How to Build a Consistent Democratic Majority

Last night as the husband and I baked cookies and other food items that he will use to cater his salon between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, we chatted with our Ralph Northan staffer who has lived with us since July 4th.  The conversation revolved in part about whether he thought he be back in Virginia next year - he is from Florida and leaves us on Tuesday - and what the Democrats needed to do to expand last Tuesday's election victories to Virginia's congressional districts, guaranty Tim Kaine's reelection to the U.S. Senate, and how to turn more states "blue."  In my view (which is based on my experience first as a GOP activist and now as someone actively opposing the toxic agenda of today's GOP), the ground game that Ralph Northam put in place should be replicated next year nationwide, especially in suburban areas.   A column in the New York Times by David Brooks - a long time GOP apologist who far too belatedly became a critic of the Christofascists and and worse elements of the GOP - lays out why this strategy could be the key to making progressive and the Democrats the majority political force going forward.  Here are column excerpts:

We’re all familiar with a certain political geography. Democrats win the cities, Republicans win the rural areas, and the battlegrounds are in the suburbs. In general, Democrats win the denser inner-ring suburbs where there are lots of professionals — doctors, lawyers, teachers. Republicans win the sprawling outer-ring suburbs, where there are lots of office parks and midlevel corporate managers.

Northern Virginia has always embodied this familiar suburban divide. Democrats have done well in inner-ring towns like Arlington. Republicans have done well in outer-ring boomburbs like Loudon County.

But we’re living in an age of global populism, a historic transition as profound as those in 1848, 1905 and 1968. Around the world, the old political divides are being replaced, and political geographies are being redrawn. One way to capture the emerging divide is by using the British writer David Goodhart’s distinction between Somewheres and Anywheres.

Somewheres are rooted in their towns and have “ascribed” identities — Virginia farmer, West Virginia coal miner, Pennsylvania steelworker. Anywheres are at home in the global economy. They derive their identity from portable traits, like education or job skills, and are more likely to move to areas of opportunity.

Somewheres value staying put; they feel uncomfortable with many aspects of cultural and economic change, like mass immigration. Anywheres make educational attainment the gold standard of status and are cheerleaders for restless change.

The thing about this new set of battle lines is this: It redraws the political map. The cities are dominated by Anywheres. The rural areas are dominated by Somewheres. But the growing suburbs are no longer divided. They are Anywhere all the way through. Last Tuesday, exurban Loudoun County went Democratic 60 to 40 percent. That’s nearly the same as inner-ring Fairfax County, which went Democratic 67 to 31 percent. These days, only a tiny percentage of Northern Virginia workers are government employees. Instead, the region is defined by the two big drivers of Anywhere culture: highly educated information age workers and fiercely energetic immigrants. Trump’s party is not at home on this ground and can’t play on it. Trumpians just want to wall it off. “DC should annex NOVA and return the governance of Virginia to Virginians!” Jerry Fallwell Jr. tweeted, referring to Northern Virginia, after the election results.

Populism has made the Republicans a rural party and given the Democrats everything else. In Virginia, Democrats won by a landslide among anybody who grew up in the age of globalization. Among voters 18-29, they won by an astounding 69 to 30 percent. Among voters 30-44, they won by 61 percent to 37 percent.

We could be seeing the creation of a new Democratic heartland, exurbia, and this alignment could hang around for a while.

The Democrats won because the Republicans decided to shrink their coalition. . . . . . The crucial question going forward is what will the Democrats do? Will they make places like Loudon County their heartland, or will they amputate themselves the way the Republicans did, and retreat back to the cities?

Here’s how you can tell which way the Democrats are going. If they talk mostly about oligarchy and rich financiers, they are retreating to their base. But if they talk about mobility — geographic mobility, economic and social mobility, intellectual and spiritual mobility, they are talking the language of the suburbs. And if they have practical plans to enhance universal mobility, the age of Democratic dominance will be at hand.

Trump Opens Up More Opportunities for Democrats

One of the things amazing about this year's presidential election is that in some ways the GOP base has gotten the nominee it wanted as opposed to a more moderate candidate that would be more palatable with moderates and independent voters. The ugly elements of the GOP base, including the Christofascist and white supremacist elements,  have blamed past GOP presidential loses on the fact that the so-called GOP establishment ultimately prevailed in putting forward moderate candidates.  Now that the base got what it wanted, as the New York Times reports, even traditionally Republican areas may be lost to Democrats.  Should Trump lose disastrously, the question will be whether or not the base will learn anything from it.  I suspect not since so much of the GOP base is utterly detached from objective reality.  Here are article highlights:

LEESBURG, Va. — Emboldened by Donald J. Trump’s struggles in the presidential race, Democrats in Congress are laying the groundwork to expand the list of House Republicans they will target for defeat as part of an effort to slash the Republicans’ 30-seat majority and even reclaim control if Mr. Trump falls further.

Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, which has already undermined the party’s grip on the Senate, now threatens to imperil Republican lawmakers even in traditionally conservative districts, according to strategists and officials in both parties involved in the fight for control of the House.

Democrats are particularly enticed by Mr. Trump’s dwindling support in affluent suburban areas — including those near Kansas City, Kan.; San Diego; Orlando, Fla.; and Minneapolis — where Republicans ordinarily win with ease. Mr. Trump is so disliked among college-educated voters, especially white women, that he is at risk of losing by double digits in several districts that the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, carried comfortably.

Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, whose district includes both suburbs and small cities [said] “Because of the nature of the nominee, it’s going to be a lot more competitive than it ought to be.”

Republicans are also bracing to take more forceful steps if Mr. Trump continues to drag down their candidates. Multiple strategists involved in the campaign for control of Congress said Republican outside groups were prepared to run ads treating Mr. Trump as a certain-to-lose candidate and urging voters to elect Republicans as a check on Hillary Clinton.

The stakes are high: Should Mr. Trump lose the presidential race and take the Republicans’ Senate majority with him, handing Democrats the power to break the deadlock over appointees to the Supreme Court, the House could become the party’s last line of defense in Washington.

Republicans fear that Mr. Trump has tainted the party’s brand for any prospective successor in areas without a well-known lawmaker already in place. . . . . At their own donor retreat last week in Jackson Hole, Wyo., House Republicans were frank about the difficulties Mr. Trump had created for their candidates.

Still, strategists for the National Republican Congressional Committee told donors that private polling showed voters were not yet equating vulnerable Republican lawmakers with Mr. Trump directly

What worries Republican strategists is not that suburban voters turned off by Mr. Trump would migrate en masse to Democrats, but that many might not show up on Election Day at all.

Mr. Trump has long faced resistance in suburban areas; during the Republican primaries, he often lost upscale suburbs even in states he carried, like Virginia and Georgia.

The GOP War on the Suburbs

If one looks at the agenda of the modern day Republican Party, its main focus is on tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and a severe slashing of social programs and government infrastructure spending.  Ironically, these policies increasingly attack the suburbs which are the trues battleground for political victory.  Outside of rural areas and wealthy enclaves, it's the suburbs that elect Republicans.  Yet despite this reality, poverty is increasing in suburban areas and the GOP is adverse to any policies that might help the battered middle class.  The question becomes one of when will suburban voters realize that the GOP is actually their enemy.  A piece in Politico looks at the changes over taking the suburbs and the damage being done by the GOP's policies.  Here are excerpts:

[S]uburbs define our politics, too. While city dwellers overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and residents of small towns and rural areas vote for Republicans by large margins, suburbs are the quintessential political battlegrounds.

But now suburbs are helping define another American phenomenon: poverty. Over the past decade, America’s major suburbs have become home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of poor residents in suburbia grew by almost two-thirds, or 64 percent — more than double the pace of poverty growth in the large cities that anchor these regions. For the first time, more poor people in America live in suburbs than in big cities.

Despite poverty’s increasing suburbanization and bipartisan character, it is not exactly catching fire as a key issue on Capitol Hill. One recent debate in which poverty has surfaced most prominently concerns the reauthorization of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, with the House GOP leadership advancing a proposal to cut $40 billion in spending over 10 years. The burden of those cuts would fall more squarely on suburbs than ever now that 55 percent of SNAP participants in major metro areas live in suburbs. Programs like SNAP, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Medicaid already deliver the majority of their benefits to suburban communities, many of which are squarely in the GOP column.

The ways in which the current system approaches initiatives such as neighborhood economic development, community health centers and affordable housing construction are often a poor fit for suburban areas where poverty is more spread out, public and nonprofit capacity is thin and hundreds of small municipalities routinely compete with one another rather than collaborate to address shared challenges like growing poverty.

 

Over the past few decades, poverty has become an increasingly structural feature of the American economy. In all likelihood, suburban poverty is here to stay. The battleground character of suburbs could set the stage for more ideological trench warfare and gridlock over federal anti-poverty policy and a suburban replay of the challenges that have beleaguered our inner cities over the last few decades. Or it could spur a bipartisan effort to convert top-down federal programs of old into support for new bottom-up solutions to urban and suburban poverty alike. The future of suburbs — as an American ideal and political keystone — may hang in the balance.

Is Life In Suburbia Becoming Untenable?

Most of life in the USA outside of central metropolitan areas is based on the automobile and what has heretofore been relatively cheap transportation costs for commuters living in the suburbs and traveling into central cities for employment. As a result, cities like Virginia Beach, Virginia - the most populous city in Virginia - have in essence virtually no public mass transit whatsoever. Other than in limited pockets of the city, an automobile is required to do just about anything whether it be commuting to work, grocery shopping, etc. Moreover, many suburbanites have shifted to massive SUV's - not that they ever use them off road - for the perceived status and other non-utilitarian reasons. Suddenly, $4.00+ gasoline is making this underlying basis for life go to Hell in a hand basket and commuting costs are wreaking havoc on many.

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Will gasoline and energy prices result in a rethinking of the suburban dream? The hand writing has been on the wall for some time - Americans have just refused to see the reality of a changing world and that artificially low US gas prices could not last forever. As a former suburbanite, I love living in an older central city and find little motivation to travel to restaurants or other venues outside of a 3-5 mile radius of home most of the time. My office is less than a 15 minute walk from home. It saves tons of money in terms of gas and wear and tear on my Jeep. This International Herald Tribune story looks at what is beginning to perhaps happen and it suggests that living patterns might not remain the same. Here are some highlights:

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ELIZABETH, Colorado: Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the outer edges of metropolitan areas.

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But life on the distant fringes of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel. The price of propane to heat their spacious house has more than doubled in recent years. Though Boyle finds city life unappealing, it's now up for reconsideration.

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As the realization takes hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a restructuring with lasting consequences, the high cost of fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs. In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to analysis by Moody's Economy.com.

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More than three-fourths of prospective homebuyers are more inclined to live in an urban area because of fuel prices, according to a recent survey of 903 real estate agents with Coldwell Banker, a national brokerage. Some proclaim the unfolding demise of suburbia.

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"It's like an ebbing of this suburban tide," said Joe Cortright, an economist at the consulting group Impresa in Portland, Oregon. "There's going to be this kind of reversal of desirability. Typically, Americans have felt the periphery was most desirable, and now there's going to be a reversion to the center." In a recent study, Cortright found that house prices in the urban centers of Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland and Tampa have fared significantly better than those in the suburbs. So-called exurbs - communities sprouting on the distant edges of metropolitan areas - have suffered worst of all, Cortright found.

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Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists decried suburban sprawl as a waste of land, energy, and tax dollars: Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns.

Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul"

I came across this article in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/02/AR2007060201025.html and it struck a real nerve with me and made me recall my straight life in my upper middle class neighborhood in Virginia Beach (the photo is of my former 5 bedroom 3.5 bath home which apparently is just back on the market). This paragraph of the article in particular struck home:

It's not just suburban life that can leave people feeling like each day brings more of the same: commuting, work, errands, chores, pressure to pay the bills. The quest for more and bigger can breed isolation and stress, leaving some in the region to question their lifestyles.

So much of the focus in that neighborhood was on bigger and more luxurious homes, multiple expensive cars, in-ground pools – in short a quest for “things” to make ones’s life complete. Meanwhile, many of the residents were what my therapist calls “sleep walkers,” going through the motions of life, but not really living life. People worried more about insignificant PTA events, children’s sports or gossip at the neighborhood pool that on the state of politics and/or the direction of the country. Or they worried about things years in the future, forgetting to live life in the present. Few if any of them were Bad people. They just had been hypnotized by societal expectations.

I will admit that for a long time I was to some extent one of the sleep walkers. I do not think I was as zoned out as most - I have always been interested in current events, news and politics. Hence, I do not believe I was ever as oblivious to things as many of those around me. Don’t get me wrong. In many ways it was a great place to raise kids in terms of a safe neighborhood. However, it was very homogenous, with an underlying, unstated message to conform. Perhaps being in the closet and being ever on guard to hide my secret I was more in tune to perceiving these things.

I do know that since (A) coming out of the closet, (B) moving to a much more diverse neighborhood (the b/f and I rehabbed a house in a marginal, but up and coming area), and (C) having to come to self-acceptance while not conforming to straight society's rules, I have met more truly alive and genuine people. True, it may not be the outwardly “perfect” world of my old life, but it is much more interesting and real. Moreover, I have learned that things do not lead to happiness. The real secret is to be who you really are and not feel need to apoligize to any one for being you.