Middle Class Issues at the Democratic National Convention

At least one element of the Democrats’ strategic plan to win the presidency this November is no secret: appeal to the middle class. Candidate Barack Obama is already using the tagline “middle class first” in TV ads. And as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, the middle class theme is consistently being stressed at the Democratic National Convention:

[T]he convention message on Tuesday was aimed squarely at the middle class, from the keynote speaker, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, on down the podium list to Gov. Jim Doyle, U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Madison and others.

The pitch: Barack Obama will cut taxes for the middle class, improve health care, expand the economy and focus the country on green jobs and alternative fuels.

There’s no question that the Democrats are doing a far better job than the Republicans of sounding pro-middle class these days. But is their newfound love of the middle class “for real”? It’s a mixed bag.

On the one hand, the Dems are addressing real concerns. Though they’re not using Bill Clinton’s 1992 mantra of “It’s the economy, stupid,” they are following it. For example, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan declared that her state was the first to be hit by the economic downturn. She demanded that something be done:

Instead of continuing the “race to the bottom,” Democrats should push for a “race to the top” by advocating investments in new energy and new jobs.

She pointed to a set of numbers not often discussed on the campaign trail: “There are 8.5 million people we know of who are unemployed. And there are less than 4 million available jobs.”

And, of course, there’s Obama’s middle class tax cut, which contrasts sharply with McCain’s intent to continue President Bush’s policy of reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy while vaguely hinting at the possibility that the tax gifts to the rich, but not the huge deficits created, will somehow trickle down to average Americans.

So what’s not to like about what the Democrats are saying? Very little; but there’s a lot not to like about what they’re not saying.

The two biggest factors that have been depressing the middle class’s standard of living over the last few decades are globalization and mass immigration. The former is responsible for the export of high-paying jobs to other nations; the latter has glutted the labor market for the lower-paying jobs that remain. How have the Democrats addressed these issues?

They haven’t. Yes, there is some indirect lip service being paid to the misery caused by globalization. Senator Stabenow’s mention of a “race to the bottom,” quoted above, is actually an indirect reference to Alan Tonelson’s book of the same name. In it, Tonelson points out that in a global marketplace, manufacturers compete on the basis of cost, which is largely determined by the price of labor. The end result is a “race to the bottom” in which nations must constantly seek to outdo each other in paying workers less.

But how, exactly, does one “race to the top”? For that matter, does the phrase really mean anything? If there’s a race to see who can pay workers the most, no one is running in it. The idea of “investing in new jobs” sounds attractive, but who is going to do the investing? Nobody in the private sector, if the work can be done more cheaply overseas. If the government creates domestic jobs through make-work programs, then who will pay for them?

If the marketplace is allowed to operate on a global scale, the race to the bottom will continue unabated. The U.S. government can’t control the entire world economy, but it can regulate the domestic economy. The only way to stop U.S. corporations from shipping jobs overseas is to make it very painful to do so, primarily by imposing stiff tariffs on products manufactured overseas. There’s still a huge consumer market in the United States. Millions of jobs—good paying manufacturing jobs—would be created by the free market if it were cost-prohibitive to try to serve that market with imported goods. But on this, the Democrats’ silence is deafening.

And what about immigration? Senator Stabenow courageously mentions the unpleasant fact that 8.5 million unemployed Americans are chasing after for only 4 million available jobs. So why on earth are we importing workers? By conservative estimates, there are 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. If we had the courage to deport only a third of them, our unemployment problems would vanish. Deport more, and the temporary labor shortage would place upward pressure on real wages (which have stagnated for decades), and the middle class’s standard of living would skyrocket. Those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder would fare better, lifting millions out of poverty and into the middle class.

But don’t expect Democrats to acknowledge this fact anytime soon, much less act on it. They’re still wedded to the idea that more non-Americans on our soil equals more “diversity” equals a better place to live. The economics of mass immigration are papered over with nonsensical feel-good declarations that “we’re all [American workers and legal and illegal aliens] in this together.” Which, of course, we’re not. We’re competitors for a shrinking demand for labor on American soil. Again, deafening silence.

So the Democratic commitment to the middle class is indeed a mixed bag, containing both genuine elements (a middle class tax cut) and phony ones (empty promises of combating unemployment without addressing the root causes).

Are the Republicans any better? That will be a topic for a future post.