Book Review/Roger Bybee

Time to Merge Left

With the menace of a second Donald Trump presidency hanging over their heads, progressives are still debating the 2016 electoral catastrophe that elevated Trump, despite his loss by 2.85 million popular votes.

A comprehensive, thoughtful diagnosis of the 2016 disaster and a path forward have never been more vitally important. That’s precisely what Ian Haney Lopez delivers in “Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America” (The New Press: New York, 2019). It is likely to be remembered as the most astute and prescient analysis available as we approach the Nov. 3 election. His chief message: Democrats and the Left must project a powerful progressive message that fuses class and race to reach all segments of working America, labeling racial divisiveness as elites’ most powerful weapon in dominating American society.

Divisive “dog-whistling” — which delivers a jolt of racialized fear while “hiding the racist nature of the messages from the intended audience itself”—has become central to Republican strategy for the past five decades. This has allowed the Republicans to become ever more dedicated to enriching the top 1% through tax, trade, and regulatory policy as it keeps the rest of the rest of the population “divided and distracted. “Dividing the races has been the principal weapon of the rich in the class war they are winning,” Haney Lopez explained in an interview.

It can only be countered by a consistent message explaining how racial division has been so central in keeping the protecting the interests of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Merge Left bases these conclusions on two years of careful study in a partnership with Demos Action, involving a team of researchers and two years of discussions among activists for labor, racial justice, and polling of some 1,500 Americans across the country about how they see race, class, and government. 

On strictly economic issues like the minimum wage, funding for public education and universal healthcare, as Noam Chomsky and others have long noted, a strong majority of Americans hold progressive, even “social democratic” views. However, Republicans and the Right have learned that fighting on the terrain of explicit economic questions is futile, and incessantly diverts attention to racial divisions.

Thus, when the public debate is influenced by divisive reactionary messages blaming problems on immigrants and other minorities is injected into the public debate, there is a profound shift to the right. The rightist message hits home more strongly among persuadable voters than a progressive message based on economics.

Only when class and racial appeals are fused can progressives overcome the emotional impact of a typical divisive dog-whistle approach. As Haney recounts about one experiment, “In Minnesota, messaging attacking “sanctuary cities for criminal illegal aliens” scored well initially. But the research team made headway with a formulation that began: “Minnesotans work hard to provide for our families. Whether white, black or brown, fifth generation or newcomer, we all want to build a better future for all children.”  This fusion of racial and class messages produced a 25% positive turnaround in attitudes.

Consistently, Haney Lopez reports, inclusive messages have been shown to be the only effective appeal to counter the dog-whistled division that the Right will always introduce. “Respondents to our survey were more enthusiastic about progressive policies when specifically told that all racial groups would benefit,” he states.

In short, as Merge Left explains, “focusing on economic populism at the expense of talking racial justice ensures that neither can be achieved. “

“Merge Left” is a powerful call to re-think many conventional theories on how Democrats and progressives should proceed. The Democrats should moderate their positions to win over centrist voters in the Midwest, we often hear from major media and candidates like Amy Klobuchar. This entirely ignores the success of Trump’s primitive but forceful talk about factory closings and trade which captured the despair felt by many.

Others—ranging from Clinton-campaign neoliberals to progressive Nation writer Bryce Covert—suggest that too much attention is focused on the white working class when it is a shrinking part of the electorate. This view utterly fails to acknowledge that, as Haney Lopez states, that “white non-college voters made up 44% of all voters in 2016,” a huge slice far too important to dismiss.

A much broader, inclusive and unashamedly progressive strategy is required. To make progress on goals like non-profit universal healthcare, a Green New Deal, and ending mass incarceration, a fused message on race and class is essential: “Only a sense of linked fate across color lines seems likely to foster the supermajorities necessary the politicians’ dog whistling on behalf of rule by and for the rich.

“The best response to divide-and-conquer is unite-and-build.”

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based labor studies instructor and longtime progressive activist and writer who edited the Racine Labor weekly for 14 years. Email winterbybee@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2020

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