We’ve never had a durable ruling majority party in this country that didn’t include the Jim Crow south. The Democratic ruling majority of the 20th century began in 1932, when the Democrats picked up a staggering 97 seats in the House (with four more from the Farmer-Labor Party), 12 seats in the Senate, and Franklin Roosevelt defeated the incumbent Herbert Hoover by a 472-59 electoral college vote.
A look at the Senate seats the Democrats won is instructive. None of them were in the South. The Dems won senate seats in Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. Yet, the Dems were building on a southern base. Democratic incumbents were reelected in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri (also Oklahoma, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and Arizona). In the House, there was no net change in House seats in the former confederacy. All the gains came from other areas of the country. The Dems picked up 6 or more seats in California, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In other words, 1932 was the biggest wave election on record, but it didn’t make the Dems any more popular in the South. Rather, the 1932 election diversified the Democratic Party, making it competitive in the North and West, and giving it an advantage in the industrial Midwest.
The Democratic Party was able to digest these newcomers, but fissures opened up soon after the war over desegregation of the armed services. In 1948, Strom Thurmond led a revolt and ran for president as the leader of the pro-segregation Dixiecrats. He was able to win Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and one electoral college vote from Tennessee. Yet, the Democratic ruling majority was so large that Harry Truman won the election without those Southern votes.
There are some that look back on the old days as if the Democratic Party was once a pure force for good that was somehow corrupted. In reality, the Democrats were a ruling majority party only so long as they were able to dominate the South.
There was very little purity in the old New Deal coalition. It was a coalition filled with some of the most vicious racists in our country’s history.
So, as the Democrats take over again as a ruling majority party, we need to understand our own history. A true ruling majority party is not overly ideological. It rules because it has broad agreement on a narrow grouping of popular ideas. And it rules because the opponents do not offer anything that can compete.
This may well be where we are headed. The Dems may begin to attract libertarians, evangelicals, free-trader true believers, and every stripe of unorthodox thinkers. Meanwhile, the Republicans will reinvent themselves in order to reestablish some appeal in the North, on the coasts, in the suburbs, and even in the cities. Many of them may be isolationists, or anti-free traders, or civil libertarians, or progressive on abortion, stem-cell research, gay rights and the environment. In other words, as the Democratic Party grows and the Republican Party evolves in reaction, the locus of progressivism will diverge from the Democratic Party.
And we should expect that and expect to see early signs of it. We’ll see more Zell Millers and Joe Liebermans in the Democratic Party even as we see more Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafees in the Republican Party. And that is a good thing.
I’ve been doing a lot of analysis of the upcoming elections and I think it is important to realize where our gains are likely to come from.
The wave will be there but it may be big or it may be small.
For example, a small wave in the Senate would bring us new seats in New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, and Colorado.
A large wave would add Oregon and Maine, plus possible pickups in Alaska, Idaho, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
Even if we do have a large wave, the current candidates in the south are no Dixiecrats or even Zell Millers.
In the House, the gains will be coming from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. We might win seats in Florida, Pennsylvania, and in California, and other seats scattered about.
The main gains, however, will be in the upper midwest…largely in suburban seats.
In the short-term, I do not see even a big wave election turning the Democratic Party too much to the right. And it will certainly turn the nation sharply to the left.
Yet, we are so far to the right at the moment that even a return to Clintonism will feel like a radical shift.
locus shmocus Boo! They(dems) snuck out of the capital last night after voting the mukster in as AG. If this represents the democratic party the fuck em. No vote from this old fart. No money either. Representation is the key.They no longer REPRESENT those that voted for them. That is the basis of a representative democracy. Those that support that form of govt have to ask themselves if this party still supports that Philosophy. I don’t thinl so and I doubt that the majority does either.
I don’t forsee that there will be any democratic wave or even a ripple in 08. I do think that the only possible saving grace is that the fundy right may either stay home or mount a third party campaign.
preview is your friend, bill.
Excellent point.
You raise some interesting points and its wise to look at the larger picture.
It’s true that the rise of the Democratic party the last century brought a lot of disparate interests together. But you miss the fact that they shared core principles regarding economic and class issues. The Democratic party used to be the party of the working man and the average family. Democrats varied widely on many issues, e.g. race. But they were pretty widely in agreement on economic issues. The Republicans were able to reverse this trend by convincing middle Americans that Republicans would help them economically (by cutting taxes) and also by changing the subject to social issues.
On a personal level I have left the Democratic party over civil liberty and foreign policy issues. I am indeed willing to join people I have a substantial disagreement with. However, I simply can’t be part of a political party in which we don’t share core values. The Democratic party has so fundamentally strayed from my core beliefs that it is now in my interest to find a new way forward.
Oh, and apart from the ideology involved there is the ability to play politics that is also a factor.
The Democratic party has not been able to provide cover for the members of party that are on the left. The Republicans are great at cultivating the fringe right of their party, or at least not actively harming them. The Democrats, on the other hand, have repeatedly stuck pointy sticks in the eyes of people like me, who are to their left. This type of politics ain’t so great at attracting a larger number of people. It’s a skill to maintian a party of a number of disparate ideas and the Democrats have not demonstrated such skill.
Democrats have to get strategically better before they can be a big tent party. Right now they are the party of “I’m Not a Republican Nutso so Maybe You Can Vote For Me?”