The Democrats’ Social Order Problem

Things fall apart.

WB Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yascha Mounk:

Over the course of my lifetime, a political order that seemed natural and even inevitable has transmogrified into an ancien régime that, even to its most ardent supporters, feels increasingly outmoded. Now, the political forces which don’t in any way feel beholden to that old order have taken power, and are gleefully dismantling it.

Right before our eyes, Humpty Dumpty has tumbled from a great height. For years, he remained suspended in midair, seemingly defying the laws of physics. Now he is about to hit the ground. We don’t yet know the full magnitude of the impact. But it is already clear that all the establishment’s horses and all the establishment’s men won’t be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

David Brooks:

America’s social order has fractured…[A]ll humans need to grow up in a secure container, within which they can craft their lives. The social order consists of a stable family, a safe and coherent neighborhood, a vibrant congregational and civic life, a reliable body of laws, a set of shared values that neighbors can use to build healthy communities and a conviction that there exists moral truth.

Millions of Americans believe [general disorder] is where we are. They see families splinter or never form, neighborhood life decay, churches go empty, friends die of addictions, downtowns become vacant, a national elite grow socially and morally detached. We have privatized morality so that there are no longer shared values. The educated-class institutions have grown increasingly left wing and can sometimes feel like a hostile occupying army to other Americans.

When the social order is healthy, nobody notices; when it is in rubble, it’s all anybody can think about.

I think these gentlemen are on to something. It’s just a fact that most Americans think the social order is falling apart. As David Shor has documented, we live in a country where 78 percent of voters think change is more important than preserving America’s institutions. According to Ipsos polling, 66 percent of Americans flat-out believe “society is broken.” Around the same number believe, “Traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like me,” and 63 percent agree, “Experts in this country don't understand the lives of people like me.”

If the social order problem is as serious as these quotes and survey findings suggest—and I think it is—it raises troubling questions about the current state of the Democratic Party. It’s bad enough that favorability toward the party has hit a 35-year low and that 70 percent of voters think the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the country today. And that swing congressional district voters feel Democrats are “more focused on helping other people than people like me”, don’t respect work, don’t share their values, don’t look out for working people, don’t care about people like them, and don’t have the right priorities. And that working-class voters prefer Republicans to Democrats on representing their values, focusing on the issues they care about, valuing hard work and being patriotic.

What’s worse is that Democrats don’t recognize that underneath these views is the roiling crisis of the social order and voters’ sense that Democrats are utterly useless at resolving it. Why on earth would voters believe Democrats will restore and rebuild the social order when they have seemed so oblivious to the problem, both in their governing practices and in their norm-shattering cultural radicalism and contempt for common sense? Democrats embody the “social and moral detachment” of educated elites alluded to by Brooks, whereby these elites preside over the deteriorating social order and then blame those affected for lashing out in unapproved ways.

That’s why so much of Democrats’ attempt at “reform” rings so hollow. They’re not even asking the right question—how to rebuild the social order—so naturally their solutions see woefully inadequate. Typically they amount to little more than fervently opposing Trump and promising to be a bit less crazy and bit more populist the next time they’re in control. This is not nearly radical enough for the situation. As Brooks also points out, Republicans and Trump, despite their chronic overreach, are at least in the game. Democrats aren’t even on the field.

Naturally, this leads to suspicion in voters’ minds that most Democrats are basically okay with their place in the broken social order, so they just aren’t that motivated to fix it. This suspicion is justified. Democrats’ revealed preference is for the very social order—or lack thereof—that ordinary voters, especially working-class voters, despise. That is why what passes for radicalism in Democratic ranks is advocating more generous—preferably free—social programs, twinned with bracing calls to “fight the oligarchy” and (somehow) bring down the cost of living. The daunting task of rebuilding the social order is simply ignored.

That won’t work going forward, no matter how badly Trump screws up. Sure, Democrats can eke out some narrow electoral wins but the fundamental problem will remain: Democrats aren’t offering voters a social order they want to be a part of. Instead, they are insisting voters must adapt to the currently broken social order and make their way as best they can (with Democrats’ help of course). That is an offer many millions of voters will never accept.

Is there a Democratic radicalism that really could meet the moment. Maybe. But it would have to start from a fundamental acknowledgement that Democrats—not just Republicans—bear grave responsibility for a social order that is collapsing around voters’ ears. As Edward Luce observes:

To many younger voters, particularly men, today’s liberal establishment looks more like a conservative one. Educated elites confect orthodoxy on what we should say and do. The resemblance to high Victorianism is more than passing. Victorians regulated manners and etiquette. They also dreaded the mob.

Expanding religions look for converts. Waning ones hunt down heretics. In form and content, western liberalism is dangerously close to the latter.

Exactly. True radicalism would begin by repudiating that entire mindset and embracing the enormity of the Democratic shortfall in confronting the social order problem. Things fall apart and Democrats are currently just poking around in the wreckage. Only fearless, open debate that admits of no heretics has a prayer of moving forward.