Despite the Republican dominance of American politics since George W. Bush ‘won’ election in 2000, the two major parties have been, in historical terms, quite evenly matched. In two straight presidential elections the outcome came down to the results in a single state. The state-by-state results in 2000 and 2004 were almost identical, leading to the terms ‘red states’ and ‘blue states’, with ‘purple states’ designating the few states that either changed hands or threatened to do so.
After the 2000 election, the Senate was locked in a 50-50 split, until Rep. Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched from the Republican caucus to the Democratic caucus. In 2002, the Republicans picked up two seats to retake the Senate and then added four more in 2004. In 2006, the Democrats took back those six seats, returning the Senate to the 51-49 condition of mid 2001-Jan. 2003.
Therefore, American politics, at least as defined by the Presidency and the Senate, have been locked in place like the tectonic plates of the San Andreas Fault. The Pacific plate and the North American plates typically move (relative to each other) only 33-37 millimeters per year. But in twenty million years that will place Los Angeles north of San Francisco. It took over a century for the south to move from a solidly Democratic region to a solidly Republican region.
Looking back on the flip of regional partisan allegiance, we don’t really see steady slippage at an annual rate of a few millimeters. Rather, we see huge seismic shocks. The civil rights movement and the failure of the Vietnam War (under Democratic leadership), were ‘the big ones’ that changed the fault lines of American politics. Since the early seventies, though, the Republicans have been making slow steady progress to consolidate the south. Meanwhile, during the Bush years, Democrats have been consolidating the northeast and other coastal regions. Christopher Shays of Connecticut is now the only New England congressperson in the House of Representatives (and he barely survived his last election).
The transformation is now nearly complete and it has resettled at a new equilibrium. The Democrats are the party of the north and coastal regions, the Republicans are the party the south and the heartland. Or, so it seems.
In reality, the Democrats ceased to be a majority party in this country after the 1968 election of Richard M. Nixon. The Democrats were wiped out in the 1972, 1980, and 1984 presidential elections. We’ve been trying to crawl back to parity ever since. But the era has seen a constant rightward shift of American politics. A whole generation of left-leaning pundits and consultants are permanently scarred by the experience and they have drawn certain conclusions about what it takes for Democrats to win on a national scale. Their one example of success is the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Thus, for them, the question of how Bill Clinton was elected, and re-elected is a central concern and emulating his success is key to the 2008 outcome.
But, this is wrong for a whole variety of reasons. Bill Clinton may not have been elected if it were not for a strong primary challenge by Patrick Buchanan and a strong third party general election challenge by Ross Perot. There are no like strong challenges on the horizon in 2008. Bill Clinton won election by focusing on domestic polities (it’s the economy, stupid), but we are living in a time of terrorism and war, not in the wake of the end of the Cold War. Finally, Bill Clinton possessed unique political skills that account for an indeterminate amount of his success.
Clinton’s re-election is also complicated. Bob Dole was not a strong candidate. Newt Gingrich made a strategic error in shutting down the government. It’s hard to make a strategy for the future out of the mistakes and weaknesses of your past opponents.
There are simply too many variables for us to be able to determine the causes of Clinton’s two successful presidential campaigns, and we would make a grave mistake to try to isolate any one thing and see it as worth emulating. It’s true, for example, that Clinton adopted a strategy of triangulation after his midterm losses in 1994. But it’s not clear that triangulation can explain his ability to get re-elected. And it didn’t prevent his impeachment (which was a reflection of his polarizing effect on the opposition).
The catastrophe of the war in Iraq, as well as the Bush presidency more generally, has opened up the potential for another seismic event. Rather than seeing the 2008 election as another red/blue/purple battle, where the states break down along regional lines, we may see an election more like 1972 (where the Dems won only Massachusetts and DC), 1980 (where the Dems won only Georgia, Minnesota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Maryland, and DC), or 1984 (where the Dems won only Minnesota and DC).
In those Republican landslides, reliably blue states like New York and California, were not safe. We may be looking at an election that is much more like 1964 (where Goldwater won only in his homestate of Arizona, and in the deep southern states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana).
I wrote yesterday about the Senate seats that are up for re-election in 2008, and they include the deep southern seats, as well as red seats in Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and Alaska. Those seats may be more vulnerable than people realize.
Nothing is inevitable, but given the right candidate we could see a fundamental realignment of the political landscape. The Democratic Party could find itself with not only the Presidency, but a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and an ever greater majority in the House.
And the Republicans could find themselves in the same deep hole that Goldwater’s campaign left them in. And, after Goldwater, the GOP began a period of adjustment and development that fundamentally changed what the party was, what it stood for, and who supported it.
To some degree the field of Republican candidates seems to already anticipate this. John McCain, like Barry Goldwater, is a senator from Arizona that is known for a somewhat maverick style. Like Goldwater, his positions on the issues (in this case, the Iraq War) are totally out of touch with the times. And the electorate, seeming to sense this, is throwing more support behind a more traditional (in the old sense) Republican, Rudy Guiliani. As for Mitt Romney, he is pandering to the conservative base and changing his positions on social issues, but he is still a moderate Republican from Massachusetts.
I’ve talked a lot about the need to impeach the President and the Vice-President, but it is probably already too late for the Republicans to avoid the reckoning that is coming. The best chance the Republicans have is that the Democrats seem to be unprepared for success. By all rights, 2008 should see a realignment of national politics. An earthquake, if you will, should be coming that will move the red/blue political plates in the blue direction for a generation.
Who is the right person to lead this revolution? Here’s a hint: it ain’t Hillary Clinton and the Clintonistas. It ain’t anyone from the Old School.
Perhaps it is Barack Obama. Perhaps it is Bill Richardson. It should be a new face for a new generation, and a new face of American politics…a politics with one solidly center-left majority party.
