It might strike you as counterintuitive, but Democrats are prospering in the richest areas of the country, while Republicans are increasingly finding themselves beaten back into the Boonies. The Democratic strongholds of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California have a high percentage of wealthy people, along with a high cost of living. And Democrats are doing increasingly well in the suburbs (see, e.g., the 2006 congressional races in the Philly metro area). Paul Krugman wonders whether the Democrats are being ‘wobbled by wealth’. Could this explain their failure to tax hedge fund managers at the normal income tax rate?
Maybe. But, for all my frustration with the current makeup of the Democratic Party, I am seeing the makings of an historic political realignment. Several factors could forestall or even derail this realignment, and I’ll be talking about those issues this fall and winter as we approach the presidential primaries. Let me lay out some of the signposts.
The first and most obvious sign of a realignment is seen in the nuts and bolts of the congressional campaigns. Breaking with all historical precedent, the Democrats are outraising the Republicans, and they are doing it at a mighty clip. The money advantage can be seen on the presidential level, where Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a combined $86 million cash on hand compared with $25 million for Romney and Guiliani. This advantage is also reflected in the parties’ congressional and senatorial election committees. The DCCC has $28 million cash on hand compared to the NRCC’s $1.5 million. And the NRCC has almost $4 million in debt. The Senate situation isn’t much better, but at least the NRSC have a little money to spend: $8,302,427. The DSCC, after debts, has $20 million. This is a staggering differential. The Republicans’ have raised the bulk of their money for the Republican National Committee (RNC), which is primarily concerned with national elections and party building, and not specific races. The RNC has a $16 million to $1.2 million advantage (after debts) over Howard Dean’s DNC. The advantage isn’t entirely from differential fundraising though, as Dean’s 50 State Strategy has a very high burn rate. Overall, the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC have more than twice as much cash on hand as their Republican counterparts. This cash advantage is important both for its strategic value (the ability, or inability, to infuse close races with last second cash) and for its symbolic meaning. People are betting on the Democratic Party and they are investing in it…heavily.
A money advantage is not the end-all of political success, however. Candidates like Rick Santorum, George Allen, and Conrad Burns lost their seats last fall despite vastly outspending their opponents. Candidate recruitment is key. And, here, the Democratic advantage is as stark as their money advantage. The Republicans have recruited no one thought remotely capable of unseating any Democratic Senator in next year’s election, (except for a Louisiana Democrat that flipped parties to challenge Mary Landrieu). The Democrats will be able to use all their money on offense. And they will be on the offense challenging seats from Maine to Virginia to Kentucky to Oklahoma, Oregon and Alaska. Their recruitment in the House has been slightly better, and they will have some strong candidates challenging some of the seats the Democrats picked up in ’06 (see Chris Carney in Pennsylvania’s 10 District, e.g.). Yet, with a plethora of retirements, especially in the blue-leaning Midwest, the Republicans will be defending many open seats, and with less than no cash on hand from the NRCC to assist them.
So, just based on the mechanics of money and recruitment, the signs all point to big Democratic gains. But, as Krugman notes, there are other signs:
James Stimson, a political scientist who uses data from many polls to construct an index of the overall liberalism or conservatism of the electorate, finds that America is now more liberal than it has been since the early 1960s…
Democracy Corps asked those who believe America is on the wrong track to choose phrases that best described their views of what’s gone wrong. The most commonly chosen were “Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington” and “Leaders have forgotten the middle class.”
While Krugman laments the Democrats’ lack of response to this economic populism, I think it spells doom for the GOP. The Republican Party’s traditional strategy has been to pile up a large money advantage from Wall Street and tax-averse activists, and then run as anti-elitist defenders of everyday folks’ values. They’ve already lost the cash advantage, they’ve started to lose the tax-averse suburbs, and now the remainder…the rural middle class and poor, are blaming ‘Big Business’ for the country’s ills.
There are signs of erosion everywhere. We saw it last week in David Kirkpatrick’s huge piece: The Evangelical Crackup. We saw it AdNags piece on Saturday, where he observed:
The continued strength of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who supports abortion rights and gay rights, is testing the question of whether social issues still drive Republican primary voters.
If Guiliani wins the Republican nomination American politics will enter a new phase. This can be summed up in two passages from Nagourneys’ article.
“The Republican Party is waiting for a nominee to voice a post-Bush vision for the party,” said Richard N. Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman…
…Should Mr. Giuliani win the nomination, he would give the party a very different definition and face than the Southerners and evangelicals who have been ascendant until now.
Yet, how would the Republicans respond to an ethnic, lapsed Catholic, northeastern, urban leader in the face of more losses in Congress that creates a caucus more regionally isolated in the southern and plains states?
It would take at least one election cycle for the Republicans to rebrand and start to appeal to the suburbanites and moderates that once were their source of strength. A Guiliani general election victory is unlikely in any case. It is more likely that Guiliani’s positions on social issues and his personal corruption will be blamed for the historic losses, and a term of entrenchment will ensue.
Here is my short-term prediction:
The Democrats will win the White House. They will pick up House seats throughout the Midwest, including seats in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota. There will be zero House reps left from New England, and the Dems will pick up seats in New Jersey and New York. The Republicans will lose Senate seats in blue states, plus Virginia, Colorado, and at least one or two other shocking areas…perhaps Kentucky, Tennessee, or Oklahoma.
The Republicans will wake up after election night and discover that they have almost ceased to exist on the coasts, in the upper midwest, and that they are vulnerable everywhere outside of the Deep South.
But, they will also find that there are no voices of moderation left. Their caucus will be more radical and socially conservative than it was before the elections. They will also be leaderless. The president will be gone. If Mitch McConnell does not go down to defeat he will still, certainly, lose his leadership position. John Boehner will certainly lose his leadership position, as well.
The exact size of the electoral defeat will be important. If the Democrats reach 60+ seats in the Senate, there will be no way for the Republicans to stop any bill that the Democrats remain united on. This would be the only way the country might see radical reforms like single-payer universal health care, public financing of elections, or a return of the Fairness Doctrine in media.
Smaller Democratic gains might lead to a more incremental approach. And there will still be many areas where the Republicans will be able to peel off conservative Democrats to forestall legislation.
Even as the Democrats retake their position as the majority party, there will be tensions. Economic populism will actually be most popular in the areas still controlled by the Republicans. How will the Republicans respond?
My guess is that, in the short-term, their response will be xenophobic, isolationist, and fascistic. But, at some point, economic moderates will reassert themselves and craft an appeal to the northeasterners, suburbanites, and upper classes that eschews southern culture and cultural conservatism. Whatever happens, it will be a long way back for the party of Lincoln.
“Whatever happens, it will be a long way back for the party of Nixon.”
Typo fixed.
that it will be a long way back for the Repugs leaves out one of the most important elements that might affect the situation: namely, the extraordinary ability of the Democrats to flock up a good situation handed to them.
The people of this country voted for CHANGE in 2006, and they voted for Dems in huge numbers to effect that change. At the very least, people wanted OPPOSITION to Bush, if the Dems didn’t yet have the numbers to make change, at least oppose, and yes, when necessary, obstruct the criminality of the Bush administration.
And what did we get?
Abso-flockin-lutely nothing. We got a massive dose of the same old same-old, made even worse by the fact that we EXPECTED something different.
Yeah, people will probably vote for the Dems again in large numbers in 2008. Although they don’t deserve it, they ARE the lesser-of-two-evils.
Sure, there may be some marginal change — a decent social program implemented here, a less-reactionary judge confirmed there.
But the fundamental erosion of our constitutional rights will not be turned back. The war in Iraq will continue on unabated and unchecked. The myth of the GWOT will continue to be the driving force of American foreign policy. Corporations will continue to buy legislators and legislation. The utterly bizarre fantasyland that is our nation’s capitol will continue to be as unconnected to the reality of the rest of the country as it ever was.
And by about 2010, people are going to start saying, hey, I voted for Dems to get change, and I got the same thing. Might as well vote for Repugs.
After Goldwater, a lot of people thought the Repugs were dead. Dems flocked up, Repugs were back in four years. After Nixon, a lot of people thought the Repugs were dead. Dems flocked up, Repugs were back in four years.
I wouldn’t be carvin’ no Republican gravestones if I were you.
all good points.
I see both parties going through a realignment. The first stage will be a Democratic ruling majority. That will be followed, probably by 2012, by a Republican reorganization and rebranding. The divisions between the parties are going to change.
It’s hard to guess just where the new dividing lines will be, but in the short-term I expect to see a new breed of economic populist Republican, who will be anti-immigration, anti-fat cat, anti-global trade, anti-intevention.
This first incarnation will be uncomfortably similar to the more radical european parties, exemplified by LePen.
And its appeal will be largely contained to areas hardest hit by economic slowdowns, or trying to assimilate large numbers of immigrants.
The salient feature will be an anti-business element within the GOP.
After that stage, I expect to see the Yankee Republicans reassert themselves with a pro-business alternative to their nativist brethren, and a slow rebuilding of the conservative coalition that ran the party from the 50’s up to Reagan.
The Dems will also change, as they come to represent more and more tax-adverse communities, and middle-class families feeling the pinch of soaring medical and education costs. We’ll see sharp divisions arise within different factions of the ruling majority, depending on whether districts are more in need of economic relief or tax relief.
It should get very interesting.
Great post.
You describe Huckabee to me (the only Republican that can win) in this comment.
and it is no accident that he is from Arkansas. But I expect the short-term Republican response to a little more David Duke than Mike Huckabee. I think they will flail around a bit before they regain their feet.
This goes to show you that 3rd parties are viable if there was any money behind them. People turn to the other of the 2-party system out of frustration and the inherent coersion of the system. We need a multi-party democracy.
the democrat party and its leadership is so sold out that honestly, i could give a fuck.
Both parties endorse torture and warrantless wiretapping. Both parties will keep us in Iraq. Both parties are utterly beholden to Big Business and Big Money.
I could give a fuck. Ooooh, the Democrat Party’s gonna be running things. Fascism with a donkey’s face instead of an elephants. Big fucking deal.
I might just vote for the American Nazi Party in 2008: at least they’re straightforward about what they want to accomplish.
Thanks for saying this. My sentiments exactly.
Too much punditry, too much trying to pretend that you’re a player.
You think I have the time to read the reams of bull that Booman spilled here? I have to work for a living, and I don’t need to be convinced by a pundit-lite that somehow the Democratic party is going to be any better than the lesser of 2 evils.
No way.
If you didn’t read it, how do you know it is bull?
“Paul Krugman wonders whether the Democrats are being ‘wobbled by wealth’.”
There are wealthy people who are socialists and Democrat, i.e., liberal-socialists, who would like to see an end to poverty and greater participation in the rewards of prosperity. Bu I’m afraid, the Gates and Buffets of this world are far and few between, whether they are socialists or not.
We are not seeing much talk in the Democratic debates of kind that got Cuomo in trouble at the 1986 Democratic Convention, when he spoke about traditionally liberal-socialist values, poverty, equality, and that kind of crap. No more. Want those values? Move to Sweden or any of the remaining social democracies (forget France momentarily; appears that Reagan has come out of the grave just to help this country, and not with B movies) where people believe in sharing wealth and that the economic system must work for everyone.
The key here is to see around the corner.
The country is polling as more liberal than any time since the early 1960’s, before civil rights, before urban riots, before divisions over the war, before full blown feminism, before legalized abortion, before the gay rights movement.
The Dems can’t see it because the moment has not yet arrived.
Let’s take this in stages.
Imagine if every bill that was filibustered or vetoed this year were to pass. Imagine, more, that the bills didn’t have to be watered down in the first place in order to try to attract some Republicans. That’s the starting point for a Democratic ruling majority.
But, a whole culture will change. The Democrats are so used to losing when they attempt to do anything progressive that a generation of them have battered wife syndrome. Once they unlearn that instinct, they will respond to the liberal wishes of the new electorate.
Basically, the dynamics are already in place, but the details will unfold in real time and according to uncertain circumstances.
It would be interesting if we had someone comment on this perspective regarding the D party’s imminent “rebirth” who was old enough to remember what things really looked like on the ground in 1957-59.
Unfortunately, I can only draw on political memories back to the late ’60’s – early ’70’s, perhaps leading to the more jaundiced perspective I posted in another diary.
“We only have the grassroots left.” – Bill Moyers
This is such an unfortunate reality, because it has rendered true liberal-socialist democracy the status of a minority position, and makes other pundits, like Bill Clinton, correct about the righward shift of the middle. That shift pulled over many otherwise liberal Democrats so that now, many of their positions are right wing.
Bill Clinton is also not pushing Hillary toward the new middle without reason. A lot of people are sitting out there who might have expressed concern for the poor and half-nots, but since rightward, middle class greed is a respectable Democratic stance, traditional issues are no longer mentioned.
Would any candidate dare propose a “war on poverty” today?
What you say would be nice to believe, but we haven’t seen traditional Democratic values enter the debates thus far. Without Iraq, where would the Democrats be today. Gravell and Kusinich are shouting from the sidelines.
Booman,
You are far more intelligent that most of your peers on the left and this piece is an excellent and accurate bit of analysis.
I’m willing to bet that you have a fairly coherent and considered worldview. Not that common a thing. My guess is that you could give a far better accounting of why you hold your beliefs and what, in your view, justifies them, than most of your netroots peers. All this by way of introducing one complaint concerning the above.
Yes, single-payer universal health care is a radical reform which I despise and you endorse. OK. Yes, public financing of elections is a radical reform which I despise and you endorse. OK. But returning the Fairness Doctrine — that’s just — pick your word — fascist or totalitarian. Don’t you understand that the coercive power of the state could turn against you? Don’t you believe in Civil Liberties and freedom?
Booman, you are more intelligent than your peers and you show slightly more of a sense that ideas and marching orders are not the same thing.
But if you simply use your intelligence in pursuit of any talking point, action alert, marching order, confiscation, re-education, and consolidation then you know what you are. Commissar in training.
I don’t dispute that they are some serious issues with the Fairness Doctrine, and this post was more punditry/analysis than advocacy. Having said that, the Brits are able to sustain a system that provides a much better, and accurate, media environment than we have. There is no question that the quality and accuracy of American news has suffered tremendously since 1987 when the Fairness Doctrine met its unofficial death.
The public airwaves belong to the public and are not synonymous with the public sphere. There is no good reason for the public air waves to be poisoned by disinformation from any party or powerful interest groups. If you think the current system is fair, talk to the Dixie Chicks or Bruce Springsteen, who both have seen their music blacklisted by Clear Channel radio.
Conservatives are understandably pleased with the result of no fairness doctrine. They can now listen to Brit Hume pretend to be an anchor and Alan Colmes pretend to be a Democrat. The reality is that the public must be informed to be responsible citizens, and feeding them idiotic and inaccurate crap, from either side, is most unhelpful.