Everyone knows that prior to the Civil Rights era the Democratic Party was the dominant party in the South, but few people seem to understand what happened when this flipped and how it is about to impact the politics of the early 21st-Century.
The period between 1968 and 2008 was marked by the steady climb of a center-right ruling coalition. But as this evolved the Democratic Party splintered along regional and ideological lines. The first to bolt the party were Cold War hawks that were alienated by the New Left. This is the root of modern day neo-conservatism. The next wave were the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’: working class Americans with conservative social values and a strong sense of patriotism. They came from the South, rural areas, and the northern suburbs. The final piece of the puzzle was the rise of the religious right. These folks didn’t so much abandon the Democratic Party (although, in William Jennings Bryan, they had once had a strong voice within the party) as drop their traditional political apathy.
The result was that Democrats found themselves pushed to the coasts and the upper Midwest. This was not enough of an electoral base for them to be able to win national elections. The Dems tried to compensate with their vice-presidential picks. Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro, hoping that he could boost female turnout to historic levels. Dukakis tried to repeat Kennedy’s successful formula by picking a prominent Texas oil-man. Al Gore tried to appease war hawks and religious conservatives by picking Joe Lieberman. John Kerry attempted to get some regional balance by picking John Edwards of North Carolina. None of it worked. Despite the Clinton interlude, the Democrats continued to lose strength in the south and border states.
By 2000, the country was locked in a virtual tie, largely drawn along regional lines. But the Bush years would see the country run by a totally southern dominated Republican Party that ran roughshod over their opponents. The Bush era Republicans pushed every advantage, but they were too fundamentalist in their religion, too pro-corporate for their own constituency, and too reckless in their foreign policy for the country.
On top of this, they groomed no heir. The result has been fascinating to witness. The Republicans are no longer viable in the northeast and mid-Atlantic. They are losing consistently in places like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The party has splintered along ideological lines. A fundamentalist Christian won the Iowa caucuses, but he isn’t viable in New Hampshire. Northeastern Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are not viable throughout much of the party’s southern base.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are no longer plagued by regional differences. No one is talking about the fact that John Edwards is a southerner. In fact, he’s polling third in South Carolina even though he was born there. Hillary Clinton, having split her time between Illinois, Arkansas, and New York, has no regional identity. And no one seems to mind that Barack Obama is a black urban politician from the North. The policy differences between the candidates have nothing to do with regional differences, and any of them will be broadly acceptable to Democrats from Maine to Hawaii.
Part of this is a result of the national media environment. We all watch the same television shows, read the same magazines, and share the same meta-culture. The experience of a child growing up in suburban Boston isn’t much different from the experience of a child growing up in suburban Atlanta. This creates a leveling effect that mutes regional differences.
Another part of it is a broad consensus among Democrats about basic domestic policy. We want more health care, tolerance towards the GLBT community and immigrants, legal and rare abortion,
policy based on science rather than religion, and less corruption. The Republicans are divided on all those issues, largely along regional and/or suburban/rural lines.
It turned out that letting southern culture dominate Washington DC was unpalatable to the country as a whole. It has led to a firming up of the Democratic Party, which has been surging in places like Montana, Colorado…even Kansas. At the same time, it has effectively discredited one Republican leader after another. Look at the following list and ask yourself, ‘where are they now?’: Newt Gingrich, Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert, Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, George Allen, Ted Stevens. These were major players in the GOP who should have been leaders for years to come.
The Republicans still have residual strength in Washington, but only because the Senate only elected a third of its members in 2006. Once they get hit by a second wave election they will be beaten back into a inconsequential southern party. They will be leaderless, and they won’t be able to compete again in the non-southern states until they create a new non-southern platform for their candidates to run on.
Republicans are now entering an era in the wilderness. And it will be lonelier than the Democrats’ turn there, because the Republicans will not see congressional majorities, in either house, for a very long time.
What this also means is that we are entering a new progressive era. And it is going to be driven by the new generation that we are seeing turn out in unprecedented numbers in this years elections. If Obama wins today as big as I think he is going to win (43-plus percent), he’ll probably be unstoppable. He’ll be our next president. And he’ll have huge and sustainable majorities in Congress. This is a return to system we saw from 1933-1968. And we know how much we accomplished in those years.
This likely outcome of the 2008 elections is so foreign to our experience (since 1968) that I don’t see anyone really talking about it. Everyone seems bogged down in the debates from the fall (and from the Bush era, generally). Obama isn’t partisan enough, or Edwards isn’t genuine enough. For Hillary’s part, she’s about the become a casualty of this new progressive era. Her niche of the party was built for a different era…and era where Democratic ideas were stagnant and in decline.
Yes…I can see the landslide from here now. And I can’t wait. It does give me hope. This country still knows how to self-correct, and that is all the faith I need to continue to believe in our Republic.
I blame my cold medication for the fact that I never came back to my opening graf. Eh…whatever. I’m groggy.
Can I have some?
That’s not a bad rendition of the past 40 years, with the downfall of liberal politics.
But the medication may be making you overly optimistic. We still have Feb 5th to get over, and then the traditional battery of Republican dirty tricks. The Swiftboaters are gearing up again, I hear.
Pessimism vs. optimism. I’m an optimist.
SO now you admit that you know nothing about the Buddhist principle of the “middle way.” Take this path and while you will never be right, you will also never be wrong. Just some advise, that’s all.
hey I could be wrong, definitely.
But I remind you that I predicted the 29 seat pickup in the midterms exactly (it later moved up to 30). And I predicted a Obama-Edwards-Clinton and a Huckabee-Romney result in Iowa. And I predicted McCain would win New Hampshire over a month ago, and again before Iowa. And I’m not using any formula.
Yes, I am an optimist, but that’s because things look good.
Okay. I’m convinced. That’s why I’m not a political blog operative and you are. So….???
PS: I think the problem here is that you’re not running for any office. I’m certain we can use another representative from somewhere except Alaska, no?
It’s not so much not seeing this as it is coming out of the long, long time in the forest, and being blinded. We can’t believe it’s happening.
This isn’t really correct. GOP neocons descend from the Goldwater-Rockefeller rift that wrecked the GOP in ’64. Democratic hawks didn’t really leave the party until ’72. Meanwhile, Nixon and George Wallace discovered and co-opted the “Reagan Democrats” in ’68. If the GOP hadn’t been stuck with Ford in ’76, they would have been “Dole Democrats.”
The next wave were the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’: working class Americans with conservative social values and a strong sense of patriotism.
They might, with greater accuracy be called Wallace
Democrats. Wallace won the Michigan primary in 1968. White people all over the country left the Democratic party over civil rights, they just don’t like to say so.
should have said 1972
This is why I’ve always read your work. Really good stuff here.
I’ve wondered for the last 2 years why that is.
my theory is that they spent too much time using Bush as a Messianic figure.
They thought the end times would come and they wouldn’t need a successor?
This assumes that that only the evangelical base had an interest in continuing a Republican presidency. And maybe that’s true. Maybe BooMan’s men in the gray suits stopped any successor grooming so they knew there would be an end to this mess.
Every time I try to rationalize their behavior, I find myself at a loss. I think that’s a good thing 🙂
Cheney and Addington(?)’s view of an imperial president worked its mojo on both sides of the aisle. It’s still working, unfortunately. Bush has so much perceived power that even though he is polling in the basement, the Dems don’t fight back and the GOP feels a need to support his policies. It doesn’t make any sense for them to grab so much power for the Executive Branch without considering the possibility of a future Dem President.
Maybe BooMan’s men in the gray suits stopped any successor grooming so they knew there would be an end to this mess.
My take on this is that they figured they’d have run the economic train off the rails by 2008 and couldn’t steal anymore from the system without mobs with pitchforks in the streets, or another 1929. “Let the Democrats clean up the mess and placate the proletariat, and then we’ll be back in 20 years for another go-round of robber baron piracy…”
I’m not willing to give them nearly enough credit to make me think they planned it that way, but at the same time I have little doubt that this is exactly how the cycle will play out.
Once things began to unravel in Iraq, no one in the GOP wanted to keep a high public profile, and those few that did were either unseated in the 2006 elections or retired after reading the tea leaves. They not only bet on the wrong horse, they bet everything on the wrong horse.
There’s also an inherent self-limitation in conservatism: it’s essentially reactionary. Without a healthy liberal opposition to parasitize, it cannot survive. The destruction of the Democratic party as a viable entity, first by DLC moles and then by Rove and DeLay’s scorched earth tactics, left them in the position of sustaining the system, which is something reactionaries cannot do.
excellent points.
I hope you are right Booman.
Becauise I am dreadfully worried that Obama’s “get along gang” rhetoric will mean there will be no consequences fro BushCo’s lawbreaking, and business will continue as usual (but with a smiley face instead of a scowl).
I want to know if he will restore habeas. I want to know if he’ll stop the wiretapping. I want to know if he’ll repudiate the “unitary executive” theory.
Looking at all the missed votes and the “present” votes on issues like abortion, I am not convinced or impressed.
It is not good enough to elect a democrat. we need the right kind of democrats.
No doubt.
And if Obama gets elected without gaining huge new majorities in Congress then it would have been better to have a fighting partisan like Edwards as president. And I would vote for Edwards today for two reasons. 1) rewarding good behavior 2) attempting to boost him into second place.
But Edwards does not have this upside.
And if Obama is elected with record turnout that turns most of the country blue, he will have the luxury of being magnanimous. Republicans that want to say they accomplished anything will have to play ball.
Envision such a victory, with Republicans on their knees, hat in hand. Do you need to kick them some more? No really.
People need to remember how to dream. All the metrics are there. Turnout is currently double the projection in New Hampshire. These are not normal times. I strongly believe the blue/red divide is over.
I strongly believe the blue/red divide is over./
So does Obama:
“”The fact of the matter is, I know some in the party have differences with Joe. I’m going to go ahead and say it,” Obama told the 1,700-plus party members who gathered in a ballroom at the Connecticut Convention Center for the $175-per-head fundraiser.
“I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf,” he said.”
That didn’t work out so hot.
“Envision such a victory, with Republicans on their knees, hat in hand. Do you need to kick them some more? No really.”
Well, actually YES I DO need to kick them some more, because repealing habeas corpus is simply unforgiveable forever. However, even though the GOP needs to learn what it’s like to be kicked repeatedly and mercilessly when you’re down, I actually cannot envision the Republicans on their knees.
I simply do not see it. The GOP does not give up: when you traffic in lies, innuendo, and smear there is never a reason to give up. That is especially true when you have an infrastructure like the movement conservatives have (the newspapers, the radio, thinktanks, most of the judiciary, and BushCo appointees at every level of government). I appreciate your optimism, but I think it’s a little premature. I also don’t think that Obama’s going to GET that filibuster proof majority, thanks to his colleagues Reid and Pelosi’s failure of leadership.
“People need to remember how to dream. All the metrics are there. Turnout is currently double the projection in New Hampshire. These are not normal times. I strongly believe the blue/red divide is over.”
maybe that’s why I have insomnia: I’ve forgotten how to dream. [speaking of which I finally DID fall asleep last night I had this really f-ed up dream where you, me, and my g/f were on a dock watching what looked like small red white and blue planes taking off. Then you pointed out that they were actually nuclear missiles. But I digress.]
I do not believe the red/blue divide is over, not for a minute.
I agree with this. I haven’t much followed Obama, because I don’t watch the teevee, but I caught a spot of him from a hotel room the other day, and he exudes authority. I don’t believe for one minute that he will be a ‘centrist’ in the Broderian sense. That’s just fluff, as you say, to woo the media. If he gets into power, he will crush any pundit that tries to do him in. Like all tested pols, he knows how the game is played. The difference is that he’s not scarred the way Hillary is, and unlike JRE, whom I support most, will if he wins, win very big.
The question we ought to be asking is, who are his backers, who are the powers behind him?
Your proposition that it will be a long way back for the Repugs leaves out one of the most important elements that might affect the situation: namely, the extraordinary ability of the Democrats to flock up a good situation handed to them.
The people of this country voted for CHANGE in 2006, and they voted for Dems in huge numbers to effect that change. At the very least, people wanted OPPOSITION to Bush, if the Dems didn’t yet have the numbers to make change, at least oppose, and yes, when necessary, obstruct the criminality of the Bush administration.
And what did we get?
Abso-flockin-lutely nothing. We got a massive dose of the same old same-old, made even worse by the fact that we EXPECTED something different.
Yeah, people will probably vote for the Dems again in large numbers in 2008. Although they don’t deserve it, they ARE the lesser-of-two-evils.
Sure, there may be some marginal change — a decent social program implemented here, a less-reactionary judge confirmed there.
But the fundamental erosion of our constitutional rights will not be turned back. The war in Iraq will continue on unabated and unchecked. The myth of the GWOT will continue to be the driving force of American foreign policy. Corporations will continue to buy legislators and legislation. The utterly bizarre fantasyland that is our nation’s capitol will continue to be as unconnected to the reality of the rest of the country as it ever was.
And by about 2010, people are going to start saying, hey, I voted for Dems to get change, and I got the same thing. Might as well vote for Repugs.
After Goldwater, a lot of people thought the Repugs were dead. Dems flocked up, Repugs were back in four years. After Nixon, a lot of people thought the Repugs were dead. Dems flocked up, Repugs were back in four years.
I wouldn’t be carvin’ no Republican gravestones if I were you.
After Goldwater, a lot of people thought the Repugs were dead. Dems flocked up, Repugs were back in four years. After Nixon, a lot of people thought the Repugs were dead. Dems flocked up, Repugs were back in four years.
Hopefully at least some of them have learned a little from history.
I expect we’re going to get change once we have two branches of government under control. But I’ve been proved a fool before (as part of your “lot of people”).
Let’s just say I haven’t sent all those books on Canada that I bought a few years ago to the used book store just yet. And my passport is still good.
I like your vision. In a sense, I’ve been arguing for something like it since 1994 in California when it became evident that demographic shifts would eventually create an “emerging majority” that was not white and not hogtied by its own racism.
And Dems came to dominate in CA, for precisely those reasons. Looks like a similar realignment toward the future is happening nationally.
That said, a cautionary note from the CA experience: many of the pols who benefit from that shift will be the same tired Dems who were already in office. We’ve seen that in the 2006 vintage Congress. They don’t get it.
We have to very consciously push forward the new pols who will take over their places under the new Dem hegemony if we want to see different results. So pushing out our own Bush Dogs, etc. remains important if we are to get the full benefit of the change afoot.
So pushing out our own Bush Dogs, etc. remains important if we are to get the full benefit of the change afoot.
Boo has said plenty of times that we should continue to use the primaries for just this purpose.
On the other hand, the Right Wing is entrenched in the judiciary for at least a generation. The effects of this will include, but go far beyond, the criminalization of abortion. It seems likely to me that ALL of the regulatory legislation post 1936 will be declared unconstitutional, including and perhaps especially the Clean Air Act. Even a Democratic President is unlikely to affect the right wing conservative majority on the Supreme Court in the next 8 years. All that can be hoped for is to prevent the moderate minority from further diminutions.
The last vote that might have had any significance for the Republic was the vote on filibustering the Alito nomination. After that failed, the Rightists were set for decades, regardless of how future elections play out.
FDR had this problem, too. You just grit your teeth and keep working at it for as long as it takes. Replacing judges over time in the lower courts will help, too.
From what I’ve read, Scalia might surprise us and retire early. He’d rather go hunting with Cheney (while still young enough to avoid an errant shot).
… but we still face the risk of Electing a Bourbon Democrat … in which case we get far less than we might from a progressive period.
And no matter how impressive things look at the height of a progressive era, it cannot last in the Madisonian system. A conservative period can last quite a long time … indeed, part of the reason the “Movement Conservative” coalition has started breaking up on the rocks as soon as it did, is that at its core, it is a radical movement rather than conservative movement.
But a progressive era is self-extinguishing in our political system.
So we got to get good when the getting is good.