Simon Torracinta in the Boston Review:
On February 18, in his inaugural memo as newly elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin was candid in his diagnosis. “When I talk about the state of the Democratic Party,” he wrote, “I often speak about the impact of perceptions—what voters see, feel, and sense. I believe the canary in the coal mine for what happened on November 5 was the recent showing that, for the first time in modern history, Americans now see the Republicans as the party of the working class and the Democrats as the party of the elites.” He continued: “We have to take seriously the job of repairing and restoring the perceptions of our party and our brand. It’s time to remind working Americans—and also show them every day—that the Democratic Party always has been and always will be the party of the worker.”
But is this just a matter of mistaken perceptions? And is the work of repair just a matter of rebranding? In Mastery and Drift, edited by historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer, the contributors suggest that the matter runs far deeper. On their collective read, the fate of the contemporary Democratic Party and the broader web of institutions in which it’s embedded is tied up in a much longer term and more fundamental emergence and transformation of what they call “professional-class liberalism” since the 1960s.
More here.
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