From Atari Democrats to President Obama: The Roots of Tech Optimism
The recent anti-tech turn among some Democrats in the Biden era marked a sharp break from the party’s decades-long embrace of technology.
From the 1980s through 2016, Democrats fostered an image as the party of innovation, nurturing a close alliance with the tech industry. We can trace this relationship back to the 80s-era “Atari Democrats,” through the Clinton-Gore era’s tech boom, and into President Obama’s embrace of technology on the campaign trail and during his presidency.
From Atari Democrats to Obama’s tech surge, the story of Democrats and tech is one of political adaptation grounded in optimism about the future. It’s a legacy worth recapturing today.
The Rise of the “Atari Democrats”
After a string of electoral defeats and only one Democratic presidency (Jimmy Carter) since the 1960s – a group of young reformist Democrats set out to reinvent the party’s economic message in the early 1980s.
Dubbed the “Atari Democrats,” figures like Senator Gary Hart, Senator Paul Tsongas, then-Congressman Al Gore, and others argued that embracing emerging technologies and high-tech industries was the key to renewed economic growth. They believed the party had “lost a strategy for growth” and needed to move beyond its New Deal-era focus on heavy industry and organized labor.
Instead of catering solely to unionized factory workers, these Democrats reached out to suburban professionals, entrepreneurs, and knowledge workers in the nascent information economy. They championed market-oriented ideas for progressive ends: using tech-driven growth to create jobs and rebuild American competitiveness.
As Senator Tsongas argued in his 1984 campaign, a new generation of Democrats was emerging with a shared commitment to rethinking the party’s economic vision — one grounded in innovation and aimed at keeping America technologically competitive. This technocratic, pro-innovation approach was a sharp break from old-school liberalism.
But the Atari Democrats provided the intellectual bridge to the party’s 1990s reinvention. Their ideas fed directly into the “New Democrat” movement associated with the Democratic Leadership Council and leaders like Bill Clinton. In 1997, moderate House members formed the New Democrat Coalition, a congressional caucus devoted to the Atari Democrats’ centrist, tech-friendly agenda.
The Clinton-Gore Tech Agenda and Its Political Payoff
The Clinton Administration of the 1990s fulfilled the Atari Democrats’ vision, blending public investment in technology with market optimism.
From day one, President Bill Clinton signaled that Democrats were now the party of tech-driven growth. In February 1993, barely a month into his term, Clinton and Vice President Al Gore flew to Silicon Valley to “introduce themselves” to the industry’s leaders and pledge the full support of Washington for U.S. innovation. They toured Silicon Graphics Inc. – then a hot young company – and told an enthusiastic crowd of engineers that government should “work like you do,” adopting the efficiency and creativity of the tech sector.
Policy-wise, Clinton and Gore aggressively promoted the digital economy. They expanded federal funding for research and development – increasing civilian R&D investment by over 40% and creating programs like the 21st Century Research Fund. They championed tech infrastructure, pushing to connect schools and communities to the burgeoning Internet. (By 2000, over half of American households owned a personal computer, double the share in 1994.)
The administration enacted tech-friendly laws – from a moratorium on Internet access taxes to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – that helped the Internet and e-commerce flourish. Vice President Gore led initiatives on information superhighways and climate technology leading to many punchlines about him claiming to have invented the internet. And Clinton consistently advocated free trade in technology, for example negotiating a WTO agreement to keep cyberspace a tariff-free zone.
Clinton and Gore also received critical support in Congress with the 1997 launch of the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of center-left Democrats who differentiated themselves from the rest of the Democratic caucus in their pro-tech posture.
The benefits of the Clinton-Gore tech agenda were enormous. It delivered economic success. Tech-fueled productivity helped drive the longest economic expansion in U.S. history at the time, only later surpassed by the economic recovery from the Great Recession under President Obama, with 22 million new jobs created and even budget deficits turning into record surpluses by the end of Clinton’s term. Incomes rose across the board and unemployment fell to its lowest rate in over 30 years – giving Democrats a powerful claim to competent economic stewardship in the Information Age.
Clinton’s embrace of Silicon Valley helped Democrats forge a new voter coalition. The party attracted a rising class of tech entrepreneurs and white-collar “knowledge economy” workers. Silicon Valley executives who once leaned Republican began backing Democrats who championed innovation. Suburban professionals in tech hubs shifted blue, turning California solidly Democratic.
The cultural image of the Democratic Party was refreshed. Clinton often cast Democrats as the forward-looking, modern party – “a new generation” comfortable with laptops and global markets instead of New Deal nostalgia. This helped shake off the “stodgy liberal” label and portrayed Democrats as pragmatic problem-solvers for the future.
Continued Tech Optimism into the Obama Era
The tech-Democrat alignment didn’t end with Clinton. It reshaped American politics into the 2000s, to the point that Democratic credibility became tied to being pro-innovation and pro-growth. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign epitomized this trend.
Obama harnessed new tech tools – from Facebook and YouTube to data analytics – to engage voters and organize supporters, becoming the first major presidential candidate to fully leverage social media. His tech-savvy campaign not only helped him win; it reinforced the Democrats’ brand as the party adept in the digital age.
As President, Obama continued Democrats’ willingness to reach out to Silicon Valley as a source of innovation and economic growth. He filled his administration with tech talent, creating new roles like a national Chief Technology Officer and launching programs to bring in seasoned technology experts from tech hubs in California, Boston, and beyond to upgrade government services.
After the HealthCare.gov website’s rocky start, Obama stood up the U.S. Digital Service to fix IT problems and modernize federal websites. He also eagerly engaged with tech CEOs to hear their perspectives. In 2011, for instance, President Obama dined with a “who’s who” of tech luminaries – Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and more – at a private Silicon Valley dinner where they discussed investing in innovation and creating jobs in the digital economy.
Lessons for Today
In the 1980s, the Atari Democrats reinvented a struggling party by hitching it to the engines of innovation and growth.
In the 1990s, Clinton and Gore proved that state-supported technology development could translate into broad prosperity and political success – turning “Silicon Valley” into a byword for American progress.
The 2000s and Obama years showed that this alliance could modernize not just the economy, but government itself (from data-driven campaigns to digitally delivered public services).
Today, as Democrats grapple with a more skeptical view of the tech industry and its leaders, it’s worth remembering the optimism and tangible benefits that a strong tech partnership has yielded.
Decades ago, the pro-innovation Democrats essentially won the argument; technology is a vital component of the economy and daily lives, just as visionaries like Al Gore and Gary Hart predicted. Nearly everyone has benefited from the groundwork they laid for the modern Internet and digital economy. With the invention and adoption of new technologies come new challenges that deserve a policy response. But the solution is not a divorce from the tech sector, it’s to reset the relationship in a way that aligns with Democratic values and the public interest.