I’m a little under the weather today. If I had more energy, I’d do a deep dive into Joshua Green’s excellent piece on the Republican Party realignment we’re witnessing.
I encourage you to read it and to keep two things in mind.
First, if the GOP goes with Trump or Cruz, it will, ironically, signal a movement away from the financial sector wing of the party. The party base will be less educated and more working class. Professionals and many high earners will gravitate toward the Democrats.
Second, if Rubio (or Kasich, Christie or Bush) becomes a stand-in for the financial sector Establishment and takes the nomination, the blue collar element of the GOP will be extremely alienated. Participation could drop off a cliff, and many of these voters could move to Sanders, if he were the nominee for the Democrats. On the other hand, professionals and high earners would probably stick with the party.
The latter scenario would leave the cleavage between the two parties largely intact. The blue collar “protest” voters wouldn’t be reliable Democrats. Their basic attitude is anti-Washington and anti-Establishment. It’s doubtful they’d stick with any incumbent.
But the former scenario would have the potential for some serious realigning. The GOP would get smaller and lose voters in droves in the suburbs.
Why would Rubio produce different outcome than Cruz, given they are almost indistinguishable on actual issues?
Exception: Rubio is way more PNAC type warhawkish, especially re the Levant.
because they have totally different voter profiles.
Really? Have you noticed how much God talk Rubio has been spewing lately?
read the article or examine the entrance polls or look at internal polling or look at their establishment support.
How much of this is extrapolating Iowa polling onto the rest of the country? And how much to current polling persisting/enduring?
The media keeps pushing Rubio as the moderate (establishment) guy, this probably influences people who have not paid attention to who he really is. Probably all the establishment really likes about him is the perception he is more malleable than Cruz.
Rubio is just another grifter. He can be bought, and I doubt he’d even be expensive. Cruz is a true believer. He was born to rule the world, and to hell (literally) with anyone who disagrees with him. Cruz is far, far more frightening.
I saw both in Iowa. Really they don’t differ that much on issues – there really aren’t that big issue differences between most of them – though Cruz’s tax plan is probably an easier target.
Rubio is smoother, and prone to throwing in rhetoric about the poor and defending social security and medicare which I didn’t hear from Cruz.
There is pretty broad agreement in the GOP on issues.
Martsching, 46, had settled on Ted Cruz over Donald Trump, but was mostly nursing his disgust at Republican leaders. “I’m a conservative. I want the Constitution to be our law, not political correctness,” he said. “I want a smaller government with less control of our personal lives and more control of our border, our finances, and our safety as a nation.” Republican lawmakers kept frustrating him by ignoring their campaign promises. “We get people that run as conservative and even get Tea Party support–they wear that lapel pin proudly,” he said. “But when they leave for Washington, they leave it on their dresser at home.”
Can you believe it? These guys were lying about being racist assholes. The gall!
“I want a smaller government with less control of our personal lives and more control of our border, our finances, and our safety as a nation.”
Sounds pretty oxymoronic to me, and I mean that in all senses of the word. Herein lies an issue with such conservatives (of whomever this person is): how is it that we have what they term a “small govt” (whatever the hell that means) but yet they want MORE control over the border, finances and alleged national safety. Frankly makes no sense.
That’s not EVEN getting into the inconvenient FACT that it’s conservatives, like this person, who want to be TOTALLY involved in what we do in our bedrooms, plus over nearly every single aspect of women’s lives.
Oh, no doubt, this person is an old, white male, so he’s just talking about himself. My bad.
But even given “his” white male preference to not have govt “involved” in his personal life, the fact “he” wants govt totally involved in the lives of women, LGBT lives, etc, again goes against the oxyomoronic notion of “small” govt.
I give you Exhibit A of why these conservatives are endlessly frustrated, angry, meaner than cut snakes, and f*cking loo-loo. Because THEY, themselves, set themselves up for disappointment… endlessly. But they’ve been taught carefully by Rush and Fox to blame it ALL on dirty dreaded horrid LIEbruls, except NOW they’re also blaming their very own cognitive dissonance on “their” politicians for not – eh? – being politically correct (in terms of what they want) enough for them.
What they want is basically impossible.
The end.
GAH!!!
I think these people want more control over brown people (and maybe their wimin), less control over whites. IE the antebellum redux.
” less control of our personal lives “
Translation: I want the freedom to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation and national origin.
Yeah. Can see that.
Cruz won’t be a move away from the financial sector. He’s married to it, literally, and gets and has always gotten lots of donations and loose loans from Wall Street.
This really has nothing to do with Cruz, but only about who is voting for him and what they do if they’re given a choice between Sanders and Kasich or Bush.
You did make a claim about the results of Cruz getting the nomination, and I don’t see it happening. The financial sector will kiss his boots and vie to offer his wife the best executive position for when he leaves office. President Cruz is Wall Street’s wet dream. They gave him twice as much money as Hillary even before he was thought to have a good shot at winning.
I actually don’t think the blue-collar types will be particularly bothered by Bush or Kasich. W did pretty well with them and Kasich does well with them in Ohio. If Trump or Cruz loses and goes rogue they might take some with them, but otherwise the Republican will be fine.
The Bush name is toxic. You may be right about Kasich. I just came back from lunch with my older very conservative friend from work. We don’t talk much politics because we know he’s Right and I’m Left. I tried to talk Republican horse race with him in a neutral manner, just to get his opinion. I mentioned Lasisch? “Who? Who’s he” “Republican governor of Ohio”. “He’s running? Who the Hell is he?” “An apparatchik, a gray faceless guy, like Putin.” “(Laughter)”.
Damn! And I checked for mis-spellings. Kasich of course.
In all honesty, who would have to be the R candidate to cause people who voted for Cruz to actually vote for Bernie?
I don’t see it. The two are so antithetical that it would literally take a crazy person to do it.
I’m not saying you can’t find examples, I am saying you can’t find enough to turn a national election in any way shape or form.
Bush? Christie?
Al G thinks Christie.
I would guess it is more likely Cruz v Clinton. And that could depend on what vision Hillary has and yes, if she really is progressive and able to project it.
This hope that the GOP is somehow going to split is wishful thinking.
“Ted Cruz is literally in bed with Wall Street.”
That would make a good ad.
It was a good piece. However, I’d say the first scenario has already happened to many former Republicans who had any degree of social liberal leanings. How do you think the Democratic Party became so watered down? And now the ones who are social neanderthals but with money might be headed that way, too? Yikes.
Equally interesting might be this link on the Democratic realignment seen in Iowa by a Clinton worker from 2008. http://iowastartingline.com/2016/02/03/the-fascinating-flip-in-clintons-iowa-support-from-2008/
I wouldn’t worry about new arrivals dragging the Democratic party to the right. It’s moving to the left, and hard. Clinton is running the most liberal primary campaign of any Dem frontrunner back to at least Dukakis and is in danger of losing because people think she’s too conservative. Among younger voters she’s getting wiped out.The Democratic party is going to be a (Bernie style) Socialist party by 2024 at the latest, unless Bernie wins and gets McGoverned, and even then it will be Socialist by 2032 or so.
I wish I saw this, but your mouth to God’s ears…
Sanders won 84 percent of the under-30 vote – 5 out of 6 – on an unabashedly socialist platform. An opponent on the liberal side of the traditional Democratic party with 100% name recognition, high favorables, an excellent resume, and overwhelming institutional support only managed to tie him in Iowa. In 2024, with overwhelmingly socialist voters up to almost 40, there will be no beating a decent socialist candidate in the Dem primary unless something really humiliating happens to Bernie in the general. A few years after that there will be no beating a decent socialist candidate, period.
That’s what we thought in the ’60s. Instead the people turned hard right.
What were the economics like then?
McGovern and Humphrey didn’t really get trumped on economics, though. They got their shit handed to them because of non-economic issues: American Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and most pertinently Acid/Abortion/Amnesty.
Exactly. People were not economic precariats back then.
White people maybe weren’t members of the precariat then…
Re Acid/abortion/amnesty
The Perlstein book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan is very good on the role of issues beyond the war, or for which people’s positions on the war were basically proxies.
I would argue that the class did not exist previous to globalization and the entrenchment of neoliberal predator capitalism.
Unemployment and poverty existed, but the peculiarities of the McJob age are different, imo.
In any event, teh % of the population in that class has multiplied exponentially and economically upwardly, too.
I think you forgot to factor in the corrosive effect the Clintons have in our political lives in this analysis. It’s virtually everywhere. Rubio, Cruz, and even Trump will completely wipe out Hillery if she is the nominee, so there will be no realignment.
We are all doomed because of their influence.
.
Worth nothing, but I’m still betting on Kasich to come up a little further on toward spring. After Rubio is exposed as incompetent and Republican primary voters begin to sicken at the thought of Cruz, who else have they got that isn’t even worse? Just seems like Kasich is their Dole/McCain/Romney failsafe this time ’round.
Worth even less, but for some reason I keep betting the same but for Bush. Even though I expect him to drop out at any moment. I still kinda think if he sticks around … I don’t know. The Underpants Gnome demographic will vault him into the lead, I guess.
Between Kasich and Bush, I’d bet on Kasich. Kasich’s problem is that people don’t know who he is — but he will get better known. Bush’s problem is that everyone knows who he is, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Kaisich (like Christie) has put all his chips on NH. He has somewhat more money in his till than Christie has, but if NH voters don’t abandon Bush and Christie in favor of Kaisich to give him a win, then he’s done. It’s difficult to see that even with such a win that he has anywhere to go from there even if Jeb? and Christie were to drop out.
Not until the South is over anyway. Will that be too late? It depends on whether each primary has a different nutjob winner or a consistent nutjob winner. If consistent, such a candidate would be hard to stop given the influence that the South has in the calculations.
As of this writing Rubio is 1t 18, and I think he has a decent shot at catching Trump.
Bush and Kasich are deader than door nails.
What’re your thoughts on Rubio? I know that Booman must be salivating at the thought of him winning the nomination.
Rubio is a gimcrack candidate who, like Fiorina, has been getting a free pass through the media for his supposed moderation and freshness. He could win the primary, but unless Clinton or Sanders were incompetent to the extreme there’s no way he could conceal his wanting to ban abortion for everything except for life of the mother and his promises to elect SCOTUS justices that overturn gay marriage.
Rubio being the Great Hope of the GOP establishment is probably the biggest indicator how much in disarray it is.
>>But the former scenario would have the potential for some serious realigning. The GOP would get smaller and lose voters in droves in the suburbs.
You need to think through the next couple of moves, not just the first one.
A realignment that shoves the wealthy into the Democratic party is going to move both parties to the right and utterly fuck the left. Financial reforms would be deader than Francisco Franco, along with minimum wage increases, and austerity would be in full swing.
Fortunately I can’t see how the attempt to put the entire sane political spectrum into one party could be stable, but while it lasted it could be very very ugly, and that’s just the Democrats.
Your point was addressed by curtadams up thread.
Interesting article. There is certainly deep disaffection with the performance of the party elites on both left and right, although this article concentrates on the right. A similar article could have been written regarding the dems. It’s possible the country really is ripe for a “realignment election”, as the article suggests. At this point, I don’t think that would be good for the country because it would further increase polarization; if Sanders won based on a far-left platform, or if Cruz won based on a far-right one, we’d be that much closer to civil war. Washington gridlock would continue unless somehow one or the other party swept the house races. Seems like small odds of that happening.
I guess what I’m saying is that gradual change is generally easier on the country.
Easier would be nice but some things are inevitable, like the transitions from agrarian to industrial to post industrial society. Now we face stagnation. Except for the elites who exactly is getting ahead in this economy? Even so called knowledge workers are feeling more precarious, about their jobs, health care, education, retirement and you name it. So we cannot hold back the tide, if it is indeed coming in. Yes, someone should write the same article about the democrats. It is time. The Clintonian world is crumbling as well.
“if Sanders won based on a far-left platform . . . “
Here’s the thing. Sander’s’ platform is NOT far left. It may seem far left after 40 years of this whole country being pulled to the right, but it’s been there all along, and it’s mainstream now.
Yeah, my positions are “far left”. I hear Bernie’s positions and in the context of any capitalist system they just sound like “common sense”.
“a party increasingly composed of working class white voters who suffer disproportionately from stagnant wages and dim prospects”.
A future re-alignment of the Repub party is very difficult to envision absent some idea of what the backbone of its [white] voters (actually) want. It’s hard for me to really believe they are driven by the kind of things the writer has listed above, since the candidates they uniformly support have literally no sensible approach to any of these supposed income/class concerns. That’s “Dividin’ America!”
The only candidate actually talking about how these economic conditions have come to pass is Sanders, of course, and these guys aren’t going to vote for any Dem, let alone a soshulist. They hate the Dem party with the white hot hatred of a thousand suns, far more than they hate the Repub party that has betrayed them.
For today’s base Repubber, the Dem party is filled with everything they hate about their new nation–it’s a party of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, feminists, abortionists, enviros and gays. They hate ’em all. That’s why the party’s policy positions poll well, while the actual party is in control of almost nothing and has been annihilated across vast swathes of the country.
Re-alignment posits some “societal trauma”, which the author ascribes to the Great Recession. But if that was the case–8 years out–the kind of workers that were hurt most in the collapse really should have been able to figure out who did it and who’s against them, economically speaking. If one looks at the evidence of our economic failure and concludes lib’ruls are “really” to blame and not the plutocrats financing the conservative movement, then you have a massive brain operation failure that no amount of “debate” and “facts” will ever correct.
The “societal trauma” that’s really motivating the base of the Repub party NOW is the fact of a (re-elected!) negro prez, and the apparent failure of the All-White voter bandwagon or Southern Strategy to work any longer. In other words, they are sensing that their tribe doesn’t control the nation any longer and that they are somehow losing their racial dominance. That’s the “trauma” that is now motivating the Repub party, and that’s the message that they are looking to hear from their new candidates.
So these white guys can prattle about “control” over “finances” and “borders” and “keepin us safe!”, but that’s not really what’s motivating them–except to the extent border control means hatred of Mexicans. These voters aren’t “re-alignable”. They will drop out or turn to militia activities and/or terror before they ever politically “re-align” to a party that (supposedly) wants to do something about economic reform–which they don’t care about and which they thinks means giving “their” money to minorities. They are dead-enders, the irreconcilable who can’t be returned to viable citizens of a pluralistic nation.
As for they Rich Repubs, they are too small in number to matter, and they will always be of much greater influence within the “conservative” party than outside it. I suppose they could work to make the Dem party more and more of a Trojan Horse in order to bring down both parties, ha-ha, but have we ever seen such a thing happen in our politics? Not that I know.
So we’ll be waiting for the “conservative crack up” forever, in other words–we’ll crack up before they ever do!
Word.
Dead enders is right. Well endless years of propaganda stoking racial/sexist hatreds, while pitting poor whites against minorities, results in this outcome.
I don’t see how anything like a realignment can occur, esp given the fact-free, fictional fairy tales fed to them daily by Hate Radio, Fox, the “Christian” Broadcast Network, their “Family” trained “pastors” and so forth. Which one of these propaganda outlets is going change their tune first?? Not gonna happen. Too lucrative to keep the rubes riled up but constantly tuned in.
It seems right that a segment of the republican base will move away from the financial wing. The working class is not all that unlike the same people Bernie Sanders is attempting to mobilize. For decades the more burning issues facing much of the electorate were non-economic ones and centered on things like abortion, religiosity, immigration and LGBT. But that is changing and many more are noticing the extreme inequality of income and wealth, that has accelerated since the great recession. Some of that started with the Occupy movement. And it has not gone away. This is actually the political revolution that Sanders is looking for and it crosses party lines. That could speak to a realignment of the parties. Many of those now on the right were part of the working class that became disillusioned with the left and, similarly, many middle class whites on the left got there by way of non economic values considerations. But that is now breaking down.
It may be premature to speak of it this year. But I believe it is coming. It would be odd if Cruz/Trump mobilizes the working classes and Hillary takes the values voters and Wall Street. Both sides would be rather warlike. That could be time to talk about what next for the democratic party and our world, as well.
None of this will happen until after the Civil War.
I give it another 150 years…
The typical ‘values voter’s’ values are being white, and not being black.
Except when you are broke.
That is who she won in Iowa….”It may seem like a long time ago, now that Sanders has fully captured the mantle of economic populism, but there was once a time when the Clinton name was synonymous with working class. When we talked with folks in the trailer parks, the Clinton brand was still strong. For many of them, the last time they had a good-paying job was during Bill Clinton’s time in office. It’s part of why Clinton won in later primary states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
But Council Bluffs precinct 21 (a new one created after 2008), which contains the county’s largest trailer park, was won 2-1 by Sanders.
And yet Clinton still won the state, albeit narrowly, not something you might expect if she was losing places she won in 2008 (like also in Cerro Gordo County, which Clinton took in 2008, but lost to Sanders in 2016). So where did she make up the margin?
In places like my precinct. When I attended my caucus location in West Des Moines, I was concerned it wouldn’t go well for Clinton. My suburban, well-educated, middle to upper-middle class neighborhood of all established houses was Obama’s base of support in 2008, and where Clinton often performed poorly. Instead, on Monday night, Clinton won my precinct with 4 delegates to Sanders’ 2.”
The financial sector on both sides of the aisle has enjoyed a free ride for a very long time, so long in fact that they have had enough time to loot the economy into practically a state of starvation resulting in the collapse of the middle class generating a good deal of anger. The corporatist on the Republican side tries to redirect that anger against anyone who doesn’t look like them. The corporatist on the Democratic side tries to redirect anger to a fear of the Republicans. This is the year all that stopped working; the free ride is over for corporatists on both sides of the aisle.
What the corporatist offer is just not enough. The racists want more than dog whistles; they want the real thing finding it in either Trump or Cruz. People on the Democratic side are tired of cowering in fear of Republicans while they try to hang on to the little they have of the New Deal left before the Republicans come to take it all. Democrats are ready to stand and fight on a united front, finding that in Bernie’s call for political revolution against both Republicans and the corporatist Al From wing of the Democratic Party. Taken together these represent realignment and the very definition of a populist movement for both bright and dark sides, definitely all anti-establishment.
This realignment is different than the ones in the past in that this realignment is going on from inside both of our major parties creating possibilities for the formation of new collations.
The Republican battles are between Trump/Cruz battling for the populist dark side and the rest trying to become the establishment candidate. I think the dark side haters are going to win.
On the Democratic side, faced with Bernie leading a bright side populist revolt to put a leash on the corporatist to make our economy work for everyone, Hillary is desperate to change sides trying to claim the progressive mantle. Bernie reminds her that she can’t have it both ways, being both a corporatist moderate and a progressive at the same time. She can’t take their money, help to the rig economy and give them their wars while claiming to represent the progressive interest of the people. Her weak tea answer is to accuse Bernie of claiming Obama and even Paul Wellstone would not be progressives (both sides do it). This battle is the populists against the establishment. So far it’s a tie.
“…if Rubio (or Kasich, Christie or Bush) becomes a stand-in for the financial sector Establishment and takes the nomination, the blue collar element of the GOP will be extremely alienated. Participation could drop off a cliff, and many of these voters could move to Sanders, if he were the nominee for the Democrats.”
I completely agree with this but also don’t think all the white blue collar element is racists lacking no interest in improving their fate in the ongoing economic collapse even if Trump/Cruz gets the nomination. Being an authentic populist, Bernie can do quite well with these populist voters, somewhat a first for Democrats in these modern times. I also think given the choice between an establishment Democrat and an establishment Republican they will stay with the Republican, always the fate of the DLC.
Now we come to the last part, what if Democrats nominate their stand in for their financial sector Establishment? Will the Democrats populist movement become extremely alienated with participation dropping off a cliff? Maybe we should consult our immediate millennials. Maybe realignment theory is a Rip Van Winkle view of democracy that voters come awake only once in a generation.
Occupy, Piketty, Sanders and now a smattering of working class republicans all talking about inequality. Something is afoot.
Stuff like PharmaBro are appearing too often and thanks to social media aren’t hidden as well as they used to be.
Yeah. That’s what my arch-conservative friend said at lunch today. He saw a report somewhere on Fox and was mad. Apparently Fox reports some things correctly. He hates bankers too. Unfortunately not as much as Socialists.
February 2000 — same question and doubt the thread would have read much differently.
February 1965 — the GOP was dead.
Did take the GOP fifteen years to capture Congress, but won eight of the next twelve year for the WH. And may have been slowed down in their quest for Congress by that little matter called Watergate.
February 1993 — “Happy Days are Here again.” Lasted for all of two years.
February 2009.
Maybe Democrats/liberals/progressives should spend more time cleaning and getting their own house in order and less time salivating over the prospect of the GOP going the way of the Dodo bird. The GOP always finds some way to survive and thrive and often because Democrats screw the pooch.
At least this time we can see how the Democratic Party is going to screw the pooch. If the Democratic flounders and invites a conservative counterattack, it’ll be because of neoliberal stumbles at home and neoconservative stumbles abroad. The Obama-Clinton wing seriously thinks that the Wall Street bailouts will just blow over and all we need are a few years of 90s-style job growth and things will be fine. Meaning that they can just sit on their ass and let demographic growth propel them to victory despite many years of complete gridlock.
I really don’t blame anyone in 1964 for thinking that the Democratic Party, despite its flaws and issues, was on a course of success and dominance thanks to the fuck-ups of the GOP. Thinking that in 1992 was stupid, though. Thinking that in 2016 is straight-up deranged.
What choice have we?
It’s just impossible, because the Republicans whose interests are closest to the Democrats’ are the ones who are ideologically furthest away.
When I say their “interests” I of course mean their actual interests (subsistence programs; federal health care; anti-corporate, pro-labor measures; diminished militarism; anti-corporate regulation; increased education funding), not what they think their interests are (“small government”; guns; anti-abortion measures; prayer in schools; anti-immigrant crackdowns; “family values”).
You know those cognitive experiments where they give people glasses that turn the image upside down, and, after a few hours, the test subjects not only get used to it but adjust so completely that when they take the glasses off they’re now seeing upside down, all on their own? That’s how I feel, thinking about today’s conservatives and the Republican presidential candidates. It’s just exhausting to have to keep thinking upside down. Rubio makes a speech about how Obama visiting a Mosque “turns us against each other”…we’re told that welfare is “holding black Americans back”…Bush insists his “brother kept us safe”…Trump is the worst, but they’re all doing it. it’s so tiring and depressing.
And, of course, public lands have to be “given back to the people” (since the government “took” them). It’s just insane — I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
simply wonderful writing and insights.
Thank you! (If I’m not misreading and that is directed at me.)
not what they think their interests are (“small government”; guns; anti-abortion measures; prayer in schools; anti-immigrant crackdowns; “family values”).
If they think those are their interests, then they’re their interests.
No. Semantics. People can misunderstand their interests (in the sense of “not acting in one’s best interests” while believing oneself to be doing so).
Booman–do you see any scenario involving a Trump or Cruz nomination in which the GOP splits?