Progressives may be a lot less religious than conservatives, but these days they have reason to think that Providence– or Gaia — has taken on a bluish hue.
From the solid re-election of President Obama, to a host of demographic and social trends, the progressives seem poised to achieve what Ruy Texeira predicted a decade ago: an “emerging Democratic majority”.
Virtually all the groups that backed Obama — singles, millennials, Hispanics, Asians — are all growing bigger while many of the core Republican groups, such as evangelicals and intact families, appear in secular decline.
And then, the Republicans, ham handed themselves, are virtually voiceless (outside of the Murdoch empire) in the mainstream national media.
Whatever the issue that comes up — from Hurricane Sandy to the Newtown shootings or the “fiscal cliffs” — the Republicans, congenitally inept to start with, end up being portrayed as even more oafish.
Not surprising then that progressive boosters feel the wind of inexorability to their backs. Red states, and cities, suggests Richard Florida are simply immature versions of blue state ones; progress means density, urbanity, apartment living and the decline of suburbs. Republicans, he argues, are “at odds with the very logic of urbanism and economic development.”
Yet I am not sure all trends are irredeemingly progressive. For one thing, there’s this little matter of economics. What Florida and the urban boosters often predict means something less progressive than feudalist. The Holy Places of urbanism such as NewYork, San Francisco, Washington DC also suffer some of the worst income inequality, and poverty, of any places in the country.
The now triumphant urban gentry have their townhouses and high-rise lofts, but the service workers who do their dirty work have to log their way by bus or car from the vast American banlieues, either in peripheral parts of the city (think of Brooklyn’s impoverished fringes) or the poorer close-in suburbs. This progressive economy works from the well-placed academics, the trustfunders and hedge funders, but produces little opportunity for a better life for the vast majority of the middle and working class.
The gentry progressives don’t see much hope for the recovery of blue collar manufacturing or construction jobs, and they are adamant in making sure that the potential gusher of energy jobs in the resurgent fossil fuel never materializes, at least in such places as New York and California. The best they can offer the hoi polloi is the prospect of becoming haircutters and dog walkers in cognitively favored places like Silicon Valley. Presumably, given the cost of living there, they will have to get there from the Central Valley or sleep on the streets.
Not surprisingly, this prospect is not exciting many Americans. So instead of heading for the blue paradises, but to lower-cost, those who move now tend towards low-cost, lower-density regions like Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Raleigh. Even while voting blue, they seem to be migrating to red places. Once there, one has to doubt whether they are simply biding their time for Oklahoma City to morph into San Francisco.
In this respect, the class issue so cleverly exploited by the President in the election could prove the potential Achilles heel of today’s gentry progressivism. The Obama-Bernanke-Geithner economy has done little to reverse the relative decline of the middle and working class, whose their share of national income have fallen to record lows. If you don’t work for venture-backed tech firms, coddled, money-for-nearly-free Wall Street or for the government, your income and standard of living has probably declined since the middle of the last decade.
If the main focus of progressives was to promote upward mobility, they would deserve their predicted political hegemony. But current-day leftism is more about style, culture and green consciousness than jobs and opportunity. It’s more Vogue’s Anne Wintour than Harry Truman. Often times the gentry agenda — for example favoring higher housing and energy prices — directly conflicts with the interests of middle and working class families.
The progressive coalition also has little to offer to the private sector small business community, which should be producing jobs as they have in the wake of previous recessions but have failed to do so this time. A recent McKinsey study finds that small business confidence is at a 20 year low, entrepreneurial start-ups have slowed, and with it, the innovation that drives an economy from the ground up.
These economic shortcomings are unlikely to reverse themselves under the Obama progressives. An old Democrat of the Truman and Pat Brown, perhaps even Bill Clinton, genre would be pushing our natural gas revolution, a key to blue-collar rejuvenation, instead of seeking to slow it down. They would be looking to raise revenues from Wall Street plutocrats rather than raise taxes on modestly successful Main Street businesses. A HUD interested in upward mobility and families would be pressing for more detached housing and dispersal of work, not forcing the masses to live in ever smaller, cramped and expensive lodgings.
Over time, the cultural identity and lifestyle politics practiced so brilliantly by the President and his team could begin to wear thin even with their core constituencies. Hispanics, for example, have suffered grievously in the recession — some 28% now live in poverty, the highest of any ethnic group.
It’s possible that the unnatural cohesion between gentry progressives and Latinos will tear asunder. For one thing Hispanics seek out life in suburbs with homes and backyards, and often drive more energy-consuming cars that fit the needs of family and work, notably construction and labor blue collar industries — all targets of the gentry and green agenda.
Arguably the biggest challenge for the blue supremacists may prove the millennials, a group I have called the screwed generation. They have been vulnerable in a torpid recovery following a deep recession since they depend on new jobs or having their elders move to better ones; more than half of those under 25 with college degrees are either looking for work or doing something that doesn’t require tertiary education.
For now, millennials — socially liberal, ethnically diverse and concerned with economic inequality — naturally tilt strongly to the President. Their voting power continue to swell as they enter the electorate. As Morley Winograd and Mike Hais have demonstrated, if they remain, as they predict, solidly Democratic, the future will certainly be colored blue.
But this result is not entirely assured. Now that the first wave of millennials are hitting their thirties, they may not want to remain urban Peter Pans, riding their bikes to their barista jobs, as they age. A growing number will start getting married, looking to buy homes to raise children. The urban developers and gentry progressives may not favor this, preferring instead they remain part of “generation rent” who remain chained to leasing apartments in dense districts.
And then there’s the economy. What happens if in two or four years, millennials find opportunity still lagging? Cliff Zukin, at Rutger’s John J. Heidrich Center for Workforce Development, predicts the young generation will “be permanently depressed and will be on a lower path of income for probably all their life”. One has to wonder if, at some point, they might rebel against that dismal fate. Remember the boomers too once tilted to the left, but moved to the center-right starting with Reagan and have remained that way.
Of course, the blues have one inestimable advantage: a perennially stupid Republican party and a largely clueless, ideologically hidebound conservative movement. Constant missteps on issues like immigration and gay rights could keep even disappointed minority or younger votes in the President’s pocket. You can’t win new adherents by being the party of no and know-nothing. You also have to acknowledge that inequality is real and develop a program to promote upward mobility.
Unless that is done, the new generation and new Americans likely will continue to bow to the blue idols, irrespective to the failures that gentry progressivism all but guarantees.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.
This piece originally appeared at Forbes.com.
Barack Obama photo by Bigstock.
Comments
29 responses to “Is America’s Future Progressive?”
Here’s a prediction: the pendulum will swing back and forth between left and right just as it has throughout American history. On the one hand, the lower middle classes are growing what with low-skilled Latino immigration and the downward mobility of the middle-classes. On the other hand fertility is highest among the most conservative elements of the population. The blue model is proving financially unsustainable, as Walter Russell Mead keeps pointing out — which implies either more misery at the bottom or else more steeply progressive taxation. A lot depends on our governing elites, including, most notably, our economic policy elites ensconced in the universities. For the last forty years they have been remarkably conservative in their proffered advice. Yet the discipline is also remarkably decadent. So who knows?
Luke Lea
Why do we continue to have these dumb articles when Democrats win one election? There is no decades long Demo majority coming. There can’t be. So many have been made fools by Obama and his minions, including the writer of this article.
I will use a word abused and misused by liberals for a while. Unsustainable. Blue America is unsustainable. It may have won some narrow victories (Obama victory was not large by any means and if you remove the voter fraud, likely not a win) but the US cannot and will not be able to have its Democrat “utopia”. It just is unworkable fantasy with no basis in reality.
It comes down to money.
The way that Democrats think money and the economy works is a complete fantasy. The economy is in terrible shape and is only getting worse as time goes on. Reality will overcome any well intentioned idea that “progressives” come up with.
Not are they bankrupting the federal government they are bankrupting small business. I have never seen a more clueless government then the current Democrat leadership, none of which have been in business. It shows so badly.
People cannot live off the government as Margaret Thatcher once said “what do you do when you run out of other peoples money?”.
If anything the nation has gotten only more conservative over the last couple of decades. “Progressive” is hardly a term to describe today’s liberals, who are hardly progressive anymore. If anything they want to go backwards.
Rich, you sure have drunk the right-wing Kool-Aid! lol…
A recent poll showed that 49% of Republicans believe ACORN stole the election for Obama. You’re probably one of them!
Now go back to Drudge and enjoy the mental masturbation.
I actually observed ACORN in action, and filed a complaint with the voter commission. Several people in my state, all Democrats, have been recently convicted of voter fraud for the election in 08. There was massive voter fraud in both 2008 and 2012 all around the nation. Its you that has drunk the Obama kool aid. If Democrats think they have huge majorities, why do they think they need to commit voter fraud? That’s right, they don’t have the majority.
ACORN ceased to be an entity as of 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now
They just go by a new name/names now. Obama still doing business with them.
Which is greener, a printed or digital piece? Naturally it depends on who is being asked. Yearbook Ideas
A recent poll showed that 68% of democrats believe that socialism is preferable to capitalism. You know capitalism, the system that brought mankind a standard-of-living previously unknown. Have fun with the collectivism, we producers will call it a day when we feel we’ve been beaten on sufficiently by the non-producers.
I plead guilty to favoring both a “carbon tax” and more fracking at the same time. But to have a higher carbon tax justice requires an expanded Cal-EITC or something similar that would compensate for the carbon tax for working families. As for higher housing prices, those of the working class that do not own homes yet favor lower prices, whereas those who already do are often “underwater” and waiting for higher housing prices to return – and they are hardly the “elite” unless everyone who already owns a home – and therefore has a vested interest in higher housing prices and the restriction of new building – is part of the “elite.”
Hey Joel,
With which of the three points below do you disagree? They come straight off the Tea Party Patriots website. Keep looking for references to gay marriage, you won’t find them. It’s too bad that disagreement on one or two social issues seems to cloud your view of conservatives. Most of your posts here on New Geography espouse ideas that match strongly with TPP points 1 and 3. The Prog side of you is probably a little uncomfortable with point 2. I sure wish you would seek out some real people in the conservative movement (like Tim Dunn, Eric O’Keefe and Mark Meckler) instead of relying on caricatures from the MSM. The freshest and most “outside the box thinking” with respect to our problems is taking place inside the conservative movement right now. We’ll be here to help clean up the mess when the liberal gentry utopia finally collapses.
As for the stupid Republican party, I agree at the national level (see John Boehner), but what about all the Red State success stories? Ever hear of Scott Walker?
Tea Party Patriots Core Principles
1. FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY means not overspending, and not burdening our children and grandchildren with our bills. In the words of Thomas Jefferson: “the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity [is] swindling futurity on a large scale.” A more fiscally responsible government will take fewer taxes from our paychecks.
2. CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMITED GOVERNMENT means power resides with the people and not with the government. Governing should be done at the most local level possible where it can be held accountable. America’s founders believed that government power should be limited, enumerated, and constrained by our Constitution. The American people make this country great, not our government.
3. FREE MARKET ECONOMICS made America an economic superpower that for at least two centuries provided subsequent generations of Americans more opportunities and higher standards of living. An erosion of our free markets through government intervention is at the heart of America’s current economic decline, stagnating jobs, and spiraling debt and deficits. Failures in government programs and government-controlled financial markets helped spark the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Further government interventions and takeovers have made this Great Recession longer and deeper. A renewed focus on free markets will lead to a more vibrant economy creating jobs and higher standards of living for future generations.
Joel, I think your work is excellent. But, I do want to defend the Republicans as it seems that nobody does including Republicans, both elected Republicans and regular voters. Most people don’t understand what most Conservatives believe and even fewer can actually explain it and defend it. All we really want is for the government is to live within its means as all of us have to do.
But, the point of my post is not to explain our ideology. My point is that the Republicans are not a bunch of dummies as many believe. First, they have a much more difficult job that someone who just plays class warfare and hands out government (taxpayer) money. They have to explain why lower taxes lead to growth and why reasonable regulation (versus over regulation) is needed for a strong economy (see Texas). Since economics and math are two subjects that most people are not very good at, the deck is already stacked against Republicans.
Second, virtually every media outlet is controlled by Liberals or Liberal Sympathizers. How hard is it to communicate a message when nearly every media outlet is reporting inaccuracies about your message? Quite hard. Watch an interview of a Republican and compare it to what questions a Democrat is asked.
Very few Republicans are able to rise above such a hostile media. Reagan could. But, the truth is that Reagan was an elite level politician. Not only could he explain things but he could deal with a hostile media and do it with a smile and rarely be flustered or taken off his message.
Finally, I do believe that this article is very good. The economics of were we are at as a country ($16.4 TRILLION debt with annual deficits of $1.3 TRILLION) will either force a new era of fiscal responsibility or we will eventually go bankrupt. Like Joel who I believe lives in California based on his excellent analysis of that state, I live in a Democrat-controlled state. For almost 20 years since moving to Illinois, I have watched this state melt down, decline and become an economic basket case. I keep wondering when people will start linking economic decline and the Democratic Party but it hasn’t happened yet. At least not here in Illinois. Or California. Or New York.
I’m a mathematician, so the maths and economics aren’t what scare me away from the republicans. What I see from the right is mainly economic dogmatism rather than any kind of reasoned approach (see the current Congressional republicans willing to destroy the country’s economy rather than raise any taxes on the rich). Furthermore, there’s a willingness to apply principles to protect the rich without sufficient attention to protecting the poor and working class, ensuring that we continue to have social mobility in the US. (Again, the current example: willing to raise taxes on the working class but not willing to consider tax hikes on the rich.) It comes across not as sound economic policy but rather as class warfare. Furthermore, the Bush years, with good ol’ boys like Cheney and Rumsfeld at the helm, were economically disastorous; two wars concurrent with massive tax reductions didn’t look to anyone like sound fiscal policy. It wasn’t what I would call an encouraging example.
And alongside this we have the broad range of social issues on which contingents of republicans seem determined to place themselves on the wrong side of history. Including rampant misogyny in the last election cycle (binders full of women, legitimate rape, the war on birth control, and so on), profound racism during the Bush years (‘towel heads’ etc), and on-going homophobia and resistance to gay rights. The party demonstrates itself as extremely non-inclusive, which leads directly to the demographic problems mentioned in the article.
If the repbulican party were legitimately trying to develop sound policy to create jobs across generations and put the country on secure footing, and get rid of all of the social terribleness, they would probably be able to get a much larger share of votes. Unfortunately, the will seems to be to destroy the government rather than effectively govern.
Austin is extremely blue. Austin is extremely liberal. Austin is extremely progressive. It has been so forever. When Texas joined the confederacy, Austin declined. When Texas went red in the 1950’s, Austin went blue and has gotten bluer and bluer. Also Dallas and Houston are going blue since 2000. As well as South Texas. And other parts as well. Soon Texas will be a blue state. Just saying…you could debate some of what I say but it is plain fact that Austin is blue and you guys said it was red which is simply untrue. And the people moving here are moving here because they hear it is progressive (in addition to other reasons). Trust me lived here all my life and I do my homework…look it up learn the facts. Thanks, love light and peace
Yet I am not sure all trends are irredeemingly progressive. For one thing, there’s this little matter of economics. helpful example sympathy message
Hi Joel and all,
This is my first post here. I enjoy many of the things Joel addresses and living in one of the spots of which he speaks highly, DFW, I also have noted that he is one of the few thinkers to recognize the Great Plains culture of this part of the world and what that might bode for the future. There is a matter I think is worth exploring, and that is income inequality. Without getting into income redistribution which seems destined to never work without negative unintended consequences, would the adoption of distributist ideas to expand capital ownership across the social spectrum be an answer? Much as Americans typically have social security accounts, people like Norm Kurland at the Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) have advocated creating capital accounts (CHA) for everyone and using various instruments to fund them including an expansion of ESOPs, Citizen Land Banks, Consumer Stock Ownership Plans (CSOP) for utility customers, etc. Kurland sees this as neither socialism, in its convention definitions (unless you are one of those who see municipal garbage collection as international socialism at its most insidious), nor capitalism–certainly not the cartel capitalism Joel discusses in his articles. Still, it uses the markets to expand ownership. Isn’t this a possibility to address income inequality while growing an economy? Of course, this is not to say that total income equality would be accomplished, that is probably not do-able and the type of authoritarianism needed to force it to happen would be undesirable. But to open doors to regular people to have access to capital markets with appropriate limitations (sorry can’t take the money to the betting tracks!) would seem to me to be an important part of addressing the issue.
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