City Cousins and Country Cousins

What Makes Them Different?

William Sundwick

The Neolithic Revolution occurred approximately 12.500 years ago. It was followed immediately by the urban/rural political divide. As soon as hunter-gatherers coalesced into agricultural settlements, and stopped being nomadic, they established villages, then cities. Yet, the food to feed the population in those cities was grown by the farmers. It was their surplus that sustained the city.

In time, however, the farmers’ natural advantage over the city dwellers became inverted. Farmers became indentured to the lords of the manor (the “city”) under feudalism. Power flowed upward – the cities became creditors and the manor, or vassals, were debtors.

The eternal conflict between debtors and creditors intensified. Mercantilism was about more than international trade. Any power center (e.g., an estate, corporation, or nation) sought to maximize profit by keeping costs (imports) to a minimum while getting maximum price for its products (exports).

As agricultural workers lost their bargaining power, since they had only one buyer (the city), workers in the city found more favorable economic conditions. If they could produce goods and services only a few skilled individuals could provide, like luxury goods for the nobility, they could demand whatever price they wanted, provided there was a market.

The activities of marketing and money lending became concentrated in cities. Other rent-seeking economic behavior followed. And, the emigration from the countryside to the cities began. That’s where the jobs were. Industrialization only aggravated this. Education also became available mostly in the city – to provide the skills necessary for even more specialized production. Capital, both human and material, became the currency of a new age.

But the farmers stayed the same. Indeed, they found they also needed access to capital in order to maximize their surplus. Family farms became businesses -- or sold out to businesses.

And, the emigration of the young to the city continued. The cities began to grow outside of their previous boundaries – they spawned suburbs! So, even the land area devoted to farming shrunk.

This happened throughout the developed world as, first industrialization, then cosmopolitanism with its diverse poly-cultural richness and higher educational levels, drew ever larger populations, magnetically, to urban areas.

But what about those who either couldn’t or wouldn’t leave? The old, the less educated, the poor. Might they not be resentful of all their talented youth abandoning their traditional way of life for the city? In the United States, and some research indicates in Europe as well, there has now developed a political ideology around the “forgotten ones” status. It often takes on racial animus, “us” (white people) versus “them” (immigrants and non-white others). Religious affiliations can exacerbate the feelings – provincialism and tribalism are frequently promoted by religious denominations. Only some of us are God’s chosen, and fewer of us live in cities.

And those suburbs? That’s where city cousins and country cousins can be neighbors! Suburban development is not unique to the United States. European cities have their own suburbs, with similar characteristics. There are poly-cultural, cosmopolitan suburban communities and multi-cultural communities which experience tension between their constituent cultures. Relatively few suburbs are mono-cultural like small towns or rural areas (very wealthy suburbs may be the exception).

Political sensibilities in the poly-cultural suburbs tend to skew left, or liberal, but multi-cultural communities with their tensions might exaggerate political allegiances across the cultural divide. Sometimes multi-cultural tension is not racial, but class based. It could be between “old-timers” who have been there since the community was a mono-cultural small town and the “newcomers” who have moved there from the city, perhaps victims of gentrification in the city center, or to raise a family in more space.

In the United States today, we are currently engaged in a discussion about the urban/rural divide as it relates to legislative districting. There are severe constitutional constraints on how apportionment is handled from state to state. Recently, the Supreme Court decided federal courts must stay away from partisan redistricting. But the fact remains: if state legislatures decide on the boundaries of the districts, they will always draw the maps so that the dominant party’s position is perpetuated, if they are able. Individual states may come up with alternatives (perhaps even proportional representation), but not all have constitutional provisions for ballot initiatives.

Unless you can make a convincing economic case to farmers and small town mono-cultural voters that their life is made much better by immigrants or free trade, it’s not likely that the present contour of rural right-populism can be replaced any time soon by a more urban poly-culturalism. Some folks simply prefer to live around fewer people, and more empty land. They skew conservative in their values.

Cosmopolitanism is seen by many country cousins as the ideology of the elites – for the winners in society, not them! Likewise, many poorer urban residents see rural provincialism as a strategy for protecting what’s theirs from “theft” by non-whites, especially. Perhaps heightened awareness of their privilege might be prudent for both city cousins and country cousins in this debate.

The Center Cannot Hold

A Primer for 21^st Century Political Labels

William Sundwick

Left and Right. It all started in 1789 with Louis XVI and his National Assembly. The body was reaction to the revolution that year, and the storming of the Bastille. The king knew he had to listen to people with differing views. The deputies supporting crown and church found themselves sitting together to the right of the Assembly President. Those who supported the revolution on the opposite side of the chamber, left of the President. The framework of this seating arrangement held in the Legislative Assembly of 1791, despite all new deputies.

The press picked up on the seating arrangement quickly. Soon everybody was talking about Le Droit and La Gauche in all discussions about the future direction of the monarchy. The coup d’etat of 1792, and the Terror following, emptied the right side of the chamber, when the Girondins , the more moderate of the Jacobins, were purged.  Survivors from that side moved closer to the Montagnards on the Left, but not quite with them, sitting closer to the Center of the chamber. That Center grew during the Thermador period (1794-95) and after the restoration of the monarchy in 1814-15.

Political clubs, then formal parties, emerged as the century progressed, over the objections of monarchists. A similar process had been underway in Britain since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, where Parliament emerged triumphant and immediately began to differentiate itself between “constitutionalism” and “divine right.” The Glorious Revolution also introduced another social and political philosophy into European history – liberalism. Inspired by John Locke, it established the notion of a “social contract” between the people and their ruler. Liberalism has remained the dominant philosophy for most western European governments, the United States and South America ever since.

In 19^th century America, however, a unique political structure developed. Slavery, and the compromises it necessitated, from the Constitutional Convention onward, made European political labels on any Left-Right spectrum difficult to apply. Our political structure has been charitably identified as “American Exceptionalism.” It reduced to two big themes: 1) slavery; and, 2) the frontier. Neither was an issue in Europe. Ending slavery required a violent Civil War, which only replaced it with the demi-slavery of Jim Crow and white supremacy. And, the existence of an empty frontier throughout the century made escape from political labels too easy! Our compromised political system might be described as “centrist,” accommodating both white supremacy and the liberal ideal of self-determination.

Liberalism in the United States became associated more with property rights than social equity. Abolitionists were not liberals, but radicals. In Europe, Marx and Engels created a Left for the industrial revolution, but wrote a series of articles for the New York Tribune before the Civil War where they identify a peculiar American strain of class conflict, literally between slaves and their masters.

Since the frontier was rural – not urban industrial – it was naturally attractive to the aspiring “petty bourgeois” of independent farmers and artisans. That was not the milieu of Britain’s growing textile industry, familiar to Engels, where workers controlling the means of production would lead to “socialism.” The struggle for socialism  would adopt a more European complexion. Not American.

Yet, by the end of the century, America had managed to create a movement of rural “populists,” who later joined with urban workers in a “progressive” coalition led by disaffected members of an elite capitalist class (William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette). Progressivism expanded the liberal idea of property rights to workers, perhaps not in Marx’s terms of “seizing the means of production,” but still making great strides toward establishing “social rights.” From the Civil War through the first two decades of the 20^th century, it was the progressive Republican Party, more than Eugene Debs’ socialists, that spearheaded the closest approximation to left politics the country had known up until that time. Progressivism’s purpose was clearly to save capitalism, not destroy it. Likewise, FDR’s New Deal.

American political labels began including the term “conservative” in the mid-20^th century. While certain cultural drivers had always existed in the U.S., as in Europe, toward traditionalism, primacy of property rights, and religious freedom, people who felt these drivers most strongly still found themselves in the broader European liberal tradition -- until that conservative brand was invented by William F. Buckley and others. Robert Taft emerged as the Republican Party symbol of conservatism, not Dwight Eisenhower (a military man averse to political labels and perhaps still tied to the midwestern populists, or progressive wing of his party).

This spiffy new brand of conservatism captured the imagination (and wallets) of media influencers, including television, convincing people that Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was defending our democracy against an insidious plot of Soviet Communism. McCarthy was a Taft Republican who exploited the fears many average Americans held for the “other.” Communists made a convenient other. Richard Nixon was a McCarthy acolyte, and Ronald Reagan gave the hysteria some slick Hollywood PR.

The hysteria faded but still left a mark on political labels. There had never been a strong identification with socialism, or anything smacking of the Left, in U.S. politics. Even labor unions eschewed the label. We remained a Centrist nation as McCarthy and, later, the John Birch Society, were discredited. More people began to see some value in the concept of “social rights” – now expressed as “civil rights.” It was the new face of liberalism. John F. Kennedy was elected, then Lyndon Johnson.

But, alas, American political compromise with the Right was still necessary. Just as it had been with slavery from the birth of the Republic.  The cultural divide between regions, between urban and rural, between religious and secular, could not be eradicated. “Socialist” remained a nasty word. It was popularly associated with communism. You could safely call yourself only “liberal” or “Democrat,” never socialist, in public. We were still a Centrist nation.

Even after Nixon’s humiliation and resignation, we merely advanced to Reagan. Jimmy Carter campaigned in 1976 from the center. Bill Clinton and his Third Way responded to Reaganism by stripping the Democratic Party of any vestiges of social rights. After two terms of Barack Obama, one might think it was time for the Party to feel more comfortable moving left. Apparently not. Donald Trump managed to squeak out an electoral college win over Hillary Clinton in 2016. And, now everybody on the putative political left is convinced that Obama could have done more, save for the country remaining “moderate” – i.e., Centrist. Sigh.

The ”establishment” in the Democratic Party, which includes Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is now identified as “neoliberal”– meaning, generally, that they believe in capitalism and the primacy of markets. They are not socialists. ONLY Bernie Sanders claims that label. And, we all know he will never be president.

We live in a shrinking “flat” world. Yes, it is governed by neoliberal capitalist interests. Those of us who want to change that must accept the widest possible spread from left to right of center in that chamber where we all sit. Imagine it is Paris, 1789. Parties have not been established. We all have our opinions, and we should understand where they come from. We should own them. Left, Right, and Center all have their place in our National Assembly. Even if the Center, changing its positions over time, always holds in the end!

Debate in Detroit

Is Bloody Combat What We Wanted?

William Sundwick

This is getting to be a spectacle. The second Democratic Presidential Debate was held July 30 and 31 in Detroit. It was marked by much more visceral combat than the first debate in Miami a month earlier. Was this by design? Or, has the temper of Democrats become more frayed over the last month?

The stage was set for the first night, Tuesday, featuring the two giants of the left, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, getting rolled by a gang of lesser polling moderates. Then Wednesday was to be the trial by fire for the titular leader of the pack, Joe Biden. CNN chose its team of moderators: Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Don Lemon – experts in following the prescribed format emphasizing attack and rebuttal. That appeared to be the plan.

Mostly, it worked. If this is what you wanted, you got it in spades. Night One saw ideological divides drawn sharply between Sanders/Warren (who continued to live up to their reputed non-aggression pact) on the left versus the rest of the stage, except perhaps Pete Buttigieg and Marianne Williamson (independent paths?). Beto O’Rourke seemed lost, not knowing where to place himself. Rebuttals are always easier than affirmative cases in debating, so the dynamic clearly favored Sanders/Warren. Similarly, Night Two tended to favor Biden – he appeared more confident than during the first debate, at least when he kept on script. He even managed a barrage of counterattacks against his tormenters (especially Kamala Harris and Cory Booker).

But some read Biden’s flailing counterattacks as a sign of weakness -- exasperation at continuously playing defense. It seems unwarranted, considering he still holds the lead in polling. He probably got his greatest respite when other candidates chose, instead, to go after each other! Harris vs. Tulsi Gabbard was a good example, or Bill De Blasio vs. Julian Castro. Both secondary fights were initiated with a parrying thrust by one against the criminal justice record of the other. Gabbard had much of the same ammunition that Biden was also using against Harris’ prosecutorial history. Castro attacked De Blasio for refusing to fire the officer who choked Eric Garner to death. Neither target recovered well, and it served to take heat off Biden, at least temporarily.

CNN’s attempt to direct the tone of the debate toward more combat has been seen by some analysts, and candidates afterwards, as an unfair bias toward Republican talking points. If this was the tactic it was entirely appropriate though. Whoever wins the nomination will face those talking points in the general. Nevertheless, it’s not clear that the strategy succeeded in avoiding the obfuscation and deflection that many lamented in the Miami debate. Buttigieg grandstanded when he faced the viewing audience and advised any Republican office holders who might be watching to think of their “legacy” in the history books. Not sure any of them care. Harris declared that Trump’s tariffs are “betraying the American people.” That seemed a tad hyperbolic. But it did heighten the dramatic tension of the event.

Who emerged in an unexpected better position than they went in? Possibly Andrew Yang on Night Two? John Delaney scored a hit on Night One when he became the main spokesperson for the “revolt of the centrists.” And, looking at Sanders and Warren as a tag team, rather than opponents, on Night One was refreshing. One can even fantasize a Sanders/Warren (or Warren/Sanders) ticket in 2020. Their posture on Tuesday was more akin to a “good cop/bad cop” scenario (or A/B marketing tool) than anything else.

With more stringent entrance requirements for the third debate in September, it’s unlikely we’ll see more than seven or eight on stage in Houston. Looking at polling, and performance in Detroit, it seems most likely that we won’t have John Hickenlooper, Tim Ryan, or Jay Inslee to kick around. Likewise, Steve Bullock or Kirsten Gillibrand (she came across Night Two as the less confident “new kid” at the cafeteria lunch table trying desperately to be accepted by the “cool kids”). In any case, getting to 2% from 1% polling average AND doubling total donations is a high hurdle for many of the two dozen candidates.

Even with fewer on-stage appearances, the third debate on September 12 and 13, hosted by ABC, will probably continue to feature drama and spectacle over substance. But perhaps we can divine something about the candidates’ characters from that? Even if we can’t decipher their policy positions.