Why Class Warfare May Work This Year

[Seth Ackerman]

Wall Street Journal
Op-Ed

CAMPAIGN 2000

Why Class Warfare May Work This Year 
Al Gore has followed Bill Clinton's lead by abandoning the nonworking poor. 
BY JAMES TARANTO 
Thursday, August 24, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT 
Class war was supposed to have gone the way of the Cold War, finished off in
the '80s. So how did Al Gore's jeremiad against "powerful forces" rocket him
into a slight lead over George W. Bush, who last Wednesday seemed
invincible? 
That's the way the poll bounces, say confident Republicans. But they
shouldn't be too sanguine. The postconvention polls may be inconclusive, but
they strongly suggest that Democratic class warfare has an unanticipated
resonance in 2000. If so, the reason can be summed up in two words: welfare
reform. 
 <<...>> 
By all accounts, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act has been a success, shrinking
the rolls by getting people to work. Its political effects have been at
least as impressive. It has nullified the underclass--those poor people
permanently dependent on government handouts--as a political issue. No
longer can Republicans wage class warfare, as Richard Nixon and Ronald
Reagan did with such great success, by promising to protect the interests of
working- and middle-class taxpayers from welfare-dependent freeloaders. 
At the same time, Democrats need no longer bear the political burden of the
underclass and its attendant problems of crime, squalor and illegitimacy.
Mr. Gore's convention speech illustrates the point. He promised so many new
programs and bashed corporations so mercilessly that it was easy to mistake
it for an oration in the great Mondale-Dukakis tradition. But there was one
crucial difference: Mr. Gore offered nothing to the nonworking poor. Quite
the contrary, he boasted of having reduced their numbers. "Others talked
about welfare reform," he said. "We actually reformed welfare and set time
limits. Instead of handouts, we gave people training to go from welfare to
work." 
What a difference from 1988, the year in which Democrats' support for the
dependent poor reached its zenith. In those days, the "plight of the
homeless" was a fashionable political cause. "Homelessness" is really a
problem of mental illness and drug abuse, but '80s Democrats insisted the
issues were housing and Mr. Reagan's malevolence. In his acceptance speech
at the 1988 Democratic convention, Michael Dukakis promised to "create
decent and affordable housing for every family in America, so that we can
once and for all end the shame of homelessness in the United States of
America." 
This year Mr. Gore not only made no such promise, he didn't mention the
homeless a single time. That's the difference between Gore-style and
Dukakis-style class warfare. Mr. Gore presents himself as the ally of the
hardworking, taxpaying American against HMOs, tobacco companies and other
unpopular corporations. Mr. Dukakis's ally was the drunken bum who accosts
you and demands a buck. That's why Mr. Dukakis got trounced and Mr. Gore may
yet win. 
Bill Clinton understood all this when he ran for president in 1992. In
perhaps the most brilliant calculation of his political career, the Arkansas
governor threw the underclass overboard. He promised to "end welfare as we
know it." He celebrated the death penalty. And he criticized the loudmouthed
rap star Sister Souljah, who had an unfortunate habit of inciting murder. 
True, it took a Republican Congress to pass welfare reform, and Mr. Clinton,
mindful of his liberal backers, vetoed two versions of the bill. But he did
sign the third, and Al Gore may be the beneficiary this November. 
 <<...>> 
Gov. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is the flip side of
post-welfare-reform politics. While Mr. Gore ignores the undeserving poor,
Mr. Bush lays out a persuasive vision for how to help them--one based on
charity and faith rather than entitlement and bureaucracy. Unlike the vice
president, Mr. Bush did mention the homeless in his convention speech. He
lauded "the heroic work of homeless shelters" and specifically cited the
work of Mary Jo Copeland, who runs a faith-based homeless center in
Minneapolis. 
Compassion, however, doesn't win presidential elections, as Democrats since
Hubert Humphrey have learned. If Mr. Bush wants to win, he will have to make
a compelling case against Mr. Gore's class-based populism. 
Fortunately for Mr. Bush, such a case can be made, thanks to a trend that
may have even more political significance than the shrinking of the
underclass: the growth of the investor class. Roughly half of American
households now own stock, either directly or through mutual funds. Among
voters, who tend to be older and better off than the population at large,
the rate of stock ownership is surely higher. 
Mr. Bush should tell Americans: When my opponent attacks "big corporations,"
he's attacking you and me. He should emphasize his proposal to allow workers
to invest a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes in private
accounts--a plan that could revolutionize politics by expanding the investor
class to include every American who collects a paycheck. No wonder Mr. Gore
thinks it's "risky." 
"I believe in private property so strongly, and so firmly, I want everyone
to have some," Mr. Bush said in an April speech. Compassionate conservatism
is a worthy idea, but the power of property should be the centerpiece of the
Bush campaign. 
Karl Marx said the class struggle would end when workers owned the means of
production. Thanks to the democracy of the market, and not the dictatorship
of the proletariat, the U.S. is now closer to this Marxian ideal than any
society in history. If Mr. Bush fights well, Nov. 7 may mark the end of the
final campaign in America's class war. 
Mr. Taranto is editor of OpinionJournal.com