Short-Term Gains Versus A Second Term For Trump

After 18 months of "only white suburban swing voters matter!" versus "only white working-class voters matter!" being the only argument as to how Dems can win against Trump, somebody finally comes up with the data that in 2018, both suburban and working-class voters are diverse and policies to help them are the key.

Democratic politicians and strategists identify a “suburban revolt” against President Trump and right-wing Republican extremism as the key to victory in the 2018 and 2020 elections. They point to Democratic successes in the off-year 2017 elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and the surprise triumph of Senator Doug Jones in Alabama, as evidence for the party’s plan to target college-educated white women, upper-middle-class moderates and even disillusioned conservatives in the affluent suburbs.

In primary contests last week from California to New Jersey, Democrats pursued that “electability” strategy through the “Red to Blue” project of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which targeted suburban swing voters by clearing candidate fields for moderate and conservative Democrats like Gil Cisneros in Orange County and Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey.

The nomination of centrist candidates may bring Democratic gains in the affluent suburbs in the midterms. But the electoral success of that strategy has previously been modest — and more important, the party has paid insufficient attention to the substantial policy costs of turning moderate and affluent suburbs blue. Democrats cannot cater to white swing voters in affluent suburbs and also promote policies that fundamentally challenge income inequality, exclusionary zoning, housing segregation, school inequality, police brutality and mass incarceration.

The political culture of upscale suburbs revolves around resource hoarding of children’s educational advantages, pervasive opposition to economic integration and affordable housing, and the consistent defense of homeowner privileges and taxpayer rights. Indeed, unlike traditional blue-collar Democrats, white-collar professionals across the ideological spectrum — for example, in the high-tech enclaves of California and Northern Virginia, which combined contain eight of the 15 most highly educated congressional districts in the nation — generally endorse tough-on-crime policies, express little interest in protections for unions and sympathize with the economic agenda of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

In these places, the Democratic suburban strategy of targeting affluent white professionals while appealing to nonwhite voters in diverse, fast-growing communities has had some success. In Virginia’s race for governor last fall, the moderate Democrat Ralph Northam followed the playbook and won 69 percent of the vote in the Northern Virginia suburbs and exurbs, 58 percent statewide from white women with college degrees, 54 percent from those with family incomes above $100,000 and overwhelming support from African-Americans and Latinos. But Mr. Northam secured only 26 percent of ballots cast by white Virginians without a college degree, slightly below even Hillary Clinton’s disastrous nationwide showing.

American suburbia today is far more racially and socioeconomically diverse than these upscale communities. In the largest metropolitan regions, more nonwhite and poor residents now live in suburbs than in central cities, and more than 60 percent of adult suburban residents nationwide are not college-educated professionals. Suburban neighborhoods also remain highly segregated by race and income, and therefore operate as engines of social and economic inequality, the consequence of historical policies of housing and school discrimination and their contemporary legacies like exclusionary zoning, unequal educational opportunity and selective law enforcement.

To explain the realignment of American politics and the migration of working-class whites to the Republican Party, observers usually focus on how politicians from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump have exploited white backlash against racial and cultural liberalism.

The flip side of this is the deliberate, long-term strategy by the Democratic Party to favor the financial interests and social values of affluent white suburban families and high-tech corporations over the priorities of unions and the economic needs of middle-income and poor residents of all races. It’s no coincidence that the bluer that suburban counties turn, the more unequal and economically stratified they become as well — a dynamic evident along Route 128 outside of Boston, in the once solidly Republican suburbs of Connecticut and New Jersey, in boom regions such as Atlanta and Denver, and along the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego.

The shocking realization that "working-class" doesn't automatically mean "white" is something that Democrats should have figured out 20 years ago, and something Barack Obama was able to win on, but then the Dems ran away from him and back to the Clinton 90's.

No wonder then that over the last decade the GOP gave rise to Trump's virulent racism.  Dems need to remember who their base is and they need to stop chasing "never Trump" Republicans who vote GOP anyway.

Will Dems figure it out?  They making a strong case in 2018 with more women and more diverse candidates across the board.  We'll see if they can win again.