I've written online about realignment and party systems since 2006. My writing combines some standard polisci views with my own personal interpretations, which are focused on trying to most economically account for the observed systemic regularities and relate them to the larger sweep of history and what we can do about it. Typical of this was my post Three Waves And A Wall: 2008 And The American Future--Part 1, which looked at the cycle of party systems, and was part of package that included the rise & fall of great powers as described by Kevin Phillips in Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich in (Part 2) and the rising wave of post-materialist values documented in the World Values Survey in (Part 3) seen in conflict with the power of hegemony (Part 4).
A lot has happened since I wrote that series and that calls for some rethinking of certain aspects. It's particularly evident, for example, that the power of hegemony internalized in a figure such as Barack Obama, specifically, is much more deep-rooted than even I (not particularly an Obama fan) realized at the time, and that's having dramatic impacts, accelerated by the economic crisis which intensified by an order of magnitude after the "Three Waves" series was written. But in this diary, I just want to take a look at the realignment/party system aspect of things.
My current thinking on such matters is relative simple and straightforward: while realignment theory began with a concern for demographic voting blocks and shifts in their allegiances, what's most salient for me is how party systems operate to deal with realworld challenges. I see the following sequence of party systems, broken up by realigning elections when one set of problem-solving arrangements breaks down:
Partisan Balance In US History
Through Six Party Systems
Control of Presidency, House & Senate
Dem-Reps: 12 / Feds: 2 / Split: 1
Dem-Reps: 9 / Whigs: 1 / Split: 7
Dems: 1 / Reps: 9 / Split: 8
Dems 3 / Reps: 12 / Split: 3
Dems: 13 / Reps: 1 / Split: 4
Dems: 3 / Reps 2.25 / Split: 13.75
There are two anomalies in this picture: The First Party System emerged unexpected, as there was no prior history of political parties, and the Founders did not anticipate or welcome them. The Federalists, shocked by the emergence of a somewhat coherent opposition, responded in an authoritarian manner (the Alien and Sedition Acts), which lead to the first realigning election in 1800, after which they never won another national election. Aside from that, realigning elections always coincided with transitions from one party system to another.
The second anomaly is 1968, which marked the end of the Fifth Party System, but was not a typical realigning election. It did not, for example, have the typical signature of two consecutive house wave elections, the minimum seen in cases of realigning elections. Following Walter Dean Burnham and Augustus Cochrane III, I regard it as a de-aligning election leading to the highly anomalous Sixth Party system, in which divided government was the norm, rather the exception, inverting the pattern of all previous party systems.
I Still Think "Realigning Elections" Depend On Demography
1968 was a realignment not a "de-alignment." Of course, Southern Democrat politicians continued to serve in the U.S. Senate for more than a decade due to incumbency, thus leading to "divided government" of the 70's where Congress was under the Control of Democrats while Republicans controlled the White House.
Of course, in one sense realigning elections--like just about everything else in politices--depend on demography. As Chris has shown in the past, issue positions are closely linked demographic groups, similar people see things in similar ways. It would actually be quite surprising if this were not the case. Big whup! Dealigning elections also depend on demographics, and 1968 was the beginning of a so-far-unique period of American history, a 40-year Sixth Party System, which unlike all the others was predominantly a period of divided government:
Partisan Balance In US History
Through Six Party Systems
Control of Presidency, House & Senate
Dem-Reps: 12 / Feds: 2 / Split: 1
Dem-Reps: 9 / Whigs: 1 / Split: 7
Dems: 1 / Reps: 9 / Split: 8
Dems 3 / Reps: 12 / Split: 3
Dems: 13 / Reps: 1 / Split: 4
Dems: 3 / Reps 2.25 / Split: 13.75
Typically--when we don't have a dealigned party system--what happens during a party system is that one party dominates almost completely at first, with the other party staging a breakthrough somewhere in the middle, but not changing the basic political logic in doing so (Eisenhower during the New Deal Party system, with the big-government Interstate freeway system was a classic example of this). The only exception was the Federalist's political repression (highlighted by the Alien and Sedition Act), which caused a backlash that permanently drove them from power. Of the other four party systems, three of them began with seven straight congresses in which all three branches were conrolled by the same party.
This was even the case after 1896, which was a particularly weak realigning election, followed by a period in which reformers like trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt battled with Mark Hannah style trust-defenders for control of the Republican Party. And that's the kind of situation we seemingly found ourselves in after 2008.
But if the GOP wins control of one or both houses of Congress this year, it's entirely possible that we could be in for yet another 40-year de-aligned party system, in which divided government dominates, which will only serve to further entrench the power of insider special interests, who always see their power increase as divided government give dealmaking far more power than it has when one party has a clear working majority, and can give its base a fairly decent amount of what it voted for.
This is the "stable, mature" version of why this election is so important. The "no extreme scaremongering talk of fascism" version. It doesn't even hint at what lies in that direction--the direction that looks more like the First Party System, only in reverse, with the repressive party taking over and perhaps using its political dominance to put an end to pesky elections once and for all.
I've been writing about hegemony, party systems and realigning elections since at least 2006. And for me, the bottom line is this: (1) elections like 2008--realigning elections--stand out as turning points between different political eras; (2) some such elections--like 1860 and 1932, for example, are quite clear and dramatic in their meanings, while oothers such as 1896 and 1968 (actually a de-aligning election, in that it brought in an era dominated by divided government) are much more muddled; (3) 2008 was a clearly in the second category; (4) but it remains to be seen whether it's an ambiguous realigning election (like 1896) where we have a chance to fight for our vision of what "progressive" means, or whether it's a de-aligning election, that will continue the drift, divison, and disconnect of the past 42 years.
A Republican victory this Tuesday will tilt the odds heavily in the direction of retrospectively casting 2008 as another 1968, despite all the numbers of election night pointing to the contrary. If Democrats hold on to control of Congress, however slightly, that means that we're in a new era, no matter how discouraging the current lack of vision by Democratic leadership may now seem.
That's why I find the following video (h/t Dave Johnson) so compelling. Because as I see it, it's not a dishonest representation of where the current DLC-dominated Democratic leadership is today. It's an honest representation of where we, the conscience of the party, have a damn good shot at taking it back to where it belongs once again. From the International Brotherhoood of Boilermakers Union:
It's time to take our country back... to the future, not the past.
The New Deal [Fifth] Party System (1932-1968) built the American welfare state. The Sixth Party System (1968-2008) saw conservatives fail to destroy it, and turn to repurposing it instead--doing more and more for the wealthy and powerful, and less and less for the rest of us. At the dawn of the Seventh Party System, Barack Obama is potentially headed toward cutting the welfare state far more seriously than conservatives ever managed to during the Sixth Party System. This comes out of his de facto acceptance of the Versailles status quo, despite all his superficial talk of change.
As Chris noted Monday, over at Think Progress, Jamelle Bouie singled me out as a stand-in for all progressives who "understate or dismiss most of the work Congress and President Obama have done over the past sixteen months". He said " I need help understanding this strange impulse," and Chris-ever the gentleman-gladly obliged. He helpfully quoted from a post by Yglesias himself from February, listing "the mainstream liberal policy agenda for the 111th Senate" and then noting that "None of these things have happened. And it's worth emphasizing that the White House hasn't even seriously attempted to do the vast majority of these things."
So, case closed on one point. But there was a broader point Bouie began with, and it's a point worth examining more carefully, precisely because it's not so easily answered. And for this, I think it's worth quoting the whole passage that Chris quoted from Bouie's post:
I need help understanding how OpenLeft's Paul Rosenberg can credibly argue that Barack Obama has manically embraced "discredited conservative ideas" and "helped enormously in extended the hegemonic continuity of [the] Nixon-Reagan Eara. [Emphasis his]" More specifically, I need help understanding this strange impulse among liberals of Rosenberg's ilk to understate or dismiss most of the work Congress and President Obama have done over the past sixteen months, especially when - as David Leonhardt noted in yesterday's New York Times - it's been a burst of activity that "rivals any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition."
The broader point is about Obama's approach in general, about what one might call the context of his governance, as opposed to the content, which was dealt by Chris with via the Yglesias list. And to begin discussing the question of Obama's context of governance, it's helpful to start by looking at the context of what I said that started all this. To wit:
Democrats currently enjoy a trifecta controlling the US House, Senate, and White House. Trifectas are more common than one might think.
32 Presidents have had a trifecta, 73% of the total. The 24 periods total 135 years or 61% of US history. Only six trifectas lasted at least 8 years and only three Presidents served at least 8 full years with a trifecta (Jefferson, Madison, FDR). The last trifecta to last 8 years was during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations 40 years ago. Although the average trifecta lasted 5.6 years the median is 2 years. The granddaddy of them all was the 22 year reign from 1801-23 ended not by an opposition party but a plethora of factions (see election of 1824).
This moved me to take out my table of party systems again, just one week after its last appearance, because I think it has something to teach us that these sort of aggregate statistics can't. Here's the table:
Partisan Balance In US History
Through Six Party Systems
Control of Presidency, House & Senate
Dem-Reps: 12 / Feds: 2 / Split: 1
Dem-Reps: 9 / Whigs: 1 / Split: 7
Dems: 1 / Reps: 9 / Split: 8
Dems 3 / Reps: 12 / Split: 3
Dems: 13 / Reps: 1 / Split: 4
Dems: 3 / Reps 2.25 / Split: 13.75
Summarizing just the figures from above:
First Party System: Dem-Reps: 12 / Feds: 2 / Split: 1 Second Party System: Dem-Reps: 9 / Whigs: 1 / Split: 7 Third Party System: Dems: 1 / Reps: 9 / Split: 8 Fourth Party System: Dems 3 / Reps: 12 / Split: 3 Fifth Party System: Dems: 13 / Reps: 1 / Split: 4 Sixth Party System: Dems: 3 / Reps 2.25 / Split: 13.75
I've written a lot about partisan realignments over the past several years. Above all, I've repeatedly pushed the idea that they happen with surprising regularity, like this:
Partisan Balance In US History
Through Six Party Systems
Control of Presidency, House & Senate
Dem-Reps: 12 / Feds: 2 / Split: 1
Dem-Reps: 9 / Whigs: 1 / Split: 7
Dems: 1 / Reps: 9 / Split: 8
Dems 3 / Reps: 12 / Split: 3
Dems: 13 / Reps: 1 / Split: 4
Dems: 3 / Reps 2.25 / Split: 13.75
While the realignment of 1932 is the most archetypal and among the most consequential, it can be quite misleading to think of it as the model. Indeed, there were two realignments in which one of the parties was totally destroyed, and other was radically transformed. In view of how little "change we can believe in" is actually happening post-2008, and how utterly blob-like the GOP has become, perhaps it's worth considering the possible lessons we might draw from the realignments of 1828 and 1860, both of which revolved around slow-moving scenarios in which both major parties failed in fundamental ways, two of them so profoundly that they ceased to exist.
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.
In Part 1, I took note of the reportage casting Fox News as "populist" highlighted by Kargo X, and wrote:
While the notion of Fox News as "populist" is a ludicrous rightwing perversion in one sense, it is quite accurate in another sense we dare not ignore--and that is, quite simply, that it reflects the truest test of elite power--the ability to define the essential contours of populist thought, and to cast someone else as the dreaded "elite".
In this diary, I want to dig back into history, and uncover some key turning points that brought us from the economic populist solidarity of the New Deal to the sorry state we find ourselves in today, where the Democratic Party is still virtually clueless about how to respond to such outrageous lies. A key figure in this story is the pivotal Republican President of the past 75 years--Richard Nixon.
While Barack Obama and legions of his supporters insist on seeing Reagan as his hagiographers have painted him--as a trascendental transformative figure--the simple reality is that he was nothing of the sort. He was the beneficiary of an enormous amount of high-power myth-making. But Nixon was the one who made it all possible.
I've argued elsewhere about why 1968 was a de-aligning election--ending the "New Deal" Fifth Party System, in which Democrats dominated Congress and the presidency as thoroughly as any party has ever dominated a party system, and ushering in the only party system in American history in which the dominant "party" is divided government. Now, in an excerpt from his new book, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, Rick Perlstein provides a striking snapshot of how that deeply split 1968 election sent down much deeper splits into the bedrock of American politics. The excerpt, "Then No One Would Be a Democrat Anymore" (at American Prospect Online) describes the progression of blue-collar anti-anti-war violence, rioting, and eventual mass marching that thrilled Nixon with the prospect of a vast political realignment:
Nixon had tried to talk to the student demonstrators. He concluded he preferred the hard hats. "Thinks now the college demonstrators have overplayed their hands," Haldeman wrote in his diary, "evidence is the blue collar group rising against them, and [president] can mobilize them."
New York construction workers now took every lunch hour for boisterous patriotic demonstrations. So did hard hats in San Diego, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. Some of the rallies were not entirely spontaneous: "Obviously more of these will be occurring throughout the nation," White House staffer Stephen Bull wrote in a memo to Chuck Colson, "perhaps partially as a result of your clandestine activity." Peter Brennan, the combative head of the Building Trades Council of Greater New York, accused of organizing the "hard hat riot," defiantly denied it -- then showed what he could do as an organizer: one hundred thousand marchers on May 20, complete with a cement mixer draped with a LINDSAY FOR MAYOR OF HANOI banner. Signs read GOD BLESS THE ESTABLISHMENT and WE SUPPORT NIXON AND AGNEW. Time called it "a kind of workers' Woodstock."
In the wake of the disasterous Bush presidency there are two possible responses. One is that, just like the last time conservatives controlled the country--1920-1932--they are destroying the country. The second is that both sides are to blame. They're both fighting, instead of solving the problems we face. Obama represents the second response, and he is, quite simply, utterly, totally and dangerously wrong. Whatever his intentions may be, action based on this worldview cannot fundamentally reverse the damage that movement conservatism has done to our country. Because of the fierceness of movement conservative opposition, his worldview demands that we change things only modestly in the grand scheme of things.
This is what's at the root of the problems Obama has faced recently, epitomized by his remarks praising Ronald Reagan, however you interpret them. Obama claims he has been misunderstood. But really, it is Obama who fundamentally misunderstands history, and it his misunderstanding that it is the root cause of the confusion he spreads to others. His misunderstanding is based on three inter-related things--a lack of historical knowledge, an acceptance of the dominant political discourse, and a devaluing of material causes and conditions. In particular, the dominant narrative blaming both sides for our political problems, and attributing the cause to bad attitudes in people's heads and hearts, is not just historically inaccurate, it results from a virtual rightwing takeover of the media and many other institutions--a material cause that affects the nature of our political narratives regardless of the actual evidence at hand.
Specifically:
Our problem is not that people are too partisan. The problem is the opposite--there are too many people with divided loyalties, and this has produced a 40-year period dominated by divided government, unlike any other time in our history.
The problem is not that Democrats are too combatative, just like Republicans. There is nothing the Democrats have done that is remotely close to the GOP impeachment of Clinton. To the contrary, the Democratic leadership has refused to even consider impeachment for a list of literally dozens of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The problem is not individual attitudes preventing politicians from agreeing. There are real, fundamental differences, driven by a widening wealth gap, and loss of political power by average people.
Kennedy and Reagan were not transformative leaders. FDR and Nixon were--not necessarily because of who they were, or anything to do with personal charisma, but because they came to power at the true turning points in political alignment--or in Nixon's case, de-alignment.
Let's take these up, one-by-one. The order will change a bit, because of how the evidence flows.
In Part 1, I showed that our current party system, with divided government as the overwhelmingly dominant norm, is extremely atypical of American history. While there is strong reason to believe that the public is deeply disenchanted with the Republicans, and signs of a realignment seem strong, one of the foremost obstacles before us is the structures of power and institutions of expectation, every bit as much as those of concrete fact, which are premised on the idea of opposing precisely the sort of change that American history tells us is both natural and proper, given how badly the Republicans have screwed up.
In this follow-up post, I want to basically complete the argument by taking a look inside the party systems, to look at how power ebbed and flowed within them. No two are the same, but there are commonalities-and, of course, ours is nothing like any of the others, though it does have a tantalizing hint.
In a shameless attempt to entice you, here's what our party system looks like, charting the distribution of power from one session of Congress to the next:
And so, if bar charts turn you on, before you get therapy, please, join me on the flip...
In a mid-week diary, "Bi-Partisan Consensus Fascists" Chris addressed an historical factor behind the mindless Versailles reflex of equating bi-partisanship with truth and sound judgment. He wrote:
There isn't a single popular appointment or piece of legislation that progressives have successfully blocked under Bush. Despite this, we are constantly told of the equal blame for polarization and equal blame for the horrors that have been caused by the lack of bipartisanship....
For the Washington Bi-Partisan Consensus Elite, the assumption is that there is always a moderate consensus in America that is to be found in a space between the two major parties. There is no accounting for the possibility that the consensus middle is actually located within one party, and is opposed by the other party. Even when one party is overwhelmingly blamed for war, global warming, poverty, prejudice and corruption, and the other party is more trusted on virtually every single issue facing the country, the Washington Bi-Partisan Consensus Elite is convinced that the true consensus in America is actually located at a point between the two parties.
This defect, I think, comes from an inability to believe in political realignment. Over the last forty years, a time period covering the span of even pundits like David Broder, there have been thirty years of divided government in Washington, D.C. The long runs of Democratic and Republican trifectas that preceded those forty years have been forgotten. "getting things done" has always meant negotiating a path between two parties. For aging pundits it will always mean just that. The result is an authoritarian belief in some sort of fake bi-partisan consensus, will of the people be dammed.
Having studied realignments and party systems somewhat since before the 2006 election, I think Chris got this right, and so I commented:
Walter Dean Burnham, one of the leading theorists of political realignment, referred to 1968 as a de-aligning election. It didn't shift power from the Dems to the Reps, but rather shifted power to split between them. This is discussed quite insightfully in the book, Democracy Heading South, which I have referenced on several occasions.
But not everyone was convinced. Since I had already done the number crunching, I decided I may as well drag it out to drive the point home: the period since 1968 is a truly anomalous period in American political history, and having lived through it for so long, we have little sense of how truly atypical it is. If we're to make headway against those who are happy with it, those who defend it, then it's a very good idea for us to have a much firmer grasp on just how atypical it is.
Which is why I invite you to join me in flipsville...
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