When Republicans Were Progressives–A Story of a Different Party and a Different Era

Minnesota is a DFL state.  Republicans are conservatives.  These are assumed to be two political truths.  Yet both are subject to qualification and David Durenberger’s When Republicans  Were Progressive, is  a recent book which tells not just a story about Minnesota politics both also one about the transformation of Republican Party politics both in Minnesota and nationally.  It is story about a party that Durenberger would say he did not leave but which left him and its values.  But in telling this story he also writes a book that, while it should be taken as a warning by Republicans, is instead being criticized by many of them.
I have known David Durenberger since the 1990s when I was with Common Cause Minnesota. I always considered him an ally on campaign finance reform and ethics in government.  We have penned essays together on ranked choice voting, and I place him among the Republicans I grew up with, worked with, or  admired, including Jacob Javits, William Scranton, and Nelson Rockefeller.  I knew a Republican Party that embraced government as a partner with the people to solve problems.  It was a party that built higher education, fought the Cold War, supported the War on poverty, and  cared about the poor and middle class. This is the party that David Durenberger represents, and he wants to tell about this party in Minnesota politics.
A conventional story of modern Minnesota politics would begin on April 15, 1944.  It was then the Farmer-Labor Party merged with Democratic Party to transform it into the dominant party in the state.  Prior to then, the Republican party was the major party, with the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties splitting votes, often unable to capture state-wide offices in Minnesota.  But the merger, affected by Hubert Humphrey, ushered in a new era of Minnesota politics, often seen as dominated by DFL figures such as Humphrey and son Skip, Orville Freeman and his son Mike, Walter Mondale and his son Ted, and other politicians such as Olaf Martin Sabo, Nick Coleman, Wendell Anderson, Rudy Perpich, Sandy Keith, Roger Moe, and Paul Wellstone, just to name a few.   This is the lineage connected to the 1970s Minnesota Miracle that changed tax, political, and social policies regarding education, transportation, and so much more in Minnesota. It is a Minnesota that defines itself as DFL and progressive.
But there is another side to the story and Durenberger tells it as party of an autobiography for himself, the Minnesota Republican party, and the state.  It is a story of how he as a Republican US senator were part of Minnesota history, and they too were once seen as progressives.  His book begins with Harold Stassen in the 1930s as governor helping to lead Minnesota out of the Depression.  It discusses Governor Luther Youngdahl seeking to address problems of racial discrimination in the later 1940s and 1950s, Elmer Anderson in the state legislature and as governor championing the plight of those with mental illness (or fighting for fair housing) in the 1960s, and others such as Bill Frenzel, Harold LeVander, Al Quie, George Pillsbury, Arnie Carlson, and David Durenberger himself as US Senator.
The story Durenberger wants to tell is that at one time the Republican Party looked very different than it does today.  Today’s Republican party under Donald Trump is one that mostly of older white males, evangelicals, located in rural areas who oppose taxes, immigrants, reproductive rights, and civil rights in general, that was not always true. It was a party, at least in Minnesota, that was a partner in leading many of the major reforms that made the state what it is today in terms of leader.  Durenberger wants this message to come out and it does in this book, but he also laments the changes that have transformed his party statewide and nationally
Reading the book one learns an amazing amount about Minnesota and Republican Party politics.  But the real value in the book is in asking a more fundamental question–What has happened to the Republican Party?  How could a party, once a 150 years ago be the party of Abraham Lincoln and civil rights, or of Teddy Roosevelt and environmentalism, be the party of Trump it is now?  For those of us who believe there is a need for at least two if not more responsible parties, who have many Republican heros, and who think the American politics would benefit from a new political realignment that moves us away from the current partisan polarization, understanding what has happened to the party that David Durenberger yearns for is an important question to ponder.  Clearly the Democratic Party embracing civil rights and identity politics, both parties ignoring the enormous economic consequences of deindustrialization, globalization, geographic sorting, technology, and the exploding  gap between the rich and poor are part of the story. 
But the Republican Party of Trump is one that plays on fear, anger, resentment, and an “us versus them” politics that has managed to tap into the most base of human emotions.  It is a party whose embrace of these issues that, while it may have won in 2016, it lost badly in 2018 (both in Democrats winning the US and Minnesota Houses, picking up many governorships, and getting far more votes for the US Senate than did Republicans despite the latter picking two seats) and is on a long term demographic extinction as the coming generation of voters (young, suburban female, and people of  color) identify as Democrats.  If the Republicans continue on the current trajectory, they will face increasingly difficulty winning statewide Minnesota elections and even victory in the legislature.
This is the message that Durenberger wants to communicate.    In a sense, When Republicans were Progressive is an apologia and a warning.  But in offering both the author talks not of a party he walked away from, but a party that walked away from its values.  Contemporary Republican criticism of the book confirms the very point Durenberger wants to make.

Sheryl Sandberg, Nancy Pelosi, and the Suburbanization of the Democratic Party

By now as all the post-2018 midterm elections have made clear, the Democratic Party’s blue wave was driven in larger part by female voters in middle class to affluent suburbs.  The question now to be answered is what will be the policy consequences of this?    Of course starting in January one will find out, with the question being will women do politics differently than men or will they conform to the rules of power that confront them?  The answer may be a little bit of both, but it is important to understand the perspective that the female suburbanization of the Democratic Party offers, and perhaps how the experiences of Sheryl Sandberg and Nancy Pelosi tell us something about what difference women do or do not make in the world of work and politics.
The question of whether women offer a unique perspective started with Carol Gilligan’s 1982 In a Different Voice.  It argued that men and women morally perceive the world in different ways, with the former depicting it in a hierarchical, right/wrong, black/white way versus a more nuanced  relational way.  Gilligan’s work was a landmark in psychology, paralleled by Mary Field Belenky’s, et al, 1986 Women’s Ways of Knowing and  Deborah Tannen’s 1990 You Just Don’t Understand,  which described the unique ways women come to learn, know, and communicate.  The core arguments for all three, and subsequent feminist writers, was that the unique experiences of women compared to men provide a female perspective in critical activities in life.  Men and women performing similar functions do things differently, might be one way to capture this idea.
Politically the argument would be that female legislatures would do politics differently, both in terms of style and policy agenda.  Margaret Conway’s 1995 Women and Public Policy noted important differences along these fronts, and since then other scholars have found contrasting ways men and women politically engage or act as public officials.  However, as other scholars, such as Robin West, have noted, lumping all women together in one group is stereotyping–there are important differences in perspectives among women based on race and class, for example. This is the concept of intersectionality recognizing the interplay of gender along with race, class, and sexual orientation,  for example. Much, but certainly not all of the  political research has focused on middle class white women, ignoring important perspective and policy differences that may divide women across a range of variables that also divide men.  Enter Sandberg and Pelosi.
Sandberg is a feminist icon to some for her book Lean In and claims that women should take charge.  Yet as many critics point out, she spoke with the voice of white affluent privilege, largely  ignoring the circumstances that women of color and less modest means face.  Her book was a claim that women would do business differently, but as the recent NY Times expose on Facebook and she revealed, it is hard to see how Sandberg brought a different way of doing business to the corporate world.  She adopted the same techniques and perhaps dirty tricks that men used when Facebook was challenged.
Nancy Pelosi ranks among the richest members of Congress, with net wealth estimated at nearly $30 million.  She is the former Speaker of the House, skilled legislatively, as a fundraiser, and as a leader.  It is hard to argue that her career has demonstrated a real difference compared to men in terms of the work she has done.  However both she and Sandberg are accomplished and represent one important perspective of women, but it is far from clear that they represent transformative figures that embody a unique female perspective.  They changed their worlds and conformed at the same time.
Why is all this significant?  The suburban blue wave that occurred on election day was one driven by affluent white women.  When it comes to partisan politics and policy,  the Democratic Party is largely being remade in the image of this powerful group of women.  If these women are the drivers of the Democratic Party now, their views should inevitably come to dominate as they take ownership of the party. Almost anyone, except former governor Chris Christie, gets this.  Sunday on ABC’s This Week when asked if it was a problem that women were not joining the Republican Party, he said they were welcome so long as they “believe in Republican philosophies and Republican approaches to government.”  Christie apparently thinks he and his other white male friends own the Republican  Party, define its orthodoxy, and that its principles are immutable.  Such an attitude is a recipe for political extinction.
The new Democratic Party will evolve;  it  is a party of women who share affinities with Sandberg and Pelosi.  It will be a perspective representing one set of middle to upper income values, but it is not clear that the interests served will necessarily be as progressive or as representative of the interests of the poor and people of color as some might think.  The challenge for the new Democratic Party will be how to hold together a constituency that contains suburban white women, people of color, urban liberals, and perhaps the poor.  These three sets of values are not necessarily compatible, and the challenge facing this new suburbanization of the Democratic Party is to ask whose preferences are not only included by excluded, and whether the female vote will really be transformative.

One Minnesota: Putting Words to Action Through a Small Town and Regional Investment Act

Tim Walz was elected governor on the slogan of “One Minnesota.”  At a time when the country and 22 of the 87 counties in Minnesota–better than Clinton did in 2016, but still not a majority of the geography of the state.  Most of his votes came from the Metro region and in many parts of greater Minnesota he lost counties by way more than 30%.  Minnesota is still deeply divided, proof also residing in the only state in the country with split partisan control of its legislature. 
Minnesota are deeply divided, such a message produced the first double-digit for a gubernatorial candidate since 1994.  Yet Walz still only won
The next challenge is putting words to action, formulating decisions in a way that unites the state, and developing policies that address needs not just of the constituencies who voted for Walz and Democrats, but everyone.  A starting step would be to enact a state version of a bill Congressman Tim Walz introduced into Congress this year--The “Small Town and Regional Vitality Act of 2018” (H.R. 6383).
In the spring 2018 I was teaching Urban Politics at Hamline University and I wanted my students to get engaged in real policy work and outside the classroom activities to enhance their learning.  Planning and economic development are passions of mine.  I used to be a city director of code enforcement, zoning, and planning, worked as a housing and economic planner, have assisted local governments with comprehensive plans and economic planning, and taught economic development at the graduate level at Hamline and the Humphrey School.  I contacted colleagues at the Minnesota Chapter of the American Planning Association to find projects for my students.
One of the projects involved an organization working with Tim Walz’s office.  Walz was doing some community engagement work with his constituents to find out their needs and concerns.  I had a chance to meet with Josh Syrjamaki, Chief of Staff for Walz.  In one of our conversations about the economic challenges that rural America and Minnesota faced I argued that one of the glaring failures of national and state policy was that there was no economic development plan for rural area.  The result was that more and more people would be forced to leave rural areas, further burdening metro areas like the Twin Cities.  Josh asked me what I would do, and I suggested that Congress needed to pass a rural capital investment and fund that would give rural areas the resources they need to address local infrastructure needs.  It would provide 85% federal funds, 10% state, and 5% local matching.  It would tie funds to local economic development plans and community planning and engagement.  The bill would provide significant local discretion to make capital investments but require a real plan and community engagement to define these plans.  In many ways, the bill I suggested would combine the best features of the very successful Rural Electrification Act of te 1930s  and the community development programs of the 1970s.
Josh loved the idea and so did Walz.  The result was the drafting of The “Small Town and Regional Vitality Act of 2018” (H.R. 6383).  The Mankato Free Press endorsed it but unfortunately the bill went nowhere given the partisan atmosphere of a Washington election year.
As governor I hope Walz considers adoption of a state version of this bill.  A Minnesota Small Town and Regional Vitality Act of 2019 would be a first good step at creating a One Minnesota by investing in our rural areas.  But even more could be done in terms of developing a real economic and infrastructure development plan for Minnesota that reveals the linkages between the different parts of the state.  Such a plan would really show that Minnesota is one and that all of the parts are really connected to one another.

What the 2018 Elections Meant Nationally and In Minnesota

Q: What is your analysis of this election?
The 2018 Trump and 2010 Obama midterm results are parallel elections in contrast. While in both years the sitting president was not officially on the ballot, nonetheless it was a referendum on them.  Both elections signaled partial repudiation of a sitting president and his party,  how divided the country is politically, and how the results did and likely will not break the gridlock in the country.
In 2010 the Obama presidency was repudiated at the polls by what the president did and did not do.  He bailed out the banks during the height of the economic crisis, but failed to help homeowners, unions, and others who supported him.  He took his base for granted and assumed they would show up to vote but they did not. He was repudiated in an election frustrated by a demand for change that did not occur, but his party also lost because much of the public thought they overreached.
Trump lost in 2018  for the very reasons why he won two years ago.  In 2016 Trump successfully appealed to the backlash against identity politics by making his own appeal to identity politics. He played on fear and prejudice two years ago, benefiting from the racial backlash against Barack Obama and also from the sexism and mediocrity of the presidential campaign that Hillary Clinton had waged.  He won because he tapped into the anxieties and anger of an electorate that had largely been ignored by the economy, Democrats, and the establishment Republicans, and he benefited from a sense of complacency that the Democrats had in thinking that a person like Trump could never win.  Trump’s win was also a product of geography and an electoral college that over-weighted votes from rural areas.
But in 2018 many of these conditions worked against him, or simply did not exist.  Officially it was not a presidential election but everyone knew it was a referendum on Trump.  But this time there was no electoral college to over-weigh rural votes, instead the geography of the election was not on swing states but instead on swing congressional districts where the battle line was in affluent and well-educated districts where suburban women, repulsed by the sexist and racist campaign that Trump waged, showed up this time to vote against him. Moreover, in 2018 there was no Hillary Clinton on the ballot to run against, reducing Trump’s electorate to a core base of voters that was far smaller than it was two years ago at a time when the Democratic voted in greater disciple and numbers than two years earlier. The result was that Democrats took control of the US House, leaving the Senate with the Republicans and a presidency with Trump.  The most likely scenario is political gridlock.

Q: With the results so far, how is the US Congress changed?

Democrats had a good night in recapturing the House as expected while the Republicans strengthened their control over the Senate.  There were no surprises here.  The US was never really within grasp of the Democrats, with them having to defend 26 seats to the Republicans 9, and many of the Democrat seats were instates Trump won.    In terms of the House, Republicans had to defend a lot more seats, especially in affluent suburbs, and this is where the Democrats had their strength among women responding to and motivated by the Me Too movement.

The Republican Senate is more conservative than the current one and the Democratic House more liberal than the current one.  Politically the two chambers are moving in opposite directions.

Q: How was this election for the Republican Party?  The Senate is a bright spot for the Republicans as well as holding on to some very close governorships.  Trump and the Republican Party will be able to point to these victories–including taking some senate seats from Democrats–as a sign of a victory and not a total rejection of the president and their party.

Q: How was this election for the Democratic Party?
This was mostly a good night for the Democrats.  They took the House ass expected, won some major governorships and legislatures, and also forced the Republicans to defend some critical seats that should have been easy wins, such as in Georgia.  More importantly, with the control of the House they have new leverage against the president.

Q: Where were young voters (under age 30) in this election?
Approximately 17% of the population is between age 18 and 29.   Exit polls suggest that 13% of the voters were under the age of 30 on Tuesday.  Generally one can say that the Gen Zs and Millennials appeared to show up almost in proportion to their population.  However, we do not have precise enough data to really say how Gen Z did, but a good hypothesis based on preliminary data is that their showed up more than two years ago.

Q: Is the Midwest still the Trump stronghold?

Yes and no.  Trump and Republicans hold pick up in Missouri and North Dakota but election returns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan suggest a resurgent Democratic Party support.  The Midwest is not solidly moving toward Trump and Republicans and this suggests a more complicated 2020 strategy for Trump.

Q: Political scientists talk of critical elections and realignments?  Did this happen?
In 2016 and now 2018 we are seeing a significant shift in the political bases of the Democratic and Republican parties.  Democrats have all but lost rural America and appear to be losing white males without college education.  Democrats are becoming a party of educated women in suburbs and urban liberals.  This shift in base means a shift in politics.

Q: What do Democrats do next?
Their first choice is whether to make Pelosi speaker again. The liberals may want this but if they do that, it plays into Trump and the Republican hands who will run against her in 2020.  The second choice is what is their agenda.  Do they push for investigations against Trump or move their policy agenda.  The former strategy is about pushing impeachment and doing other investigations.  This is an important check but if it dominates the Democrats strategy then they are set up as obstructionists in 2020.  The alternative strategy is pass their entire agenda, send to the Senate and the president, and force them to respond.  If it is passed, great, if not, run on this agenda in 2020.

Q: What's next in the last two years of Donald Trump's presidency?
Gridlock, gridlock, and gridlock.  Policy wise little gets done and now the president will fact incredible scrutiny from Democrats.  I doubt Trump changes his strategy and becomes more conciliatory.  That is not his political instinct.  But this is a problem.  If the president and Trump cannot win over suburban women their base remains narrow and the road to victory in 2020 is difficult.

Q: How does the election affect US foreign policy?
Very little.  Presidents have far more power internationally than domestically and I see no basic change in what Trump will do.


Q: What are other key points of this election that you would highlight?  This election now sets up the 2020 presidential election.  In places the president in a new position that will expose his weaknesses.  The election changes the political geography for the two parties, and it also makes it easier for the special prosecutor to do his job, thereby exposing Trump to more scrutiny from him and the Democrats.

Q:  What happened in Minnesota and Why?
Minnesota proved to be a mirror of national politics in many ways but not others. Minnesota Republicans tried to nationalize the state elections by running on immigration, but as former US House Speaker Tip O’Neill once said, all politics is local.  Issues that play well nationally don’t always play well locally, and in part that is why statewide Democrats did well.  Minnesota with four swing congressional districts showed it was a major battle ground which helped decide control of Congress. Minnesota largely followed the pattern of national politics where Democrats won the suburbs and Republicans did well in the rural areas, and one can predict that the Iron Range is now permanently lost to the DFL, perhaps turning the Democratic Party ever more into an urban metro party. And the key to success for Democrats taking control of the state house also was through the affluent suburbs, producing a Minnesota pattern of divided government that parallels national politics.

One result of the election is that with five new members of Congress, Minnesota will have one of the least senior congressional delegations in the nation.  However, Colin Peterson will head up the House Ag committee and Betty McCollum will have an important leadership position too.

The Politics of 1968 and 2018: Parallels and Divergences, Tragedy and Farce

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

It was an ugly election, marred by a partisanly-divided nation torn by generational divides and broader undercurrents of world politics.  Overt appeals to racism were made  to play on the insecurities, anxieties, fear, and perhaps hatred of a group of people sensing that their world was crumbling and that a new Weltanschauung was emerging. They were looking for a scapegoat, someone to blame.  It was an election where leading up to it demonstrations, often violent, had torn the country, and where violence itself defined the election up to the closing days.  It was an election everyone knew or sensed would be significant, and one where no matter what happened the country would remain divided.

Was that election 1968 or 2018?  The parallels are powerful and eerie. Much of what is taking place in the 2018 US midterm elections recall parallel conditions found in 1968. While there is no official presidential election this year, in reality the only issue is Trump–it is a referendum on him. Both 1968 and 2018 were or are critical elections that will have lasting impact on US and perhaps world  politics, and both represent clashes of generations and ideas at a scale one only sees perhaps at epochal points in history as we see now.  But despite the parallels, there are also profound differences.

1968 and 2018 unfold with contrasting esprit du temps.  1968 was a clenched fist by Black athletes, 2018 was a clenched fist by a white president.  1968 was the spirit of the French Revolution played out, a forward-looking revolutionary moment precipitated by what historian Alex  de Tocqueville contended in L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution a drive for liberty and equality.  1968 was about global movements for freedom–be in the Paris demonstrations, the Prague Spring, or the civil rights and antiwar demonstrations in the United States.  It was a revolutionary moment about  rising expectations clamped down, with a dam finally bursting that lead to a violent clash of forces. If part of 1968 was the revolutionary moment, it also had its Thermidor–the crushing of the Paris demonstrations, the Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia, and the election of Richard Nixon.

Contrarily, the esprit of 2018 is not emancipatory but reactionary.  It is born not of the rising expectations frustrated, but of ressentiment as social critics Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler.  It is a resentment by a white, often rural, older, and Christian cohorts, seeing a world they once controlled pass to others of a different age, skin color, ethnicity, religion (or none) or nationality.  Marian Le Pen, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump are the figure heads for this new reactionary movement that is nativist, racist, and increasingly violent.

For so long I wanted to argue that  the current US political climate was no where near as polarized as the 1960s when leading up to the  American presidential elections one witnessed in a matter of a few years a president assassinated along with his brother (too a presidential candidate) and a civil rights leader.  But Charlottesville last year, the pipebombs mailed to Democrats, the killings at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and two African-Americans killed by in Krogers last week show that the path in the 1960s from partisanship to anger, to hate, and to violence may be repeating itself.

Another parallel is race.  Strangely, 1968 was less about gender than race, but 2018 is about  both race and gender. 2018 will be decided by women, by MeToo, by Brett Kavanaugh and Susan Ford.  But if in 1903 W.E. Du Bois was correct in arguing that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line,” the 1960s was ground zero for that line.

The 1960s was the decade of race, the riots of 1966 and the burning of  American central cities.  But it was also the candidacy of George Wallace for US president, running on a white supremacist platform of  “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” that was inspired by a 1962 speech he had given when he resisted the integration of Alabama schools.  Wallace ran an overt racist campaign.  Trump is doing the same.

Some will say 2018 is the most openly racist election since the 1988 Willie Horton ads, but by comparison the latter was no where near as dominated by race as 1968 or 2018.  (2016 was the most sexist since 1984 when in the latter Geraldine Ferraro ran as vice-president).  Yes all three juxtaposed race, law and order, and class insecurities, but the degree to which Trump has overtly and explicitly exploited the three eclipses 1988 to rival  1968.  Wallace’s overt racial appeals, along with Nixon’s implicit ones, torn America as the Democrat Party divided between the Humphrey and McCarthy (and RFK) people  failed to must a majority to win the presidency.  Again in 2018 America est omnis divisa in partes tres–with a strong unified Trump base, a fractured Democratic Party unable to articulate a clear response to him, and a torn shell of a former Republican Party unable to resist the president.  For the  201 elections, alea iacta est, and cast it is with Trump making it about him, law and order, and race.

2018 is both a repeat and a rejection of 1968.  It is the final gasp to fight the battles that one might have thought were won in 1968.  2018 is an election that will have implications perhaps for years much like 1968 did.  Depending on what happens, it may not only be a tragedy as we have seen in terms of the violence and racism, but also a farce in terms of its results.

Postscript: Less literary and poetic, the final days of the 2018 election come down to the themes of Trump, race, gender, and law and order and whether the Democrats or the Trump supporters will be more mobilized and show up at the polls.  As of now the battle is over mostly moving suburban women in affluent suburbs to vote, with secondarily whether young people and people of color (especially Hispanic) show up.  If the latter three do then it will be a good year for Democrats. If I were making a prediction, the Third Congressional District in Minnesota is ground zero for American politics.  If Dean Phillips wins then Democrats take the US House, if Paulsen wins, Republicans retain control.  That race is nearly a perfect picture of the divides of US party politics now and how and why educated suburban women will control the fate of American politics.