Newer Democrats

Newer Democrats view the argument between New and Old Democrats as old hat and unproductive. Their concern is to toughen up the party to beat Bush and take back Congress.
- Ruy Teixeira

The average white working class vote for the Democrats in 1960-64 was 55 percent; in the Nixon elections of 1968-72 and in the Reagan elections of 1980-84 it was 35 percent, a staggering 20 point drop in support from their key constituency.

But as the white working class was changing and moving away from the Democrats, other pro-Democratic constituencies were emerging. The support of professionals, women, and minorities has transformed the Democratic electorate. The older, New Deal Democrats used to be the party of Southern whites, urban ethnics and Midwestern blue-collar workers. Now the Democrats are the party of teachers, nurses and janitors.

The New Deal Democrats used to be based primarily in the Deep South and in the urban North; the new Democratic party's greatest strength is in post-industrial metropolitan areas, or "ideopolises," where 44 percent of the nation's voters now live. These new communities were spawned by the transition to post-industrial capitalism. They specialize in the production of ideas and services. Their workforces are dominated by professionals and by lower-level service workers, many of whom are minorities.

New Democrats like to maintain, of course, that all of Clinton's successes were attributable to following the moderate policies they have advocated since 1985 to correct the party's "liberal fundamentalism" which, as William Galston and Elaine Kamarck argued in The Politics of Evasion:

"the public has come to associate with tax and spending policies that contradict the interests of average families; with welfare policies that foster dependence rather than self-reliance; with softness toward the perpetrators of crime and indifference toward its victims; with ambivalence toward the assertion of American values and interests abroad; and with an adversarial stance toward mainstream moral and cultural values."

Conversely, Gore's failure in 2000 was attributable to the reverse: not following the DLC's great advice, especially his inexplicable emphasis on populist themes after the 2000 Democratic convention. The populist-liberal wing of the party – the descendants of the Old Democrats – strenuously dispute the New Democrats' self-aggrandizing analysis, pointing to the many populist elements of Clinton's successful campaigns, as well as Gore's surge in the polls in 2000 after he adopted his populist stance.