The College Party

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

 

Josh Kraushaar says we are witnessing “a political realignment in real time.” He writes that “Democrats now have a bigger advantage among white college graduates than they do with nonwhite voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.”

 

It’s also very much worth your time to look at Nate Cohn’s writeup of the results at the Times. “The liberal backlash against conservative advances in the court appears to have helped Democrats most among white college graduates, who are relatively liberal and often insulated by their affluence from economic woes,” he writes. “Just 17 percent of white college-educated Biden voters said an economic issue was the most important one facing the country, less than for any other racial or educational group.”

 

Cohn adds:

 

The fight for congressional control is very different among the often less affluent, nonwhite and moderate voters who say the economy or inflation is the biggest problem facing the country. They preferred Republican control of Congress, 62 percent to 25 percent, even though more than half of the voters who said the economy was the biggest problem also said abortion should be mostly legal.

 

This is really the most massive electoral shift over the course of my political consciousness. A quarter century ago David Brooks used to write humorous essays in the Weekly Standard about how affluent, college-educated Republicans in Chicago were starting to feel alienated from their party during the Gingrich-revolution era. Here’s a taste from his 1998 essay “Rich Republicans“:

 

Winnetka still has a Republican congressman, John Porter, but you wouldn’t exactly call him a Gingrich or a Lott or even a Dole Republican. His voting record makes him an extremist in the pursuit of moderation: He scores about a 50 percent in the liberal/conservative vote ratings year after year. He opposed more of the items in the Contract With America than any other Republican but one. He tends to support spending cuts but oppose Republican tax cuts. He enthusiastically backs federal funding for the arts, gun control, and environmental initiatives (he’s been endorsed by the Sierra Club). He’s also pro-choice, rejecting the gag rule that would have banned abortion counseling at federally funded clinics.

 

When you ask Winnetkans why they are disenchanted with the Republican party, they sometimes go an entire six or seven seconds before they mention the religious Right. To be elected in Winnetka you have to demonstrate you are on the correct side of the cultural divide that splits the GOP between the sane moderates and the Bible-thumping crazies.

 

Winnetka is now in the ninth Congressional district, which has been represented by Democrat Jan Schakowsky since 1999. It’s a D+20 seat.

 

Brooks predicted that the future belonged to rich Republicans because everyone was getting rich, and so culture-war politics would die down. What he missed is that college-educated Democrats were going to make peace with financial markets and upward mobility. In many parts of the country, the noisy protest against the liberal establishment has driven rich Republicans out. For me the great shift was signaled when moderate Republican Chris Shays lost his seat along the Gold Coast of Connecticut to a Goldman Sachs Democrat. The natural predominance of affluent voters (college-educated whites for Dems) over their party is reinforced and magnified by the same class’s dominance in media, nonprofits, and academia. This ascendance coincided with the diminution and dissolution of organized labor. Now, the Democrats go to conferences with college-educated “Latinx” voters, and compare all Hispanics to tacos, as mere tokens of diversity. In this environment, Republicans are getting off easy. It’s no surprise they are attracting more Hispanic voters.