentages of the citizenry as members. In the U.S., this is a thing of the past.If you like the current distribution of resources in the U.S. and woud like to see existing patterns intensified, this book will make you feel virtyous and powerful. Otherwise, Edsall's brilliantly informative analysis, with its unmistakable implications for the present and our future, will break your heart.