Long-Term Parity

> The real long-term political question, on
> this view, isn't about partisan dominance,
> but about the terms of equilibrium -- how
> do both parties shift around to maintain rough
> parity and what are the implications of those
> shifts for policy.

When one party effectively owns the largest news network in the nation (and 40% of the TV stations), it isn't hard to figure out where the "equilibrium center" will be set.

For me this will be a major test of the Democratic Party over the next four years: will they work hard to bring back the media ownership concentration restrictions and some version (however weakened) of the Fairness Doctrine? Will they move the principle of Internet Neutrality into rock-hard law? If so, liberal ideas might have at least a fighting chance.

My guess? No, they will not. The big-name Dems are already sucking up K Street cash, and I doubt they will do anything to disturb the major media corporations.

Cranky

There is no way that the Republicans can make "demographic repositioning" that will allow them to pick up more black and hispanic votes without losing as many or more white votes. The demographic trends in the US will bury the Republican in an avalache of "diversity."

In the long run, the Democratic Party will be the dominate party in the US because of immigration trends, differing birthrates, and changing economics. The Republicans are trapped in a demographic box. They are a minority party and no matter what move they make they lose votes. There is no bright idea or platform that can get more votes for the Republicans. They could adopt the platform of the Democratic Party and they would lose more elections than they do now.

The real question should be is how will politics in the US function with only one dominate party? Will Repubicans and conservatives start voting in Democratic primaries and thus force the Democrats to the midde, will more people drop out of poltical participation since elections will decide so little, or will corrupt and graft replace political participation and activsm?

"A 35 year period in which the Republicans had the White House for only eight years and did even worse in congress creates the impression that that sort of thing might happen again at some point."

You really, really, really ought to re-read your American political history from scratch.

The model in your mind of historical partisan non-dominance is waaaaay removed from reality, and it deeply colors your overall political worldview.

Parity is historically the exception, not the rule. It's not even close.

I wonder if 9/11 and its political aftershocks in 2002 and 2004 didn't do for the GOP what Watergate and the 1974 election did for the Democrats - that is, give them a temporary boost that hid their real weaknesses from themselves.

In 1976, with all the advantages they had, the Dems won an election by only a few percentage points. In 2004, the same thing happened to the GOP.

Another thing that's cloaked the underlying strength of the Democratic message in recent years has been the existence of a permanent pundit class whose supposedly center-left representatives have gotten rich, lost touch with ordinary people, and done their level best to co-opt and smother any appearances of economic populism in the Democratic Party.

That message is more popular than it looks, and its proponents did quite well this year despite limited exposure in a hostile media landscape.

Meanwhile, it's hard to see the current generation of Republicans adapting by moving towards the center. First of all, centrists have held little power in the GOP for some time. Second, the ranks of centrist Republicans in Congress just took a real beating; there's hardly anybody to lead the GOP back towards the center. Third, the tidal tug of the primaries is already pulling the crop of GOP Presidential hopefuls rightward. And finally, just look at the GOP Congressional contingent. Moving to the center just isn't in these guys.

Maybe after the GOP loses another fifty House seats, new blood will replace the losers they have now. But that will be 15+ years down the road. In the meantime, the Dems can run against Bush for a long time, the way they once ran against Hoover.

As far as the terms of equilibrium go, there almost aren't any. The GOP will block when it has the power to block, and when they lose the last of that power, the floodgates will open, and the Dems will be able to do whatever they want, as long as they don't get too stupid about it.

At the risk of looking totally stupid a few years down the road, this is where I'm putting my marker.

The Bloc Quebecois won less seats in the most recent election - the one that brought the Conservatives to power, albeit with the smallest minority in Canadian history. The Liberals didn't lose because they lost to the BQ, they lost because the Conservatives and NDP picked up seats in Ontario from them.

Not only that but if you finally ever do work out that educated voting populace thing you've been working on :-) I betcha what will follow is much growth in independent and swing voters and a growth in the lack of interest in being a "card-carrying" anything.

People used to vote the Dem or GOP party line because their husband told them to or because their family had done so for generations. Then many more of them started going to college.

Of course, this won't solve the "chicken in every pot" demagogue problem, they'll just be promising other things than chicken on Sunday. And they'll be doing it by pandering to whatever they call "netactivist" groups in the future? No getting round that "special interest group" problemo in the future? Such folks won't carry a card but they'll gang together in groups agitating for one single issue or another, and those running for office will have to judge whether pandering to that interest will help them more or hurt them more with all the other voters?

It isn't just the dominance of the Democrats 1932-1968+, it is the preceding hegemonic position of the Republicans, 1896-1930, and the Democrats, 1828-1858, and the Democratic-Republicans, 1798-1824. (I leave aside the Republican majority of 1860-1876 as having, shall we say, peculiar features.)

There's a two-party political choice model, that says, in a two-party system, each party should be aiming for 50%+1. I won't repeat the rationale, but it is an oversimplified model, because of the American system of divided government: federalism + separation of powers.

America has a "2" party system, because of the structure of Presidential politics. The rules of the game in Presidential politics strongly favor two-party politics, and punish severely the emergence of third parties: third parties tend, in effect, to elect the guy the supporters of the third party least want. So, our Presidential politics tends to favor a strict two-party system.

But, our political parties must also organize the two houses of Congress and participate in the contest for political control of the individual States. The two Congressional Parties and the 50-odd State Parties are participating in games, with very different imperatives.

In a parliamentary body like the Senate or the House, the underlying game of getting elected and enacting policy does not promote a two-party system, at all. Being part of a third or even fourth party can actually be a highly advantageous strategy to the third or fourth party. We can see this clearly in British or German politics, where there is no contest for head of state, or it is of relatively minor importance.

In a pure parliamentary system with little regionalism, with something other than first past the post voting by single-member district, the number of parties would tend to multiply and be very issue oriented. In the French Fourth Republic, there were three critical issues, which divided France: clericalism, colonialism, and I forget the third, and they ended up with six parties, representing every possible combination of opinion on those three issues.

In a two-party system, issues tend to get suppressed in the coalition-building to create a party, and party identification becomes part of personal identity, tied to family, tribal and class and lifestyle identifications. Every child born, is born a little Whig or a little Tory, and knows it from the moment she knows her father.

Single-member districts with first past the post voting are, of course, subject to gerrymander, and the Federal States constitute a kind of permanent gerrymander for the Senate, while each State adopts a new gerrymander every 10 years for the House. The thing is, the Parties shift about to adapt to the gerrymander. Issues don't dominate the definition of the Party, and the State Parties have considerable freedom to adapt to local norms. So, they do, seeking the 50%+1, locally, to overcome the gerrymander. And, mostly the Parties tend to succeed, if they try. (See Dean is right; the State Democratic Party can contest the legislature, even in States like Oklahoma and Mississippi.)

But, of course, it is complicated, and the national identity of the Party interacts with local identity put forth by the Party, and issues still matter. In the 1840's the Whigs seemed on track to become the presumptive majority party in both the South and the Northeast (and thus the country as a whole), by being very different Parties in those two regions, while retaining a vague national identity associated with deference to authority and rank, and orderly national development (the Lords of the Loom and the Lords of the Lash). The Democrats purged their northern ranks of those opposed to slavery, enabling the southern Democrats to demonstrate to their constituents that they could protect slavery in Federal office, while the Whigs, tied to an antislavery northern wing, could not.

The difficulty of constituting a national Party that can simultaneously appeal to majorities in the deep South and the Northeast has defined American politics every since.

So, in the American Congress, the third and fourth Parties are usually carefully hidden behind the two Party labels. But, the third and fourth Parties are there, and often have some regional association, as well. And, the politics of actual policy-making has to do with the patterns of association and compromise: does power center on compromises made within a dominating Party, or between a dominating majority controlling one Party and a dissenting minority of the other Party, or some other pattern?

What's really peculiar about 21st century American politics is how uniform across the country personal identification with a Party has become, and how neatly the Parties divide on critical issues. Through most of American political history, as important as personal identification with a Party has been, it has ordinarily been very difficult to describe the basis of that identification without a lot of handwaving and regional, ethnic and class qualifications. In FDR's coalition, the fierce Party identification of the yellow dog Democrats of the South had little to do with equally fierce Democratic identifications of, say, northern urban Catholics and Jews. Explaining what made a Whig of 1840 a Whig has defeated any number of professors of American history; Tippecanoe and Tyler, too, thank you very much. And, actual national issues have been treated very gingerly by the Parties, which after all, at their core, are Societies of Mutual Aid in Obtaining Employment more than they are vehicles for enacting an agenda. Issues are treated by office-seekers as potentially toxic, which, as a practical matter from the perspective of practical politicians, they often are. Neither Party nationally, before the Civil War, really wanted to be definitively antislavery or proslavery; the northern Democrats claimed they favored "popular sovereignty" while the Republicans claimed they merely opposed slavery "expansion". Likewise, neither Party ever took a position on Temperance (prohibition of alcohol), an issue fiercely contested throughout the 19th century, and the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century was independent of Party and used by both Parties.

So, it is really weird, that at the moment, the Parties divide so neatly, nationally, on world-view questions, like "are successful people successful primarily because of luck or hard work?". Party identification is tied to stuff like that more than ever, not just regionally, but nationally. And, it is weird that the Parties seem to be divided on issues, as well, like abortion or stem-cell research or national health care or the war in Iraq.

The natural dynamics of American politics tends to undermine both issue-identification with Party, and regionalism. Just as Nixon and Rockefeller arose as liberal Republicans to battle triumphant post-New Deal Democrats, I imagine, it is no accident that the Republicans are offering, say, Romney, a former Northeastern governor identified with a major health care initiative.

I launched on this long lecture, because I wanted to make a simple point: the complications of regionalism, of Congressional Parties and State Parties add up to a system, which tends more to a 55-45 (or 48-38) equilibrium, than a 50-50 equilibrium. The Democrats really are on a roll here, and fabled realignment may be in the offing. Both issues and regionalism are breaking, for the moment, in their favor; the third great factor in Party identification -- national trauma -- also seems to be breaking in the Democrat's favor. Just as the Depression of 1893 created the Republican majority of 1896-1930, and the Great Depression of 1929 created the Democratic majority of 1932-1968+, economic stagnation and the Iraq War may be contributing to a Democratic hegemony forming now.

The one big disadvantage of the Democrats has been the Republican-control of Corporate Media. Republicans, through Media consolidation and deregulation and entrepreneurial zeal, have created a powerful, dominating propaganda machine, the like of which has never before existed in American politics. The Hearsts and local press barons of yesteryear were small potatoes compared to this behemoth of journalistic incompetence. The corruption of American politics by the increasing sums needed to pay that same corporate, Right-Wing Media to broadcast campaign commercials, is a closely related problem. A very sizeable proportion of the Republican vote consists of people, who are completely uninformed or misinformed about Republican policies, but a coalition with the clueless can still be a majority with the right propaganda.

As Cranky Observer points out, Democratic politicians may not realize the urgent necessity of radical surgery on American Media, and that, along with corruption as usual, could be their undoing and the undoing of American Democracy as well as all progressive/liberal hope.

Matt: I think you're missing something here. I don't think that the model people have in mind when they think about one party domination in the US is the New Deal coalition, but rather the Republican coalition from roughly 1860 to 1932. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt, only one Democrat won a majority of the popular vote (Sam Tilden in 1876) and he didn't even become President. There were, of course, more and less competitive subperiods duing these 7 decades; the Dems were much more competitive in Presidential elections between 1876 and 1896 than they were in the '00s or '20s. Woodrow Wilson needed a very significant third party run to win the White House in 1912, and was relected only by the skin of his teeth. His second term was so popular that the Democrats got less than 40% of the vote in the next three elections. That's one party dominance, and the subordinate party held (and was confined to) the South. The New Deal coalition was not unusual in its dominance (the Jacksonian coalition was also pretty dominant between from 1828 to 1856), but because it managed to forge an enduring partnership between the most liberal and most conservative segments of US society. Its hard to see how the GOP replicates that now.

Bruce's post went up as I was composing mine, so I could have just waited and said "what Bruce said." I believe the third issue dividing the French Fourth Republic was "class."

I disagree in part. I think it is highly unlikely that we will ever see a party as dominant as the Democrats were. However, I think that there is a "stickiness" or "lag time" in parties modulating which results from the powers of incumbency both for politicians and in incumbent bases' control within the party, and the incompatibility of certain bases. The result is the possibility of minor dominance depending on those bases.

In the Republican party, large portions of the base hold positions which appear to be flatly incompatible with integration of the two large racial minority demographics - Latinos and Blacks. I had feared that Republicans would find a way to smooth this conflict over between white racial conservatives and Latinos. The recent election suggests that this approach may be doomed for failure.

The result might be an opportunity for Democrats to construct a significant majority. Racial conservatives will retain their power in the Republican party, and it appears that they have not figured out an effective way to paper this over (I think the anti-homosexual agenda was meant to achieve this, but it doesn't really work given that inflammatory racial issues - immigration, social programs, etc - tend to require addressing). You can rant about gay marriage every year, but eventually you will have to discuss immigration. The Republicans have found that their base insists on this, and those who ignore it can be challenged by conservative upstarts.

Bruce,

Thanks for the history lessons but the question should be is what will political life be like in the US with one dominate party. I cannot see the Republicans survivng as a permanant minority party. Why would anyone was to contribute money or time to a party that has no ability to win except in a few limited areas. I belive the pundit class should begin to examine what the US will be like as a single party state. What will the US be like if the voting in general elections is meaningless? Will the Democratic Primary become the most important election and will conservatives move over to voting in the Democratic primary in order to influence the government.
Can a government of checks and balances function with one relevent political party? I look at the District of Columbia and am not that optomistic about what the future will look like with one political party.

Speaking of Canada, former Environment Minister Stephen Dion won an upset victory for leader of the Liberal Party today.

He's a Quebecker, and Liberal Quebeckers seem to do well as leaders of the Liberals, sort of like Southern Democrats at the presidential level down here.

I'm pretty relieved by this outcome, especially since the initial frontrunners for the position were Michael Ignatieff, a really cold, smarmy academic figure, and Bob Rae, a silver-spoon ex-NDPer and former Premier of Ontario whose administration got slaughtered after one term in power.

Huge events can weaken a party for a long time. If your party, arguably, is the party of treason in the Civil War, well, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle for a long time. The Depression made the Democrats the dominant party for a long time.

On the other hand, in the absence of events as overwhelming as the Civil War or the Depression, Matt's parity model is more sensible.

Re; Every child born, is born a little Whig or a little Tory, and knows it from the moment she knows her father.

People do not simply inherit their political outlook from their parents. My father was a staunch Republican, the kind that thoughtRichgard Nixon was unjustly railroaded in Watergate. (Albeit, dad mae to hate the Religious Right as much as I do). I did vote Republican in my first presidential election (1988) but I have long since moved far away from those views.

Re; Between Lincoln and Roosevelt, only one Democrat won a majority of the popular vote (Sam Tilden in 1876)

Grover Cleveland? And if your Roosevelt is FDR not TR, I will add Woodrow Wilson.

Steve, you of all people should realize that the current demographic trends in the US do not lend themselves to parity but to Democratic dominance. To maintain parity, the Republicans have to increase their share of the white vote with every election cycle. I think that the Republicans have reached the limit on increasing its share of the white vote.

There is no event except for massive democratic corruption that will put the Republicans back into power. And judging by DC, Mass, and NJ, I doubt that corruption would significantly dent the Democrats advantage.

In 2010, the Democrats will probably be able to redistrict dozens of Republican congressmen out of office and even eliminate much of the advantage that the Republicans have in the south. After 2008, the Democrats will be able to expand McCain-Feingold and to bring back some form of the Fairness Doctrine. Such moves will lock in all of the Democratic Party's advantages while eliminating any hope of a Republican resurgence.

A number of other readers beat me to the punch in giving Matt a history refresher. But, I'd note his "Parity Forever" theory is no more valid than the straight line prediction pundits.

This isn't the NFL, the losing side doesn't get a weaker schedule and the first draft pick. The political system has as many positive feedback loop mechanisms (more money, attention for the victors)as negative (overreaching by the victors, self-correction by the losers).

The GOP had a chance at realignment in 2002 after 9/11, and Bush blew it. Now the Dems may have a chance if they pick the right nominee in 2008.

I think the problem with Matt's model is that it underestimates the degree of collaberation between politicians between different political parties. It has the same problem with economic theories that ignore oligopolies.

In reality, a "Washington Generals style losing political party that plays nice winds up getting a decent share of the spoils. If it tries to gain majority status, it leaders might wind up getting arrested for corruption, poisoned, or kidnapped by death squads. Not every country is like Canada.

No, we don't have death squads in the US, but the normal model in most countries is a dominant political party that wins about two thirds of the elections, for whatever reason. Parity in party political systems is very much the exception.

MDtoMN: The Left have been successful on demagoguing the issue, but there really isn't much "there" there in terms of conservative problems with Latinos. Heck, there are very, very many Latinos who hold the same position wrt immigration. One can easily play the issue much better to split the "Latino" vote into legal immigrants vs illegal immigrants. Long term that's a very advantageous split, for Republicans, as long as the illegals stay illegal and aren't given an amnesty. That hardline is also attractive to every other immigrant who went through the (rather hellish) legal immigration process.

Keep lying about it, but you'll lose soon.

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