The next American realignment

[CivCube]

In 1968, many segregationists reacted to the Civil Rights Act's passage by switching to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party, long the party of Jefferson Davis, then the party of an uneasy alliance between abolitionists and Dixiecrats, became superficially the party of Martin Luther King, Jr. We have been in political gridlock ever since.

I think we are in the middle of a new alignment in American politics. At some point, a libertarian/environmentalist/socialist movement will be able to use data and organizing skills to create a viable party at the state and local level. They will not be as interested in promoting minority rights, but they will accept them at face value. The Democrats will continue to represent minority visibility.

This party will be able to fundraise far faster than either existing party's ability to engage the Internet. They will learn from Trump's successes with anti-security efforts and, eventually, the Democrats' failures with campaigning on offense. I suspect that the likes of Mark Zuckerberg will be able to pinpoint data on potential voters with more efficiency than either party's existing framework. Yes, this means that the new party will again be led out of California.

Will it be a true third party? Hard to say. Kind of a Hardee's/Carl's Jr. situation. In some areas it may have its own name and identity; in others, it may exist as a subset of the Republican Party. It will not be Democratic--there is too much frustration and anger for these folks to identify with a party they think should have been doing its job. Whether this is fair or not is irrelevant--the movement is there, and it will eventually take shape as these people learn more about political engagement.

The other side of this realignment will be quite unusual--the former Eisenhower Republicans will be infrastructure and welfare Democrats representing mainly civil rights and cultural liberalism, while the new party will be focused on technological infrastructure, superficial economic socialism, and broad anti-climate change efforts. The Republicans may not dissolve as a party, but they may be assimilated.

 

[Bootstoots]

I see weaknesses in America's party structure along with substantial evolution likely in the future, and it's obvious that the Democrats are at this point an alliance among college-educated white liberals and most minority groups. Meanwhile the Republicans are an alliance among non-college-educated whites (the right-wing populist part, some of whom are also fundamentalists), true believers in trickle-down economics, people inspired by Ayn Rand, neoconservatives, and lots of business types who are trying to run the show to benefit their own interests. These alliances could shift at some point, perhaps in the wake of a Trump debacle. But I don't see how the sort of third party you're proposing would get anywhere.

Are you saying that this new party is basically just the first group of the Democrats, minus the second? A party dominated by college-educated white liberals and techno-libertarians, minus the social justice contingent of the former? Even with all the funding and big data they want, I don't see how this party would get very far - they would make up at most 20% of the population, and would mostly serve to split the vote with the Democrats and make things even more heavily Republican.

What other groups do you bring under the tent? If minorities, they would have to start making minority-focused appeals, and they'd just turn into the Democrats 2.0. If non-college-educated whites, it'll be difficult because there's a very strong, and still increasing, class tension between upper-middle-class white liberals and non-college-educated whites that wouldn't just go away. If something more fine-grained, what does that coalition look like?

The Republicans are successful (for the moment) because they exploit class tension, racial tension, and religious/cultural tension simultaneously to win over a large share of working-class whites, even though their upper echelons are dominated by the Randroids and trickle-downers, who seek policies that are obviously harmful to working-class whites. Maybe your third party breaks into this and splits off some of these voters in the wake of Trump's disaster, but it would be very tough to align them with Mark Zuckerberg no matter how many targeted ads they get.

 

[Perfection]

The next paradigm:
Smart people vs Dumb people

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The next paradigm:
Smart people vs Dumb people

That's a real problem, since by all indications the dumb people have the numbers.

 

[Bootstoots]

@Perfection - We all know who wins that contest.

 

[JollyRoger]

Obviously, the Big 12 will have to be broken up to accommodate realignment.

 

[Hehehe]

I was going to comment, but apparently Bootstoots already typed out almost everything I was going to write.

I am no expert in American politics, but it seems to me like Donald Trump has a fair chance to go down in history as one of the least popular presidents in US history. If that happens, it will be curious to see what happens to his populist voting block if that happens (from what I understand, the republicans aren't too fond of Trump and his constituency, but I could be wrong on this one). Also I'm not sure how the college-educated white liberals are going to fare in the future. Seems to me like their European counterparts are going to get trashed eventually

 

[Perfection]

@Perfection - We all know who wins that contest.

Nobody

 

[Ryika]

Sounds a bit like what the Justice Democrats are trying to do. With little success so far.

 

[CivCube]

The Republicans are successful (for the moment) because they exploit class tension, racial tension, and religious/cultural tension simultaneously to win over a large share of working-class whites, even though their upper echelons are dominated by the Randroids and trickle-downers, who seek policies that are obviously harmful to working-class whites. Maybe your third party breaks into this and splits off some of these voters in the wake of Trump's disaster, but it would be very tough to align them with Mark Zuckerberg no matter how many targeted ads they get.

This is why I think this party will be more loosely defined, although there will be more discreet coordination behind the scenes. A Midwestern conservative is less likely to vote for a Democrat for cultural reasons but may vote for a self-described libertarian party for more economic reasons, especially if issues like the environment are framed with an agricultural bent. Democrats have the additional challenge of being the foil of conservative propaganda for decades and the primary subject of hatred.

The other variable is going to be Republican-dictated voter suppression. It could well be that this new party will simply take the place of the Democrats as the latter's voters are phased out of legal eligibility.

I am no expert in American politics, but it seems to me like Donald Trump has a fair chance to go down in history as one of the least popular presidents in US history. If that happens, it will be curious to see what happens to his populist voting block if that happens (from what I understand, the republicans aren't too fond of Trump and his constituency, but I could be wrong on this one). Also I'm not sure how the college-educated white liberals are going to fare in the future. Seems to me like their European counterparts are going to get trashed eventually.

Populism will dominate much of the new party as well, as much as it worked for Obama and Sanders.

Obviously, the Big 12 will have to be broken up to accommodate realignment.

The Big 12 and the Nebraska Cornhuskers (formerly Big 12) are the DNC of college football. They play to not lose.

Sounds a bit like what the Justice Democrats are trying to do. With little success so far.

Time will tell if organizational efforts like Indivisible will eventually conglomerate into something viable, or if their constituents are ultimately too disestablishment to bother.

The next paradigm:
Smart people vs Dumb people

I think we've already crossed that threshold twice over with Weird Twitter.

 

[Hehehe]

The next paradigm:
Smart people vs Dumb people

Yeah, and everybody will assume that the people on their side are the smart ones and the people on the other side are dumb.

Populism will dominate much of the new party as well, as much as it worked for Obama and Sanders.

So did I get this right? This new party would split off from the democrats? So it would be left-wing populism? I know Bootstoots covered this already, but it seems to me like the US system favors the two established parties so heavily that I doubt a 3rd party could get anywhere

 

[Bootstoots]

I was going to comment, but apparently Bootstoots already typed out almost everything I was going to write.

I am no expert in American politics, but it seems to me like Donald Trump has a fair chance to go down in history as one of the least popular presidents in US history. If that happens, it will be curious to see what happens to his populist voting block if that happens (from what I understand, the republicans aren't too fond of Trump and his constituency, but I could be wrong on this one). Also I'm not sure how the college-educated white liberals are going to fare in the future. Seems to me like their European counterparts are going to get trashed eventually

That's why I keep imploring the Democrats to go back to more populist campaigns, to downplay the class tension [EDIT: the tension between wealthy liberals and the working class, not class tension as a whole - play up the non-rich vs rich angle], and more generally just run someone with charisma. One of the most important reasons Clinton lost is that the share of voters who disapproved of both candidates went to Trump by a 3:2 margin, and even worse in the Rust Belt. The disasters Trump causes, and in particular any ill effects he causes on his core voters, can be capitalized on by any Democrat who is a competent politician - which Hillary Clinton was not.

(she's probably the most competent political technocrat in America, but that's not the same as being a competent politician)

College-educated white liberals aren't going anywhere - if anything they're demographically ascendant, as the young are both more likely to be college-educated and to be liberal. That's the whole crux of the long-term Democratic Party strategy: just wait until white liberals and minorities combine to make up enough votes to win, and then you'll eventually have power forever. They didn't seem to realize that they were still winning a substantial minority of working-class white voters, who still make up ~35% of the electorate and more in the most electorally important states. Their net margin among non-college-educated whites went from -26 to -39 between 2012 and 2016, easily enough to more than cancel any demographic shifts. There's still potential to lose even worse among that declining-but-still-large demographic, too.

As a very-long-term strategy, and assuming that demographic trends continue, it may turn out to be sound at least for the presidency and the House. They'll have Senate problems forever, though - 48 seats is actually on the high end of what they can expect, because they've still got a number of seats in deeply Republican territory (all of which will come up in 2018). Here's the map they could win the presidency with in 2028 or 2032, if they dispense with the Rust Belt entirely (losing MN, NH, and ME-statewide) and focus on the Sun Belt states where they have positive trends:

Note of course that this is still really weak: just flip FL and TX back and they lose again, while still probably winning the popular vote by even more than in 2016. FL has a neutral trend rather than a Dem trend and will probably be close for a long time, while TX has a Dem trend but is starting from a heavy GOP lean, which is also true to a slightly lesser degree for GA, AZ, and NC - so this map can't be counted on for a reliable win until like 2036. But it's basically what they seem to be going for in the long run, and I'm trying to convince them that it would be much better to just win the Upper Midwest back.

Nobody

Nobody has trouble with ballot access - he's only on the ballot in Nevada as of now. Nobody did get 2.6% of the vote in Nevada in 2016, though, an all-time presidential election record. Gary Johnson still placed third, but it was a hard-fought campaign. Nationwide, write-ins totaled 0.8%, which I believe may also be a record, and many of those write-ins would certainly have been for Nobody, or one of his surrogates like Mickey Mouse. If the Democrats nominate Pelosi or Schumer or someone like that and the Reps nominate Trump again, then I could easily see Nobody breaking 5% in NV and 1% nationwide. That's still a long way from winning though.

 

[mrt144]

Downplay class tension when one of the biggest issues pervading our nation is class tension and how we as a society bend over backwards for people with money? Maybe in 2036 when Democrats have finally completed their transformation to the 1992 Republican Party they can tackle the issue?

 

[Hehehe]

That's why I keep imploring the Democrats to go back to more populist campaigns, to downplay the class tension, and more generally just run someone with charisma. One of the most important reasons Clinton lost is that the share of voters who disapproved of both candidates went to Trump by a 3:2 margin, and even worse in the Rust Belt. The disasters Trump causes, and in particular any ill effects he causes on his core voters, can be capitalized on by any Democrat who is a competent politician - which Hillary Clinton was not.

(she's probably the most competent political technocrat in America, but that's not the same as being a competent politician)

College-educated white liberals aren't going anywhere - if anything they're demographically ascendant, as the young are both more likely to be college-educated and to be liberal. That's the whole crux of the long-term Democratic Party strategy: just wait until white liberals and minorities combine to make up enough votes to win, and then you'll eventually have power forever. They didn't seem to realize that they were still winning a substantial minority of working-class white voters, who still make up ~35% of the electorate and more in the most electorally important states. Their net margin among non-college-educated whites went from -26 to -39 between 2012 and 2016, easily enough to more than cancel any demographic shifts. There's still potential to lose even worse among that declining-but-still-large demographic, too.

As a very-long-term strategy, and assuming that demographic trends continue, it may turn out to be sound at least for the presidency and the House. They'll have Senate problems forever, though - 48 seats is actually on the high end of what they can expect, because they've still got a number of seats in deeply Republican territory (all of which will come up in 2018). Here's the map they could win the presidency with in 2028 or 2032, if they dispense with the Rust Belt entirely (losing MN, NH, and ME-statewide) and focus on the Sun Belt states where they have positive trends:

Note of course that this is still really weak: just flip FL and TX back and they lose again, while still probably winning the popular vote by even more than in 2016. FL has a neutral trend rather than a Dem trend and will probably be close for a long time, while TX has a Dem trend but is starting from a heavy GOP lean, which is also true to a slightly lesser degree for GA, AZ, and NC - so this map can't be counted on for a reliable win until like 2036. But it's basically what they seem to be going for in the long run, and I'm trying to convince them that it would be much better to just win the Upper Midwest back.

I won't do a long-form reply, because I'm tired and will go to sleep soon. But a few points, if I may:

1. I believe the white working class voted for Trump because democrats are working directly against their interests. But then again this is whole another debate entirely
2. Indeed, Clinton did drag the democrats down, and I expect them to rebound in the next election
3. As for colleges, the US is not Europe, but here it seems to me like a certain portion of college educated people are starting to shift to the right. Trends are difficult to predict but it seems to me like the college-educated right-wingers are gaining ground whereas the left-wingers are losing it

That's the whole crux of the long-term Democratic Party strategy: just wait until white liberals and minorities combine to make up enough votes to win, and then you'll eventually have power forever.

4. If the democrats ever become that dominant, I assume that the voting blocks would simply shift so that Republicans become competitive again

 

[Bootstoots]

Downplay class tension when one of the biggest issues pervading our nation is class tension and how we as a society bend over backwards for people with money? Maybe in 2036 when Democrats have finally completed their transformation to the 1992 Republican Party they can tackle the issue?

You're right, I worded that incorrectly. Downplay tension specifically between the attitudes of upper-middle-class liberals and working-class white people, but play up tension between the non-rich (collectively, all races) and the rich. I'll edit my post to reflect that.

 

[mrt144]

I won't do a long-form reply, because I'm tired and will go to sleep soon. But a few points, if I may:

1. I believe the white working class voted for Trump because democrats are working directly against their interests. But then again this is whole another debate entirely
2. Indeed, Clinton did drag the democrats down, and I expect them to rebound in the next election
3. As for colleges, the US is not Europe, but here it seems to me like a certain portion of college educated people are starting to shift to the right. Trends are difficult to predict but it seems to me like the college-educated right-wingers are gaining ground whereas the left-wingers are losing it

4. If the democrats ever become that dominant, I assume that the voting blocks would simply shift so that Republicans become competitive again

One question I have is what qualifies as working class white. I make about 50k a year doing IT admin/project planning/helpdesk, have no college education, am white, and while I certainly don't align with blue collar, I feel like I have much more in common with someone assembling RVs in Indiana than George Soros. Are we further distinguishing it so that working class refers to people earning wages for a living in a fields that aren't located inside cubicles?

 

[mrt144]

You're right, I worded that incorrectly. Downplay tension specifically between the attitudes of upper-middle-class liberals and working-class white people, but play up tension between the non-rich (collectively, all races) and the rich. I'll edit my post to reflect that.

Makes sense. I really thing its a hard bridge to gap because so much of rural vs. urban is baked into the current politics. Maybe throw an identity bone out to the heartland by actually running Democratic candidates at the national level at the very least who have a background in non coastal areas.

 

[Bootstoots]

This is why I think this party will be more loosely defined, although there will be more discreet coordination behind the scenes. A Midwestern conservative is less likely to vote for a Democrat for cultural reasons but may vote for a self-described libertarian party for more economic reasons, especially if issues like the environment are framed with an agricultural bent. Democrats have the additional challenge of being the foil of conservative propaganda for decades and the primary subject of hatred.

The other variable is going to be Republican-dictated voter suppression. It could well be that this new party will simply take the place of the Democrats as the latter's voters are phased out of legal eligibility.

Well, that wouldn't be libertarianism as it's currently defined in US politics - large-scale government intervention is necessary on environmental issues, and Midwestern agriculture depends on large government subsidies. I just don't see how some Silicon Valley-centric party is going to win very many people who aren't already voting Democrat. Even if 2/3 of their support comes from Democrats and 1/3 from Republicans, they still mostly have the effect of just making Republicans more competitive vis a vis both the Dems and the new party.

Current voter suppression, with the exception of denying felons the right to vote, is more subtle than the Jim Crow variety and depends on getting people from targeted groups who might vote if it were convenient to decide not to bother, or to be unaware of current ID laws and happen not to have the correct ID when they do try to vote. This works to the tune of about two percentage points in any given state, which matters in close elections - but it's nowhere near as powerful as being able to just suppress most minority voters from voting entirely. I guess I wouldn't put it past the Republicans to more actively suppress minority voters and slowly stack the courts so that they always support even blatant Jim Crow-style voter suppression, but even I am not pessimistic enough to think that this is likely.

One question I have is what qualifies as working class white. I make about 50k a year doing IT admin/project planning/helpdesk, have no college education, am white, and while I certainly don't align with blue collar, I feel like I have much more in common with someone assembling RVs in Indiana than George Soros. Are we further distinguishing it so that working class refers to people earning wages for a living in a fields that aren't located inside cubicles?

The definition of "working class white" I'm using is the one that pollsters use, which means white people no four-year college degree. So yeah, you're a working-class white person in the broad way I'm using it. Of course when you look at people as people rather than as a few big demographic groupings, there's a whole lot more complexity. But there is still a lot of utility in aggregating people together this way, even though there's always a lot of intra-group diversity. It could plausibly be that some better classification scheme could be used instead, but the key is that you need to split people into a fairly small number of clusters with different voting behavior.

Makes sense. I really thing its a hard bridge to gap because so much of rural vs. urban is baked into the current politics. Maybe throw an identity bone out to the heartland by actually running Democratic candidates at the national level at the very least who have a background in non coastal areas.

Yeah, I'd very strongly suggest that. Bill Clinton pulled something like this off; somebody like him could easily win in 2020, although not by just shifting way over to the right like he did.

So did I get this right? This new party would split off from the democrats? So it would be left-wing populism? I know Bootstoots covered this already, but it seems to me like the US system favors the two established parties so heavily that I doubt a 3rd party could get anywhere

That's right, our system is so heavily two-party that even when an obvious buffoon actually won his party's nomination, the party's leaders just moaned a bit, held their nose, and voted for him anyway. That would have been a perfect time for a third party to form, but even when both candidates were polling in negative double digits, all third parties together still combined for less than 6% of the vote. Our third parties are basically just political clubs rather than real parties, and the main incentive not to join them is that your two-major-party preference will be hurt.

I won't do a long-form reply, because I'm tired and will go to sleep soon. But a few points, if I may:

1. I believe the white working class voted for Trump because democrats are working directly against their interests. But then again this is whole another debate entirely
2. Indeed, Clinton did drag the democrats down, and I expect them to rebound in the next election
3. As for colleges, the US is not Europe, but here it seems to me like a certain portion of college educated people are starting to shift to the right. Trends are difficult to predict but it seems to me like the college-educated right-wingers are gaining ground whereas the left-wingers are losing it.
4. If the democrats ever become that dominant, I assume that the voting blocks would simply shift so that Republicans become competitive again

The first point is something I'd be interested in hearing a full defense of. Outside the economic sphere, that could easily be argued to be true. Even within it, both parties are pro-corporate and have agendas that directly conflict with what white working class voters want. I still think it's pretty clear that Republicans are worse this way - just the AHCA slashing of Medicaid alone is damaging enough that anything they have which favors white working-class people (e.g. opposing affirmative action) wouldn't make up for it.

I don't yet see any statistical signs of a right-wing trend among young college-educated types here. This may just be an issue where European and American politics diverge. Even within Europe, though, I don't see much evidence other than that a few of the right-wing populist parties (e.g. FN) do a have younger voting base. I'm not sure about more educated - probably not in FN's case at least. Maybe True Finns is both younger and more educated? This probably differs a lot on a country-by-country basis though.

I agree about it being unlikely that we'll see one-party dominance at any point. One quite possible scenario is that third+ generation Hispanic and Asian voters shift towards the Republicans by enough to cancel out the demographic shifts the Dems are counting on. Another is that the business class switches mostly to the Democrats, while the Republicans abandon the right-wing economics and morph from a right-wing populist party to a broad-based populist one over time. The scenario then ends up being one where the political axes have flipped from "right vs left" to "populist vs technocratic" or something like that.

All sorts of other long-run configurations are imaginable too - the only constraint given our political system is that there are only two major parties unless one of them disintegrates entirely, in which case a political realignment will happen that will scramble things up until there are only two major parties again within a few years, with (at least) one of them having a different name. It isn't totally unimaginable that there could be stable regional third parties, though. I just don't think what CivCube is imagining is among the set of possibilities.

 

[Broken_Erika]

The next paradigm:
Smart people vs Dumb people

More like Dumb People vs. Dumber People.

 

[Hehehe]

One question I have is what qualifies as working class white. I make about 50k a year doing IT admin/project planning/helpdesk, have no college education, am white, and while I certainly don't align with blue collar, I feel like I have much more in common with someone assembling RVs in Indiana than George Soros. Are we further distinguishing it so that working class refers to people earning wages for a living in a fields that aren't located inside cubicles?

I admit that I do not have a perfect definition for working class white at hand. But I was thinking more along the lines of Joe Sixpack assembling RVs in Indiana.

The first point is something I'd be interested in hearing a full defense of. Outside the economic sphere, that could easily be argued to be true. Even within it, both parties are pro-corporate and have agendas that directly conflict with what white working class voters want. I still think it's pretty clear that Republicans are worse this way - just the AHCA slashing of Medicaid alone is damaging enough that anything they have which favors white working-class people (e.g. opposing affirmative action) wouldn't make up for it.

Democrats are in favor of immigration, are they not?

This is again one of those things where I should begin by saying that US is not Europe. I should also point out that the debate about immigration is a lengthy one, and we've covered that on other threads, so I'll just TL;DR it. But in Europe immigration mostly hurts the working class. Laws of supply and demand apply to workforce too, and most of the immigration we've seen has been low skill. So the working class has seen the worst of it. They've seen their jobs shipped overseas, and they've seen people shipped in to compete for whatever jobs are left. At a time when, due to circumstances, many of them have to rely on welfare, welfare is being cut to make way for immigrants. And unlike some of the more affluent members of society, they can't afford to white flight into whitopias, which means that they have to deal with the crime that comes with immigrants. And if they dare complain, then the political class just calls them stupid ignorant racists (some of these people are really not happy about the way they've been treated). This is exactly why we've seen social democrats bleed voters the so-called right-wing populists.

Now again, I realize that the US is not Europe. But I've heard people make a similar case for the US. I've also heard people make the opposite case, but US immigration is not something that I am interested in debating. To debate it, I would need to do a huge amount of research and I simply don't care enough. However it seems to me like there are a bit similar things going on in both US and Europe. In any case, all of this brings us back to Trump. As I understand it, on the campaign trail, his most popular promises were building the wall (curb immigration) and his infrastructure program. Now I realize there is a lot to criticize in both proposals but it seems to me like they would both benefit the working class.

As for the other stuff, Medicaid. Maybe some see it as a transfer of wealth from whites to minorities? I am neither American nor working class, so I can't say how they see it, but it's just a thought. As for Trump tax cuts, this isn't something I would defend, but maybe some people truly believe that trickle down economics works?

I don't yet see any statistical signs of a right-wing trend among young college-educated types here. This may just be an issue where European and American politics diverge. Even within Europe, though, I don't see much evidence other than that a few of the right-wing populist parties (e.g. FN) do a have younger voting base. I'm not sure about more educated - probably not in FN's case at least. Maybe True Finns is both younger and more educated? This probably differs a lot on a country-by-country basis though.

I don't see any statistical signs either, so maybe I am getting ahead of myself. And the college-educated types do still mostly vote left. But all I am saying is that I'm seeing small signs that the trend might reverse. I've been following the debates that are being had online, and it seems to me like the right is picking up intellectual momentum. I've also been hearing chatter about people wanting to set up nationalist-leaning clubs in universities. Maybe I am living in a bubble but at least in my university-educated circles, there has definitely been a shift to right. Of course this doesn't always translate directly to more support for the populist parties