It remains to be seen how hard the shit-hammer will come down on the Republicans this Tuesday. They are now busy at work ramping up their 72-hour project. Robo-calls are going out. They’re getting ready to pamphleteer church parking lots. They’re challenging absentee ballots. They’re telling blacks and latinos not to vote if they have parking tickets or cannot provide a picture ID. Some advance work has already been done, making sure lines are longer in Democratic precincts, purging voter rolls, throwing away voter registrations. The GOP will do whatever they can to suppress turnout and turn off independents.
But the shit-hammer is still going to come down. And depending on where it comes down hardest, the make up, lessons, and reactions of our two governing parties will differ. In the rubberstamp Hastert House, it is difficult to label any Republican as a moderate. But they do exist. Some are pro-choice, some are fairly environmentally friendly, some are decent to unions, some are open to stem-cell research and oppose the privitization of Social Security.
As the Washington Post notes, these types of Republicans are especially endangered this election season. It’s quite possible that the Republicans will lose one or both New Hampshire seats, three Connecticut seats, five or six New York seats, a New Jersey seat, five Pennsylvania seats, four Ohio seats, a seat in suburban Chicago, and seats in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Things could even be worse, with seats in Michigan and additional seats in Illinois that are endnagered. If the Republicans are basically purged from the northeast and upper midwest (including red Indiana) it will have repurcussions for the party moving forward. It could lead to an even starker north/south polarization of the country.
But there is something else afoot. The Dems are showing signs of life in the border states and Virginia. Strong Senate challenges in Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia combined with three potential house pick-ups in Kentucky, show that the Dems may be gaining some traction that could translate into electoral votes in 2008.
At the same time, the Dems are showing surprising strength in house races in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho. The Senate race in Montana and the Governor’s race in Idaho are highly competitive and may even be leaning Dem. If the Dems can do in these states what they have done in the Dakotas, namely win state-wide despite the basic conservatism of the population, then we could be seeing the beginnings of a basic realignment of the parties, with the GOP suddenly relegated to the old confederacy. Yet, such a coalition, in order to be viable and to constitute a true ruling majority, would have to be organized upon different principles than the ones that have driven the Democratic Party since 1968. It would be an unexpected result and end to the red/blue deadlock we have seen develop since the end of the Cold War.
Another possibility is that the Dems will not win in these plains and mountain states, or will not be able to translate wins into a realignment. But we may gain a ruling majority through a southwest strategy than includes Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. This is the path that has seemed most obvious and fruitful to me. It basically relies on the changing demographics of these areas as they become more hispanic and filled with more California exiles. In this case, we would not be witnessing as much of a change in the basic makeup and ideology of the Democratic Party. We would prevail mainly through the demographic changes.
As Bush and Rumsfeld are fond of reminding us, the enemy just doesn’t sit there. They have a voice and a strategy too. The GOP will react to these election losses. Their reaction will depend a lot upon where they lose and how big their losses are. The stump of a Republican Party that is left in the House is going to be more conservative than ever. But that will be no comfort to the GOP party organizations in places like New York and Connecticut. They will have to start thinking about how they can change their brand to appeal nationwide again. It’s the mirror image of our struggles to compete in Alabama and South Carolina. They will have to decide whether they still can still muster a ruling majority or gain back northern suburban seats if they don’t soften their message and change their agenda.
They will begin by assigning blame. They will blame Bush, they will blame Cheney and the neo-cons, they will blame Rove, they will blame people like Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley and Tom DeLay. They will blame the media. They’ll blame profligate spending. They’ll blame Kuo’s book and Pastor Haggard. They’ll blame Bob Woodward and the NIE leaks. They’ll blame Katrina, and the war in Iraq. They’ll blame Terri Schiavo. But none of that will do much to provide them with answers for what to do next.
In 1994, Bill Clinton recognized one thing. He and his party had been soundly rejected. He had to change course. His decisions helped him win a second term, but did nothing to reverse a trend running against his party. Now the GOP has to decide whether they will spend the next two years trying to save Bush’s presidency or if they will spend it redefining themselves and revitalizing their party. Because, regardless of the exact size of the landslide, one thing is for sure. On Tuesday the American people are going to soundly reject the GOP.
Could it be true?? So many times when the Democrats have wrung their hands trying to figure out how they could move far enough right to win the South, I would dream of the day the discussion changes to one about how the Republicans can move far enough left to win in the North. I wish there was a non-religious equivalent to “From your mouth to God’s ear.”
I’ll be writing a lot about this next week after the election, barring being swamped with recounts and the like…
Bowers wants the northeast, upper midwest sweep because those seats will be easier to defend and lead to a more confident and progressive majority. I understand his thinking, but I hope that it is grounded in the red/blue deadlock and highly partisan paradigm that we are in.
I obviously want to win as many seats as possible, but if I have to choose, I would prefer a moderate gain in the blue areas combined with a shocking success in the red. Yes, this will leave us with imperiled and scared rabbit Democrats, but it will give hope and momentum to the 50 state strategy and bode better for our Presidential chances in 2008.
Moreover, what I really want is for the GOP to get over its sickness so it isn’t a life or death matter whether they win elections. In order for that to happen, they need to gain some moderate strength in the blue areas, not become totally relegated to the south and plains states.
Long-term, I’d like to see a ruling majority Democratic party with big enough majorities to sustain a lot of more conservative members. Kind of like how the party was under LBJ. I’d rather have a progressive majority that involves cross-over Republicans along with Democratic defectors, than one big ideologically pure Democratic Party opposed by one smaller ideologicially insane Republican Party.
The two-party system requires that neither party is insane or dangerous. That’s a longer term goal though. As long as the GOP is potent and powerful and insane, we have to match them in ideological purity. We can’t have Liebermans in our party when the parties are evenly matched. But we can have them in our party when we have big majorities and there are progressive Republicans that will vote with us.
I agree with your argument that the Democratic Party needs to be strong enough to include a wide range of voices. I think that StevenD’s argument for a Democratic bloc composed of the NE and Upper Midwest is a mistake. Your passing comment about the Democrats under LBJ illustrates my point.
The conservative Democrats under LBJ were largely Southern and Western conservatives for whom the Democratic Party was a legacy of Reconstruction. The Original Radical Republicans were the Abolitionists who fought against slavery. After the Civil War, they pushed the Reconstruction measures that included the Freedmen’s Bureau and Federal troops deployed throughout the defeated South. (For more on the Freedmen’s Bureau, fascinating reading.) The posting of Federal troops in the South also lead to the Posse Comitatus Act, of which I will say more in a separate diary.
As late as the 1960’s, the Republican party was anathema in the South, where the memories of the War Between the States and Reconstruction were still vivid. This was the day of the “Solid South,” solidly Democratic, that is. But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed everything. LBJ said that the Act would cost the Democrats the South and he was right. It also sparked the “Southern Strategy” of the GOP which culminated in Reagan’s election and the current domination of both houses by the GOP.
The Democratic “Big Tent” of LBJ held many Southerners and Westerners who were already out of the party in spirit. The Senators stayed because of the power of seniority, which meant that conservative Southern Democrats held many of the Committee chairs. In the House, always faster to change than the Senate, Southern delegations also began to turn Republican in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This, along with large scale population shifts to the Sun Belt which began in ’70s and continues to this day, increased the size of the Southern House delegations.
Anyway, all this is to say that the Democratic Party in 1964 was beginning to fall apart under the weight of regional conflicts over Civil Rights, the growing anti-war movement, and population shifts. What remained was the Northeast. The Midwest, with its many factory workers drawn from the South, is the home of Reagan Democrats, most of whom are now firmly Republican.
For the Democratic Party to regain a majority position in this country, it must find a way to break loose from the grips of the Northeastern Democratic establishment and to include Midwestern, Southern, and Western voices and concerns. This is why Dean’s 50 State agenda is so crucial.
An interesting opportunity for the Democrats is the growing discontentment among retired factory workers who were Reagan Republicans. Many are now scared and angry as their retirement plans are being attacked and eviscerated by their former employers. The corporate, Bush element of the GOP is aiding and abetting this criminal disregard for the rights of workers and the labor agreements they negotiated. Fertile ground there for a tough, corporate responsibility Dem like Eliot Spitzer.
There is a big difference between west and south. What you say about the Southern Democrats of the 60s is true, but the western Democrats were not at all a conservative block. Many were full liberals: Frank Church (ID), George McGovern (SD), Fred Harris (OK), Wayne Morse (OR), Ernest Gruening (AK). Even establishment figures like Mike Mansfield (MT) and Wayne Magnuson (WA) were not conservatives, they were genuine moderates.
You’re right about the West being a different case than than South. I didn’t develop my point about the West very well, because I don’t know that part of the story as well. I included the West in my analysis because I was struck by a fact that jumped out at me while was looking into the vote counts for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
* Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) (Senators Wallace Bennett of Utah, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and Milton R. Young of North Dakota opposed the measure)
As you can see, their were some conservatives in the West in 1964. Clearly the majority of the Senators were liberal to moderate, as you’re examples attest. My question is how did the West go from producing so many liberal and moderate leaders to producing the current crop of Western Senators? What were the issues and factors that turned the West and Southwest into Red states? What do you think?
I use a couple:
From your fingertips to FSM’s noodly eyestalks.
From your lips to $DEITY’s ears (invoking the programming concept of “whatever the value of the variable DEITY may be, which could be empty)
Or you could use inherently bogus deities like J. R. “Bob” Dobbs or Eris fnord or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. I mean, you don’t have to believe in a deity to invoke an expression.
I want to believe it, but I can’t yet.
I’m waiting until I see the election results on Tues. night, and even then I won’t really be happy until I see Dem majorities seated in Congress next year.
There is simply too much that could happen, from election fraud to post election chaos to God knows what for me to sign on to the Tsunami wave theory of Dem victory this year.
we’re ying and yang.
Wow, you and Steve D are the famous Siamese twins? That explains a lot. No, wait, that was Chang and Eng, not ying and yang. My mistake. Nevermind.
Amen.
It all hangs on GOTV and how many votes are counted or trashed.
Florida 2000 Ohio 2004.
It is becoming increasingly clear to just about everyone except Bush that the war in Iraq is a disaster. It’s tragic that more people didn’t get this before the 2004 election. Tuesday’s elections represent an important opportunity to tell Bush that immediate change is imperative. Even if you prefer the Republican over the Democrat, for whatever reason (except for those few who still support Bush’s folly), you MUST do the right thing and vote for the Democrat. You do not want to be on the wrong side of this issue. If Saddam Hussein is convicted and sentenced to death tomorrow, the chaos and carnage will be ratcheted up even further. Everyday we remain in Iraq is inexcusable. Bush must be stopped. An overwhelming Democratic victory on Tuesday will embolden the last few Republican stalwarts who, as was done in Nixon’s final days, will privately tell Bush enough is enough. We don’t need investigations. We don’t need impeachment. We definitely can’t wait for January 20, 2009. Please vote Democratic.
He’s been quoted as saying that people are telling him, “Linc, I like you, but this time I have to send Bush a message.”
I sure hope that the Congressional clean sweep takes place. The one thing that Democrats have to do is get back to their populist roots. Congressman Reichert (R-WA) brags that he fired a single mom school bus driver that gave the finger to the Presidential motorcade. VP Cheney states “It may not be popular with the public — it doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” .
The GOP does not give a damn for American citizens only corporate doners and the wealthy.
I don’t like bragging about this school bus incident as a political point, either. However, I am in complete agreement that a schoolbus driver who gives the finger while she or he is driving a busload of kids should be disciplined. That person’s responsibility is to her/his students, to be an adult who is taking care of the students. That includes being a good role model.