Okay, so this is a topic I wanted to get to for a while. Today I’m
going to discuss the concept of party alignments and realignments and
how they relate to this election. Essentially, things in America change.
The issues we face change, the demographics change, the political
parties morph into something totally different than they used to be. I
believe that 2016, and the craziness of this election, signifies a
failure of our current party realignment, and a potential shift toward a
new one. I have heard many people say that this is an election like
we’ve never seen before, and while I don’t think it’s that crazy, it’s
probably the most tumultuous since the 1960s and 1970s, when we were
arguably undergoing our previous alignment.
What are party realignments and how do they work?
Party realignments are basically course corrections in American politics. They happen about once a generation. It’s been said once every 36 years, but I think in modern times this is a bit more muddled. Arguably the previous alignment started showing cracks after 36 years, but it took an additional 12 years for things to really change ideologically. I’ll be discussing this later in depth. It is possible we’ve been undergoing one since 2008, but it’s also possible that it’s only starting now. We really won’t be able to make a decision until we can look at it in hindsight.
As for how they work, parties align via different platforms. They take stances on issues, and people vote with who they align with best. Under ideal circumstances, these parties generally reflect the will of the majority of the population. While they may never satisfy everyone, they generally do a good enough job where the politically active populace rallies behind them and agrees with them. However, after a while, the parties and their platforms stop making sense. The parties stop representing the will and politics of the people, and the people either stay home, vote independently, or hold their nose to support a candidate they don’t like. Sound familiar? I’m sure most people who read this know how this feels. Well, there is hope. Eventually, the parties do correct themselves. They recognize that there is a lot of unhappy untapped members of the electorate, and they realign around the new issues of the day, and become in touch with the populace again. A few examples. In the 1840s and 1850s, we had a string of really horrible presidents. They did nothing to fix the slavery issue, and eventually, Lincoln was elected, the country broke into a civil war, and the parties realigned around that platform. In the 1930s, we saw a total breakdown of the contemporary alignment due to the depression, and a move by the democrats to step in and fix the issues, realigning the parties around the 20th century politics we’re more familiar with. Of course, the country was much more left wing until we got to the 1980s when the parties essentially realigned again. I’m gonna analyze the previous realignment in great detail later, because I think there are some interesting parallels between them. Anyway, the parties being out of touch with the populace are a big reason why these realignments happen. Eventually things get so out of sync that the parties are forced to change their platform to be more representative of the people. This is said, by some political scientists, to happen along generational lines, which makes sense given our current predicament. The current parties represent the baby boomers, not the millennials and their politics. Don’t worry, our time will come. Eventually we’ll outnumber them and the politicians will be members of our generation who see things our way. Sometimes realignments happen suddenly, as one party takes over all of government at once and pushes through an agenda that will define the political spectrum for the next several decades, although sometimes these alignments need to die a slow death as we go through a decade or more of ineffective politics before things finally come together.
Here are some sources on the matter for further reading.
The history of the previous party realignment, 1929-1979
I’d say the story of the previous party alignment before our current one started in 1929. What happened in 1929? Stocks fell through the floor and the country was brought into the great depression. Hoover was president at the time, and economically, the debate that we see today in politics just wasn’t happening. We were basically at the end of what I would consider the gilded age. A time where the government did not help fix the problems related to capitalism, and everything was laissez faire. As we know though, the depression was really bad though, and this forced Hoover to act. Hoover tried to do some things, like a tariff act, but these were fairly ineffective. By 1932, people were pissed off and voted for FDR. Now, as you know, I love FDR. I think he was the greatest president we’ve ever had, save for maybe Washington and Lincoln. He came into office with a mandate, and he did so much to help people. He implemented the FLSA, OSHA, the minimum wage, social security, etc. These are the cornerstones of American labor relations and safety nets today. He was loved so much he was elected 4 times, and died in office in his fourth term. His vice president Harry Truman took over and largely continued the torch, although was a bit less impressive than FDR himself in my opinion. The democrats held onto government for 20 years, and only lost it because in 1952 they ran a weak candidate against a war hero, here we get into Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency.
After 20 years of republican exile, the republicans didn’t want to rock the boat. Part of the reason they lost for so long is because no one wanted to see FDR’s legacy undone. They loved it, and it set the stage for American prosperity in the post war era. Eisenhower moderated the republican party a lot. He was for the minimum wage, he taxed the rich at 90% just like FDR did, he expanded the New Deal. He essentially governed, economically, like a modern day democrat. Keep this in mind, this is gonna be important later on. Socially, the republicans were quite conservative though. We have McCarthyism, we had a lot of pushing of traditional values and theism, and this later morphed into the religious right. Even today, the right glorifies the 1950s in terms of social policy, although not economic policy.
In the 1960s, things swung back to the democrats. However, the 1960s were a pretty tumultuous time. JFK inspired the hope of a nation, but his administration was mired in scandals and the whole nuclear standoff with the Soviets. The democrats got us in Vietnam, which upset a lot of people, to the point there were riots and protests. We had the hippie movement under the JFK and Johnson administrations protesting the war, wanting more relaxed social policy, etc. We also had the civil rights movement, which, while being on the right side of history, cost the democratic party its movement. This probably did more damage than the other factors combined. It wasn’t really the war, or the hippie protests that changed things, it was the civil rights movement. Let’s take a brief history detour to understand why. Back in 1860, Lincoln was the first republican to get elected to president. Then the civil war happened. The republicans fought against slavery, whereas the democrats sided with the south. From then on, the democratic party was a traditionally southern, conservative party, whereas the republicans were a traditionally northern, more progressive party. Yeah. Until FDR, the roles of the government were reversed from what they were today. Well, even in FDR’s administration, a lot of concessions were made to southern democrats who didn’t want black people being economically empowered. As such, the whole new deal thing only helped white people at the time. The democrats were still an extremely racist party, and were until the 1960s, when the federal democrats turned against the southern democrats. This alienated the south so badly that in 1968, they spited the democratic party and voted third party, for George Wallace, the southern governor who opposed civil rights and desegregation. This happened 36 years after the 1932 realignment, ironically. However, we didn’t really see things shift until 1980, as I’ll get to.
So, 1968, the democrats have their vote split, and Nixon wins. Economically, he’s still fairly liberal. As I mentioned in a previous post, this guy was for a limited form of basic income. The republicans werent anti welfare yet, they were anti inefficiency. They didn’t think that the government should have all these different means tested programs that do different things to combat poverty, and that Johnson’s war on poverty was flawed. And he was right, actually. The war on poverty was a flawed movement. It was done with the best of intentions, but compared to the kinds of ideas I’m for? Yeah. Very inefficient, but I digress. Back on topic, Nixon was pretty left wing economically, much like Eisenhower, not as much as the democrats, but still, pretty left wing. Probably about as left wing as the current democrats. Nixon was also fairly socially conservative, and in response to the hippie movement, appealed to a “silent majority”…what’s that you ask? Well, glad you did ask, even if you didn’t. The silent majority appeals to a portion of the populace that isn’t very politically loud, but actually makes up most of the population. Basically, a majority of the people, who were silent, heh. Anyway, he appealed to the silent majority, which helped build a republican coalition. He also started appealing to racists. Nixon is known for his southern strategy and dog whistle politics in which he appealed to racists in coded language in order to win them over. The democrats alienated the south, and Nixon spoke their language, in code. This allowed him to build a power house of an electorate going into 1972, where McGovern was destroyed. So, long story short, Nixon was very par for the course ideologically for the republicans in that time period, but he actually did some leg work in building a movement that later became the conservative movement we know today. Nixon actually is the architect of the modern conservative movement and the coalitions they used to win. Still, he isn’t really remembered for this due to being moderate, and because his presidency went down in a blaze of glory due to watergate. Which brings us full circle.
In 1976, the country was a mess. It really was. Both parties were pretty hated. The democrats werent doing so good since their coalition fractured in 1968, and while the republicans had a winning coalition, the scandals of the Nixon administration weighed heavily on Ford, allowing Carter to win. Before I get into Carter though, I want to discuss something interesting that happened. In 1976, despite running for reelection, Ford had a primary challenger. That challenger was Ronald Reagan. Reagan was considered a bit of an extremist at the time. While conservatives spoke behind closed doors of being more conservative, it was considered political suicide in the light of the New deal and FDR’s successes. The republican party was destined to be moderate, and “extremists” like Reagan were kind of unpopular. But Reagan gave Ford a run for his money, and almost won the nomination actually. It seems people liked Reagan. He took dog whistle politics to the next level and mixed it in with his small government narrative. He spoke of welfare queens, which was really just code for black women abusing the system. It really should be noted, I said this before, and I’ll say this again, the small government narrative that arose in the 1970s and 1980s actually had a racist double meaning. Yes, it appeals to people on one level, but it appeals to racist people on another completely. And there was a lot of hidden racism in this message. Anyway, he didn’t win the nomination, Ford did, and Ford went up against Carter and lost.
Carter’s presidency was an unmitigated disaster. I don’t think the guy was as bad as he is portrayed, but much like Hoover was a scapegoat of the gilded age alignment failing, Carter was the scapegoat of the New Deal one. Carter failed to meet the challenges of his time. He faced oil crises, in which he told people to consume less. This is a good message, but it went over with the American people like a lead balloon. He failed to deal with stagflation in a timely manner. He fought his own party in congress. He failed to respond to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He failed to respond to the Iran hostage crisis. He meant well, but he was completely and utterly ineffective. At one point in his presidency, he gave his crisis of confidence speech, which I think was heartfelt and sincere, but again, the American people didn’t take well to it. All these failures to address the problems of the day led to Reagan winning in 1980. This is where I think we saw the real end of the previous party realignment. We saw the demographics shift starting 36 years after the last alignment, and we saw a victory happen that changed the country ideologically in 1980.
The modern alignment
Reagan came into office with an agenda much like FDR, but at the same time, antithetical to his values. Whereas FDR marked an era in which the government was to get involved in the economy and regulate it, Reagan thought that government was the problem. He weakened unions, lowered taxes, used the federal reserve to force an end to stagflation, deregulated the economy, and blamed the fact that government interfered with government in the first place as a reason for the problem. His solution to everything economically was less government. He inflamed his base about safety nets, demonized them, and pushed for them to be cut. Conservatives went from merely wanting more efficient regulations and safety nets to wanting none at all, and putting those “lazy” people back to work. He won 2 terms. He dealt with the Soviets more pointedly and escalated the cold war, which ended up leading to their demise. While the democrats were “weak” on foreign policy, Reagan was strong. He was very popular. Bush campaigned on his success in 1988, crediting Reagan with “the longest economic expansion in history” and wanting to keep that going. Of course, Reagan’s legacy was GROSSLY overstated, and this came back to bite him in 1992.
In 1992, crap happened. We saw the “longest economic expansion” implode. Bush just kinda shrugged it off and was like, eh, recessions happen, what can you do. He raised taxes to deal with Reagan’s growing budget deficits, which went against his campaign promises and made people angry, and by this time, the Reagan charm was just wearing off a little. Reagan was still idolized, but Bush wasn’t. The democrats were doing some changing as well. Seeing how they have been getting destroyed since Nixon, they decided that they needed to moderate their positions a bit. While much more socially liberal than the conservatives, they moved significantly to the right on economics. Clinton was a “new democrat”, which was basically code for a democrat who was to the center and acted like a republican at times. While Clinton was for universal healthcare, this was about the only thing he was liberal on. He deregulated Wall Street, signed NAFTA, and cut welfare. Whereas just 20 years ago republicans proposed workable safety nets of their own, now the democrats were cutting them. The realignment was in full swing by this time. Notice how Clinton sounds a lot like Eisenhower was in the 50s? Me too.
Clinton was pretty popular though. For a democrat in the dark ages of conservatism, he did pretty good for himself, and in 2000, Al Gore lost primarily because of the electoral college, an institutional feature of our system. We can blame the supreme court too, which sided with Bush out of ideology. The left will try to blame it on Ralph Nader, which might be technically true as well, but ignores the many many other issues and is really just a narrative pulled out to keep voters in line and unified. Anyway, Bush won.
Like JFK and Johnson in the 1960s, the conservative movement was not very welcomed back into power this second time around. We had 9/11, Bush went into Afghanistan and Iraq. We had anti war protests, we had high budget deficits, we had the recession….wait, is this like the 60s all over again? Eh, kind of. In the sense that the republican party had to deal with a lot of problems and hurt its image significantly. I don’t think a 1968-esque fracture happened, but the republicans still suffered significantly from the Bush administration, and we MAY have been seeing it start to erode. This is my opinion, the facts are unclear looking at things now. Anyway, the recession happened, the wars happened, people hated the republicans, and voted for Obama in 2008.
Today’s situation
Obama won in 2008 with a mandate for change and a congress behind him, but between fear mongering, losing congress, and effectively being a lame duck for 6 years, he hasn’t really been in a position to do much. I think that he started off good, he stabilized the economy, he passed obamacare, which was better than nothing but he ended up being far more moderate and doing a lot less than I think people wanted of him. I think people are turning their backs on the republicans, despite their congressional victories. It’s easy to win elections in a gerrymandered system with low voter turnout, but I don’t think the country is behind the GOP. I think the recession changed the narrative, and the failures of the Bush administration are still in peoples’ minds. I think that older voters may flock to the GOP, and maybe some young libertarian types, but other than that, I think they’re losing support. Most people who like them are older; young people don’t support them much. The democrats are losing support too though. I think a lot of people agree with them ideologically, but that the Obama administration has been disappointing, and as such people don’t bother turning out. I think the democrats’ big issue is morale. The democrats won big in 2008 and 2012 because when we had a highly visible election, it was quite clear that people preferred liberal candidates to conservatives who represent corporate interests and the interests of the rich. I think the GOP has been trying to maintain power, knowing they’re losing ground, but that they will ultimately fail and will have to transform into some new party with different values and policies to deal with the times. Meanwhile, I think the democratic platform is solid, at least in rhetoric, it just needs to move to the left in policy a bit and be the champions of the working and middle class, not just the lesser of two evils. The democrats of today are too rich, too elitist, and too in bed with big interests. They talk big, but when the time comes they turn into moderate conservatives.
What the democratic party needs to do
I am going to give the democrats coaching advice here because let’s face it, while I have a falling out with the establishment and the Clinton campaign, I still align with them in principle and want them to succeed. I believe the future of this country rests on the democrats being the best they can be, while I believe the republicans represent everything wrong with America and are what we need to change. Anyway, here we go. We are 36 years after the Reagan revolution swept the country, which is, as the party realignment theory goes, about the amount of time it takes for a new paradigm to take hold. The republican party is falling apart. It’s been rotting from within since 2008. I think that choosing Trump over all conservative establishment candidates, by a wide margin, and trust me, there are a lot of them, shows a rejection by the party’s voters that they know something is wrong and that something needs to change. I think the republican party is transforming. I don’t know where it will end up, but it’s floundering around like a fish on land trying to gasp just a tiny bit of water. All republican action since Obama was elected has largely been obstructionism. They dont have solutions. They want to stop YOU from fixing the problems. They are the party of no. Even Donald Trump, who speaks of trade deals and tariffs and walls and illegals, is horribly misguided and won’t be able to save them. The way I see it, the republican party is a zombie. It’s animated, but it’s dead and rotting from the inside. Much like the democratic party was in the 1970s.
Obama has had the role of “Nixon” in this party realignment. He was won over a generation of young voters, only to alienate them by not following through. To an extent this isn’t his fault, but in some ways it is. Obama is too willing to compromise with the GOP. The GOP knows it’s dying, and they’re fighting to the last man to maintain power. They will obstruct him no matter what, because that’s the only move they have. They don’t have solutions, so they’re trying to bring down the democrats. Obama compromising was a good move, at least initially. I think Obama’s reasonableness and willingness to compromise is one reason I was willing to switch to being a liberal. Because it became quite clear the GOP has lost its mind and the democrats are the reasonable ones here. However, reasonableness only goes so far. When you are dealing with a bully, you can only ignore them for so long before you appear weak and have to start punching back. That time is now. We need STRONG liberalism. Not the wishy washy compromising kind. STRONG liberalism. Unapologetic liberalism. Be like FDR. FDR, as I showed in a previous post, pointed to his opponents as do nothings and talked about getting crap done. This is what the dems need to do. This is why Clinton is a horrible candidate. She wants to continue a lukewarm legacy, basically snubbing half the democrats unsatisfied with the current direction in the process, to push more of the same. It isn’t gonna work. I outlined the problems with our economic system. I have proposed solutions. Clinton is too moderate too wishy washy, and unwilling to do what’s needed to be done to change things. She’s a “new democrat” just like her husband. This might have been good in 1992, just like Eisenhower was good in 1952, but it’s not 1992 any more, it’s 2016. We’ve had 3 administrations since then and the current paradigm is failing. People are upset, people are alienated, people want something new. This is why there’s so much support for Trump and Sanders. We’re undergoing a realignment, and we need candidates that represent the future, not the glory days of the past.
What we need in the future is democrats with balls. We need democrats to stop cow towing to the republicans, stop pandering to the elite, stop saying one thing and doing another. We need democrats that are as unapologetic as FDR, and willing to present bold, systemic solutions to fix our problems, not wishy washy “oh this is the best we can do because of the big mean republicans” lame piecemeal crap. We don’t need to fix obamacare, we need universal healthcare. We don’t need a college compact, we need free education. We don’t need means tested welfare with a trillion different forms and requirements, we need guaranteed income. We also need updated labor regulations that represent the world in the 21st century, where new problems have arisen, and old laws are skirted. FLSA may have been good for 1938, but that was almost 80 years ago. Yes, you will face opposition to these proposals, but like FDR, you need to welcome their hatred head on and do the right thing. This is why I’m for Sanders, and this is why I think he should be the future of the democratic movement, not Hillary. Supporting Hillary is a monumental mistake. We need a Reagan to seal the deal, not a weakling like Ford. I fear Hillary may damage the democratic brand if anything. What good is winning the white house for four years if you fail to do anything with that power and lose the people? At best, Hillary delays progress, at worst, she derails a progressive movement and hands the entire game back over to the conservatives. What would have happened if Ford won in 1976? Would the democrats have recovered? Would the reagan revolution have been delayed indefinitely? It’s possible. I fear Hillary could do this to the progressives. There’s no point in winning a battle only to lose the war. As for Trump, if he gets elected, he’s gonna suck. I know he is. He’s horrible. He has no real solutions, he’s a con artist. But you know what? He’s also the perfect “Carter”. Someone who will inevitably fail to address our challenges, bring shame to his party, and hand the ball back to progressives in 2020. Maybe, if Trump gets elected, we could see a democratic congress with a president Warren? That would be sweet. As such, if the democrats have no balls, I really have no reason to vote for them. They’re just gonna squander their opportunities and while they would be better than Trump, Trump’s awfulness could bring in progressive change. I’m not about to support Trump since this is all a big risk, but I have little incentive to support Hillary knowing she won’t do crap and potentially damage the party’s viability over the long term either. As such, I think I may vote for Jill Stein if she is indeed the nominee.
Is it really worth supporting Stein if you don’t get your way? There’s so much at stake!
Yeah. I’ve heard this before, I even did an article on it. And I even did an article stating how I didn’t like Stein policy wise because none of her ideas have even the faintest sense of practicality to them. However, I want to bring people back to 1968 here. In 1968, a group of people rebelled from the democrats, threw a hissy fit, and what happened? Massive political change. It’s a snowball effect. The democrats lost the election, and even lost relevance, but what was the result? PEOPLE LISTENED. Nixon noticed this, and began appealing to these people. He LISTENED. And people supported him. And they supported Reagan in 1980. Even if Clinton is a “better” alternative to Trump, I cannot, in good conscience, support her. She’s gonna damage the party. You know what? She’s most likely gonna face a recession (economic booms don’t last forever, just ask Bush Sr.), she’s gonna do nothing to fix it, and the dems will lose credibility. By voting third party, I’m not voting for Stein and her unworkable policies. I’m voting for her ideology, which puts a fire under the democrats to move to the left. The republicans aren’t gonna listen to a bunch of people who are liberals on steroids, but if we show the democrats that they need us to win and we aren’t gonna support them just because, they’ll have to come to us.
What will the future parties of America look like?
I really don’t know what the end result of this party realignment will be. It really depends who gets elected, and when, and how the electorate responds. I do think, based on the preferences of Millennials currently, that the republican party is likely to move in a libertarian direction, and the democratic party is gonna move in a progressive/”democratic socialist” direction. I don’t think the economic issues will be resolved, although I do see the republicans and democrats coming to an agreement socially. Too many people will still support conservatism of a sense economically, whereas the left will likely become more aggressive and flagrant. This likely means the future of this country will become more permissive socially, but not so much economically. Still, I do think we will lean to the left on the whole economically if the democrats can establish themselves as the dominant political party that sets the agenda. I don’t think the people will actually stand for hardcore libertarian economic policy, at least not for long. So I think that they may be more moderate in practice. To be fair though, anything can happen, and it’s very hard to guess. If Hillary gets elected, something is going to happen very differently than if Trump gets elected. If Johnson gets third party votes, that could lead to a different outcome than if people rally behind Trump and Hillary. Same with Stein, if she gets votes, that could influence things too. If Clinton gets indicted before the convention and Sanders gets the nomination, that would have a profoundly different impact still. It’s really hard to say.
Conclusion
Yes, this is a very long article, but I touched on some essential points. We, as Americans, are likely in the middle of a party realignment. I discussed the history of recent realignments here, and gave some predictions of how I think 2016 will impact future elections. Still, because there are many unknowns, it is impossible to know where we’ll end up. Still, I gave my advice to democrats and think we could afford to become far more aggressively liberal and progressive in economic policy, and how this would be good for the country. We need change. Our current system isn’t working. We’re on the tail end of an alignment where everyone is pissed off at everything and where we’re pretty much close to the breaking point of monumental change.
What are party realignments and how do they work?
Party realignments are basically course corrections in American politics. They happen about once a generation. It’s been said once every 36 years, but I think in modern times this is a bit more muddled. Arguably the previous alignment started showing cracks after 36 years, but it took an additional 12 years for things to really change ideologically. I’ll be discussing this later in depth. It is possible we’ve been undergoing one since 2008, but it’s also possible that it’s only starting now. We really won’t be able to make a decision until we can look at it in hindsight.
As for how they work, parties align via different platforms. They take stances on issues, and people vote with who they align with best. Under ideal circumstances, these parties generally reflect the will of the majority of the population. While they may never satisfy everyone, they generally do a good enough job where the politically active populace rallies behind them and agrees with them. However, after a while, the parties and their platforms stop making sense. The parties stop representing the will and politics of the people, and the people either stay home, vote independently, or hold their nose to support a candidate they don’t like. Sound familiar? I’m sure most people who read this know how this feels. Well, there is hope. Eventually, the parties do correct themselves. They recognize that there is a lot of unhappy untapped members of the electorate, and they realign around the new issues of the day, and become in touch with the populace again. A few examples. In the 1840s and 1850s, we had a string of really horrible presidents. They did nothing to fix the slavery issue, and eventually, Lincoln was elected, the country broke into a civil war, and the parties realigned around that platform. In the 1930s, we saw a total breakdown of the contemporary alignment due to the depression, and a move by the democrats to step in and fix the issues, realigning the parties around the 20th century politics we’re more familiar with. Of course, the country was much more left wing until we got to the 1980s when the parties essentially realigned again. I’m gonna analyze the previous realignment in great detail later, because I think there are some interesting parallels between them. Anyway, the parties being out of touch with the populace are a big reason why these realignments happen. Eventually things get so out of sync that the parties are forced to change their platform to be more representative of the people. This is said, by some political scientists, to happen along generational lines, which makes sense given our current predicament. The current parties represent the baby boomers, not the millennials and their politics. Don’t worry, our time will come. Eventually we’ll outnumber them and the politicians will be members of our generation who see things our way. Sometimes realignments happen suddenly, as one party takes over all of government at once and pushes through an agenda that will define the political spectrum for the next several decades, although sometimes these alignments need to die a slow death as we go through a decade or more of ineffective politics before things finally come together.
Here are some sources on the matter for further reading.
The history of the previous party realignment, 1929-1979
I’d say the story of the previous party alignment before our current one started in 1929. What happened in 1929? Stocks fell through the floor and the country was brought into the great depression. Hoover was president at the time, and economically, the debate that we see today in politics just wasn’t happening. We were basically at the end of what I would consider the gilded age. A time where the government did not help fix the problems related to capitalism, and everything was laissez faire. As we know though, the depression was really bad though, and this forced Hoover to act. Hoover tried to do some things, like a tariff act, but these were fairly ineffective. By 1932, people were pissed off and voted for FDR. Now, as you know, I love FDR. I think he was the greatest president we’ve ever had, save for maybe Washington and Lincoln. He came into office with a mandate, and he did so much to help people. He implemented the FLSA, OSHA, the minimum wage, social security, etc. These are the cornerstones of American labor relations and safety nets today. He was loved so much he was elected 4 times, and died in office in his fourth term. His vice president Harry Truman took over and largely continued the torch, although was a bit less impressive than FDR himself in my opinion. The democrats held onto government for 20 years, and only lost it because in 1952 they ran a weak candidate against a war hero, here we get into Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency.
After 20 years of republican exile, the republicans didn’t want to rock the boat. Part of the reason they lost for so long is because no one wanted to see FDR’s legacy undone. They loved it, and it set the stage for American prosperity in the post war era. Eisenhower moderated the republican party a lot. He was for the minimum wage, he taxed the rich at 90% just like FDR did, he expanded the New Deal. He essentially governed, economically, like a modern day democrat. Keep this in mind, this is gonna be important later on. Socially, the republicans were quite conservative though. We have McCarthyism, we had a lot of pushing of traditional values and theism, and this later morphed into the religious right. Even today, the right glorifies the 1950s in terms of social policy, although not economic policy.
In the 1960s, things swung back to the democrats. However, the 1960s were a pretty tumultuous time. JFK inspired the hope of a nation, but his administration was mired in scandals and the whole nuclear standoff with the Soviets. The democrats got us in Vietnam, which upset a lot of people, to the point there were riots and protests. We had the hippie movement under the JFK and Johnson administrations protesting the war, wanting more relaxed social policy, etc. We also had the civil rights movement, which, while being on the right side of history, cost the democratic party its movement. This probably did more damage than the other factors combined. It wasn’t really the war, or the hippie protests that changed things, it was the civil rights movement. Let’s take a brief history detour to understand why. Back in 1860, Lincoln was the first republican to get elected to president. Then the civil war happened. The republicans fought against slavery, whereas the democrats sided with the south. From then on, the democratic party was a traditionally southern, conservative party, whereas the republicans were a traditionally northern, more progressive party. Yeah. Until FDR, the roles of the government were reversed from what they were today. Well, even in FDR’s administration, a lot of concessions were made to southern democrats who didn’t want black people being economically empowered. As such, the whole new deal thing only helped white people at the time. The democrats were still an extremely racist party, and were until the 1960s, when the federal democrats turned against the southern democrats. This alienated the south so badly that in 1968, they spited the democratic party and voted third party, for George Wallace, the southern governor who opposed civil rights and desegregation. This happened 36 years after the 1932 realignment, ironically. However, we didn’t really see things shift until 1980, as I’ll get to.
So, 1968, the democrats have their vote split, and Nixon wins. Economically, he’s still fairly liberal. As I mentioned in a previous post, this guy was for a limited form of basic income. The republicans werent anti welfare yet, they were anti inefficiency. They didn’t think that the government should have all these different means tested programs that do different things to combat poverty, and that Johnson’s war on poverty was flawed. And he was right, actually. The war on poverty was a flawed movement. It was done with the best of intentions, but compared to the kinds of ideas I’m for? Yeah. Very inefficient, but I digress. Back on topic, Nixon was pretty left wing economically, much like Eisenhower, not as much as the democrats, but still, pretty left wing. Probably about as left wing as the current democrats. Nixon was also fairly socially conservative, and in response to the hippie movement, appealed to a “silent majority”…what’s that you ask? Well, glad you did ask, even if you didn’t. The silent majority appeals to a portion of the populace that isn’t very politically loud, but actually makes up most of the population. Basically, a majority of the people, who were silent, heh. Anyway, he appealed to the silent majority, which helped build a republican coalition. He also started appealing to racists. Nixon is known for his southern strategy and dog whistle politics in which he appealed to racists in coded language in order to win them over. The democrats alienated the south, and Nixon spoke their language, in code. This allowed him to build a power house of an electorate going into 1972, where McGovern was destroyed. So, long story short, Nixon was very par for the course ideologically for the republicans in that time period, but he actually did some leg work in building a movement that later became the conservative movement we know today. Nixon actually is the architect of the modern conservative movement and the coalitions they used to win. Still, he isn’t really remembered for this due to being moderate, and because his presidency went down in a blaze of glory due to watergate. Which brings us full circle.
In 1976, the country was a mess. It really was. Both parties were pretty hated. The democrats werent doing so good since their coalition fractured in 1968, and while the republicans had a winning coalition, the scandals of the Nixon administration weighed heavily on Ford, allowing Carter to win. Before I get into Carter though, I want to discuss something interesting that happened. In 1976, despite running for reelection, Ford had a primary challenger. That challenger was Ronald Reagan. Reagan was considered a bit of an extremist at the time. While conservatives spoke behind closed doors of being more conservative, it was considered political suicide in the light of the New deal and FDR’s successes. The republican party was destined to be moderate, and “extremists” like Reagan were kind of unpopular. But Reagan gave Ford a run for his money, and almost won the nomination actually. It seems people liked Reagan. He took dog whistle politics to the next level and mixed it in with his small government narrative. He spoke of welfare queens, which was really just code for black women abusing the system. It really should be noted, I said this before, and I’ll say this again, the small government narrative that arose in the 1970s and 1980s actually had a racist double meaning. Yes, it appeals to people on one level, but it appeals to racist people on another completely. And there was a lot of hidden racism in this message. Anyway, he didn’t win the nomination, Ford did, and Ford went up against Carter and lost.
Carter’s presidency was an unmitigated disaster. I don’t think the guy was as bad as he is portrayed, but much like Hoover was a scapegoat of the gilded age alignment failing, Carter was the scapegoat of the New Deal one. Carter failed to meet the challenges of his time. He faced oil crises, in which he told people to consume less. This is a good message, but it went over with the American people like a lead balloon. He failed to deal with stagflation in a timely manner. He fought his own party in congress. He failed to respond to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He failed to respond to the Iran hostage crisis. He meant well, but he was completely and utterly ineffective. At one point in his presidency, he gave his crisis of confidence speech, which I think was heartfelt and sincere, but again, the American people didn’t take well to it. All these failures to address the problems of the day led to Reagan winning in 1980. This is where I think we saw the real end of the previous party realignment. We saw the demographics shift starting 36 years after the last alignment, and we saw a victory happen that changed the country ideologically in 1980.
The modern alignment
Reagan came into office with an agenda much like FDR, but at the same time, antithetical to his values. Whereas FDR marked an era in which the government was to get involved in the economy and regulate it, Reagan thought that government was the problem. He weakened unions, lowered taxes, used the federal reserve to force an end to stagflation, deregulated the economy, and blamed the fact that government interfered with government in the first place as a reason for the problem. His solution to everything economically was less government. He inflamed his base about safety nets, demonized them, and pushed for them to be cut. Conservatives went from merely wanting more efficient regulations and safety nets to wanting none at all, and putting those “lazy” people back to work. He won 2 terms. He dealt with the Soviets more pointedly and escalated the cold war, which ended up leading to their demise. While the democrats were “weak” on foreign policy, Reagan was strong. He was very popular. Bush campaigned on his success in 1988, crediting Reagan with “the longest economic expansion in history” and wanting to keep that going. Of course, Reagan’s legacy was GROSSLY overstated, and this came back to bite him in 1992.
In 1992, crap happened. We saw the “longest economic expansion” implode. Bush just kinda shrugged it off and was like, eh, recessions happen, what can you do. He raised taxes to deal with Reagan’s growing budget deficits, which went against his campaign promises and made people angry, and by this time, the Reagan charm was just wearing off a little. Reagan was still idolized, but Bush wasn’t. The democrats were doing some changing as well. Seeing how they have been getting destroyed since Nixon, they decided that they needed to moderate their positions a bit. While much more socially liberal than the conservatives, they moved significantly to the right on economics. Clinton was a “new democrat”, which was basically code for a democrat who was to the center and acted like a republican at times. While Clinton was for universal healthcare, this was about the only thing he was liberal on. He deregulated Wall Street, signed NAFTA, and cut welfare. Whereas just 20 years ago republicans proposed workable safety nets of their own, now the democrats were cutting them. The realignment was in full swing by this time. Notice how Clinton sounds a lot like Eisenhower was in the 50s? Me too.
Clinton was pretty popular though. For a democrat in the dark ages of conservatism, he did pretty good for himself, and in 2000, Al Gore lost primarily because of the electoral college, an institutional feature of our system. We can blame the supreme court too, which sided with Bush out of ideology. The left will try to blame it on Ralph Nader, which might be technically true as well, but ignores the many many other issues and is really just a narrative pulled out to keep voters in line and unified. Anyway, Bush won.
Like JFK and Johnson in the 1960s, the conservative movement was not very welcomed back into power this second time around. We had 9/11, Bush went into Afghanistan and Iraq. We had anti war protests, we had high budget deficits, we had the recession….wait, is this like the 60s all over again? Eh, kind of. In the sense that the republican party had to deal with a lot of problems and hurt its image significantly. I don’t think a 1968-esque fracture happened, but the republicans still suffered significantly from the Bush administration, and we MAY have been seeing it start to erode. This is my opinion, the facts are unclear looking at things now. Anyway, the recession happened, the wars happened, people hated the republicans, and voted for Obama in 2008.
Today’s situation
Obama won in 2008 with a mandate for change and a congress behind him, but between fear mongering, losing congress, and effectively being a lame duck for 6 years, he hasn’t really been in a position to do much. I think that he started off good, he stabilized the economy, he passed obamacare, which was better than nothing but he ended up being far more moderate and doing a lot less than I think people wanted of him. I think people are turning their backs on the republicans, despite their congressional victories. It’s easy to win elections in a gerrymandered system with low voter turnout, but I don’t think the country is behind the GOP. I think the recession changed the narrative, and the failures of the Bush administration are still in peoples’ minds. I think that older voters may flock to the GOP, and maybe some young libertarian types, but other than that, I think they’re losing support. Most people who like them are older; young people don’t support them much. The democrats are losing support too though. I think a lot of people agree with them ideologically, but that the Obama administration has been disappointing, and as such people don’t bother turning out. I think the democrats’ big issue is morale. The democrats won big in 2008 and 2012 because when we had a highly visible election, it was quite clear that people preferred liberal candidates to conservatives who represent corporate interests and the interests of the rich. I think the GOP has been trying to maintain power, knowing they’re losing ground, but that they will ultimately fail and will have to transform into some new party with different values and policies to deal with the times. Meanwhile, I think the democratic platform is solid, at least in rhetoric, it just needs to move to the left in policy a bit and be the champions of the working and middle class, not just the lesser of two evils. The democrats of today are too rich, too elitist, and too in bed with big interests. They talk big, but when the time comes they turn into moderate conservatives.
What the democratic party needs to do
I am going to give the democrats coaching advice here because let’s face it, while I have a falling out with the establishment and the Clinton campaign, I still align with them in principle and want them to succeed. I believe the future of this country rests on the democrats being the best they can be, while I believe the republicans represent everything wrong with America and are what we need to change. Anyway, here we go. We are 36 years after the Reagan revolution swept the country, which is, as the party realignment theory goes, about the amount of time it takes for a new paradigm to take hold. The republican party is falling apart. It’s been rotting from within since 2008. I think that choosing Trump over all conservative establishment candidates, by a wide margin, and trust me, there are a lot of them, shows a rejection by the party’s voters that they know something is wrong and that something needs to change. I think the republican party is transforming. I don’t know where it will end up, but it’s floundering around like a fish on land trying to gasp just a tiny bit of water. All republican action since Obama was elected has largely been obstructionism. They dont have solutions. They want to stop YOU from fixing the problems. They are the party of no. Even Donald Trump, who speaks of trade deals and tariffs and walls and illegals, is horribly misguided and won’t be able to save them. The way I see it, the republican party is a zombie. It’s animated, but it’s dead and rotting from the inside. Much like the democratic party was in the 1970s.
Obama has had the role of “Nixon” in this party realignment. He was won over a generation of young voters, only to alienate them by not following through. To an extent this isn’t his fault, but in some ways it is. Obama is too willing to compromise with the GOP. The GOP knows it’s dying, and they’re fighting to the last man to maintain power. They will obstruct him no matter what, because that’s the only move they have. They don’t have solutions, so they’re trying to bring down the democrats. Obama compromising was a good move, at least initially. I think Obama’s reasonableness and willingness to compromise is one reason I was willing to switch to being a liberal. Because it became quite clear the GOP has lost its mind and the democrats are the reasonable ones here. However, reasonableness only goes so far. When you are dealing with a bully, you can only ignore them for so long before you appear weak and have to start punching back. That time is now. We need STRONG liberalism. Not the wishy washy compromising kind. STRONG liberalism. Unapologetic liberalism. Be like FDR. FDR, as I showed in a previous post, pointed to his opponents as do nothings and talked about getting crap done. This is what the dems need to do. This is why Clinton is a horrible candidate. She wants to continue a lukewarm legacy, basically snubbing half the democrats unsatisfied with the current direction in the process, to push more of the same. It isn’t gonna work. I outlined the problems with our economic system. I have proposed solutions. Clinton is too moderate too wishy washy, and unwilling to do what’s needed to be done to change things. She’s a “new democrat” just like her husband. This might have been good in 1992, just like Eisenhower was good in 1952, but it’s not 1992 any more, it’s 2016. We’ve had 3 administrations since then and the current paradigm is failing. People are upset, people are alienated, people want something new. This is why there’s so much support for Trump and Sanders. We’re undergoing a realignment, and we need candidates that represent the future, not the glory days of the past.
What we need in the future is democrats with balls. We need democrats to stop cow towing to the republicans, stop pandering to the elite, stop saying one thing and doing another. We need democrats that are as unapologetic as FDR, and willing to present bold, systemic solutions to fix our problems, not wishy washy “oh this is the best we can do because of the big mean republicans” lame piecemeal crap. We don’t need to fix obamacare, we need universal healthcare. We don’t need a college compact, we need free education. We don’t need means tested welfare with a trillion different forms and requirements, we need guaranteed income. We also need updated labor regulations that represent the world in the 21st century, where new problems have arisen, and old laws are skirted. FLSA may have been good for 1938, but that was almost 80 years ago. Yes, you will face opposition to these proposals, but like FDR, you need to welcome their hatred head on and do the right thing. This is why I’m for Sanders, and this is why I think he should be the future of the democratic movement, not Hillary. Supporting Hillary is a monumental mistake. We need a Reagan to seal the deal, not a weakling like Ford. I fear Hillary may damage the democratic brand if anything. What good is winning the white house for four years if you fail to do anything with that power and lose the people? At best, Hillary delays progress, at worst, she derails a progressive movement and hands the entire game back over to the conservatives. What would have happened if Ford won in 1976? Would the democrats have recovered? Would the reagan revolution have been delayed indefinitely? It’s possible. I fear Hillary could do this to the progressives. There’s no point in winning a battle only to lose the war. As for Trump, if he gets elected, he’s gonna suck. I know he is. He’s horrible. He has no real solutions, he’s a con artist. But you know what? He’s also the perfect “Carter”. Someone who will inevitably fail to address our challenges, bring shame to his party, and hand the ball back to progressives in 2020. Maybe, if Trump gets elected, we could see a democratic congress with a president Warren? That would be sweet. As such, if the democrats have no balls, I really have no reason to vote for them. They’re just gonna squander their opportunities and while they would be better than Trump, Trump’s awfulness could bring in progressive change. I’m not about to support Trump since this is all a big risk, but I have little incentive to support Hillary knowing she won’t do crap and potentially damage the party’s viability over the long term either. As such, I think I may vote for Jill Stein if she is indeed the nominee.
Is it really worth supporting Stein if you don’t get your way? There’s so much at stake!
Yeah. I’ve heard this before, I even did an article on it. And I even did an article stating how I didn’t like Stein policy wise because none of her ideas have even the faintest sense of practicality to them. However, I want to bring people back to 1968 here. In 1968, a group of people rebelled from the democrats, threw a hissy fit, and what happened? Massive political change. It’s a snowball effect. The democrats lost the election, and even lost relevance, but what was the result? PEOPLE LISTENED. Nixon noticed this, and began appealing to these people. He LISTENED. And people supported him. And they supported Reagan in 1980. Even if Clinton is a “better” alternative to Trump, I cannot, in good conscience, support her. She’s gonna damage the party. You know what? She’s most likely gonna face a recession (economic booms don’t last forever, just ask Bush Sr.), she’s gonna do nothing to fix it, and the dems will lose credibility. By voting third party, I’m not voting for Stein and her unworkable policies. I’m voting for her ideology, which puts a fire under the democrats to move to the left. The republicans aren’t gonna listen to a bunch of people who are liberals on steroids, but if we show the democrats that they need us to win and we aren’t gonna support them just because, they’ll have to come to us.
What will the future parties of America look like?
I really don’t know what the end result of this party realignment will be. It really depends who gets elected, and when, and how the electorate responds. I do think, based on the preferences of Millennials currently, that the republican party is likely to move in a libertarian direction, and the democratic party is gonna move in a progressive/”democratic socialist” direction. I don’t think the economic issues will be resolved, although I do see the republicans and democrats coming to an agreement socially. Too many people will still support conservatism of a sense economically, whereas the left will likely become more aggressive and flagrant. This likely means the future of this country will become more permissive socially, but not so much economically. Still, I do think we will lean to the left on the whole economically if the democrats can establish themselves as the dominant political party that sets the agenda. I don’t think the people will actually stand for hardcore libertarian economic policy, at least not for long. So I think that they may be more moderate in practice. To be fair though, anything can happen, and it’s very hard to guess. If Hillary gets elected, something is going to happen very differently than if Trump gets elected. If Johnson gets third party votes, that could lead to a different outcome than if people rally behind Trump and Hillary. Same with Stein, if she gets votes, that could influence things too. If Clinton gets indicted before the convention and Sanders gets the nomination, that would have a profoundly different impact still. It’s really hard to say.
Conclusion
Yes, this is a very long article, but I touched on some essential points. We, as Americans, are likely in the middle of a party realignment. I discussed the history of recent realignments here, and gave some predictions of how I think 2016 will impact future elections. Still, because there are many unknowns, it is impossible to know where we’ll end up. Still, I gave my advice to democrats and think we could afford to become far more aggressively liberal and progressive in economic policy, and how this would be good for the country. We need change. Our current system isn’t working. We’re on the tail end of an alignment where everyone is pissed off at everything and where we’re pretty much close to the breaking point of monumental change.
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