The traditional example of the Yiddish word “chutzpah” is a kid who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy — because he’s an orphan. Last fall, we got a new one — Republicans claiming to be the party of “change.” Republican ideas have dominated American politics for a generation. With luck, we are watching that long domination unravel.
During the Twentieth Century, especially the last third, America became an unrecognizably freer and more inclusive place. And since the mid-1960′s, the Republican Party has followed a strategy of playing to the “backlash,” the fear and resentment of many Americans with the pace and direction of social and cultural change, to carry out a program of upward redistribution of wealth and power. Voters were promised that, if they elected Republicans, things would go back to the way they used to be — with whites, men, and Christians back on top. Of course, the juggernaut of change never turned aside. People who thought they were voting to ban abortion and restore prayer in the schools were repeatedly disappointed.
The other half of the Republican coalition, on the other hand, got everything it wanted — busted unions, gutted regulations, slashed taxes on the rich, and more and more wealth going to fewer and fewer. For the last thirty years, the country has been dominated by people with an almost religious faith that the “free market” solves all problems, that shrinking government is the answer to every issue. The truth is that, left to itself, the market spins out of control — wasting resources, wrecking the environment, blowing and bursting bubbles, concentrating wealth in a few hands, and depriving ordinary people of what they need to live with dignity. Right now we are surrounded by the consequences of a generation of dismantling the achievements of the Twentieth Century.
It was a winning strategy, but it couldn’t last. American society has gotten comfortable with the new patterns of equality, inclusion, and personal freedom. An entire generation has grown well into adulthood never knowing a time when it was socially unacceptable to live together unmarried. Racial integration, sexual freedom, and gay rights are second nature to them. The country is becoming less and less white, and although the bigots still make a lot of the noise, most religious Americans are fairly tolerant and open-minded. So however much the social conservatives still howl, they have zero chance of prevailing in the long run. Like a dying animal, though, they can still lash out and do a lot of damage, especially to the relatively powerless in our society — homosexuals, young people, the poor. They have to be stopped, at any cost. But their strategy is pretty well played out. The Republicans have painted themselves into a corner.
That’s why there has been a quality of desperation to recent Republican campaigning. Forty-nine state presidential blow-outs have given way to paper-thin margins, eked out with wedge issues, “Swift-boating,” and vote suppression. To the end, the Republicans hoped that there were still enough white racists out there to save them from the meltdown of their philosophy of governing.
After the social conservatives have been repudiated, what will the Republicans have left? Even more tax cuts for the rich? Even lower wages for the rest of us? If elections have to be fought on economic issues, we’ll finally get the things the rest of the developed world takes for granted, such as universal health care, child care, and access to higher education. After that, restoring “traditional values” will go the way of Prohibition and Free Silver — dead political programs.
To be sure, more than a few Democrats have joined in the deregulation craze. Even with a solid Democratic victory last November, there will be a lot of hard campaigning to set the country right. The Democratic Socialists of America have developed an “Economic Justice Agenda” as a good place to start. It calls for (1) restoring progressive taxation and cutting wasteful military spending, (2) bringing in universal health care and other social programs, (3) rebuilding the labor movement, and (4) renegotiating international agreements to include human rights, labor, and environmental protections.
And then the real struggle to build a new America can begin.
