Beyond the sheer mendacity of the 'center-right nation' meme, there lies serious discussion of whether the election we just had is, indeed a realigning election. The mendacious meme and the serious discussion are clearly related: if this was a realignment, then we can say, "Well, maybe it was a center-right nation, but it isn't anymore." There's just one problem: no one can quite agree on what a realigning election is. I can sympathize with this confusion, have struggled with it myself, but I've come to a embrace the view that realigning elections can only be understood by their place in the periodic cycles of American party systems-as I'll briefly recap on the flip.
On Tuesday, at DKos, DemFromCT called attention to two similarly-themed pieces that stopped short of calling 2008 a realignment-but did so on what I regard as dubious grounds:
Stu Rothenberg and Jay Cost have interesting pieces up about the realignment idea. Based on Obama's historic win, they both see this as more than a usual election, and less than a realignment.
Rothenberg's approach is to look at the good news for the Dems, say, "that's a lot," and then look at the not-so-good news, and say, "but there should be more if it's a realignment." Cost's approach eschews the term "realignment." Instead, he compares this election with 1860, 1896 and 1932, and concludes that it doesn't compare. While both writers make some good points, they miss both the complexity and the simplicity of a realignment. The complexity is that they are messy things, they don't always look the same. The simplicity is that one thing is certain: you can never go back again.
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.
STATE BLOGS
