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 contestation because almost thirty members of the NDC (and Blue Dog Coalition) self-signify as both Progressives and New Democrats. In 2020, the CPC tightened membership requirements and updated ideological as well as voting expectations for members. This restructuring diminished, but did not eliminate, the number of representatives who held seats in both caucuses, that is, as both "New Democrats" and "Progressives." 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.

Despite expansion of the CPC, even with stricter criteria for "Progressive" representation in Congress, the New Democrats' Progressive Policy Institute (established in 1989) persists 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."

Origins
In 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. Michael Dukakis, for instance, was a Watergate Baby who, after establishing the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation (1978), increasingly garnered attention from "private" start-up investors and, conversely, state auditors, as an Atari Democrat. Democratic voter "tax revolts" that began in the Carter administration, and continued into the first Reagan administration, unraveled this common thread.

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. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was founded in 1985 by Al From and a group of like-minded politicians and strategists.

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. 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 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.

Presidency of Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, 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.

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.

Bill Clinton became 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 families and making tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses. "Small businesses" and taxpayer classifications were reconfigured by these new tax brackets. Again, according to the Clinton Foundation, these brackets raised the top marginal tax rate from 31% to 40%. Additionally, it mandated that the budget be balanced over a number of years through the implementation of spending restraints.

Bill Clinton's promise of welfare reform was passed in the form of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Prior to 2018, critics such as Yascha Mounk contended that Clinton's arguments for the virtues of "negative" notions of "personal responsibility [New Orleans Declaration: 'individual responsibility']," propounded within DLC circles during the 1980s, stemmed more from Ronald Reagan's and Peggy Noonan's specific conception of "accountability" than any "positive notion of responsibility" or even multifarious approaches to "accountability." Additional critics distinguish the New Democrat idea of "personal responsibility" from arguments over the extent of limitations on government, if any, in platforms that advance social responsibility. The 1996 United States presidential election, the temporary relegation of Hillary Clinton to the global promotion of microcredit (argued by Claremont McKenna College historian Lily Geismer), partisan compromises over this act, conflicts within the Democratic Party, as well as the act's multivalent consequences, all contributed to deliberations over passage and execution of the PRWORA.

Democratic partisan criticism of the first Clinton administration as well as the formation of the Blue Dog Coalition, particularly in response to proposals and actions by the First Lady, followed 1994 congressional New Democrat losses in the southeast and west coast. Bill Clinton's reassertion as a New Democrat during the 1996 presidential elections, and passage of the PRWORA, contributed to the founding of the New Democrat Coalition, reaffirming Clintonian Democrats as New Democrats. As of August 2023, 23% of the New Democrat Coalition have become simultaneous members of, or declared an intention to vote for more proposals by, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. A number of these delegates, most notably Shri Thanedar, faced backlash from pundits and constituents alike, as evidence surfaced of alleged involvement in post-2016 attempts to rally neoconservatism.

Presidency of Barack Obama
In March 2009, Barack Obama, said in a meeting with the New Democrat Coalition that he was a "New Democrat" and a "pro-growth Democrat", that he "supports free and fair trade" and that he was "very concerned about a return to protectionism".

Throughout the Obama administration, a "free and fair trade" attitude was espoused, including in a 2015 trade report entitled The Economic Benefits of U.S. Trade that noted that free trade "help[s] developing countries lift people out of poverty" and "expand[s] markets for U.S. exports".

Throughout Obama's tenure, approximately 1,000 Democrats lost their seats across all levels of government. Specifically, 958 state legislature seats, 62 house seats, 11 Senate seats, and 12 governorships, with a majority of these elected officials identifying as New Democrats. Some analysts such as Henry Eten at FiveThirtyEight, believe this was due to the changing demographic shift, as more Democrats identified as liberal in 2016 than moderate.

Consequently, many pundits believed that Obama's tenure marked an end of the New Democrats' dominance in the party, although the faction still remains an important part of the party's big tent.

Hillary Clinton presidential campaign
Ahead of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, many New Democrats were backing the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, the wife of former New Democrat president, Bill Clinton who served as a Senator from New York during the 2000s and as Barack Obama's Secretary of State during the early 2010s. Originally considered to be an expected nominee, Clinton faced an unexpected challenge from Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders, whose campaign garnered the support of progressive and younger Democrats. Ultimately, Clinton won 34 of the 57 contests, compared to Sanders' 23, and garnered about 55 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, commentators saw the primary as a decline in the strength of New Democrats in the party, and an increasing influence of progressive Democrats within the party.

Ahead of the formal announcement of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published the Democratic National Committee email leak, in which DNC operatives, many of whom were New Democrats, seemed to deride Bernie Sanders' campaign and discuss ways to advance Clinton's nomination, leading to the resignation of DNC chair, and New Democrat member, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other implicated officials. The leak was allegedly part of an operation by the Russian government to undermine Hillary Clinton.

Although the ensuing controversy initially focused on emails that dated from relatively late in the primary, when Clinton was nearing the party's nomination, the emails cast doubt on the DNC's neutrality towards progressive and moderate candidates. This was evidenced by alleged bias in the scheduling and conduct of the debates, as well as controversial DNC–Clinton agreements regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions. Other media commentators have disputed the significance of the emails, arguing that the DNC's internal preference for Clinton was not historically unusual and didn't affect the primary enough to sway the outcome. The controversies ultimately led to the formation of a DNC "unity" commission to recommend reforms in the party's primary process.



Presidency of Joe Biden
The winner of the 2020 United States presidential election was Joe Biden, who served as vice president under Barack Obama. Joe Biden is the 46th president of the United States. In the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections, 13 Democrats lost their seats. All thirteen Democrats that lost their seats had won in the 2018 mid-term elections. Of those 13 members, 10 of them were New Democrats.

During the 117th United States Congress, the New Democrat Coalition lost its status as the largest ideological coalition in favor of the more left leaning Congressional Progressive Caucus. The CPC was founded in 1991, but only began catching up and eventually surpassed the New Democrat Coalition in the 2010s.

As of December 2023, Biden has largely maintained Trump's protectionist trade policies, and has not negotiated any new free trade agreements. Labor unions, an important constituency for Biden’s re-election, opposed removing Trump's tariffs.

Ideology
According to Dylan Loewe, New Democrats tend to identify as fiscally moderate-to-conservative and socially liberal.

Columnist Michael Lind argued that neoliberalism for New Democrats was the "highest stage" of left liberalism. The counterculture youth of the 1960s became more fiscally conservative in the 1970s and 1980s but retained their cultural liberalism. Many leading New Democrats, including Bill Clinton, and Gary Hart, started out in the George McGovern wing of the Democratic Party and gradually moved toward the right on economic and military policy. According to historian Walter Scheidel, both major political parties shifted towards promoting free-market capitalism in the 1970s, with Republicans moving further to the political right than Democrats to the political left. He noted that Democrats played a significant role in the financial deregulation of the 1990s. Anthropologist Jason Hickel and historian Gary Gerstle contended that the neoliberal policies of the Reagan era were carried forward by the Clinton administration, forming a new economic consensus which crossed party lines. According to Gerstle, "across his two terms, Clinton may have done more to free markets from regulation than even Reagan himself had done."

New Democrats have faced criticism from those further to the left. In a 2017 BBC interview, Noam Chomsky said that "the Democrats gave up on the working class forty years ago". Political analyst Thomas Frank asserted that the Democratic Party began to represent the interests of the professional class rather than the working class. In his 2020 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders said that "the Democratic Party has become a party of the coastal elites, folks who have a lot of money, upper-middle-class people".

Presidents

 * 1) Bill Clinton (former)
 * 2) Barack Obama (former)
 * 3) Joe Biden

Vice presidents

 * 1) Al Gore (former)
 * 2) Joe Biden (former)
 * 3) Kamala Harris

Senate

 * 1) Chuck Schumer
 * 2) Evan Bayh (former)
 * 3) Mark Begich (former)
 * 4) Jacky Rosen
 * 5) Jeanne Shaheen
 * 6) Maria Cantwell
 * 7) Tom Carper
 * 8) Bob Casey Jr.
 * 9) Max Cleland (former)
 * 10) Hillary Clinton (former)
 * 11) Kent Conrad (former)
 * 12) Chris Coons
 * 13) Joe Donnelly (former)
 * 14) Byron Dorgan (former)
 * 15) Al Gore (former)
 * 16) Maggie Hassan
 * 17) Heidi Heitkamp (former)
 * 18) John Hickenlooper
 * 19) Tim Johnson (former)
 * 20) Doug Jones (former)
 * 21) John Edwards (former)
 * 22) Ted Kaufman (former)
 * 23) Amy Klobuchar
 * 24) Mary Landrieu (former)
 * 25) Claire McCaskill (former)
 * 26) Bill Nelson (former)
 * 27) Barack Obama (former)
 * 28) Mark Pryor (former)
 * 29) Ken Salazar (former)
 * 30) Debbie Stabenow
 * 31) Jon Tester
 * 32) Mark Warner
 * 33) Michael Bennet
 * 34) Mark Kelly
 * 35) Bob Menendez
 * 36) Martin Heinrich
 * 37) Tim Kaine
 * 38) Patty Murray
 * 39) Catherine Cortez Masto
 * 40) Ben Ray Luján
 * 41) Chris Van Hollen
 * 42) Richard Blumenthal

House of Representatives

 * 1) Pete Aguilar
 * 2) Colin Allred
 * 3) Jason Altmire
 * 4) Brad Ashford (former)
 * 5) Cindy Axne
 * 6) Ami Bera
 * 7) Don Beyer
 * 8) Lisa Blunt Rochester
 * 9) Brendan Boyle
 * 10) Anthony Brindisi (former)
 * 11) Anthony Brown
 * 12) Shontel Brown
 * 13) Julia Brownley
 * 14) Cheri Bustos
 * 15) Lois Capps (former)
 * 16) Salud Carbajal
 * 17) Tony Cardenas
 * 18) André Carson
 * 19) Troy Carter
 * 20) Sean Casten
 * 21) Joaquin Castro
 * 22) Gerry Connolly
 * 23) Jim Cooper
 * 24) Lou Correa
 * 25) Jim Costa
 * 26) Joe Courtney
 * 27) Angie Craig
 * 28) Charlie Crist
 * 29) Jason Crow
 * 30) Joe Crowley
 * 31) Henry Cuellar
 * 32) Sharice Davids
 * 33) Susan Davis (former)
 * 34) Madeleine Dean
 * 35) John Delaney (former)
 * 36) Suzan DelBene
 * 37) Val Demings
 * 38) Eliot L. Engel (former)
 * 39) Veronica Escobar
 * 40) Elizabeth Esty (former)
 * 41) Lizzie Fletcher
 * 42) Bill Foster
 * 43) Vicente Gonzalez
 * 44) Josh Gottheimer
 * 45) Gwen Graham (former)
 * 46) Josh Harder
 * 47) Denny Heck (former)
 * 48) Jim Himes
 * 49) Steven Horsford
 * 50) Chrissy Houlahan
 * 51) Sara Jacobs
 * 52) Bill Keating
 * 53) Derek Kilmer
 * 54) Ron Kind
 * 55) Ann Kirkpatrick
 * 56) Raja Krishnamoorthi
 * 57) Ann McLane Kuster
 * 58) Rick Larsen
 * 59) Brenda Lawrence
 * 60) Al Lawson
 * 61) Susie Lee
 * 62) Elaine Luria
 * 63) Tom Malinowski
 * 64) Sean Patrick Maloney (former)
 * 65) Kathy Manning
 * 66) Lucy McBath
 * 67) Gregory Meeks
 * 68) Joe Morelle
 * 69) Seth Moulton
 * 70) Patrick Murphy
 * 71) Donald Norcross
 * 72) Beto O'Rourke (former)
 * 73) Jimmy Panetta
 * 74) Chris Pappas
 * 75) Scott Peters
 * 76) Ed Perlmutter
 * 77) Dean Phillips
 * 78) Pedro Pierluisi (former)
 * 79) Mike Quigley
 * 80) Kathleen Rice
 * 81) Laura Richardson
 * 82) Cedric Richmond (former)
 * 83) Deborah K. Ross
 * 84) Raul Ruiz
 * 85) Loretta Sanchez (former)
 * 86) Adam Schiff
 * 87) Brad Schneider
 * 88) Kurt Schrader
 * 89) David Scott
 * 90) Kim Schrier
 * 91) Debbie Wasserman Schultz
 * 92) Terri Sewell
 * 93) Mikie Sherrill
 * 94) Elissa Slotkin
 * 95) Adam Smith
 * 96) Darren Soto
 * 97) Greg Stanton
 * 98) Haley Stevens
 * 99) Marilyn Strickland
 * 100) Norma Torres
 * 101) Lori Trahan
 * 102) David Trone
 * 103) Juan Vargas
 * 104) Marc Veasey
 * 105) Filemon Vela Jr. (former)
 * 106) Jennifer Wexton
 * 107) Susan Wild
 * 108) Nikema Williams

Incumbent governors

 * 1) Andy Beshear
 * 2) John Carney
 * 3) Roy Cooper
 * 4) Laura Kelly
 * 5) Janet Mills
 * 6) Gavin Newsom
 * 7) Jared Polis

Former governors

 * 1) Evan Bayh (former)
 * 2) Mike Beebe (former)
 * 3) Phil Bredesen (former)
 * 4) Steve Bullock (former)
 * 5) Tom Carper (former)
 * 6) Jim Doyle (former)
 * 7) Mike Easley (former)
 * 8) Dave Freudenthal (former)
 * 9) Christine Gregoire (former)
 * 10) Maggie Hassan (former)
 * 11) Brad Henry (former)
 * 12) John Hickenlooper (former)
 * 13) Ted Kulongoski (former)
 * 14) Terry McAuliffe (former)
 * 15) Ronnie Musgrove (former)
 * 16) Janet Napolitano (former)
 * 17) Gina Raimondo (former)
 * 18) Brian Schweitzer (former)
 * 19) Kathleen Sebelius (former)
 * 20) Earl Ray Tomblin (former)