Part I
The GOP is on a collision course with time. Its base of voters is aging and shrinking. The GOP has become a white grievance party fueled by fear-mongering right-wing media.
Meanwhile, the democratic coalition is expanding. These stats are from the census bureau:
These stats are from Pew:
In 2018, young people had the largest increase in voter turnout.
The GOP sees these numbers and knows that its medium and long-term prospects are poor.
These stats are from Harvard Professor Steven Levitsky’s lecture, available here:
The GOP understands as soon as they lose power, inevitable legislative changes will make minority rule harder. Hence, the desperation that leads to lawbreaking as they seek to solidify minority power.
Trump is all about consolidating minority power by creating a white billionaire plutocracy / oligarchy. That’s why the GOP leadership loves Trump and leaps to defend him. Not because they’re all blackmailed. It’s because they want to be part of that oligarchy. (See this post before you argue.) You might say they lack moral courage, but what they’re afraid of is losing power, which is basically another way to say the same thing. They want power. Trump can provide it.
Given the size and diversity of this country—and views of the younger generation—a GOP oligarchy would not be sustainable. How long do you think America’s young people will tolerate an NRA-loving, climate-destroying, KKK-loving plutocracy?
The conventional wisdom is that the GOP needs to be defeated soundly at the polls for it to regroup and change course.
Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and Berkeley political scientist Paul Pierson, in their book Let Them Eat Tweets, say this:
John Weaver, a founding member of the Lincoln Project, says one goal of the Project is to expand voting rights so that a conservative party will have to compete for votes based on policy.
Stuart Stevens, in his book It Was All A Lie, agrees. After showing how the current GOP is built on decades of lies, he says:
Professors Ziblatt and Levitsky, in How Democracies Die, argue that America needs what we might call a traditional conservative party. Ziblatt and Levitsky point to post WWII Germany as an example of how it can happen. Out of the ashes of the Nazi Party arose a true conservative party.
These guys are called “border ruffians” in the caption:
They were pro-slavery dudes from Missouri who went to Kansas in the 1850s to attack the free-state settlements. Let’s just call them white supremacists.
So let’s say the GOP takes a beating in 2020 and 2022, and decides to reform.
One problem: In a two-party system, where will these guys go? (While the drafters of the Constitution envisioned no parties, our system doesn’t lend itself to multiple parties. (More about that in Part II)
Do those border ruffians look familiar? They should. They’ve been with us since the founding of the nation.
We can safely assume that dudes like these possess what political psychologists like Adorno call the “anti-democratic personality” or “authoritarian personality.” They’re driven by what Hofstader calls the “paranoid style in American politics.”
It will take at least a generation of educational and other reforms to shrink their number. Moreover, research from political psychologist like Karen Stenner demonstrates that there will always be those who resist democracy. (For more on Stenner’s research, see this post.)
Another problem: What Hacker and Pierson call the conservative dilemma: How can conservatives align with monied interests and attract the support of ordinary voters? The result is that conservatives will feel a constant temptation to align with the far right to achieve electoral majorities.
Other problems complicate our current political realignment.
Part II
To have a sense of what might be in store for a white grievance party with a shrinking base, I think we need to see where we’ve been.
History offers possibilities and perspective. So first, some history. Sources are these books and my Making of America series:
The drafters of the Constitution imagined no political parties. Our two-party system developed under George Washington.
The first two parties were the Democratic-Republicans (Thomas Jefferson’s party) and Hamilton’s Federalists.
The Democratic-Republicans were mostly Southern and favored an agricultural economy. They wanted a small federal government. They feared a strong central government would end slavery and infringe on individual liberty. (Yeah, I know. It’s a contradiction.)
The Federalists wanted a strong central government, taxes, tariffs, and infrastructure to support industry. Democratic-Republicans vetoed federal funds for infrastructure because they understood it would strengthen the industrialized north.
The Federalists imploded after Hamilton died. The reasons given for the implosion vary. The Democratic-Republicans (their enemies) said they imploded because they were elitist, monarchical, anti-American, and anti-democratic. Other reasons offered: They weren’t organized. They were pro-northern industry. Many were anti-slavery, and the South got too strong.
Adams, a Federalist, served one term (1797-1801). From 1801 until 1841, every president was a Democratic-Republican.
Under Jackson, the party shortened its name to “Democrats.”
John Quincy Adams (president from 1825 to 1829) was first a Federalist. He ran for president as a Democrat because you couldn’t get elected otherwise—but he was northern, anti-slavery, and he only lasted one term. Later he became a Whig. (John Quincy Adams was a DINO—a Democratic in name only🤣)
By 1841—after so many pro-slavery presidents—the Supreme Court was stuffed with pro-slavery justices. Wealthy plantation owners so consolidated power that they became America’s first oligarchy.
The Whig Party formed in 1834 to oppose the destructive politics of Andrew Jackson (Trump’s hero). Young Abraham Lincoln joined the Whig Party, which lasted about 20 years. The Whigs divided over the issue of slavery and imploded.
So, for about 50 years, the Democratic Party was dominant.
The border ruffians (pictured above) would have been Democrats or Know Nothings.
We weren’t, however, what you’d call a one-party state. Other parties were allowed to form. They just had trouble finding footing.
In 1855, the Republican Party was born as an anti-slavery, pro-industry, pro-federal government party. Industry needed roads, canals, etc. to thrive. For that, they needed a strong central government and federal legislation. The Republicans gave us our first income tax.
After the Civil War and the defeat of the South, Republicans had the power to pass pro-industry legislation. As a result, the industrial revolution boomed. Soon the nation’s wealthiest people were railroad and business executives.
Income inequality opened up. Business tycoons got rich. Labor put in long weeks in dangerous jobs at poverty wages.
Note: When slaveowners had power, they voted to consolidate their power. Now industrialists did the same. Sometimes (but not always) people in power do that.
After the rise of the business tycoons (our second oligarchy) the GOP split into two factions: The conservative pro-Industry faction and liberal pro-labor faction.
The liberals thought the GOP anti-slavery position meant they should now stand up for labor. Factory owners disagreed.
The gap between a few wealthy families and everyone else widened. Then, in 1929 under Republican President Hoover, the market crashed & the Depression hit.
Democrat FDR promised a pro-labor New Deal.
The party of the Confederacy became the party of labor (where labor largely meant northern factories). FDR gave us social security, minimum wage, a 40 hour workweek, and the GI Bill, which ushered in a strong middle class (Blacks and minority communities were mostly excluded).
Neither party championed racial equality. This ushered in a long period of relative harmony between the parties—they respected each other’s “differences” because they weren’t that different: Both parties were basically ruled by white men.
The border ruffian dudes were still mostly Democrats, but the coalition had expanded to include Blacks, who recognized that the Democrats position on labor helped them more than the Republican support for industry.
I’ll pause here to note that realignments happen. It’s even possible to go through a time with a single dominant party while others struggle to be born (or reinvent themselves).
Also—with the exception of the first half of the 20th century—the issue of racial equality has divided and defined the parties since the start of the nation. The difference is that for most of our history, voting was mostly restricted to white men.
Women began voting in 1920, but they mostly voted the same as men until about 1980. Keep in mind that what we now call voter suppression was legal through most of our history. Allowing all adult citizens to vote didn’t happen until fairly recently.
This is getting long, so I’ll continue with Part III, probably tomorrow.
Continue reading Part III here.
