Structure vs Conjuncture: The 2006 elections and the rightward shift

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 43, 2007, Pages 33-59

  Brenner, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33847709433     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (37)

1. By comparison to the House elections of 2004, the Democrats won a swing of 6 per cent of the white male vote, 4 per cent of the white female vote, 5 per cent of 18-29 year olds, 4 per cent of those making less than $50,000, and 6 per cent of those making over $50,000, while maintaining 89 per cent of the Black vote. Democrats made strong inroads in the Midwest, Northeast, South and West, giving a Democratic plurality of 4.4m votes, compared to a Republican plurality of 3.6m in 2002. With respect to 2002, the 2006 mid-terms witnessed a 5.5 per cent shift from Republicans to Democrats.
2. See, for example, Michael Tomasky, 'Dems put the "big tent" back together', Los Angeles Times, 12 November 2006;
3. John Nichols, 'Power Shifts in the States', Nation, 4 December 2006.
4. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 'Iraq Looms Large in Nationalized Election', 5 October 2006, p. 7.
5. Jim VandeHei, 'Republicans Losing the "Security Moms"', Washington Post, 18 August 2006; CNN Exit Polls for the House of Representatives, 2004 and 2006.
6. White evangelicals voted 70 per cent GOP, 28 per cent DP; those attending church at least once a week voted 55 per cent GOP, 43 per cent DP. Though 3-4 per cent fewer voters in these categories went Republican than in 2004, given the overall swing toward the Democrats of 4-5 per cent these small declines cannot be taken as indicative of the longer-run trend.
7. The Republicans had previously attempted to recruit Shuler, a conservative anti-abortionist, for their own ticket, but he was persuaded to run as a Democrat by Rahm Emanuel.
8. Most salient are the Class Action Fairness Act, reducing the effectiveness of class action suits; the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, reducing protection for the country's indebted working class. In addition, the Energy Policy Act, Medicare Prescription Drug Act and Estate Tax Relief Act constituted huge giveaways to oil, pharmaceuticals and the ultra-rich. Republican tax cuts, skewed toward top income brackets, have produced an annual deficit equivalent to 2 per cent of GDP, with obvious implications for social spending.
9. CNN Exit Polls for the House of Representatives, 2006.
10. In the words of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, 'This was a campaign that was run explicitly to be devoid of issues. They never had to outline their own positions. . . which makes it very hard to know exactly where these folks are coming from'. 'Five Myths About the Midterm Elections', Time, 16 November 2006.
11. On the morrow of the vote, some 65 per cent thought that the result was due to dissatisfaction with the Republicans; only 27 per cent believed the Democrats had won by virtue of having better candidates. Democrats won 57 per cent of self-identified 'independent' voters in 2006, compared to 49 per cent in 2004, and 65 per cent of self-styled 'moderates', compared to 56 per cent in 2004. See Marcus Mabry, 'Newsweek Poll: Bush Hits New Low', MSNBC.com, II November 2006; CNN National Exit Polls, 2004 and 2006; 'Centrists Deliver for Democrats', Pew Research Center, 8 November 2006.
12. Chris Bowers, 'Congressional Loyalty Scorecards, Part Four Blue Dog Democrats', MyDD.com.
13. Jonathan Weissman, 'Democrats Find Lessons in GOP Reign', Washington Post, 12 November 2006. For Blue Dog Democrats see the website of Congressman Tanner, a founding member www.house.gov/tanner/blue.htm.
14. Worker militancy reached its zenith in the Great Textile strike of 1934, the successful general strikes in Toledo, San Francisco and Minneapolis of the same year, and the sit-down strikes at General Motors in 1936-37.
15. See especially Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream, London 1986.
16. The Act outlawed secondary boycotts, undercut the union shop, sanctioned statelevel strike-breaking legislation ('right to work' laws), and targeted Communist unions and leaders.
17. On the mid-century decline of the unions, see Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States, Chicago 1987;
18. Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union. A Century of American Labor, Princeton 2002.
19. 'Labor History Symposium', Labor History, vol. 47, no. 4, p. 573,
20. citing Gerald Friedman, Reigniting the Labor Movement, London, forthcoming.
21. Donatella Gatti and Andrew Glyn, 'Welfare States in Hard Times', Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 22, 2006, especially pp. 307-8; OECD Social Expenditures Data Base, 2004.1 wish to thank Andrew Glyn for forwarding this dataset to me.
22. In the following sections I am much indebted to Thomas Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality, New York 1984;
23. Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction. The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics, New York 1991;
24. and Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn, New York 1986.
25. Paul Abramson, John Aldrich and David Rohde, 'Social Forces and the Vote', Change and Continuity in the 2000 and 2002 Elections, Washington, DC 2003, p. 112.
26. Edsall, New Politics of Inequality, pp. 211ff;
27. Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction, pp. 105-6.
28. Gary Jacobson, 'Congressional campaigns', in Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections, 6th edition, New York 2003, p. 65, Figure 4-2.
29. Between 1960 and 1996, the number of Republican representatives from the South increased from 10 to 82 seats, or from 6 to 36 per cent of their total House delegation.
30. Sector by sector, the ratio of Republican to Democratic corporate campaign contributions between 1994 and 2006 increased as follows: agribusiness, from 1.5 : 1 to 2.5:1; construction, from 1.5:1 to 2.5:1; defence, from 0.7:1 to 1.7:1; energy, from 1.3:1 to 3.2:1; health, from 1:1 to 1.8:1; transportation, from 1.3:1 to 2.6:1. The only sector in which the Democrats outdrew the Republicans was telecommunications, although in FIRE the Republican increase was relatively weak, rising only from 0.9:1 to 1.3:1, after peaking at 1.5:1 in 1996. See Center for Responsive Politics, www.opensecrets.org.
31. Source: Congressional Budget Office.
32. Of the Republicans' eleven gains in House seats between 2000 and 2004, ten came from the South. In 1996, when Clinton defeated Dole, the white vote in the South for Dole exceeded that in the North by 7.5 per cent, 14.7 per cent and 17.2 per cent among white voters making less than $30,000 per year, $30,000-$70,000 per year and above $70,000 per year, respectively. But by 2004, when Bush defeated Kerry, the white vote in the South had gone a decisive distance further in a Republican direction, exceeding that in the North by 13 per cent, 17.5 per cent, and 19.7 per cent, respectively, for the same three income categories. I am indebted to Rachel Cohen for assembling these results from exit poll data and for her help in interpreting them.
33. 'GOP Glum as it Struggles to Hold Congress', New York Times, 5 November 2006.
34. Jim VandeHei and Zachary Goldfarb, 'Democrats Split Over Timetable for Troops', Washington Post, 27 August 2006.
35. See John Walsh, 'Election 2006: How Rahm Emanuel Has Rigged a Pro-War Congress', CounterPunch, 14-15 October 2006.
36. The Washington Post describes Hoyer as 'business-friendly . . . a free-trader and a balanced-budget proponent, with strong ties to lobbyists'. Shailagh Murray, 'Political Pragmatism Carried Hoyer to the Top', Washington Post, 17 November 2006.
37. Jonathan Weisman, 'Congress Votes to Extend Tax Cuts', Washington Post, 24 September 2004.