Party Realignment. It could happen, couldn't it?

Party re-alignment won't happen.  There is too much inertia, too much power to old brands, and the political divisions are not really about money.  They are about culture.

Trump and Sanders both shook up their parties.  

Trump did it by showing that the populist Tea Party talk radio wing of the party was actually more popular that the Reagan-Ryan-Bush small government-neocon version of the GOP.   It was a revolt against the ties to big business, trickle down economics, and involvement in foreign wars.  Maybe.  Trump handily beat well positioned opponents who represented the traditional GOP, and beat them voicing those policies.   Maybe GOP voters really liked those policies.  Or, maybe, they really were just attracted to a Trump attitude of strength and defiance and they went along with those policies because Trump led with them.  Maybe they liked Trump better than Trumpian policies.

Time will tell if this is a real split in the GOP.  The jury is out.

Meanwhile, Sanders revealed the splits by reminding Democrats that they do not have a majority without their uncompromising issue-based left flank, and that the left flank is populist.  It considers business elites the enemy.   A Democratic party that combines educational, artistic, and cultural elites with business elites falls apart.   Harvard yes; Hollywood yes; NY Times yes; but combine it with Goldman Sachs, NO.

Democrats have thought they cannot be a viable national party without buy-in from business, but the progressive left considers that buy-in a losing contract with the devil.   So there is a populist Democratic party and a centrist Democratic party.

I did a thought experiment:  could there be a major party realignment, one as significant as the switch of the Solid South from Democrat to Republican in response to racial politics?

Could there be two parties divided along the lines of populism versus establishment, based primarily on economics?   

There would be a modern party of the modern globalism, a party of free trade, of continued immigration, of continued involvement in the UN and multi-lateral trade agreements, a party in which America continued its leadership in the role of the pre-eminent power and policeman of the shipping lanes and world peace, a party of social welfare which takes some of the edge off of the displacements that are taking place for lower skilled workers.  (This is the status quo under Bush 41, Clinton 42, Bush 43, Obama 44).

There would be an alternative party, the populist one, the party of angry opposition to that status quo because it serves the urban and educated elites but hurts the less educated lower skilled people who are forced to compete head to head with low-skilled workers in China, Mexico, and Indonesia.   This is the populist party, whose voters voted for Trump or stayed home rather than vote for Hillary.  They don't want food stamps.  They want jobs. They consider America First protection to be a route to that end.

My conclusion: no. There will be no big party realignment.   I was led to this in part by observations from a number of readers of this blog.   The real fault line in America is not over money.  It is over culture.  There is a party that represents traditional conservative culture and one that represents modern, diverse, liberal culture.   The Republican base is built around maintaining a traditional social order on issues of culture.  The Democratic base is built around making that social order permeable and tolerant of new attitudes and new people.

It isn't the economy, stupid, not really.   It is about tradition.

Race is in the middle of this.  America's original sin still has its power, well past the 7th generation.  There is a notion of "our kind" and "outsiders" which is probably hard wired into the human psyche, and is currently playing out in the debate over immigration, over profiling in policing, over college admissions, and over whom the economy best serves.  It is also about religion--our religion versus other, "weird" ones..  Abortion remains a useful wedge.  It is about guns.  It is about spanking children, and feeling squeamish around gays, and whether God blesses everyone or whether he blesses America most.

Trump was theoretically an economic populist but he won because he appeared to enough Republicans to be a warrior for cultural conservatism on race, guns, abortion, and patriotism.   He was true to the real Republican brand, which is about culture.

What about Sanders?   It is possible that Sanders, not Hillary, was most true to the real Democratic brand.   Sanders accepted, but did not focus on, the premise that disadvantaged minorities needed to be integrated into the system, but he also challenged the assumption that the business elites were on the side of working people.   Hillary may have been the brand-breaker especially in the big, bold body language statement of getting money from Wall Street in campaigns and speeches.   Wall Street represents entrenched economic power, and the Democratic brand is breaking though entrenched status.  Hillary thought the Democrat need economic elites along with educational and cultural elites who embrace diversity.  Sanders said no.  Those economic elites only pretend to care about working people.  

Conclusion:   The two parties will hang together roughly as they are now.  Change will happen slowly, if at all, as candidates patch together coalitions wiithin the broad tents of the culture wars.

This will be a long post, because I want to include other voices, who shared their thoughts with me.  These are lightly edited, but essentially as presented by my informants.

Stine

Kevin Stine is a Medford City Councilman, a Democratic party activist, a student in political science, a former candidate for US Senate who made a primary challenge against Ron Wyden and lost decisively, as expected, but won some 70,000 votes.  He is widely rumored to be considering running for some office in 2018.

"1) I'm not seeing a party realignment. I see shifts in the Overton Window [i.e. the range of more or less acceptable political thought] and shifts in where each political party is willing to throw their tent. I don't see either political party as a "Big Tent Party". I believe the one that is successfully able to, without alienating their base, can control the next decade in electoral politics. There used to be quite a bit of crossover on a subject such as abortion, where some Dems were "pro-life" and some Republicans were "pro-choice", but that is nearly non-existent today. A few months ago the leader of the DNC, Tom Perez, stated that it was a non-negotiable position that candidates must be pro-choice. For the party out of power, that keeps the base happy, but that is not a winning statement. Dems need more Bob Caseys and John Bel Edwards if there is any hope of winning the seats in red areas.

2) For all her faults, Hillary received about 3 million more votes than Trump. She lost because not enough of those voters were in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. I love your blog, but Trump won because of a bizarre system, not that he is some kind of political genius and Hillary is not. Hillary also was the victim of an October surprise.

3) The Bernie-Hillary thing officially ended 13+ months ago. I'm puzzled why this is such a big deal. I don't recall in 2005 any great Howard Dean-John Kerry factional politics. Kerry beat Dean, lost to W. Bush and Dems focused on winning the next elections, which they successfully did in 2006 and 2008. I want to do that again.

Most Bernie voters were already engaged Democrats that voted for the most progressive candidate in the primary. Some others were not Democrats, but became ones to vote for Bernie. Some of those in the second group decided to stay with the party and help it move forward in a more progressive direction. Others in the second group decided not to become Democrats and decided to say nonsensical things about the primary election being rigged, about Trump and Hillary being equals, and other unproductive things. Those people are a minority, and we need to stop giving them the microphone. We should highlight the newcomer Democrats and thank them. For those that still want to battle we should bid them adieu. The party must focus not on fighting the last war, but the new one.

4) I keep seeing Kasich described as some kind of moderate. He isn't. He was a deep conservative member of the house, and as a Governor slashed taxes, signed the bill that gerrymandered his state, and signed a huge anti-labor bill. He is much like the Republicans in Congress currently where he agrees with most of Trump's policies, but doesn't like the tact. Under no situation would Hillary and Kasich be in the same political party, even if social issues were somehow eradicated from the face of the Earth.

Kevin Stine"
                                                           

                                                              *   *   *

Peter Coster is a retired trucking executive, a student of history and politics, who has the advantage of living in Virginia, but outside the beltway.  This puts him in touch with people who voted for Trump, as neighbors, former employees, former clients.   He has progressive instincts and politics, but thrives in an environment that disagrees with him.  I consider that a distinct advantage in seeing American politics clearly.

"I think what you are saying is there is a need for a third party by whatever name you choose.  The idea sounds great, but it will never fly.  We have a 2 party system and only  a two party system.  Other parties are regarded as fringe types and very few people vote for them.

So, the idea is to get one of the major parties to become the establishment party.  You can forget about the populist Trump party changing.  They are the religious right, Southern right, anti government right, and gun enthusiasts.  Tough crowd.

So, you are left with the progressive left Sanders-style party changing.  I think that's doable.  The elites can see they're losing and have to give a little.  They could work with the centrist Republicans for a common goal.  That's called compromising, which I haven't seen since Ted Kennedy was in the Senate and the rise of the Tea Party.  It's a wonderful concept and things would get done.  Finally.

Then the question is how do you do it?  How do you get reasonable people together to run the country again?  Hard question, but I'll give it a shot. 

You get people like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Warren, and Al Franken together and make a deal.  Find someone who they could reasonably support in the next election.  He would have to be a Democrat, but not a leftist.  He could have shown he could work with both parties.  If Trump ran again, the Republican faction could back off their support.  Make it hard on Trump.  If Trump were defeated, the new guy would have to keep his promise to compromise with the other party.  Play nice.  Hell, party together.  It would be a government of the people, for the people, with justice for all!  (cue the music)

Peter Coster"

                                             *    *    *

Tony Farrell is a retired marketing executive, who has managed the branding and marketing of brands for the Gap, Banana Republic, The Nature Company, and others.  He was in the NROTC at Harvard and was at one point a Republican.  He lives in Oakland, California.

Farrell

I put into bold print below a sentence I consider particularly valuable, particularly coming from an expert on branding, and because it expresses one of the ongoing themes of this blog: political messaging is about a few bold points of nearly content-free imagery.  It is body language, not policy white papers.  The content is approximately analogous to the character depicted by a professional wrestler--a few bold adjectives--not that of a legal brief.  

"First, I feel that there will be only two political parties in America for the foreseeable future; Democrat and Republican, and none other.   For more reasons than I can contemplate, there is no room for a third party of any significance. But, oh, how they change! 

Republicans consistently earned over 90 percent of the black vote before the 1932 election, for one example. And in the 1950s and 60s, each party was split into liberal and conservative halves, creating quadrants that aligned across party lines--Southern Dixiecrats with Western Birchers; Northeast Republican liberals with urban liberal Democrats. That was the so-called era "when the parties worked together" but, really, it was simply ideological kins working together. 

I believe the confusion has come about because of broad-based agreement, rather than disagreement, on fundamental issues. President Clinton, leading the Blue Dog Democrats, was probably the principal architect of this--co-opting "conservative" ideas on crime, welfare, etc., and making them "liberal" for workers and the like. All the things that used to make me a die-hard Republican were adopted by Democrats, making such allegiance silly, in the end. 

This broad agreement on major issues that once divided the country--race; capitalism; trade; crime; welfare--has forced smaller cultural issues to get elevated to extremes: Guns; abortion; affirmative action. When I was in college, serious thinking students touted Mao as a good guy; regarded the military as evil; considered Communism as an acceptable alternative to capitalism. Huge swaths of the public truly believed in segregation of the races. That nonsense is, largely, gone from the scene. 

So, where does this lead me? I believe it comes down to individual leaders, who convey their winning message with the strength of their personality and charisma. Trump has proven that content-free "arguments" work just as well as those with merit. My take is that, as in Weimar, the public wants strong leadership; enough with the ideas! Trump offered it in his own way, and he won. All the same weapons of influence and persuasion are available to any candidate, of whatever political stripe. 

The fact that so many working-class Obama voters switched to Trump argues for a content-free theory of voter preference. The nomination of Hilary Clinton as the strongest possible Democratic candidate, in these times, for president was utterly laughable; Trump's super-narrow victory demonstrated that clearly. So, I would argue that the broad-based agreement among most American leaders about the benefits of free trade, global engagement, strong military, sensible crime control, etc., will, ultimately, lead to bi-partisan cooperation on key issues. Election fights, therefore, will continue to highlight the few cultural differences, making it seem that our country is "more divided than ever" but, in fact, to my mind, it shows the opposite. 

And as for neo-Nazis, KKK supremacists, and white nationalists? Well, they are as small or smaller than they have ever been, albeit more visible and coordinated because of social media. Of course, there are "brand loyalists" who would never vote for someone from the other party; but there are millions of voters who "vote for the person" and that's what we need to think about: 

Who are the future leaders? If Trump taught us anything, it's that DOLLARS and the ESTABLISHMENT mean nothing! (Just ask JEB Bush....)

Tony Farrell"

                                               *     *     *

John Shutkin is a lawyer serving as General Counsel for a consultancy and a close political observer.

Shutkin

"Here are my $.02.  I think your proposal is entirely logical and plausible.  But I just don't see it happening.  Why? Mainly because I am a great believer in inertia -- perhaps too great a believer, because clearly big changes do occur from time to time.  But I rarely bet on them, so I am simply the wrong guy to ask about them.

Also, and more specifically, I just don't think that the Democrats are as divided as you suggest.  Hillary was a particularly -- perhaps, uniquely -- divisive candidate, but I think it is possible that the Democrats can come up with a fairly consensus candidate in the future.  And I also think that Bernie was a uniquely divisive outlier, whether intending to or not.  Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part, but I don't see the party splitting.  

And, as to the Republicans, maybe Trump will prove to be the end of this, but, in getting elected, he at least demonstrated for now that the full spectrum of Republicans will hold their noses and vote for the most odious and questionable Republican candidate no matter what, so long as he runs as the party candidate.

John Shutkin"

                                                         *    *    *

Guyer

Thad Guyer is a frequent guest post writer here.  He practices law representing whistleblower clients around the world, with a home base wherever he has his laptop, most recently in Saigon.

"If all you are talking about are cross party coalitions, Gang of 8, bipartisan bill co-sponsorship, cross-over voting, etc, then you're just talking status quo. That is how our 2 party system works and I think it's working as well, if not better, than it always has. 

We're not a parliamentary system with proliferating micro issue parties. We have very broad issue houses, the house of culturally liberal and the house of the culturally conservative. Within each house, there are multides of bikering coalitions and interest groups. Very infrequently we experience tectonic voter-driven shifts between parties based on major culture wars, like Dems losing the south over race politics, losing Christians over abortion, and Dems now losing big on immigration politics. If you want to call that "party reallignment" fine, but those tectonics aren't planned, they're cultural, the politics and platforms are reactive, and the parties can just try to make the most of them.  

Dems lost big on race politics and abortion, will continue to lose big on illegal immigration, and are likely to lose bigger still on climate religion. Those are the culture wars that shift voter registration and loyalties. But thinking you can create new non-tectonic issue baskets and effect significant party defections or major party realignments is fantasy football.

Thad Guyer"

                                               *    *    *

Bowman

Ralph Bowman is a retired filmmaker who has volunteered services to local public television.  He is also a man I think is fed up with wishy washy Democrats and Republicans who are out to destroy America.  He referred to his comment here as a rant.   He has frequently read my blog posts and urged me variously to run for office, to get more angry, to quit describing things and to start changing things, to start a video blog, and to rant and rave until people in America wise up.

"I think your analysis is fairly correct. I don’t think you give much credence to groups like “Black Lives Matter”, Slum Dwellers on Indian Tribal lands like Pine Ridge and inner city generational poor as in Camden NJ.  even union workers if they exist any longer, Students in DEBT,  or the very small business men who have been shafted by the box stores , chains , Amazon;  also what about the family farmers killed off by mega farms and animal factories.  

What parties do these groups gravitate to….or do these groups just do not vote their interests since they have no say and know they will not make a change.

It seems you are advocating for the Third party because it could become the largest…the party of the status Quo, business as usual under the guise of can’t we all get along. Trump and Bernie spoke to the same under class…those who have been shafted by the status quo… Trump carved out the religious racists while Bernie appealed to the old FDR Demos and the young idealists.

So the gentleman well educated generous patrician Republican comes together with the wealthy liberal minded Democrat who loves women’s rights, pays the nanny and the lawn care guy a living wage and social security, invests in stocks and bonds, runs a tech company, sends his children to charter schools.

Both listen to the screaming tribes who come to the office, and give generously to good causes and the arts. Both deliberate before sending men and women into a war that destroys countries that have oil, but send them anyway.

Sorry. This party already exists. It is called the Democratic and Republican Party. It could be brought together by General Colin Powell or some unknown Cowboy.

America could then live on in hypocrisy and alienation of it’s underclasses.

Ralph Bowman"