How John Edwards has Changed the Democrats

It is now an acknowledged truth that Howard Dean, even though his candidacy for president was unsuccessful at the ballot box, nonetheless changed the Democratic party for good, showing the party the possibilities of bringing in new voters, new technology, new sources of funding, and an unintimidated spirit of challenge to the right.

As the nomination process seems to be winding swiftly to a conclusion, it's time to argue that Senator John Edwards has done the same, and in fact, his contribution to the party and to modern liberalism may be more important, more daring, and more lasting. His contribution was in challenging the lazy assumption of "universalism" that has dominated the language and program of liberals and Democrats. By this I mean the assumption that successful politics depends on benefits that reach "a huge cross-class constituency," in the words of political scientist Theda Skocpol. It is largely Skocpol and pollster Stan Greenberg, in books and articles such as "The New Majority" who popularized the idea that only programs that benefit the middle class as well as the poor, as Social Security and Medicare do, can be politically successful.

I don't mean to criticize Skocpol, whose work I love and whose research and knowledge is unimpeachable, or Greenberg. But it's really when their historical understanding gets oversimplified in ordinary political practice that it severely narrows the sense of possibility in modern politics. The result of the search for programs that reach "a huge cross-class constituency" in times of fiscal scarcity and hostility to government is thin programs, like Clinton's "micro-initiatives" of the Dick Morris era, that offer a little something for everyone and not much to anyone.

Meanwhile, what this politics missed was the fact that the middle of the middle class in the U.S. was not doing that badly -- at least not during the Clinton boom -- but life has been getting steadily more difficult for the bottom 40% of the population, which is to say not only the very poor but the first rungs of the middle class. The median income for households in this sector is $23,000, and they have gained virtually no income since 1974, while losing significant economic security. While we fixate on the fact that more than 50% of Americans now own stocks or mutual funds, at least 45% do not. Three in ten households has a net worth of less than $10,000.

Of course you'll never hear George Bush, or, sadly, any other Republican mention any of that. You won't hear many Democrats mention it either. They prefer to hit a little closer to the middle, to the stock-owning, voting middle. They want to talk about child care, not Unemployment Insurance and certainly not Food Stamps or Medicaid. Last week, for a project I've been working on, I spoke to someone in Washington who has been very important in organizing opposition to the Bush tax cuts. "Every communications person or pollster we talk to," she said, "tells us that we have to speak to the middle middle of the middle class, and not talk about anything that benefits poor people." She didn't disagree with that judgment, but found it very limiting.

Even the "populism" peddled to candidates Kerry and Gore by Bob Shrum conveys little sense of the degree to which the working poor are screwed in today's economy and how that can be changed. It's about "the people vs. the powerful," that is, it's a populism that's almost entirely about the rich, and only by inference about the people who are really suffering. (I resist even calling this appeal "populism," because it is only vaguely resembles the American tradition of populism, which (1) had an ugly side to it and (2) sprung naturally from the deeply suffering rural poor. It was not just language adopted by ordinary politicians.)

Edwards is the first politician who, when he talks to a room full of middle-class people, doesn't necessarily seem to be promising something to them. Sure, he's a little vague about just where the line is between the "Two Americas" -- it's "the rich and powerful" and "everyone else." But when he gets specific, when he starts talking about the ten-year-old girl who goes to sleep hoping that it isn't as cold tomorrow as today because she doesn't have warm enough clothes -- it's got to be apparent to any audience that he's not talking about what he's going to do for them. He's making a moral claim about what our country owes to those who have the least, not promising something to everyone who "works hard and plays by the rules." And, shocking as it is, that's a big deal. And it matters that it comes from a candidate who is generally perceived as a moderate -- if only because he's a southerner -- rather than the leftmost candidate in the race. Although I think that's a very subtle distinction, and I agree with every word of Joel Rogers' argument in The Nation, "Progressives Should Vote For Edwards".

It also, surprisingly, permits a kind of optimism. The Shrum populism is just a complaint, it doesn't lead to a structural revamping of the economy that would really change the circumstances that the rich and powerful are rich and powerful. Edwards' vision, on the other hand, suggests something that it is within our power to change. We can do something for that ten-year-old girl, we can generate what the folks at the Economic Policy Instittute call "broadly shared prosperity."

Dean's transformation of the Democratic party was largely procedural, though not unimportant. He helped the party see that enthusiasm could be as valuable as converting a swing voter at the 50th percentile. He showed that money could be raised from supporters of any age, income or background, that the only contributors were not those on the Democratic National Committees official list of proven contributors. And he showed how giving up control of a campaign, letting it be driven by its supporters, could generate tremendous enthusiasm. Edwards' campaign has been more conventional in procedure, and in the end, while doing "better than expected," he is still unlikely to be the Democratic nominee. But if Democrats hear his language, the willingness to make a moral claim about what our country should be like, not just what he will do for the middle of the middle, it will be a powerful voice.