In the early 1900s, the Democrats began to shift from the party of farmer to the party of labor. In 1800, only 20 percent of the workforce was employed by someone else; by 2000, over 90 percent were. [1] The modern corporation was defined in the mid-1800s. As its employees grew in number, so did their political influence.
When the Democratic Party was first defined by Jefferson, it was the farmer’s party. As farmers fell as a percentage of the workforce, the Republican Party emerged – and dominated – as the capitalists’ party. But those successful capitalists who were creating new factories were hiring labor that often found itself at odds with the owners. As the Democratic Party shifted its identity from the farmers’ party to the labor party, it dominated American politics from 1933 to 1969.
In 1972, labor and politics changed. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, the party had quotas for women, young people, and minorities but none for union labor. At that point, labor began its split into two camps: the blue-collar labor on factory lines that was both at odds with and dependent on the capitalists who built the factories and made the investments in industrial capital that made them productive; and the white-collar labor in cubicles wearing pocket protectors and increasingly reliant on the novel technology of computers. By appealing to the blue-collar workers reliant on industrial capital, Republicans like Nixon and Reagan won over a group the Democrats had long had. By appealing to the white-collar workers, Democrats were helping to create a new economy but were floundering as a national party.
Without understanding how Kamala Harris represents knowledge workers and this new economy, it is hard to understand how she is different from Joe Biden, how she is a different kind of Democrat.
California has led before. Blue jeans, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley began here. So did the Republican resurgence that ended Democrats’ long dominance in DC. Between 1933 and 1969, Democrats had control of the White House and Congress 72% of the time. In 1968, 1972, 1980 and 1984, two Californians – Nixon and Reagan - won the presidency in landslide victories, marking an end to Democratic dominance. What Nixon and Reagan represented was the Republican Party gaining the blue-collar workers who had for so long identified as Democrats.
As blue-collar workers rose in prominence a century ago, they changed politics. White-collar workers are now rising prominence and they, too, are changing politics. Today one of the simplest predictors of whether someone will vote Democratic is the question of whether they have a college degree. A recent – and typical – poll showed that only 39% of whites without a college degree would vote for Biden but 64% of those with a degree would, a stunning shift of 25 points.[2]
Harris represents a very different kind of labor than did her fellow Californians Nixon and Reagan from an earlier generation.
Trump won Joe Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania with 48% of the vote. In the California counties where Harris spent her childhood, he won only 17%. In California, Trump’s campaign promises sounded like threats. Trade wars with China? A wall to keep immigrants out? It is connection to and not protection from the rest of the world that has helped California to thrive. A regional Hollywood is a playhouse. A regional Google search engine is the yellow pages. Silicon Valley is capital of the worldwide – not the nationwide - web.
Harris’s parents met as grad students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. While the Midwest was enjoying its time of manufacturing dominance, the Bay Area was placing its bets on a new economy, one Harris’s parents were part of. It is not a stretch to say that Harris is a product of Clark Kerr's vision of a knowledge economy that helped to define the UC Berkeley that brought her parents together from such distant places.
In 1960, California governor Pat Brown signed legislation that made California the only state in the nation to offer free education from kindergarten through grad school. Clark Kerr – who headed the committee that drafted the plan Brown turned into law – was head of the University of California and had a theory about economic progress. In the same way that the railroad in the late 1800s and the automobile in the early 1900s had reshaped the economy, he thought that the late 1900s would be transformed by a knowledge economy.
In the decades after it began investing in Kerr’s vision, California became home to Silicon Valley. Intel was founded in 1968, Apple in 1976, and Google in 1998. California’s early investment in education paid off with millions of high-paying jobs and trillions of dollars in new wealth.
Harris’s father was an economics professor at Stanford, her mother a researcher at UC Berkeley. Median household income in the two Bay Area counties where Harris spent her childhood is now about $119,000 a year. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania where median household income is now about $39,000. Biden comes from a generation of labor that needed protection from capitalists. Harris comes from a generation of labor who are the capitalists. The Bay Area is defined by returns to intellectual – not industrial - capital. On two campuses six miles apart – Google and Facebook – median employee pay is $200, 000 and $240,000. Billionaires get a lot of attention but stock options have made multi-millionaires out of thousands of west coast employees. To not understand how labor changed from the early to late 1900s is to not understand the Democratic Party that now champions the information economy dependent on global markets, immigrants, and big investments in education and research.
In 1969, per capita personal income in Santa Clara County was 24% higher than the national average. By 2018, it was double. Clark Kerr was right about the importance of the knowledge economy and while the Bay Area and Scranton are in the same country, they are in different worlds. In Harris’s two childhood counties[3], 77% of people over 25 have a Bachelors degree. In the county that is home to Scranton, only 22% do. In Harris’s counties, minorities and immigrants make up 45% and 28% of the population; in Biden’s home county they are only 27% and 10%.[4] The Bay Area’s highly-educated, diverse and cosmopolitan population thrives in the global economy while Scranton struggles.
When the US was founded, it was a nation of farmers. 80 to 90% of the workforce was in agriculture. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the workforce moved from farms to factories and investments in industrial capital made regions prosper. By the late 1900s, it was investments in creating intellectual capital that made regions prosper.
In 2010, Harris won her first state-wide election in California. In 2020, she could share a victory with Biden in the nation’s most defining election. If knowledge workers represent the future of the American economy, Kamala Harris could represent the future of Democratic Party: educated and cosmopolitan.
California was one of the early investors in Kerr’s vision of an economy dependent on knowledge workers but it is not the only one. States that enjoy a return to investments in education lead the nation in income. Biden and Harris will win the eight states with the highest per capita income. Trump will probably win all but one of the eight states with the lowest per capita income. This has nothing to do with the people in these states and everything to do with past decisions about whether to heavily invest in industrial or intellectual capital. It is the states that made relatively heavier investments in the intellectual capital that now lead in incomes.
Biden will likely bring compassion to communities like Scranton that are struggling to transition out of an old economy dependent on industrial capital. Harris will likely bring a vision of what is possible if communities place their bets on the information economy.
Biden’s compassion promises to alleviate poverty; Harris’s Bay Area experience promises to enhance prosperity. It is the latter that could define the Democratic Party for the next generation.
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