We agree that a chief cause of the feeble US response to economic inequality is the weakness of the US working class. And we agree that a crucial cause of that weakness is racial division among workers, sometimes inflamed by opportunistic politicians or self-interested employers who benefit from a low-paid and powerless workforce. We would add two points. Increased capital mobility, the global labor market, and automation have strengthened capital versus labor in all advanced countries. But specific undemocratic features of US political institutions and processes have further increased the relative influence of the affluent and wealthy here, so that in the United States—more than in Western Europe—public policies have failed to offer much help. Our two books do not really disagree much about this: they just emphasize different parts of the story.
We do differ somewhat on the causes of racial divisions and of what Engstrom and Huckfeldt refer to as “a contagion of citizen-led grassroots disruptions” of democratic processes. We see genuine economic distress as providing much of the fuel for these fires and elite leadership as lighting the matches and fanning the flames. What remains unclear—and invites more research—is how often and under what circumstances elites actually generate (or at least exacerbate) social divisions, as opposed to mobilizing and channeling them. Social identities, and the tribalism that sometimes accompanies them, are socially constructed.
Our book focuses heavily on remedies. It will not be easy to reverse the weakening of US labor. We need either to rebuild unions or to encourage new organizational forms (some of which have sprung up around the country). Realistically, this will only happen if, as occurred between the New Deal and the late 1960s, a substantial segment of corporations and wealthy Americans concludes that business will gain more from a well-paid and harmonious workforce than from racial or class conflict. There are some signs of movement in that direction. It also appears that post-Trump political leaders will take a less socially divisive approach, helping reduce social conflict and disruption more generally.
We also agree that widespread misinformation can be very harmful to democracy, but we are less worried about misinformation being spread “by citizens themselves.” Elite behavior, public policy, and the quality of the information system as a whole are crucial. Social media and talk radio have become fever swamps only when elites (domestic or foreign) have promoted misinformation and have done so unchecked.
Fortunately, research indicates that siloed echo chambers are less common than was feared, and that most Americans have rejected the nonsense, misinformation, and outright lies that now pervade many US media. Still, changes are called for. Some social media have begun to struggle with how to reduce toxic and misleading content. But the profit motive is likely to limit such efforts, so government regulation may be necessary—with all the tangled issues that regulation raises. We will probably also need to reinvigorate FCC regulation of radio and TV, especially cable. Beyond that, it may be necessary to rethink the whole logic of freedom of the press. Does the First Amendment guarantee freedom for any billionaire who buys a press to spread whatever lies and misinformation he wants, short of violating rather toothless libel laws? Perhaps we should also consider robust funding of public media. Fox News might be partly countered by something like an American version of the BBC.
Because most of the specific reform proposals in our book have not yet come up in this dialogue, we want to close by mentioning a few highlights. We favor thinking about tomorrow as well as today, so we advocate several big, long-term reforms—reforms of the outrageous pro-rural bias of the US Senate, of “natural” and deliberate gerrymandering of House districts, of the outsized role of ideological extremists in primary elections, and of antidemocratic actions by the Supreme Court. To enact such reforms will require a strong, sustained social movement of the sort that won voting rights for women and the direct election of senators. Happily, there are signs that such a movement is coming together.
Certain other important reforms can be quicker and easier to achieve. The reprehensible efforts at voter suppression and obscene floods of big money in recent elections can be addressed by simple legislation, some of which has already passed the House. Universal voter registration, easy voting by mail, abundant in-person polling places, and plentiful opportunities for early voting: all this should be a high priority. The Supreme Court has made it impossible to directly regulate big political money, but public financing—by diluting the impact of private money and by incentivizing candidates to forswear it altogether—can help. Matching grants for very small contributions, or (better) equal “democracy vouchers” for each citizen to distribute among favored candidates, could go a long way toward muffling the loud political voices of multimillionaires and billionaires. These, we believe, should be the two top near-term priorities for democratic reform.
