 | I've been writing about realigning elections for quite some time now, looking forward to this November, starting back in 2006. Now that we're just one month out, signs are stronger than ever that this will be a realigning election, though of course, nothing is certain until election day. Still, it's such a strong probability that I can't help asking the next question: what kind of realigning election will it be? It's a question of sharply increased urgency, particularly in light of the just-passed Wall Street bailout, the only legislation that Barack Obama has acted as a party whip on.
One thing seems clear: whatever this election turns out to be like, it won't be 1932, although that is clearly what we need. But what will it be like? My short answer: Nothing we've ever seen before. But that doesn't mean we can't get some hints by looking at the past. That's why I've put together some electoral maps to look at the lead up to four other realigning elections--in one case, actually, a de-aliging one. Our first realigning election was 1800, but that was the most anomalous one, since it threw out a party that formed in government, and it represented the effective beginnings of two-party system. I want to look at all the other examples, except for 1932, to see what they tell us aobut the ebb and flow of 2-party power.
So join me on the flip. |
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 | 1828 was a realigning election that that swept Andrew Jackson into power, and ended the period of exclusive East Coast dominance.
Leading up that election, the Democratic Republicans had increasingly marginalized the opposition Federalists, who never recovered from losing the election of 1800. By 1820, the Federalists were so weak that they failed to carry a single state, and by 1824, all the presidential candidates were Democratic Repbulicans, revealing a sober fact of American politics, that would be seen again in the Democratic "Solid South": a one-party system is a de facto NO party system. The fragmented result was brokered in the House of Represenatives, and Andrew Jackson seethed for 4 years before gaining his revenge in a sweeping victory that redefined the party system for the next two decades plus.
Jackson's enemies came in two different flavors--the Northerners, who hated him for his autocratic ways, and for smashing the central power of the US Bank, and the Southerners, who hated him for his autocratic ways, and for not being decentralist enough. Somehow, after Jackon left the scene, the two factions managed to cobble themselves together into the Whig Party, and even win some elections. But those of you thinking that the Dixiecrat enbalbed New Deat coalition was an odd duck, should spend a little time contemplating the Whigs. |
 | Abraham Lincoln's victory in the realigning election of 1860 was the historically inevitable outcome of the unstable Whig alliance under the stress of Northern industrial expansion.
The Whig victory of 1848, their fortunes plummeted rapidly, barely hanging onto anything in 1852, and vanishing from the national electoral college results by 1856. The Republicans won out over the the Know Nothings in replacing them, and by 1860, they won a mere plurality, yet decisively won a four-way race, which was then followed by the secession of the Southern states, and the beginning of the Civil War.
In summary: the Party of Jackson reasserted itself, and destroyed the opposition party, only to have a unified northern fragment ressurect itself and emerge triumphant. |
 | The 1896 election is considered a classic realigning election, yet it did not involve the replacement of one dominant party by another. A "me too" Democrat, Grover Cleveland, won two out of three elections--1884 and 1892--with strong Populist sentiment raging in the west oin 1892. The next election saw the merger of the Populists and like-minded Democrats behind Wiliam Jennings Bryan, and loss of all Electoral College votes in the Northeast.
The victorious Republicans characterized themselves as "progressive" as opposed to the Populists, who they characterized as obstructing progress. But more intensely self-identified progressives had something more specific in mind, which didn't include a lot of corrupt business practices. The next two decades were largely defined by a various struggles over the term's meaning. |
 | The 1968 election has been dubbed a "de-aligning" election because it resulted in a prolonged period of divided government, rather than a reaslignment into a newly characterized dominant party & its subdominant opposition party. The runup to this saw Eisenhower, a war hero "me too" Republican, win 1920's style landslide victory, losing only the Southern core, followed by an electoral map of a kind never seen before in 1960, and then in 1964 and almost complete reversal of the 1956 map, another map never seen before, followed by the 1968 map, similar to the 1960 map, but with the notable Third Party defection of the Southern core.
This dealigned state proved surprisingly robust, as the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress for 6 of the 8 years that Bill Clinton was President. |
Common Factors
There are two common factors of these re(de)aligning elections that deserve coomment:
(1) A more or less destabilization of the two-party system. This was most extreme in the case where the subordinate party disappeared entirely. It was least extreme with the emergence of a new Third Party.
(2) The politically victorious parties were not necessarily capable of dealing with the problems that brought them to power. Most could make a good deal of political hay for a while, but they proved largely unequal to the task of governing, and disputes continued witin the dominant party/ideological coalition as well as within the polity as a whole. Technological and demographic driving forces overwhelmed the polticial infrastructure.
Thus, the Jacksonians represented the political periphery of the country, but the drive of modernization in the industrial Northeast determined the main thrust of national development, in direct opposition to the core of Jacksonian ideology. First the Civil War frustrated the Republican hope for a peaceful, gradual end to slavery, and the post-war resurgence of Southern terrorism thwarted the radical Republicans hope for a just racial order. Morepver, the post-Civil War explosion of corruption-fueled industrial development left the Main Street Republican base wondering what the hell happened, not for the last time in the party's history. The progressive's woes have already been commented on.
Finally, the backlash politics beginning with Nixon was unable to reverse desegregation, or any of the related cultural changes that came in its wake, nor could it dismantle the welfare state, but only weaken it substantially. And no workable positive vision was ever proposed. The Democrats fared no better, primarily holding on to past gains, but accomplishing very little that was new.
Conclusions
In light of the above, two things need to be said:
(1) The 1932 realignment was unique in its degree of success in effectively dealing with the problems that brought it power. This fact is vastly underrated in most assessments of our history. It stands in stark contrast to all other realignments, most tragically, of course, that of 1860.
(2) We appear to be very much in line with these other, less successful realignments. The Third Party emergence of Ross Perot seems to indicate that our current realignment has been unnaturally delayed, compared to the normal time-table, but our current state of relatively amorphous, though sharp discontent appears to portend that we will not have a materially successful response come out of this realignment, unless we find some way to avoid the patterns of the past. |
