The Technocratic Party

How Democrats became boring

The event had all the excitement of a teeth cleaning and its emcee, the charisma of an undertaker. It was September 7, 1993, and Vice President Al Gore was speaking.

For over ten minutes—in a navy blue, ill-fitting suit to compliment his prep school coif and schoolboy tie—he droned on to the crowd gathered in front of him—their eyes glazed and heavy—about the basic principles of governmental success: “Number One, cut red tape. Shift from a system of accountability based on rules to a system where you’re accountable for achieving results.” That, he lectured, required a need to “use market dynamics such as competition to create incentives for success.”

Behind Gore were two forklifts, stacked with books filled with rules that defined the laws of gravity in Washington, where by that sunny September day in 1993, the federal workforce had ballooned to record-high levels. Gore was there to announce the findings of his “National Performance Review” and his report, “From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less.” It was a task President Clinton had handed him that March—part of their campaign commitment to “reinvent government.” The performance review was, as Gore said, “A new customer service contract with the American people.” It was also a new political strategy—Democrats were making an explicit break from the party’s past, which included the New Deal and the Great Society, two efforts in the 1930s and 1960s which permanently transformed (and vastly expanded) the federal government.

Gore was a New Democrat: fixated on the facts, and absolutely determined to make sure he knew them so that he could look smarter than you—and everyone else. He looked, dressed, and sounded like an actor who auditioned for the role of Bill Clinton but didn’t get the part. In the early 1990s, Gore and so many other Democrats had adopted a new way of speaking: technocratic, itemized, disciplined. It made sense for a character like Gore, the son of a U.S. Senator who attended the only university he had applied to, Harvard.

Since 1968, the Democratic Party had been adrift. By 1992, they had lost five of six elections: back-to-back losses to Nixon, a narrow win by Jimmy Carter, and three successive blowouts by Republicans in 1980, 1984, and 1988. To adjust to a country that had fallen under the spell of the Conservative Revolution, Democrats tacked to the right too. Rather than defend Democratic programs that had slashed inequality and poverty, they began discussing their dismantling. Under the guidance of groups like the Democratic Leadership Council—which styled itself on the Heritage Foundation, a group founded in 1973 to push the Republican Party further to the right—Democrats delighted in new, corporate-manager-class solutions that had flooded the private sector in the preceding decades.

After Watergate, a new wave of Democrats, like Senator Gary Hart from Colorado, emphasized a desire for “the end of the New Deal” because “the proliferation of agencies often creates—not solves—problems.” He was one of many “Atari Democrats” coming to Washington, a group who represented mostly white, middle class, suburban districts and who promised “market solutions” to a country racked by the chaos of Vietnam and the violent end of the Civil Rights movement.

Others included Michael Dukakis, who was elected Governor in Massachusetts in 1974, and Jerry Brown who was elected Governor in California that same year. Two years later, Al Gore was elected to the U.S. House from Tennessee. Another among them was Tim Wirth, who was elected to the U.S. House from Colorado in 1974 and later became a U.S. Senator. Wirth summed up the new outlook best. “Democratic constituencies used to be labor, blue-collar, and minority oriented. Now, as in my case, they are suburban, with two working parents…a college educated, information-age constituency.”

And in the appeal to that new constituency, and in the elevation of figures like Gore, Democrats began speaking this new, wonkish yuppy language. As Gore outlined in the National Performance Review, unions—long the backbone of the party—could be uplifted only if they “transformed an adversarial labor-management relationship into a collaboration” that created a “high performing, customer-focused organization.” Absolute gobbledygook signifying little beyond the fact that Democrats had made being out of touch one of their party platforms.

In 2025, Elon Musk will try to revive Gore’s idea—which was successful in cutting the federal workforce, so much so that President Clinton had started to sound like a Republican in his 1996 State of the Union address when he declared, “the era of big government is over.” However, just as Musk’s idea isn’t new, neither was Gore’s. President Reagan too promised to “drain the swamp”—that’s the phrase he used—and in fact he commissioned businessman J. Peter Grace in 1982 to lead an effort attacking government inefficiency. Yet, across Reagan’s two terms the federal payroll expanded by 20 percent. Whether Musk is successful or not is yet to be determined—and to be sure, the federal bureaucracy is overcomplicated and bloated—but identifying a problem and solving it are two different things. And of course, it remains to be seen whether Musk roots out corruption or emboldens it.

However, the more pressing issue is that Democrats, still, don’t talk like normal people. Recently, the leadership of the Harris campaign went on a very friendly podcast to review their effort which raised $1.5 billion dollars, and according to them, only made a single mistake: losing. And of course, that wasn’t their fault.

Yet, in listening, it’s clear that Democrats have not learned that the language they adopted whole cloth in the late 1980s and early 1990s needs to be abandoned. To put it bluntly: they need to stop talking like consultant-class nerds. Phrases like “a new way forward”, “opportunity economy”; “care economy”; “Build Back Better,” “building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” and “justice for all,” mean nothing.

Rather than smugly make fun of Donald Trump’s use of language, perhaps party elites—who no doubt will fight to maintain power despite having lost two out of three elections to Trump—should begin to pay attention to it. Of course, many of Trump’s go-to phrases and outright lies mean little as well, but at least to many voters, they create a response other than heavy eyelids. Beyond talking like normal people, Democrats also need to craft policies that actually make sense and have appeal to the base of voters that the Atari Democrats explicitly abandoned: working class people. The party needs to give these voters a sense that they are fighting for something other than simply opposing Donald Trump. And perhaps leave the finger-wagging style in the past. Otherwise, the droning, focus-group approved language will continue to sound and feel like a trip to the dentist.

Sources:

Lily Geismer. Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality. 2022.

Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein. A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism. 2023.