September 2006
Beyond November: Who Will Prevail in American Politics?
As the upcoming elections dominate current political discourse, three new books examine the long-term political landscape in the United States and ask whether a suspected shift after the midterm elections will present a substantial change or just a blip in an era of Republican dominance akin to the Democratic control of most of the twentieth century.
In One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century (Wiley, 2006), Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten discuss the notion that the Republicans may have laid the necessary groundwork for long-term control. In Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (Basic Books, 2006), Thomas Edsall makes a similar case, arguing that the Democrats have only themselves to blame. By examining the growth of the suburban chain Applebee’s, evangelical churches, and the Internet in Applebee’s America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community (Simon and Schuster, 2006), Doug Sosnik explains how politics today has been affected by these changes, and how politicians, business leaders, and religious leaders must adapt in order to succeed. On September 21, AEI held a conference featuring these panelists to discuss how the upcoming midterm elections fit into the larger framework of party politics in the 21st century.
Norman J. Ornstein
AEI
The Democratic Party retained virtually uninterrupted power from 1930 until 1994 by maintaining a core constituency of white, Southern conservatives. During much of that time, the civil rights issue dominated politics in the Democratic Party. While both parties dominated distinct groups of voters within the electorate, there was still a large base of persuadable voters. By 1994 that had changed. Among the politically inclined population, only 8 percent were still persuadable, a number very different from statistics reported during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. With this in mind, how does one build long-term party dominance with such a small population of persuadable voters?
Do the Republicans now have an intraparty fault-line similar to the twentieth century Democratic civil rights platform? If so, what is it? Can Democrats successfully address national security, or will the Republicans continue to find success in claiming the issue as their own?
How much of an electoral edge is garnered by successful get-out-the-vote (GOTV) drives? Can victory in this arena counter disadvantages in other campaign areas? What is the role of Congressional scandals in affecting both short-term and long-term political change?
Tom Hamburger
Los Angeles Times
The 2004 presidential campaign was historic in that it saw the Republicans turning the tables on the Democrats with superior GOTV efforts. Recent polling and Congressional scandals might be alarming to Republicans in 2006, but the Republican Party has over the years installed a series of strategic and structural advantages that may save them this year. The book One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century focuses on the extraordinary things the Republicans have done to build their current majority and how they might use these tactics to hold onto power in the future.
Peter Wallsten
Los Angeles Times
The structural advantages the Republicans claim amount to a clear electoral edge. Such advantages include a new and muscular alliance with big business and a vast database, “Voter Vault,” which the Republican Party has spent millions of dollars updating. Moreover, the way in which the Republican Party approaches minority outreach cannot be underestimated. The Bush administration has targeted ethnic groups across the spectrum and has been successful in drawing them into the Republican fold. Examples of this aggressive outreach include the identification of millions of potential Latino voters in the 2004 election and the subsequent dissemination of a five-minute promotional DVD to members of the Latino communities showing President Bush waving an American flag and marching in a Mexican Day parade. The campaign also sent a representative to a Russian Jewish community in Ohio on the last Sunday before the election to conduct a rally in Russian.
Thomas Edsall
The New Republic and National Journal
There has been an undisputed rise of conservatism since the time of Barry Goldwater. In a nearly equally divided country, the conservative coalition in the guise of the Republican Party has some clear electoral advantages. Despite the fact that the Republican Party has taken many political hits (Watergate, Iran-Contra, the failure of the Clinton impeachment), it has emerged stronger and more aggressive each time. Insistent, unrelenting, and committed, the Republican Party stands in stark contrast to its ideologically disorganized opponent. Why are the Democrats failing? In a political system in which cultural issues can dominate elections, Democrats do not have as much of a spirit to fight because they have already won the culture battle in multiple societal arenas (for example, abortion is legal virtually everywhere, homosexual relationships permeate television, and women have entered the workplace at all levels.) Second, the Democratic Party’s coalition is made up of people who are only involved in politics because of their identity (i.e. homosexuals, African-Americans, etc.). A constituency based on multiple identities makes it incredibly difficult for Democrats to engage in cooperative coalition-building among themselves. Formulating broad ideological convergence is made more difficult because compromise in many cases means the abandonment of aspects of one’s own social identity. With loyalty to one’s particular social group within the Democratic Party trumping loyalty to the Democratic Party as a whole, the Democrats remain weak, decentralized, and ideologically diffuse.
All this leads to the conclusion that, although Democrats could conceivably win this November and in 2008, it is unlikely that the Democratic Party will be able to hold onto power and build a successful, long-term coalition. Republicans, who are more cohesive in their beliefs, will regain their political dominance.
Douglas Sosnik
National Basketball Association
It may be unclear where exactly we are headed, but we are indeed in the midst of a sort of transition that occurs once every hundred years. In the midst of this generational change, the people who are successful in politics, business, and religion are those who best understand this societal transformation and thrive regardless of party orientation or political inclination. Who we are as a country is vastly different than who we were twenty years ago. Immigration, technology, globalization, and the failure of virtually every institution that emerged after World War II (for example, Wall Street, the media, sports) has inextricably altered the post-war national landscape. Our government was built upon ideas and policies that no longer exist, and thus the entirely of our political structure is outdated.
September 11, 2001, was the tipping point for this societal reorientation and the issues that it brought to political prominence prove that it takes a much different kind of leader to be successful today than it did fifteen to twenty years ago. Although we may like to think that the 2006 midterm elections are a grand opportunity for the type of governmental change that will mirror this large-scale societal transformation, the November elections will not likely yield political reorientation. Indeed, whether the Democrats or Republicans are in control, little can alter the inevitably of a lame-duck finale to the Bush administration. No matter which party is in control, the focus of the next two years will be about who will lead in 2008 and which issues will surround that campaign. Not until then is meaningful governmental change likely to occur.
AEI intern Jessica Natbony prepared this summary.
