How Democrats Got Away From ‘Third Way’ Politics / David A. Hopkins

How Democrats Got Away From ‘Third Way’ Politics

David A. Hopkins | Bloomberg — Read time: 4 minutes

Democracy Dies in Darkness

How Democrats Got Away From ‘Third Way’ Politics

Analysis by David A. Hopkins | Bloomberg

March 3, 2023 at 2:33 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and Former President Bill Clinton arrive for an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act in the East Room of the White House on February 02, 2023 in Washington, DC. Some Democrats in Congress are calling on Biden to expand access to the FMLA by, in part, including a national 12-week paid family leave system as part of his proposed federal budget. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)

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The era of the New Democrats, who spent four decades seeking to reinvent their party, has finally come to an end. Don’t take my word for it — take it from Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic analyst and consultant who founded the New Democrat Network in 1996. He announced last month that his organization, now known simply as NDN, will soon close its doors.

The shuttering of the NDN seems like an appropriate moment to consider the legacy of the New Democrats, who achieved prominence during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Though their influence over the policy positions of national Democratic leaders remains evident, the New Democrats’ major political achievement — pushing the Democratic Party to expand its base of popular support by adopting a more moderate public image — has, like the faction’s disappearing organizational infrastructure, become a casualty of a changing world.

The New Democrats of the 1980s and 1990s were motivated by both substantive and strategic goals. They claimed that many policy proposals offered by traditional liberals had either failed to solve existing social problems or were unlikely to address the new challenges of a globalizing economy and rising federal deficits. New Democrats also argued that the “big government” approach of the New Deal and Great Society could no longer attract a popular majority after Republicans won three consecutive presidential landslides between 1980 and 1988. To prevail in many Southern or suburban constituencies, they believed, Democratic candidates needed to reassure voters that they represented a more innovative style of politics.

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The New Democrats’ critique of FDR-style liberalism has left an enduring residue in the governing approach of the national Democratic Party. After the 1970s, Democratic policy proposals became less ambitious in their redistributive goals and less reliant on the creation of new bureaucracies. Instead, they often attempted to achieve their aims through tax incentives and partnerships with the private sector.

Former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, for example, expanded health care coverage via the creation of subsidized market competition without overhauling the existing employer-based system that provides insurance to most Americans. While congressional Democrats seeking to increase access to affordable child care in 1971 attempted to create a national network of government-run day care centers, their successors 50 years later instead proposed the public funding of private providers. And every subsequent Democratic presidential candidate has followed Bill Clinton’s lead of promising not to raise taxes on the middle class.

But the New Democrats’ view that candidates need to pick regular public fights with the left as well as the right in order to win electoral support from suburban moderates — a political strategy that was known as “triangulation” during the Clinton presidency — has become less popular over time. It’s difficult today to imagine a Democratic president negotiating a major welfare reform bill with Republican leaders over the frustrated opposition of liberals within his own party, as Clinton did in 1996.

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The subsequent national victories of Obama and Joe Biden demonstrated that Democratic nominees could win the presidency without selling themselves as champions of a political “third way” distinct from both liberalism and conservatism. Meanwhile, the congressional Democratic Party’s increasing reliance on winning suburban seats since the 1990s has neither pushed it in a more moderate direction nor increased internal tensions in what is, by historical standards, an unusually unified party.

Changes in the Republican Party are partially responsible for the decline of the “third way” strategy. The rise of conservative populism during the Tea Party and Trump eras reduced Republican strength in the prosperous suburbs where Democratic candidates once felt the need to distance themselves from the urban left. Rosenberg himself gained attention last year for his confident predictions that Republicans’ continued embrace of Trumpism would limit Democratic losses in the 2022 midterm elections, happily claiming vindication after the results confirmed his expectations.

The political climate that incubated the New Democrat phenomenon has disappeared, but perhaps not permanently. If Republicans gain an enduring electoral advantage in the future, if the Democratic Party’s national reputation becomes associated with socialism or another unpopular cause, or if rising federal debt and inflation produce a popular demand for fiscal moderation, suburban Democratic officeholders may once again feel the need to promote themselves as a distinct faction within their party. But for now, the rise and fall of the New Democrats shows how parties’ ceaseless pursuit of power provides them with a strong incentive to keep changing with the times.