The decline of the Democrats

James Bradshaw

February 14, 2024 1 Reaction

Third, there is the range of gender-based issues that the authors cleverly categorise as ‘Sexual Creationism.’

Just as a majority of Americans support the usual legal protections for transgender people, a clear majority also break with the Democratic elite by telling pollsters that gender is determined at birth and that trans athletes should be required to compete in sports categories corresponding to their biological sex.

Last of all, there is the issue of environmental policy, where a clear class divide exists.

While left-wing activists adopt apocalyptic rhetoric in discussing the problem, only 3 percent of respondents in a 2022 Gallup poll said that climate change was the ‘most important problem.’ Working-class voters were far less likely to do so, and they are of course far more likely to be adversely impacted by increased energy costs caused by the shift from fossil fuels to renewables.

For all the talk of green-collar jobs, the authors point out that so far, employment opportunities within the renewable energy sector appear far less attractive than the huge numbers of jobs that still exist in fossil fuel-related industries.

They are also admirably brave in acknowledging that the great majority of the world’s energy consumption is from fossil fuels and that humanity’s overall reliance has barely budged in the last two decades.

Utopian and unachievable policy proposals like the ‘Green New Deal’ plan for America to become carbon neutral by 2030 are not just bad policy; they are bad politics too, considering the number of American swing states where such a plan would cause devastating job losses.

The authors are critical of President Joe Biden for not doing more to check the radicalism of his party, but they do commend him for his pro-union stance and his overall economic agenda.

Biden’s measures to improve America’s infrastructure, accelerate the energy transition and increase the domestic production of all-important semiconductors are notable, they write, for the emphasis that this recent legislation has placed on the need to ‘buy American’, as well as the inclusion of measures designed to boost wages and counteract the effects of regional deindustrialisation.

Considering the scale of Biden’s legislative accomplishments in these areas, it is surprising that they are not discussed more frequently.

This in itself points to the degree to which cultural issues have taken centre stage in American politics.

Spiritual malaise

Interestingly, though they are firmly of the Left, the authors identify a spiritual dimension to the crisis in American society.

“People’s sense of their own self-worth depends on the ways in which they can think of themselves not as isolated collections of cells destined to disintegrate but as people having multiple identities that transcend their own biological individuality. They need affirmation from others, and they need to feel they are part of not only families or neighbourhoods but also larger communities,” they write.

College-educated Americans in large cities, they go on to write, can feel part of the new economic and global order more easily than those living in those smaller and often economically depressed communities where factories, unions and churches are all less vibrant than they were several decades ago.

Donald Trump’s rallying cry to ‘Make America Great Again’ was not for such voters about rolling back the clock on racial equality or other forms of progress. Instead, it was about restoring the widespread prosperity and tranquillity which has been lost.

In several instances, Judis and Teixeira hint at the impact that the secularisation of America has had in propelling progressives in a socially and politically self-destructive direction.

Citing the work of Columbia Professor John McWhorter on racial radicalism, the authors speculate “that the absence of conventional religion and of expected economic opportunity had created among the college-educated young a search for identity, lifestyle, and salvation that had led some into a moralistic radical politics.”

Similarly, they correctly describe today’s environmental movement as having been “hijacked by a millenarian, quasi-religious commitment to rapidly zeroing out fossil fuels and creating a renewables-based economy.”

Though they are also slowly showing a greater willingness to consider Republican candidates, the African-American community offers a useful case-in-point of a stable component of the Democratic coalition.

Disproportionately religious, culturally moderate black voters act as a bulwark against even greater radicalism within a Democratic Party where the ancient quest for community continues to push the rootless towards utopian and even authoritarian causes.

This is not likely to change. As America continues its drift away from Christianity, the main left-wing party is not likely to make its way back towards the centre, no matter how cogently Judis and Teixeira express themselves.

Their book is nonetheless outstanding. As the United States veers towards what could be the most contentious election in the country’s history, these brilliant minds explain better than anyone else exactly why it is surely going to be incredibly close.

James Bradshaw writes on topics including history, culture, film and literature.

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