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Blog PostsMeasuring the Small Differences between Democrats and Republicans in the White House since 1980
By Joe Emersberger at Oct 24, 2012 |
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Rebecca Solnit wrote in the UK Guardian that
“If I vote for a Democrat, I do so in the hopes that fewer people will suffer, not in the belief that that option will eliminate suffering or bring us to anywhere near my goals or represent my values perfectly.”
She added that “there's something to be said for actually examining the differences” as opposed to dismissing them as insignificant.
I made a few attempts to actually measure the impact of those small differences on the most vulnerable US citizens. Perhaps the often acrimonious debate I observe among US progressives during the interminably long presidential campaigns would be less bitter if they tried to quantify what those small differences are.
Below is a table showing what has happened to the gap between life expectancy (LE) between black and white men in the USA under Republican and Democrat presidents since 1980.
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SOURCE:
As of 2008, the most recent data I could find, life expectancy for black men in the USA was 70.9 years compared to 75.9 for white males - a gap of 5 years. In 1980 the gap was 6.9 years. You’d expect the rate of progress in life expectancy to eventually slow down no matter how good or bad public policy is. You’d expect it to slow down the soonest and the most for the longest living (most privileged) people as the easiest to fix causes of early death become less prevalent. However, countries like Norway, where both men and women live longer than white men and women in the USA, have also seen significantly faster rates of improvement in LE in recent years.
Between 1970-1980, black males had been gaining ground on whites at a rate of 0.10 years per year (third column in table). The Reagan years coincided with markedly decreased progress for white men and disaster for black men who lost ground relative to whites at a rate of 0.15 years per year. The Bush Senior years appear to have halted the downward spiral as black males held ground relative to whites under his administration. During the Clinton years, black males made faster progress relative to whites than in any of the periods considered – 0.25 years per year. However, the second best era by this measure was the “W” Bush era that followed Clinton.
The data for black female LE compared to white female LE is far less flattering to the Clinton period. However, there is no disputing that the Reagan era was a disaster.
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The next table summarizes how the proportion of unionized workers has changed.
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Source: (click link to data on “union coverage”)
Between 1973 to 1980 the share of unionized workers eroded by 0.5% per year. Under Reagan the deline sped up drastically to 2.6% per year. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the next two worst periods for unions in terms of rate of decline were under Clinton and Obama. Perhaps this shows that organized labor fights harder when labor leaders are not tied to the sitting president. That said, slowing down the rate of union decline is nothing to brag about. This trend needs to reverse for major reform to ever take place in the USA.
A look at how the richest 1% have done under Democrat and Republican presidents since 1980 shows a trend simlar to the one for unions. The election of Reagan brought in a huge acceleration in the rate of increse of the income share captured by the richest 1%. The rate slowed down under Bush Sr. then greatly accelerated again under Clinton. It slowed under "W" Bush but (at least for the 2 years for which I found data) accelerated again under Obama.
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SOURCE (clink "income shares" link)
Below is the data used to calculate the rate of increase numbers in the table above:
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Conclusion
If there was ever an election where it appeared to matter the most that the Republican candidate be defeated in order to prevent horrible outcomes in the USA, then that was clearly the 1980 election that brought in Reagan. However the election of Reagan was part of shift in the elite consensus that included the Democratic Party and its powerful backers. It should be recalled that the Democrats had a majority in the House of Represenatives throughout the Reagan years. Some may remember Jimmy Carter’s cheerleading for NAFTA while Clinton was in office – an assault on US workers Carter would never have proposed while he was in office. As this important study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found, 1980 marked the beginning of greatly diminished progress in numerous economic indicators in countries around the world over the following two decades.
The data above doesn’t justify indifference towards which party wins the White House. However it also doesn’t justify fear mongering that suggests the first priority of all decent people in the USA should be to defeat the Republican presidential candidate.
Matt Stoller’s fine piece on the case for voting against Obama generated considerable outrage in some circles as Glenn Greenwald remarks here. One thing I really like about Stoller’s piece is that he acknowledges uncertainty about his conclusions: “I don’t think the case against voting for Obama is airtight”.
Stoller pointed this piece out to me by Lane Kenworthy that reaches conclusions similar to mine by looking at economic data since 1980.
Excellent
By Lee, Terri at Oct 28, 2012 00:13 AM
I really appreciate this piece so much, most especially the last line:
"..It also doesn’t justify fear mongering that suggests the first priority of all decent people in the USA should be to defeat the Republican presidential candidate."
I could not agre more. This is so refreshing! I am really weary of the variations of 'lesser evilism' 'vote Democrat in contested/battleground/swing states' and as you say that "all decent people ....should defeat the [more evil] Republicans'". While some version of this may have been true in the past (as you illustrate) it is no longer true in 2012.
Thanks so much for laying it out so clearly and convincingly!
In a somewhat related notion, a few years back Glenn Greenwald made a very solid argument that not only is it not justified to vote Democrat as the lesser evil, but also there is a cost in doing this.
Here is Greenwald's argument:
GREENWALD: You know there’s abeen lots of people who make radical critiques of hte government who — like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and others — who have said ‘as horrible as the Democrats are the fact that they are even a little bit better than the Republicans means that it’s important that they win and not Republicans because with an entity as powerful as the United States governmetn even small differences can make meaningful differences in the lives of millions of people.’
And so even though there’s tiny little differences between Democrats and Republicans — and they’re both evil and corrupt in their own ways — that it’s important to continue to elect Democrats, they’ve argued.
That to me was an argument that was somewhat persuasive — for awhile.
And what I’ve actually decided and concluded instead was that even if there are short-term benefits to electing Democrats — as opposed to Republicans — so you get a Sonya Sotomayor on the Supreme Court instead of an Antonio Scalia, for example — something like that.
That’s a benefit that’ll sway some case and it’s bettr [inaudible]….um, there’s also experent costs to pledging your loyalty to a political party and to contine to support it even though it’s in this extremely corrupt and destructive expression.
And so it’s not just the benefit that needs to be weighed, it’s the cost as well, knowing — as party leaders do — that many liberals are convinced (and that many people on the left are convniced) by this reasoning [the Democrats] can continue to ignore people on the left, because they know that at the end of the day they’ll scare enough of them to with scary images of Michele Bachman or Newt Gingrich or whomever…they’ll continue to support [the Democrats] even though they’re ignored adn they get nothing.
And they’ll be ignored and get nothing forever.
That’s a huge cost.
Another cost is the opportunity cost of doing activism for a political party that doesn’t care at all about you.
Instead of using your money and time on more meaningful changes.
[APPLAUSE]
So that, I think, is the ultimate formula that needs to be evaluated. The ultimate weighing of costs and benefits that needs to be assessed — not just ‘well, there are some beneifts to the Democrats, therefore let’s vote for them.”
[Ask, too] what are the costs from continuing to support and prop up this party and having them know that they can take the support for granted and putting our time and energy into that rather that something more significant that can achieve something more enduring and more fundamental with longer-lasting benefits.
And so that’s the calculation that, to me, has swayed me away from that view [of Zinn and Chomsky].
LINK: http://wearemany.org/v/2011/07/civil-liberties-under-obamaThank again,
Terri
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Re: Excellent
By Emersberger, Joe at Oct 28, 2012 02:07 AM
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Re:
By Kaushik, Raghav at Oct 26, 2012 09:26 AM
Also, people of color vote with a clear preference for Democrats consistently. That must mean something.
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Re: Re:
By Emersberger, Joe at Oct 26, 2012 14:25 PM
Yes, black people (those who vote) overwhelmingly do so for Democrats and that is rational. I think it is also rational – given how small the differences have become between the two parties – to reject voting for the lesser evil in Presidential elections, or to simply reject voting.
I have my criticisms of Ralph Nader, but I don’t think he should have taken the falk he did from some progressive for “helping to elect” Bush over Gore.
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I updateed the blog post to include
By Emersberger, Joe at Oct 26, 2012 15:52 PM
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