The Coming Realignment
Martin Longman has a thoughts on the coming landslide and what it will mean for the two political parties:
Trump will force loyal Republicans to support or tolerate or grudgingly accept many of the things they’ve spent their whole lives warning us would lead to armageddon. When that happens, many of them will change their core beliefs and their standards for what a Republican should be and what they should represent. When it’s over, assuming he loses, the party will never be the same. They will never go back to those three legs of the stool. And, if he wins, the party will definitely be transformed into something unrecognizable.
There are areas where this will cause actual party shifting. At first, free-traders will move to the Democrats simply because they’ll get a fairer shake and because they’re appalled by Trump. But they won’t find a party to go back to later, and they’ll rightly conclude that a taxing, regulating party that isn’t anti-business is a better home than a xenophobic gathering of anti-elite rageoholics. Neoconservatives will vote for Hillary out of genuine panic that Trump might get the nuclear codes, but they can’t afford to be politically homeless because their livelihood is built on influence. They’ll find that a party that supports the postwar consensus on American internationalism is preferable to one that wants to encourage nuclear proliferation and destroying our alliances in Europe, the Far East, and the Arab world. Conservative intellectuals (like George Will) aren’t the biggest demographic, but they’re important to the Conservative Movement. They will leave Trump’s party and try to rebuild something to take its place. Some will simply find the anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party has become too much, and they’ll make peace with the Democrats. Others will come limping along later when their efforts to remake what has been lost become obvious failures.
And this assumes that Trump actually succeeds in Etch-A-Sketching his racism out of the fall campaign. He’s stuck with the Wall, although he can try to deemphasize it. But if he can’t beat his rap for being an out-and-out racist, he’s going to lose “respectable” people from all over this country who now send their white kids to the most amazingly pluralistic schools. If the Republican Party gets branded as a National Front party, they’re not just losing the youth for generations, they’re losing an enormous chunk of tax-averse educated professionals. This is also how the Republicans could conceivably lose the House of Representatives, which was something unthinkable pre-Trump.
Now, I can anticipate some reactions to this.
A lot of Democrats, particularly Sanders Democrats, don’t want to hear that the result of their labors will be a party newly filled with free-traders, militarists, tax-averse white professionals, and conservative intellectuals. My response is twofold.
First, they have nowhere else to go but out of politics altogether, and that isn’t going to work for a lot of them. So, get your welcome mat out, because this is how a major party achieves LBJ-like dominance. It’s not by purity, but by winning the argument in decisive fashion.
Second, at least initially, the Sanders wing of the party will have more influence and juice than they had before. That’s because they will have representation at the convention and support for a lot of their ideas from the majority of traditional Democrats, including most of Clinton’s supporters. What will be interesting to see is how some of those ideas might fare if they are picked up by Trump and then rejected in emphatic fashion in November. That would be unfortunate if you care about fair trade, for example. Nonetheless, the progressive instincts of the Democratic Party will be enlivened at least for the initial stages of a Clinton presidency. The newcomers won’t be anything but padded numbers until substantially later, and no sooner really than when Clinton seeks reelection.
I just want to add one additional thought before retiring for the night. The Republicans have been here before and bounced back in short order. They won the presidency four years after Goldwater got thumped and six years after Nixon resigned. They’ve made huge gains on the state, local and federal level during midterm elections in the Obama Era.
But think about this.
They accomplished their turnarounds in the 1960’s and 1970’s by going after the Democrats’ soft spot in the South. Where is the Democrats’ soft spot now?
Certainly, you can look at the Rust Belt and the grumpy mood of the white working class, but there’s nothing on the scale of Jim Crow. How do the Republicans bounce back and begin a realignment of the realignment?
There is a lot to unpack here. Let’s start here: American political parties should really be divided into four parties. First you would have the Green Socialists, with figures like Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader. These are your ultra liberals, ultra progressives, socialists and communists. Next you would have your liberal-left-of-center party known as the Democrats, are are very much like our own Democratic Party today. It’s leading figures would be Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean. Your standard left of center realist progressives and pragmatic liberals, sprinkled in with some moderates. To the right of center you would have your business conservative party, the Republicans. I imagine this party to be what the Republican Party used to be like in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, before the Religious Right took it over and then the White Supremacists joined. The leading figures of that party would be Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and John McCain. And then you would have the White Christian Nationalists, with Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin, and Ted Cruz being its leading figures.
If America was a parliamentary democracy, and we have a Prime Minister rather than a President as the chief executive, then surely these parties would exist, especially if you had some form of non-first past the post voting system. But we live in Presidential Republic with single member winner take all districts and states, meaning that whomever wins 50+1 wins it all, which will naturally always favor a two party system. Until we rip up our Constitution and start over, the two party system is the way our politics are structured. And that means each party has keep their two component parties intact in a coalition.
Right now, the Democrats are most assuredly doing a better job of that. The vast majority of the Bernie Sanders coalition will support Democrat Hillary Clinton in the fall, while some will stay home or vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is especially evil for saying Hillary was a horrible mother on Mother’s Day (third party candidates have to say weird stupid shit to get noticed, and that is why they will remain third party candidates).
Meanwhile, the GOP coalition of Republicans and Christian Nationalists is falling apart now that a Christian Nationalist has actually won the nomination. You see, Republicans always used the Christian Nationalists for their votes and then treated them like rubes forever. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and Republicans don’t like it.
Now, Martin is right, in that some leading free trade and neoconservative figures will try to emigrate over to the Democratic Party, at least for a while. But I don’t think that is going to work because the Sanders wing is too strong for the Democratic Party to go full DLC Third Way again. The Democrats only went that way after 1988 because dyed in the wool liberals had lost time and again for three elections in a row and something was needed to win back the middle so as to convince the country that being a Democrat did not mean being evil. Within the Democratic Party, the Progressives have been ascendant since 2003, culminating with taking over the party literally in 2005, nominating a Progressive in 2009, and now nominating another in 2016 (yes, Hillary is progressive, she is just not pure enough for some, and too practical for others, with some transgressions in her past). So, the borrow a surgical analogy, if you try to transplant free trade and neoconservative Republicans into the Democratic Party as it stands today, it will be rejected. It might have worked in 2000 or 2002. Not now.
No, what this election is going to do is convince some moderate Republicans that they are actually Democrats. I have seen this affect happen in real time on my Facebook feed. On of my mentors in my legal career has been a life long Eisenhower/Nixon/Reagan Republican. She hates Trump, and she has become a fervent Hillary supporter. Now, in truth, she was already a Democrat, with socially liberal positions on reproductive choice and the like (she would say socially libertarian), but her cultural affinity to being a Republican is just too strong. She was always a Republican. Her family was Republican. But Trump was a bridge too far.
So that is what this going to provide: not wholesale movement of ideological blocs, but recognition of what is already reality. Just like in 1994 Southern Conservative Democrats realized that they were actually Republicans.
Your big assumption is that Clinton wants a “progressive” and not “right of center business conservative” Democratic Party. I don’t think that’s an assumption anyone can have much faith in.
There have been a lot of good articles on this out there from people who know what they’re talking about. This one, from some clown from Montana, isn’t one of them.
Trying to figure out all this within the current two-party system is a fool’s errand, and Booman is just the fool for the job. He accurately identifies the forces in play, but I disagree with his conclusion that this will be good for liberals because it strengthens the Democratic Party.
Martin, a friend of mine from the Drinking Liberally Deaniac days in Philly, is from Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was nice of you to call him a bumfuck.
No, Montana is bumfuck. Its population is smaller than Delaware’s. Tell him he’s wrong for me. Inheriting centrist Republicans will make the Democratic Party more like Clinton, not more liberal.
That’s not what Stein said at all. And, yes, I see a huge conflict between motherhood and being a war monger.
Here’s what Stein tweeted:
Okay, then.
Jesus Christ, we don’t need more Republicans in the Democratic Party.
Who the fuck cares about what walking irrelevancy, Dr. Jill Stein, said .. other than maybe people seeking out stuff to be offended by?
DD linked to it and Nemski obviously thought it mattered since he commented on it. I posted the tweet because Nemski obviously agreed with it. Which I found surprising.
@Pandora: That’s not what I said.
“That’s not what Stein said at all. And, yes, I see a huge conflict between motherhood and being a war monger.”
Motherhood and fatherhood do not coalesce with being a war monger.
I posted the tweet. You don’t agree with it? I’m trying to follow what you’re saying here.
My understanding is that since Nemski alleges Hillary is a warmonger, that necessarily means she is a horrible mother.
I am going to spend the entirety of President Clinton’s administration requiring admissions from many in this thread that they were wrong.
Yawn.
DD that is what we are all hoping for, with varying degrees of confidence it will come to pass. I would love to be wrong about Hillary and the economy.
This is, without a doubt, my favorite post this season. I find nothing to really argue about or disagree with, other than the fact that I will view all the new Conservadems with extreme suspicion…. We’ll have to treat them like the former Jonny-Rebs after the civil war so they learn their place… I dont mind this. They have contributed to stagnation and regression and need to earn our trust. They dont really deserve a seat at the table until the prove they are no longer the party of the Klan.
Your summation of what the 4 parties would look like is pretty much exactly what I would have said.
“Hillary is a warmonger”
http://deepseacreatures.org/shark-jumps
Yeah, that about sums it up.
I mean…. Sanders voted to bomb Afghanistan and to continue building waste-of-money planes that the military didn’t want… So I guess he is a warmonger as well.
Libya and Syria are two pretty good examples of Hillary wanting to “get skin in the game”.
Yeah, we sent way too many troops into Lybia and Syria.
Ben, you should probably do some research about Libya and its aftermath.
A couple of things the US sucks at:
1. Arming rebels
2. Nation building
Are you advocating an isolationist stance? There is an area between Bush-style occupation and just letting mass murder occur. I think it’s called the Obama Doctrine.
Clinton was insistent we get involved in Libya and over throw Qaddafi. She had no plan in place for the day after Qaddafi’s regime ending and now the country is a cluster-fuck. Then she wanted to rinse and repeat the same horrible no plan on Syria.
Leaving Kadafi and Assad in power was the right move then?
They are not in our national interests.
I think we’re pretty good at arming rebels and then summarily removing them from power 25 years later and letting their countries tear themselves apart.
I wanna hear the rationale for letting Kidawfee to continue the genocide he was carrying out when a multi-national coalition ended his regime.
As soon as I hear the rationale for stabilizing countries after we create power vacuums.
Other than it wasn’t genocide?
” “We came, we saw, he died,” Clinton laughed after learning of dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s death. She’s probably less triumphant today, given that Libya is now a failing state. GOP presidential aspirant Rand Paul and the Washington Post have even, for different reasons, called it “Hillary’s war.” That’s a misnomer; she was far from alone in supporting it, and others played a similar role in the decision to topple Gaddafi. Yet some of the mistakes made in Libya fall primarily on Clinton’s shoulders.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/121879/hillary-clinton-should-take-blame-disastrous-libyan-intervention
Obama had the final say, but Clinton pushed for our involvement in Libya. And now she’s running for president, so she needs to take a lot of shit for such a bad decision. And the fact that she wanted to repeat the disastrous approach in Syria is mind-numbing.
“I have similar, but different thoughts”
the grammar is strong with this statement
I think part of the disagreement is that Many if not All of the writers here aside from Nemski (who appears to have snuck back in when everyone else thought they locked the door behind him and changed the key) that you are all in favor and don’t see anything wrong with the 2 party system.
I think it’s something worth also pointing out. It again points to the issue that none of you are really liberal. You’re democrats. Some centrists, and some to the left of those at the center.
Nemski to me is the one that is the liberal here. His points don’t resonate because most of the group think here occurs from the a party view of things and not ideological.
But I’ll be told I’m wrong so I’ll go back to work now
You are wrong. The worst part of your wrongness is that you claim to be the arbiter of the term liberal. In your distorted reality, one is only liberal when they meet some strict requirements that you and people like you claim are the liberal position.
It’s not. Like all political labels, it is a spectrum. But you have shown that you have some sort of whacked out version of liberalism that somehow the rest of us are supposed to buy in to.
We don’t. But you seem to get your jollies from invoking your holier than thou argument against the people that disagree with you 10% of the time (and mostly on tactics, rather than goals). It’s pretty much how most social experiments fail. Bravo.
are some people actually saying that a government official can never make what to them is a principled decision in favor of military action and still be a good parent? ridiculous, even when one disagrees with that action.
and are some people on the far left actually saying they would not accept an alliance with moderates from another party? no wonder the far left is always on the outside looking in.
Bravo, LG!
He is right about one thing. Not changing the locks on Nemski was an oversight.
Sanders is going to have another huge night tonight. The bottom line is that there are a great number of Democrats who don’t think it is over.
Anti war, anti wall street, anti Drone murders of American citizens, anti indefinite detentions, anti warrantless wiretapping, anti torture
And expecting my leaders to be the ones holding those people accountable that break the laws I don’t consider whacked out.
My problem is… And a majority of liberals.. Is that those things are what’s important… Not just winning with a shitty candidate so the other sides shittier candidate doesn’t win. I just don’t see what’s whacked out about it
The lesser of two evils is less evil.
@J “The bottom line is that there are a great number of Democrats who don’t think it is over.”
Why is that a “bottom line”?? Is that some sort of end goal? You want more idealistic and gullible Democrats??
The REAL bottom line is that if the Dems are going to win in November, then Hillary is going to need to get some help. This isn’t called helping.
@D “Not just winning with a shitty candidate…”
Some of us liberals actually like Hillary and think that she’ll make a great president.
@lg and @dv: How about we call Hillary a compassionate liberal?
@le, Millions of Democrat voters are still not swayed by Hillary. She and her campaign need reach out, address issues of concern, and persuade us. Then and only then will she get the help you seem to crave.
@n “She and her campaign need reach out, address issues of concern…”
She’s already done that. She has a solid record of doing just that (but some seem to want to keep moving the goalposts).
“…and persuade us.”
Ahhh. You want her to perform for you… Do a little “progressive” dance.
Bottom line… She’s fine. Now we’ve just got to get her elected.
Oh, LE says she’s fine. I guess it’s all settled then.
My main “goal post” (that bumper-sticker phrase is starting to wear thin) has always been a return of Glass-Steagall. She isnt even in the “red zone” and, imo, has yet to even “punt”
I realize it probably would not work to just reinstate the way it was, when it was killed by president Bush, (It was Bush right? Only a republican would do something that stupid)
But Clinton’s reticence to lay out a firm plan to control the banks (I dont feel Dodd-Frank was enough, thanks, Lieberman) is a big problem for me. NOT as big of a problem as vowing to send storm troopers to round up immigrants (which means you can un-twist your knickers, i’ll still vote for her, but still a problem.
“Do a little “progressive” dance.”
For some reason I envision the dance like this: http://awesomegifs.com/wp-content/uploads/elaine-benes-dancing.gif
I mean it’s not like progressives have any rhythm, so what else would it be?
Come on Dave, give me a break.
“Clinton’s reticence to lay out a firm plan to control the banks ”
And yet, the same “goal” does not apply to Sanders because…?
The only answer I could come up with is that Sanders is leading a “movement” not a campaign.
an article on the atlantic site points out that some sanders loyalists are so poorly informed (this would not include the ones here) that they actually think sanders still has a chance to win the nomination. this is because they live in their own social-media bubble so they don’t hear anything they wouldn’t want to hear. there are good reasons to keep supporting bernie — for one, the better he does the more likely income-inequality will get some attention in a clinton administration. but it’s sad to think some sanders people are ignorant of reality. it’s like trump supporters who live in their own fantasy bubble and would lead us on the road to ruin. wish we could all be reality-based. i’m not thrilled that hillary is the one who will have to beat trump, but there it is.
@Ben “NOT as big of a problem as vowing to send storm troopers to round up immigrants”
No one believes Trump’s campaign promises. Everyone knows it’s just pure rhetoric (or if they don’t know… they’re idiots).
No one believes Sanders’ campaign promises. He has zero track record of pushing through his agenda, and with the opposition, everyone knows it’s not real (or if they don’t know… they’re idiots).
And now we’re arguing about whether Hillary has made enough worthless campaign promises? Really???
This thread is so 2008. PUMAs Rule! #squadgoals
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