Thomas Edsall: How Did the Democrats Become Favorites of the Rich?
Thomas Edsall: How Did the Democrats Become Favorites of the Rich?
Democrats now depend as much on affluent voters as on low-income voters. Democrats represent a majority of the richest congressional districts, and the party’s elected officials are more responsive to the policy agenda of the well-to-do than to average voters. The party and its candidates have come to rely on the elite 0.01 percent of the voting age population for a quarter of their financial backing and on large donors for another quarter.
The gulf between the two parties on socially fraught issues like abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage and voting rights remains vast. On economic issues, however, the Democratic Party has inched closer to the policy positions of conservatives, stepping back from championing the needs of working men and women, of the unemployed and of the so-called underclass.
“The Democratic Party pushed through the financial regulation of the 1930s, while the Democratic party of the 1990s undid much of this regulation in its embrace of unregulated financial capitalism,” the four authors write.
They cite the crucial role of congressional Democrats in enacting the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which eliminated past restrictions on interstate banking; the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act separating commercial banking from other financial services; and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which restricted government oversight of most over-the-counter derivative contracts, including credit default swaps — all of which played a role in the financial crisis of 2007-2009.
Sanders is running on an explicitly left-populist platform. It includes taxation of overseas corporate profits, a progressive estate tax, an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, the investment of $1 trillion in infrastructure, withdrawal from Nafta and other trade agreements, free tuition at public colleges, a single-payer health care system, and more.
The problem is that the core of Sanders’s support, according to an October 2 Pew Research Center survey, is more concentrated among the college-educated than among those without degrees, and stronger among middle-class and affluent Democrats than among low-income Democrats. For now his messages appear to have caught on primarily among ideologically liberal voters, although there is an argument that it will resonate with others as they learn more about it.
Related:
Rolling Stone: Robert Reich on Why Capitalism Needs Saving
Yahoo Politics: Hillary Clinton doesn’t support revival of Glass-Steagall Act
The New Yorker: Bernie Sanders has spent decades attacking inequality. Now the country is listening
Delamaide: Clintons still have blind spot on deregulation
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