So, the lessons of the past few days have been sinking around in my head, and honestly, I can't help but draw some disturbing parallels from the previous realignment and the modern age.
The new deal coalition lasted from 1932-1968. In 1968, it split, mostly over civil rights. The southern racists left the democratic party, were courted by the republican party, and this led to the republican coalition rebuilding itself in a way to get a majority of voters, leaving democrats unable to do anything, and ultimately being forced to cobble together an ideologically impure coalition in the 1990s that was inconsistent at winning elections.
In 2008, Obama assembled a coalition that actually brought a lot of white working class voters back to the party that the democrats lost. Those guys had been leaving the democratic party for decades, but Obama seemed to be in a unique position during the recession to win those guys back, and to be blunt, they even won me over. it was during the obama years I was able to realize the GOP was insane and that the republicans offered the country nothing on economics.
But....2016 seems to be like 1968 all over again. Clinton fractured this coalition Obama was able to win and maintain, throwing away a potentially generational electoral advantage that could have shut the republicans out of the electoral college, at least for a while. Seriously, the Obama coalition was strong enough it COULD have won three consecutive terms. And the democrats were the favorites from the election. but for reasons I've mentioned and have been ranting about since this blog was created, it's possible that they just ended up throwing away whatever advantage that they had, and literally alienated a whole bloc of voters to the republicans.
The gamble that for every working class voter they lost, they could win two republicans seems to have cost them dearly, and seems to have completely screwed up their electoral advantage. The democrats arrogantly threw away a core voting bloc because Clinton wanted the party to remain centrist, and now the brand of politics the democrats have been pushing since have been alienating to most voters.
But it gets worse than that. Those guys aren't coming back. I mean, my desire to punish the democrats came out of a desire to force them to be better, to not be the lesser evil, and to stop taking voters for granted. It was intended to make them do better and put them on a better path. But most voters seemed to have left. And those who did seem mostly happy with Trump. They LIKE trump. They're ride or die on him. They think he was the greatest economic president we've had since Ronald Reagan. Obama win back the white working class in 2008 and 2012, only for Clinton to lose them again, and now they might stay republicans.
Biden did temporarily win those guys back and had some play with the electoral map, but still the results were narrower than i anticipated and it kinda scared me Trump was so popular, and that people liked him.
And here we are in 2024, and it's feeling a bit like 1980. If Obama was Johnson, Trump was Nixon, and then Biden is carter, and now Trump coming back could be Reagan. We might be screwed. Inflation has raged again, the democrats are dysfunctional, Israel is starting to feel like a new Iranian hostage crisis, and the polling is shifting hard toward the republicans. We barely have a path to the white house, and it mostly involves the same rust belt states Clinton failed to win. And it's narrow. In 2016 they were favored for clinton. That was the reason no one really thought Trump could win, but he managed to do so.
We are in the weakest electoral map for a democrat since 1988 and at least in 1988 Dukakis seemed like he had a chance until the tank thing. It's still possible things can turn around, but we're now 5 months from the election. Were pretty on general election footing, and even with a criminal conviction these numbers aren't changing. This isn't good. We are not in a good position. And I fear this could be that generational election you DON'T want to be on the wrong side of. I am seeing history possibly repeating itself here, with the democrats screwing up their coalition, and now the trade the dems made is happening and it's not working well for us. We're screwed. We might be screwed for a generation. Just calling it here. Not saying it's all written in stone yet, but it seems to be going that way.
And again, it's not just the US. I mean I thought maybe it really was just clinton alienating people, but the alt right is rising in Europe too. I have European friends from the Rammstein fan base who were talking about the French and German EU elections today and the alt right SWEPT. The right is insanely popular. And their politics resembles america's more than I'd like to admit. I've been saying that perhaps the left would be more popular if it stopped dying on the hill of immigration and leaning into wokeness, but even if the parties do that, they dont seem to be gaining support. People seem to genuinely like the alt right, and it scares me. We are truly in the worst timeline electorally.
I don't get it. i don't get politics any more. Wtf is wrong with people. In America I can at least kinda get it and blame clinton for starting this mess, but Europe is literally doing the same thing.
Sorry to be a doomer but given what I've been seeing out of politics this year, i kinda can't help it.
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