The Democratic puzzle

Sam Smith - The unprecedented number of Democrats running for president is being defined in some quarters as a sign of the party's revival but there is an alternative and not so cheery analysis: the party has no strong leaders.

What is happening now is further evidence of my view that these days there is no business like show business - except for politics. What is happening in the Democratic Party is more like a TV talent show than a traditional political primary.

Only four of the candidates - Biden, Sanders, Harris and Warren - have hit in the double digits. How long that will last is anyone's  guess, but for most additional beneficiaries it will be more based on new image rather than old record. And as Donald Trump has shown, relying on image can be risky.

Playing one's cards in this sort of game is not easy. My own thought is to give the benefit of the doubt to the candidate who plays best in the country's center as well as on its blue edges. As noted here before, Jack Kennedy is the only Democrat in seventy years to win the presidency from a blue state. This problem gets little attention, especially from blue state liberals who tend to view politics as a religion rather than a risky gamble. Thus finding the most virtuous has outweighed finding the most winnable.

We don't have much evidence yet, mainly an Iowa poll that shows Biden as the only Dem who could beat Trump - and just by 2%.

The best way to change this is to replace identity politics with shared identity politics, which is to say issues that bring different sorts of people together, with economics leading the pack.

The two presidents who really changed America in modern times were Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. It is worth remembering how they did it:

- Regulation of banks and stock brokerage firms cheating their customers

- Protection of your bank account

- Social Security

- A minimum wage

- Legal alcohol

- Right of labor to bargain with employers

- Tennessee Valley Authority

- Rural electrification

- College educations for innumerable veterans

- Housing loans for innumerable veterans

- FHA housing loans

- The bulk of hospital beds in the country

- Unemployment insurance

- Small Business Administration

- Medicare

We have seen nothing like this in more recent times. What we have instead, just in the past two decades, is a decline in Democratic support by non-college graduates of 8 points and whites in general of 12 points.

There is nothing inconsistent  with improving ethnic affairs and economics at the same time. LBJ successfully pushed both civil rights legislation and Medicare. It can happen again.

But frankly, in recent decades too many liberals have treated less educated white voters as trash and have paid the price for it. And one of the greatest civil rights achievement would be to align whites, blacks and latinos  against a power structure that badly wants them to stay apart.

It's too early to tell if there is a Democratic candidate  who can help this to happen. But it's the big thing to watch