The Red Dog Dilemma

by | Jan 3, 2022 | Politics | 4 comments

During the Donald Trump presidency, suburban areas were a goldmine for Democrats. Across the Sun Belt and into the North and West, well educated suburban voters moved sharply toward the Democratic Party. It wasn’t just a thermostatic reaction manifest in the midterm, either. In 2020, college-educated white voters provided the margin of victory for now-President Joe Biden. One could even sense a realignment.

That’s certainly what it looked like in North Carolina’s inner-ring suburbs. After years of trending blue by increments, Wake and Mecklenburg Counties–the heart and soul of suburban N.C.–suddenly became supermajority Democratic. Given the demographics there, a mix of left-leaning in-migrants and well settled college grads repelled by the social conservatism of MAGA nation, observers surmised that Wake and Mecklenburg were now the keystone of any Democratic victory. After all, only one Republican still remained representing each county. The rest of the legislative counties’ legislative delegations were Democratic.

The NeverTrumpers at The Bulwark have a term for these people: Red Dog Democrats. The Red Dog Dems now represent an important constituency both mirroring and distinct from the more established “Gentry Liberals.” Red Dogs, unlike the progressive gentry, have streamed into the Democratic Party recently and largely in reaction to the appalling bigotry, ignorance, and authoritarianism of the Trump-era GOP. They are still fiscally conservative and averse to the excesses of the cultural left (as, for the record, are many members of the pan-racial working class). While deeply alienated from the GOP, Red Dogs are not yet solid Democrats. Democrats will have to work to keep their support.

The rise of Red Dog Democrats has been a good thing for the party in the electoral sphere–see the fact that Biden won in large part due to shifts in the educated suburbs. But the trend brings with it several vexing challenges for the Democratic Party. First, Red Dogs are not an inherently Democratic constituency. They voted Republican until very recently; for example, even Elizabeth Dole won southwestern Wake County while losing badly statewide. As the recent gubernatorial election in Virginia demonstrated, a certain percentage of center-right suburbanites seem willing to vote for a Republican again if the GOP candidate appears amenable to suburban sensibilities. Democrats, again, cannot take these voters for granted. They will have to actively court their votes.

Which brings us to the second dilemma that Red Dogs pose to Democrats. To win them, Democrats may have to make painful concessions that anger not only “progressive leftists” (who make up a very small percentage of the electorate but a large share of the activist class), but old-school Democrats committed to the party’s historic identity as the party of the working class. For the most part, Red Dog Democrats do not have any deep affinity for the Democratic Party or FDR liberalism. They are new Democrats and New Democrats, in the mold of Bill Clinton’s fiscally conservative administration. While Jeremy Corbyn’s strong showing in suburban Great Britain suggests that economic leftism is not an automatic loser in the suburbs, other, more local results suggests Democrats will face a tough dilemma.

Consider the Build Back Better Act. A group of “centrist” Democrats, led by the outspoken Rep. Josh Gottheimer, insisted upon the restoration of the State and Local Tax Deduction as the price of their support for BBB. SALT is, to be entirely blunt, a giveaway to the wealthy. The vast majority of the deduction will go to millionaires in rich regions, and almost nothing will flow to people mired in poverty. This outrageous sop to the privileged is a good proxy for where, in the worst-case scenario, the party could go as the influence of Red Dog Democrats continues to grow. Tax policy would tilt toward the affluent, unions would be forsaken, free trade would once again become Democratic dogma, and in general the legacy of FDR would be supplanted by “Simpson-Bowles”-style socially progressive centrism.

In North Carolina, Democrats need the Red Dogs. Unfortunately, the white working class in rural North Carolina has completed its long transformation into a Republican constituency. Mobilizing Democratic non-voters will help but Democrats will still need to do better with suburban and exurban swing voters if they ever want to become the majority party again. But, like everything in politics, the Red Dog phenomenon brings challenges as well as blessings. Can Democrats keep suburbanites in the fold? Can they still be the party of FDR?

4 Comments

  1. cocodog

    Why do Democratic pundits love to name some politicians within the party after dogs? This terminology seems insulting to the noble, honest, and protective dog. They never desert their owners or make self-serving deals out the back door, like we have seen of recent in the Senate. Dogs are very much a part of my family, and I might say garner more respect than a few of the two-legged members. Republicans have party factions; they call them “cloth coat republican” referring to those Republicans who lack the wealth associated with being part of a political party that regard tax write offs as part of their lucrative business endeavors. We could call the wealthy Republicans Purse Puppy Republicans. I have a couple of those types in my wife’s family. Here is a thought, lets drop the dog names and call Democrats Patriots. I will leave it to you to come up with a name for the modern Republican.

  2. Joe Beamish

    Oooh socialists! Very scary. You know what is scary? Republicans are all a bunch of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.

  3. adamclove

    Your core constituency is now upper middle-class and wealthy white corporatists. Your affiliation with the working class is now a part of history. The Red Dogs you speak of have more in common with your new core constituency than they do your past. Unfortunately for you, your activists are not members of your core constituency, they’re open and unabashed socialists, and in some cases, self-declared Marxists. Your donor class is arrogant enough to think they can control your activists, but the Red Dogs that you can’t win without in NC are utterly repulsed by your activists.

    To put it bluntly, in the absence of a bonkers-level threat like Trump, your party’s new coalition doesn’t work. If Republicans can keep themselves from falling back into the Trump orbit, you’ll be sitting on the sidelines in NC for the foreseeable future.

    I’ll grant you, that’s a big “if.”

    • cocodog

      Why do amateur republican operatives continue to throw around the trigger words such as Marxist, Communists and Left-Wing Liberal like it has any operative meaning in today’s Democratic Party. Old Karl passed away and the remaining pure communist country Russia went bankrupt and was broken up years and years ago.
      We are well into the 21st Century and have stations in outer space, moving toward colonization of the planets. Moreover, the family car is evolving into an all-electric driving machine.
      Folks don’t sit around a floor model radio listening to fire side chats and ball games broadcast on AM. Moreover, the average educational background of most voters has improved these days.
      Living in the past may have its advantages, like you never grow old, at least in your mind, but the downside is obvious, you just don’t fit into the real world along with the old Charley McCarthy one liners.

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!