In a two-party system, parties become a bit of everything. This raises the question: What, exactly, is the Democratic Party? Who or what drives it? The blog 538 took a couple of cracks at this. Most notably, Nate Silver wrote about the ‘5 Corners‘ of the Democratic Party. And that’s what I’m going to look at in this post. His colleague Perry Bacon Jr., in a post on Democratic Party politicians, wrote about the party’s ‘Six Wings‘. Does Silver (or Bacon) get it right?
5 Corners of the Democratic Party
Silver thinks there are five groups driving the Democratic Party, which he calls ‘corners’. The groups aren’t mutually exclusive. That it to say, they overlap. Sometimes they overlap quite a bit. But, according to Silver, we can discern enough of a difference to talk about them as such. I’ll describe of each group before evaluating Silver’s model.
Party Loyalists
Lots of people ‘vote blue no matter who‘, and they’re a big part of the Democratic Party. From Joe Manchin on the right to Elizabeth Warren (perhaps even AOC) on the left, they support just about anyone with a ‘D’ next to their name. They’re enough of a force that Silver thinks they’re a large voting bloc in the 2020 primaries.
Politically, Silver sees them as running the gamut from pretty moderate to pretty liberal. They hold conventional Democratic views on, e.g., education and gun control. And while they might support ideas like Medicare for All or a Green New Deal, these aren’t their top issues. Party Loyalists are mostly white and mostly supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries.
The Left
There are lots of highly ideological progressives-to-socialists who want deep change that goes beyond conventional liberalism. Contrary to Party Loyalists, they’re very enthusiastic about Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. And many are turned off by the Democratic Party to the point they identify as independents rather than Democrats.
In something of a non-shocker, this group voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016. And while Elizabeth Warren has made some in-roads among 2016 Sanders supporters, she hasn’t picked up much vote from this camp.
Millennials and Friends
In one sense, it’s obvious what someone like Silver means when he talks about millennials. He means young people. But there’s an ambiguity here. The term ‘millennial’ doesn’t refer to young people per se. It refers to people born sometime in the 1980s or 1990s. Silver himself uses the range of 1982-2004. I’d prefer something more like 1980 or 1985 to 2000.
But whatever. You get the idea. Perhaps this is just a generic group for young people, or perhaps it’s a group for the specific experiences of people born in the 1980s and 1990s regardless of their current age. As millennials get older, we’ll find out. But it won’t matter so much in 2020.
As for Millennials and Friends, Silver sees them as people who get their news online rather than from print (or TV) sources. They care deeply about racial justice, educational access, and climate change. And they prefer change candidates over establishment ones. However, they don’t necessarily vote all that often. They supported Obama in 2008 and Sanders in 2016. For 2020, they lean Sanders, but they’re open to Warren and perhaps other candidates not named Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg.
Black Voters
The next two groups are racial and ethnic minority groups that vote strongly Democratic. As such, black Democrats tend to be more conservative than white Democrats. Why? White voters have more choices. While white conservatives vote Republican, black conservatives still vote Democratic. The GOP brand as the party of racism pushes black conservatives into the Democratic Party camp. And so, the white Democrats who remain in the Democratic Party camp are quite liberal.
Due to these considerations, Silver claims that black Democrats tend to back establishment candidates. And I think the word ‘establishment’ does a lot of work for Silver here. He seems to be using it to mean: (a) candidates well regarded by party leaders; (b) candidates who are more moderate and less liberal; and (c) candidates who are better known, particularly in black communities.
For my part, I’ll note that these claims perhaps work as tendencies but not as iron laws. Black Democrats voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008, at a time when she was the ‘establishment’ candidate in all three of the above senses. Once Obama established in the Iowa caucuses that he could win the nomination, black voters switched to him en masse. And even in 2020, we see black voters strongly supporting both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Biden’s an establishment candidate in all three senses above, but Sanders only in (c).
Hispanic Voters
This is the most ambiguous category, and for several reasons. One, Silver uses the term ‘Hispanic’, where he probably should’ve used ‘Latinx’. I’ll set that issue aside, though there’s plenty to discuss here. Two, Silver waffles on whether to include Asian-Americans in this group to make it a kind of general ‘non-black people of color’ voting bloc.
What’s the dispute? Silver notes that non-black people of color do tend to vote similarly, and not necessarily in the same way as black people, in Democratic Party primaries. He cites in particular the fact that both Latinx and Asian groups tended to prefer Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008 and over Bernie Sanders in 2016. But 2020 is rather more complicated. While Latinx voters tend to prefer Sanders (and, secondarily, Biden), Asian voters tend to prefer Warren (and, secondarily, Biden). And so, we have reason to believe there’s probably no ‘non-black people of color’ voting bloc in 2020.
Silver also notes, correctly I think, a strong generational gap here. Voters over the age of 45 in this group tend to be politically moderate, while voters under 45 (and especially under 30) tend to be very progressive. We can find lots of examples of the latter among the supporters of, say, Julián Castro.
Evaluation of Silver’s 5 Corners
And so, I think Silver’s basically correct with his 5 Corners presentation. At least if we’re talking just about groups of voters and looking at the US through something like a conventional political lens. Yes, there are about 5 Corners. And, yes, they’re about what Silver says they are.
But a few notes.
Silver’s Typology
Silver obviously mixed together various sorts of classification. A couple of the 5 Corners are demographic groups, a couple are ideological groups, etc. Not necessarily the end of the world.
But some things remain unclear even granting this point. Does Silver leave out Asian voters completely, or does he lump them with Latinx voters? We have decent evidence Asian and Latinx voters behaved similarly in 2016, but less evidence this time. In particular, Latinx voters lean heavily toward Bernie Sanders in both money and support, while Asian voters tend to prefer Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren.
And black Democratic Party voters are a very diverse group, probably too diverse to constitute a single corner. Particularly noteworthy is the generational divide between older (Biden) and younger (Harris, Sanders, Warren) black voters. This divide also stretches across the other 5 Corners, with older black voters more likely to be Party Loyalists and younger black voters more likely to be Millennials and Friends and/or The Left.
Alternative Divisions
There are other ways we might divide the Democratic Party. As I mentioned earlier, Perry Bacon Jr. divides it into six wings. In some sense, Perry offers an alternative. Even though they’re technically compatible. Perry’s six wings refer to Democratic Party politicians rather than its voters. But some of those distinctions might filter down to voters.
Other Power Sources?
Here’s where we come back to the ‘conventional political lens’ point. Business interests and various issue groups hold major sway in the Democratic Party, and Silver’s typology doesn’t account for that at all. The tech industry, for example, constitutes a major force in the Democratic Party right now. Many of these power sources draw on a base of voters that’s economically moderate, mostly white, and mostly upper middle income professionals. They’re closest to the Party Loyalists of the 5 Corners, but much less loyal to the party.
While these voters might be a small group overall, they tend to reside in the kinds of suburban House districts Democrats dominated in their 2018 wave. They hold power for two reasons. First, they have a lot of money. And, second, they’re swing voters who probably only recently converted from Republicans to Democrats. Thus, you’ve got a group of pretty conservative Democrats who swing a big bat and probably need their own corner.
What is the Democratic Party?
Let’s conclude with this. The Democratic Party is a collection of about a half dozen voter blocs along with a wide variety of issue and interest groups. It has popular tendencies and some responsiveness to the electorate. But money, corporate power, and pragmatic partisan politics generate it as a force for capital.
In some ways, the party isn’t as bad as it was during the Clinton years, but in other ways it’s worse. And any progress remains incremental and less impressive than one might think. Whereas the party sometimes progresses along lines of inclusiveness or cosmopolitanism, it usually regresses simultaneously on questions of the ownership and distribution of economic power.
