The upcoming inauguration of George Bush after a tortuous legal process should be a wakeup call for Democrats. Too many mainstream Democrats blame Bush’s triumph on Ralph Nader or Katherine Harris. They would be well advised to recognize the ways in which their version of “democracy for the few” finally came back to haunt the party.

Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council have governed on the premise that upscale suburban professionals are the swing vote in American politics. To appeal to these voters, the party became more conservative on social issues and moderate in fiscal policy.

President Clinton, of course, still anticipated holding the traditional bedrock of the Democratic Party, blue-collar and service-sector workers, and African-American voters. Unfortunately, his policies both failed to serve these constituencies and even exacerbated tensions among them. Clinton support for affirmative action – while commendable – did little to benefit most working-class African-Americans. The North American Free Trade Agreement hurt many white working-class ethnics, leaving them to see Democrats as the party of special rights for African-Americans and social minorities.

Welfare “reform” may have symbolically appeased some of this anger, but only by further damaging the working poor. The DLC has always assumed that poor, minority and working-class voters have nowhere to go besides the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, as Ray Teixeira and Joel Rogers demonstrate in a recent book, white working-class males helped make Ronald Reagan president in 1980. In 1992, discouraged by a weak economy, they returned to the Democrats and stayed there in 1996 out of concerns about Republican attacks on Social Security.

Why was Al Gore unable to hold as many of these voters as Clinton did? Gore lost because 1) growth over the last decade has only belatedly and weakly benefited many working-class Americans, 2) he was a less than convincing advocate on behalf of these groups, and 3) Republicans have been smart enough not to run against Social Security or Medicare.

Unions did get out the vote, but their inability to convince a large minority of their members about Gore has been less widely noted. Thirty-seven percent of the vote from union households went to Bush. In Florida, Bush received far more of the votes of self-described liberals than did Ralph Nader.

New Democrats could respond that efforts to hold these liberals through trade reform, the minimum wage and universal health care would scare off the middle- class suburban professional. Perhaps, but over the long term, Democratic losses among the working class, not simply to Republicans but to the ranks of the nonvoters, have cost the party more than it can ever hope to pick up among affluent suburbanites.

The ugliest fact of American politics over the last generation has been the growing class voting gap. Not only have the ranks of nonvoters grown, nonvoting is disproportionately concentrated among the poor and working class. I have not yet seen a full analysis of the class voting gap for this election, but preliminary data suggest continuing working-class desertion of the electoral process.

Democrats’ relative indifference to their other two key constituencies was equally significant. Unlike Clinton in 1996, Gore could not carry a majority among Florida’s seniors. Republican promises to save Social Security were effective in part because they were slickly packaged. But Clinton opened the door by endorsing implausible scare stories about Social Security. Obligations to the elderly will continue to be met unless U.S. economic growth slows to a level unprecedented in this century.

Democrats supported voter mobilization efforts among African-Americans. Nonetheless, Florida Democrats they did little to monitor or challenge preemptory and biased proceedings of a private firm contracted to remove felons and other ineligible residents from the voting list. In addition, even long into the recount procedure, most Democrats were silent about the ways in which poor and minority communities were disproportionately harmed by archaic voting technologies and inadequate voter support services.

Americans desire protection from violent criminals, but extensive jail time – and permanent denial of voting rights – for such crimes as simple drug possession would probably not stand electoral muster even in Florida. A party with a long-standing track record of defense of working-class incomes and rights could surely have been supported in an equally basic fight to make the right to vote equal and effective in all communities.

Democrats still need the votes of their traditional constituencies, but they do little to meet their needs or even to assure that their votes are as likely to count as their affluent neighbors’. Eager to market themselves as enemies of big government, they have been reluctant even to invest in the infrastructure of democracy, state-of-the-art voting machines and adequate numbers of well-trained election officials. They have paid a high price for their flawed and morally myopic vision.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net.