It started when one person wrote this diary, making the argument common among white progressive circles that the Democratic Party lost populists (as well as Americans in general) because they dropped economic populism in favor of "identity politics". Then another person wrote a rebuttal stating that the Democrats' embrace of civil rights is what made the (white) people leave the party. Then the first diarist wrote a response to the rebuttal.
Where do I stand? Go past the Populist Cheez Wiz spirogyra to find out.
The "Democrats lost white people and turned them into non-voters by going corporate" argument has at least three major flaws:
1) It doesn't account for the ever-rightward push of the mainstream US media, and the loss of unions as alternate sources of information for working-class white men. (Don't discount the loss of unions and their newsletters as a counterweight to right-wing propaganda, especially since the American mass media, after decades of work by guys like Bill Simon and the Olin Foundation, not to mention Roger Ailes, tilted far more to the right on economic issues than it's been since before FDR took office.) The average American is a lot LESS well informed about his or her economic rights than his or her parents (not to mention grandparents) were about theirs.
Wanna know how many non-voters in 2008 stayed at home for high-minded reasons such as "not liking the candidates or issues", thus implying that they'd actually made something resembling an informed decision not to vote?
12.9%. That's all.
But you'd never know that from all the talk from all the people who think that white Americans would all become Eugene Debs if people just talked to them to the right way. Most white Americans don't have a chance in Hell of becoming Eugene Debs, and the following is why:
2) The diarist ignores the resounding success the GOP has had with the Southern Strategy, developed as a way to make electoral capital in the South and discovered to be very successful in white-flight exurb enclaves elsewhere in America.
As BBB, DROzone, and others have stated, the white flight from the Democratic Party predates the Clintons or even Jimmy Carter (and anyone here besides me remember how Teddy Kennedy handed the White House to Ronald Reagan in 1980 with his incredibly destructive purity primary against Carter?). It can, in fact, be traced back to something that its instigator knew would cause the white exodus:
The signing of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts.
LBJ said, after he'd signed them, that he had "lost the South for a generation." LBJ was an optimist. He didn't just lose the South, but Northern whites in white-flight suburbs as well. And he didn't just lose them for one generation, but three and counting. After over fifty years, the attitudes of the white-flighters have, if anything, hardened -- and that's because of the Southern Strategy and the plan set in motion by Republican activists like Lewis Powell and William Simon to gain control, not just of the media, but of our schools, universities, and research facilities as well -- anything that is an arbiter of how the public views reality.
They are holed up in their exurb enclaves, watching FOX News, listening to Rush or Glenn Beck or any of an infinite number of right-wing screamers who are often secretly subsidized by rich conservatives as part of the "wingnut welfare" gravy train.
And that leads to the third flaw:
3) It ignores the evidence that the rightward turn of white Americans is directly connected to their resentment of any aid that government is believed to give to nonwhites:
MANY Americans are skeptical about government spending on social programs, and they cite a litany of familiar reasons: big government programs aren’t effective, they are vulnerable to waste and abuse, and they run counter to the libertarian, self-reliant spirit of the nation’s founders.
But a growing body of research suggests that America’s antipathy toward big government has another, less-often-acknowledged underpinning: the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity.
Recent studies by economists and other social scientists have found that this mix tends to undermine support for government spending on “public goods” of all types, whether health care, roads or welfare programs for the disadvantaged.
Some of these studies suggest that America’s rich diversity — not only ethnic and racial but also religious and linguistic — goes a long way toward explaining why government spending on social welfare programs is much lower than it is in the more homogeneous nations of Europe. Other studies have found that within the United States, local support for various types of public spending falls as diversity rises.
“Racial divisions and ethnic divisions reduce incentives for people to be generous to others through social welfare,” said Alberto Alesina, a professor of economics at Harvard. “This is very unfortunate. But as social scientists, we can’t close our eyes to something we don’t like.”
[...]
In a 1997 study, Mr. Alesina, along with Reza Baqir, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, and William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University, looked at the relationship between social spending and ethnic diversity in 2,700 cities, counties and metropolitan areas across the United States.
They found that in more diverse cities and counties, the share of local government spending on public goods — in this case, roads, sewage treatment, trash clearance and education — was generally lower than it was in more homogeneous localities. “Our results are consistent with the idea that white majorities vote to reduce the supply of productive public goods as the share of blacks and other minorities increases,” they wrote.
Emphasis mine.
FDR himself recognized that the New Deal would never pass Congress, much less be accepted by most white Americans, if it were seen to benefit nonwhites in any way, shape, or form. That's why he soft-pedaled certain parts of it, especially in the South. It took Lyndon Baines Johnson to bring the New Deal to nonwhites, with his "Great Society" program and his Voting and Civil Rights Acts -- and he knew full well that this would mean losing the South for a generation (much longer, as it turns out).
But should we turn back the clock? No.
Even if it weren't amoral to jettison nonwhites, LGBTs, and women, it would be stupid politics as well. Demographics are on the side of justice, and even the worst gerrymandering in the world can't keep the white-power party in power forever. Even the return of Jim Crow -- a return that has been spotty and in several states successfully turned back -- can't do it.
What it does mean is that progressives have to be clear-eyed and realistic about why things are the way they are, or they won't ever be able to figure how how to change them for the better.