Creating Environmental Coalitions: Red, Blue and Purple from Aubergine to Lilac
William Grady Holt
There are two lessons from the original New Deal for the Green New Deal. First, legislative progress takes place in steps. Second, this progress can be reversed if the coalition that supported the progress unravels. For GND to endure, a stable winning coalition of various groups need to be constructed and this will require compromise. Seeking a perfect GND might lead to non GND or a reversible GND.
Policies Need Political Coalitions
In 1932 President Franklin Roosevelt developed a loose political coalition of Northern Liberal Democrats and Southern Conservative Red Dog Democrats while bringing in African Americans who had voted Republican since Lincoln’s emancipation. Under the New Deal Programs, Franklin Roosevelt dealt with tensions between the labor unions’ desires for job creation with the emerging American environmental movement. The First New Deal (1933-34) focused on the banking crisis. The Second New Deal (1935-38) encompassed the Wagner Act, protecting labor union organizing; the Works Progress Administration (WPA), making the US federal government the nation’s largest employer; and the Social Security Administration. The development of the US Housing Authority, building public housing, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing minimum wages and maximum work hours for most employment categories in 1937 represented the end of major New Deal legislation. Even within the Democratic Party’s liberal wing supporters who focused on job creation clashed with early environmentalists objecting to development projects like dams by the Bonneville Power Administration in the US West. Importantly, the 1937 recession resulted Republican Congressional gains creating a new coalition with conservatives who opposed New Deal legislation as hostile to economic development and business growth resulting in programs’ shutdowns and repeals by 1943.
GND and Political Coalition
While the U.S. electorate is presented as severely partisan, an April 2019 Gallop Poll indicates 44% adults identify as independents with 27% Republicans and 26% Democrats. So, there is a hard-core base on the left and right that candidates placate in their party’s primary elections. However, in order to win a general election, candidates move to more centrist positions to capture these independent voters as well as moderate cross-over voters from the opposing party. Also, 212 pivot counties voted in 2008 and 2012 for Obama while voting for Trump in 2016 with 113 voting for Democratic Congressional members in 2018. While the party loyalty and straight -ticket voting of decades past may be gone, the collation of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives representing the Clinton and Bush wings of each party, resulted in the emergence of left-wing socialists and right-wing nationalists within each party. Ironically, each wing shares some common ground on economic development, job growth, and inter-generational prosperity in deindustrialized urban centers and depopulating rural areas.
The 2019 Green New Deal (GND) contains concepts that may appeal across the electorate. GND supporters should be developing bipartisan support for components that could be phased. Americans support the concepts of clean water and air. They see the impacts of the multiple clean air act over decades. Innovations drive capitalism. Look at ways to encourage investments in new efficient technologies that can become best practices. This would build bridges between liberal environmentalists and conservative conservationists. Look to the state level where environmental referendums passed in conservative majority state with these bipartisan coalitions.
However, the proposals are clouded by other issues like socialism that may alienate independent and conservative voters. On one hand, the GND seeks to infuse environmental issues across federal programs as well as rebuilding the national electric grid and guarantee access to clean air and water. Within 10 years under the GND, the US would transition to 100% renewal, zero emission energy sources emphasizing electric cars and trains. However, the GND also includes proposals for universal health care, basic income, increasing minimum wage, and divesting monopolies. An early version included provisions for economic security even if an able-bodied person chose not to work despite a job guarantee. The GND created critics on left and right among its environmental and social programming proposals. The MIT Technology Review criticized the GND for ignoring science by taking carbon taxes, fossil fuel carbon capture, hydropower, and nuclear power out of this legislation. Many of these initiatives garner moderate Republicans’ support. A January 2019 letter to Congress by 626 organizations supporting the GND had noticeable absences including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Audubon Society. Conservatives and liberals began to question who would make the decisions about individual transportation ownership to home energy consumption.
The GND’s current proponents are ignoring the conservation conservatives ranging from outdoor enthusiasts to moderate Republicans to independents. The GND proponents cloak their plans as a moral argument which leaves little to no room for compromises-it’s us v. them. Some of the earliest supports of the environment, were conservative conservationists emerging from outdoor enthusiasts as well as hunters and fishers from the Roosevelt (Teddy not Franklin) Coalition that created what became the US the National Parks System. Since the 1970’s US federal keystone environmental legislation, the public shows support for clean air and water. Building on this group, moderate conservatives support governmental subsidizes for nuclear power plants. Americans are not monolithic voters but may not be sure who the GND means by us v. them. Drawing from the New Deal’s coalitions, the GND could develop stable political coalitions across political ideologies by returning the focus to environmental issues breaking down the red/blue divide into multiple shades of purples around green topics by staying on point. The lesson of the 1937 recession should not be forgotten. If GND is difficult to pass during an economic boom, how will it survive an economic downturn? GND must therefore create a stable coalition to provide it with some level of political cushion, during various phases of the business cycle.
William Grady Holt is an Associate Professor in the Urban Environmental Studies (UES) Program at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.