It’s the culture, stupid

The broad swath of issues shaping our politics — and our country.

In 2018, the two Minnesota Congressional Districts with the highest median household incomes — the 2nd and 3rd — flipped from Republican to Democrat, while those ranked sixth and seventh out of the eight districts by income — the 1st and 8th — flipped from Democrat to Republican. This illustrates a broader phenomenon that is reshaping American politics, which John Judis and Ruy Teixeira examine in “Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.”

“The Democratic Party has had its greatest success when it sought to represent the common man and woman against the rich and powerful, the people against the elite, and the plebians against the patricians,” Judis and Teixeira write. “[B]ut over the last decades,” they argue:

Democrats have steadily lost the allegiance of “everyday Americans” — the working- and middle-class voters that were at the core of the older New Deal coalition.

This applies to working-class voters of all ethnicities, undermining the Democrats’ hold on minority votes and torpedoing The Emerging Democratic Majority they famously forecast in their 2002 book. They ask: “How did this happen?”

They blame Democrats’ support for: “trade deals that led to factory closings in many small towns and midsize cities…”; “spending bills that the working and middle classes paid for but that were primarily of benefit to poor Americans, many of whom were minorities…”; “immigration of unskilled workers and…opposition to measures that might reduce illegal immigration…”; “Eliminating fossil fuels…”; “abortion rights (and opposition to any restrictions on those rights)…”; “strict gun control…”; “the quest for new identities and lifestyles…and denigration of all those who were not supportive…”; and “the desecration of national symbols, such as the flag or national anthem, to dramatize discontent with injustices.” They also list Democrats’ “opposition to open displays of religiosity” and “use of the courts and regulations to enforce their moral and cultural agenda, whether on the sale of wedding cakes or the use of men’s and women’s bathrooms.”

“The labor movement used to play a dominant role in the Democrats’ shadow party,” Judis and Teixeira write, “the activist groups, think tanks, foundations, publications and websites, and big donors and prestigious intellectuals who are not part of official party organizations, but who influence and are identified with one or the other of the parties.” They claim that “Neoliberalism” — exemplified by NAFTA and China joining the WTO — has crippled American manufacturing, eroding the power of the labor unions. So, unions “had to take second or third place during the Clinton and Obama years to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street, together with various environmental, civil rights, and feminist groups.” Democrats’ focus on these groups has replaced a focus on the concerns of America’s working class.

An entire literary genre exists to explain what’s the matter with Kansas: Why blue-collar Americans vote Republican against their alleged economic interests. The standard answer is that they have been distracted by irrelevant cultural issues.

But cultural issues matter to the other side, too. The voters in U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna’s 17th District in California — where 44 percent of households earn over $200,000 annually, making it the richest district in the country, and gave Kamala Harris 67 percent of its vote in 2024 — are, he tells Judis and Teixeira, “vehemently pro-choice, vehemently pro-gay marriage, vehemently for reasonable gun safety legislation. Yeah, vehemently pro-immigration…and care about the climate.” Nobody argues that they are being bamboozled with irrelevant cultural issues.

This is driving the realignment in American politics. “In almost every election since 2016,” Judis and Teixeira write, “the result has rested on which party is able to best link the other party’s candidate to the cultural radical strands within their party.” This has been easier for Republicans because Democrats have embraced a “post-sixties version of social liberalism, which is tantamount to cultural radicalism,” putting them on the wrong side of a string of 80/20 issues, from defunding the police to boys playing on girls’ sports teams.

Another literary genre exists to lament how the Republican Party became extremists. But, while Judis and Teixeira remain liberals, arguing that “[m]ost of the stands the [Democratic] party and its groups take on issues like race, crime, immigration, climate, sex, and gender have a rational basis and justification,” they conclude that the Democrats have become extremists also: “the radical solutions and censorious outlook advanced by the Democrats’ shadow groups and by some Democratic politicians have been wrong-headed and divisive.” “[T]hey need to declare a truce and find a middle ground in today’s culture war…so that they can once again become the party of the people.”

This warning went unheeded by Democrats in 2024. Looking to 2028, some, like Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, appear to have accepted their analysis. Others, like Gov. Tim Walz, remain wedded to those “wrong-headed and divisive” positions. Which way the Democratic Party goes will be a major factor in that election, and beyond.