Last week Bill Moyers asked Kevin Phillips — his latest book is Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism — where he stood on the “punditocracy” debate over whether we are a center-left or center-right country:
Well, I think the demographics of the change that we started out discussing, which is the great rise in non-whites it’s not a center right country anymore in my opinion. But I think it’s a centrist country with tendencies towards frustration. And back in the 1970s I remember Pat Caddell, who was Jimmy Carter’s pollster, was polling on some of this stuff.
And we sort of semi-collaborated a bit because we thought that affected both parties because the radical center so to speak was angry in a way that neither side could count on. I think that’ll develop again. I don’t want to say radical center. But I think it’s going to be a frustrated centrism that can lurch either left or right, outdated terms, but it’s probably going to be very unhappy if anybody says, “We can reform and privatize Social Security.” And the voter then says, “Yeah, but you bailed out the rich.” End of debate.
Does he see an emerging majority?
I would say it’s the emerging non-majority. In other words, you can’t count on more than a plurality because party attachment isn’t going to run deep enough, which means you can’t possibly build a generational supremacy. I mean, after 1968 Republicans held the White House for 20 of the next 24 years.
And I believe if Bill Clinton hadn’t had a zipper problem, the Democrats would have had it for three terms. But at this point I think what you’ve got is a troubled enough set of circumstances for the United States, economically and globally, that people in the White House are not going to be able to make enough of a stalwart rallying impression to set up another supremacy like you got out of 1860 with the Civil War or 1896 or 1932. I think they’re gone. I think the roots of political parties are more tenuous now. And nobody will have that sort of supremacy.
Phillips goes on to say that the two parties are a duopoly, “a double monopoly that no longer has meaningful ideas but has entrenched interests.” And, he says, “we have socialism coming in a big way. But it’s socialism for the rich.”