Steve Peoples and Aaron Kessler of the Associated Press have examined voter registration data in 43 states over the last year and report that over a million people have changed their party affiliation to join the Republican Party. The pattern is nationwide but most pronounced in the suburbs.
A million sounds like a huge number but divided by forty-three, it’s only 23,256 voters per state. This is very bad news for the Democrats, but more for the suburban problem than the absolute amount of party-switchers. That’s because the Democratic majority in Congress is built on formerly Republican districts in the suburbs.
I’ve been warning for more than a decade now that the Democrats’ reliance on an urban-suburban coalition is built on sand. There’s probably no easier wedge in politics than the divide between urban and suburban interests. This is most easily understood by asking why elites and many immigrants left cities in the first place and settled in the unplowed fields surrounding them: independence from urban political machines, fear of crime, better quality education, a desire not to mix with other races, religions and ethnicities. These factors, along with the ability to take advantage of the freedom and space the automobile provides, have always defined the cultural and political tensions between cities and their suburbs.
The Republicans brought these antagonistic groups together by pursuing an aggressively anti-urban southern populist agenda that offended the sensibilities of the white collar professional class, and non-white non-Christian suburbanites of all stripes. The GOP also demonstrated colossal incompetence on national security (9/11 and Iraq), core government functions (Hurricane Katrina), the economy (the Great Recession) and public health (the COVID-19 epidemic). With the exception of the rally-around-the-flag 2002 midterms, suburban voters punished the Republicans in every case.
But now the tide is turning. Suburbanites are unhappy with how the Democrats handled school shut-downs during the height of the pandemic. They’re noticed an uptick in crime, especially urban crime, as the worst of the pandemic has receded. High inflation and supply chain problems are souring them on the Democrats’ management of the economy. Meanwhile, the suburbs many be increasingly diverse and socially liberal, but GOP has found areas where there are still divides, especially on attitudes towards policing and transgender issues.
The Democrats cannot survive erosion in the suburban support, especially if they’re suffering some urban slippage too. And this is largely because they have given up on a populist agenda that can compete with the Republicans’ white nationalist, conservative Christian chauvinist appeal in small towns and rural areas.
Democrats keep hoping that suburbanites will notice that the GOP is running on an anti-Democratic fascist program and stay loyal, but there is no evidence this is happening. It appears that the opposite is happening. We could soon be back to the 1980’s when Reagan won 49 states in his reelection bid against Walter Mondale, except this time we’ll be handing over power to latter-day Nazis.
It was probably not the most opportune time for the Republicans to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling because that will reshuffle the deck. It’s possible that it will halt the suburban erosion of support for the Democrats or even reverse it. The general trend, however, is extremely grave. There is simply no way to avert the threat through an urban/suburban alliance alone.
I’m starting to wonder if Democrats main problem is with the messaging. Are they perpetually so weak that they can’t ever rise to the occasion when we really need them? It just feels like they aren’t being forceful enough when they need to be, while Republicans can act tough and voters seem to like that despite the fact they are destroying the country in the process. Maddening 😕
There are two parents to a group of children. One is attempting to build a jungle gym, while the other one is drunk, abusive, and willing to knock anything they don’t like to the ground.
The parent who wants to build the jungle gym for the kids can have the best message there is, but it doesn’t matter if the drunk and abusive parent has frightened enough of the children into believing that if they don’t kill the other parent, they’re going to get murdered by the neighbors and their one sibling who acts a little funny.
This shit is structural, and the only actual answer is Strong Federalism. Period.
https://www.politicalorphans.com/democrats-should-weaponize-federalism/
Wondering how bad it has to get before progressives of all flavors find their way towards a Democratic Party that delivers and fights enough to become a true force against the GOP. Also wondering – if it gets that bad – how much harder and how many years more we’ll have to fight before we can overcome all the GOP’s built-in advantages — so we can substantively change the structure of our democracy.
What if I told you that it is going to be literally impossible to ever “overcome” all of the GOP’s built-in advantages? What if I pointed to the Senate and told you that as the Blue States become more Blue and the Red States become more Red, the Republicans will outright own the Senate FOREVER?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/12/in-about-20-years-half-the-population-will-live-in-eight-states/
We’re trying to keep two separate boats together with scotch tape and smiles.
Strong Federalism ASAP, or it’s going to be a balkan-style civil war and then when the real climate crises happen, ecofascism.
Which party is going to get full control of the government when tens of millions of climate refugees are pouring over the Southern Border and Canada won’t let the US siphon the Great Lakes into a holding container in the midwest?
>>a Democratic Party that delivers and fights
if such a party existed I think it would attract a lot of people. but that is not an accurate description of the Democratic party as it exists today.
There is cause for concern, but not as dramatic as the AP lead makes it sound. One million switched to the GOP, but if you read further in the article, 650K switched to D. That’s still a net gain of about 370K for the GOP, but it doesn’t take into account newly registered voters. Would like to see those numbers.
I’m a newly registered “R” here in Georgia. I made sure to give Trump and Friends even more assurances that their votes really don’t count because of the DeepState support of Kemp and Raffensperger…so they might as well stay home in November.
That said, let’s be clear here, the fascists don’t need 50.1% of the vote. Typically 40% or more is enough, and they’ve already got that in the bag.
The only thing the Democratic Party can do is get out the vote. Save the powerpoint presentations and the smiles for later. Get every single Democratic voter to the polls every single election, or it’s done.
If they’re all in Wyoming trying to help Liz Cheney….
There aren’t a million people in Wyoming.
The corollary is that the Democrats still lose the White House even if they win 500,000,000 votes out of California.
As someone who has read your blog for several years, I can attest to your statement that you have been making this point for a long time. What I haven’t seen much of in your writing is any response about what the Democrats should do instead, particularly how they can reach rural voters in a world of Fox News, Talk Radio and QAnon. You went through a phase when you were promoting antitrust, but then you stopped with that, and then I haven’t noticed you presenting a clear alternative to the Urban/Suburban strategy, other than these “see, I told you so” posts. I believe that most of your readers are aware of the negative predictions about the coming midterm elections. What do you think the Democrats should be doing differently? What should now replace the Urban/Suburban strategy? Does that mean a change in policy? Messaging? If we are talking about a different set of voters, how do we reach them?
There is something else that is quite misleading in the AP article, which mentions a Ben Smith from “Suburban Larimer County” north of Denver. I live in Larimer County. There are parts of Larimer County like Fort Collins and Loveland that look suburban, but it is really a checkerboard. Where I live is right on the edge of Trumpland. There are some very red, rural areas surrounding blue. This has been the case for years. Interviewing one person from this county who switched to the Republican party doesn’t say much. If you look at the map of the 2020 election, it looked very red, but Biden won the state, and my district, which combines Boulder and Larimer counties, is key to winning the state. Despite all of the red, these two counties include UC Boulder and Colorado State University. Jared Polis, now Colorado governor, used to represent this district. Now it is Joe Neguse.