We are all going through a very depressing postmortem of an election which cannot possibly be interpreted as a victory for Democrats and progressives. Complex national elections are never determined by any single cause and effect relationship. However, there is little doubt that much of the electorate is unhappy with their economic situation and that Republicans were successful in convincing enough of them to blame Democrats and President Obama to have a significant impact on voting. The Republicans made some significant shifts in strategy between the 2012 election in which they had a generally bad outcome and this one in which they had a good one. They put a lid on the rhetoric of the social conservatives and soft peddled the cultural issues that played a big role in 2012 and concentrated on economic issues. Many Democratic candidates focused on issues such as reproductive choice and marriage equality.
This is resulting in a call from many people in the Democratic Party to focus on a progressive economic agenda. I certainly count myself a progressive Democrat and I have been concerned about the unwillingness of the party leadership to take strong stands in favor of progressive economic policies regardless of the immediate prospects pf getting them through a gridlocked congress. However, there is a recurring suggestion that the cultural issues that are priorities for groups who make up much of the party base aren't really economic issues and have cost the party in terms of votes lost. I would like to remind people that the cultural issues are economic issues. They have direct economic impact on the lives of the people whose rights are being suppressed.
The specific cultural issues that were the focus of public attention at the time of the election were:
Police violence against people of color
The Hobby Lobby decision obstructing funding for contraceptive coverage
Laws in several states which attempt to restrict access to abortion
Marriage equality
Immigration
All of these have their roots in the structural racism, sexism and homophobia that permeate American society. If you look and the practical realities of the specific issues that are the focus of passionate debates it is fairly easy to see how they all have economic implications. They all involve to some degree issues of fairness and justice that apply to people regardless of economic circumstances but they fall most heavily on people who lack economic means. Let us look at the issue of reproductive choice.
Prior to the 1960s most states had laws making abortion illegal in most circumstances. Many of them had laws prohibiting access to contraception as well. In theory the laws applied to all women. However, women with comfortable economic means never had much difficulty in getting around them. It was poor women who were most often forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy and seek abortions under medically unsafe conditions. Providing the practical realities of reproductive choice for all women has been a major focus of the women's movement and the most consistent target of opposition from right wing political groups.
For women the ability to have control over their reproductive choices is directly tied to their economic opportunities. This effects women with professional career aspirations, but it impacts poor women of color most heavily. When you are a single mother struggling to feed a family, the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy is not just an inconvenience, but a disaster. The Texas law which attempts to reduce the number of abortion clinics in the state to a few in widely scattered places will not stop women of means from getting abortions. They can always get on a plane and go to California. It does place a great burden on poor women who would have to travel a great distance to reach one of the remaining clinics.
I could do a similar analysis for the other issues listed above. Reproductive choice is just one example. There is no denying that cultural conflicts have long been political tools useful for dividing the masses and keeping them from uniting around common economic complaints. That was the main political engine of the Jim Crow south. It worked like magic to set poor black and poor white people against each other and keep the wealthy white oligarchs in power. We still live with the legacy of that racism.
We can't just drop the cultural issues and focus on economic issues. If the Democrats decided to take on a populist identity then it would be inevitable that the power structure which wants to preserve the present imbalanced economic structure would quickly return to stirring the cultural pot. The political reality for progressives is that we have to figure out a way to walk and chew gum at the same time.