Who Own The Middle-Class Voter? Owns, Owns!

Ross Douhat and Reihan Salam, who blog at The American Scene, have a piece in the Weekly Standard that looks at why white middle-class voters, much maligned by liberals after the 2004 election for their irrational voting in books such as What's The Matter With Kansas?, were more receptive to the Democrat's message of economic populism this time around:

For Rose, the economic story of recent decades is not one of immiseration but one of dramatic gains for both middle and working-class families. His most striking finding: When you average-out family incomes over 15 years and capture only the peak earning years--from age 26 to 59--fully 60 percent of Americans will live in households making over $60,000 a year, with half of these households making over $85,000. This has meant that more and more workers feel like beneficiaries of the changing economy rather than victims of it--and as a result, feel comfortable voting for the GOP.

So what happened in 2006? Why is left-wing populism suddenly resonating? What's masked by Rose's averaging, and by the general picture of working-class success, are the tremendous fluctuations in annual income created by the globalized economy. This has made economic security, not poverty or prosperity, the central concern of today's working class--whether you're talking about the small business woman who can barely afford health care or the autoworker who's just discovered that his corporate pension is a mirage. And the bad news for the GOP is that the left has begun to figure out how to speak their language. In cutting-edge polemics like Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift, the smartest liberal voices are focusing on voter anxiety about health care and income volatility--anxiety that the GOP hasn't even begun to find a way to address.

The good news for Republicans, on the other hand, is that the left's preferred solution--making America more like Europe through a vast expansion of the tax-and-transfer state--is still extremely unpopular with most voters, which is why Democrats talked up economic security in 2006 but were thin on policy detail. To working-class Americans struggling to figure out how to get ahead in a more competitive economy, when you can expect to change jobs several times in a decade let alone a lifetime, the "Lou Dobbs Democrats" don't have much to offer--a minimum wage increase, a critique of the alleged inequities of small-bore trade deals, and tough talk on border security that will be drowned out in a caucus that's eager to liberalize immigration laws and increase the influx of low-skilled laborers. Once the artfully named bills pass and the signing ceremonies fade into the past, working class voters will probably wonder, as Walter Mondale once put it, "Where's the beef?"

This gap between what the Democrats are promising and what they can deliver offers a renewed opportunity to the GOP. To date, Republicans have failed to come to grips with the issue of economic insecurity, offering table scraps and tax credits in place of real solutions. This signal failure is the reason that the Bush-Rove vision of a lasting Republican majority has hovered just beyond the GOP's reach. It's easy, however, to imagine a renewed "ownership agenda" focused on spreading capital ownership, freeing workers from employer-based health care, rewarding low-wage work, and defending the interests of hard-pressed parents. The question is whether Republicans, in their present state of drift and disarray, will be farsighted enough to embrace it.

In May of 2005, Hugh Hewitt had an essay contest where he asked people to describe what the GOP message should be for the 2006 midterm election. This is part of my entry:

The GOP strategy for 2006 should be to follow up the "ownership society" message that George W. Bush pushed (not aggressively enough in my opinion) in his 2004 reelection campaign. The message is a powerful one that appeals to all Americans, but particularly to young twenty and thirty-somethings that the party has made inroads with already. It also has strong appeal to minorities, who are beginning, however slowly, to realize how hollow the Democrats message of victimization and government as the only answer really is.

It's a message of personal responsibility, individual freedom, and optimism that encapsulates the American Dream. But it needs a little rebranding. Instead of "ownership society" it should be simplified to "It's Yours."

It's your retirement.

It's your health care.

It's your kid's education.

It's your government.

And most of all, it's your country and it's your future.

It's impossible to say that such a message could have prevented the loss of the House and Senate in the recent elections. But, as Douhat and Salam point out, it is a message that at least begins to address the issues of middle-class economic security that the GOP for the most part chose to ignore in 2006. There is no reason that Republicans shouldn't own these issues if they decide to focus on them.