This is not an "Edwards for VP" candidate diary series. But it is a very candid look at why Edwards makes a strong choice, the better to discuss the underlying forces at play. The foundations of my argument comes from two different diaries Chris wrote, years apart. The first-discuissed in this diary-concerns the need for connecting Democratic Party liberalism with a more non-idelogical reform tradition. The second-discussed in the next diary-concerns the logic a reinforcing VP pick. After discussing those two diaries, I'll review some recent polling data that shows Edwards as a very strong VP pick for Obama.
The first diary comes from a period in which Chris did some of his most fundamental thinking, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election, and it represented a culmination of almost a month of intensive analysis and reflection, starting with basic number-crunching, and reflecting critically on the results.
I believe it is possible to break the majority Republican coalition, which is primarily an ideological coalition of conservatives against liberals, and create a majority Democratic coalition that will last for at least two or three decades, by liberalizing / progressivizing the 10-15% of the population that is currently primarily reform minded and non-ideological (and thus has a strong tendency to support major third-party efforts). While it is currently non-ideological, this segment of the population, which has existed in large numbers since at least the 1880's, has an outlook on politics that is far more closely allied with liberalism than conservatism because of its emphasis on reform. It is, to put it one way, latently liberal. This segment of the electorate can be swung toward the liberal camp, thus breaking the Republican majority coalition, if the pragmatic, non-dogmatic, reformer, anti-status quo, entrepreneurial aspects of liberalism are foregrounded and turned into a national narrative and platform. Pulling this off will also require dismantling the Great Backlash narrative of oppressive liberal elites, and replacing it with a narrative about conservatism being a force that relies on pure theory, faith-based worldviews, and that supports status-quo institutions such as corporations and the media.
Currently, the significant majority (60-70%) of the non-ideological "reformer" segment of the population, which has a tendency to vote in blocks, is allied with the Republican coalition. In fact, it was this addition to the Republican coalition that led to their 1994 sweep to power, and it remains the aspect of the Republican coalition that gives them their national slim majority (50-52% of the electorate). Primarily, this alliance is a result of the Great Backlash narrative, which identifies liberalism as an oppressive, status quo force in control of academia, the media, the entertainment industry, and the judiciary. However, unlike the conservative and evangelic / born again segments of the coalition that allies itself against liberalism on ideological grounds, the non-ideological element allies itself against liberalism not because of what liberalism stands for, but because liberals are viewed as powerful, anti-reform "insiders." It opposes liberalism not because of left / center / right reasons, but because of insider / outsider reasons. Best of all, because liberalism is a reformer ideology, liberals have the potential to swing this group more or less permanently, which is something that conservatism have never been able to do.
Of course, Chris didn't say that the way to outreach to the reformer segment of the population was to nominate one of them as our candidate for President, but that's precisely what we've done, and it's part of what's got us a little off balance, even as we're in a far superior place to where the Republicans are. Instead of reaching out to the reformer wing, Obama has to reach back to the base of the party, while at the same time fighting the media love-fest delusion that his opponent, John McCain is himself a reformer.
In this strange position, the very sensible act of connecting the reformer wing and the Democratic base together is guaranteed to be portrayed as nothing more than simply playing to the base and trying to deceive those in the middle. In short, Obama will be falsely accused of doing exactly what John McCain is actually doing. But we'll worry about that later on. First, let's take a closer look at what's going on in light of Chris's prescient diary from so long ago-and then, in the next installment, let's connect that with his more recent diary on reinforcing VP picks.
This idea occurred to me as I was shifting through the blogosphere and election stats late Saturday night, which is my normal late-night routine. Past three a.m., four a.m., five a.m., I could not get past the enormous similarities I found in the following seven maps of failed, third-party electoral coalitions (my source is the world-class Dave Leip):
1912 Socialist
1912 Progressive
1924 Progressive
1948 Progressive
1980 Independent
1992 Reform
1996 Reform
Take a while to look at these seven maps, as all seven show the same pattern. Specifically, these significant third party campaigns found their strength in the Western, Midwestern and Northeastern parts of the country, but were extremely weak in the South. Except for the regional, segregationist third-party movements of 1948-1968, the South is where third-party movements go to die.
Liep's reference center page has moved here since Chris wrote his diary, and you can check out all seven maps for yourself. Here are just two of them, from very different eras, that should be enough to show the gist of what Chris was pointing to:
Progressives, 1924:
Reform Party, 1992:
Now look at how Barack Obama did in the Democratic primaries:
Obama, 2008:
The pattern is strikingly similar, except for the fact that he picks up enormous support from the black South-hardly a surprise, that. The conclusion is inescable-next time you're in Philly, take Chris to the races, and double every bet he makes.
In his diary, Chris went on to look at two different groups of states, one with strong third-party traditions, the other without. And he found that Kerry did much better among moderates in the latter group. He went on to conclude:
In our current coalition, we have almost all of the liberals, and we have most of the ideological moderates. To complete a majority coalition, we need the reformers. I believe that "moderates" who are concerned with reform and supportive of third-party movements are streaming toward the Republican Party in order to strike a blow against the insider "elites" in charge of unpopular institutions: the media, academia, the judiciary and the entertainment industry. In do doing, they are performing a liberal act while allying with a conservative party. By positioning liberalism as a reformist ideology permanently struggling against elites--which it is--we could bring a large segment of the non-ideological "moderate" population back into the liberal camp on a semi-permanent basis. This would allow us to break the Republican majority coalition which is currently run by the nation's 34% conservative minority, and regain the reigns of power for the next generation....
Our future success is not predicated upon moving to the left or the right, but rather in our ability to move from the inside to the outside in the national political frame. This is something we succeeded in doing in the past. This is something that Republicans learned immediately following the Perot movement of 1992, and executed so brilliantly in their 1994 "Contract with America," campaign. The Contract With America was filled almost entirely with reformist, rather than conservative, legislative proposals. Conservatives won, and are currently in power, because they swung the reformer vote their way, even though our coalition is a more natural fit for such voters. We can change this and set things right. Howard Dean as DNC chair is a darn good place to start.
Now, of course, Dean did become DNC chair a couple of months after Chris wrote those words. But Dean did not become the face of the party, standing strongly for reform. Yet, the desire for reform was bigger than any one person, and it was clearly a major factor in Obama's success.
I want to make two comments about the orientation of reformist tendencies, before concluding this diary and moving on to look at Chris's diary about VP picks in my next diary. These will both be important for us to keep in mind as we consider different alternatives on a number of different levels, both during the campaign and afterwards:
(1) The identification of liberals as anti-democratic elitists thwarting the public will is but one example of the age-old process I've described before in terms of Projection and Shadow Elites. Thus, for example, the vast majority of "judicial activism" is conservative in nature. But conservatives never complain about that. In fact, it's almost completely invisible to them. It's only "judicial activism" when they don't like the results.
(2) The reformist tendencies Chris alludes to were polled intensively by independent pollster Alan Kay, who discovered that the reform proposals of the time fell into two categories-those that limited the power of elected government officials, such as term limits, and those that enhanced the power of ordinary citizens, such as national deliberative polling to determine public preferences in the shaping of major legislation. Support for these two types of measures were roughly equal. Yet, it is quite obvious that the first types of "reform" can easily be used to cripple effective democratic government, since they do nothing to impede the informal power of special interests, while conservatives have strong interest in suppressing the role of public opinion across the vast majority of issue areas. This has always been true for roughly 2/3rds of the issues historically covered in opinion research, but in recent years has become true for virtually every single major issue, as public trust has swung dramatically away from the Republican Party.
Together, these two points strongly indicate the need to take a proactive approach in bridge-building with ideological reformers-including Barack Obama himself. There are very real liberal/conservative differences that have deep roots and wide-ranging implications. It behooves us to become much more familiar with, and committed to the deep logic of liberalism, and how it can help produce much more
