New Democrats (United States)

New Democrats, also known as centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats, or moderate Democrats, are a centrist ideological faction within the Democratic Party in the United States. As the Third Way faction of the party, they are seen as culturally liberal on social issues while being moderate or fiscally conservative on economic issues. New Democrats dominated the party from the late 1980s through the mid-2010s, and continue to be a large coalition in the modern Democratic Party.

However, with the rise of progressivism with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, higher support for protectionism in the United States, and a general leftward shift of the Democratic Party since the 2010s, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) challenged the New Democrat Coalition (NDC) for the largest party plurality. As of April 2024, the seat margin between the two caucuses remains a source of dialogic contestations because almost thirty members of the NDC (and Blue Dog Coalition) self-signify as both Progressive and New Democrat, a dialectical legacy of both the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Third Way. With the notable exception of Sara Jacobs, delegates who currently hold seats in both caucuses were all born before 1979, with a supermajority born in, or well before, 1973. They also began their partisan careers on the eve of, or prior to, the Presidency of Barack Obama.

History

Origins

After the landslide defeats to the Republican Party led by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 1980s, a group of prominent Democrats began to believe their party was out of touch and in need of a radical shift in economic policy and ideas of governance.Wayne LeMieux, The Democrats' New Path, 2006, John F Harris, The Survivor:Bill Clinton in the White House, Random House, 2005, The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was founded in 1985 by Al From and a group of like-minded politicians and strategists. They advocated a political Third Way as an antidote to the electoral successes of Reaganism.

The landslide 1984 presidential election defeat spurred centrist Democrats to action, and the DLC was formed. The DLC, an unofficial party organization, played a critical role in moving the Democratic Party's policies to the center of the American political spectrum. Prominent Democratic politicians such as Senators Al Gore and Joe Biden (both future Vice Presidents, and Biden a future President) participated in DLC affairs prior to their candidacies for the 1988 Democratic Party nomination. Hale, Jon F. "The Making of the New Democrats." ''Political Science Quarterly'' 110, no. 2 (1995): 207-221. The DLC did not want the Democratic Party to be "simply posturing in the middle", and instead framed its ideas as "progressive" and as a "Third Way" to address the problems of its era. Examples of the DLC's policy initiatives can be found in ''The New American Choice Resolutions''.

Although the New Democrat label was briefly used by a progressive reformist group including Gary Hart and Eugene McCarthy in 1989, the term became more widely associated with the ''New Orleans Declaration'', Bill Clinton's subsequent criticism of Democratic Presidential hopeful Jesse Jackson's variant of Rainbow/PUSH, and policies of the DLC which in 1990 renamed its bi-monthly magazine from ''The Mainstream Democrat'' to ''The New Democrat''. When then-Governor Clinton stepped down as DLC chairman to run for the presidency in the 1992 United States presidential election, he presented himself as a New Democrat.

First wave

After 1974, the Yellow Dog, Atari, and Watergate Baby factions within the Democratic Party found a common thread in "liberal" iterations of "illusory" supply-side progressivism, advancing their mutual conceptions of "centrism" and post-industrial society. Democratic voter "tax revolts" that began in the Carter administration, and continued into the first Reagan administration, unraveled this common thread. Clinton and additional partisans subsequently organized the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985 and, four years later, the Progressive Policy Institute. The DLC and PPI promoted post-1985 configurations in fiscal and monetary "leadership" for a revival of the front. Elements of DLC convocations and PPI research later (re)introduced Joseph Schumpeter's innovation economics, and creative destruction as revolution, to Democratic Party platforms on political economy. Their efforts also produced electoral recoveries and even gains, especially during the 1992 elections. The PPI persisted into the present day, recently sponsoring "young pragmatists" at the rechristened Center for New Liberalism (formerly known as the Neoliberal Project) to "modernize progressive politics."

Historian Michael Kazin argues that the shift marked a divergence from Keynesian public spending, which aimed to stimulate a consumer market rally in a given economic sector, particularly by "laboring" individuals and families. These were fiscal and monetary goals of the latter half of the Second New Deal, as well as early Cold War liberalism. For this thesis, Clinton's "the era of big government is over" partially signified a reduction in government standards for determining levels of consumer resurgence, and the limits of public spending, in an economic sector. Kazin favored an updated version of these platforms for the Progressive Caucus and Bernie Sanders, albeit with a more diversified consumer base, in his "moral capitalism." This Kazin concept was connected to, yet distinct from, Ethical consumerism in the moral economy of capitalism.

Second wave

Presidency of Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton is the Democratic politician most identified with the New Democrats due to his promise of welfare reform in the 1992 United States presidential campaign and its subsequent enactment, his 1992 promise of a middle-class tax cut and his 1993 expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor. New Democrat successes under Clinton, underpinned by the writings of Anthony Giddens on the duality of structure, sustained a unity of opposites that became the hallmark of Third Way political economy. Allusions to this Third Way as syncretic politics and ''unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno'', should be explicated and the concepts assessed in shifting contexts. New Democrats are often regarded to have inspired Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and his policies within the Labour Party as New Labour, as well as prompting the continental conflation of Third Way approaches to social democracy with previous notions of democratic socialism. The two were often used interchangeably by political scientists and fostered popular conceptions of democratic socialism as a social democratic variant of libertarian socialism.

Clinton presented himself as a centrist candidate to draw White middle-class voters who had left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. Until 2016 and even after, the Third Way defined and dominated notions of centrism in U.S. partisan politics. In 1990, Clinton became the DLC chair. Under his leadership, the DLC founded two-dozen chapters and created a base of support. Running as a New Democrat, Clinton won the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.

Legislation signed into domestic law with bipartisan support under President Clinton includes:
* The North American Free Trade Agreement, a core international agreement signed during Bush Administration without NAALC/NAAEC and required Congressional approval for implementation. It is still largely in effect via the succeeding USMCA and proposed IPEF.
* The Don't Ask, Don't Tell ban on openly gay people serving in the Armed Forces ( repealed in 2010).
* The Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. (It was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 and repealed in 2022, the latter with support from 24% of the Congressional GOP).
* The Religious Freedom Restoration Act federal religious discrimination statute.
* The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, sometimes referred to as the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.

New Democrats dialectically adopted GOP proposals and platforms during the campaigns for the 1992 Congressional/state elections and 1992 United States presidential election. Below are subsequent Congressional legislative authorships and voting percentages. Please note that both the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act became law three months before the 1996 Congressional/state elections and 1996 United States presidential election.

''Legislative Authorship''
* 1996 Defense of Marriage Act: Bob Barr (R-GA) (GOP introduction)
* 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act: John Kasich (R-OH) with Ideas/Provisions from Clinton's 1994 proposal
* 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act: John Kasich (R-OH) with Ideas/Provisions from New Democrats
* 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: Phil Gramm (R-TX), Jim Leach (R-IA), and Thomas Bliley (R-VA) with Ideas/Provisions from New Democrats

''Congressional Democrat Voting Percentages''
* 1996 Defense of Marriage Act: 64% Dem Representatives support & 72% Dem Senators support
* 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act: 50% Dem Representatives support & 53% Dem Senators support
* 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act: 80% Dem Representatives support & 82% Dem Senators support
* 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: 75% Dem Representatives support & 84% Dem Senators support

The Clinton Administration, supported by Congressional New Democrats, was responsible for proposing and passing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which increased Medicare taxes for taxpayers with annual incomes over $135,000, yet also reduced Medicare spending and benefits across all tax brackets. Congressional Republicans demanded even deeper cuts to Medicare, but Clinton twice vetoed their bills. The Clinton Administration in turn taxed individuals earning annual incomes over $115,000, but also defined taxable "small business" earnings as less than approximately $10 million in annual gross revenue, with tax brackets for high-gross incorporated businesses beginning at that number. According to the Clinton Foundation, the revised brackets and categories increased taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers within these new brackets, while cutting taxes on 15 million low-income