The Democrat's Re-Branding Fiasco

The Russian collusion hoax is wearing thin.  After more than half a year of unsubstantiated charges against President Trump and his team, even Democratic operatives are growing restless.   They realize that they cannot go into the 2018 election cycle with gruel this thin.

And so they have been looking around for a more attractive option.  To this end, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi decided to re-brand the party.  They intend to bring it back to its roots so that it could reclaim the working class voters it lost to the Republicans.

After months of soul-searching—and no doubt numerous focus groups—these so-called “progressives” decided that exhuming the past was better than moving forward.  The party’s new, post-Hillary, slogan would be: A Better Deal.  To this was appended the stimulating mantra: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages.

Evidently the goal was to resurrect a storied history.  Teddy Roosevelt, the original progressive, promised his voters a Square Deal.  His cousin, the much-lionized Franklin Roosevelt, updated this as the New Deal.  Harry Truman followed suit with the Fair Deal.

The programs now expected to implement the revised panacea were also a rehash of days gone by.  As in former years, an array of government regulations and federal spending programs would presumably juice up the economy and spread the wealth.

Of course, eight years of Obama’s reign had produced no such results, nonetheless this time things would be different.  This time the refurbished assurances of a bunch of congressional retreads would work their heralded magic.  With the help of the media, their catchphrases might even sound novel.

The trouble these left-wing reorganizers faced, however, ran deeper than a lack of imagination.  A contradiction built into their Marxist heritage prevented an authentic remedy.  The Democratic establishment had alienated its traditional working class base because it attempted to serve conflicting constituencies.

The old-line Marxists once promised to free wage-slaves from capitalistic oppression.  These enlightened intellectuals would help factory workers pierce their “false consciousness.”  The latter would then rise up to over-throw their bosses and initiate a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Unfortunately most blue-collar workers refused to cooperate.  The more money they made, the less eager they were to kill the industrial golden goose.  Who then would lead the revolution?  The answer came from an unanticipated source.

Marx had assumed there were only two significant classes: The capitalists and the proletarians.  He discounted the middle class as handmaidens of their bosses.  Yet this group later rose to social dominance and in the process split into two opposing sub-classes; the upper middle and the lower middle.

Many in the upper middle identified with Marx’s intelligentsia.  These folks assumed that they had a right to steer communal progress.  Not withstanding their heritage as guardians of the proletariat, they looked with contempt upon the lower middle, which is to say, the working class.  These manual laborers were regarded as vulgar.  After all, they clung to their Bibles and guns.

A substitute for the old-style proletarians thus needed to be found.  An alternative was located in the minorities and poor.  Now these individuals were transformed into oppressed masses who needed to be rescued by well-meaning progressives.  They were, in short, to be furnished with social justice.

Except that this solution excluded the working stiffs.  They got squeezed out because they lost their usefulness to their former protectors.  Despite the repeated pledges of Democratic politicians to build prosperity from the middle out, wages stagnated and jobs were lost.

Worse still, blue-collar types felt disrespected.  Instead of being recognized for the efforts they made to climb out of poverty, their exertions were overlooked.  To the contrary, these workers were asked why they didn’t sacrifice more for folks who were less diligent.  Plainly, the erstwhile reformers pandered to a collection of idle lay-abouts.

 Sooner or later, even the dimmest of laborers were apt to figure this out.  After a while, mere words would no longer satisfy.  Democratic leaders, who wish to entice their once-upon-a-time base with honeyed words, are thus in for a shock.  They will shortly discover that mutually hostile social classes are unlikely to dwell contentedly in a single tent.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University