The 'Rightwing Backlash' That Never Was

The consensus is that angry voters are moving rightward. But it's nothing Democrats couldn't fix with a dose of economic populism

by Mark Weisbrot

Then the horror movie scenes began about the dreaded budget deficit, which, over the next decade, is almost entirely attributable to two non-stimulus-related items: Iraq and Afghanistan war spending and the Bush tax cuts. In spite of this well-financed campaign against the scourge of red ink, only 3% of voters see the deficit as the most important issue facing the country, as compared to 32% who chose the economy and 28% for jobs. Somehow, though, the deficit got to be so alarming that it became politically impossible for congress to even talk about another stimulus for the economy. So, very predictably, the recovery lost steam and the Democrats felt just "powerless" to do anything to boost the economy and employment before the election. This guaranteed big losses for their party in the election.

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Republicans were able to keep this country moving to the right for nearly four decades – including through the Clinton years. For much of this time, they used a fake populist appeal based on cultural issues, portraying a "liberal elite" that was contemptuous of the values of working-class white voters – who have generally been the biggest group of swing voters. The strategy succeeded because Democrats refused to make the obvious economic populist appeal to the real interests of these voters – who were getting hammered by the loss of manufacturing jobs, weakening of labour and redistribution of income that was engineered by the leadership of both parties. In 2004, non-college-educated whites with household income of $30,000-50,000 voted for Republicans for congress by a 60-38% margin; in 2006, a switch to a 50-50 split (22 percentage points) contributed significantly to the Democrats' victory in congress.